Hornet’s Sting

by Derek Robinson

  “Ugly spotted green thing? Very nasty item.”

  “That’s your opinion. My cousin gave it to me, for luck. I always wear it. Now someone’s pinched it.”

  “Act of God. The Almighty doesn’t like superstition.”

  “I think you took it.” Drinkwater stared, but Mackenzie stared back. “Anyway, what’s this about saying goodbye? Are you leaving?”

  “No, but you might be. The old man asked me what I thought of your offensive spirit, so I told him. A chap’s got to be honest, hasn’t he? Ta-ta.”

  Earthquake Strength 10:

  Most structures destroyed. Large landslides.

  Before lunch, Paxton and McWatters each led their flights on short patrols, escorting RE8s on photo-reconnaissance tasks in the Arras area. It was routine stuff, a chance to educate some replacements. There were few Huns in the air, and these declined to take on six Bristol Fighters. Enemy Archie was like a pack of dogs, always chasing, always barking. Two Biffs got ripped by shell fragments. One RE8 was shot down in flames.

  Steak-and-kidney pie for lunch. Its pastry crust glowed like bronze and tasted like the glow and not the bronze: another triumph for Lacey’s cook. Orders for the next day arrived by despatch rider. All leave was cancelled. The squadron was to be on stand-by from 3 a.m. onwards. That confirmed it. Third Wipers was about to begin.

  A fine day had turned into a magnificent afternoon, with baking sunshine and more blue sky than you could shake a stick at.

  No patrols had been ordered. The padre arranged a cricket match: pilots versus the rest. Klagsburn decided to film it. “Everyone likes a sportsman,” he said. “War isn’t all bullshit. Besides, we need a few laughs.” He wandered about the wicket, shouting at the players to make it more exciting.

  “Extraordinary fellow,” Drinkwater said to Mackenzie. He very much wanted to ask him how he had got his flamer, without sounding envious or admiring, and this was difficult because he was, in fact, both. “Are all Americans like him?”

  “I’ve known dozens.”

  “Really?” That was a fatuous reply. “Look: congrats on your Hun.”

  “Yes.” Mackenzie’s acknowledgement was so curt it sounded like a dismissal. “If you really want a Hun, don’t wait for permission. It’s not a bloody squash court up there, you know.” He strolled away. Drinkwater stood with his hands clenched and hidden in his pockets, desperate to kill somebody and thereby prove something.

  Dando was acting as umpire for the cricket match, mainly because standing quietly was the best way to get over the indigestion that raged within him. McWatters came and stood alongside. “I’m being punished, so I am,” Dando said. “For a sin I never committed. Which proves there is no God and I wish to blazes He would go after the adulterers and the sons of bitches who covet their neighbours’ oxen and leave my alimentary canal alone, for the love of Christ.”

  “I need your advice, doc,” McWatters said.

  “Has it to do with the bowels? That’s the first question we doctors ask, so I’m reliably told. Who was it told me that, now?”

  Harry Simms, McWatters thought, and very nearly said so. Harry Simms rabbiting on about Carter’s Little Liver Pills and upsetting Spud Ogilvy. But that was not a fit subject for conversation and Dando should know better than to raise it. “Nothing to do with the bowels. It’s about the way a girl gets pregnant.”

  “Ah, I know that one. It’s called sex. We don’t get a lot of it in the Royal Flying Corps. Boom Trenchard is strongly against sex, you know. He thinks it weakens your offensive spirit.” The more Dando talked, the less his indigestion hurt. A cricket ball whizzed between them. “Trust the English to invent cricket,” Dando said. “The only sport that’s lethal and tedious at the same time.”

  “It may be a silly question,” McWatters said, “but is it possible for a girl who’s already pregnant to be made pregnant again? Say, a couple of months later?”

  “No,” Dando said confidently.

  “Good. Thank you.”

  “I take it you’re planning on having relations with a female two months gone?”

  “I might. You never know.”

  “Very true. Even more true of the lady. Not every pregnancy goes the whole hog. Sometimes a lady’s no longer pregnant and doesn’t know it.”

  “Ah. So I might...”

  “You might. Fortunately I can supply a device to prevent that. It’s a protective sheath, illegal and totally sinful in Ireland but endorsed by the British Army and highly virtuous in France. God moves in a mysterious way, and not only in my alimentary canal.”

  Klagsburn wanted Mackenzie to do something heroic with the bat. He asked the padre to arrange five or six fielders behind Mackenzie. “When he hits the ball,” Klagsburn said, “they all go hey! wow! terrific! and they point up high, and the nearest guy slaps Mackenzie on the back and the rest applaud, okay?”

  “I’ve never seen anything remotely like that happen in a cricket match,” the padre said.

  “Trust me.”

  The padre organised the players.

  “Big grins!” Klagsburn called. “Lotsa teeth. Mac, gimme some energy! Wave the damn bat!” He began filming. “Pitch the damn ball,” he shouted. The bowler lobbed it invitingly. Mackenzie skipped down the wicket and whacked the ball hard and high. The fielders performed. “More excitement!” Klagsburn demanded. “He just won the damn game!” They cheered. A fat raindrop hit the lens. “Shit in spades,” he said. “Sorry, padre.”

  They all walked away, the rain making dark dots on their shirts, but soon it was spattering hard and they were running. The storm chased them into the anteroom. The sky had a sullen look that promised plenty more where this came from.

  “If it hits Wipers,” Cleve-Cutler said, “God help the P.B.I.”

  “Join the army and see the sea,” Paxton said. A servant gave him a towel.

  “War is not a fair-weather pastime,” the adjutant said. He hung his tunic on the back of a chair. “The British soldier can cope with a spot of rain. It’s not going to kill him.”

  “Isn’t it?” Maddegan said. “You didn’t see the swamp map, Uncle.”

  “It’s only mud. We know all about mud.”

  “I think the swamp’s reached here,” Maddegan said. Rain was being blown under the door and forming a pool.

  Morale matched the weather. Nobody wanted to talk about Wipers. Nobody wanted to argue with Brazier. Rain hammering the roof made a depressing noise. The Americans looked around them, and decided nothing was going to happen here for a while. They got in the Buick and drove off to see the action at Wipers. There were rumours of tanks. Klagsburn thought they would make good pictures.

  * * *

  Cleve-Cutler sent for Drinkwater.

  “I won’t tolerate bullying in my squadron. What puzzles me is why you tolerate it, Drinkwater. You’re bigger than him. Punch the silly bastard in the teeth.”

  “Wouldn’t that reduce me to his level, sir?”

  “No. You’d be on your feet and he’d be on his back.”

  “With respect, sir, it’s not the Christian way.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. I know what works.” Drinkwater did not reply. He just stood, looking solemn. “Explain how your way works,” the C.O. demanded. “Doing nothing.”

  “Sooner or later, sir, it will make him realise what an utter rotter he’s been.”

  The C.O. used his sleeve to buff his buttons. “Well,” he said, “it’s a point of view. All right, toddle off.”

  Drinkwater left. The C.O. watched him go, and took out an envelope addressed in green ink. He looked at the snapshot: the jaunty posture, the cocky grin, the heroic statue in the background. You fly, he fled, and PB stood for Poor Butterfly. It was all a lot of sentimental tosh. London wasn’t in the real world. New York was just a name. The Western Front was where life was being lived to the full. And lost too, of course, but take away death and life had no point, no purpose. Cleve-Cutler looked at the picture again and was surpris
ed to feel a brief glow of happiness. Poor young Tommy Blanchflower. Probably live to be sixty and die of gallstones. Serve the little bugger right.

  * * *

  “Damnfool deck chair,” McWatters said. “Squashed my fingers.” His right hand was wrapped in a handkerchief. “Can’t write a bally word. Need to send a letter.”

  “Of course, sir.” Lacey took up his shorthand pad.

  “It’s to Miss Edith Reynolds. Here’s the address. Let’s say ... um ... ‘Dear Miss Reynolds. Thank you for your kind letter dated 27th July... um ... The arrangements ... um ... suggested therein ... um ... are agreeable to me and ... um ... I suggest a further discussion . . . um ... in the very near future. Yours truly, etcetera’. Oh ... better put a PS: ‘Subject to flying duties’.”

  Lacey watched him stride away from the orderly room. “Turgid,” he said. He thought for a minute, and wrote:

  Dearest Edith,

  What a wonderful letter! I thought I might never see you again, and now it seems that you want us to meet! You spoke of your thirst for pleasure. If I can bring to your life a fraction of the joy you bring to mine, I shall count myself a lucky man. I’m told the Hotel Lion d’Or in St Pol is a cosy rendezvous. My stars! If I concentrate I can see your delightful smile from here ...”

  Lacey signed it Yours very affectionately, Jack McWatters. Thirty minutes later he bribed a despatch rider to deliver the letter and wait for an answer. “And this goes with it,” he said, attaching a red silk rose. The despatch rider cocked an eye. “Be prompt and courteous,” Lacey said, “and you shall have one, too.”

  * * *

  Cleve-Cutler telephoned ahead to Ypres, and when Dabinett and Klagsburn got there, a Tank Corps man, Captain Quigley, was waiting to look after them. They dined in his mess: oysters, braised pheasant and sherry trifle, with a robust Côtes du Rhône to help the pheasant along. “We always lay on a good spread before an attack,” Quigley said. “Who knows when these chaps will eat again?”

  “A shame about the rain,” Dabinett said.

  “Yes. The aim is to smash through the muck as quickly as possible,” Quigley said. “We need to break out, and give the cavalry firm ground to operate on.”

  “What’s morale like?”

  “In the tanks? First-rate. Keen as mustard.”

  “How d’you reckon your chances?” Klagsburn asked.

  “Zero. We’ll bog down in less than a mile. We’re not submarines. D’you play bridge? We’ve time to kill.”

  At half-past three they were in a dugout not far from the Front Line. Outside, the communication trenches were packed with troops waiting to move up. The barrage had stopped long ago. The dugout was crammed: a major, a captain, two lieutenants, batmen, runners, signallers. The Americans and Quigley sat in a corner; the others were always on the move, talking, joking, drinking rum, singing a line or two from a London show. The jokes were desperately poor, the singing was flat, and every minute somebody wanted to know the time. Far away, a solitary gun fired. It fired so regularly, about every third minute, that it was like a timepiece. Once, when the telephone rang, the major took the call and shouted for quiet. In the silence, the cracked music of a distant concertina trickled into the dugout. “Ours or theirs?” Dabinett whispered. Quigley just shrugged.

  At three forty-five, Quigley said, “Jerry’s unlikely to capture you now, so I can show you exactly where we are.” He opened a map and pointed to the northern part of the battlefront. “Just beyond the enemy lines is Pilckem village – doesn’t really exist, of course – and running south from it is Pilckem Ridge. That’s the first objective.”

  “Can your tanks climb the ridge?” Klagsburn asked.

  Quigley was amused. “It’s not like Vimy,” he said. “It’s only a few feet high. In fact nothing is more than a few feet high out there.”

  “So what’s beyond the ridge?”

  “Just farms. The barrage got them long ago. Rubble, now. You couldn’t hide a rat behind them. You can’t even find them unless you know where to look.”

  “So it’s all just...”

  “Mud. Our tanks navigate by compass. The tank commander takes a compass bearing and sets off into no-man’s-land and hopes for the best. Come on, we’d better get outside.”

  After the tobacco-fug of the dugout, the night air was cool and sweet. No stars. Heavy cloud. Quigley checked his watch. “Three forty-nine,” he whispered.

  At precisely three fifty, the barrage erupted and three thousand Allied guns fired.

  Dabinett stumbled, and a soldier grabbed his arm. He felt as if the noise had blown him over. It made every thunderclap he had heard seem like a doorslam. The roar pounded his ears and numbed his brain. He lost control of his body, his knees were shaking, his feet were trembling. Then his brain caught up with reality. The ground was shaking, and he was shaking with it.

  Now Quigley seized his arm. “Climb up!” he shouted. “See better from the top. Jerry won’t harm us.”

  They went up a ladder. Shells were exploding all along the enemy trenches, making an unbroken line of spouting fire. Dabinett had to brace himself against the gusting wind. He was puzzled: a minute ago the night had been calm. Then he understood: the wind was made by the displacement of a thousand shells, all blasting holes in the air. He heard the crack and bark of field batteries, and looked behind him. Beyond the batteries was a horizon of gun-flashes like an army of signallers working the shutters of their signal lamps.

  Klagsburn said something, and Dabinett turned and looked again at the battlefield. It was an earthquake releasing a volcano. Miles of the enemy lines were a blaze of orange light. Above this, hundreds of shrapnel-bursts sparkled. Higher still, burning oil fell like yellow rain from the drums of Thermit flung by the artillery. And just to point up the magnificent, inhuman scale of the inferno, the enemy was sending up streams of delicate red and green rockets, his pleas for help.

  “Look!” Quigley called, and gestured all around. The ground was moving, was running: rats were fleeing from the Lines. “Never seen that before,” he said. “What you might call an unsolicited testimonial.”

  The barrage went on, devastating what it had already destroyed, but it made so much smoke and dust that soon it hid its own firework display. Now machine guns opened up, hundreds of guns, rattling like regiments of typewriters. It was a signal for the barrage to raise itself from anger to fury.

  “Not long now,” Quigley said. “And Jerry knows it. See?” Enemy shells were bursting in no-man’s-land.

  They climbed down. The dugout was empty except for the major, his batman and a signaller. “Have some rum,” the major said. “They’ve gone over. Nothing we can do.”

  “When will the barrage stop, sir?” Dabinett asked.

  “Not for ages,” the major said. “Every four minutes, it lifts forward one hundred yards. In theory, the infantry just keep walking forward.”

  “In theory?”

  “Nobody’s perfect. Gunners make little mistakes. Have some rum. What time is it?”

  “Two minutes past four, sir,” Quigley said.

  “Dawn in an hour. Full daylight in two. Then we’ll know something. Maybe. Have some rum.”

  They waited. The barrage lifted, and lifted again, until its noise was a distant thunder. Now Quigley reckoned it was safe to go to the Front Line. Stretcher-bearers trudged back up the communication trench in an endless procession. Dawn was a red slash in the clouds; smoke from the barrage drifted across it. They reached the Front and climbed onto the parapet and looked across no-man’s-land at where Pilckem Ridge was alleged to be.

  “First objective taken,” Quigley said.

  “Is it?” Klagsburn said. “It all looks kind of samey to me.”

  The entire battlefront was a sea of craters. There were no paths or tracks; nobody walked in a straight line; men followed the rims of the craters. In daylight this was difficult; at night, with drifting smoke and bursting shrapnel, it must have been worse than a nightmare. Nightmares end. Men aw
ake. Here, they could only plod on, from a world of mud and explosions into a world of mud and explosions.

  “Jolly thorough lot, the gunners,” Quigley said.

  Dabinett nodded. He could see a few tanks tipped sideways in craters too steep for them to climb, but he said nothing of that.

  They each helped carry a stretcher up the communication trench to a regimental aid post. Because Klagsburn was so much shorter than the man carrying the other end, blood ran down the poles of his stretcher and made the handles slippery. He dropped them before he knew it and fell forward, on top of the casualty. When he got up there was blood all over his sleeves. “Sorry,” he said.

  “Don’t take it to heart, sir,” the other stretcher-bearer said. “That one’s not feeling any pain.”

  The Americans had breakfast. Then they took the film camera and went back to the battlefield.

  * * *

  At about the same time, O’Neill had a longer, much better breakfast. Then he returned to his hut and found it full of sheep. They were not as well-behaved as the horse. Droppings dotted the floor. He shouted for his servant.

  “My compliments to Mr Paxton. Ask him to spare me a few minutes.”

  Paxton arrived, but not through the door; instead he looked through a window. “Dash it all, O’Neill,” he said, “you really must curb this passion for farm animals. People are beginning to talk.”

  “I’m a reasonable man,” O’Neill said, “and I’ll make a reasonable offer. Get your woolly friends out of here or I’ll smash your face in.”

  “I’d like to oblige you, but they’re not my sheep.”

  O’Neill snatched a cushion that a sheep was chewing.

  “I expect they just wandered in,” Paxton said. “That one looks remarkably like you. Much cleverer, of course.” O’Neill cursed, and hurled the cushion. Paxton had gone.

  He found the French shepherd and gave him ten francs. “Infinitely obliged,” Paxton said. “For a similar consideration, could you repeat the exercise, only this time with a small herd of goats?” The man grinned and nodded. “You are a prince amongst shepherds,” Paxton said.