Derek Robinson - A Splendid Little War

Already the tents were down and dumped in a big farm cart. Everything went into the cart: cooking pots, a few rifles, some sacks of stuff, shells, a bundle of firewood, and Maynard. The horses were harnessed. The field guns rolled. Maynard’s cart followed. Some men rode. Most walked.

It was pleasant countryside, all woods and meadows, occasional valleys and hills. After an hour or two its pleasantness wore thin and Maynard would have swapped it for a good straight road. The cart had no springs. Farm tracks were tolerable but they were rare and mostly the cart bumped and jolted. He made himself as comfortable as possible on the tents and blankets and watched the sky go by. He’d give a year’s pay to be up there in a Camel.

They didn’t stop to eat. He found some stale bread in a sack and chewed on that. The sun was burning his face so he covered it with a handkerchief. He had no idea where he was going and he didn’t want to ask Edwardes for fear the man would tell him and it would be really remote. He might end up living with this gang for a week. Or more. He itched and scratched. There was something in this bloody cart that was biting him. He opened his shirt and smelled himself, and got a sour whiff of old, dried sweat. Horrid.

The sun was going down when the gun team plodded over a rise and the ground exploded in front. Several explosions: high fountains of brown earth and blast that ruffled Maynard’s hair. Everyone was shouting. Men were releasing the horses and dragging the guns into position to fire. Maynard stood and watched them load and was shaken by the savage crack of their detonations. He had never been near artillery before. He had no idea how loud it was. How harsh. Someone kicked his leg.

It was Edwardes. “Get down, you bloody fool! Get out of here! Run, run!” He went back to his guns. Maynard ran as fast and as far as his flying boots would let him. He stopped and looked back. The guns were doing very well without him. Edwardes was using the binoculars, shouting, pointing, and then in a blink they were all gone, swamped by pounding, furious shell bursts which swallowed the gun team and when the smoke drifted away, only a little tangled wreckage was left. Maynard could not believe it. The phrase ‘wiped out’ presented itself. Men said the enemy had been wiped out and that was just what had happened here. Guns and gunners, wiped out, vanished. As if they’d never been.

Maynard walked away. After a while he found a hollow in the grass, so he curled up in it. Nothing made sense to him and he stopped thinking. He fell asleep. That was where the Red soldiers found him.

He was a rarity, a curiosity. They knocked him about a bit, just enough to realize that he wasn’t Russian, and gave him to an officer who, mysteriously, was riding in an open horse-drawn coach, rather like the droshkys of Taganrog. More questioning. “Angliski,” he said through a split lip. He was blindfolded and seemed to spend several hours in a series of vehicles. The blindfold came off and he was in the boxcar of a railway train. A very young soldier with a very old rifle was guarding him. Outside it was night. The train started.

Maynard felt rotten. His head hurt, one eye was swollen shut, he could taste blood from his lip, and his tongue found gaps where teeth had been. His body ached from the impact of soldiers’ boots.

The guard looked to be about sixteen, and not very bright. Maynard pointed forward, the way they were going. “Na Moskvu? ” he said. The guard thought about it. “Na Moskvu ,” he said.

That decided Maynard. He was damned if he was going to Moscow. He was damned if he could see how to avoid it, but he sat still and behaved nicely. His chance came when the guard slid open the boxcar door and prepared to urinate into the night. Both hands were needed to brace himself. Maynard dived past him and hoped for a soft landing. Instead he dived into the stone wall of a cutting and broke his neck.

The guard fired his rifle three times and the train stopped. An officer and five men walked along the track and found Maynard. He looked very dead indeed, but the officer shot him to make sure. Then the men shot the guard. They threw the bodies in the boxcar.

“Chef says we’re out of mustard,” Tusker Oliphant said. “We’re one hell of a long way from Taganrog.” He was looking at a map. “Not much hope of getting supplies sent up here.”

“The further from England, the closer in to France,” Wragge said. “As my dear old dad used to say. We’ll be in Moscow soon, at this rate. Lots of mustard in Moscow. Famous for it.”

They were in the C.O.’s Pullman, with Rex Dextry, drinking coffee.

“I can live without mustard,” Dextry said. “As long as we don’t run out of cheese. That’s unthinkable.”

Oliphant was estimating distances on the map, using hand spans. “Supposing we’re halfway between Kursk and Orel… That makes another sixty, seventy miles to Orel. Then Orel to Tula, say a hundred, and Tula to Moscow, hundred and fifty. All told, three hundred miles or more.” He looked up. “Can Denikin do it?”

“Why not?” Wragge said. “He’s already captured half of Russia. Not Siberia, but who cares about Siberia, they’ve all got icicles on their testicles, while we’ve got the best airfield since Tsaritsyn, so well done, Rex.”

“We strive to please,” Dextry said.

He had found a short spur of railway that forked away from the main line and gave up after a mile. An engineer’s mistake, evidently. The rails were rusted and grass grew high between them. Everything was blessedly quiet. The loudest sound was the bleating of lambs in a meadow as big and smooth as Lord’s cricket ground.

“Down to business,” the C.O. said. “First point is, are the machines all operational? Yes? Good. Right, the Nines can get on with their knitting while the Camels go and find the Bolos.” A tap on the door. Lacey came in, handed him a paper, said: “From Mission H.Q.,” and went out. As Wragge read it, his eyebrows rose. “Goolie Chit,” he said. “Anyone heard of it?”

“Yes,” Oliphant said. “My brother’s with a squadron in India, on the North-West Frontier. He mentioned it in a letter.”

“Did he, by Jove? Well, according to H.Q., it’s a linen envelope attached to the fuselage. On the outside, it says in the local lingo that this is a British officer, help him and you shall be rewarded. Inside are twenty gold sovereigns.”

“That’s right. If it works, you get to keep your goolies. My brother says the natives are a bit ferocious and the women are even worse. Afghans and so on.”

“Bless my soul.”

“Famous last words, if you get engine failure over the Khyber Pass.”

“Mmm. It’s marked ‘For Information Only’. H.Q. thinks only of our welfare.” Wragge stuffed it in a pocket. “I’ll ask Borodin what he thinks.”

They went out and enjoyed the sunshine. Wragge breathed the sweet smell of lush countryside at the height of summer. “Reminds me of the Scottish Borders,” he said. “I wonder if there’s any trout fishing near here?”

“About Daddy Maynard,” Dextry said. “When should we count him as lost? Uncle was asking.”

“Give him a day or two,” the C.O. said. “You never know. Daddy’s no fool. Not like that clown who got lost at Butler’s Farm. Silly ass was only three miles from the field. Barnett? Burnett? No.” He clicked his fingers. “Bennett. Got it.”

“Never knew him,” Dextry said.

The four Camels followed the railway north. It was stocked with troop trains. Few were moving and the rest had emptied their troops into the fields beside them. They sat or lay in the sun, doing what all soldiers do well, which is wait. Cook fires were everywhere. Soldiers learn to eat whenever possible, in the certain knowledge that they’ll go hungry soon. Some waved at the aircraft. Others saved their energy.