War Story

by Derek Robinson

  “Stop explaining, David. Just tell me.”

  “Yes. Very well. Um … Well, I think it’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen. Exciting, and colourful, and and … beautiful. That’s the only word, beautiful.”

  “How can it be colourful? Everyone’s in khaki.”

  “Yes, but there are dozens of different regiments. D’you know the most wonderful sight of all, for me? A battalion of infantry on the march. There’s something about the drums, and the crunch of the boots. I get quite a lump in the throat. And when it gets dark the Front is lit up like a firework display! Flares of all colours, and starshells … We can see them from the aerodrome. And hear the guns.”

  He was so happy that he made her smile. “I wish I could see it,” she said. “I’ve got a little cine-camera … Is there really going to be a battle? People keep talking about a Big Push.”

  He nodded. “There’s going to be the most glorious scrap, and we’re going to hit Master Fritz for six, you watch.”

  “And you’re going to be in it?”

  “I must be the luckiest man alive. I’m in the right place, at the right time, on the right side! Can you beat it?”

  Coffee came, and brandy. “You haven’t said anything about flying,” she said. “But I can see you’ve been in action.” She meant his split lip.

  “That? Oh, that’s nothing.” Now that he had to tell her about his kill he felt awkward, although it was the main reason for his visit. “We were up on patrol this afternoon,” he said, taking a deep look into his coffee-cup, “and I had a spot of luck. Shot down a Halberstadt.” He glanced up, shyly.

  She stood and came over and put a finger under his chin to tip it up and kissed him on the lips. “Bully for you,” she said, and stroked his cheek.

  “Actually …” Paxton took her hand. “You said you’d teach me to dance if I got another kill.”

  They went to the ballroom. She put a slow waltz on the gramophone. “Don’t try to think,” she said as they held each other. “Just let your body follow mine.” Paxton had taken a couple of dancing lessons during the school holidays so he knew a bit about the waltz, but dancing with Judy was a far more exciting experience. For one thing she held him much closer than his partners had, and she would often rest her cheek against his chin.

  When the fourth record spun to an end they stopped and she said: “You’re perfect. Get another kill and I’ll teach you something else.”

  “Try and stop me,” he said. It wasn’t a very clever remark, so he kissed her. It was meant to be a quick, thank-you sort of kiss but she let it grow into much more than that. Unprecedented ideas drifted into his head, until she pushed him away. “Mr. Haffner is due home any time,” she said. “But come again, won’t you?”

  The old man at the lodge had the gates open for him. Paxton gave him some money and chugged into the night. A rich, full day, he thought.

  A week passed, a bad week for Hornet Squadron.

  A man called Macarthur, a new boy, a replacement pilot, stalled on take-off. He got to a hundred feet, over-revved the engine and lost it. Then he did what he had repeatedly been told not to do: he tried to turn and land on the ‘drome, instead of gliding forward and crash-landing wherever he could. So the FE fell on its back like a load of old furniture pushed over a cliff. More work for the padre.

  Then a quite experienced crew – two months and one kill was lost over the German Lines. Their names were Surridge and Nash, so they were called Sausage and Mash. They were at eight thousand feet, setting out on a Deep Offensive Patrol, when the first shell of the first pattern of German archie struck the engine and exploded with enough violence to destroy a house. Surridge knew nothing of it: before any message could reach his brain his body had been shattered, wrecked, blown to bits. Nash was somewhat protected from the blast by Surridge’s body. He got flung through the plywood nacelle and broke most of his bones. For a few seconds his eyes did their job and recorded the whirling nightmare. Then his body twisted one way and his head jerked the other, and he broke his neck. Thirty-five seconds later his body landed in a patch of nettles and buried itself three feet deep. Nobody saw it. Nobody found it. A month later the nettles had covered the scar in the earth.

  Macarthur was a newcomer but Sausage and Mash were regular fixtures in the squadron. Or so everyone had thought. Their loss – reported by several infantry units in the trenches – hit Pepriac hard. Nobody took archie terribly seriously; it was easy to dodge when you saw where it was. The frightening thing was that first shot. You couldn’t dodge that, because you didn’t know where it would be. Of course what happened to Sausage and Mash was sheer luck. Some bloody Hun battery commander had aimed at a fast-moving target a mile and a half up and hit it first shot. It was appalling, lousy luck. It might never happen again. But it showed it could happen. That was what was frightening.

  Cleve-Cutler smelled doom and despair and mixed up an especially stimulating batch of Hornet’s Sting. When everyone had a pint of the stuff bubbling in his gut Cleve-Cutler organised a knock-out battle with soda-syphons, each Flight attacking the other two. The anteroom was awash and the squadron was soaked when they went into the mess for dinner. Dinner was sausage and mash. Everyone thought that was hilariously funny. Most of it got thrown. Afterwards there was another battle with soda-syphons to wash the food off. You could hear the racket from Pepriac churchyard. Surridge and Nash had been seen off in style. They were rarely mentioned after that. Which is not to say that everyone forgot them, or their way of going.

  Next morning it rained before breakfast and then the sun came out. The grass glittered. Gerrish and Ross were in their FE with the engine thundering, ready to taxi out and take off, when a pigeon flew into the propeller. Blood and guts and feathers everywhere. Gerrish switched off.

  While his crew cleaned off the mess and examined the prop for chips or cracks and checked for any other damage, Gerrish got out and talked to Foster, who had been watching. Ross felt warm and comfortable with the sun on his face. He was too hungover for violent exercise. He stayed where he was.

  “Ugly brute, isn’t it?” Foster said. He meant the FE. “Doesn’t look much like a bird. Looks more like the old lady who lived in a shoe and was frightfully prolific. With wings on.”

  Gerrish took off his sheepskin coat and sat on it. “Someone told me that Jerry calls it ‘the flying packingcase’. I expect that sounds better in German. Or worse. Bloody ugly lingo, German.”

  Foster sat behind Gerrish and leaned against him. The aerodrome was quiet; no engines were being run. From the next field came the faint gabble of Chinese as the labour gang squabbled about something. “I don’t suppose you’ve had a lot to do with women, Plug,” Foster said.

  “No? Why not?”

  “Because of your extreme ugliness, old chap.”

  “If it didn’t mean getting up I’d bash your face in. Then women wouldn’t have a lot to do with you.”

  “Too late, alas. One poor creature has decided that she cannot live without me.”

  Gerrish grunted. “I’ve got a tailor like that. Keeps writing me grovelling bloody letters. Tell her to go to hell.”

  Foster sighed. “Actually, I told her I’d gone to hell.”

  “So you have. Pigging it in that wigwam with that bloody dog and playing the concerto for the back passage on the trombone all night. I mean to say, dash it all, Frank.”

  “She thinks I snuffed it. You see, I arranged for her to hear that I’d been shot down. And now she’s snuffed it.”

  “What d’you mean? Dead?”

  “So I hear, Plug.” Foster blew his nose, and Gerrish felt the vibrations. “Message from a mutual friend. Jenny’s snuffed it.”

  Gerrish released his breath, puffing out his lips. “That’s going a bit far, that is,” he said.

  “My fault. People in our line of business shouldn’t fall in love. It’s not fair on anyone.” There was a faint tremor in Foster’s voice. “Too late now, alas.”

  “Definitely
snuffed it, has she? I mean …”

  “Blew her brains out, old boy. Don’t tell anyone, will you?”

  “Must have used a very small revolver, that’s all I can say.” When there was silence he said:”Sorry, Frank. I didn’t mean that.”

  A series of bangs erupted inside the FE and Ross began screaming.

  Ross had grown bored. He knew the story about Paxton, O’Neill and the flare pistol – the whole squadron knew it – and he started wondering how accurate the thing was as a weapon. He unclipped his own flare pistol, knowing it was unloaded, and tested the trigger action, squeezing harder until it fired and it was loaded and the flare roared out like dragonsbreath. It ricocheted around the inside of the cockpit and hit a drum of Lewis ammo. Ross was dazed and dazzled. The flare rammed itself in the drum and, burning furiously, sent it skittering about the floor. Bullets detonated. Three hit Ross in the leg, one went through his left arm, another entered his thigh.

  Everyone fell flat. Ross went on screaming until the firing stopped, and then he began swearing. Later, when Dando had taken him to hospital, twenty-seven bullet-holes were found in the nacelle.

  “They say these things always go in threes,” Foster said. “I wonder what’s next.”

  “We’ve had three,” Gerrish pointed out. “Macarthur, then Sausage and Mash, and now this.”

  “Macarthur … I forgot about Macarthur. Or maybe nobody told me. Did he crash?”

  “He snuffed it, like your lady-friend. At least Ross hasn’t snuffed it. What a bloody fool, though.”

  For Paxton the worst part of the week was his failure to add another kill to his score, or even to claim that he’d damaged a Hun. He was moving steadily up the table in the mess, which was fine, and most people had come to accept him, especially now the camp had fresh milk and eggs every day from the cow and hens that Lacey had acquired. It was amazing what Lacey could get in exchange for good cigars or new records: a billiards table, a case of Cooper’s Oxford marmalade, a crate of soft toilet paper, rugs for the billets, carpet for the mess, fresh fruit galore including bananas, which were Cleve-Cutler’s favourite. Paxton received his share of the kudos for making all this possible. Pepriac developed a reputation for being the camp with everything; certainly its gramophone had plenty of the latest records, and the gramophone was the beating heart of every RFC mess.

  That stuff was all very nice but it wasn’t blood. The enemy was in the sky but he wasn’t in the mood. At the end of the week O’Neill had got close enough to an aeroplane to force a skirmish on only three occasions. Always the enemy held off, backed away, stayed out of range. In a dozen patrols Paxton fired just one burst, and then the range was enormous. The other plane immediately turned and dived to the east.

  “Looked like a Roland,” O’Neill told Brazier. “He ran away.”

  “How could you tell?” Paxton asked. “Your eyes were too wet to see anything.”

  “The great mouth speaks,” O’Neill said sourly.

  “He’s sorry for the Hun,” Paxton told Brazier. “Goes all weepy when one appears.”

  “Any complaints, see your Flight Commander,” Brazier said. “I just do the paperwork.”

  They bickered all the way to their billet.

  “Of course the stupid Hun got away,” Paxton said. “You gave up.”

  “Right, I did.”

  “That’s my wild colonial boy. First prize in the backwards dash.”

  “I gave up because I didn’t want to have tea in a prisoner-of-war camp. Don’t you ever look at your watch?”

  “Constantly. It’s so boring up there I can’t wait—”

  “Shut your trap, fartface. We had enough fuel to get back, or chase that Roland and have a scrap. Not both. Simple enough?”

  “Oh, indubitably.”

  “Trouble with you English is once you’ve stirred your tea you’ve strained your brain for the rest of the day.”

  They argued in and out of the bathhouse and all the way to the mess anteroom.

  “If I were driving we’d chase the sods until we jolly well caught one,” Paxton said.

  “If you were driving we’d stall on take-off.”

  Paxton drank some whisky-soda. He was getting to like the taste. The gramophone played Ragtime Cowboy Joe. “Hey, Kelly,” he said, and threw a cushion at Kellaway. “What’s the difference between an Australian and a dead kangaroo?”

  Kellaway chewed on a corner of the cushion. “Give up,” he said.

  “Right first time. The Australian gives up.” Paxton was delighted, and tittered into his drink.

  “Don’t get too excited,” O’Neill warned. “You’ll wet yourself again.”

  Mayo stopped playing ping-pong to say: “I’ve got an uncle in Australia and he’s never seen a kangaroo. He says it’s all rabbits. Bloody rabbits everywhere.” He served.

  “One escaped,” Paxton said. “O’Neill’s a bunny.”

  “It’s running down your leg,” O’Neill said. He was beginning to sound edgy.

  “Oh dear. Bunny doesn’t like being called Bunny. Do you, Bunny?”

  Goss put down his newspaper. “Is that chap annoying you?” He got up and tipped Paxton out of his chair. “You leave my friend Bunny alone! He can’t help it if he’s got big ears. Can you, Bunny?”

  Paxton lay on the carpet and wrinkled his nose at O’Neill. For once, O’Neill had no answer except to turn away. From then on he was known as Bunny. He did not find it amusing. That night, as Paxton was brushing his teeth, O’Neill paused beside him and said: “You’re the great comedian, aren’t you? All right, we’ll see how funny you find it next time we’re in a scrap. You’ll think our fucking FE’s on tramlines, and so will Fritz.” Paxton spat, and looked up, and wrinkled his nose.

  A large pilot called Jumbo James, in ‘B’ Flight, had a bright idea. He got it when he was talking to a chum who was with an anti-aircraft battery defending a British balloon site. He thought it over, and told Plug Gerrish.

  “There’s one place the archie tries not to fire,” he said. “That’s directly above the balloon, in case any of their red-hot shrapnel falls on the damn thing and busts it. So I reckon a chap might be able to come in high and dive straight down and pop it.”

  “He might. What then?”

  “Well, assuming the observers have taken to their parachutes, like intelligent men, what you do is circle around them as tight as you can. The archie can’t hit you without hitting them. Then you scoot home. Clever wheeze, isn’t it?”

  Gerrish told the CO. “It’s a lousy idea,” Cleve-Cutler said, grinning fiercely. Gerrish asked why. “I don’t know why,” Cleve-Cutler said. “I just hate bloody balloons, I suppose.”

  “But you asked everyone to try and think of—”

  “I know, I know. Does Jumbo want to test his idea? All right. I suppose I’d better come and watch.”

  There was no lack of German balloons to attack. They were up every day, and higher than ever. Jumbo James made his attempt one bright morning when he hoped he could hide his FE in a convoy of chunky clouds sailing from west to east, not too high. Gerrish and Cleve-Cutler took off at the same time.

  Perhaps it really was a good idea, or perhaps the ground defence was half-asleep. Jumbo fell out of a cloud in a near vertical dive. No archie. Five hundred feet above the balloon he had to pull out or risk tearing the wings off. No archie but the balloon was going down. He climbed until he stalled and slid sideways into a spiralling descent, steeply banked to give his observer a good view of the balloon. The Lewis was loaded with incendiary bullets and tracer, five to one. Still no archie.

  To Cleve-Cutler it looked like a fly buzzing over a toffeeapple. The FE had that long-legged, nosey look of a greedy insect; the balloon was brown and plump. Yellow sparks journeyed from one to the other, but the gasbag seemed to absorb them. Still no archie. No parachutes, either.

  The observer was reloading. Jumbo was close enough to see how the network of ropes crimped and squeezed the balloon. It was descendin
g faster than ever. He kept chasing but he felt no great enthusiasm for destroying it: the thing was too huge and helpless to hate. A flame as big as a marigold showed itself halfway up the balloon. It split and each part set off in a golden race to reach the other side, a race that was never won because the entire balloon turned itself into an open furnace.

  Jumbo felt a blast of heat as he sheered away. There was archie everywhere he looked. It was as if someone was trying to fill the sky with black blots. This wasn’t right. He looked for parachutes but all he saw was the blazing wreck of the balloon with its basket tumbling below it. This wasn’t right at all. The FE hit a patch of shattered air and staggered over the smoky ruins. Coloured tracer came reaching up like party streamers. One streamer flicked a wing and the joystick kicked in Jumbo’s hand. The wing sank and the ground tipped up and nothing he could do would change it. This was all wrong. Jumbo was strong, very strong, and angry. He whacked and wrenched the joystick until it came away in his hands. He was still looking at it when a grass field raced up and smashed into him.

  O’Neill and Paxton returned from another wearying and completely dud patrol. O’Neill washed before lunch, and when he went back to the billet Paxton was rummaging through O’Neill’s chest of drawers. “Where d’you keep your clean socks, Bunny?” he asked, still searching.

  “I don’t keep them. Bastards like you steal them.”

  “Not steal. Exchange. I always leave a dirty pair … Hullo, what’s this?” He came away with a pair of clean socks. “Anything of mine you want, Bunny, just help yourself. My trunk is never locked. “

  O’Neill sat on his bed, and yawned. “I could break your arm,” he said. “That would be nice.”

  “Nearly forgot. You had a letter from home.” Paxton sent it skimming across the room. “Auntie Doris got arrested for interfering with a kangaroo, very nasty, and brother Bill’s got another boil on his backside, very painful.”

  “Keep taking the prunes,” O’Neill said as he began reading the letter,”and for Christ’s sake stay downwind. Even the flies have moved out since you arrived.”

  Kellaway came in. “Heard about Jumbo?” he asked. Paxton nodded. “He owed me fifteen francs,” Kellaway said.