Derek Robinson - War Story

They walked back to the gate. “Pay no attention to me,” the major said. “My impatience gets the better of me sometimes. The way things have been going, you chaps see more action in a week than we do in a year. What?”

Paxton nodded. “I had a scrap with a Fokker just the other day, sir. Managed to knock him down in the end.”

“Good for you. Come and have a drink. Meet the chaps.”

Paxton dropped the half turnip when the major wasn’t looking. “People sometimes call us the cavalry of the skies,” he said. “I must say I think that’s the most enormous compliment we could have, don’t you, sir?”

The RFC was very efficiently organised to provide replacements. The adjutant phoned the Officers’ Pool at St. Omer and a new observer was delivered by tender to Pepriac in time for tea. He was Canadian and his name was Stubbs. He was built like a heavyweight and he had a face like a baby. Gus Mayo had got permission to go to Amiens to get his hair cut. When he came back he went to his billet and found his batman changing the sheets on Henley’s bed. At the other end of the room Stubbs was playing darts against himself.

“Hullo!” Mayo said. “Henley gone?”

“Yes, sir,” the batman said. “Shame, isn’t it?”

“Oh.” Mayo came to a halt. He watched him smooth out a creased blanket. “Gone for good, you mean.”

“Funeral’s tomorrow, sir. This is Mr. Stubbs, sir.”

They shook hands. “You’ll like it here,” Mayo said. “Grand bunch of chaps. I don’t suppose you brought any new gramophone records?”

“No. Should I have?”

“Dougie Goss trod on our one and only ragtime record last night, the silly sod. What about Mr. Goss?” he asked the batman. “Did he get pipped too?”

“No, sir.”

Mayo grunted. “Bloody good pilot, Dougie. I just wish he’d watch where he puts his feet. Feel like a drink?”

The Court of Inquiry into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of 2533409 Muleteer-Sergeant Harris J., Attached Royal Engineers, During the Night of 4-5 June 1916, While Driving RFC Tender No. 04379 in the Town of Breteuil, adjourned for lunch after two hours, resumed at half-past two and adjourned again at four, the Court (presided over by Colonel Bliss, supported by a major and a captain) having questioned everyone in Hornet Squadron it could lay its hands on and having discovered, in the words of its president, bugger-all.

That wasn’t what went into the official record. It was what Bliss told Major Cleve-Cutler and Captain Brazier. “Personally I don’t give a toss about Sergeant Harris J.,” the colonel said. “None of this would matter if he hadn’t utterly demolished a double-fronted grocer’s shop. The owner is demanding a fortune in compensation. You know how the general hates grocers.”

“Look, Bob,” Cleve-Cutler said. “Isn’t it obvious that Rufus Milne’s your man?”

“The general won’t wear that.”

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t believe squadron commanders go around at night swapping army tenders for mules. It’s simply not the way they behave, in his experience.”

“Milne was ill.”

“Well, he doesn’t believe that, either. He’s never heard of someone that age getting stomach cancer. Milne looked perfectly all right the last time he saw him.”

“And then went off and killed himself?”

“The general believes Milne died while battling against great odds. He thinks all these stories about Milne are in very poor taste.”

“Jolly considerate of him.”

“Rufus is going to get a posthumous medal,” Bliss said. “Probably a bar to his MC. So I need a villain for my villain, not a hero. See you tomorrow.”

With the arrival of Stubbs, Paxton no longer had the lowest place at dinner; in fact he was now third from the bottom, because Kellaway had returned from hospital. Kellaway had a black eye and some yellowing bruises on his forehead and a little thicket of stitches on his chin, but he seemed cheerful enough, although his eyes sometimes crossed without warning and he had to shake his head vigorously in order to uncross them.

Paxton was glad to see that Kellaway treated him in a friendly fashion. Evidently there were no hard feelings about the cold-bath treatment. When they had left the mess and were back in their billet, Paxton said: “You won’t believe this, old man, but they’ve refused to credit us with shooting down that Hun.”

“Who are they?”

“Captain Piggott.” Kellaway looked puzzled. “Our flight commander, for heaven’s sake,” Paxton said. “And of course the CO backs him up. Isn’t it a rotten shame?”

“What Hun?” Kellaway asked.

“The Fokker.” Paxton remembered that Kellaway had seen the enemy plane. “The Albatros, I mean. It crashed. I shot the tail off and it crashed.”

“I don’t remember. If you say it happened, of course it happened but I don’t remember anything for the last week. I don’t even remember coming here.”

“Yes, but…” Paxton felt swindled of his kill. “You remember me, don’t you? We left England together.”

“Dexter?” Kellaway suggested. “No. Wait a minute…”

O’Neill strolled in, eating an apple. “You want to stay away from the adj,” he said indistinctly. “There’s hell to pay in the men’s latrines… Jeez, you look a sight,” he told Kellaway.

“What’s wrong with the latrines?” Paxton demanded.

O’Neill took three swift bites of the apple. “Better ask the adj, hadn’t you? All I know is he wants your blood. Two men locked in a cubicle, not very nice, he’s old-fashioned about that sort of thing, I never saw a man so angry, I’d wait until tomorrow if I was you…” But by then Paxton had grabbed his cap and gone. The adjutant didn’t scare him.

Within a minute he was back. He came in quietly and didn’t look at the other two, just sat on his bed and flicked through a magazine. He had never reached the latrines. Halfway there he had remembered that the cubicles in the latrines had no doors.

Beneath his apparent calm all his senses were pounding. O’Neill was chatting to Kellaway but it was a while before Paxton took in the meaning and realised that O’Neill was talking about him. “Personally, I put the peculiar smell down to the constipation,” O’Neill said in that maddeningly flat, unchanging voice of his. “A lot of English people of his sort smell like that. We don’t get it in Australia because Australians invented prunes, did you know that?”

If Sherborne had taught Paxton nothing else it had taught him self-control. This filthy sneering from O’Neill was painful, but Paxton had a trick which he used to deflect it: he repeated to himself the words of his commission: George, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India, Etc… To Our Trusty and well beloved Oliver Arthur David Paxton, Greeting. We reposing especial Trust and Confidence in your Loyalty, Courage and good Conduct, do by these Presents Constitute and Appoint you to be an Officer…

“I offered him a pound of Australian prunes,” O’Neill said,”but I think he thought they were extra large suppositories and you know he’s not very big in that department. See these pyjamas?”

Paxton could not resist looking up. O’Neill was holding a pair of his pyjamas. He could see the monogram, OP.

“He threw these out,” O’Neill said. “I had ‘em washed in disinfectant, you can hardly tell where the stains were. Piece of advice. Never, ever touch that trunk of his. I don’t know what he’s got in there but he goes insane if anyone touches it.” O’Neill picked up his sponge-bag and went out.