Derek Robinson - War Story

“Not a funny joke,” the general said. “Your deal.” Kellaway kept falling off his mule.

He was unused to wine. His father kept a bottle of sherry in the house and it always lasted a year. The pungent ordinaire of Le Trictrac had gone down Kellaway’s throat like water. The faster he drank it, the less he noticed its coarse taste. His speed amused other people, and they kept refilling his glass. He was flattered by their attention, so he kept entertaining them. He was, inevitably, sick; but once his stomach was empty he found it easier still to pour more wine into it. He had been standing, singing, when the room lurched. He had tried to grab a table. The table had turned into two tables. He missed them both. His legs were as slack as string. The roaring noise faded like a big wave receding. He collapsed and knew nothing of it.

Now, every time he fell off his mule he banged and bruised his arms and shoulders, which made it all the harder for him to remount and cling to the animal’s skimpy mane. “Grip him with your knees, for God’s sake,” the adjutant kept telling him. “Use your thighs, man. That’s what they’re for.” Kellaway did his best, but from time to time his mind wandered off and left him; and then everyone had to stop again until Kellaway had been found and picked up.

Only Milne remained cheerful. “This is wonderful exercise,” he said. “The night, and the countryside, and the fresh air – it brings you closer to nature. Don’t you agree, Tim?”

“As long as it brings me closer to my bed I’ll agree to anything,” Piggott said.

Mayo said: “Keep your bloody mule away from me, Douglas. The brute keeps trying to bite me in the leg.”

“I’m nowhere near you, damn it,” Goss snapped.

“Well, who’s that , then?” Mayo kicked at the mule alongside.

“You do that again and I personally will bite you in the arse,” O’Neill said.

“Jesus…” Piggott tried to ease his aching backside. “At this rate it’ll be dawn before we get home, and I’m flying after breakfast”.

“Are you absolutely sure this is the right road, Rufus?” the adjutant asked.

“Well, it may not be the quickest route,” Milne said,”but it’s by far the prettiest.” A bank of cloud slid over the moon. Now there were two sorts of blackness to look at: earth and sky. Kellaway swayed and tried to make his knees do something other than tremble. Despair filled him like a fever. He had joined the RFC quite willing to die, but not like this. This was not just rotten, it was endlessly rotten.

The cloud thickened. A wind came in from the west, ruffling the poplars that lined the road, and a light rain drifted over the plodding mules. The night and the journey seemed endless, shapeless, hopeless. Kellaway slept, and awoke feeling utterly lost. “Here we are, home again,” said Milne.

The adjutant grunted. He recognised the Pepriac crossroads. Now for a hot toddy and bed, a great deal of both.

“Haiti” The challenge was so loud that the leading mules checked. “Who goes there?”

Milne peered at the figure standing in the entrance to the aerodrome, and saw the dull gleam of a bayonet. “Good heavens,” he said. “Friend, of course. Several friends, in fact.”

“Advance, friend, and be recognised”. The order was crisp.

Milne got off his mule. He could see a roll of barbed wire in front of the sentry, blocking the entrance. “I’m Major Milne, commanding officer,” he said. “Who are you?”

“Corporal Lee, sir. I shall have to ask you for the password, sir.”

“Password? What password?”

There was a pause. “That’s for you to tell me, sir.”

“Look here…” Milne walked forward and Lee operated the bolt of his rifle. Milne stopped. “You wouldn’t actually fire that thing, would you, Lee?”

“Not unless I have to, sir.”

“Sensible fellow.”

Behind him, Tim Piggott lost patience and dismounted. “Look, this is bloody ridiculous,” he barked, striding towards the sentry. “We’re all—”

The bang made everyone jump, and the puff of flame from Lee’s rifle was imprinted on their vision. He had fired high. Now they heard him re-load. “Jesus Christ,” Piggott breathed.

They went back to the others. “Does anybody know anything about a password?” Milne asked. At first nobody spoke. Then Kellaway, sitting in the middle of the road, swallowed something that he should have spat out “Shit,” he muttered.

“That’s not it,” O’Neill said.

“I remember brigade gave out passwords,” Milne said,”in case we got shot down in No-Man’s-Land, or something. Trouble is, the password gets changed every day. But I think they were names of flowers.”

“Geraniums,” Goss called to Lee. No response. “Roses. Tulips. Daisies, marigolds, daffodils, pinks, carnations, dahlias, winter-flowering jasmine. “Lee was silent

“Jasmine isn’t a flower,” Jimmy Duncan said.

“Yes, it is.”

“No, no. Jasmine’s a bush.”

“Balls! It’s a flower, ask anyone. Ask Lee. Corporal Lee, is jasmine a flower or a bush?”

It had begun to rain again. Lee’s voice came out of the wet, black night: “I couldn’t say, sir.”

“Well, you’re a fat lot of good.”

“But I can tell you one thing, sir. It’s not the password.” Lee sounded as if he might possibly be enjoying himself.

“This is absurd,” Milne said. “Who put you here?”

“Orderly Officer, sir. Mr. Paxton.”

“Bloody Paxton,” the adjutant said in a voice like rust

“Go and get him,” Milne ordered.

“Not possible, sir. Not allowed to leave my post, sir. Courtmartial offence, sir. Could be shot, sir.”

“Forget all that. I’m CO and I’m giving you fresh orders.”

“That’s as may be, sir. But you still haven’t given me the password, sir, so how can I take your orders? You lot could be anyone, sir. You could be the Boches.”

“All right, just suppose we were the Boches. What would you do about it?”

“I’d telephone Mr. Paxton, sir.”

“Then for God’s sake go and telephone the silly bugger before we all drown.”

In fact Lee had to telephone the duty NCO, who had to go and wake Paxton. “Why tell me?” Paxton said. “I’m not Orderly Officer any more. That was yesterday. You do as you like. Goodnight.”

The duty NCO, cursing, bicycled out to the gate and took over from Corporal Lee. “Very sorry about all this, sir,” he said to Milne across the wire. “Mr. Paxton said—”

“Forget Mr. Paxton,” Milne said. “I’ll strangle Mr. Paxton at breakfast. Just shift this wire.” But the ends of the coil had become tangled in the fence and were unwilling to be released in the darkness. Goss got his hands scratched and gave up. The rain suddenly intensified. Mayo was proposing that they get some rope and use the mules to drag the wire away when headlights appeared. A large staff car arrived, turned towards the entrance and stopped.

The rear window was opened a few inches. Foster said: “Are these your mules? Awfully Biblical. Jolly wet, too.”

“Was it a good dinner?” Milne asked.

“Dull. But we had some good poker afterwards. I won this car. Until tomorrow, anyway, then it goes back. How was your evening?”

“Oh… quite amusing, until we got home and found this wire everywhere.”

“Nasty stuff, wire. Bad for the skin.”

In the glare of the headlights the wire was soon unhooked and dragged clear. “Most kind,” Foster said, as he was driven through. “That will be all, thank you.”

Dawn came too soon. Breakfast came too soon. Drymouthed brainthrobbing foultasting hangovers came too soon. Batmen with cups of hot, sweet, undrinkable tea came too soon. And of course the weather was unspeakably bad: nothing but sunshine wherever you looked. The treacherous rain belt had passed over in the night. ‘C’ Flight’s morning escort duties would not be cancelled.