Hornet’s Sting

by Derek Robinson

  “So do I: whisky-soda and a pipe. Buzz off.”

  “We could fit twin Lewises to the Biff and double the gunner’s firepower.”

  “Spare me your tactical brainwaves, Mackenzie. What you don’t know about air fighting would reach from here to the back of beyond, and I wish you were there. Twin Lewises are too heavy.”

  “Remember the roller at Coney Garth? If I could handle that, sir, I could handle twin Lewises.”

  Paxton halted abruptly. “Now you’re driving the bus and firing twin Lewises. That’s frightfully clever. You couldn’t drop a few bombs, could you? Then we can all stay here and play poker while you win the war.”

  “My gunner can fly the Biff, sir. I’ll take his place.”

  “You’ll go where you’re damn well told, you insolent little tick. Now get out of my way before I put my boot up your miserable backside.”

  There was no more flying that day. The weather was fickle. Noise of the barrage far to the north reached Gazeran as a soft rumble, like a slow train crossing a steel bridge. O’Neill gave a short lecture on the state of the war. Cleve-Cutler attended. O’Neill said the news from the Russian Front was sketchy. The Italians seemed to be holding the Austrians, and the Turks were definitely getting thrown out of Palestine. Peru had broken off diplomatic relations with Germany, O’Neill added, and Brazil was becoming quite shirty with the Kaiser. Brazil, he reminded everyone, was much bigger than Peru.

  “Bugger Brazil,” someone said. “What about Wipers?”

  “Ah, Wipers,” O’Neill said. “On the subject of Wipers the best I can do is quote the words of our commanding officer.” That got everyone’s attention, especially Cleve-Cutler’s. “A year ago he said, ‘There is going to be a most enormous battle’.” O’Neill sounded like a provincial mayor opening a flower show. “Then he said: ‘And the war will be over by Christmas. Which Christmas, God alone knows, and I don’t care’ ...” Coarse laughter and shrill whistling silenced him.

  “Quite true,” the C.O. said. “True of the Somme, and now it will be true of Wipers! You have my solemn word.” He looked at them, and they looked back, expecting more. He turned to the doctor. “What is my solemn word?”

  “Drinks all round,” Dando said at once. That got enthusiastic applause and foot-stamping. Only O’Neill remained silent.

  The crowd thinned. Some went into Arras for whatever recreation its ruined streets might offer. Others made a poker school. Those with no money played tennis or swam in the pool. Maddegan, Drinkwater and Mackenzie went for a walk.

  The countryside around Gazeran had emptied of troops after the Arras show stumbled to an end. Grass had sprung up to hide the rows of circles where bell tents had stood. During April and May, bugle calls had decorated the air, marking each stage of a soldier’s daily life. Now the skylarks and the swallows were back in occupation. They had never really gone away; just been briefly silenced by the noisy soldiers. Here and there, a plough horse put its massive weight into turning the heavy soil. Each new furrow had a dull polish. It faded and began to crumble before the posse of crows had finished hunting for food. Sometimes an aeroplane droned overhead. The ploughman never looked up. French farmers ignored the war unless the shells were bursting nearby. Some had even been known to ignore that. Some had paid for their dedication.

  The three airmen found a path alongside a small and wandering stream. Dragonflies jumped and sped and hovered, all without apparent effort. Lucky devils, Maddegan thought. “How long do they live?” he asked. Nobody knew. “Not long, I bet,” he said.

  “There are compensations,” Drinkwater said. He pointed to a pair that was coupling while clinging to a reed.

  “Desperately uncomfortable-looking,” Mackenzie said. “But then, I don’t suppose these two have had much practice.”

  “Have you?” Maddegan asked. Mackenzie simply smiled. The smile made him look even more like a boy in uniform, a mascot rather than a warrior.

  They walked on, and talked of life after the war. Now that America was in, the Hun must lose; everyone said so; but nobody was putting money on it, not after the way the Hun had chopped up the P.B.I. and the frogs until they were mincemeat. Maybe Wipers would be different. The artillery could still be heard. Its endless rumble was like a smudge on the horizon. How could an enemy survive such a barrage?

  They reached a wooden footbridge, just planks with no guard rails, and sat on it. Drinkwater took off his shoes and socks. His feet touched the water. Sticklebacks came up to nibble his toes, and he remembered a holiday in Scotland when he was ten. “Salmon fishing,” he said. “That’s the life.”

  “A pleasant enough pastime,” Mackenzie said.

  “Got a better idea?” Drinkwater was beginning to be irritated by Mackenzie.

  “What matters is now. We’re here to do the tasks that God has set us. We’re here to kill the ugly Hun and fuck the beautiful women.”

  They were startled into silence. The word was often heard on R.F.C. camps, but usually in anger or blame. It was rare to hear it used in a literal sense.

  “And I suppose you’re an expert,” Drinkwater said.

  “Three Huns and five women.”

  “Fancy that,” Maddegan said. “I don’t suppose you remember the details.”

  “Vividly.” Mackenzie closed his eyes. “Barbara was about twentyfive, brown eyes —”

  “The Huns. I meant the Huns.”

  “Oh.” Mackenzie’s eyes opened. “An Aviatik, a Rumpler – both two-seaters – and a Fokker scout, rather old and slow.”

  “I’ve been here for months,” Drinkwater said. “And all I’ve got is a share in an Albatros.”

  “I tell a lie,” Mackenzie said. “Barbara had grey eyes. It was Pansy had brown.”

  “Sounds easy. What’s the trick?”

  “No trick. There’s lots of them about, isn’t there? They find me, usually. They see the wings on the tunic and they think I’m the Angel Gabriel, and they can’t wait to get my bags off.”

  “Drinkwater means the Huns,” Maddegan said.

  “No, I don’t,” Drinkwater said.

  They walked back to camp.

  “All these Barbaras and Pansies,” Maddegan said. “You really reckon you’re doing God’s work, do you?”

  “I see it as a reward,” Mackenzie said blithely. “I send a Hun to hell and I take a woman to heaven.”

  “Sounds like bullshit to me.”

  “Well, God has a place for bullshit, otherwise bulls everywhere would be terribly uncomfortable.”

  After that, Maddegan was silent. Mackenzie’s fancy talk didn’t fool him. He knew bullshit when he smelt it.

  The anteroom was full and unusually quiet. The gramophone was silent. A crowd was standing around the poker table. Five men were playing. Nobody was joking. Maddegan saw the adjutant and whispered, “What’s the score, Uncle?”

  “Paxton’s playing like a demon. Won a fortune and then lost most of it. Woolley’s down, Dando’s down, the big lads are up.” The big lads were two Canadians, recent replacements. “Never play poker with Canadians,” Brazier murmured.

  Paxton played the next hand mechanically and he lost. A Canadian won. “That’s me out,” Woolley said, “and may the lot of you rot in hell, which is somewhere in Canada.” He got up, and Mackenzie slid into the empty chair. “If nobody objects?” he said. He was holding a wodge of notes as fat as a sandwich. Paxton looked up, just far enough to see the money. Nobody objected. It was unusual for new boys to play with old sweats unless invited, but there was no rule against it. “Is there a limit?” Mackenzie asked.

  “It’s dealer’s choice,” Dando said. “Usually we’ve been playing a ten-franc maximum raise. But it’s dealer’s choice.”

  Play was slick and speedy. Mackenzie bet modestly and lost steadily. When he had to, Paxton moved his hands; otherwise he sat like a statue. Win or lose, he was inscrutable. Usually he lost.

  The cards came to Mackenzie. He said, “Dealer’s choice. No limit.”
<
br />   Silence. Mackenzie rasped his thumbs against the edge of the pack. One of the Canadians closed an eye and peered at him with the other. “You sure your daddy would approve that sort of talk?” he asked.

  Mackenzie smiled, and dealt. “Twenty francs to play,” he said.

  “You’re just plain nasty,” the other Canadian said. But everyone chipped into the pot. They picked up their cards, all except Mackenzie. He left his cards lying. “Dealer plays blind,” he said. The tension in the room jumped a few degrees.

  “We had a Russian used to do that,” the doctor said. He was studying his cards. “Is this a hand you’ve given me, or an old leather glove?” He changed four cards. The Canadians changed two cards and three cards. Paxton, for the first time, looked at Mackenzie. “I’ll play these,” he said.

  Mackenzie bet fifty francs. Dando quit. The Canadians stayed, and raised him fifty. So did Paxton. The watchers were shocked and excited: weeks and months of pay were lying on the table. Mackenzie stayed in, and raised a hundred.

  “This ain’t poker,” one Canadian said, casually.

  “Dealer’s choice,” Dando said.

  “No complaints. But it ain’t poker.” He threw in his cards. So did the other Canadian.

  Paxton had been given time to think. He had staked all his money; only a couple of francs were left. “See your hundred, and raise you a hundred,” he said. He scribbled an IOU and threw it onto the pot.

  “I’ll see that, and raise you five hundred,” Mackenzie said.

  Somebody said: “Christ Almighty.” The words were spoken softly and they did not break the tension. A few men shuffled to get a better view of Paxton’s face. Everyone knew what he was thinking. Paxton had chosen to play the hand he was dealt, but that didn’t mean it was strong. He might be bluffing. He might be holding a load of old rubbish. Or perhaps not. Everyone was thinking the same thing: This man has played all afternoon, won big and then lost big. Now he could win big again, or go down the pan entirely. What would I do? Would I risk five hundred to discover whether Mackenzie’s hand is shit or roses?

  Paxton squeezed the point of his chin between thumb and forefinger. He was no longer looking at Mackenzie. “Well, damn it all to hell and back,” he said. “It’s only money.” He quit.

  Mackenzie took the pot. The room was suddenly full of noise and movement. Paxton said: “It would be amusing to know ...” He aimed a finger at Mackenzie’s cards, still lying face-down.

  “You wouldn’t buy them,” Mackenzie said, “so I’m not giving them away.” He scraped them together and shuffled them into the pack. He looked calm, and slightly remote. He fished the IOU out of the heap of notes. “Double or quits?” he said. That stopped a lot of conversations. Many people turned to look.

  “Cut the cards? Sudden death, best of three, or what?”

  “No cards. I’ll bet you ...” Mackenzie was toying with the IOU, rolling it around his forefinger. “I’ll bet you I can fly a Biff and fire its twin Lewises and drop a bomb.”

  It was too absurd to be funny, and nobody laughed.

  “And you will do all these things during one flight,” Paxton said.

  “Yes.” Now almost everyone was listening.

  “Done.”

  The poker was over. Mess waiters were bringing in tea and fruit cake. The gramophone was back in action, breaking the tension with ragtime. “I think that’s called syncopation,” Mackenzie said. “American invention. Jolly clever lot, aren’t they?”

  * * *

  The next day was dull but dry. The entire squadron flew north, to an aerodrome at Poperinghe. This was less than ten miles west of Ypres. The crews noticed the difference as soon as their engines stopped. The Ypres bombardment boomed until the air itself seemed to be humming.

  This trip was Cleve-Cutler’s idea. Archie and aeroplanes fought a private war. Maybe Hornet Squadron could learn some tricks of the trade from British Archie and use them against the enemy. Wing H.Q. agreed. “Take a squint at Wipers while you’re up,” they said. “Get to know the landmarks.”

  Transport took them to the biggest anti-aircraft battery in the Wipers area. They trooped into the officers’ mess, which was half a hotel. The other half lay in ruins. Coffee was served. A gunner introduced himself as Major Champion. He had eyebrows that signalled like semaphore flags.

  “A good rule of thumb is this,” he said. “If you cannot hear the shell explode, it’s our mistake. If you can hear it explode, that’s your mistake. And unless you do something very quickly, it’s your funeral.” He described all the things a pilot could do to help get himself shot down. Flying just below a bank of white cloud helped the gunners calculate his height. If the first bursts were at all close, then aerobatics greatly improved the chances of the next bursts. “I have seen Huns loop or spin to escape our fire,” Champion said. “Looping and spinning is a slow way to travel but a fast way to eternity.” He was pleased if one machine in a formation was damaged by shellfire and the others circled the casualty; that made his job much easier. Any machine which kept the same height and course for a minute or more was always a welcome sight, especially below ten thousand feet. He liked a nice tight formation. It made a better target.

  “What’s different above ten thousand?” Cleve-Cutler asked.

  “Weather. Half a gale is enough to shove the shells a hundred yards sideways. Gunners don’t want strong winds.”

  “And what else don’t you want?”

  Champion sighed. “Sudden changes of altitude. If you chaps go up or down several hundred feet, then we can’t change the fuses quickly enough.”

  “I know the safest place to fly,” Mackenzie announced.

  Paxton closed his eyes and let his head drop. The C.O. said, “Share the fruits of your wisdom, do.”

  “Close to the Hun, sir. It’s the one place enemy Archie never fires.” Half the squadron groaned. “That’s my experience, anyway,” Mackenzie said.

  “Thank you, major,” the C.O. said. “Most enlightening.”

  “It’s worth a try, anyway,” Mackenzie said.

  * * *

  The adjutant enjoyed the squadron’s absence. He even tolerated Lacey’s playing records of Beethoven string quartets. “At least those blighters can keep in step,” he said. “Not like that long-haired anarchist friend of yours who started the riot in Paris.”

  “Stravinsky. It was the audience who rioted.”

  “Wanted their money back, I expect.”

  “No, they wanted their childhood back.”

  Brazier didn’t even try to make sense of that. He filled his pipe while he glanced at the paperwork that Lacey had put on his desk. “Well, well. Brigade quartermaster’s got his jam back at last. How did you manage that?” Lacey said nothing. Brazier nodded. “Better I don’t know ... Two hundred pounds of raspberry?” He lit the pipe. “I thought it was strawberry.”

  “Opinion was divided.”

  “Divided, was it?” Brazier blew smoke at the flies. They did not panic as they used to. Maybe they were beginning to like the taste. Flies were cleverer than Huns. A million dead Huns was a solid achievement, but flies seemed to thrive on death. “The Q.M. seems to have given up on the cheese.”

  “He was always more comfortable with jam ... Some items here require your approval.”

  Brazier looked at the list. “A squash court?”

  “Portable. It’s wooden.”

  “Where in God’s name did you find a squash court?”

  “All it needs is a foundation. I can get racquets and balls from Harrods.”

  Healthy exercise, Brazier thought. Who could possibly object? “Approved. What’s this? Silk flowers?”

  “A genius in Amiens. I challenge you to tell his silk roses from the real flower without touching.”

  “Where do we put the bally things?”

  “On the dining table at guest nights,” Lacey suggested. “In patriotic colours.”

  “Get two bunches. We’ll see ... What’s next? Silk sheets. Are
you mad, Lacey?”

  “Silk is very practical. It’s warm and hardwearing. This is a cancelled order for a Paris bordello. Those people understand beds and bedding and —”

  “No. Definitely no. Whatever next? Eunuchs in the orderly room? Lipstick in the flight huts?”

  “Some French pilots wear lipstick,” Lacey said. “Very effective against chapped lips, I believe.” But he knew that silk sheets were out. Since Mata Hari, the Allied armies were taking no chances.

  * * *

  During lunch, Major Champion suggested that, unless Cleve-Cutler’s lads had to hurry back to Gazeran, they might like to see what use the army made of the excellent photographs taken by the R.F.C.

  They drove to a warehouse on the outskirts of Poperinghe. Champion got them through the guard of red-capped Service Police, and led them into a well-lit space as big as a ballroom. Aerial photographs lined the walls. Officers with magnifying glasses studied pictures spread on tables. The place smelt of developing fluid, with a faint aroma of coffee and chicory lingering behind it.

  A shirt-sleeved officer introduced himself as Lieutenant-Colonel Kerr-Scott of the Tank Corps. He led them to a large table. Polished brass shellcases held down the corners of a map. It showed the area of the coming battlefield, with the Ypres Salient in the middle, poking like a blunt arrowhead into enemy territory. “Beyond the Salient it’s nearly all farmland,” Kerr-Scott said. “A few very small villages – Langemarck and Poelcappelle to the north, Gheluvelt and Becelaere to the south, Zounebeke and Passchendaele to the east. In the piping days of peace, farmers hereabouts got fined heavily if they allowed their dikes and culverts to become clogged. What you are looking at, gentlemen, is a well-drained bog. This map shows how it looked ten days ago, when our bombardment began.”

  Kerr-Scott moved the shellcases and let the map roll itself up. Beneath was another map, spattered with blue.

  “The same area, three days later. Thanks to your comrades performing photo-reconnaissance, we have been able to make a record of the destruction of the drainage system. Every time a shell destroys a drain, it creates a small swamp. Blue indicates swamp.”

  He moved the shellcases once more and revealed another map. “After five days of bombardment.” The spatter of blue had spread and begun to connect up and form larger blue patches.