Derek Robinson - War Story

A reaction set in when they moved to the anteroom for coffee. It had been a long time since the hour before dawn when most had been shaken awake by their batmen. Some, including Cleve-Cutler, wandered off to bed. Foster went for a walk. Others slumped in armchairs or sofas and watched Goss and Ogilvy play ping-pong. The gramophone played loud ragtime until Charlie Essex took off a sock and stuffed it into the speaker. “You chaps haven’t got the brains to do that,” he said. “But of course I was at Cambridge.”

“What else did you learn there?” the adjutant asked.

“Oh… Let’s see. Two pints one quart, four quarts one gallon, and after that you’re too plastered to climb into college so it doesn’t matter.”

“That’s all? Didn’t they teach you anything else?”

“Um… I learned how to do the polka. Well, nearly.”

“Heroic,” Brazier murmured.

Paxton was dozing in a corner, but the word stirred his memory. After a moment his memory reported its findings. “I say,” he said to Dando. “What’s heroic surgery?”

Dando blinked. “Extraordinary question,” he said. “Well, when normal measures have failed to save the patient, the surgeon may take extreme measures – I mean, do things he would normally consider too violent, too dangerous – as a kind of a last-ditch attempt to save the patient’s life. That’s known as heroic surgery.”

“Multiple amputation?”

“Yes, that’s the sort of thing. Why d’you ask?”

“Chap I met the other day was very keen on heroic surgery. Said the record for chopping off all four limbs is just over twelve minutes but he reckoned he could do it in eight minutes dead.” Paxton was about to mention the axe and then thought better of it.

“My goodness.” Dando made his eyes big and wide. “Eight minutes, you say… That’s more than heroic. That’s herculean.”

Gus Mayo stirred and yawned. “Bit tough on the patient, isn’t it? I mean… What if he didn’t want them all cut off?”

“Then he should have said so at the start,” Charlie Essex told him. “Now he hasn’t got a leg to stand on.”

Some laughed, some groaned. Mayo got up and began beating Essex with a cushion. Essex fought back. His chair fell over. The scuffle went on until they were both too tired to fight and lay side by side in a pool of feathers. Goss came by, searching for a lost ping-pong ball, and they tripped him up, so he hit them. The scuffle began again. Ogilvy got tired of waiting for Goss to come back and he left the table. “When it comes to heroic surgery we’ve got the champion right here,” he said. “Haven’t we, adj?”

Brazier took his pipe from his mouth, looked into the bowl, put his pipe back, and waited.

“I got another letter from my chum in the trenches,” Ogilvy said. “The adj used to be his CO. Billy Winters, adj. Remember him?”

Brazier nodded. “Reliable fellow. A bit wild, but he led his company well.”

“And you remember Ashby?”

In the same voice Brazier said: “I shot Ashby. He didn’t lead his company so well, and I had to shoot him.”

The scuffling had stopped.

“What did you shoot him with?”

“A rifle. He was forty yards away. The Service revolver is useless at that range and I couldn’t wait until he got closer. I took the nearest rifle and shot Ashby through the chest. Through the heart. I’m sure he never knew what hit him. The others did, though.”

Everyone was very awake now. Brazier picked a shred of tobacco from his thigh and let it fall in an ashtray.

“I take it there was a panic,” Ogilvy said.

“There was indeed a panic.”

“And you were then a colonel.”

“I was then a colonel and my regiment took part in an attack, a most important part, and the attack miscarried and the enemy counter-attacked. There was fierce fighting, very fierce fighting indeed. Ashby’s men fought with the bayonet and the rifle-butt. Many men died but the line was held. Then the German artillery bombarded Ashby’s position. The enemy attacked again. Ashby got up and ran. His men ran too, until I shot him and told them to go back and fight. They went back and fought and again we held the line.”

There was silence while they absorbed this information.

“Billy says the attack was a flop,” Ogilvy said.

“The attack failed, because the enemy brought up their heavy mortars. You were in the trenches, weren’t you? Perhaps you experienced minnenwerfers yourself?”

“Only once. That was enough. Frightful brutes.”

“A forty-two-inch shell makes a big explosion. We had no answer. We withdrew.”

“What does Billy say next?” Dando asked Ogilvy.

“Billy says there was hell to pay and when the dust had settled the colonel was a major.”

“Two things,” Brazier said. “First: Captain Ashby was the son of a baron. Only the third son, but his blood was blue. Second, I had not shot him quietly. On the contrary, I made sure everyone heard my ultimatum. I shouted, very loud: Ashby, stop. Go back or I’ll kill you. That, after all, was the whole point of shooting him: to influence the others. I suppose Divisional HQ thought I should have shot someone less eminent and done it more discreetly.” Brazier re-lit his pipe.

Mayo said: “Or perhaps they thought you shouldn’t have shot anyone at all.”

Brazier fanned the air to dissipate a cloud of blue smoke and looked at Mayo as if he were a child who had unexpectedly wandered into an adult conversation. “Oh, somebody had to be shot. It was just a matter of how and when.”

Paxton tried to make sense of that, and failed.

“According to Billy you got shunted off to a different division,” Ogilvy said.

“There was some expectation that I would get myself killed leading a rather more ambitious attack. My men were given the task of capturing an enemy strongpoint. It was terribly well defended. We got very close to it – at a cost, of course and then a German machine-gun pinned everyone down in a string of shell-holes. I knew we could knock out this gun if we all charged at once but nobody would move. I tried to buck them up but they were all afraid. The longer we waited, the more time the enemy had to organise a counter-attack. So I told my men that they had a choice. They could advance and risk being killed by the Hun, or lie there and be utterly sure that I would shoot them. Then I gave the order to advance. Nobody moved. I shot one man with my Service revolver, a private named Yelland. Scarcely anyone moved, so I shot another private. His name was Haslam. After that they all went over the top in a rush, me with them, and we took that German machine-gun in no time.”

“At a cost, of course,” Dando said.

“Of course.”

“Including your rank. Down from major to captain. Why? You shot nobody eminent, and you did it discreetly.”

Brazier stood up, and ducked to avoid a hanging lamp. “Yelland died, Haslam didn’t. He made a great fuss and there was an inquiry. After all, it’s a serious matter when officers go around shooting their men in the back. I think I’ll turn in. Goodnight.”

When Mayo was quite sure that Brazier had gone, he said: “Fancy shooting a chap in the back.”

“What should he have done?” Ogilvy asked. “Rolled him over and shot him in the front?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No I don’t. I’m damned if I do.”

Charlie Essex pulled his sock out of the gramophone. “Thank God we don’t have to shoot anybody in our job.”

“You don’t?” said Dando, startled.

“No. Only aeroplanes.”

“With men in them.”

“Well, that’s their silly fault. Who wants a game of ping-pong?”

“Ball’s bust,” Goss announced.

“I’ll play,” Paxton said. “I’ve got a new ball.”