Derek Robinson - War Story

After more experimenting he came to the conclusion that it was virtually impossible to fire forwards without hitting something. Firing sideways or downwards or upwards, you had to avoid the wings or the wing struts. You could fire backwards quite safely provided you took care not to shoot off your own tail, but that involved kneeling on your seat and aiming above your pilot’s head. And what if the enemy pilot failed to place himself where you could hit him? What then?

Paxton looked around, and wondered who had put the gunner inside this birdcage of struts and wires and why he had thought it was such a bright idea. That was when he noticed the buzzard. He shouted and pointed, but Kellaway didn’t seem to notice. What dull company Kellaway was. On impulse, Paxton fired a short burst over the top of the tail. That made him jump!

Kellaway gestured. “We nearly got bounced by a buzzard,” Paxton bawled. “Or maybe an Albatros.” He grinned. Kellaway didn’t hear or understand, but then, Kellaway was an idiot.

The telephone awoke Milne. He felt as if he had slept for hours but it was only ten minutes. Sergeant Widgery told him his aeroplane was warmed-up.

The mule Alice followed him as he walked to the hangars. “I wish I’d learned to swim.” he told the beast. “I wish I’d done lots of things. Wish I’d taken a chorus-girl to a champagne supper. Taken lots of girls to lots of suppers Wish I’d seen the Pyramids.” He returned a salute. “You ever seen the Pyramids, Jennings?” he asked, not pausing.

“No, sir.”

“Shame, isn’t it? Maybe I’ll learn to swim today, though.”

His FE was ticking over, the wash from the propeller making the tailplane flutter. A mechanic stood by each wingtip. to help steer when he taxied out. The legs of the undercarriage stretched slightly as Widgery jumped down from the cockpit. The mule, disliking the noise, hung back. “No kit. sir?” Widgery said. “It’ll be chilly up there.”

“I’m only going for a stroll. Want to come? Just for balance You won’t have to shoot anyone down. You can take a pot at a pheasant, if you see one.”

They took off. Milne levelled out at three hundred feet. Two miles away he found a cavalry regiment in camp and he landed in the next field. The officers’ mess welcomed him. “Come to lunch, all of you.” he said. “We’re celebrating.” Jolly decent of you, they said. What’s up? “Don’t know yet.” he said. “I haven’t decided. Who else is around here? I want cheerful chaps, like you.” Well, they said, the Artists’ Rifles were just up the road. A laugh a minute, they were. Widgery swung the propeller and scrambled aboard, and they took off.

Kellaway had never flown through cloud, and on this morning he didn’t feel brave enough to start. The stuff seemed far too crisp and dense. When he looked to the west it was like being in a small boat on a stormy sea: whitecaps everywhere. He decided to get well above it and worry about getting down later.

It worked. There was clear air above twenty-five hundred feet, a colossal amount of it in fact, reaching upwards and outwards for miles and miles to a sky that was so big and so blue it made his head swim if he tried to see it all. The sun was more than he could take: even with goggles on, his eyes watered when he looked eastward.

Which made map-reading quite hard. He ducked his head into the cockpit and blinked while he worked out where he was. Thus he was in a crouched position when the BE2c flew into a patch of turbulent air and dropped into a hole fifty feet deep.

The metallic taste of bacon and egg rushed up his throat. He forced it back. The aeroplane rocked and slithered as it bounced into and out of a series of air pockets. His breakfast surged and surged again, backed now by a tide of sweet tea laced with Daddies Sauce. Kellaway got his head outside the cockpit and was horribly sick. Each new air pocket pumped a little more from his stomach until the plane flew into calm air and he was drained and spent and useless.

Paxton glimpsed some of this, and enjoyed it. A couple of minutes later he heard a fist being banged on the outside of the fuselage and turned to see Kellaway reaching forward with a scrap of paper.

The message read: Compass bust. Which way Pepriac?

Paxton did not hesitate. He pointed towards the Trenches. Kellaway looked uneasily to left and right, and did not change course. Paxton gestured more strenuously. Kellaway turned the aeroplane and flew to the east. Paxton settled down, out of the draught, and ate some chocolate to show his stomach who was boss. He reckoned that in four or five minutes Kellaway would start getting worried again and look for holes in the cloud. By then, they should get a good view of the Front.

Kellaway’s trust lasted only three minutes. It was more than enough. Ever since they got above the cloud, a brisk wind had been shoving them eastward. When Kellaway went down to find a landmark he emerged above the German trenches.

Paxton was delighted. He leaped from side to side of his cockpit, shaking the plane with his eagerness to enjoy this magnificent view of modern war. Trenches, endless zigzag lines of trenches, a vast pattern of black lines rimmed with white chalk in green fields splattered with shell-holes, all repeating itself into the distance. Like tapestry , Paxton thought. No, more like a colossal snakeskin, one of those snakes with a pattern down their backs, only this was a mile wide and hundreds of miles long. Spiffing! If only I had a camera. Or a bomb!

Kellaway was too shocked and startled to know what to do for the best. Those must be the Lines down there. But whose Lines? He tried to work it out. If he was flying south they would be the British Lines, so he should turn right for Pepriac. But if he was flying north they had to be the German Lines and turning right would be the worst thing to do. Meanwhile he wandered northward, just below the cloud base, as clear as a fly on a ceiling. It took the German antiaircraft batteries fifteen seconds to find him, estimate his height, fuse the shells, load, aim and fire.

Out of nothing, as cleverly as the act of a music-hall magician, a string of black woolly balls appeared to the left of the BE2c. Instantly, they started to fade and unravel. Kellaway heard the woof-woof and said aloud: “That’s archie.” But it took him a couple of seconds to realise that it was archie aimed at him , and then he banked smartly away from it and drove up into the cloud, shutting his eyes at the moment of impact, opening them again when nothing bad happened. Damp gloom streamed past. Abruptly he popped into dazzling sunlight. The plane was shaking; the joystick flickered in his gloved hand. Too many revs! He throttled back, but still everything shook. What was broken? Kellaway held his breath to listen for the sound of damage and heard his heart stampeding. The plane wasn’t shaking. He was.

The sun, by great good luck, was behind them so he knew they were going home, more or less. And the compass seemed to have mended itself. He steered west, skimming along a hundred feet above the cloud, which didn’t scare him now and which was a handy refuge in time of trouble.

Paxton was pleased with himself: he had seen the fighting, he had heard shots fired in anger. He played some more with his Lewis gun, shifting it from one candlestick mounting to another and shutting his left eye while he swung the sights onto an imagined Fokker or Albatros storming in to attack. Thus he failed to see a very real Albatros biplane steadily overhauling them in a long flat dive.

Kellaway did not feel well. His stomach suffered spasms as if it wanted to throw up some more. His legs and feet trembled, his head throbbed, and from time to time his eyes went out of focus. He thought perhaps he had caught influenza. All he wanted was to go home and go to bed for ever and ever. A large bump of cloud came towards him and he slammed straight through it. “See if I care,” he said feebly, and immediately regretted it because the plane started making breakingup noises.