Derek Robinson - War Story

“But we could have caught it! I could have cut the blasted thing in half!”

“You never saw the Albatros.” O’Neill had taken Paxton’s eau-de-cologne from his shelf and was splashing it on his neck and face. “It was in and out of that cloud like a whore who’s lost her handbag.”

“Help yourself, it’s free,” Paxton said.

“Thanks.” O’Neill took a mouthful, rinsed his teeth and spat out of a window. “Back home we make better booze than this out of dead dingoes… That Albatros wanted our Quirk.”

“So you say.”

“And he was fast enough to catch the Quirk. But I knew he was up there, and he knew that I knew, and we both knew he wasn’t going to risk it while I was in the way.”

“I don’t believe it.”

O’Neill raised one knee and broke wind. “God save the King,” he said. “Indubitably.”

In the afternoon they were listed for a Deep Offensive Patrol. The air was still and dull as they walked from the pilots’ hut to the FE. The inevitable flurry of flies tried to get a taste of their sweating heads.

“I can’t hit the Hun if you never get near him,” Paxton said. O’Neill said nothing. “We’ve got nothing to protect this afternoon except ourselves,” Paxton said. “If we see a Hun, are you going to let me fight him?”

“Depends. Depends how many there are, how high, and how late in the patrol.”

“You mean how desperately you want to get home for tea and cake?”

Their fitter swung the propeller. The Beardmore coughed and spat, banged and coughed, and grudgingly decided there was nothing else for it and so settled down to work. O’Neill slowly built the revs, and the roar broadened and deepened to a bellow, while black exhaust smoke got sucked into the propeller disc and sliced into nothingness. The wheels leaned hard on their chocks, and everything shook like a wet dog on a cold day. Paxton sat in the front cockpit and tried to focus on the dancing flies. He knew it couldn’t be done but it was something to do. O’Neill slowly brought the revs down. The chocks were dragged clear. The FE rolled. The flies gave up the chase. Paxton stared at the rushing grass until it became a blur. He had a sudden moment of panic when he thought he’d left his chocolate behind, but it was in his pocket after all. By then they were flying.

O’Neill went through the overcast and into a new world where the cloud was as white and smooth as linen and the sky had the huge, friendly blueness that gave heaven a good name. Paxton blinked with approval a few times and then got down to the business of hunting Huns.

O’Neill took them up so high that cold began to seep like a stain through the flying gear, and Paxton couldn’t believe he had ever been hot and sweaty. He loosened his straps and moved about, working his body as he searched. After an hour he was tired and all they had seen was a couple of British Nieuports and a Vickers Gun Bus. Paxton waved as they passed and hoped they would go away.

He no longer heard the engine-roar and the wind-rush. The FE seemed not to be moving. It hung in space, occasionally leaning one way or the other. He had eaten his chocolate. He was chilled and he had cramp in his right buttock. The whole silly afternoon was a wash-out. He was glad when O’Neill turned towards the sun and began to lose height. That way lay steaming hot baths and drinks before dinner. The FE stopped its gentle dive and began climbing, hard. Paxton, irritated, looked around and saw O’Neill pointing to the left and high, almost vertically.

It had to be an enemy machine. Only an enemy would be falling so far, so fast. Paxton fumbled for his binoculars and before he got them out he knew it was too late to use them. Already he could make out details: a biplane, sleeker than most, glossy purple, with a snout-like exhaust poking straight up. O’Neill had turned to face it, but his climb was so much flatter than the enemy’s dive that Paxton had to crouch to get it in his sights. He tested the Lewis, saw a round of tracer fall away, remembered that he was firing upwards , must allow for that. Now the Hun seemed to be accelerating, quite startlingly: Paxton had the impression of adjusting the view through binoculars and making it rush closer. He saw propdisc, undercarriage, tailplane. When he could see the wingstruts he would open fire. He saw the struts and fired, and his tracer passed tracer jetting from the nose of the Hun, and he edged his fire down and saw it washing and wandering all around the Hun while a magnificently destructive banging hammered in his ears, and he was remotely aware of the enemy tracer flickering past, missing him, harmless, and the target was big, unmissable, perfect and suddenly it was snatched from view because the FE had been flung aside. “You bastard!” he shouted. “Gutless bastard!” He dropped the Lewis and snatched a flare pistol from its clip, swung around to face O’Neill and fell off his seat when the FE banked even more steeply. Paxton fired. He was halfsprawled in a corner of the cockpit, left arm hooked around his seat. The flare was red, a hot brick-red, and it raged across O’Neill’s cockpit and streaked between the struts of the left wing like a slice of a furnace. O’Neill threw up an arm: too late: it had missed him. But Paxton tasted joy. The red blaze of the flare matched his rage at O’Neill for cheating him of his kill. The FE heaved itself from one bank to the other. Paxton tumbled with it, got his boots against the side, stood, hurled the pistol at O’Neill, missed by a yard. O’Neill didn’t even duck. He was pointing dead ahead. The FE levelled out and Paxton saw the Hun, half a mile away, turning to attack. He fell over his feet getting to the Lewis.

Big black crosses outlined in white, on deep purple shimmering to silky green: the enemy looked as pretty as a butterfly. It made its turn and became a sharp silhouette. This was going to be a simple, head-on attack, both machines at the same height. He just had time to rip off the half-empty drum and bang on a full one. Flame was flickering in the nose of the Hun like impossibly rapid Morse. Paxton aimed, squeezed, revelled in the battering, stammering racket. The enemy propeller-disc shattered in a whirl of fragments and he lowered his aim as the Hun lost speed and sank. He could see the pilot’s head. Strikes sparkled around it. Everything magnified as if the plane were being inflated and then it exploded and was gone.

O’Neill hauled the FE up to escape the whirling debris. By the time he had circled, there was only a fading smudge of black smoke and a handful of bits of aeroplane already well on their way down. Paxton leaned out and watched them until they hit the cloud. It really is like bursting a balloon , he thought. Just like bursting a balloon.

Cleve-Cutler and Tim Piggott were watching the last of the afternoon patrols return. They saw O’Neill and Paxton land. They saw them get out, and they saw O’Neill kick Paxton and Paxton punch O’Neill and both men go down in a wild tangle. By the time they had strolled over to the fight it had lost almost all momentum through sheer exhaustion. “Give these gentlemen my compliments,” Cleve-Cutler said to the fitter,”and ask them to meet me in my office as soon as they can bear to be separated.”

Cleve-Cutler sat behind his desk, looking even jauntier than usual. Piggott leaned against the door. Paxton and O’Neill stood as far apart as possible. They were still in flying kit. Paxton’s face was white where his goggles had been and black around the mouth and chin from the blow-back of the Lewis. O’Neill’s face was rubbed green with grass-stain.

“I don’t care who starts,” Cleve-Cutler said.

“Fucking maniac tried to kill me,” O’Neill said. “Tried to kill himself too. I don’t mind that , he can kill himself any time he likes, I’ll hold his coat.” All his Australian accent had vanished.