A Good Clean Fight

To Squadron Leader Bob Spurdle,
DFC
,
to Squadron Leader R. W. “Wally” Wallens,
DFC
,
and to their comrades of the RAF
in the Second World War

Also by Derek Robinson

Fiction
Goshawk Squadron
Rotten With Honour
Kramer's War
The Eldorado Network
Piece of Cake
War Story
Artillery of Lies
A Good Clean Fight
Damned Good Show
Kentucky Blues
Hornet's Sting
Hullo Russia, Goodbye England
Red Rag Blues
Operation Bamboozle

Non-fiction
Invasion. 1940

Derek Robinson

An imprint of Quercus
New York • London

© 2010 by Derek Robinson

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ISBN 978-1-62365-318-7

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Derek Robinson is a policeman's son from a council estate who crossed the class barrier by going to Cambridge, where he got a degree in history and learned to write badly. A stint in advertising in London and New York changed that. In 1966 he moved to Portugal, wrote two unpublishable novels, returned to England flat broke, and finally got it right when
Goshawk Squadron
was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. This novel of the Royal Flying Corps led to a sequel,
Piece of Cake
, which told the story—21 years later—of an RAF fighter squadron in the first year of World War Two.
A Good Clean Fight
follows that squadron to North Africa. The desert war was unique: in the absence of civilians, there was nothing to harm except the sand, the enemy, and yourself. Hence the title, which is also ironic, since there is nothing either good or clean about violent death. Robinson's novels contain a streak of black humor and a certain debunking of the myths of war. The desert campaign was sometimes brutal but it was never glamorous and rarely glorious. There were major cock-ups, and there was great courage.
A Good Clean Fight
aims to do justice to both.

Derek Robinson lives in Bristol. When he's not writing, he's either publishing his best-selling guide to the local underground lingo known as “Bristle,” or playing much squash, against everybody's advice.

A Good Clean Fight

Chapter One:
Walkover

Chapter Two:
More Bright Breasts

Chapter Three:
A Few Desert Sores

Chapter Four:
Bad Form

Chapter Five:
Zig Zag

Chapter Six:
Pluck and Dash

Chapter Seven:
The Easy Bit

Chapter Eight:
Most Urgent

Chapter Nine:
Chaps Come and Go

Author's Note

It was good to be alive and young and flying Messerschmitt 109s from Barce airfield in April 1942.

Barce was in Libya, near enough to the comforts of Benghazi and far enough from the Gazala Line, which was a couple of hundred miles to the east, near Tobruk. Beyond the Gazala Line (which existed on the map, but was mainly minefields, and so invisible) were the enemy: British, Australians, New Zealanders, Rhodesians, South Africans, Indians. So you were usually safe enough at Barce. If you were a Me 109 pilot you flew every day—training exercises, mock combat, gunnery practice—just to keep yourself tuned-up. When you landed you could go for a swim in the Med, maybe drive into Benghazi for a meal. It was a good life. Rewarding by day and relaxing by night. It would come to an end soon. One more big shove by the Afrika Korps and Rommel would be in Alexandria. Where would the British go then? India, probably. That was somewhat beyond the range of a 109, even with drop-tanks.

The only thing conceivably wrong with Barce (and the half-dozen other airfields along the coastal strip between Benghazi and Tobruk) was a range of mountains just to the south, called the Jebel al Akhdar; and even the Jebel wasn't much of a problem because as mountains go they were more like high hills: in fact they had to work hard to reach a couple of thousand feet. Nevertheless, if the weather suddenly closed in—and it could rain like a bastard in this part of Africa—then a bit of careless navigation could lead you to try to fly slap through the limestone
escarpment of the Jebel. So far nobody had succeeded in achieving this feat, although a couple of scorched wrecks marked the sites of brave attempts.

*   *   *

Captain Lampard and Sergeant Davis came across one of the wrecks just below the rim of the escarpment and sat in the shade of what was left of a wing while they looked down on Barce. It was midday and the heat was brutal. Lampard had chosen to leave their camp, hidden five miles back in the Jebel, and come here at midday because he reckoned nobody down there would be looking up. And even if someone did look up, all he would see would be dazzle and shimmer and, if his eyesight was phenomenally good, the army of flies that followed Lampard and Davis everywhere. If they followed Lampard rather more faithfully it was not because he was the officer but because he was six foot two and there was more of him to overheat.

Each man examined the airfield through binoculars while the flies walked around their ears, lips and nostrils.

“See the wire?” Lampard said.

“Yes. Concertina, the usual stuff.” Davis spat out a reckless fly. “We can cut it, easy.”

“Might be an alarm wire running through the middle. Cut that and bells start ringing.”

“Doubt it,” Davis said. “Look at the length of the perimeter. Bloody miles. Think of the current you'd need.”

Lampard thought about it while he went on looking, and then said: “Doesn't matter, anyway. There's a damn great gap. See? Far right.”

Davis found the gap in the wire. It was where the coastal road passed closest to the airfield. As they watched, a truck swung off the road and drove through the gap. “That's daft,” he said. “Why string up miles of wire if you're going to leave a hole? I can't believe it.”

“Maybe they shut it up at night,” Lampard suggested.

“Can't see any spare wire lying around. No sentry, either. That's sloppy, that is. Not like Jerry at all.” Davis was a Guardsman; he disapproved of sloppiness, even German sloppiness.

But Lampard had already lost interest in the unfinished wire. He had turned his binoculars on the built-up area of the airfield and he was watching the arrival of a large staff car, an Alfa-Romeo with the top down. Three officers and a dog got out. The dog was enormous, as big as a young pony. It cantered around the car, skidded to a halt in front of one of the officers, reared up, put its paws on his shoulders and licked his face. He stumbled backward and the dog fell off him. Lampard saw the silent laughter of the other men. One of them clapped his hands, soundlessly. The dog bounded amongst them and the man whose face it had licked shook his fist, then took a little run, swung his leg and kicked it on the rump. “Did you
see
that, Davis?” Lampard gazed wide-eyed at the sergeant. “First they invade Poland, then they go around kicking dogs. People like that have got to be taught a lesson.”

Lampard booted the blistered wreckage of the German airplane, hard, as they went back up the escarpment. “That's blindingly obvious,” he said.

“I wonder how much one of these costs, new,” Davis said.

“Ten thousand pounds, I think. Twenty, by the time they've got it all the way out here.”

“So there must be about half a million quid standing around down there.” Davis paused to take a last, backward look. “I hope they got good insurance.” Lampard was already at the top, striding hard, rapidly moving out of sight. Lampard knew only two speeds: asleep, and apace.

*   *   *

They came back at ten o'clock that night with three more men: a lieutenant called Dunn and two corporals, Pocock and Harris. Apart from desert boots and black stocking-caps, they wore normal British army battledress, so dirty that it was more charcoal-gray than khaki. They were all bearded and their faces were sunburned to a deep teak that merged with the night. Each man carried a rucksack, a revolver and six grenades. Lampard also had a tommy-gun. There was no moon. From the top of the escarpment, Barce airfield was a total blank. Even the road that ran past it was lost in the darkness.