War Story

by Derek Robinson

  “And never will be.”

  “True. But you’re in Toby Chivers’ bed and I’m afraid Mr. O’Neill can’t accept that. They were terribly close, you see.”

  “I don’t care if they were Siamese twins, he has no right to behave like an Australian pig.” Paxton realised that he shouldn’t be talking to a corporal like this, but it was too late now. “According to Fidler, the fellow’s not even a genuine colonial. Is that right?”

  “Yes and no. He was born in Australia, but his family sent him to England to be educated when he was only six. As it was scarcely worth going home for the holidays, he stayed until he was eighteen, and then joined the Army.”

  “So all his Australian rubbish is just… just rubbish.”

  “A natural reaction against the Anglican piety and cold baths of Lancing College. Not to mention the food, which I’m told was even worse than—”

  “Hey! Who’s that?” Paxton pointed to a dim, remote figure walking across the airfield. “Stop!” he shouted. The figure immediately ran. He chased it but within twenty paces it had merged into the night.

  “Probably only a peasant,” Lacey said. “They often do a bit of poaching. Hares and partridge and so on.”

  “Not while I’m Orderly Officer they don’t. Where’s the damn Duty NCO?”

  “In the guardroom, I expect. Goodnight.” Lacey waved a hand in farewell. It was not a salute, but Paxton didn’t stay to argue about it.

  The Fourth of June had been fully celebrated. There was nothing intact left to celebrate.

  Lord Trafford was staying overnight with a cousin who was a general and who occupied a small château outside Amiens. Trafford liked talking and he knew that his cousin alone would be a poor audience, so he invited fifteen o twenty officers to join him for champagne at the château. The quartet from Hornet Squadron went along.

  “He was always called ‘Sally’ Chandler,” Trafford said. “Eton had some mighty floggers in my day but Sally Chandler stood out. He had a magnificent arm. He once flogged thirty boys before breakfast. Thirty boys! Just think of it.” Trafford beamed. “That was the great thing about Eton in my day. There was none of this modern nonsense about justice, or fair play. Everyone got flogged whether he deserved it or not. And, of course, we did deserve it. But I understand all that’s changed now.”

  “Not entirely,” Foster began; but Trafford had paused only to refill his glass. “People complain about bullying at schools,” he said. “I tell them they don’t know what they’re talking about. Did you ever hear tell of Miles Pratt? No? Sic transit. Pratt was a famous bully of my day. I bear the scars still. Pratt would strap on a pair of spurs, climb onto the back of his fag, and ride him around a room as if it were the Grand National! My thighs were like raw beef. Oh, Pratt was famous. People had far more respect for Miles Pratt than for the Headmaster, wouldn’t you say, Rupert?”

  “Never knew him,” the general said. “He got expelled the year before I started.”

  “What for?” asked Ogilvy.

  “The usual thing,” Trafford said. “I suppose that’s all changed, too.”

  “On the contrary,” said Foster,”it’s part of the entrance examination now.”

  “When the school captain examined my entrance,” Charlie Essex said,”he gave me two lollipops and an orange.”

  “That’s nothing,” said a major in the Rifle Brigade. “I got a box of chocolates and a crate of champagne. Is there any more champagne, by the way?”

  “I don’t suppose there will ever be another flogger like Sally Chandler,” Trafford said wistfully. “D’you know, he once flogged a pair of choristers who just happened to be passing his study?”

  “Miles Pratt won a VC in the Second Afghan War,” said the general. “Posthumous, thank God.” As the military police fought their way in through the front door, the adjutant led the airmen out through the kitchen. “Quickly but quietly,” he urged. O’Neill carried Kellaway on his back like a sack of coal. “Hurry, hurry,” the adjutant said. Goss stumbled and fell. “I think I’ve broken my ankle, Uncle,” he said. “Break what you like,” the adjutant told him, “but do it fast.” The patron was holding the back door open. “Merci mille fois” the adjutant said, giving him a handful of money. Then they were all out in the night. The distant crash and shout of battle was cut off as the kitchen door closed. Mayo began wandering off, down the alley that backed the bar. “Not that way!” the adjutant said.

  “You can’t talk like that to me,” Mayo said thickly. “Moi, je suis the next Czar of Russia but three and I’ll have your bloody head chopped off if—”

  Piggott grabbed him and dragged him back. There was a ladder against the alley wall and the adjutant was pushing men up it as fast as he could. Mayo, unable to escape from Piggott, surrendered to him and began to waltz. Soon this struck him as hugely funny, and he stopped waltzing to laugh. “Shut him up!” the adjutant hissed. Piggott punched Mayo in the stomach. The laughter turned to a groan, the groan to a gurgle as Mayo was sick. Spitting and wheezing, he let himself be steered up the ladder.

  They were in a churchyard.

  “One short,” O’Neill said. “Where’s the old man?”

  “Vanished ten minutes ago,” the adjutant told him. “No idea where he’s gone.”

  “Gone berserk, if you ask me,” Piggott said.

  A deep sigh came from Kellaway. He lay stretched out on the top of a tomb, his arms crossed on his chest.

  “He wants to die here,” O’Neill explained. “He reckons it’s handy for the pub.”

  “Did we win the boat race?” Jimmy Duncan asked. “I sort of lost count.”

  “Stand him up,” the adjutant said, pointing to Kellaway. As he spoke there came a glow of light in the alley, a rush of boots and oaths and the thud of blows. O’Neill shook Kellaway by the foot. Kellaway rolled over twice and fell off the tomb, crushing something fragile, a vase perhaps. “Follow me,” the adjutant muttered. He hurried them through the churchyard, down a muddy track and into a cobbled street. The street led back to the town square. “Rufus can look after himself,” the adjutant said. “We’re going to take the tender and get out of here, now.” But the tender was not where they had left it. “Damn,” said the adjutant. “Damn, damn, damn. Also bugger.”

  They sat on the edge of a fountain in the middle of the square and watched Le Trictrac being emptied by the military police. There were several bloody heads and a few men being carried by their friends. The police whacked and kicked indiscriminately to keep the crowd on the run.

  “Just like Piccadilly Circus on Boat Race night,” said Piggott.

  “Did we win?” Jimmy Duncan asked. “I lost count.”

  “He must have gone somewhere,” the adjutant said. “Who else would have taken it?”

  O’Neill said: “Big question is, where’s he gone?”

  “I’ll ask a policeman,” Mayo said, and made off. “I say, constable!” he shouted. Piggott chased him and dragged him back. “Sit down and shut up,” he said.

  Mayo shook himself free. “Russian policemen finest in the world,” he said loftily. “Russian police know all the answers.” He found himself looking at Jimmy Duncan. “What’s the question?” he asked.

  “Did we win?” said Duncan. “I lost count.”

  For a long while, nobody spoke. Kellaway was asleep, propped up against O’Neill. Appleyard was wondering how long they should wait. Goss was rubbing the ankle he said he had broken. The others were staring at the moon, or combing their hair, or just standing with their hands in their pockets, rattling their small change. A mule trotted into the square. By now the troops had gone. Le Trictrac was shuttered and dark. The mule stopped and looked around. It heard the tinkle of falling water, walked to the fountain, eyed the airmen and found them unthreatening, and began to drink.

  “That’s a mule,” Duncan said.

  The animal flapped its ears. Water dripped from its nose. A clatter of hooves made it look over its shoulder. Another mule cantered into t
he square.

  “There’s another,” Duncan asked.

  “How many does that make?” Piggott asked.

  “Two.”

  “You’re not as stupid as you look, Jimmy.”

  “Wrong,” O’Neill said. “It makes four.” Two more mules had arrived. He pointed, and the gesture disturbed Kellaway, who toppled backwards into the fountain. The first mule tossed its head and backed away. “And six makes ten,” O’Neill said. “And ten makes twenty. After that it’s bloody ridiculous.”

  Kellaway stood up in the fountain. His eyes were open but he was seeing double. He was utterly bewildered. He had no idea where he was or how he got there. Everywhere he looked he saw moonlit mules: double images of moonlit mules, dozens and dozens of them, all running, but the more they ran the more there were of them until the square was crammed with mules. It was a nightmare. He dropped to his hands and knees and shut his eyes and crawled away from it.

  “I don’t like the look of this,” the adjutant said to Piggott They were standing on the fountain wall, for safety. It was not a big square and mules were still pouring in. “There’s got to be a reason for this sort of nonsense.”

  “Here he comes,” said Piggott.

  Rufus Milne cantered into the square on a mule with reins and a halter but no saddle. He saw the airmen and forced his way towards them. “Hullo, you lot!” he cried. “Where on earth have you been?”

  The square was dense with braying and stamping. Still more mules were arriving. Faintly, from a corner, the whistles of the military police could be heard. “What’s the game, Rufus?” Piggott shouted.

  “These are all mine,” Milne announced. “Aren’t they jolly? This one’s called Alice. She’s a wise old bird. Aren’t you, Alice?”

  “Mules are neuter,” said Goss,”and yours looks stupid.”

  “Does she really? Trick of the light, I expect. The sergeant said she has the brains of an archbishop.”

  “What sergeant?” the adjutant asked.

  “Chap I met in the Trictrac. Awfully nice fellow. I said to him, you look a bit fed-up, and he said so would you look fed up if you had to look after five hundred bloody mules, so I said that’s an awful lot of bloody mules, and he said you bet it’s an awful lot of bloody mules, and to cut a long story short we went to see them and he swapped them for the tender.”

  “He must have been drunk.”

  “Soused as a herring.”

  “We need the tender,” Piggott said,”to get home.”

  “Take a mule. Take any mule.” Milne waved at the moonlit mass of animals. “Shop around. Find one that fits. Take two, and give the other to your mother.”

  “I’ll go and get the tender,” Piggott said to the adjutant.

  “You’ll have to run,” Milne said. “He told me he was going to drive to Paris.”

  Mayo gave a little scream of pain. “That beast bit me!” he said.

  “He’s got a girlfriend in Paris, you see.”

  “Bugger the girlfriend,” the adjutant said bleakly.

  “Very unlikely,” Milne said. “Not according to what he told me.”

  Lord Trafford fell asleep, in mid-sentence, in an armchair. His cousin Rupert, the general, played poker with the hard core of the Old Etonians, including the four from Hornet Squadron. After an hour or so they stopped to eat sandwiches of beef tongue and chicken.

  “Has it ever occurred to you,” said the general,”that this would be a much better war if all the Russians were in France, and we and the French were in Russia? Our men rot in trenches until they get blown to glory. Any bloody fool can do that. The Russian army is perfectly qualified for trench warfare. They’ve got an endless supply of bloody fools. But there’s no trench warfare to speak of on the Eastern Front. It’s all war-of-movement. Professional fighting. That’s what we’re good at. We should be there, having the time of our lives in the wide open spaces. They should be here, doing what they’re good at, which is dying for Holy Mother Russia. This is a very badly arranged war.”

  “What about Salonika and Gallipoli?” someone asked.

  “Not a funny joke,” the general said. “Your deal.” Kellaway kept falling off his mule.

  He was unused to wine. His father kept a bottle of sherry in the house and it always lasted a year. The pungent ordinaire of Le Trictrac had gone down Kellaway’s throat like water. The faster he drank it, the less he noticed its coarse taste. His speed amused other people, and they kept refilling his glass. He was flattered by their attention, so he kept entertaining them. He was, inevitably, sick; but once his stomach was empty he found it easier still to pour more wine into it. He had been standing, singing, when the room lurched. He had tried to grab a table. The table had turned into two tables. He missed them both. His legs were as slack as string. The roaring noise faded like a big wave receding. He collapsed and knew nothing of it.

  Now, every time he fell off his mule he banged and bruised his arms and shoulders, which made it all the harder for him to remount and cling to the animal’s skimpy mane. “Grip him with your knees, for God’s sake,” the adjutant kept telling him. “Use your thighs, man. That’s what they’re for.” Kellaway did his best, but from time to time his mind wandered off and left him; and then everyone had to stop again until Kellaway had been found and picked up.

  Only Milne remained cheerful. “This is wonderful exercise,” he said. “The night, and the countryside, and the fresh air – it brings you closer to nature. Don’t you agree, Tim?”

  “As long as it brings me closer to my bed I’ll agree to anything,” Piggott said.

  Mayo said: “Keep your bloody mule away from me, Douglas. The brute keeps trying to bite me in the leg.”

  “I’m nowhere near you, damn it,” Goss snapped.

  “Well, who’s that, then?” Mayo kicked at the mule alongside.

  “You do that again and I personally will bite you in the arse,” O’Neill said.

  “Jesus …” Piggott tried to ease his aching backside. “At this rate it’ll be dawn before we get home, and I’m flying after breakfast”.

  “Are you absolutely sure this is the right road, Rufus?” the adjutant asked.

  “Well, it may not be the quickest route,” Milne said,”but it’s by far the prettiest.” A bank of cloud slid over the moon. Now there were two sorts of blackness to look at: earth and sky. Kellaway swayed and tried to make his knees do something other than tremble. Despair filled him like a fever. He had joined the RFC quite willing to die, but not like this. This was not just rotten, it was endlessly rotten.

  The cloud thickened. A wind came in from the west, ruffling the poplars that lined the road, and a light rain drifted over the plodding mules. The night and the journey seemed endless, shapeless, hopeless. Kellaway slept, and awoke feeling utterly lost. “Here we are, home again,” said Milne.

  The adjutant grunted. He recognised the Pepriac crossroads. Now for a hot toddy and bed, a great deal of both.

  “Haiti” The challenge was so loud that the leading mules checked. “Who goes there?”

  Milne peered at the figure standing in the entrance to the aerodrome, and saw the dull gleam of a bayonet. “Good heavens,” he said. “Friend, of course. Several friends, in fact.”

  “Advance, friend, and be recognised”. The order was crisp.

  Milne got off his mule. He could see a roll of barbed wire in front of the sentry, blocking the entrance. “I’m Major Milne, commanding officer,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “Corporal Lee, sir. I shall have to ask you for the password, sir.”

  “Password? What password?”

  There was a pause. “That’s for you to tell me, sir.”

  “Look here …” Milne walked forward and Lee operated the bolt of his rifle. Milne stopped. “You wouldn’t actually fire that thing, would you, Lee?”

  “Not unless I have to, sir.”

  “Sensible fellow.”

  Behind him, Tim Piggott lost patience and dismounted. “Look, this i
s bloody ridiculous,” he barked, striding towards the sentry. “We’re all—”

  The bang made everyone jump, and the puff of flame from Lee’s rifle was imprinted on their vision. He had fired high. Now they heard him re-load. “Jesus Christ,” Piggott breathed.

  They went back to the others. “Does anybody know anything about a password?” Milne asked. At first nobody spoke. Then Kellaway, sitting in the middle of the road, swallowed something that he should have spat out “Shit,” he muttered.

  “That’s not it,” O’Neill said.

  “I remember brigade gave out passwords,” Milne said,”in case we got shot down in No-Man’s-Land, or something. Trouble is, the password gets changed every day. But I think they were names of flowers.”

  “Geraniums,” Goss called to Lee. No response. “Roses. Tulips. Daisies, marigolds, daffodils, pinks, carnations, dahlias, winter-flowering jasmine. “Lee was silent

  “Jasmine isn’t a flower,” Jimmy Duncan said.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “No, no. Jasmine’s a bush.”

  “Balls! It’s a flower, ask anyone. Ask Lee. Corporal Lee, is jasmine a flower or a bush?”

  It had begun to rain again. Lee’s voice came out of the wet, black night: “I couldn’t say, sir.”

  “Well, you’re a fat lot of good.”

  “But I can tell you one thing, sir. It’s not the password.” Lee sounded as if he might possibly be enjoying himself.

  “This is absurd,” Milne said. “Who put you here?”

  “Orderly Officer, sir. Mr. Paxton.”

  “Bloody Paxton,” the adjutant said in a voice like rust

  “Go and get him,” Milne ordered.

  “Not possible, sir. Not allowed to leave my post, sir. Courtmartial offence, sir. Could be shot, sir.”

  “Forget all that. I’m CO and I’m giving you fresh orders.”

  “That’s as may be, sir. But you still haven’t given me the password, sir, so how can I take your orders? You lot could be anyone, sir. You could be the Boches.”

  “All right, just suppose we were the Boches. What would you do about it?”

  “I’d telephone Mr. Paxton, sir.”