Hornet’s Sting

by Derek Robinson

  Soon, all the first-day objectives were taken. The battle of Arras had advanced the Front by a mile, sometimes two miles: the biggest gain since ... Nobody could remember when. Men hurried across noman’s-land and scrambled up the slopes to revel in the thrill of standing where yesterday the Boche had stood. Across the plain, faintly visible, were the spires of Douai. Douai, for God’s sake! Until now, as remote as the far side of the moon.

  It was a splendid start, a thumping victory, a crack in the Kaiser’s armour. The newspapers all said so, and for once they were nearly right.

  * * *

  Cleve-Cutler was back in Taggart’s Hotel.

  The Committee of Inquiry into the loss of his Bristol Fighters had moved from Wing H.Q. to Brigade H.Q. After a gloomy session of many questions and few answers, the chairman sent Cleve-Cutler to England. He was to seek the views of experts at the War Office, the Directorate of Military Aeronautics, the British & Colonial Aeroplane Company in Bristol, and the curators of the British Museum, too, if he felt they might throw some light on the matter.

  “Hullo,” Taggart said. “You look fucked.”

  “Rough crossing,” Cleve-Cutler said.

  “I thought you’d be in Arras.” Taggart poured two nips of brandy. “Up your kilt.”

  “Up yours.” The brandy tasted like a small reward for long service and good conduct. “Since we’re being so frank and bloody candid, you don’t look unfucked yourself.”

  Taggart grimaced. “This lousy weather. Bits of bullet keep doing a route march around my body. Since you’re not in Arras, I reckon you’re here because your shiny new fighters took such a pasting the other day.”

  “Firstly, that’s not true. And secondly, how did you find out?”

  “Chap from 60 Squadron told me yesterday. I suppose you want a room. I’m full up, but ...” He ran a finger down the entries in the register. “Snotty little captain in the Sherwood Foresters: I’ll kick him out. Unless...” Taggart scratched an eyebrow. “A man’s entitled to go to hell his own way. You might like to know that your old friend Lady Jaspers has a room.”

  The title fooled Cleve-Cutler for a moment; then he understood. A pulse began throbbing in his forehead, as urgent as a klaxon. “Well, that’s a coincidence,” he said.

  “No such thing. She’s kept a room here ever since... Well, ever since” Taggart glanced at the clock: almost noon. “Should be up by now”.

  Cleve-Cutler climbed the stairs with a kind of military stride, to hide the fact that he was both eager and reluctant to meet her. A very young man in a khaki shirt and officers’ slacks opened the door. What Cleve-Cutler noticed at once was the way the light caught the golden down on that part of his cheeks left unshaven, which was the greater part. “Oh well,” Cleve-Cutler said. “Damn it all to hell.”

  “Let him in,” she called. “It’s only grumpy old Hugh, he won’t bite you.”

  “Don’t be so bloody sure of that.”

  The young man closed the door behind them and tiptoed away. He was barefoot. Cleve-Cutler saw a tunic hanging on a chair. Second-lieutenant, Durham Light Infantry. Hell’s teeth! he thought. A dribbling infant! He would have given a month’s pay to punch the fellow in the teeth, but a major could not strike a subaltern. Not in a lady’s bedroom. Not in the Royal Flying Corps. Not before lunch. “I’m looking for my umbrella,” he said. “Did I leave it here?”

  “Come and have some champagne.” She was sitting up in bed. She didn’t look like a million dollars, but she certainly looked like fifty thousand guineas. Even with the brandy inside him, he felt like sixpence by comparison. “Tell me all about this battle,” she said. Newspapers lay on the bed.

  “You know more than I do.” He took a glass of champagne. “This is pretty rich, even for you, isn’t it?”

  “Well, everything else is so scarce. Taggart can’t get decent tea or coffee, and Fortnums are always out of sugar, so I’m doing my bit for England like this.”

  He drank. Champagne merged with brandy to spread wellbeing. “Not one of your worst ideas,” he said.

  She topped up his glass. “You need it. You look as if you’ve walked from France.”

  “Bloody awful crossing. Hell of a sea, and we zigzagged like fury to dodge the U-boats.” He drank. “My dinner’s in the Channel. Breakfast, too.” He drank again.

  “I like you thin. Have you stopped feeling grouchy?” He nodded: he couldn’t resist her. Nobody could resist her. “Good,” she said. “Promise not to fight, and I’ll introduce you.” He nodded again. “This is Tommy. Tommy, this is Hugh.”

  They shook hands, very briefly, reaching across her bed. Tommy kept his eyes down and went straight back to the other side of the room.

  “There,” she said. “That didn’t hurt, did it?”

  “I’d better be pushing off,” Cleve-Cutler said.

  “Not before lunch. I’m hungry, Tommy’s always hungry, and you must be empty. Besides, we’re both stony broke, so you’ll have to pay.”

  “I’ve got an appointment at the War Office at three.”

  “So have I. We’ll share a taxi.”

  They ate at a nearby restaurant, Studleys, in a curtained booth. While he supped his soup, Cleve-Cutler took stock of Tommy and decided that he was a young eighteen. His collar was a size too big. He looked tired, perhaps drained of energy by a night of carnal excess, or several nights, or several days and nights ... He did not have the face of a soldier. He took a second helping of soup. Perhaps he was still growing.

  Nobody said much. They ate dishes of whitebait, and then mutton chops with redcurrant sauce, buttered parsnips and braised onions. Tommy had an extra chop and parsnips. He concentrated on his food. Obviously it mattered greatly to him.

  The table was cleared.

  “I take it you’re on leave,” Cleve-Cutler said. Tommy blinked a couple of times before he agreed. “When does it end?” Cleve-Cutler asked.

  Again, there was a pause. “In a little while, sir,” Tommy said.

  It was such an unmilitary answer that Cleve-Cutler repeated it: “In a little while?” Tommy nodded, once, sadly. “I see,” Cleve-Cutler said. “Well, we’re not on parade so you can drop the ‘sir’. I don’t know your other name.”

  “Blanchflower.”

  “Oh. Bad luck.”

  “You can’t be on leave,” Dorothy said. “You just were. What brings you to London?”

  “Can’t say. Top secret.”

  “I’ll ask my chums in the War Office.”

  “You’re awfully thick with the generals, all of a sudden. What are you up to?”

  “Can’t say. Terrifically top secret.”

  He made a sulky grunt. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t pay very well.” He covered the bill with money.

  “Poor Hugh,” she said. “You’re not much fun when you’re jealous, are you?” He ignored that. He ignored Tommy Blanchflower. He ignored the waiter who gave him his hat. The surgeons might have hitched his face into a permanent, jaunty smile, but they couldn’t stop him brooding if he wanted to brood.

  Tommy went back to Taggart’s. Hugh and Dorothy took a taxi to Whitehall.

  “I suppose he’s another trophy from your tea-dances,” he said.

  “Far from it. I met him on Waterloo station. We go to the races together, on my gold medallion. That’s why we’re flat broke.” She said nothing more, and neither did he.

  * * *

  British and Canadian troops began a painful campaign for villages whose quaint names they soon learned to hate: Mericourt, Arleux en Gohelle, Willerval, Oppy, Monchy le Preux, and many more. Before long these places ceased to exist, battered into brick-dust by one side after the other, in a series of attacks and counter-attacks.

  And still it rained. The British had tanks, but they bogged down or broke down or both. The British guns had to be dragged forward through a chaos of their own making, a pox of flooded craters and sucking bog.

  Hornet Squadron, like every R.F.C. unit, was in the air all day.
>
  A-Flight went first, led by Woolley. Ten miles over and one mile up, they got into five or six fights within an hour, all without loss, all without success. The sky was a murky tangle of cloud, much of it leaking rain, and visibility was poor. Much tracer stabbed the gloom;much smoke got pumped from exhausts; nobody scored a kill.

  They landed at Gazeran. One Pup was coughing so hard that it barely crossed the hedge; it would not fly again that day. All the machines were slick with rain. One Biff showed a stream of red from cockpit to tail: its gunner had bullet-wounds that bled down his arm and ran through a hole in the fuselage. He would not fly again that year.

  B-Flight left and came back with much the same to report, except that the casualty was a Pup pilot, shot in the foot. He was barely conscious when he landed, which he did with such a bang that the pain flowered into total oblivion and the Pup touched a wingtip and made destructive circles in the grass. The doc had to cut away his flying boot before he could be lifted out.

  “Can you patch him up?” Paxton asked.

  “There are nineteen bones in the human foot,” Dando said, “not to mention seven in the ankle. He’s broken most of them. What do you think?”

  “Don’t get shirty with me, old man. I didn’t shoot him.”

  At lunch, Woolley briefed them about the afternoon patrols. “And I’m acting major until the old man comes back,” he said. “You can cheer if you like.”

  They chewed their food.

  “I’ve got a pain in the bum,” Maddegan said. “That means there’s rain on the way.”

  By 3 p.m. each flight had flown another patrol over the battle-field. Fierce counter-battery work was being done by both sides in an attempt to shield the infantry from the pounding of artillery. Two-seaters kept grinding up and down, their observers searching for the flash of an enemy battery, or for coloured smoke that would indicate a friendly infantry position. Mainly, they saw rain and shellbursts. If they flew low they got raked by machine-gun fire. When they climbed to escape, the rain blotted out all detail.

  High above all this bloody confusion, a separate battle went on: a struggle between fighters. Hornet Squadron drove down a couple of Huns and blew a Pfalz scout to pieces, or maybe he just fell apart under the strain; it was hard to say. One Pup was a flamer. Andrei’s Biff lost its prop when he flew into bits of an FE2d, fluttering down after a shell knocked its wings off. He glided halfway home, potted at by troops to whom he was an ominous shape in the rain, and made a clever landing on a farm track.

  Woolley gave a third briefing at 3.30 p.m. The rain had stopped and enemy machines were flying low over the battlefield, strafing troops who had not had time to dig trenches. At 4 p.m. Hornet Squadron took off with orders to stop the strafing. After forty-five minutes they came back without one Pup. Nobody had seen it crash. Every machine was holed or ripped or bent or all three.

  Four new Biffs, six new Pups and three replacement pilots had arrived. Woolley put Maddegan in charge of the replacements. “Kick their arses,” he said. “Keep them flying until they’re flapping their little wings in their sleep. I won’t take them over the Lines until they’ve done at least twenty hours solo.” Maddegan glanced at their logbooks. “You want me to turn deuces into aces.”

  “Oh, I don’t bloody know.” Woolley was wet and cold. His eyes were sore. His ears ached from so much climbing and diving. The stink of whale-grease filled his nostrils. He opened two bottles of Guinness and gave Dingbat one. “I didn’t pick the bastards. Just get them out of the nursery, that’s all.”

  The adjutant visited Andrei and told him that Duke Nikolai’s death had been confirmed. “A Hun machine dropped a message-bag on one of our ‘dromes,” he said. “No doubt as to identity. His tunic was enclosed.”

  “He will be avenged ten times over.”

  “Yes, of course.” Brazier was surprised to see tears streaming down Andrei’s cheeks, although his face itself was stiff and stern and his voice was strong. “Your loyalty does you credit.”

  “He was a true Russian,” Andrei said. “What more is there to say?”

  Brazier remembered the Bible whacking Nikolai’s head. “Naturally, you two didn’t always see eye-to-eye.”

  “He gave his life for Russia! It wasn’t his fault he was stupid. He was raised to be stupid. He didn’t know how to live, but he knew how to die.”

  “I don’t know whether you were aware of it,” Brazier said, “but he urged the C.O. to have you shot for treachery.”

  “Magnificent.” Andrei’s face was shining with tears and pride. “In such a small body, such a big heart.” He poured two tots of peppervodka. “To Nikolai! To Russia!”

  Brazier drank, and shook hands, and left. Later he told the padre what had happened.

  “Extraordinary people, the Russians,” the padre said. “They couldn’t raise a cricket team if you gave them all eternity. Still, I shall say a prayer for Nikolai. A gallant lad.”

  * * *

  The inquiry got nowhere.

  It identified four possible causes of the Arras Incident (as it was discreetly labelled). First, the Bristol Fighters might have underperformed or suffered some grave failure. Second, the observers’ marksmanship might have been poor. Third, the pilots – especially the flight commander – might have been in error. Finally, the enemy might have been armed with some new weapon. Rockets were spoken of.

  The trouble with all these theories, Cleve-Cutler pointed out, was the total lack of supporting evidence. The survivors spoke of “a classic interception, exactly as practised”. There was nothing unusual about the Albatroses. Except their success.

  Someone mentioned tactics.

  The Director of Military Aeronautics was ready for that. He had brought a paper, summarising the tactical situation vis-à-vis the Bristol Fighter. He reminded those present that this type had originally been conceived in the photo-reconnaissance role, to replace the highly vulnerable BE2c and RE5 and their like, which were being lost in large numbers. That was why it was a two-seater. A single-seater could not defend itself while the pilot was taking photographs. The superb design of the Bristol Fighter made it well able to fight off such attacks. It was built to fly straight and level. A pilot who threw it around like a Camel placed unacceptable strains on the structure. But during testing it had been discovered that this apparent drawback could be turned to great advantage. A group of Bristol Fighters, flying in close formation, formed a multiple gun-platform whose crossfire was lethal to any enemy attack. This had been demonstrated again and again in trials. In fact its performance was so impressive that it was given the name ‘Fighter’ and sent to the Western Front in that role.

  The Director distributed copies of his paper.

  Cleve-Cutler struck a match and held it to a corner. As the flames swarmed across the pages he let the copy drop into an ashtray.

  “What do you think that proves?” the Director asked.

  “I don’t know. I just wanted us all to be aware of what actually happened to some of my men, ten thousand feet above the Western Front.”

  The flames, and the words, silenced the others; but silence brought a solution no nearer.

  He got back to the hotel at eight o’clock. “I’ve shifted the fair-haired boy to another room,” Taggart said. “So you can stay with her, if you want.”

  “Good.”

  “They’re not here. They went out, both.”

  “Oh well.” Cleve-Cutler headed for the stairs, and then checked. “How long has he been here? The boy.”

  “Let’s see ... Ten days.”

  Cleve-Cutler went upstairs, wishing he hadn’t asked, wishing his knee didn’t ache so abominably. He had a bath, ate a bowl of Taggart’s stew, drank some wine, went to bed. When he awoke it was daylight and Dorothy was in her nightdress, sitting on the bed, brushing her hair.

  “What’s this stuff about Lady Jasper?” he asked.

  “Taggart’s joke.” She tossed the brush away and, with one easy roll of her body, got into bed. She
dragged up his pyjama jacket and hugged him so hard that his ribs hurt.

  “I say ... Look here, steady on old girl.” The embrace was a shock, but already his body was rising in approval of the idea. Where was discipline? Where was order? He was a major in the R.F.C., for Christ’s sake! “Who’s in command here?” he demanded. His pyjama trousers had gone. “Dammit, woman.”

  “Look! The height of fashion.” She took a yellow hair-ribbon and, with one practised flick of the fingers, tied a bow around his penis. “I claim this height for King George and England! We shall now sing the national anthem.”

  “You’re very frisky, for someone who’s just had ten days of rumpty-tumpty.”

  “Ten days?” She fussed with the bow, making it neat and tidy. “You mean poor Tommy. I kissed him once, on the cheek, and he had palpitations. Tommy is one great big emotional booby-trap.”

  Cleve-Cutler tugged the ribbon. “What would happen if you did this to him?”

  It was meant to be a joke, but she took it seriously. “He’d be a gibbering idiot for a week. What he doesn’t understand about himself would fill a book.”

  “Ah. So you and he have not been fornicating like the beasts of the fields.” Cleve-Cutler knew that that was excessive, but he felt entitled to a little excess.

  “Would it make any difference if we had? I don’t remember you making any pledge to be faithful as you trotted back to France.”

  “Well, you didn’t ask for any.” They ended up staring at each other. “Where did he sleep?”

  “On the couch.”

  Cleve-Cutler undid the ribbon and dropped it, delicately, over the side of the bed. “What was it about him that appealed to you?”