A Splendid Little War

by Derek Robinson

  “So who has the real six of clubs?” Susan Perry asked. Nobody had. “What d’you want it to be?”

  “Ideally, the ace of diamonds,” Stevens said.

  She plucked out the card and played it for him. “Ace of diamonds, by majority vote.” The train jolted, and the needle jumped back to the start of “The Entertainer”.

  “Maybe we can buy some Russian cheese,” Lacey said.

  “It’s foul.” Brazier trumped Stevens’ ace with the two of spades and won the trick. “Inedible.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve played the two of spades,” she said. “This is my idea of purgatory – playing whist with a crooked pack and a batty gramophone record.”

  “And to complete your suffering,” Brazier said as he tore up his two of spades, “Lacey reciting his poetry.”

  “The C.O. thanked me for it,” Lacey said. “He told me the last four lines really hit the bullseye.”

  “Remind us,” she said.

  Lacey quoted: “Nor law, nor duty bade them fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds. A lonely impulse of delight, Drove to this tumult in the clouds.”

  “W.B. Yeats,” Stevens said.

  “One of my contributors. It sums up the squadron, according to the C.O.”

  “Good for him,” she said. “I hope we never hear it again. But I fear we shall.”

  Stevens played the four of diamonds, Lacey played the five. “Bloody officers,” Stevens said. “There’s no justice.”

  4

  Count Borodin awoke to the sound of rifle fire. The noise came in irregular bursts, like the faraway crackle of burning stubble. Experience told him that the firing was more than a mile away, probably two miles, and the blackness said it was the middle of the night. He closed his eyes and guessed how many men were fighting. Perhaps two battalions. A small battle. The firing grew more intense and then faded and died. He went back to sleep.

  At breakfast, the talk was all guesswork. “What d’you think happened, Count?” Jessop said.

  “I think you have egg on your chin.”

  “I know. I keep it there in case I get peckish later.”

  Borodin ordered a pony to be saddled. He visited the staff train, came back and joined a meeting of the C.O. and the flight leaders. “There was a small Red attack during the night,” he said. “Several, simultaneously. All beaten off.”

  “Where did they spring from?” Wragge said. “There were no Reds in Orel when we looked. Nobody fired a shot at us.”

  “Wise restraint. If they fire at us, we bomb them. So they don’t fire, and we go away.”

  “The Huns learned that trick,” Oliphant said. “We bombed their cities at night and at first they were easy to find because when they heard us coming they turned on their searchlights, but then they realized they were advertising themselves so they stopped. Hid in the darkness. Not easy to find a blacked-out town in the middle of Germany. If we found it, of course, their searchlights came on and they chucked all kinds of filth at us.”

  “Cunning buggers, Huns,” Dextry said.

  “What are you saying?” the C.O. asked. “Orel’s full of Bolos, hiding in back alleys, waiting to do their worst?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “Moscow by Christmas,” Borodin said. “That’s all everyone thinks of. Some of Denikin’s people have even picked out the white horses for their triumphant entry.”

  “Why not?” Oliphant said. “Denikin’s made mincemeat of the Bolos.”

  “Mincemeat, you say. Russians prepare many a hearty meal from mincemeat.”

  “So what was last night’s nonsense all about?” Dextry said. “The Bolos made a nuisance of themselves and then went home. Not very heroic.”

  “Delaying tactics,” Borodin said. “Spoiled our troops’ sleep.”

  “Or maybe it was a last gasp.”

  “We’re guessing,” the C.O. said. “What does Denikin want us to do?”

  “Ground-strafing,” Borodin said. “Targets of opportunity.”

  “So he’s guessing too. Well, let’s get in the air. With any luck, someone will try to kill us.”

  Wragge took the whole squadron, four Camels and four Nines.

  From two thousand feet, Orel still looked peaceful. Still no burning buildings, no heavy machine guns chucking filth at the sky. No point in strafing something that might be a barracks but was more likely to be a hospital. Proves nothing, Wragge thought, even a hospital might be a hiding place full of Bolos. Or it might be an orphanage, and we’d end up strafing a hundred blond-haired blue-eyed boys and girls. Hard cheese. Teach them not to grow up to be ruthless Bolsheviks. And anyway they’re orphans, nobody would miss them, so nichevo. And we’d vranyo Mission H.Q. and Denikin and say the Camels were returning enemy fire.

  But Orel remained a picture of a market town drowsing in the midday sun, and the squadron cruised on, and soon Wragge’s humane and civilized conduct was rewarded by the sight of two armoured trains, north of the town, not moving. Almost at once, the old familiar ink-blots decorated the sky ahead. One burst was close, and he felt rather than heard the rattle of shrapnel pocking his wings as he bucked through the broken air. He looked back and pointed at Oliphant, the Flights separated, and he led the Camels away in a long, shallow sideslip.

  We have been here before, Oliphant thought. The Nines had moved wide apart as soon as the shelling began. From this height the armoured trains were very thin, no wider than strips of ribbon. The C.O. would want him to go in low, very low, to improve his bombing chances. That was how the Bolos got Michael Lowe. Oliphant searched the sky, half-hoping for three Spads to appear and give his Nines an excuse to dive hard towards home. No Spads. Black shell bursts marched towards him and forced a decision. A compromise.

  He took his Flight down to a thousand feet and put them in line astern. A strong wind kept nudging him to the right. He crabbed to the left and hoped the correction would let his bombs drift onto the target. The old familiar tracer, red and yellow, was pulsing up, searching, racing past. Oh yes, we have been here before.

  He bombed the first train, then banked hard to give his gunner a clear shot, and watched his explosions chase each other through the grass. He circled and watched the rest of his Flight have the same bad luck. Well, we tried. Oliphant looked up and saw three Spads arriving from the north. You’re late. What kept you? Pink, with yellow flashes. Did the Reds repaint them every night? Or was there an endless supply? The Nines formed up and made haste for home. Slow haste. The bomber flown by Prod Pedlow and Joe Duncan had been hit. Their machine had lost a wheel, the last three feet of its lower port wing was gone, the rudder was trailing yards of fabric and the engine was streaming black smoke. Pedlow and Duncan waved to show that they were unhurt, but they were losing height and their speed was not much above stalling. The other Nines stayed with them, watched the Spads with one eye, and hoped the C.O. would keep the enemy busy.

  Wragge did his best. His plan – to strafe the trains when the last bomb exploded – got scrapped. The Camels climbed hard. The Spads, very cavalier in their bright décor, had seen the Nines and were in a long dive to cut them off. By great good luck, Wragge’s course would meet the Spads halfway. It would be a perfect interception: hammer the enemy broadside while he couldn’t bring his guns to bear. The Spads saw it coming.

  When the Camels were just out of gun-range, the enemy suddenly turned away and climbed, turned even more and came at them as nicely as a display at an airshow.

  The Camels scattered. The usual madhouse began.

  Dextry never flew straight. He saw flashing glimpses of a gaudy fuselage, got few chances to fire and by then he was looking at blue sky until a Spad wandered so close to him that he could smell the stink of its exhausts, and he fired one long burst at the cockpit, one single glorious battering burst and the Spad reared so that he saw the pilot’s arms thrown up as if in surrender. Dextry used the Camel’s escape, a hard right bank, and it was too slow. He flew into the Spad and buried his en
gine into its cockpit. Now the two aeroplanes were welded into one. The control column impaled itself in his stomach and the gun butts flattened his nose. Dextry knew nothing of this. In the instant when he went from a hundred miles an hour to nothing, the fuel tank behind him tore loose, smashed through his seat and crushed his spine.

  The wreckage fell, slowly and awkwardly spinning. It did not burn until it struck the ground. The impact burst the tanks and the flames roared.

  The scrap had ended. The other two Spads had gone back where they came from and the three Camel pilots had no appetite for pursuit. They went down and circled the crash until the big guns of the armoured trains chased them away.

  They caught up with the Nines, by now down to a few hundred feet. They kept clear and tried to guess whether the broken bomber had enough speed to reach the airfield, and if it had, what sort of landing Pedlow would make on one wheel. They watched it tip sideways, at first gently, as if testing the manoeuvre, and then more boldly, until the wings were vertical and the aeroplane sideslipped hard.

  From height, say from fifteen hundred or better yet two thousand feet, with ample space to pull out, the move would have looked smooth, even slick. From a few hundred feet, the best that could be said is that it was a quick death. The force of the crash crumpled the Nine as if it had been made of paper. It burned like paper.

  Nobody hung about. Once you’ve seen one crash site, you’ve seen them all. And no amount of looking would improve this one.

  5

  Orel fell, without being pushed.

  The town sent spokesmen, under large white flags, to say that the Red Army had all gone, were probably halfway to Tula by now, and Orel was glad to offer every assistance to the splendid White armies, including a gala banquet in the town hall that very night.

  An invitation to Merlin Squadron was politely declined. “Nobody feels like getting hilariously drunk,” the C.O. told the adjutant, “and we’re not going to sing funny songs for the benefit of a lot of fat, over-decorated …” He couldn’t find the right insult. “Fiascos,” he said.

  They were in the Orderly Room. Lacey was filing his radio reports. “Strictly speaking, a fiasco is a total failure,” he said. “Originally a term used by Venetian glassblowers. If one of them blundered, he turned it into a flask, a fiasco. Perhaps the word you seek is farrago, which means—”

  Wragge punched him. Lacey saw it coming and swayed. The blow skidded off the side of his head. Brazier was between them at once. “Out, out, out!” he roared. Lacey ran.

  Wragge sucked his knuckles. “Sorry about that, Uncle,” he said.

  “I’m not. Lacey needs to be struck often and hard. Like insolent children.”

  “Blame it on the war. It’s not panning out the way we all thought, is it? If we carry on like this, the whole squadron will be wiped out before we get anywhere near Moscow. I need a drink. What’s wrong with us, Uncle? What’s wrong with me? I’ve lost six men in four days. Three today. Griffin led the squadron all through the Tsaritsyn show and lost no-one.”

  Brazier opened a desk drawer and took out a bottle of whisky and two glasses: essential equipment for any adjutant. He poured, they clinked glasses and drank. “Griffin killed himself,” he said. “He didn’t do it for the good of the squadron. Or maybe he did it to teach you a lesson.”

  Wragge thought about that. “Nobody liked him, but so what? Not the C.O.’s job to be liked.”

  Brazier settled his meaty backside in Lacey’s chair. “He told me he was disappointed in you. All of you. He said Russia wasn’t like France. He felt badly let down.”

  Wragge tried to work that out. “He blamed us because Russia isn’t like France? That’s cuckoo.”

  “Well, all pilots are slightly cuckoo. You wouldn’t fly if you were completely sane. He said he’d lived the life of Reilly in France. Every day in the air, getting paid to fly top-notch fighters and chase Huns. Marvellous. Time of his life.”

  “Griffin told you all this? Extraordinary. Not his style. Was he blotto?”

  “Slightly drunk. We were at that big Russian banquet and the vodka made him open his soul. Said he didn’t believe in God until the Royal Flying Corps showed him the heavens, but the war ended and dumped him in the mud. Said he felt worthless. Worse than worthless.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You can’t be worse than worthless. It’s like …” Wragge was struggling. “Forget it. Anyway, they gave him another squadron. The Camel’s a decent enough bus. What’s he got to complain about?”

  “Russia’s not France.”

  Wragge booted the waste-paper basket and scattered Lacey’s rubbish. “I think I’m beginning to understand that, Uncle. It’s not Mexico, either. Or Portugal. Nobody promised the silly bastard it would be France. Why blame us?”

  Brazier spread his arms in defeat. “Maybe every C.O. needs somebody to blame.”

  “Too deep for me. And I don’t give a toss why Griffin picked a fight with all those Bolos. Who cares, anyway? I want to see the chief mechanic. Anderson. Peterson.”

  “Patterson. Very good man. I’ll get him.”

  “Now.”

  Patterson arrived, very grimy. He was twice Wragge’s age and his grey hair was stained with oil. Wragge told him to take a seat, offered him a whisky which he readily accepted, and asked him for a frank account of the condition of the aeroplanes.

  Patterson gave it to him: engines, guns, gauges, pumps, airframes, control wires, wing structures, struts, rudder units, wheels, fabric. He didn’t waste any words – he was from Glasgow and he knew that you had to keep it simple when you talked to the English – but it took him ten minutes. The whisky was a lubricant. Brazier topped it up.

  “It comes down to this,” Wragge said. “If it were up to you, they would all be scrapped.”

  Patterson had been in the Service too long to be tricked into saying that. “Complete overhaul, sir. Everything stripped and tested. Everything.”

  “Do it, Patterson. And thank you.”

  Patterson finished his whisky, every last drop stripped and tested, and left.

  “All operations are cancelled for a week,” Wragge told Brazier. “This isn’t France. The bloody silly war can wait.”

  “I hope your decision has nothing to do with what I said about Griffin.”

  “Certainly not. Griffin was crackers. I may be batty but I’m not crackers. Big difference. That was the first thing they taught me at Eton.”

  Sergeant Stevens had taken the Chevrolet ambulance to the crash sites and shovelled as much as he could find into canvas sacks. He was always guessing. Was that half a shinbone or a bit of broken strut? Never mind, shovel it in. Extra weight would be useful. He worked fast at Dextry’s wreck. The Red armoured trains had gone but they might come back.

  So there were three coffins and nobody had any illusions about what might be in them. Some of it could be Prod Pedlow and some of it Joe Duncan, but which was in whose coffin would never be known, just as half of Rex Dextry’s remains could easily be those of the Bolo pilot he crashed into.

  Oliphant went to the C.O. “No speeches. No Lacey. No heroics. And no God stuff,” he said. “That’s what my bomber boys want. A few words from me about Pedlow and Duncan will do, and you should say something about Dextry, and then the coffins go down. Rifles, bugle. Dismiss.”

  “Alright. Actually, I think we’re all getting a bit sick of Lacey’s poetry.”

  “Tumult in the clouds,” Oliphant said, and they both laughed. “In the clouds is where we go to get away from the damn tumult. Lacey’s a penguin. He calls himself a pilot officer but he flies a desk.”

  The service lasted ten minutes. The rifle volley was crisp and the bugler did not sound any false notes. They were getting better with practice.

  THE JOLT OF BULLETS

  1

  The ground crews worked. The air crews had a holiday.

  Lacey paid everyone, which made them feel better, and he took the Chevrolet to go shopping in Orel. Borodin drove. The doctor
and Jessop came along for the ride.

  The car bumped across fields which were now empty of the White armies. Denikin was advancing again, northwards, ever northwards, to Tula, to Moscow. As the car drove into Orel, the doctor said, “Everything is untouched. Pleasant surprise.”

  “Maybe the Bolos just did a bunk,” Jessop said.

  “They could have smashed it up. Like Kursk.”

  “Perhaps the Bolsheviks expect to recapture it,” Borodin said. “Or perhaps they laid the dynamite but nobody could find the matches.”

  He parked the car and they strolled the streets. In fifteen minutes they had seen the sights, which were a railway station, two onion domes and the town hall, which was shut. Borodin translated the sign hanging on the door: Open tomorrow. “They never change it because it’s always true,” he said. There were no unburied corpses in the street and nobody begged them for food; equally, nobody smiled.

  Lacey found what he was looking for: an open-air market. Not big but better than nothing. He left the others and went to see what he could buy.

  Borodin stood and sniffed the air. “Follow me,” he said, and quickly tracked down a house with no sign but an open front door. “This is either the Café Royale of Orel,” he said, “or someone has thrown his breakfast on the fire.”

  It was a large room, very dark, with half a dozen tables and a bar. Tiny shells crunched under their feet. “Sunflower seeds,” Borodin said. “Everyone chews them.” The aroma of fried onions fought with the stale smell of tobacco smoke.

  “It’s not the Café Royale,” Jessop said. “You get white tablecloths at the Café Royale.” A woman appeared. “This must be the chanteuse,” he said. “Past her prime, I’m afraid.”

  Borodin had a brief conversation.

  “It’s a bar,” he told them. “There are no restaurants in Orel. People eat at home. Mainly she sells vodka. As a favour to us, she can make omelettes.”

  “Omelettes are good,” the doctor said. “Ask her if we may eat outside, where the stench is tolerable.”