War Story (18 page)

The German archie ignored him as he crossed the trenches. Maybe they agreed with him. Maybe they were all too busy eating their sausage and sauerkraut. He hunched his shoulders, trying to keep out that persistent, chilly draught. The pain that was not dyspepsia came out of nowhere and hurt and made him pound a fist on his knee and shout at it: “Shut up, you bloody fool!” It hurt so much that his eyes ran with tears. He took his goggles off and stuck his head in the airstream. For a few seconds he was blind. He pulled his head back and blinked hard. The tears went, and he saw a cluster of dots about two miles ahead and below.

They soon noticed him and turned to intercept. Milne was pleased to see that they were Roland C IIs, a new type of two-seater, big, heavily armed, valuable. There were five of them. They spread apart as the gap closed. No doubt they had all worked out their tactics for cross-fire. It made no difference to Milne. He pushed the throttle wide open. The leading Roland grew and grew until he could see the perforated barrel of the pilot's Spandau on top of the engine. It fired. The FE raced into the wandering line of bullets, soaking up damage, until the Roland veered away. Milne banked hard in the same direction. He kept turning and chasing until the eggshell
smoothness of the Roland's fuselage magnified and filled his eyes and the rising drumroll of its engine deafened him. The impact of the collision welded the aeroplanes like mating insects. They fell in one piece for a thousand feet, and blew themselves apart. But by then Milne was feeling no pain.

“When I was in 23 Squadron,” Mayo said,”we had a pilot who could blow smoke through his ears.”

“That doesn't make him dotty,” Goss said.

“It might have kippered his brains,” Jimmy Duncan suggested. “That's the way fish get kippered, you know. With smoke.”

“Has anybody ever seen the old man blow smoke through his ears?” Goss asked. Nobody had. “So much for that theory,” he said.

Most of the squadron was sitting around in the mess anteroom. ‘A' Flight's patrol had been uneventful, and nobody had seen the commanding officer's aeroplane. It was now more than two hours since he had taken off.

“I don't know what you're all worrying about,” said an observer called Binns. He was teaching himself to be a cartoonist, and he was always sketching the others. “The old man's come down somewhere.”

“I knew a chap who made twelve forced landings in a week,” Duncan said. “He was always late back.”

O'Neill nudged Piggott. “You're very quiet.”

Piggott sighed. “I reckon he ran out of fuel ten minutes ago. So he's either crashed or forced-landed or something …” He stirred his drink with his finger, and sucked it. “I'm wondering whether I should go and tell Frank Foster.”

“What for?” Mayo said. “He's asleep.”

“He's also senior flight commander. Which makes him acting CO.”

That silenced them. Dando, glancing at their faces, caught glimpses of shock and even the foreshadowing of grief. Milne had always led Hornet Squadron. Now, suddenly, they might have to live without him. They felt damaged. The room was completely still.

Paxton came in, and strolled to the middle of the group. “You will be pleased to know,” he said happily,”that there will be hot water for all in the morning.” His smile was radiant, but when nobody looked at him it steadily burned itself out until there was nothing of it left. “I knew you'd be pleased,” he said, peevishly. “I expect you'd like to know how I did it.”

“I'd like you to stick your head up your arse,” O'Neill said,”and take a close look at your brains.”

Paxton glanced at them: sprawling, grubby, pouchy-eyed, defeated-looking. He sniffed, and said loftily: “Three cheers for the red, white and blue …” He never knew who picked him up. Someone seized him by the collar and the seat of the pants. His feet scrabbled against the floor as he was rushed to the door. It opened outwards. He was thrown into the night, which turned out to be made of gravel and quite painful. He crawled away and picked the bits out of his hands and face.

It had been a long day, and there would be more patrols tomorrow. One by one the pilots and observers left the mess. Paxton sat on the grass and watched them go. After half an hour he went up the steps and opened the door. “Oh, for Christ's sake,” Piggott said. His voice was flat as spilled ink. He and Dando were standing at the bar.

“I just want you to know, sir, that I did not come to France to make friends,” Paxton said. His voice was cracked, and he didn't know what to do with his hands so he took a good grip of a chairback. “I came here to fight, sir. I told you this afternoon that I shot down a Hun and you told me to forgetit. Well, I can't forget it.” Paxton could feel a nerve in his face jumping and tugging. “That was my Hun. My kill. I want it on my score. I'm entitled to it. Otherwise it's … it's … it's just not fair.” He stopped because Piggott was nodding.

He went on nodding, gently, while he looked at Paxton, up and down and up again. “Yes,” he said,”I think I can safely
say that you are the tallest turd ever to join this squadron. We had a turd who was almost as tall as you, chap called Gallagher, but he died a long time ago, March, April, I can't exactly remember when. I said to Goss, ‘Douglas', I said, ‘that turd Gallagher won't last a week', and Gallagher went and copped it on his third day, didn't even have time to pay his mess bill. But you, chum, you out-turd Gallagher in all respects, including length, by a good ten per cent. You are the longest, strongest, thickest, heaviest, most stinking turd between the Somme and the sea. Pour me another large disinfectant, Collins,” he said, “and one for the doctor, too.”

“At least I got a Hun,” Paxton muttered stubbornly.

“No. Not a hope. You got bugger-all.”

“You weren't there.”

“Captain Foster was. All of ‘C Flight was. You didn't notice them. There was a pair of Aviatiks in the sun. You didn't notice them either. They saw you, all right. D'you remember the sun? Big round yellow thing, quite bright?”

Paxton squeezed the chairback and glowered at Piggott's boots.

“Well, do you or don't you?” Piggott barked.

“Yes, I do. Sir.”

Piggott grunted. “That's a bloody miracle, because you didn't see those two machines.” He sipped his whisky, and grimaced at Collins. “Put more disinfectant in this disinfectant,” he said. “Let me tell you why you're still here, stinking up this room. Captain Foster's flight saved your filthy skin twice today. First you got jumped by a wandering Albatros who would have blown you to blazes in ten seconds if one half of ‘C' Flight hadn't seen him sneaking up on you and got behind him and made him nervous. The other half went and made sure the Aviatiks didn't interfere. Kellaway ran off and hid in the cloud. So did the Albatros, but he got confused and came out the bottom of it and made a perfect target for our archie.”

“And for me,” Paxton said.

“You missed. Why d'you think that poor bleeding Hun didn't try to get back up in the cloud?”

No answer. The only sound was a faint squeaking as Collins polished a glass.

“Because ‘C' Flight was just above you, that's why. They kept him down, made him run for home, and gave the archie a clear shot. The archie hit him. Captain Foster saw the shell explode. He also saw you open fire when out of range. He says your gunnery was pathetic. He thinks you may have hit some of the men on the ground in the British gun pits. If that's true I'll have you court-martialled and I hope you get shot. Now go away.” Piggott turned his back. Paxton, his legs weak and his knees stiff, stumbled on the way out.

O'Neill was squatting on Paxton's bed, cutting his toenails, when Paxton reached the billet. A paring sprang past Paxton's head and made him flinch. He saw O'Neill drag some grime from between his toes and wipe his finger on the blanket. “Poor little Kellaway began bleeding from the ears,” O'Neill said,”so he's gone off to the hospital. Looks like the old man's a goner too.”

“Kellaway was a tiny turd.” Paxton felt almost too full of hate to speak. “The old man was a turd too.” Then he noticed that the Albatros rudder was not hanging on the wall above his bed. “Look here!” he said, and pointed at the empty space. “Now look bloody here—”

“These need sharpening. “O'Neill tossed the nail-scissors to him. “I gave that bit of Hun rubbish to the sergeants' mess. The colours clashed with the curtains. I wouldn't get a wink of rest with that up there. You ought to—”

“Bastard!” Paxton seized the bed and flung it onto its side. O'Neill hit the floor in a tangle of bedding. Paxton tramped over the heap to get his toilet kit from a shelf, and went out to the officers' bathhouse. He was amazed at his own strength. He brushed his teeth, savagely, until he made the gums bleed. But when he came back, O'Neill still lay wrapped up inside the heap of bedding, breathing slowly and deeply.

Paxton hurried out, found a full firebucket, came back and flung it over the huddled shape, which did not move or speak. He kicked it. His boot found nothing. Empty. O'Neill cleared his throat.

He was sitting on the floor in a corner of the room. “You can sleep in my bed if you like,” he said, woodenly. “It smells a bit, but then so do I.” Paxton threw the bucket at him, and
missed. “No wonder Frank said your gunnery stank,” O'Neill said.

Hugh Cleve-Cutler improved his face considerably when he flew into a barn.

He had been born with moderately handsome features but the older he got, the gloomier he looked. Even as a child, his expression naturally fell into a slump. People treated him as if he were worried or grim, which made him
feel
worried or grim. He joined the Army largely because it seemed the right place for a young man with his outlook: stern, dutiful, joyless; then he transferred to the RFC because they seemed to offer a lot of fun, and he hungered for fun.

In May 1915 he was a captain, twenty-five years old, not having a bad time but still glum-looking and subdued and without many friends. He was stationed at Hazebrouck aerodrome. One day, as he was coming in to land, a Morane Scout took off across his path. Cleve-Cutler avoided the collision by banking his BE2a sharply to the right. Banking so steeply robbed the plane of its power to climb. Luckily the barn was elderly, frail and ramshackle, and he was lifted out of the wreckage with nothing worse than a broken leg and a slashed face. Next day he was able to hobble to the funeral of his observer who had broken his neck.

Long before the stitches came out, people began to comment on how chipper Cleve-Cutler looked. He went about with a jaunty smile and a rakish glance that quite took the nurses' minds off their work. He was literally a changed man: the doctors had sewn his face together as the pieces best fit, and now the left corner of his mouth was permanently hitched upwards, while the opposite eyebrow was always cocked. Cleve-Cutler looked a bit of a rogue. People warmed to him.

When his leg had healed he went back to France as a flight commander in a squadron that flew Gun Buses, pusher planes like FE2bs. Morale was poor. The older pilots had seen too many of their friends killed: they flew cautiously, not looking for trouble. Sometimes they didn't fly at all: the medical officer was kept busy treating inexplicable cramps and pains. Cleve-Cutler changed all that.

He called his Flight to a meeting and shut the door.

“I've just had a word with the CO,” he said, which was not true,”and if any of you desperately wants a change of scenery, now's the time to say.” He gave each of them a fair share of his crooked smile. One man nodded, or perhaps shrugged. “Right,” Cleve-Cutler told him,“go and tell your batman to pack, toot sweet.”

The man was startled. “Where am I going?” he asked.

“God knows. The trenches, I expect. That's where the rest of the army is. But don't hang around, old chap, because your replacement is going to need your bed tonight. Goodbye.” Cleve-Cutler shook hands with him. “You will pay your mess bill, won't you?” The man left, looking dazed.

“I hate giving people the sack, don't you?” Cleve-Cutler said, looking jovial. “Much better this way. If a chap's unhappy…”

“I rather think he thought you were talking about compassionate leave,” someone said.

Cleve-Cutler roared with laughter. It was a sound his Flight was to hear many times every day. “Compassionate leave! That's a good one.” He wiped his eyes. “The CO warned me you were a mad lot of buggers. Which one of you was it who flew through that Jerry railway station while the troop train was unloading?” He roared again. They glanced at each other, half grinning, half guiltily. It was the first they had heard of it. Still, they felt flattered.

“Oh, one last thing,” Cleve-Cutler said. “I'm sorry to see you all looking so disgustingly fit. It means I can't try out my Universal High-Altitude Cure-All Treatment. Doesn't matter what's wrong with the chap, I take him up to five thousand feet and chuck him out. By the time he's fallen four thousand nine hundred and ninety feet, the rush of air has completely cured him. Never fails. Marvellous, isn't it?” He beamed like a bishop.

Somebody had to ask, so someone did. “What about the last ten feet?”

“Well, he's fit and strong by then, isn't he? Strong enough to fall ten feet, I should hope.”

“Actually, it's only the last six inches that hurt,” someone else said. Cleve-Cutler roared with laughter, and this time they joined in. Cautiously. But it was a start.

During the next week, when they were not on patrol they visited all the BE2c squadrons within fifty miles. They learned what some of them had never known and others preferred to forget: that the average life-expectancy in those squadrons ranged from three to six weeks. Someone enquired about tactics. “I pray a lot,” one observer told them. “And when that doesn't work I curse a bit.”