Derek Robinson - War Story

Everyone stopped to watch the plane fall. Several battalions of infantry camped nearby saw it. So did a couple of squadrons of cavalry, and a unit of sappers, and some gunners. Not many French farmers looked up: they usually got on with their work and let the war go by. Still, King had the biggest audience of his brief life as his FE tumbled from the sky, twitching like a scrap of paper.

“Oh, Christ Almighty,” Foster said, in a voice like cracked leather. “What a waste.”

“Not your fault,” Cleve-Cutler told him.

They saw the FE hit the ground about a mile away. A second later the sound reached them. It was like a wooden hut collapsing. They saw flames, and then the bang of the exploding fuel tank made the windows rattle.

Cleve-Cutler stood and stared at the smoke. There was nothing he could do at the wreck, and in any case other men were already on their way to it. “I’ll write to the parents,” he said. “What was his name? King, wasn’t it?”

No reply. Foster had gone.

Five minutes later he found Foster in the anteroom, scribbling with chalk on the blackboard that normally carried Flying Orders for the day. Foster had cleaned the board and covered it with algebraic equations. He was still writing, writing so hard and so fast that bits of chalk went flying. He reached the edge of the board and stopped.

“Doesn’t add up,” he said. “I can’t make it add up.”

“That’s because it’s all junk, old boy,” Cleve-Cutler said.

Foster took a pace back. They examined the mass of algebraic nonsense for quite a long time. “Well, of course it’s junk,” Foster said. “That’s why it won’t add up! That’s the whole problem, don’t you see?”

Cleve-Cutler found a cloth and wiped the board clean.

“Come on, Frank,” he said. “I’ll buy you a nice big drink.”

One of the Buicks delivered Paxton back to Pepriac in good time for dinner. He sought out Kellaway and found him lying on the grass, watching a game of cricket. “Hullo!” he said. “Guess what?”

“The Kaiser’s had a baby,” Kellaway said without looking up.

“No, no. Nothing like that.” He began to describe his meeting with Judith Kent Haffner. He got as far as coffee on the terrace when O’Neill sat next to him. “CO wants you,” O’Neill said.

Paxton couldn’t stand being close to O’Neill, so he got up. “I don’t believe you,” he said.

“You’re right, the old man’s lying, he doesn’t want you.” O’Neill lay back and closed his eyes. “Don’t let him toy with your affections like that, get over there and gouge his eyeballs out.”

“Excuse me.” Paxton walked away.

Kellaway applauded a big hit by Gus Mayo. “Why do you keep pestering him?” he asked.

“It’s a dirty job, I know,” O’Neill shouted at Paxton,”but somebody has to do it.”

Kellaway didn’t understand, but he didn’t really care. “You’re looking a bit pale, old chap,” he said. “Been sick?”

“Paxton took my rouge, without asking.” O’Neill’s face was as blank as ever. “He wants to humiliate me in front of the entire German Air Force.” Kellaway gave up.

Paxton went to his billet. He was looking at his haircut in a mirror, and thinking how desirable it would be to go back and get a trim in a week or so, when Fidler arrived. “Mr. Cleve-Cutler’s compliments, sir,” he said,”and could you report to his office immediately.”

Paxton forgot haircuts, forgot Mrs. Kent Haffner, forgot O’Neill and Kellaway and all. This was the call. He was going to fly again.

The CO and Captain Piggott were looking at a short length of telegraph wire. Paxton saluted and waited. “Where exactly did they find this?” Cleve-Cutler asked Piggott.

“Outer strut, left-hand side. Sawed the strut nearly in half.”

Cleve-Cutler tested the strength of the wire until he hurt his fingers and grinned with pain. “Cheap and nasty… Where have you been all day?”

“Amiens, sir,” Paxton said. “Haircut.”

“Didn’t O’Neill tell you I wanted to see you?”

“Yes, but… I’m afraid I don’t trust him, sir.”

“Really! You don’t trust O’Neill.” Cleve-Cutler blew his nose: one short foghorn blast. “And how does O’Neill feel about you?”

“Well… he’s not friendly, sir.”

“Not friendly. How odd. Everyone else finds him friendly.”

Paxton turned his head and looked out of the window. This wasn’t what he’d expected but he was quite willing to reveal the truth. “From the start, sir, O’Neill has had his knife into me.”

“And how do you feel about him?”

“I detest him.”

“That should be interesting. Starting now, you’re O’Neill’s observer.”

For a few seconds Paxton’s brain refused to accept these words. They made no sense; they didn’t fit. Yet the squadron commander and the flight commander kept looking at him as if they made sense. “I’m a pilot, sir,” he said. “I’m not an observer.”

“Then you’ll just have to do your best, won’t you? I’ve got too many pilots and the Pool’s run out of observers.”

“But O’Neill… I mean isn’t there anybody else—”

“No, there’s nobody else,” Cleve-Cutler said jauntily,”and I know you’re the worst air-gunner in the Corps and you couldn’t hit Immelmann himself if he came up and sniffed the end of your gun, and it’s certainly rough luck on Frank O’Neill, whose life-expectancy with you guarding him is now a minus figure because you’ll probably shoot him the very first chance you get, thus causing the plane to crash and kill you both, which will be an enormous relief to me. Now go away.”

Paxton went away, looking dazed.

“I thought he might learn something if he kicked around the squadron for a few days,” Piggott said. “He hasn’t learnt a damn thing, he’s just as stupid as ever. I wonder what he did to get on O’Neill’s tit?”

“Doesn’t matter any more. Once they start fighting, they create more reasons to fight.”

“Childish, isn’t it?”

“I hope not,” Cleve-Cutler said. “It’s what we’ve all been doing for the last two years.” He made a coil of the wire and released it, so that it bounced across his desk. “He didn’t ask what had happened to Duncan.”

“No. Self-centred and selfish. Doesn’t give a damn for anyone else.”

“So all he needs,” Cleve-Cutler said,”is brains, guts and a ton of luck and he might make a good fighter pilot one day.” Piggott stared. “Just a little joke,” Cleve-Cutler said.

Paxton searched the camp until he found O’Neill. He was strolling around his FE, whistling in his peculiar tuneless fashion.

“Shut up that racket and listen,” Paxton said. O’Neill went on whistling. He took a close look at an oil stain. “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this,” Paxton said, “but it seems that I am your observer.”

O’Neill stopped whistling. For the first time, Paxton saw emotion show through that usually wooden expression. Surprise, certainly. Perhaps even alarm. It lasted only a few seconds.

“Or perhaps it would be truer to say that you are my pilot,” Paxton said.

“You’ll like flying with me. It’s better than prunes.” O’Neill was back to normal.

Cleve-Cutler mixed up a batch of Hornet’s Sting in memory of Jimmy Duncan but there was no squadron party. It seemed wrong to smash up the new old furniture as soon as Lacey had had it unloaded, and in any case tomorrow’s orders had come through and ‘A’ and ‘B’ Flights were on dawn patrol. All the keys worked on the replacement piano, so Stubbs played and everyone sang. Even Paxton stood at the edge of the crowd and sang. He had something to celebrate: he’d moved one more place up the table. Tough luck on Duncan. Pity it hadn’t happened to O’Neill, he thought, then it would have been two places… Kellaway nudged him. “Heard the new diet joke?” he asked.