War Story (32 page)

The padre jumped nimbly across a set of puddles. “You make my task extremely difficult. I suppose I can safely mention the fact of your death?”

“As long as you don't call it the supreme sacrifice.”

The padre threw up his hands. “What greater sacrifice could there be?”

“It's not a bally sacrifice at all! Use your imagination, padre. D'you honestly think poor little King
gave
his life?
D'you think Jimmy Duncan had any choice? D'you think
any
of us would die if we could wangle some way around it? You make the supreme sacrifice sound like the noblest, cleverest, bravest thing a man could do. That's rubbish. When we get killed it's because we got it wrong. Or blind chance. Archie. Nothing clever about that.”

“No indeed.” The padre put a long, heavy arm around Foster's shoulders. “You've emptied my stock, Frank. Why don't you tell me what I ought to say?”

“Just say … Just say: ‘He wasn't a bad sort, paid his debts, told a few good jokes, and took five wickets for 39 runs in the match against Harrow.' That's enough. In fact it's too much. Cut out the bit about the jokes. They weren't all that good.”

Rainstorms blundered in from the west more and more frequently. A canvas hangar was blown down and all flying was cancelled. A lot of poker got played and the gramophone never stopped. Lacey fixed up the cinema projector and showed some Charlie Chaplin films, which were enormously popular. Boy Binns drew dozens of cartoon portraits, which were no better than his usual efforts. “That's libellous,” Spud Ogilvy said when Boy showed him a sketch. “You've made me look like Charlie Essex.” Boy held the sketch at arm's length and closed one eye. “I think this
is
Charlie,” he said. “I got them mixed up.
That
one is you.”

“No, it's not. It looks horrible. That's another picture of Charlie.”

Boy took it over to the light. “Maybe this one is Gus Mayo,” he said. “I drew Gus when he was smiling.”

“Whoever it is, someone just kicked him in the goolies. Why don't you put names on the damn things?”

“I'm an artist,” Boy said,”not a writer.”

As a flight commander, Foster was entitled to his own room. During a lull between cloudbursts he moved out of his room and into a bell tent, far from the officers' quarters. He took the dog Brutus with him, and a clarinet that Corporal Lacey had swapped for some of Paxton's cigars. Foster couldn't play the clarinet but he tried. Brutus sat beside him and howled. Their wretched duet drifted across the camp, fading and reviving as the wind gusted and fell away.

Spud Ogilvy and Charlie Essex went to visit him.

“What's the idea, Frank?” Essex asked.

“That's a good question. It's a very good question. What the blazes are we all doing here? I mean, what's the point of it all? Any suggestions?”

Ogilvy hesitated, but Essex was bouncing on the camp bed, testing its comfort. “Obvious, I should have thought,” Ogilvy said. “We're here to win the war, aren't we?”

“Is that all?” Foster took his clarinet away from Essex, who had begun playing with it. “If that's all, then I can do it easily. I can end this war with one little bullet. It's simply a matter of killing the right man.”

Essex said: “And who's that?”

“I'll find him, don't you worry.” Foster was standing in the door of the tent, his arms folded, looking through the rain at the billets. “He's not far away. If I can find him I can kill him.”

“And that will end the war?” Ogilvy asked.

“Instantly and for ever.” Foster turned and lifted his revolver from a nail in the tent-pole. “I always keep it loaded, because you never know when your chance may come. True?”

Ogilvy shrugged. “Charlie's brought a fruit cake his aunt sent him. Shall we eat it?”

“Certainly.” Foster hung up his revolver. For the rest of their visit he was perfectly normal and charming.

Paxton mooched about the camp. He was more popular now it was known that he and Lacey had organised the flicks, but he didn't much feel like mixing with people. He met the adjutant and sheltered under his giant golf umbrella. “This is going to sound pretty silly, adj,” he said,”but why don't we have a swimming pool? I can easily lay on a bunch of Chinks to dig one.” The adjutant told him to go ahead, as long as the pool was well down-wind of the camp, to keep the mosquitoes away. So that settled that. Rain rattled on the umbrella. The windsock stood out horizontally.

“I was in the anteroom the other night,” Paxton said. “In my opinion you should have been decorated, not demoted.”

“Funny you should say that. I wasn't the only officer who had to do a bit of shooting. There was a captain in my
battalion who stopped a panic with his revolver. I wrote a commendation afterwards. I wrote: ‘By his presence of mind and resolve he shot a lieutenant and a private of his company, thus preventing the spread of panic and ensuring that the line was held.' It was a brave act and he certainly deserved a decoration. I believe my commendation was burned. Let me know exactly where you want to put that swimming pool, won't you?”

Paxton drew a Lewis gun and two drums of tracer ammunition from the armourers' hut and carried them to the firing range. The wind was so strong that he had to lean against it; even so, some of the gusts made him stagger. That was good. The stronger the better. He placed the gun two hundred yards from the butts, and fired off the ammunition in brief bursts of five or six rounds, watching each time to see how the wind made the tracer bend. The further it went the more it bent. That made sense. He did some guessing and some simple arithmetic and decided that, firing a Lewis sideways from an FE doing eighty miles an hour, at an enemy attacking head on, you should aim off by one length for each one hundred yards' range. More or less.

Worth getting wet for.

The storm exhausted itself the following morning, leaving behind a trail of battered cloud. By afternoon most of Hornet Squadron was flying (a couple of planes had been knocked about by the wind) and nearly everyone made some sort of contact with the enemy. Gerrish and Ross claimed to have driven down a Pfalz monoplane, or it might have been a Fokker; anyway it was giving off a lot of smoke when last seen. Cleve-Cutler, flying with Boy Binns, had a long scrap with a Rumpler two-seater until they both ran out of ammunition; Binns said he hit the German gunner, maybe killed him. Others chased a variety of Huns but lost them. As usual the balloons were heavily defended; nobody got near one. Tim Piggott's engine conked out over the Lines but he managed to glide to a field and land between the shell-holes. O'Neill's FE came back with three inches missing from one wingtip. “Too much cloud,” he told Brazier. “This Hun suddenly popped out and gave me a burst and popped back.”

“Indubitably.” Paxton nodded briskly.

Brazier looked at him, but Paxton had finished. Brazier made a note.

O'Neill said: “I saw a Hun about a mile away, Halberstadt I think, but I couldn't catch it.”

“Indubitably.” Paxton nodded briskly. This time they both looked at him but he had nothing to add. Brazier made another note.

“Cruised around for a bit,” O'Neill said. “Saw a Hun much higher than me, Albatros maybe, couldn't get up to him.”

“Indubitably.” Paxton nodded briskly.

“Sounds like the Hun's come out to play at last,” Brazier remarked.

“One wonders,” Paxton said.

“Then a bit later, I saw a Hun below me,” O'Neill said. “Looked too much like a decoy. Left it alone.”

“Indubitably.” Paxton nodded briskly.

“And besides I was getting low on fuel.”

Paxton said nothing. Brazier looked at him. “Forgotten your lines?” he asked.

“Oh, indubitably,” Paxton said, and nodded slowly.

“I take it you didn't open fire,” Brazier said.

“No risk of that,” Paxton said. He gave the adjutant a sly smile and took O'Neill's arm. “Come along, old chap,” he said. “I'll get you a nice cup of cocoa.”

O'Neill shook him off. “Not much archie,” he told Brazier. “Cloud was too thick.”

“Indubitably,” Paxton said.

They were halfway back to the billet when Paxton noticed that O'Neill was not whistling. Paxton began whistling a tearaway version of
Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.
To his surprise O'Neill joined in. He whistled a different part of the melody and did it as badly as ever. Thus they were both whistling, after a fashion, as they entered the hut.

Kellaway was writing a letter. “Isn't it great?” he said. “Dando just told me I can fly again. He says my head's in pukka shape. At least I think it was Dando.” He frowned.

“You'll enjoy flying,” Paxton said. “It's so relaxing. I've nearly finished reading
Treasure Island.”

“He was so relaxed he nearly finished breathing,” O'Neill said.

“Every time I looked up there was a different Hun,” Paxton told Kellaway. “First I saw a big blue one, but he didn't fancy the colour. Then I saw a red one, but it was the wrong shape. Then I saw a very pretty speckled one, but it must have been going in the wrong direction or something. Anyhow, it didn't suit him. He's hard to please. Fussy.”

“It
was
Dando,” Kellaway said. “I wrote his name down.”

O'Neill was cleaning his nails with a penknife. “He thinks the Huns line up to be shot down. He's a fairy in a fairy tale.”

“Very, very fussy,” Paxton said. “He must have been spoiled rotten when he was a kid, don't you think?”

“There's a rumour going around about a Russian squadron just landed at St. Omer,” Kellaway said. “D'you believe it?”

“Indubitably,” Paxton said.

“Keep that up and I'll give you my fist to suck,” O'Neill said. He took his towel and went out.

“What's wrong with him?” Kellaway asked.

“He's got the runs. He was certainly running hard today.”

“They must be Russians because they smell of vodka,” Kellaway said. “That's what I heard. D'you think they'll come here?”

“Only if they want to be bored to death.”

Next day the weather was perfect and all flying orders were cancelled. Instead, Colonel Bliss came down from Brigade HQ to speak to the squadron.

The battle for Verdun, he said, was fizzling out. Frankly, it was a shambles down there, more bodies than either side could count. The French urgently wanted a British attack, pronto, to take the remaining pressure off Verdun before the frog troops started to mutiny.

So the Royal Flying Corps had two new jobs. We had to keep the German Air Force pinned down behind their own Lines so they couldn't snoop on our preparations. This squadron (and many others) could expect to fly a lot of Deep Offensive Patrols in future – five, ten, fifteen miles beyond the
trenches. We were going to show the Hun who was boss.

Bliss saw some long faces in his audience, and he hurried on. The other job, he said, was trench-strafing. When the British infantry went over the top, the Flying Corps would go with them, harrying the Hun from his hole. Obviously this called for expert low-level flying, so the Corps Commander had had a dummy stretch of Hun trenches dug, with plenty of smoke and bangs to make everything thoroughly realistic. Hornet Squadron would practise there this afternoon.

Bliss offered his congratulations on recent kills, and Cleve-Cutler led him away to his office for a drink.

“Fifteen sodding miles,” Goss said. “That's deeply offensive all right.”

“It's too far,” Mayo said.

“It's safer than being over the Front,” Piggott told them. “Much less archie.”

“It's halfway to bloody Berlin! What if something goes wrong?”

“Don't worry,” Goss said. “The wind will blow you the rest of the way.” That brought laughter, but it was brief and nervous. The prevailing west wind was no joke. Almost every patrol over the enemy lines ended up having to labour home into a headwind. Hun patrols, on the other hand, got blown home. It was a swindle.

“I don't know what you're bitching about,” Gerrish said. “You might as well complain about falling into twenty feet of water instead of ten feet, or five. You get just as wet, either way.”

“Come off it, Plug,” Mayo said. “Fifteen miles with a dicky engine? Losing height? Huns taking turns to polish you off? That's a long trudge, that is. No thanks.”

“Orders is orders,” Ogilvy said.

“I can't count up to fifteen,” Mayo said.

“That's funny, I can't get up to ten,” Goss said.

“I meant ten,” Mayo said. “Come to think of it, I meant five.”

Gerrish was not amused. He said: “The last squadron I was in, we had a pilot who didn't go where he was sent. Next time, his flight commander flew behind him with his finger on the trigger.”

“The adj would approve of that,” Ogilvy said.

Paxton said:“Did he pull the trigger?”

Gerrish turned and stared. “None of your damned business,” he said.

Paxton stared back. Gerrish's anger had made him angry, and he enjoyed the sensation. “Just trying to improve my mind,” he said.

“I went to Cambridge, you know,” Charlie Essex said. “I can count up to five with one hand tied behind my back.”

They played cricket until lunch, and then killed time with cards and newspapers, waiting for orders. At three o'clock the trench-strafing exercise was cancelled. “It seems that some bright spark thought it would be a good idea if the trench were under actual artillery fire while strafing took place,” Cleve-Cutler told them. “Two aeroplanes got badly damaged by shrapnel or blast, and one got blown to bits, before they decided it was a bit too realistic.”

“How can they be so stupid?” Piggott demanded.

“Centuries of practice, old boy,” Cleve-Cutler said.