War Story (15 page)

“This
is
Colonel Bliss. Listen—”

“What a coincidence, I was talking to him just a moment ago and—”

“Shut
up
, Rufus. I mean it, this is really serious.”

Milne sighed. “Hang on, Bob.” He found his hot bottle and wedged it in the top of his trousers. “You were more fun when you had a squadron. Go on, fire away.”

“That was your mob that ran amok in Montvilliers last night, wasn't it?”

“Dunno. I was miles away, playing whist with the vicar's wife.”

“What matters is the Corps Commander's told me to kick your arse till your balls ring like a bell-buoy in a gale. His words, not mine.”

“I'm innocent,” Milne said. “Nice turn of phrase, though.”

“You were seen, Rufus, by dozens of people. Those bloody mules caused absolute havoc. The Assistant Provost-Marshal's raising hell. The sergeant you got the mules from went and crashed your tender right through a shop window. Killed himself.”

Milne was briefly silent. Then he said: “And he swore to me he'd been a crack racing driver. The man's a fraud. Don't believe a word he says.”

“I'm coming over. Now.” Bliss hung up.

Milne took the telephone and stretched out on the floor. He suddenly felt utterly weary, washed-out, drained. He telephoned the cookhouse. “I'm going to have rather a large party for lunch,” he said sleepily. The sergeant cook asked how many. “Hundred. Hundred and fifty.” What should they prepare? “Everything. Cook everything.” Milne said. Then he called the hangars and told them to warm up his aeroplane. Then he fell asleep.

The sight of a buzzard, circling a hundred feet to their left and fifty feet above them, startled Paxton out of his boredom. He shouted and pointed. The rush of air pressed his arm back as the buzzard was quickly left behind. He sat down. Excitement over.

They had been flying for fifty minutes. Kellaway had climbed to fifteen hundred feet and cruised around Pepriac at a safe sixty miles an hour. The morning had been golden and clear at the start but now clouds of all sizes were beginning to tumble out of the west, and the BE2c occasionally shook or even bounced. Each time, of course, it steadied itself without any help from him. It was very comforting.

For Paxton it was very tedious. He had forgotten to bring a map, so the landmarks meant little. Besides, the countryside was dull and he'd seen it all before. Lots of troops in lots of camps, tens of thousands of them, and all about as interesting as ants. Even the river Somme wasn't worth a second glance: not big, and in no hurry to get anywhere.

Paxton played with his Lewis gun instead.

It was longer and heavier than he'd expected. It had a cocking handle on the end shaped like a shooting-stick, a drum of .303 cartridges on top and a pistol grip below. The barrel was a good two feet long and encased in a cylinder. In the middle of the gun, at its balancing point, was a socket that fitted onto a metal prong attached to the rim of the observer's cockpit. There were several of these mountings, and Paxton practised shifting the Lewis gun from one to another, firing at an imaginary foe, then shifting again. It was cramped and awkward. He stopped for a rest and noticed that his final aim had been dangerously close to the propeller disc. He swung the gun further out. Now his aim crossed a bracing wire that ran from nose to wing. He avoided the bracing wire and found himself looking at the exhaust pipe, which rose vertically until it cleared the upper wing.

After more experimenting he came to the conclusion that it was virtually impossible to fire forwards without hitting something. Firing sideways or downwards or upwards, you had to avoid the wings or the wing struts. You could fire backwards quite safely provided you took care not to shoot off your own tail, but that involved kneeling on your seat and aiming above your pilot's head. And what if the enemy pilot failed to place himself where you could hit him? What then?

Paxton looked around, and wondered who had put the gunner inside this birdcage of struts and wires and why he
had thought it was such a bright idea. That was when he noticed the buzzard. He shouted and pointed, but Kellaway didn't seem to notice. What dull company Kellaway was. On impulse, Paxton fired a short burst over the top of the tail. That made him jump!

Kellaway gestured. “We nearly got bounced by a buzzard,” Paxton bawled. “Or maybe an Albatros.” He grinned. Kellaway didn't hear or understand, but then, Kellaway was an idiot.

The telephone awoke Milne. He felt as if he had slept for hours but it was only ten minutes. Sergeant Widgery told him his aeroplane was warmed-up.

The mule Alice followed him as he walked to the hangars. “I wish I'd learned to swim.” he told the beast. “I wish I'd done lots of things. Wish I'd taken a chorus-girl to a champagne supper. Taken lots of girls to lots of suppers Wish I'd seen the Pyramids.” He returned a salute. “You ever seen the Pyramids, Jennings?” he asked, not pausing.

“No, sir.”

“Shame, isn't it? Maybe I'll learn to swim today, though.”

His FE was ticking over, the wash from the propeller making the tailplane flutter. A mechanic stood by each wingtip. to help steer when he taxied out. The legs of the undercarriage stretched slightly as Widgery jumped down from the cockpit. The mule, disliking the noise, hung back. “No kit. sir?” Widgery said. “It'll be chilly up there.”

“I'm only going for a stroll. Want to come? Just for balance You won't have to shoot anyone down. You can take a pot at a pheasant, if you see one.”

They took off. Milne levelled out at three hundred feet. Two miles away he found a cavalry regiment in camp and he landed in the next field. The officers' mess welcomed him. “Come to lunch, all of you.” he said. “We're celebrating.” Jolly decent of you, they said. What's up? “Don't know yet.” he said. “I haven't decided. Who else is around here? I want cheerful chaps, like you.” Well, they said, the Artists' Rifles were just up the road. A laugh a minute, they were. Widgery swung the propeller and scrambled aboard, and they took off.

*

Kellaway had never flown through cloud, and on this morning he didn't feel brave enough to start. The stuff seemed far too crisp and dense. When he looked to the west it was like being in a small boat on a stormy sea: whitecaps everywhere. He decided to get well above it and worry about getting down later.

It worked. There was clear air above twenty-five hundred feet, a colossal amount of it in fact, reaching upwards and outwards for miles and miles to a sky that was so big and so blue it made his head swim if he tried to see it all. The sun was more than he could take: even with goggles on, his eyes watered when he looked eastward.

Which made map-reading quite hard. He ducked his head into the cockpit and blinked while he worked out where he was. Thus he was in a crouched position when the BE2c flew into a patch of turbulent air and dropped into a hole fifty feet deep.

The metallic taste of bacon and egg rushed up his throat. He forced it back. The aeroplane rocked and slithered as it bounced into and out of a series of air pockets. His breakfast surged and surged again, backed now by a tide of sweet tea laced with Daddies Sauce. Kellaway got his head outside the cockpit and was horribly sick. Each new air pocket pumped a little more from his stomach until the plane flew into calm air and he was drained and spent and useless.

Paxton glimpsed some of this, and enjoyed it. A couple of minutes later he heard a fist being banged on the outside of the fuselage and turned to see Kellaway reaching forward with a scrap of paper.

The message read:
Compass bust. Which way Pepriac?

Paxton did not hesitate. He pointed towards the Trenches. Kellaway looked uneasily to left and right, and did not change course. Paxton gestured more strenuously. Kellaway turned the aeroplane and flew to the east. Paxton settled down, out of the draught, and ate some chocolate to show his stomach who was boss. He reckoned that in four or five minutes Kellaway would start getting worried again and look for holes in the cloud. By then, they should get a good view of the Front.

Kellaway's trust lasted only three minutes. It was more
than enough. Ever since they got above the cloud, a brisk wind had been shoving them eastward. When Kellaway went down to find a landmark he emerged above the German trenches.

Paxton was delighted. He leaped from side to side of his cockpit, shaking the plane with his eagerness to enjoy this magnificent view of modern war. Trenches, endless zigzag lines of trenches, a vast pattern of black lines rimmed with white chalk in green fields splattered with shell-holes, all repeating itself into the distance.
Like tapestry
, Paxton thought.
No, more like a colossal snakeskin, one of those snakes with a pattern down their backs, only this was a mile wide and hundreds of miles long. Spiffing! If only I had a camera. Or a bomb!

Kellaway was too shocked and startled to know what to do for the best. Those must be the Lines down there. But whose Lines? He tried to work it out. If he was flying south they would be the British Lines, so he should turn right for Pepriac. But if he was flying north they had to be the German Lines and turning right would be the worst thing to do. Meanwhile he wandered northward, just below the cloud base, as clear as a fly on a ceiling. It took the German antiaircraft batteries fifteen seconds to find him, estimate his height, fuse the shells, load, aim and fire.

Out of nothing, as cleverly as the act of a music-hall magician, a string of black woolly balls appeared to the left of the BE2c. Instantly, they started to fade and unravel. Kellaway heard the
woof-woof
and said aloud: “That's archie.” But it took him a couple of seconds to realise that it was archie aimed
at him
, and then he banked smartly away from it and drove up into the cloud, shutting his eyes at the moment of impact, opening them again when nothing bad happened. Damp gloom streamed past. Abruptly he popped into dazzling sunlight. The plane was shaking; the joystick flickered in his gloved hand. Too many revs! He throttled back, but still everything shook. What was broken? Kellaway held his breath to listen for the sound of damage and heard his heart stampeding. The plane wasn't shaking. He was.

The sun, by great good luck, was behind them so he knew they were going home, more or less. And the compass seemed
to have mended itself. He steered west, skimming along a hundred feet above the cloud, which didn't scare him now and which was a handy refuge in time of trouble.

Paxton was pleased with himself: he had seen the fighting, he had heard shots fired in anger. He played some more with his Lewis gun, shifting it from one candlestick mounting to another and shutting his left eye while he swung the sights onto an imagined Fokker or Albatros storming in to attack. Thus he failed to see a very real Albatros biplane steadily overhauling them in a long flat dive.

Kellaway did not feel well. His stomach suffered spasms as if it wanted to throw up some more. His legs and feet trembled, his head throbbed, and from time to time his eyes went out of focus. He thought perhaps he had caught influenza. All he wanted was to go home and go to bed for ever and ever. A large bump of cloud came towards him and he slammed straight through it. “See if I care,” he said feebly, and immediately regretted it because the plane started making breakingup noises.

Paxton heard them too: crackings and hangings. Holes appeared in the wings; then more holes, and flying splinters and strips of fabric. He stood up to get a better view, leaning into the rush of air, and from the corner of his eye saw a flicker of tiny flame and with it heard the whizz of bullets and sat down with a wallop that broke the seat. The Lewis gun, miraculously, was on the right mounting. The enemy machine was above and to the right of their tail, not much of a target, just a purple silhouette. Paxton cocked and fired. The gun made a wonderful high-speed battering sound so he kept on firing, hugging the Lewis so as to share its power. At last he paused, and looked for his victim. Not there. Nowhere. Yes: on the left now, and curling in for another attack. Paxton yanked the Lewis off its pin just as Kellaway came out of his state of shock and thrust the Quirk into as steep a dive as possible. Paxton stumbled. His finger was still on the trigger and he put a dozen rounds through the upper wing. Then he was on the floor, tangled in his straps, hearing the whipcrack of bullets all around. Then the cloud rushed up and saved them.

Kellaway loved this cloud. He wanted to live in it for the
rest of his life, or at least for an hour. As the dank greyness raced past he knew that he would soon fall out of the bottom, so he hauled back on the stick. Too much. Now he was climbing. Or was he? It felt like climbing. It might still be diving. He couldn't read the speed in this gloom. He might stall and spin. The engine sounded under strain. He might pop out of the top and get shot to blazes.
Oh God
, Kellaway prayed,
Oh God, what should I do?
No answer came. He did a little of everything: middled the stick, opened the throttle, worked the rudder pedals once each way for luck. It worked. Or maybe it made no difference, maybe he was doing the right thing in the first place; anyway the cloud was still doing its merciful job half a minute later. And when at last the BE2c slid out of the bottom, crabwise, right wing down, the Albatros was not behind it. The Albatros was half a mile in front and coming towards them, zigzagging through a field of white puffballs: British archie.

Kellaway saw none of this. He had his head down and he was trying to make sense of his restless compass. Paxton saw it, saw black Maltese crosses on the wings, guessed that the German was heading for home. He shouted: “There's our Hun! There's our blasted Hun!” The words were blown away and when Kellaway looked up, all he saw was delight on Paxton's face, and his outflung arm. It must point towards home, to Pepriac. Now Kellaway knew he was going to live, and the day seemed golden. In fact as he turned onto Paxton's course it
was
golden: sunlight had broken through the clouds! Kellaway felt saved. When Paxton pointed left, he steered left. Paxton waved downwards; he pushed the plane into a gentle dive. Paxton spiked the Lewis gun onto a forward mounting and changed the drum. Kellaway looked where the gun was pointing and shut his eyes.