War Story

by Derek Robinson

  “No, no. Nothing like that.” He began to describe his meeting with Judith Kent Haffner. He got as far as coffee on the terrace when O’Neill sat next to him. “CO wants you,” O’Neill said.

  Paxton couldn’t stand being close to O’Neill, so he got up. “I don’t believe you,” he said.

  “You’re right, the old man’s lying, he doesn’t want you.” O’Neill lay back and closed his eyes. “Don’t let him toy with your affections like that, get over there and gouge his eyeballs out.”

  “Excuse me.” Paxton walked away.

  Kellaway applauded a big hit by Gus Mayo. “Why do you keep pestering him?” he asked.

  “It’s a dirty job, I know,” O’Neill shouted at Paxton,”but somebody has to do it.”

  Kellaway didn’t understand, but he didn’t really care. “You’re looking a bit pale, old chap,” he said. “Been sick?”

  “Paxton took my rouge, without asking.” O’Neill’s face was as blank as ever. “He wants to humiliate me in front of the entire German Air Force.” Kellaway gave up.

  Paxton went to his billet. He was looking at his haircut in a mirror, and thinking how desirable it would be to go back and get a trim in a week or so, when Fidler arrived. “Mr. Cleve-Cutler’s compliments, sir,” he said,”and could you report to his office immediately.”

  Paxton forgot haircuts, forgot Mrs. Kent Haffner, forgot O’Neill and Kellaway and all. This was the call. He was going to fly again.

  The CO and Captain Piggott were looking at a short length of telegraph wire. Paxton saluted and waited. “Where exactly did they find this?” Cleve-Cutler asked Piggott.

  “Outer strut, left-hand side. Sawed the strut nearly in half.”

  Cleve-Cutler tested the strength of the wire until he hurt his fingers and grinned with pain. “Cheap and nasty … Where have you been all day?”

  “Amiens, sir,” Paxton said. “Haircut.”

  “Didn’t O’Neill tell you I wanted to see you?”

  “Yes, but… I’m afraid I don’t trust him, sir.”

  “Really! You don’t trust O’Neill.” Cleve-Cutler blew his nose: one short foghorn blast. “And how does O’Neill feel about you?”

  “Well… he’s not friendly, sir.”

  “Not friendly. How odd. Everyone else finds him friendly.”

  Paxton turned his head and looked out of the window. This wasn’t what he’d expected but he was quite willing to reveal the truth. “From the start, sir, O’Neill has had his knife into me.”

  “And how do you feel about him?”

  “I detest him.”

  “That should be interesting. Starting now, you’re O’Neill’s observer.”

  For a few seconds Paxton’s brain refused to accept these words. They made no sense; they didn’t fit. Yet the squadron commander and the flight commander kept looking at him as if they made sense. “I’m a pilot, sir,” he said. “I’m not an observer.”

  “Then you’ll just have to do your best, won’t you? I’ve got too many pilots and the Pool’s run out of observers.”

  “But O’Neill… I mean isn’t there anybody else—”

  “No, there’s nobody else,” Cleve-Cutler said jauntily,”and I know you’re the worst air-gunner in the Corps and you couldn’t hit Immelmann himself if he came up and sniffed the end of your gun, and it’s certainly rough luck on Frank O’Neill, whose life-expectancy with you guarding him is now a minus figure because you’ll probably shoot him the very first chance you get, thus causing the plane to crash and kill you both, which will be an enormous relief to me. Now go away.”

  Paxton went away, looking dazed.

  “I thought he might learn something if he kicked around the squadron for a few days,” Piggott said. “He hasn’t learnt a damn thing, he’s just as stupid as ever. I wonder what he did to get on O’Neill’s tit?”

  “Doesn’t matter any more. Once they start fighting, they create more reasons to fight.”

  “Childish, isn’t it?”

  “I hope not,” Cleve-Cutler said. “It’s what we’ve all been doing for the last two years.” He made a coil of the wire and released it, so that it bounced across his desk. “He didn’t ask what had happened to Duncan.”

  “No. Self-centred and selfish. Doesn’t give a damn for anyone else.”

  “So all he needs,” Cleve-Cutler said,”is brains, guts and a ton of luck and he might make a good fighter pilot one day.” Piggott stared. “Just a little joke,” Cleve-Cutler said.

  Paxton searched the camp until he found O’Neill. He was strolling around his FE, whistling in his peculiar tuneless fashion.

  “Shut up that racket and listen,” Paxton said. O’Neill went on whistling. He took a close look at an oil stain. “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this,” Paxton said, “but it seems that I am your observer.”

  O’Neill stopped whistling. For the first time, Paxton saw emotion show through that usually wooden expression. Surprise, certainly. Perhaps even alarm. It lasted only a few seconds.

  “Or perhaps it would be truer to say that you are my pilot,” Paxton said.

  “You’ll like flying with me. It’s better than prunes.” O’Neill was back to normal.

  Cleve-Cutler mixed up a batch of Hornet’s Sting in memory of Jimmy Duncan but there was no squadron party. It seemed wrong to smash up the new old furniture as soon as Lacey had had it unloaded, and in any case tomorrow’s orders had come through and ‘A’ and ‘B’ Flights were on dawn patrol. All the keys worked on the replacement piano, so Stubbs played and everyone sang. Even Paxton stood at the edge of the crowd and sang. He had something to celebrate: he’d moved one more place up the table. Tough luck on Duncan. Pity it hadn’t happened to O’Neill, he thought, then it would have been two places … Kellaway nudged him. “Heard the new diet joke?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “How to lose ten ugly pounds at a stroke: volunteer to be O’Neill’s observer.” Kellaway giggled. “Get it?”

  Paxton turned and went out. He took his binoculars from O’Neill’s bedside and walked to the far end of the aerodrome where there was an oak tree he could climb. It was dusk, and he watched the starshells and flares and coloured rockets to the east. Sometimes, when he was lucky, he saw the actual flash of guns. It was magical and beautiful, thrilling and manly. It made him feel cleaner and stronger.

  Chapter 14

  Breakfast before a dawn patrol was always hard-boiled eggs and tea. Nobody liked the eggs but they were better than nothing. After an hour of O’Neill’s aerobatics Paxton’s stomach held nothing and his mind was full of murder.

  Tim Piggott’s briefing had needed very few words; it was obvious to Paxton that everyone knew the drill. Dawn patrols were freelance affairs: the British artillery was still in bed, so there were no shoots to cover, and the light wasn’t good enough for photo-reconnaissance. Hornet squadron was going over to show the flag, to remind fritz how inferior he was. O’Neill’s words to Paxton were even briefer. “Puke on your boots,” he said,”not on me.”

  They were a mile up and two miles over when he began throwing the FE about. At first he swung in and out of a series of tight bends as if swerving past obstacles, wings tipped almost to the vertical. Paxton quite enjoyed that. O’Neill levelled out. Paxton turned to look at him and as he did, O’Neill stuffed the nose down hard and Paxton whacked his face against the back of the cockpit. He was still struggling to get back in his seat when the dive abruptly bottomed out and became a climb. His breakfast began to come loose. O’Neill stalled at the top and Paxton braced himself as the FE toppled sideways and threatened to fall on its back. A frighteningly long sideslip grew into another dive. The rush of air tore at Paxton’s bloody face. His goggles had been knocked upwards and the gale made him weep. He never saw how the dive ended; all he saw was a small cloud dead ahead that was rotating rapidly, clockwise. Then the machine smashed into the cloud and bounced like a rubber ball and came out into sunshine with the Earth hanging sideways from
the sky and Paxton hanging desperately in his straps while boiled eggs and tea fought to get out of his mouth. After that O’Neill began attempting some quite ambitious stunts.

  The adjutant doubled as intelligence officer. When they landed he took their report. “Nothing much,” O’Neill said. “One stroppy little Fokker tried to jump us. He wasn’t very good. Soon got fed up.”

  Brazier looked at Paxton. “Did you damage him?”

  “No.” He peeled a bit of dried vomit off his chin. “No, he was always behind us, wasn’t he?”

  “Not always.”

  “And it wasn’t a Fokker, it was an Albatros. Two Albatroses.”

  Brazier crossed out what he’d written.

  “Fokker,” O’Neill said. “One Fokker.”

  “Make up your ruddy minds.”

  “I observed two Albatroses,” Paxton said,”and I should know because I’m the observer.”

  Brazier grunted, and wrote some more. “Where’s that black ink you said you were going to get me?”

  Paxton had completely forgotten about it. “They were sold out,” he said. The adjutant sniffed disbelief. “Everyone’s been buying it,” Paxton said. “The stuff the Army issues is like gnat’s piss.”

  The afternoon patrol was similar but worse. Paxton lost his lunch, bruised his elbows and knees and bloodied his nose. O’Neill told Brazier the German archie had been bad, so he’d dodged about a bit. “Anything to add?” Brazier asked. Paxton shook his head. The archie had been quite light but he hadn’t the strength to get into an argument. Instead he stared at the thick growth of hair sprouting from the adjutant’s nostrils. How ugly. How insanitary.

  O’Neill whistled his aimless, dreary whistle as they walked to their billet. Eventually Paxton recognised the tune through the wreckage: it was Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring. Once, Paxton had told Kellaway that it was his favourite piece of music. That was why O’Neill was murdering it, of course.

  “I say, you do look grim,” Kellaway remarked. “Pale, too.”

  “I offered to lend him my rouge,” O’Neill said, flat as mud,“but he’s very fussy about these things.”

  Paxton had a bath and slept for an hour. When he awoke the others had gone. He went outside. The air smelt marvellously fresh, as if he had convalesced for a week. What he wanted above all was tea, hot sweet tea. The mess would have people in it. He went instead to the Orderly Room. Corporal Lacey had a Mozart piano concerto on the gramophone. He reached to turn it off but Paxton shook his head and sat down. Lacey got on with his work. Mozart got on with his genius. The piano duelled brilliantly and courteously with the orchestra and won a fair fight. Silence. Paxton sighed and pointed to the kettle. Lacey made tea. Next door the clerk-typists began pecking.

  “I hear you met Mrs. Kent Haffner,” Lacey said. “A very spirited young lady.”

  “That seems like a month ago.” Paxton warmed his hands on the half-pint mug. He could feel the tea reviving him. “How do you know her?”

  Lacey smiled. “Just chance. I understand you have another uncle who owns a company that makes gramophone records. Why don’t you write to him? Jazz, ragtime, songs from the London shows.”

  “Cigars aren’t good enough?”

  “Not always. With a supply of records I could get two cows and fifty hens. Fresh milk and eggs for the mess.”

  Paxton looked at him. Lacey’s feet were on his desk and his hands were linked behind his head. “I can’t help thinking you should be an officer,” Paxton said.

  “I probably should. I don’t want to be an officer. I’ve never wanted to be an officer. War seems to me to be a very silly affair. I can’t see the glory in killing people, still less in being killed.”

  “But you joined the Army.”

  “Well, I decided I’d better do what I wanted to do before somebody else ordered me to do what I disliked intensely. You see, I never believed that this would be a short war. It was obvious when war broke out that everyone wanted it and was thoroughly pleased with it. They weren’t going to let go of it in a hurry. On the other hand, if it did last a long time, I might get conscripted and sent to stick bayonets in Germans, or, even worse, made to lead other men with bayonets. So I took a course in shorthand and typing. Then I joined up. A man who can type fast and accurately and do shorthand is like gold in the Army. Ask the adjutant. Such a man is never going to be put in the trenches. Nor is he ever going to be pushed into a commission. So here I am, utterly indispensable. What more can a man do for his country?”

  Paxton got up and went to the door. He threw the dregs of his tea onto the grass. “He can die,” he said.

  “Oh, anyone can die. It takes no great skill to die. No skill at all, in fact. Thoroughly unqualified people do it all the time. Personally, I reckon that dying has been highly overrated. I blame the newspapers.”

  Paxton returned his mug. “Thanks for the tea,” he said. “No thanks for the philosophy.”

  Hornet Squadron was pleased with itself that night. During the afternoon, Plug Gerrish had found a Halberstadt twoseater and stalked it for twenty minutes until he crept under its tail and Ross, his observer, killed the pilot with a burst of only seven bullets. This was the squadron’s first confirmed kill since Milne’s ramming (which didn’t really count) and it was regarded as a change of luck. Then Goss and Stubbs had come across a German balloon stuck high in the sky. It must have had trouble down below, a jammed winch or something, because they were able to fly right up to it. At first the archie was furious but when the two German observers took to their parachutes the risk of harming their own men silenced the guns long enough to let Stubbs pump tracer and incendiary into the big bag, which burned like a beacon. So it was a happy day. Dinner in the mess was loud with triumph. The air criss-crossed with flying bread.

  A reaction set in when they moved to the anteroom for coffee. It had been a long time since the hour before dawn when most had been shaken awake by their batmen. Some, including Cleve-Cutler, wandered off to bed. Foster went for a walk. Others slumped in armchairs or sofas and watched Goss and Ogilvy play ping-pong. The gramophone played loud ragtime until Charlie Essex took off a sock and stuffed it into the speaker. “You chaps haven’t got the brains to do that,” he said. “But of course I was at Cambridge.”

  “What else did you learn there?” the adjutant asked.

  “Oh … Let’s see. Two pints one quart, four quarts one gallon, and after that you’re too plastered to climb into college so it doesn’t matter.”

  “That’s all? Didn’t they teach you anything else?”

  “Um … I learned how to do the polka. Well, nearly.”

  “Heroic,” Brazier murmured.

  Paxton was dozing in a corner, but the word stirred his memory. After a moment his memory reported its findings. “I say,” he said to Dando. “What’s heroic surgery?”

  Dando blinked. “Extraordinary question,” he said. “Well, when normal measures have failed to save the patient, the surgeon may take extreme measures – I mean, do things he would normally consider too violent, too dangerous – as a kind of a last-ditch attempt to save the patient’s life. That’s known as heroic surgery.”

  “Multiple amputation?”

  “Yes, that’s the sort of thing. Why d’you ask?”

  “Chap I met the other day was very keen on heroic surgery. Said the record for chopping off all four limbs is just over twelve minutes but he reckoned he could do it in eight minutes dead.” Paxton was about to mention the axe and then thought better of it.

  “My goodness.” Dando made his eyes big and wide. “Eight minutes, you say … That’s more than heroic. That’s herculean.”

  Gus Mayo stirred and yawned. “Bit tough on the patient, isn’t it? I mean … What if he didn’t want them all cut off?”

  “Then he should have said so at the start,” Charlie Essex told him. “Now he hasn’t got a leg to stand on.”

  Some laughed, some groaned. Mayo got up and began beating Essex with a cushion. Essex fought b
ack. His chair fell over. The scuffle went on until they were both too tired to fight and lay side by side in a pool of feathers. Goss came by, searching for a lost ping-pong ball, and they tripped him up, so he hit them. The scuffle began again. Ogilvy got tired of waiting for Goss to come back and he left the table. “When it comes to heroic surgery we’ve got the champion right here,” he said. “Haven’t we, adj?”

  Brazier took his pipe from his mouth, looked into the bowl, put his pipe back, and waited.

  “I got another letter from my chum in the trenches,” Ogilvy said. “The adj used to be his CO. Billy Winters, adj. Remember him?”

  Brazier nodded. “Reliable fellow. A bit wild, but he led his company well.”

  “And you remember Ashby?”

  In the same voice Brazier said: “I shot Ashby. He didn’t lead his company so well, and I had to shoot him.”

  The scuffling had stopped.

  “What did you shoot him with?”

  “A rifle. He was forty yards away. The Service revolver is useless at that range and I couldn’t wait until he got closer. I took the nearest rifle and shot Ashby through the chest. Through the heart. I’m sure he never knew what hit him. The others did, though.”

  Everyone was very awake now. Brazier picked a shred of tobacco from his thigh and let it fall in an ashtray.

  “I take it there was a panic,” Ogilvy said.

  “There was indeed a panic.”

  “And you were then a colonel.”

  “I was then a colonel and my regiment took part in an attack, a most important part, and the attack miscarried and the enemy counter-attacked. There was fierce fighting, very fierce fighting indeed. Ashby’s men fought with the bayonet and the rifle-butt. Many men died but the line was held. Then the German artillery bombarded Ashby’s position. The enemy attacked again. Ashby got up and ran. His men ran too, until I shot him and told them to go back and fight. They went back and fought and again we held the line.”

  There was silence while they absorbed this information.

  “Billy says the attack was a flop,” Ogilvy said.