Derek Robinson - War Story

“You have grown bitter, Frank.”

“I’ve grown honest, chum.”

“But surely there are qualities to admire? Courage, chivalry, truth? Shouldn’t we recognise them?”

“All right: tell the truth. Tell all the truth. Tell everyone how courageous our late comrade was and also how frightened he was. And lonely. Even in a two-seater. You’ve no idea how lonely and frightened you can feel up there. Just you in several hundred cubic miles of sky, and then all of a sudden here comes the Hun trying to kill you. Nothing personal about it. I’m sure the Hun is the soul of chivalry, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of putting a few bullets in your stomach or your head or your lungs, anywhere as long as the blood comes out in a rush. By all means, you go ahead and recognise the admirable qualities of truth and chivalry. Tell us the truth about chivalry. I’d like to know what it is, because I’ve never seen it in action. If it means that one sportsman waves his hat and lets the other man fire first, that’s not chivalry. That’s suicide. That’s idiocy. So leave it out, will you?”

The padre jumped nimbly across a set of puddles. “You make my task extremely difficult. I suppose I can safely mention the fact of your death?”

“As long as you don’t call it the supreme sacrifice.”

The padre threw up his hands. “What greater sacrifice could there be?”

“It’s not a bally sacrifice at all! Use your imagination, padre. D’you honestly think poor little King gave his life? D’you think Jimmy Duncan had any choice? D’you think any of us would die if we could wangle some way around it? You make the supreme sacrifice sound like the noblest, cleverest, bravest thing a man could do. That’s rubbish. When we get killed it’s because we got it wrong. Or blind chance. Archie. Nothing clever about that.”

“No indeed.” The padre put a long, heavy arm around Foster’s shoulders. “You’ve emptied my stock, Frank. Why don’t you tell me what I ought to say?”

“Just say… Just say: ‘He wasn’t a bad sort, paid his debts, told a few good jokes, and took five wickets for 39 runs in the match against Harrow.’ That’s enough. In fact it’s too much. Cut out the bit about the jokes. They weren’t all that good.”

Rainstorms blundered in from the west more and more frequently. A canvas hangar was blown down and all flying was cancelled. A lot of poker got played and the gramophone never stopped. Lacey fixed up the cinema projector and showed some Charlie Chaplin films, which were enormously popular. Boy Binns drew dozens of cartoon portraits, which were no better than his usual efforts. “That’s libellous,” Spud Ogilvy said when Boy showed him a sketch. “You’ve made me look like Charlie Essex.” Boy held the sketch at arm’s length and closed one eye. “I think this is Charlie,” he said. “I got them mixed up. That one is you.”

“No, it’s not. It looks horrible. That’s another picture of Charlie.”

Boy took it over to the light. “Maybe this one is Gus Mayo,” he said. “I drew Gus when he was smiling.”

“Whoever it is, someone just kicked him in the goolies. Why don’t you put names on the damn things?”

“I’m an artist,” Boy said,”not a writer.”

As a flight commander, Foster was entitled to his own room. During a lull between cloudbursts he moved out of his room and into a bell tent, far from the officers’ quarters. He took the dog Brutus with him, and a clarinet that Corporal Lacey had swapped for some of Paxton’s cigars. Foster couldn’t play the clarinet but he tried. Brutus sat beside him and howled. Their wretched duet drifted across the camp, fading and reviving as the wind gusted and fell away.

Spud Ogilvy and Charlie Essex went to visit him.

“What’s the idea, Frank?” Essex asked.

“That’s a good question. It’s a very good question. What the blazes are we all doing here? I mean, what’s the point of it all? Any suggestions?”

Ogilvy hesitated, but Essex was bouncing on the camp bed, testing its comfort. “Obvious, I should have thought,” Ogilvy said. “We’re here to win the war, aren’t we?”

“Is that all?” Foster took his clarinet away from Essex, who had begun playing with it. “If that’s all, then I can do it easily. I can end this war with one little bullet. It’s simply a matter of killing the right man.”

Essex said: “And who’s that?”

“I’ll find him, don’t you worry.” Foster was standing in the door of the tent, his arms folded, looking through the rain at the billets. “He’s not far away. If I can find him I can kill him.”

“And that will end the war?” Ogilvy asked.

“Instantly and for ever.” Foster turned and lifted his revolver from a nail in the tent-pole. “I always keep it loaded, because you never know when your chance may come. True?”

Ogilvy shrugged. “Charlie’s brought a fruit cake his aunt sent him. Shall we eat it?”

“Certainly.” Foster hung up his revolver. For the rest of their visit he was perfectly normal and charming.

Paxton mooched about the camp. He was more popular now it was known that he and Lacey had organised the flicks, but he didn’t much feel like mixing with people. He met the adjutant and sheltered under his giant golf umbrella. “This is going to sound pretty silly, adj,” he said,”but why don’t we have a swimming pool? I can easily lay on a bunch of Chinks to dig one.” The adjutant told him to go ahead, as long as the pool was well down-wind of the camp, to keep the mosquitoes away. So that settled that. Rain rattled on the umbrella. The windsock stood out horizontally.

“I was in the anteroom the other night,” Paxton said. “In my opinion you should have been decorated, not demoted.”

“Funny you should say that. I wasn’t the only officer who had to do a bit of shooting. There was a captain in my battalion who stopped a panic with his revolver. I wrote a commendation afterwards. I wrote: ‘By his presence of mind and resolve he shot a lieutenant and a private of his company, thus preventing the spread of panic and ensuring that the line was held.’ It was a brave act and he certainly deserved a decoration. I believe my commendation was burned. Let me know exactly where you want to put that swimming pool, won’t you?”

Paxton drew a Lewis gun and two drums of tracer ammunition from the armourers’ hut and carried them to the firing range. The wind was so strong that he had to lean against it; even so, some of the gusts made him stagger. That was good. The stronger the better. He placed the gun two hundred yards from the butts, and fired off the ammunition in brief bursts of five or six rounds, watching each time to see how the wind made the tracer bend. The further it went the more it bent. That made sense. He did some guessing and some simple arithmetic and decided that, firing a Lewis sideways from an FE doing eighty miles an hour, at an enemy attacking head on, you should aim off by one length for each one hundred yards’ range. More or less.

Worth getting wet for.

The storm exhausted itself the following morning, leaving behind a trail of battered cloud. By afternoon most of Hornet Squadron was flying (a couple of planes had been knocked about by the wind) and nearly everyone made some sort of contact with the enemy. Gerrish and Ross claimed to have driven down a Pfalz monoplane, or it might have been a Fokker; anyway it was giving off a lot of smoke when last seen. Cleve-Cutler, flying with Boy Binns, had a long scrap with a Rumpler two-seater until they both ran out of ammunition; Binns said he hit the German gunner, maybe killed him. Others chased a variety of Huns but lost them. As usual the balloons were heavily defended; nobody got near one. Tim Piggott’s engine conked out over the Lines but he managed to glide to a field and land between the shell-holes. O’Neill’s FE came back with three inches missing from one wingtip. “Too much cloud,” he told Brazier. “This Hun suddenly popped out and gave me a burst and popped back.”