Derek Robinson - War Story

“Come on then, Pax,” Essex said. It was the first time anyone in the squadron had been slightly friendly to Paxton. He suddenly felt accepted.

O’Neill came across an invisible, lumpy seam in the weather just above eight thousand feet. Two airstreams of differing speeds jostled each other, creating a layer of turbulence. He let the FE bounce up through it and when he reached calm air he tipped the nose down and let the FE bounce down through it. Then he climbed very gradually. The FE bucked and plunged and shuddered for a long time. Paxton kept his mouth shut and tried to forget his sore, bruised rump. The patrol was more than half over and his lunch was still in his stomach. This was progress. He tried to ignore the smell of whalegrease, smeared on his face to keep out the battering cold air, but every now and then a breath of whalegrease mingled with the aftertaste of stew and threatened disaster.

The FE bucketed through another lumpy patch. He tightened his jaws and thought of Sherborne.

Then O’Neill was climbing and the air was smooth. Paxton raised his goggles and blinked hard to clear the tears. O’Neill’s fist banged the top of his helmet and Paxton searched the sky where O’Neill pointed.

It took him ten seconds to find a speck the size of a pinhead, high to the right, and then he blinked and lost it. The sky was baby-blue, softened by a screen of cirrus two miles above them. He found the speck again. It was bigger and fuzzier, and falling; falling fast. Quite soon he could see the wings, razor-thin lines on either side of the tiny blob that must be the engine and propeller. The FE was booming and vibrating: O’Neill had opened the throttle wide. Paxton swung the Lewis to the right and tested it: only a brief stutter: he was going to need the rest of the drum. The blob was growing. It was a biplane, blue or purple, yellow wheels, and it was diving at a speed that made Paxton feel the FE was standing still. O’Neill shouted something but whatever it was it was lost. Paxton’s brain was so calm that he felt tranquil yet his body throbbed with excitement. The enemy plane was magnifying at an astonishing rate and he knew with absolute certainty that he could destroy it. Tracer pulsed from its nose, searching for him, missing; the range was too great; he did not fire back. The Hun blossomed in his sights, still firing, and he waited and made sure and then squeezed the trigger as O’Neill flung the FE onto its right wingtips and sheared away from the enemy. Before Paxton could stop himself he had fired at the empty sky. O’Neill hauled the FE into a tight circle. By then the enemy – an Albatros – was half a mile away, a dwindling dot.

Usually, when they got back to Pepriac, Paxton handed over the Lewis to the armourer and got away from O’Neill as quickly as possible. This time he waited.

O’Neill talked briefly with his fitter and rigger and then headed for the pilots’ hut. Paxton blocked his way. “If you don’t want a gunner, leave the gun behind,” Paxton said. “Leave the ammunition behind. Save weight.”

“You had your chance.”

“What? What chance? Precisely when I opened fire, you turned sharp right.”

“Because I couldn’t wait any longer.”

“Wait for what? Until then, that Hun wasn’t in range.”

“No? We were in his range.”

“Rubbish. He opened fire when he was miles away.”

“You know bugger-all about air gunnery.”

“I know that the bigger the target, the better your chances. And just when that Hun got big enough for me to hit him you lost the target.”

“I made damn sure he lost his target, that’s what I did.”

“You ruined my shot.”

“You were too constipated to fire.”

It was hot and they were sweating. O’Neill shed his flying jacket. Paxton said, savagely: “If you’re such an expert, why don’t you do the damned gunnery, and I’ll guarantee to get you close enough, and keep you there.”

O’Neill laughed at him.

They got out of their flying kit and Paxton wiped off the whalegrease. Brazier heard their report; Paxton contributed little. They walked to the billet in silence. Again and again Paxton kept seeing in his mind that beautiful purple-blue yellow-wheeled Albatros enlarging perfectly in his sights, and being snatched from him just as he squeezed the trigger. It was robbery. He’d been swindled. “You did it deliberately, didn’t you?” he said.

O’Neill yawned. He was stretched out on his bed.

“Of course you did,” Paxton said. He walked around the room, kicking a waste basket. “I should have guessed. You don’t like me, you’re certainly not going to give me a chance to pot a Hun, are you?” He booted the basket over O’Neill’s bed and glared at him.

“I don’t give a stuff about you,” O’Neill said.

“Well, you’d better start bloody learning, my fine Australian friend.” Paxton found the basket and gave it another boot, aiming at O’Neill’s head and almost hitting it. “Because our job up there is killing Huns, in case you didn’t know.”

“I’ve killed more Huns than you’ve had wet dreams.”

“Next time we meet one, I want him. I want you to get me near him and stay there while I kill him. That’s your job. You’re just the blasted driver. You drive. I’ll kill. Understand?”

“You had your chance, chum. You muffed it.”

“Peter King and James Duncan never met,” the padre said,”yet now they lie side by side, as brothers. For, as the poet said, he today that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother.”

There had been a sharp storm half an hour before the funeral and everything in the churchyard dripped. The bodies had been lowered into an inch of water. The air smelt clean and cold, as if it had never been used before.

“One day, when this dreadful conflict is over, some passerby may pause here and wonder just what King and Duncan achieved. The answer is that they died in a just and decent cause, and that by their deaths they helped to win a splendid victory for freedom and for honour. I need not remind you of their gallantry. Those who go forth to do battle in the skies possess a special courage. They display a golden chivalry that shines in the gloom of war like a torch of inspiration.” He said something about the supreme sacrifice and the triumph of right, and then rounded it off as usual.

Frank Foster walked back to camp with him.

“Well done, padre.”

“Thank you, Frank. I think Jimmy would have liked it.”

“Jimmy wouldn’t have understood half of it. He was one of the stupidest men I ever met.”

“Surely not.”

“Oh, don’t worry. Not your fault. He was born thick. Just as well, perhaps. It pays to be thick in our job. Once you start thinking about it you’re heading for a crack-up.”

“You can come to me at any time, you know.”

“I know. I don’t belong to your club, padre. I’ve been upstairs often enough and, believe me, there’s no sign of a bloke with a beard and a box full of thunderbolts. So will you do me a favour? If and when I go west, and you get called upon to propose the toast, leave out all the God stuff, will you?”

The padre hesitated. “I’m by way of being in the God business, you know.”

“Well, I’m not and it’s my funeral. I don’t want any of that high-minded stuff about dying in a just cause, either. Freedom and justice and honour and whatnot. You can forget all that.”

“If you say so, old chap.”

“What I don’t want above all is any waffle about democracy.”

“No democracy. I see.”

“Democracy never did me any good, and if I survive this nonsense I shall inherit the family title and a large slice of England and I shall have earned it ten times over, so democracy can keep its sticky fingers off me.”