Derek Robinson - A Splendid Little War

They turned and looked at Griffin, who was kicking at weeds. Hopton said, “He’s not a happy man, is he?”

Wragge had joined them. “The skipper may not look happy on the outside,” he said, “but I can assure you that deep down inside he’s as miserable as sin.”

“What’s the Red defence like?” the gunner asked. “Are their fighters any good?”

“None. Frankly, it’s not much of a war for us. Either the Bolos haven’t got an air force or someone’s lost the key to the hangar door. It’s very dull up there. My advice to you,” he told the gunner, “is to take a good book. That’s what I do.”

He left. “Camel drivers,” the gunner croaked. “All piss and wind.” His throat still hurt from that godawful exhaust smoke.

It was midday before the Nines were ready to fly, and by then Tsaritsyn had fallen.

Count Borodin brought the news. He said that the remnants of the Red Army were in full retreat, flooding out through the northern gates of the city and fleeing panic-stricken by rail, boat and foot. “Actually, Tsaritsyn has no gates,” he said, “and the remnants are too tired to flee at any great pace. All the trains and the boats left yesterday, full of officers. Which leaves the poor bloody infantry on its poor bloody feet, as usual. But, for the purposes of Wrangel’s bulletins, the remnants are fleeing panic-stricken through the gates etcetera.”

“Good. We’ll bomb them,” Griffin said.

“Yes, he’d like that. D’you know, it makes a change for me to be on the winning side. The last time was three years ago, and the fleeing remnants were only Bulgarians, so they don’t count. Is it possible for me to come along and watch?”

“Can you fire a Lewis gun?”

“I was a pilot in the Tsar’s Imperial Air Service. I can hit a squirrel in the eye at one hundred yards.”

“Just shoot the fleeing Bolo remnants in their fleeing Bolo backs.” Griffin didn’t smile. Carnage was a serious business.

The land north of Tsaritsyn was not steppe. It was broken by hills and ravines that appeared and ended for no apparent reason. The railway followed the easiest route along valley floors, and so did the retreating Red infantry. It was not an organized retreat. Clumps of men who had fought together now walked away from the defeat, too tired to run. Why run when the next town, Kamyshin, was a hundred miles away and the first real stronghold, Saratov, two hundred beyond that? Then the bombs began to fall.

All but one of the Nines had taken off. They circled the airfield, climbing to three thousand feet and making hard work of it, before they headed for Tsaritsyn, where a few of Wrangel’s triumphant troops fired at them out of high spirits, and missed.

The Camels followed, high above, and watched. The bombers soon found the mass of the enemy trudging between hills, and Oliphant got his Flight into line astern. There wasn’t much point in aiming. The whole valley was a target. When he knew he couldn’t miss, he pulled a toggle and his pair of 230-pound bombs fell away. The aeroplane bounced, as expected, and he banked it a few degrees to give himself a better view.

He had seen bombings before, many times, but he always enjoyed watching the creation, out of nothing, of a pure white explosion. The roaring Puma drowned the noise, and this made the spectacle seem silent. It reminded him of a conjuror suddenly producing a bunch of flowers from a hat. Then the creation slowly collapsed and left bodies strewn around it like petals. Bombs were blossoming all over the valley and men were running everywhere. Why run? Oliphant thought. You’re just as likely to run into the next bomb as away from it.

The Flight left the valley, turned, lost height and flew back. It went down to a hundred feet, a comfortable height for a gunner with his Lewis to spray the survivors.

Count Borodin was Oliphant’s observer and he fired intelligently: short bursts at visible groups. Nothing wasted. This time, nobody ran, which surprised Oliphant. They stood and let themselves be killed. Maybe they had had enough. Maybe they didn’t care.

High above, Griffin led the Camels in lazy circles until the Nines turned for home. Just when he thought his escort duty was done, two enemy aircraft came out of the north, black specks that grew into a blue Spad and a grey Nieuport, each with a red star on the rudder. Before they arrived the Nines had gone, lost in the haze of smoke drifting from Tsaritsyn. Griffin felt the old kick of excitement, the familiar prickle of blood surging to his fingertips. The enemy were outnumbered, but that was their stupid affair. As soon as he could see the sheen of the Spad’s propeller disc, he signalled Scatter and his formation went five different ways.

Hackett climbed. He opened the throttle and tucked the stick into his stomach and watched the land fall away. No looping. He had seen bravos performing stunts like that over France and he knew where it got them: wrong speed, wrong attitude, easy meat. He made height, invaluable height, levelled out and found the blue Spad far below, flying in circles. It was steeply banked and tail-chasing a Camel. Small streaks of tracer stabbed at the space where the Camel had been. That was foolish. That was hope over experience. A new boy’s mistake. Hackett pushed the nose down.

He slowed the dive by flying small S-bends to left and right, and timed his arrival so that he joined the circle, fully banked like the others, close behind the Spad. It didn’t see him. Definitely a new boy. He had a good view of its tail unit. The rudder was unusually long: it reached forward an extra yard or more. Well, Spad knew best. He squeezed the triggers and the twin Vickers blasted the tail unit. Debris flashed by. Bits bounced off his wings. Hackett banked right so hard that his vision briefly went absent without leave. When it returned, the Spad was tumbling and its tail unit was elsewhere. In another part of the sky, the Nieuport was going down in a leisurely spin. It had lost a wing. “Well, that was quick,” Hackett said aloud. He felt flat. It had all been too easy.

Griffin felt differently. He thought: First blood to us. Now we’ll go and beat up some more bloody Bolos.

As soon as the Flight had assembled, they flew north. They saw retreating soldiers but the numbers were too few. Maybe the sound of bombing had driven the others to hide. The C.O. had no appetite for machine-gunning a poxy platoon of Reds, not after the victory in the valley, so he pressed on for five, ten miles, hoping for a juicy concentration of troops just waiting to be strafed. Nothing. He turned the Flight and flew south and there, tucked into a narrow ravine, maybe fifty yards wide, was the very thing. Not infantry but cavalry. Packed tight, everyone in the saddle, as if ready to charge.

The C.O. went first, swooped, began machine-gunning when he was a hundred feet up, kept his thumbs on the triggers until he was so low that his wheels were skimming the raised lances of a few riders, and as the ravine narrowed he climbed away, back into the clean blue sky. The others followed, one by one, and left a shambles of collapsed and dying horses, their legs thrashing, their riders dead or dying or trapped under the fallen animals. In three minutes the guns were empty. It was all over.

As the Flight regrouped, Wragge wondered about that attack. The cavalry had been in formation, as if they were ready for action. Why? Who did they expect to attack? There was nobody for miles and miles except retreating Red soldiers. And shouldn’t we have seen a red banner? People said the Red Army always waved red flags. Maybe they were hiding. No, that didn’t make sense. They weren’t in any danger, nobody to hide from, not until Merlin Squadron showed up. All very puzzling. If they weren’t Red cavalry, then who were they? So they had to be Bolos. Well, they learned a lesson. Never dawdle after you’ve lost a battle.