Hornet’s Sting

by Derek Robinson

  “Only if you’re wearing the trousers at the time,” Cleve-Cutler said, and went away feeling quite pleased with himself.

  * * *

  Next morning, Woolley walked into A-Flight hut, carrying a small sack. “In here is the secret of eternal life,” he said. He looked at the crews. Most faces were blank.

  “Eternity’s too late, sir,” Mackenzie said. “My diary’s full. Let’s say Wednesday week.”

  “No, let’s say you’re a mouthy little shit who’s in love with himself because nobody else is good enough.” This was said so smoothly that Mackenzie flushed: a rare sight. “Now listen. I’m going to tell you Woolley’s Ten Rules of Air Fighting. Rule One for pilots is never look back at the Hun who’s trying to kill you. This sack holds the mortal remains of a Hun whose Fokker I blew to bits last year.” Carefully, Woolley took out a calf-length flying boot, very scarred and scorched, and held it upright. “I crept up behind him, fired, missed. He heard the bullets go by and he turned to see who sent them. This took him three or four seconds. You can fire twenty or thirty rounds in three or four seconds. I certainly did. Blew his head off. It was what he wanted, otherwise why did he give me a second chance? Healthy young Hun, in the prime of life.” Woolley turned the boot upside-down and poured out a quart of blood. It hit the floor and splashed brilliantly. The flight jumped to save their boots and breeches.

  Woolley tossed the boot into a corner.

  “When there’s a Hun behind you, and he’s kind enough to miss, the last thing you need to know is the colour of his moustache.”

  He told them to recognise the different sounds of a Spandau and a Vickers. A Spandau made a fast, ripping kak-kak-kak. A Vickers made a slower pop-pop-pop. A Lewis rattled like a stick on railings. “If you hear kak-kak-kak and you can’t see the Hun, he’s behind you. Look back and you’re dead. Turn hard!” That meant a vertical bank, then pull the stick right into the stomach and whack the throttle wide open. “Not Mackenzie, of course. Mackenzie’s an angel, he can do what he bloody well likes.”

  They edged away from the spreading pool of blood.

  “Rule Two: check your ammunition. Three: practise clearing gun stoppages. Do it blindfold. Four: get above the enemy. Height is a great ally. Five: don’t fool around with deflection shooting if you can get behind him and shoot him up the arse. Six: don’t shoot him up the arse if you can hit his head or the engine. Look at Dingbat: shot in the arse, but he got home. Seven: never follow a Hun if he dives out of the fight, even if he looks like easy meat. Let him go. If he’s dead you can’t kill him. If he’s not, he might kill you. Stay with your flight. They need you, and by Christ you certainly need them.”

  He talked of the need to get close to the enemy. Anything over two hundred yards was a waste of bullets. Under a hundred yards was better. “If you can’t see his oil stains,” he said, “don’t shoot. When you do shoot, fire short bursts.” A new boy sees half a chance, bangs off a whole drum of ammunition and hopes for a hit; an old sweat aims straight and uses twenty rounds. “If you’re on target, twenty is all you need,” he said. “Save the rest. You’ll need them later.” Often a jumpy young Hun gave himself away by firing too soon and too long. “Concentrate on him,” Woolley said. “Make him panic. Doom him.”

  They liked that. Some even laughed. Woolley saw nothing funny. He went back to Rule Two: always check your ammunition. “One fat bullet jammed up the spout and where are you? Wetting your bags at fifteen thousand feet, that’s where. Don’t expect the Hun to feel sorry. Any bollocks you may have heard about chivalry between foes is pure bollocks. If you get a gun stoppage and the Hun doesn’t try to kill you, it’s because he’s out of ammunition, not because he’s got the milk of human kindness like Mackenzie’s got piles.” Mackenzie coughed. Woolley glanced sourly at him. “Where I grew up, in Bog Street, we couldn’t afford the milk of human kindness,” he said. “We had to make do with Château Lafitte ‘93.” Mackenzie shook his head, once. “And lucky to get it,” Woolley said. “All right. That’s all.”

  They left, except Mackenzie, who picked up the boot and sniffed it. “Jolly interesting, sir,” he said.

  Woolley walked through the blood, already drying and tacky, and leaned against the doorframe. “The major’s given you one of the Nieuports.”

  “Yes.”

  “Just like Albert Ball.”

  “That would be awfully nice, sir.”

  “Awfully nice ...” Woolley laughed: an unpleasant, nasal sound. “You think what Ball did was nice, do you? How about slitting throats for a living? Is that nice?”

  “Um...”

  “Don’t strain your brain, Mackenzie. Air fighting is a craft you have to learn. Mick Mannock is a far better fighter pilot than Ball ever was, and Mannock flew for two months before he got his first Hun. Two months. Bloody Richthofen crashed when he soloed. Took him a year to learn his trade. A year. Now some fat fart tells these Yankee comedians you’ll be the new Albert Ball by the end of the month. That’s a lie. Learn your craft! Learn how to skulk around the sky, sneak up on some poor Hun’s blind spot so he never hears the bullet that kills him. Bloody humane, that is, it’s the way St Francis of Assisi would have done it, a nice quick Christian act of murder. Then bugger off home fast.”

  Mackenzie strolled over to the doorway. “Flying and killing,” he said. “It’s delicious.”

  Woolley felt that he had been talking to himself. “Delicious,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. Danger is the most wonderful part. I like being afraid. Fear is delicious. The more I get, the more I want.”

  “Jesus! See Dando. Get a sedative.”

  “Not flying is the biggest sedative I know, sir.”

  Woolley turned and looked at him. Each man was thinking much the same thing: what a bloody awful face to go through life with. “Well, you’re probably right,” Woolley said. “It’s probably all a joke. You think you’ll always win because you look like the fairy on the Christmas tree. That’s a joke. Now you’ve got your own Nieuport, which is a little scout for little fairies, so that’s a joke. And you’re going to win the war in the cinema, so that’s a joke.”

  “Talking of jokes, sir,” Mackenzie said, “I honestly think you should drop the one about what you couldn’t afford in Bog Street. Nobody’s laughing any more.”

  “It’s not a joke,” Woolley said, “and I don’t give a toss if nobody laughs. Get a bucket of sand and cover up this tomato soup.”

  * * *

  Before noon, C-Flight was on patrol.

  Cleve-Cutler had briefed his flight commanders that the squadron was to keep up a series of Deep Offensive Patrols opposite Arras in order to distract enemy aircraft from Wipers. “Think how our generals would feel if they saw Fokkers poncing about the sky all day,” he said. “Well, go and show your knickers to the Hun.”

  “Ponces don’t wear knickers, sir,” McWatters said.

  “In that case, go knickerless. You’ll be an even more terrifying sight.”

  But C-Flight returned without having attracted anything except sporadic Archie. “We shot down a balloon,” McWatters told O’Neill. “One of ours. Bust its string, I suppose.”

  B-Flight took off and was slightly more successful. A pair of Albatros scouts shadowed them, probably hoping that someone would crack a piston and offer an easy target. The Biffs chased a few singleton Huns. If they got near, the Hun put his nose down and vanished: the sensible thing to do. Otherwise, it was a three-hour grind.

  “Proves one thing,” Cleve-Cutler said. “They’re all at Wipers.”

  When A-Flight left, just after 6 p.m., the weather was on the change again. Scrubbed blue sky alternated with cloud as scruffy as cotton waste. The Biffs flew through showers that came and went in seconds. Mackenzie’s Nieuport tagged along at the rear. He had to work hard to keep up. The Lewis gun on the top wing made his machine look overloaded.

  Five miles beyond the Lines, Woolley was at twelve thousand and still climbing. A sprinkling of dots showed up agai
nst cloud to the east; at least six, maybe more. Now came the old familiar clenching of the stomach muscles, and then a rush of saliva. What’s the point? he wondered. Must ask Dando. He swallowed. Later his mouth would be dry. What good did that do? The body had some bloody silly ways of coping with danger ... The Biff next to him was waggling its wings. More dots to the south.

  Woolley swung the flight into a wide left-hand turn and kept turning and climbing. He had plenty of time: two minutes at least. There was cloud to the west, far below; that could be useful. Of course it was possible that these dots now taking shape were British or French. The Biff circled again and made four hundred feet. The setting sun picked out the first formation and showed purple, green, red and yellow. Hun colours. Seven machines. Woolley made a hand-signal. The flight spread out and each crew tested its guns.

  By now the second bunch of dots had grown into four multicoloured Huns. As he watched, they veered left. He guessed they were hoping to get between the sun and his flight, and then attack out of the glare. Or perhaps just hide there, a lurking threat. He looked at the seven Huns. Only a quarter of a mile away. Amazing how rapidly a fight took shape. They were a mixed bunch of different types: probably a scratch flight. Good.

  Woolley decided to tackle the four Huns first, maybe scare them off, then ... Then he saw the Nieuport flying straight at the seven Huns like a child running towards the edge of a cliff. It changed nothing. He led his flight in the opposite direction.

  Mackenzie saw none of this.

  The moment he broke away he felt the same surge of fear and delight he had known as a boy when his father taught him how to ski by pushing him off the top of a slope. Everything was clean and fast and frightening. The air was too cold, the colours were too bright, and above all he was on his own. Free to terrify himself, to triumph, to be swamped by joy, to break his neck. He was a boy again.

  The formation of Huns turned to meet him, but with a closing speed of more than two hundred miles an hour they left it late. Mackenzie picked out a two-seater on the leader’s left because it was big and colourful. In the space of a breath it magnified. He glimpsed tracer criss-crossing around the Nieuport and ignored it. He fired both guns and rejoiced at the stabbing flames, leapfrogged the target and dodged through the formation as if it were tethered. Nobody fired at him. He looked back once, and saw an aeroplane spin slowly and spread a cloak of flames.

  Three Huns chased him in a long dive to a bank of cloud that swallowed him. He turned left and right in the wet gloom and finally fell out of the other side. The Huns were in the wrong place. Just as well: the Nieuport was vibrating feverishly and strips of canvas were tearing off the left wings. The rudder moved grudgingly, too.

  Just before he touched down at Gazeran, the engine quit, which gave cause for a final happy spurt of fear. At the same time, he realised why the Huns hadn’t fired at him as he dodged through their formation. They couldn’t. They might have hit their own machines. Splendid! That was worth remembering.

  The mess was filling up for dinner. Mackenzie swaggered in, tossed his hat to a servant, and climbed onto the piano stool. “Flamer!” he announced, grinning like a bridegroom. “Exit one Hun, burning bright! Lovely flamer!” They applauded. Mackenzie jumped onto the piano keyboard and marched up and down. “Frying tonight!” he shouted.

  Dabinett turned to Cleve-Cutler. “What did he say, sir?” he asked.

  “Just a joke. It’s a sign you see in fish-and-chip shops in England. Means they’ll be open for business.”

  “Ah. So the frying referred to...”

  “To the kraut,” Klagsburn said. “The kraut in the flamer. I’d give a thousand bucks to have got a shot of that.”

  “I can’t put ‘frying tonight’ in the subtitles,” Dabinett said.

  “You’ll think of something. He’ll think of something,” Klagsburn told the C.O. “We can get away with murder in subtitles. I mean, who the hell knows?”

  “‘Down with tyranny!’” Dabinett said. “That’ll do nicely.”

  Cleve-Cutler went over and shook Mackenzie’s hand. “Well done, lad.”

  “I’m afraid I rather bent the Nieuport, sir.”

  “Who cares? We’ve got another! You’re not hurt?” He pointed to a bullet-burn on the sleeve of Mackenzie’s flying coat.

  “Never felt better.” It wasn’t true. He felt flat. He wanted to fly again. Now.

  * * *

  While A-Flight was up, the squadron’s mail arrived. Lacey put Paganini’s Cantabile in D on the gramophone and brewed some American coffee and started sorting.

  From the usual intake he put aside three letters. One was from London, addressed to Major Hugh Cleve-Cutler in green ink with a woman’s handwriting. He steamed it open and took out a snapshot of a slim young man at the rails of a ship. He looked very pleased with himself. Behind him was the Statue of Liberty. On the back, also in green ink, was written: You fly. He fled. It was initialled PB. That was all; no letter. Lacey put it back and re-sealed the envelope.

  Next he opened a letter to Captain McWatters. It was from Nurse Edith Reynolds: her name and address were on the back.

  Dear Jack,

  I’m sorry I wasn’t much fun. Still, you know the reason why. It was most awfully kind of you to want to see me again, in the circs. I wasn’t very grateful at the time, was I? Too much self-pity! Nanny always said, “You pay for your pleasures” but I’m paying and where was the pleasure? Is it still to come? If you think it might possibly be, then shall we meet again? Soon?

  Edith

  “Saucy baggage,” Lacey said. He replaced it and re-sealed it.

  The third letter was from the Yorkshire Post. Originally it had been sent to The Minister for War, Whitehall, London, but it had been readdressed many times as it got shuttled from department to department until finally someone had stuck a label on it and sent it to R.F.C. H.Q. From there it had been forwarded to Hornet Squadron, marked Attention: Adjutant.

  Lacey slit the envelope and took out a page torn from the Yorkshire Post, the ‘In Memoriam’ page. Someone had ringed the death in action of a Lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps. The notice included Lacey’s epic verse, Now God be thanked, From this day to the ending of the world... It was said to be the work of “a brave British airman, somewhere in France”.

  Two notes were attached. One was from the literary editor:

  Brave indeed! Or is plagiarism now a weapon of war?

  The other note was a memo from Maurice Baring, Boom

  Trenchard’s private secretary. It said:

  Dear Brazier: I rather think you’ve been rumbled. My advice is, make a clean breast of it and appeal to the chap’s sense of humour.

  Lacey tore the notes and the newspaper page into little pieces.

  “Baring has obviously never been to Yorkshire,” he said to Paganini. “Humour has been extinct in Yorkshire since the fifteenth century.”

  * * *

  Woolley told Cleve-Cutler that he had hammered into Mackenzie’s skull the need to stay with the flight, learn his trade, wait his chance, do what he was told; and Mackenzie had rushed at the first Hun he saw like a dog after seven bitches. “I can’t lead my flight with a loony in it, sir.”

  “Loony ... That’s a bit strong. He did get a Hun.”

  “Anyone can get a Hun. I never met Major Milne, but I’m told he made damn sure he got a Hun.”

  Cleve-Cutler thought about that. Milne had been C.O. before him. One day he had thrown an enormous party, and then taken off alone and deliberately rammed a Hun. Not a well man, so Dando had said ... “All right. I’ll have a word with the lad.”

  The upshot was that Cleve-Cutler detached Mackenzie from A-Flight, in fact from the rest of the squadron, and gave him permission to freelance: to fly when he liked, where he liked, and fight how he liked.

  “Rather like Captain Ball, sir,” Mackenzie said.

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  Mackenzie was enormously pleased. “Suppose I were to live in a
tent, sir, next to the Nieuports? Awfully convenient.”

  “And also just like Captain Ball.”

  “Yes, absolutely.”

  The notion that Mackenzie was a bit of a recluse, if not a hermit, amused the squadron, all except the adjutant. “This sort of thing ruins discipline, sir,” he complained.

  “Bad for discipline, good for morale, as Bliss said. Remember?”

  “It’s irregular, sir. You won’t find it in King’s Regs.”

  “You won’t find Hun flamers there, either, Uncle.”

  The spare Nieuport was not ready. While his bell tent was being put up and his kit transferred, Mackenzie wandered about the aerodrome, booting an old football from here to there. He reached the chapel and, because it was there, kicked the ball against a wall, harder and harder, trying to burst it. The padre came out. “You’re turning the House of God into a bass drum!” he shouted.

  “Am I really?” Mackenzie said. “That sounds like some sort of miracle.”

  “Spare me your ignorant jokes. I take my faith seriously, even if you don’t.”

  “Funny you should say that. I keep having visions.”

  “No, you have delusions. There is a difference.”

  “Honestly, padre, I keep seeing the Virgin Mary up a tree. Look, there she is now.”

  “Profanity is not wit.” The padre pushed past him and strode away.

  “Look here, if three peasant kids can see her in Portugal, why not me?” Mackenzie called. No answer. “Damn, she’s gone,” he said. “See what you’ve done?”

  He went into the chapel and knelt in front of the cross that the squadron carpenters had made from broken propellers.

  “Signal,” he said. “From Lieutenant Mackenzie, R.F.C., to St Hubert, patron saint of hunting. Subject: Flamers. Message begins. Keep up steady supply of above. Message ends.” He almost stood, and then knelt again and said, “And if you bump into that poor bloody Hun I got, give him my regards.” He got up. Drinkwater was standing in the doorway. “Come to say goodbye?” Mackenzie said.

  “No. No, I’ve come to ask if you took my scarf.”