Hornet’s Sting

by Derek Robinson

  He asked each new pilot to make a will. “A tedious chore, I agree, sir. But it makes the adjutant happy. A lot of gentlemen regard a will as a talisman, on the grounds that anything the army requires is bound to be superfluous.”

  When a pilot died, and his effects were collected for forwarding, Lacey put aside the chequebook. He used it to pay the man’s mess bill; this made life tidier all round. After that, he only used it provided he knew there were ample funds in the account. And he made three other rules for himself. A cheque must be for a modest amount. It must predate death by at least a week. And it must benefit, not himself, but the squadron. This sometimes involved an oblique transaction. By sending a cheque for a mere ten pounds to a Baptist missionary charity, Lacey could clinch an agreement with a warrant officer at Brigade H.Q. which meant that a sergeant cook with prewar experience at the Ritz would be posted to Hornet Squadron. The warrant officer’s mother was a Baptist missionary; Lacey knew he would keep to the bargain. The only question was which chequebook to use? April was a grim month; he was spoiled for choice. He chose D. G. T. Gerrish. Lacey found a signature in Gerrish’s file and made a dozen copies before he was satisfied. He wrote the cheque and looked up. The adjutant was watching him.

  “Everyone is a soldier, Lacey,” Brazier said. “Look at you, fighting your little paper war against the banks.”

  “Good lord: symbolism,” Lacey said. “We’ll make an artist of you yet, sir.”

  “The A.P.M. will make mincemeat of you, one day.”

  “Surely, when everyone is happy and no-one suffers, there can be no crime.”

  “The army doesn’t exist to make everyone happy. Quite the reverse,” Brazier said, happily.

  When Cleve-Cutler returned to Gazeran, there were many new faces in the mess. He sent for Woolley. “You’ve had your little moment of glory,” he said, “and very expensive it’s been. Now get back to your flight and for Christ’s sake try not to lose any more men.” But it took Cleve-Cutler only a day or two to learn that Hornet Squadron’s losses were no greater than the rest of the R.F.C. The battle dragged to an end in mud and blood and misery and failure. By the end of the month, 151 of its machines had been destroyed, and many more had crashed as they struggled to get home. In all, the Corps lost 316 pilots or observers, dead or missing. The R.F.C. called it Bloody April.

  This was the small change of carnage. The Allied armies’ casualty figure was in the region of two hundred thousand dead and wounded. Unlike the R.F.C., the P.B.I. was not fastidious about counting its losses. What difference did 316 men make, one way or another? At any hour on any day of April 1917, a couple of hundred troops might vanish, drenched in the sudden annihilation of artillery fire. What mattered was the outcome. At Arras the Allies took Vimy Ridge and a few dozen gutted villages and no more. Vimy was a victory. The rest was defeat.

  And it failed to distract any German forces from the French offensive a few miles to the south. Here, General Nivelle’s troops were killed in such vast numbers, with such mechanical efficiency, that their advance wasn’t worthy of the name: just six hundred yards on the first day. Nivelle had promised his attack would be le dernier coup, and so it was; but not in the way he intended. Nivelle quietly disappeared.

  The Illustrated London News regularly printed maps of the war zones. Maddegan was in the anteroom, looking at a map of the Arras area, when the adjutant came in.

  “That tunnel we dug under Arras, Uncle,” Maddegan said. “How long did that take to dig?”

  “Eighteen months.”

  “Reckon we’ll dig another?”

  “Unlikely. Pretty boggy ground ahead.”

  “Don’t fret yourself, Dingbat,” McWatters said. “The British Army is not about to tunnel its way to Berlin.”

  “Still, it was a brave venture,” the padre said. “War’s a bit like a cricket match, isn’t it? You’ve got to keep changing the bowling if the batsmen get established. Bring on a bit of spin, swap your speed merchants about, toss the ball up occasionally. I’ve seen many a good bat bowled by a full toss.”

  “I had a subaltern in my battalion at Second Ypres,” Brazier said. “Dotty about cricket.”

  “Not that I know anything about tunnels,” the padre said. “Just a working chaplain, me.”

  “We had some good parties at Pepriac, didn’t we?” Maddegan said. “I liked Pepriac.”

  “Second Ypres,” the adjutant said. “This chap led his platoon over the top with a cricket bat and a bag full of balls. Out in front, clouting the balls into the German Lines! Cool as you like.”

  “It’s all in the follow-through.” The padre demonstrated. “Get your follow-through right, and you’re halfway home.”

  “What was your follow-through like, Uncle?” McWatters said. “At Second Ypres, I mean?” But the adjutant was busy winding up the gramophone. “Blaze Away!” was on the turntable. One of his favourites.

  Earthquake Strength 9:

  General panic. Conspicuous cracks in ground.

  The R.F.C. had made the aerodrome at Gazeran in the autumn of 1914, when the war was young and the fields were stubble. The first adjutant had a passion for wild flowers. To his eyes, the French field was a drab desert. He sent for seeds and bulbs and plants.

  Now, nearly three years later, as the warmth of May soaked into the earth, the fringes of the aerodrome began to show bright blue with English bluebells, and orange with Welsh poppies, and yellow with primrose. There were patches of white narcissus and red anemone. Marsh buttercups were springing up as densely as a crop.

  Brazier disapproved. “Makes us look like Kew Gardens, sir.”

  “As long as it doesn’t interfere with the flying, Uncle, I don’t give a damn.”

  But something did interfere with the flying: the long grass. After such a wet spring, the sunshine created a lush growth, reaching up to the axles of the Biffs’ wheels in places. Add to this a heavy dew, and the field became so slick that a pilot might find himself skidding like a duck landing on a frozen pond.

  “Sheep,” Woolley said. “About fifty. And a shepherdess. About nineteen.”

  Lacey was sent to search. Next day a very old man, dressed in rusty black, with a crook as tall as an archbishop, drove a flock of sheep into the camp. His left arm had been shot off in the war with Prussia of 1870.

  The adjutant saluted him and gave him a tin of tobacco. “Mangez les fleurs?” he suggested, pointing out bluebells and poppies.

  “Sale Boche,” the man said, and spat.

  “I don’t quite see the connection.”

  “Sale Boche.” The man spat.

  “He’s completely deaf, sir,” Lacey said. “But very sound politically.”

  The sheep did a fine job on the grass, clearing first the two main runways and then nibbling their way into the rest of the field; but the shepherd never let them near the flowers.

  “A truly sensitive soul,” McWatters said. It was early evening, and the officers were playing croquet on a well-cropped stretch of runway. “But not half as sensitive as me.” McWatters was lining up a shot. “Watch this, Griff. I’m going to smack you into Belgium.” His mallet made a sharp crack. The ball fizzed over the turf and was stopped by the rough.

  “Just be careful what you do to Belgium,” Griffiths said. “You don’t want to upset the Hun.” He set off for his ball.

  “At school I won prizes for sensitivity,” McWatters said.

  “This silly sheep is eating my ball,” Griffiths called.

  The padre was umpire. “I think you get a free shot,” he said. Griffiths hit the sheep, which bounded away. “Not quite what I meant,” the padre said. Woolley strolled towards them, hands in pockets, looking bleak; but he always looked bleak. “The Huns are happy,” he said. “Captain Ball’s gone.”

  “Ah,” Dando said. He sounded sick. He tossed his mallet at the box it came in. Nobody else spoke. “You wouldn’t have said it unless it was definite,” Dando said.

  “It’s definite.”

 
“Well... that’s an awful shame, so it is.”

  No more fun and games. They walked to the mess. The sunset became more splendid by the minute, but all the life had gone out of the day.

  None of them had met Albert Ball; the man flew with 56 Squadron, and their field was miles away. Yet everyone knew what he looked like: not handsome, but good-looking, clean-shaven, eager, the unlined face of a young man who couldn’t wait to fight. In a period when the R.F.C. was often outclassed, Ball made the enemy look second-rate. He never wore a helmet or goggles. He liked the wind in his hair. He tore into any Hun formation, no matter its size. He flew as if he didn’t give a damn for anyone, and by the day of his death he had fourty-four confirmed kills. He had rattled up his score at an astonishing speed: fast enough to earn him a Military Cross and a Distinguished Service Order, followed by a second D.S.O., and then a third. A Victoria Cross must have been in the offing. And he’d still been only twenty years old.

  In Bloody April his mounting score had been a bright light in a gloomy battle. Now it was May, and Ball’s luck had run out. Nobody lasted for ever. Still, it came as a shock to lesser men when even the best went west.

  * * *

  June wasn’t altogether a bad month. Not brilliant, but not a blood bath like April. The squadron got a steady supply of Bristol Fighters, the new F2B with its even bigger engine, worth 220 horsepower; until finally all the Pups had been replaced. There was a price. Patrols went on. Six men died. Two were in a Biff that got lost in a fog and flew into a quarry. One was a sentry who saw what he thought might be an unexploded bomb and gave it a kick. The other three were pilots of Pups. Archie got one: a direct hit at twelve thousand feet: a good way to go, if you have to go. A clutch of Fokkers ambushed another and he was a flamer: not a good way to go. And the last, and saddest, was Andrei.

  A dozen people were watching Andrei’s Pup as it returned from patrol and came sliding down its glidepath towards Gazeran field. That was quite normal. Airmen will always watch any landing. The Pup was only fifty feet up when it toppled slightly to the left. The angle grew steeper, until the Pup fell off its glidepath. The bang panicked the sheep grazing at the edge of the field. An hour later, when the rescue team was shovelling the last bits of smoking wreckage into a truck, the shepherd was still collecting strays.

  Cleve-Cutler ordered a squadron party that night. Nobody mentioned Andrei. Everyone played the usual violent games, poured drinks into the piano, smashed the furniture. The pilots and the observers tried to out-sing each other, bawling until they became hoarse and raucous and fought with soda-syphons instead.

  Woolley was not there. He had made a token appearance and slipped away. Now he was in his hut, drinking Guinness and playing backgammon with Sergeant Lacey. The dice were not favouring him. Lacey had won six games straight.

  They heard a distant cheer, and the tinkle of breaking glass.

  “If one knew no better, one would suspect that they were celebrating,” Lacey said.

  “Well, Andrei’s gone and they’re still here. That’s something to celebrate.”

  Lacey got a double-six. “The same applied when Captain Ball died, but nobody celebrated survival then, as I recall.”

  “Ball was different. We’re just tradesmen. Ball was an artist. This isn’t a war for artists, it’s all about machinery. The machine always wins in the end.” Woolley threw the dice. Five and two: exactly what he didn’t want. “You have a mechanical smell to you tonight, Lacey. And a whiff of brimstone, too. I give up. What do I owe you?”

  Lacey consulted a piece of paper. “Eight and a half francs.”

  “Blood-sucking parasitic louse.” He paid.

  The adjutant drilled the burial party next morning, and the funeral in the afternoon at Gazeran church was faultless. Volleys were fired over the grave. A Biff flew low overhead and the gunner emptied a bucket of white petals which drifted down like summer snow. A bugler sounded Retreat, then took up a trumpet and played a few bars of Tchaikovsky of such crystal clarity that when the last notes faded to silence, the air itself seemed to have been purified.

  The officers chose to walk back to camp. Cleve-Cutler beckoned to Dando. “It was an old Pup, you know. Too many patrols, too many stunts. I expect something broke. A spar, a strut, an aileron.”

  “Indeed, indeed. Very true.”

  “Or you get a wasp in the cockpit. The pilot lashes out at it.” He performed a panicky piece of flailing. “Over goes the joystick. Before you can say knife ...”

  “Nobody would argue with that, either, major.”

  “All it takes is a couple of seconds.”

  “I was watching. A couple of seconds is all it took.”

  Cleve-Cutler saw a pale blue butterfly on the path, resting its wings, and he stepped over it. “All the same, it’s a shabby way to go, isn’t it?”

  “If I wasn’t an agnostic, I’d think God didn’t care.”

  A week later, there was a memorial service in one of the hangars. The padre ran it, brilliantly. He didn’t make the mistake of invoking God too much; God was not a safe bet on the Western Front in 1917. He made sure the chaps had familiar, four-square Anglican hymns to sing – “To Be a Pilgrim” and “Onward, Christian Soldiers” and the like – which balanced the presence of a patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church. He was deeply bearded and splendidly robed. It was difficult to associate his massive pomp with little Andrei; but then, it was becoming difficult to remember the dead man’s face. Difficult and pointless. Memories were like obsolete aircraft: just so much clutter, to be got rid of quickly.

  Also paying their last respects were Captain Lightfoot and Mr Hennessy from the embassy in Paris. Hennessy wore a flannel suit of clerical grey and carried a black bowler. Cleve-Cutler resented the presence of civilians (other than the patriarch) at what was a squadron affair. After the service he said, “You must be the spy that my adjutant told me about.”

  “If I must be,” Hennessy said, “then obviously I am not, and therefore your adjutant is wrong. Am I going too fast for you?”

  “Oh, sod it,” Cleve-Cutler said. “Come and have tea, both of you”.

  Mess servants set up deck chairs for them, far from the crowd of pilots and gunners. They served China tea with lemon, and cherry cake, and went away.

  “The gang of assassins has been eliminated,” Hennessy said.

  “Well done. Did they put up much of a fight?”

  “They went all to pieces,” Lightfoot said.

  The C.O. stirred his tea and watched a Biff charge across the turf and come unstuck and make height like a hawk riding a thermal. Paxton was flying. The C.O. recognised his style. “Brazier said you had pictures of a pair of ruffians.”

  “N’existe pas,” Lightfoot said.

  “What does exist, somewhere, is the duke’s money,” Hennessy said. “Ten thousand dollars.”

  “Not long ago it was a million.”

  “Duke Nikolai misplaced the decimal point,” Lightfoot said. “His arithmetic was fragile.”

  “Russian dukes have flunkeys to do their sums for them,” the C.O. said.

  “Still, ten thousand dollars is a tidy amount,” Hennessy said. “If it’s not in his bank account, where is it? Come to that, where is his chequebook?”

  “Maybe he gave everything to Andrei.”

  “For what possible reason?” Lightfoot asked. “Nikolai didn’t know he was going to die.”

  “Come, now. You mustn’t be too sure of that,” the C.O. said comfortably. He was on his home ground here. “It happens all the time. More tea?”

  “If this money helps put the Tsar back on his throne,” Hennessy said, “there will be a ceasefire on the Eastern Front within seven days. And we’ll all be in deep trouble.”

  “Which reminds me, major,” Lightfoot said. “The adjutant of 40 Squadron denies receiving two hundred pounds of raspberry jam from this squadron when it was at Pepriac. It would seem, therefore, that you are still in debit to the brigade quartermaster in the amount
of two hundred pounds of raspberry jam. The A.P.M. is involved because the jam appears to be missing.”

  “Nikolai is missing, too,” Cleve-Cutler said. “My theory is he took the jam.”

  “Very droll.” Lightfoot collected the last few crumbs from his plate. “Excellent cake, sir.”

  “We’ve got a new cook,” the C.O. said. “Absolute genius. You should see what he does with pigs’ trotters.”

  * * *

  July followed June with neither triumph nor disaster.

  Hornet Squadron took a professional interest in the war beyond its patrol lines. Everyone knew that half the French Army had been teetering on the edge of mutiny after Nivelle’s monumental cock-up of an attack. That wasn’t good. Some reports said five hundred thousand Russians took to the streets in Petrograd – what had happened to Petersburg? – and demanded peace. Other reports said the Bolsheviks in Galicia, wherever that was, had persuaded half the Russian Army not to fight. That wasn’t good, either.

  Mutiny in the east, mutiny in the west. Who was left to fight the good fight? Why, the dear old battered, bruised and bloodied British Army, which would hold the fort until the Americans could raise an army and build an air force and launch a navy.

  So July 1917 was not disastrous, but it was nothing to cheer about. It was midsummer, and summer meant campaigning. The war was costing the British taxpayer seven million pounds a day. For seven million quid a day you expect to get a pretty good show, with plenty of fireworks. What you won’t accept is the British Army sitting on its arse, eating its bully-beef sandwiches and singing “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile”. There would have to be another Big Push. The war was turning into one Big Push after another, with precious little to show for them. But maybe the final Big Push would be more of a Last Gasp that saw the only two surviving Allied soldiers killing the very last surviving Hun. It might not be a cheerful prospect, but where was the alternative?

  * * *

  The adjutant was in the anteroom, drinking his mid-morning coffee and listening to “The British Grenadiers” on the gramophone. He beat time on the sugar bowl with a spoon.