Derek Robinson - War Story

The sal volatile put Kellaway back on his feet, coughing and cursing. Several lungfuls of oxygen restored his strength, if not his health. His eyes were red, but so were his cheeks. The medic took his pulse. “Hammering away like a machinegun, sir,” he said.

It took Kellaway ten minutes to get dressed, with occasional pauses for a whiff of oxygen. Paxton paced up and down and looked at his watch. ‘C’ Flight took off; he went to the window and watched them climb eastward. Kellaway brushed his hair. “Never mind that,” Paxton said. “Come on, we’re late. Get a move on.”

But the night had changed Kellaway. It remained in his memory largely as a blur of noise and colour and misery, but he knew he had experienced astonishing heights and depths: people had been cheering him and giving him endless drinks, and other people had been cursing him and picking him out of stinking puddles in total blackness. He was nineteen, and he had survived a CO’s party, which was more than Paxton could say. Kellaway wasn’t afraid of Paxton any more. “I’m hungry,” he said.

Paxton shouted. Kellaway put his hat on and went to the mess, where he ate a bacon-and-egg sandwich that tasted metallic, so he poured lots of Daddies Sauce on it. Paxton stood with his arms crossed, and watched. His fingers clenched and unclenched. He counted every mouthful. At length he said: “I can’t tell you how unspeakably filthy you looked this morning.”

“Then don’t,” Kellaway said. He drank a second cup of tea.

“I wouldn’t drink too much of that if I were you,” Paxton said. “Then don’t.”

Paxton’s eyes widened. His heartbeat made a sudden rush. “Don’t let the war hurry you,” he said harshly, and wished he hadn’t.

“I won’t,” Kellaway said, and he didn’t.

They said nothing as they went to the pilots’ hut and put on their flying kit: fleecelined, thigh-length boots, sweater, scarves and double-breasted, high-collared sheepskin coat. Gently sweating, they lumbered across the field to the aeroplane. Paxton went straight over to the fitter and rigger, who were standing by the engine, and so he failed to see Piggott, sitting on the grass beyond the tailplane. “Who’s driving today?” Piggott called out.

“I am, sir,” Kellaway said. Paxton turned and gaped.

“Then listen to me.” Piggott got up. “No stunts. No low flying. Don’t bully the engine, it won’t thank you for it, and don’t go faster than seventy. If you can’t see Pepriac, you’ve gone too far. Learn the landmarks. Stay out of trouble. Don’t even think about doing anything heroic. See you at lunch. Goodbye.” He walked away.

“You little swine,” Paxton said. He tried to duck under the wing, and banged his head on the leading edge. “This is my show. The CO gave this flight to me.” But Kellaway was already climbing into the rear cockpit. “Hard cheese,” he said. “I’ve just taken it back. Get in, I’m ready to take off.”

“It’s a rotten swindle.” Tears of pain and frustration blurred Paxton’s eyesight. “You watch, I’ll get you for this.”

“Can’t hear you,” Kellaway announced, as he fastened the strap of his helmet.

Milne dropped a pile of papers into a sack held by one of the Orderly Room clerks. “I should have done this months ago,” he said. “It’s all nonsense, you know.” He dumped the contents of a desk drawer. “All bally nonsense, every bit of it”

“Beg pardon, sir,” the clerk said. “Wasn’t that your cheque book just went in?” He fished it out.

“My stars, so it was. What big eyes you’ve got, grandma.” He stuffed the cheque book into a tunic pocket. “Time for a little rest.” A young lime tree grew outside his office. As the breeze shook its leaves, a constant flicker of shadow and sunlight chased itself across Milne’s desk. “What does that remind you of?” he asked, pointing.

The clerk cocked his head. “A sideboard?” he said. Milne wasn’t listening. “It reminds me of the way you get a run of fast water in a river, and then it gradually smooths out,” he said. “This is June, isn’t it? Best month for trout on some rivers.”

“Don’t know, sir.” The clerk gave the sack a shake.

“I always got sick in a boat, never got sick in a river,” Milne said. “The ripples used to look just like that. Alive. And I’ll tell you something else…” His telephone rang. “Can you get this bloody instrument in your bag?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

“I was afraid not. Oh well. Go and burn that lot.”

He picked up the phone. “Mary, Queen of Scots,” he said. “You have an appointment?”

“She’s dead,” said a voice he knew. “Try again.”

“Dead, is she? Where did she cop it?”

“Shut up, Rufus. This is serious.”

“So is war. War is hell. Ask Colonel Bliss. He knows.”

“This is Colonel Bliss. Listen—”

“What a coincidence, I was talking to him just a moment ago and—”

“Shut up , Rufus. I mean it, this is really serious.”

Milne sighed. “Hang on, Bob.” He found his hot bottle and wedged it in the top of his trousers. “You were more fun when you had a squadron. Go on, fire away.”

“That was your mob that ran amok in Montvilliers last night, wasn’t it?”

“Dunno. I was miles away, playing whist with the vicar’s wife.”

“What matters is the Corps Commander’s told me to kick your arse till your balls ring like a bell-buoy in a gale. His words, not mine.”

“I’m innocent,” Milne said. “Nice turn of phrase, though.”

“You were seen, Rufus, by dozens of people. Those bloody mules caused absolute havoc. The Assistant Provost-Marshal’s raising hell. The sergeant you got the mules from went and crashed your tender right through a shop window. Killed himself.”

Milne was briefly silent. Then he said: “And he swore to me he’d been a crack racing driver. The man’s a fraud. Don’t believe a word he says.”

“I’m coming over. Now.” Bliss hung up.

Milne took the telephone and stretched out on the floor. He suddenly felt utterly weary, washed-out, drained. He telephoned the cookhouse. “I’m going to have rather a large party for lunch,” he said sleepily. The sergeant cook asked how many. “Hundred. Hundred and fifty.” What should they prepare? “Everything. Cook everything.” Milne said. Then he called the hangars and told them to warm up his aeroplane. Then he fell asleep.

The sight of a buzzard, circling a hundred feet to their left and fifty feet above them, startled Paxton out of his boredom. He shouted and pointed. The rush of air pressed his arm back as the buzzard was quickly left behind. He sat down. Excitement over.

They had been flying for fifty minutes. Kellaway had climbed to fifteen hundred feet and cruised around Pepriac at a safe sixty miles an hour. The morning had been golden and clear at the start but now clouds of all sizes were beginning to tumble out of the west, and the BE2c occasionally shook or even bounced. Each time, of course, it steadied itself without any help from him. It was very comforting.

For Paxton it was very tedious. He had forgotten to bring a map, so the landmarks meant little. Besides, the countryside was dull and he’d seen it all before. Lots of troops in lots of camps, tens of thousands of them, and all about as interesting as ants. Even the river Somme wasn’t worth a second glance: not big, and in no hurry to get anywhere.

Paxton played with his Lewis gun instead.

It was longer and heavier than he’d expected. It had a cocking handle on the end shaped like a shooting-stick, a drum of .303 cartridges on top and a pistol grip below. The barrel was a good two feet long and encased in a cylinder. In the middle of the gun, at its balancing point, was a socket that fitted onto a metal prong attached to the rim of the observer’s cockpit. There were several of these mountings, and Paxton practised shifting the Lewis gun from one to another, firing at an imaginary foe, then shifting again. It was cramped and awkward. He stopped for a rest and noticed that his final aim had been dangerously close to the propeller disc. He swung the gun further out. Now his aim crossed a bracing wire that ran from nose to wing. He avoided the bracing wire and found himself looking at the exhaust pipe, which rose vertically until it cleared the upper wing.