Derek Robinson - War Story

He was talking to a captain in the Medical Corps. They were standing outside a new Casualty Clearing Station. “Is it?” the captain asked. He sounded doubtful.

“Well, I bet the Hun doesn’t look after his troops like that. I think it’s jolly thoughtful. It could get pretty hot this summer.”

“Oh, I think it will. Extremely hot.”

“There you are, then. I know the chaps at the aerodrome wouldn’t mind having a pool as big as that.”

“Give those Chinks a dozen loaves of bread,” the doctor said,”and they’ll dig night and day for you.”

Paxton laughed. “It takes a war to get things going, they say.”

“It’s certainly done my career a power of good. I’ve learned more about heroic surgery in a year than I would have done in a lifetime. Lucky old me. At this rate I’ll be the world’s greatest expert at high-speed multiple amputation. Did you know that the record for lopping off all four limbs is twelve minutes ten seconds?” He ditched the dregs of his tea.

“Good Lord.”

“It’s not good enough.” The doctor looked Paxton in the eye. “I can get that time down to eight minutes dead and throw in an appendectomy, if only they’ll let me use my surgical axe. You see,” he said, flexing his elbows, “it’s all in the follow-through. If this war has taught us doctors anything, it’s the need to use the wrists and follow through.” He lifted Paxton’s right arm and fingered the shoulder. “Otherwise it’s all chopping and hacking,” he said. “Which is. not only distressing to the patient but also very, very time-consuming.”

“Good heavens.”

“You’ve nothing to worry about.” He let the arm fall. “I could whip through that joint in half a minute. Be sure to ask for me, won’t you? Don’t let those butchers start hacking at you.”

Paxton wondered about this conversation all the way back to Pepriac. There had been a combative glint in the doctor’s eyes. Could have been drunk, of course. Except that he’d sounded so utterly clear and sure of himself. Queer coves, doctors.

“They could have been hit by archie,” Colonel Bliss suggested.

“No, sir,” Foster said. His face looked frozen.

“I mean you were both deliberately trying to provoke their guns. You went in until they forced you out. Isn’t that right?”

“I’ve seen planes hit by archie. I know what it looks like.”

Cleve-Cutler said: “You were a mile away, Frank.”

“What’s a mile? I could paint a picture of it all.” His voice was dead level. “The Nieuports came down in single file, steep dive, going for the balloon, that’s what I thought and so did the Hun. He turned all his guns on the frogs. Archie all around them. The frogs swung away, kept diving, passed behind Yeo’s machine. The last Nieuport was closer than the rest. I saw it fire, I saw the tracer, I saw it hit the FE, I saw the FE tip up like a… like a wheelbarrow. I saw it crash.”

They were in Cleve-Cutler’s office. Bliss picked up a pen and examined the nib from different angles. “Perhaps we ought to wait and see what the Hun drops over our Lines. By way of confirmation, I mean.”

Cleve-Cutler saw the look on Foster’s face and rapidly put himself between the two men. “Captain Foster is a most experienced and capable flight commander,” he said. “If Captain Foster says it was a fatal crash, you can be sure it was exactly that. Captain Foster is an officer I have complete and utter confidence in.”

“Of course, of course,” Bliss said. He was on his way out. “It’s a shocking business. The French Air Force will be given hell, believe you me.”

“They’ll get more than that,” Foster said.

Bliss pretended he hadn’t heard. “Absolute hell,” he said. “It’s too bad you weren’t able to spot the identification letters on those Nieuports.”

“We got them,” Foster said. “It’s all in my report, for God’s sake.”

“Is it? I must have lost the file.” Bliss remembered that he was holding the pen and gave it to Cleve-Cutler. “No, it really is too bad, because otherwise I might have been able to tell you that they belong to the 27th Escadrille of avions de chasse stationed at Selincourt. Shame, isn’t it?”

They walked with Bliss to his car, and then went to the mess. It was the end of the afternoon, a grey day, no wind. Cleve-Cutler sent Private Collins to round up all those pilots and observers who were on the aerodrome. He went behind the bar and began opening bottles. “I’ll make a few gallons of Hornet’s Sting,” he said to Foster. “You’d better hurry if you don’t want to miss the party.” Foster nodded, and went out.

Paxton went to his billet to change and found that his chest had been painted bright red. Well, it was just another insult. He could tolerate it. He moved the chest and found that the paint was wet. His hands were red. He shouted for Fidler, and sent him to get petrol and rags.

While Paxton was standing waiting, holding his hands as if supporting an invisible tray, Kellaway came in from the bathhouse. “Hullo!” he said. “You’ve got red hands.”

“Shut up before I kill you.”

“Please yourself.” Kellaway began to dress. “There’s a party in the mess, you know. CO’s party. Remember Yeo?”

“Of course.”

“Well, you can forget him.”

At first Paxton was amazed by Kellaway’s coldblooded announcement; then he realised that it meant another move up the table. To make sure, he said: “What about his observer?”

“Gone west too. The frogs did it.”

Paxton didn’t know whether to believe that or not. The more he thought about it, the less it mattered.

Kellaway put his cap on. Paxton said, distantly: “You might give O’Neill my compliments and ask him to spare me a few minutes.”

Kellaway left. Paxton walked up and down. He found a loose floorboard and made it creak. O’Neill arrived, whistling. Paxton showed him his red hands. “If you are a gentleman, which I very much doubt,” Paxton said,”you’ll put your fists up and we’ll settle this affair here and now.” His lungs were pumping double-time, ready for the fight.

“You first.” Nothing seemed to excite O’Neill.

Paxton clenched his fists and raised his arms and put one foot forward.

“Your lace is undone,” O’Neill said. Before Paxton could look down, O’Neill had knelt and was retying the lace. He seized Paxton’s ankle in both hands and heaved it waist-high. Paxton staggered. O’Neill turned and walked him out of the room. Paxton hopped behind, shouting and windmilling his arms. O’Neill led him to the mess, passing Fidler as he returned with a can of petrol. By the time he hopped up the wooden steps of the mess, Paxton’s working leg was so exhausted that when O’Neill let go he fell over. He tried to stand on the other leg and fell over again.

A loud and violent race was going on inside the mess. It involved jumping from one piece of furniture to another, while holding and drinking a tankard of Hornet’s Sting. Paxton lay on the floor and watched furniture collapse and splinter, and heard the raucous howling of his fellow-officers. Collins gave him a full tankard. He got red paint all over it. Nobody cared. O’Neill had vanished. Paxton didn’t care. He drank the filthy muck. It didn’t taste too bad. He finished it and threw the tankard at Collins. Collins caught it, onehanded. Somebody went through the piano with a noise like a harp having a nightmare.

Foster reached Selincourt and remembered nothing about the journey. He had climbed to three thousand feet; he remembered nothing of that either. He circled Selincourt. It looked just like any other aerodrome, from the air.

He had to wait twenty minutes for a Nieuport. A monoplane took off, probably a Morane, and a big heavy biplane flew by. He ignored them both. The Nieuport came out of the east, as expected. It carried identification letters and numbers on its fuselage but he didn’t look for them because he didn’t care what they were. He dropped, turning his height into speed, and followed the Nieuport down to the field, gaining on it all the time, until the FE was bouncing about in its wash, only a couple of lengths behind.