Derek Robinson - War Story

O’Neill was squatting on Paxton’s bed, cutting his toenails, when Paxton reached the billet. A paring sprang past Paxton’s head and made him flinch. He saw O’Neill drag some grime from between his toes and wipe his finger on the blanket. “Poor little Kellaway began bleeding from the ears,” O’Neill said,”so he’s gone off to the hospital. Looks like the old man’s a goner too.”

“Kellaway was a tiny turd.” Paxton felt almost too full of hate to speak. “The old man was a turd too.” Then he noticed that the Albatros rudder was not hanging on the wall above his bed. “Look here!” he said, and pointed at the empty space. “Now look bloody here—”

“These need sharpening. “O’Neill tossed the nail-scissors to him. “I gave that bit of Hun rubbish to the sergeants’ mess. The colours clashed with the curtains. I wouldn’t get a wink of rest with that up there. You ought to—”

“Bastard!” Paxton seized the bed and flung it onto its side. O’Neill hit the floor in a tangle of bedding. Paxton tramped over the heap to get his toilet kit from a shelf, and went out to the officers’ bathhouse. He was amazed at his own strength. He brushed his teeth, savagely, until he made the gums bleed. But when he came back, O’Neill still lay wrapped up inside the heap of bedding, breathing slowly and deeply.

Paxton hurried out, found a full firebucket, came back and flung it over the huddled shape, which did not move or speak. He kicked it. His boot found nothing. Empty. O’Neill cleared his throat.

He was sitting on the floor in a corner of the room. “You can sleep in my bed if you like,” he said, woodenly. “It smells a bit, but then so do I.” Paxton threw the bucket at him, and missed. “No wonder Frank said your gunnery stank,” O’Neill said.

Hugh Cleve-Cutler improved his face considerably when he flew into a barn.

He had been born with moderately handsome features but the older he got, the gloomier he looked. Even as a child, his expression naturally fell into a slump. People treated him as if he were worried or grim, which made him feel worried or grim. He joined the Army largely because it seemed the right place for a young man with his outlook: stern, dutiful, joyless; then he transferred to the RFC because they seemed to offer a lot of fun, and he hungered for fun.

In May 1915 he was a captain, twenty-five years old, not having a bad time but still glum-looking and subdued and without many friends. He was stationed at Hazebrouck aerodrome. One day, as he was coming in to land, a Morane Scout took off across his path. Cleve-Cutler avoided the collision by banking his BE2a sharply to the right. Banking so steeply robbed the plane of its power to climb. Luckily the barn was elderly, frail and ramshackle, and he was lifted out of the wreckage with nothing worse than a broken leg and a slashed face. Next day he was able to hobble to the funeral of his observer who had broken his neck.

Long before the stitches came out, people began to comment on how chipper Cleve-Cutler looked. He went about with a jaunty smile and a rakish glance that quite took the nurses’ minds off their work. He was literally a changed man: the doctors had sewn his face together as the pieces best fit, and now the left corner of his mouth was permanently hitched upwards, while the opposite eyebrow was always cocked. Cleve-Cutler looked a bit of a rogue. People warmed to him.

When his leg had healed he went back to France as a flight commander in a squadron that flew Gun Buses, pusher planes like FE2bs. Morale was poor. The older pilots had seen too many of their friends killed: they flew cautiously, not looking for trouble. Sometimes they didn’t fly at all: the medical officer was kept busy treating inexplicable cramps and pains. Cleve-Cutler changed all that.

He called his Flight to a meeting and shut the door.

“I’ve just had a word with the CO,” he said, which was not true,”and if any of you desperately wants a change of scenery, now’s the time to say.” He gave each of them a fair share of his crooked smile. One man nodded, or perhaps shrugged. “Right,” Cleve-Cutler told him,“go and tell your batman to pack, toot sweet.”

The man was startled. “Where am I going?” he asked.

“God knows. The trenches, I expect. That’s where the rest of the army is. But don’t hang around, old chap, because your replacement is going to need your bed tonight. Goodbye.” Cleve-Cutler shook hands with him. “You will pay your mess bill, won’t you?” The man left, looking dazed.

“I hate giving people the sack, don’t you?” Cleve-Cutler said, looking jovial. “Much better this way. If a chap’s unhappy…”

“I rather think he thought you were talking about compassionate leave,” someone said.

Cleve-Cutler roared with laughter. It was a sound his Flight was to hear many times every day. “Compassionate leave! That’s a good one.” He wiped his eyes. “The CO warned me you were a mad lot of buggers. Which one of you was it who flew through that Jerry railway station while the troop train was unloading?” He roared again. They glanced at each other, half grinning, half guiltily. It was the first they had heard of it. Still, they felt flattered.

“Oh, one last thing,” Cleve-Cutler said. “I’m sorry to see you all looking so disgustingly fit. It means I can’t try out my Universal High-Altitude Cure-All Treatment. Doesn’t matter what’s wrong with the chap, I take him up to five thousand feet and chuck him out. By the time he’s fallen four thousand nine hundred and ninety feet, the rush of air has completely cured him. Never fails. Marvellous, isn’t it?” He beamed like a bishop.

Somebody had to ask, so someone did. “What about the last ten feet?”

“Well, he’s fit and strong by then, isn’t he? Strong enough to fall ten feet, I should hope.”

“Actually, it’s only the last six inches that hurt,” someone else said. Cleve-Cutler roared with laughter, and this time they joined in. Cautiously. But it was a start.

During the next week, when they were not on patrol they visited all the BE2c squadrons within fifty miles. They learned what some of them had never known and others preferred to forget: that the average life-expectancy in those squadrons ranged from three to six weeks. Someone enquired about tactics. “I pray a lot,” one observer told them. “And when that doesn’t work I curse a bit.”

Morale in Cleve-Cutler’s flight improved. They scored a couple of kills and after that nobody went sick. It was lucky that the Fokker monoplane was in decline, but every good leader needs a bit of luck. Soon Cleve-Cutler became senior flight commander, then acting CO. Now, overnight, he was a major, posted to Pepriac as new CO of Hornet Squadron.

He arrived at noon. The first thing he did was assemble the officers in the mess anteroom.

“Major Milne is dead,” he said. He was pressing a couple of fingers against the side of his mouth to hold his face in a suitably neutral expression. “It seems that he killed himself by ramming an enemy machine on the other side of the Lines last evening. One of our observation balloons saw him cross the Lines, and later saw the collision. My name is Cleve-Cutler and I now command this squadron.” He released his face, and the roguish smile slowly restored itself. “Later on I shall meet each one of you individually. For now, all I shall say is this. There is soon going to be the most enormous battle near here, and the war will be over by Christmas. Which Christmas, God alone knows, and I personally don’t much care, and if the lieutenant at the back doesn’t stop picking his nose I’ll come and pick it for him. Of course, all these umpteen infantry divisions camped around here could be just an elaborate deception. Maybe the real battle will be elsewhere. But in any case, the Hun can’t ignore us, so there will be large numbers of Hun aeroplanes to be shot down, which is all they’re good for. Finally, I invite you to sample Cleve-Cutler’s Patent Pink Potion For Pale People, several gallons of which are now waiting at the bar. For convenience I think it ought to be re-named Hornet’s Sting. That’s all. Thank you.”