War Story

by Derek Robinson

  Watkins cleaned up his face and gradually stopped gasping. “You promised you’d take me up in your aeroplane,” he said. His voice was croaky and thin.

  “Did I really?” But Paxton remembered very well; there was no denying it. “You’re absolutely right. So I did.”

  “I want to go now.”

  Paxton almost laughed and then was glad he hadn’t. Watkins was looking up at him like a hungry orphan who’s just walked ten miles to ask for a crust. Nothing was funny to Watkins any more. “I’m afraid it’s rather difficult just now,” Paxton said. “What with the Push coming up and, you know, all that—”

  “I want you to fly me to England.”

  Paxton felt he could reasonably smile at that. He swung his legs inside and sat on the cockpit edge. “You don’t really want to go to England, do you?” he said.

  “No, I want to go to fuckin’ Australia where they’ll never fuckin’ catch me but if I can get to England maybe I can stow away on a fuckin’ boat or something.” His elbows were propped on his knees, and Paxton’s handkerchief was pressed hard against his cheek. Paxton tried to remember how old he’d said he was. Eighteen? Seventeen? He looked about fourteen. He looked as if he could do with a damn good meal, too. “I’ve thought it all out,” Watkins said flatly. “Bleedin’ France is no good, I don’t parley-voo an’ I got no francs, fuckin’ police are everywhere, they’d catch me like they caught poor old Dodds, an’ shoot me too, so you got to take me to England, I got a fuckin’ chance if I can get there.”

  “Look here, I’m sure you’ve got this all wrong,” Paxton said.

  “Could we be there in time for tea? Is it really fast, your aeroplane?”

  “Let me try to explain,” Paxton said.

  “I’d give any bloody thing to be home in time for tea. Any bloody thing.” He was chewing on his knuckles. “They had to shoot Dodds twice. Firing party fucked it up. Bastard officer had to finish the poor bugger with his revolver. We all heard it.” He looked at Paxton, accusingly, appealingly. “That’s never bloody right, is it?”

  “I don’t know. What had he done?” When Watkins looked away, Paxton asked:”Did he desert? Was that it?” Watkins nodded. “Well, you know as well as I do,” Paxton said,”desertion’s a very serious crime. Was Dodds a particular friend of yours?”

  “He wasn’t in my mob. I just happened to know him.” Watkins yawned. “You said you’d fly me to England. You promised.” He wasn’t pleading; merely reminding.

  “I’m afraid we’ve got our wires crossed, old chap. I never said anything about England. Besides, have you any idea how far it is from here? It’s a jolly long way, and much further to Yorkshire. This bus won’t fly for ever, you know. One’s got to land and refuel several times.”

  “I’ll pay you for the petrol.”

  “No, no, that’s not the point—”

  “I’ve got the money at home. Cash.”

  Paxton sighed. This was becoming very difficult.

  “Two pounds, I’ve got saved. Will it be more than two pounds, the petrol?”

  He really was a handsome lad and Paxton would happily have paid more than two pounds to see him smile, but it was time to be firm. “It’s quite impossible for you to fly to England,” he said,”because for one thing you’d be deserting and for another thing my machine is going up on patrol very soon. Incidentally, how did you know this was my machine?”

  “You got out of it and came over and talked to our Captain Jameson.”

  “Ah. So you were one of the drill unit? Excellent performance, by the way. Congratulations. Now look here, old sport: you don’t want to go back to England. Damn it all, you’re a volunteer! You’re one of Kitchener’s Army!”

  “So what?” Watkins said, with the bleak fatalism of a child. “What’s the sodding difference? They brought in fuckin’ conscription months ago, didn’t they? Bastards would’ve got me, one way or the other.”

  “But you don’t want to miss the show!” Paxton urged. “I mean, this is the grand finale! Don’t you want to join in the fun?”

  “Fun.” Watkins rested his head on his arm again. “Fun.”

  “Yes, certainly, fun! You’ll be able to tell your grandchildren: ‘I went over the top at the Somme and we walked all the way to the Hun front line and we captured the lot!’ It’ll be a Cakewalk.”

  “You believe all that bollocks, do you?”

  “Listen to the guns.”

  “Fuck the guns. I hate fuckin’ guns. I’ve been in an attack an’ I know what it’s like an’ it’s not like what you saw us do that day I mended your motorbike. That’s a fuckin’ fairytale, that is. It’s not like that in a real attack.”

  “Indeed? What’s the difference?”

  Watkins turned his head and looked at him, a long, wide-eyed look that seemed so candid and trusting that Paxton was quite flattered until he realised that Watkins was looking straight through him. Eventually he said: “I used to be a gardener’s boy.” So did Dick, Paxton thought, what a coincidence.”One day I was cuttin’ the grass, pushin’ the lawnmower, up an’ down, up an’ down, an’ I saw this spider in the grass, just in front of me, runnin’ like a bastard to get away an’ before I could stop the lawnmower I’d run over the bugger. I thought at the time: poor little sod, chopped up by a fuckin’ great lawnmower, never stood a chance. Well, that’s what it’s like when you go over the top. You’re like a spider under a lawnmower.”

  “Come on.” Paxton reached down to help him but Watkins would not move. “I’ll give you a lift back to your camp on my trusty motorbike.”

  “Too late. I’m overdue. Absent without leave. I’m fucked.”

  “No you’re not. I’ll make up an excuse for you. I’ll tell them I needed you to help me do something.”

  “What have we here?” said Brazier. His head and chest appeared above the cockpit, and instantly Watkins scrambled to his feet, hatless, face smudged, eyes frightened, and looking as guilty as a murderer.

  “It’s quite all right, adj,” Paxton began.

  “You don’t belong here,” Brazier said, using that bright, confident tone that every soldier knows means he’s in trouble to the armpits so there’s no point in trying to dodge it. “I don’t know your face, do I?”

  Paxton said: “Honestly, adj, I can—”

  “What a filthy, tatty, shabby apology for a private soldier you are.” Brazier reached out with his cane and flicked a tunic button. “Do your buttons up, lad. And put your headgear on. And stand to attention when addressed by an officer!”

  Watkins stopped fumbling with the button and searching for his cap, and jumped to attention. Paxton was amazed by the transformation Brazier had achieved. Watkins now looked as if steel rods had been inserted in his small body. His shoulders were forced back, his chest stuck out, his chin was tucked down and his head was quivering with the strain of holding himself so erect. “Name, rank, number,” Brazier snapped.

  Paxton climbed down from the aeroplane while Watkins chanted his reply. He knew there was no point in talking to the adjutant. The Army had taken over; you couldn’t talk to the Army. He walked away and sat on the grass. He could hear Brazier asking about permission, and intentions, and absence from duty. If Watkins answered he spoke very quietly. Paxton lay on his back and counted the clouds. Brazier shouted: “Duty NCO!” in a voice that could have knocked the flies off the cookhouse roof. When Paxton stood up, Brazier and Watkins were standing beside the FE and the Duty NCO was doubling across the field towards them. Paxton gave up. He strolled back to the deckchairs. Most of them were empty. It was nearly time to get dressed and go on patrol.

  “Who was he?” Goss asked.“Nobody.”

  “You had a long chat with him. For a nobody.”

  “He was a lost dog, if you must know. And now I suppose they’ll send him to the dogs’ home.” The Duty NCO was quick-marching Watkins towards the guardroom.

  “Here’s your toilet-paper,” O’Neill said. He held out the sheet of poetry.

 
; “Oh, fuck off,” Paxton said.

  Goss and O’Neill looked at each other. “I don’t know where he picks up these words,” Goss said. “Not from me, I’m sure.”

  “He’s been playing with those nasty boys in the street,” O’Neill said. “Just look at his fingernails!”

  “For God’s sake let’s get upstairs,” Paxton said. “I’m sick of being down here.”

  Chapter 19

  The adjutant’s information had been right. The barrage went on, night and day, thundering perpetually and erupting into an hour of colossal, concentrated devastation every morning. It was said that the British guns stood wheel to wheel for twenty miles, that the hillocks of empty shellcases stood fifty feet high, that hordes of rats – maddened by the battering detonations – were fleeing from the Front, even that the bombardment could be heard by people living on the south coast of England. This last claim was true: men coming back from leave confirmed it; in fact some said the gunfire could be heard in London, when the wind was right.

  So nobody had any doubt where the Big Push would be. The only question was when.

  Meanwhile, Hornet Squadron was being worked increasingly hard: three patrols a day became normal, four not unusual. Inevitably, men died and machines crashed. Kills were claimed by Gerrish and Piggott and O’Neill (or by their observers) and a dozen crews said, more or less confidently, that the enemy plane had abandoned the fight in a steep and smoking dive. But three FE2ds were missing, one from each flight, and the ground crews were working through the night, every night, patching the battle damage and servicing the overstrained engines and occasionally washing the blood out of the cockpits. Boy Binns had his right arm almost shot off and Dando finished the job with a pair of scissors, kneeling in the wreckage of the observer’s cockpit in the middle of the field while his medics dragged the pilot clear and cut away his flying coat in order to find the bullet-holes. Dando got Binns onto a stretcher just as the wreckage caught fire with a rush that singed their hands and eyebrows. Binns’ arm got a quick cremation. Both casualties were in the squadron ambulance within minutes, and they got excellent surgical treatment within half an hour; there were casualty clearing stations everywhere, full of keen young doctors with nobody to save. The pilot died, perversely, while they were stitching up his chest and stomach. Shock, they said. Massive trauma and postoperative shock. Classic case of Moran’s Disease. The body got moran it could take.

  Boy Binns survived. He had hardly any blood but somehow he survived. He felt rotten, he looked rotten and he developed pneumonia a month later, which killed him. That wasn’t what Cleve-Cutler wrote to his parents, of course. If they had to grieve, they might as well grieve over a more glorious death than pneumonia. Boy Binns went down gallantly, outnumbered but fighting pluckily to the end. Or some such. Cleve-Cutler knew what to say. He had written many letters before he wrote that one.

  A curious thing happen to Paxton on the fifth day of the barrage. After their third and last patrol, at about seven in the evening, he went with O’Neill to report to the adjutant on what had happened up there and he couldn’t remember anything about it. “You mean you’ve lost your memory?” the adjutant said. They were in his office, out of the rain.

  “No, no, of course not. I can remember yesterday, but today’s patrols are a blank. Isn’t that funny?”

  “Come on, then,” O’Neill said. “What happened yesterday?”

  “Um … Well… Nothing happened yesterday, did it?”

  “You two got a flamer yesterday,” Brazier said. “At least, that’s what’s in my notes.”

  “Hey, that’s good,” Paxton said. “That’s very good, isn’t it? My sainted aunt! A flamer! That’s tremendous.”

  “Don’t drench your drawers, Pax, because we didn’t get one today,” O’Neill said. “In fact we got bugger-all on that last patrol except a chunk of red-hot archie through the wing.”

  Brazier made a note.

  “I seem to remember today was damn good fun,” Paxton said.

  “You frightened a couple of Aviatiks, I suppose. Put down that he frightened a couple of Aviatiks, adj. And put down that he terrified me as usual.”

  “Really?” Paxton said. “How?”

  “I’m going to have a bath.” O’Neill went out.

  “What on earth did he mean?” Paxton asked.

  Brazier shuffled his notes together and put them away. “Bunny’s looking tired,” he said.

  “Is he? I hadn’t noticed.” Paxton licked his lips and tasted the salty chemicals left by the blowback of the Lewis. It was a taste he enjoyed. “Dunno what he’s got to be tired about. All he does is drive the bus. I’m the one who does the hard work. Not that I’m complaining, adj. Bloody good fun.”

  “So you say. From what you can remember. How about Private Watkins? Can you remember him?”

  Paxton laughed. “The spider in the lawnmower…” Brazier raised his eyebrows. “Never mind, adj. Too complicated to explain. Yes, I remember Watkins, poor little chap. I thought you were a bit hard on him, to be frank. I mean, why not—”

  “Why not kiss it better and give him sixpence for sweets? Because that’s not how battles are won.”

  “Oh, come on! Watkins isn’t going to win a battle for anyone, ever. He’s—”

  “He’s tried to desert three times already, so his company commander told me. He’ll never win a battle, you’re right there, but he could easily help to lose it. You let one man get away because he doesn’t feel like fighting and the rot spreads through his platoon, his company, his battalion. They go into battle but they won’t stand and fight. They run, just as Watkins ran. They abandon their comrades on the flanks and leave them exposed to the enemy. Far better to shoot one man now than lose a thousand when the line fails.”

  “Good God,” Paxton said, all humour gone,”he’s not going to be shot, is he?”

  “If I had my way, yes. I’d parade the battalion in a hollow square, I’d march Private Watkins in, I’d read the charge and the penalty and I’d have him shot, which would save a lot of decent men’s lives later on. But it’s not up to me, and I don’t know what they’ll do with him.”

  Paxton had strolled over to a window. “Pity about the rain,” he said. “Just as we got the tennis courts finished.”

  “If you don’t want to be thrown through that window,” Brazier said,”you’d better leave by the door.”

  Paxton left by the door. Lacey was in the Orderly Room, unpacking gramophone records. “Watkins is quite safe for the moment,” he said. “He was sentenced to death as a matter of form, but in view of the imminent battle it seemed superfluous, so they’ve done the usual thing and given him a chance to redeem his crime … I know it’s a matter of taste, but I wouldn’t have thought Watkins was your type.”

  Paxton frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Well…” Lacey blew some straw off a record. “He’s quite pretty, I suppose, but sullen. And I’m sure he’s never owned a toothbrush in his life. No ambition there. And you are ambitious, aren’t you?”

  Paxton thought about that. It made him uncomfortable, so he asked: “What was all that about redeeming his crime?”

  “Don’t you know? I assumed everyone knew. They’ll give Watkins the most dangerous job in the first wave. That will give him the greatest chance to demonstrate enough bravery and devotion to duty and similar abstract nouns to wipe out his offence.”

  “Oh,” Paxton said. “I hadn’t heard of that.”

  “Oh yes. You’d be surprised what an incentive to heroism crime can be. Young Watkins will emerge with the VC. You watch.”

  Cleve-Cutler took Piggott out of a game of poker and led him to the end of the bar, where Foster was standing. “I think you ought to hear this, Tim,” he said. “Just wait a sec while I get Dando.” He went away.

  “I had a king-flush,” Piggott said.

  Foster smiled sadly. “Think yourself lucky,” he said. “Archie Ryan had gangrene.”

  It took a moment
for Piggott to remember Ryan and what had happened to him. “That’s damn bad luck. I liked Archie.”

  “People shouldn’t play around with guns.”

  Piggott was silenced by this remark. Cleve-Cutler came back with Dando and Gerrish. “Frank’s invented a new way to win the war,” he said. “Fire away, Frank.”

  “You are, I’m sure, familiar with the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,” Foster said. He flashed a keen, conspiratorial grin at each man.

  “No,” Gerrish said.

  “Probably a writer,” Cleve-Cutler said. “Chaps with three names are usually writers, aren’t they?”

  Foster raised a forefinger. “Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”

  “Oh yes,” Dando said. “Coleridge. Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I had to learn great chunks of it at school. He shot a bird, didn’t he? Shot the wrong bird and brought bad luck to the ship.”

  “Exactly,” Foster said. “And the same thing’s happened to us. Why have we had all this bad luck? Damn decent chaps, all gone west, one after another? I’ll tell you why. Somebody in this squadron has shot down an Albatros with a crossbow.” He raised his eyebrows and looked hard, checking to be sure they understood.

  “Come off it, Frank,” Piggott said. “Who would want to attack a Hun with a crossbow? It’s absurd. Where on earth would anyone get a crossbow?”

  “Harrods,” Foster said.

  “Listen,” Gerrish said,”do you know this for a fact? I mean, who is this idiot?”

  Foster suddenly became quite passionate. “I know for a fact that decent chaps keep going west day after day,” he said,”and somebody’s got to be responsible. Don’t you agree?” His head was trembling with anger.

  “I still don’t see the point,” Cleve-Cutler said. “Why pot an Albatros with a crossbow?”

  “To humiliate the enemy, of course,” Foster said. It was so obvious to him that he could only look pityingly at the CO. “Any fool can see that. But while he’s been humiliating the Hun, this chap has been bringing the squadron all this shocking bad luck. No doubt he means well. But it’s got to stop.”