Derek Robinson - War Story

“For God’s sake let’s get upstairs,” Paxton said. “I’m sick of being down here.”

The adjutant’s information had been right. The barrage went on, night and day, thundering perpetually and erupting into an hour of colossal, concentrated devastation every morning. It was said that the British guns stood wheel to wheel for twenty miles, that the hillocks of empty shellcases stood fifty feet high, that hordes of rats – maddened by the battering detonations – were fleeing from the Front, even that the bombardment could be heard by people living on the south coast of England. This last claim was true: men coming back from leave confirmed it; in fact some said the gunfire could be heard in London, when the wind was right.

So nobody had any doubt where the Big Push would be. The only question was when.

Meanwhile, Hornet Squadron was being worked increasingly hard: three patrols a day became normal, four not unusual. Inevitably, men died and machines crashed. Kills were claimed by Gerrish and Piggott and O’Neill (or by their observers) and a dozen crews said, more or less confidently, that the enemy plane had abandoned the fight in a steep and smoking dive. But three FE2ds were missing, one from each flight, and the ground crews were working through the night, every night, patching the battle damage and servicing the overstrained engines and occasionally washing the blood out of the cockpits. Boy Binns had his right arm almost shot off and Dando finished the job with a pair of scissors, kneeling in the wreckage of the observer’s cockpit in the middle of the field while his medics dragged the pilot clear and cut away his flying coat in order to find the bullet-holes. Dando got Binns onto a stretcher just as the wreckage caught fire with a rush that singed their hands and eyebrows. Binns’ arm got a quick cremation. Both casualties were in the squadron ambulance within minutes, and they got excellent surgical treatment within half an hour; there were casualty clearing stations everywhere, full of keen young doctors with nobody to save. The pilot died, perversely, while they were stitching up his chest and stomach. Shock, they said. Massive trauma and postoperative shock. Classic case of Moran’s Disease. The body got moran it could take.

Boy Binns survived. He had hardly any blood but somehow he survived. He felt rotten, he looked rotten and he developed pneumonia a month later, which killed him. That wasn’t what Cleve-Cutler wrote to his parents, of course. If they had to grieve, they might as well grieve over a more glorious death than pneumonia. Boy Binns went down gallantly, outnumbered but fighting pluckily to the end. Or some such. Cleve-Cutler knew what to say. He had written many letters before he wrote that one.

A curious thing happen to Paxton on the fifth day of the barrage. After their third and last patrol, at about seven in the evening, he went with O’Neill to report to the adjutant on what had happened up there and he couldn’t remember anything about it. “You mean you’ve lost your memory?” the adjutant said. They were in his office, out of the rain.

“No, no, of course not. I can remember yesterday, but today’s patrols are a blank. Isn’t that funny?”

“Come on, then,” O’Neill said. “What happened yesterday?”

“Um… Well… Nothing happened yesterday, did it?”

“You two got a flamer yesterday,” Brazier said. “At least, that’s what’s in my notes.”

“Hey, that’s good,” Paxton said. “That’s very good, isn’t it? My sainted aunt! A flamer! That’s tremendous.”

“Don’t drench your drawers, Pax, because we didn’t get one today,” O’Neill said. “In fact we got bugger-all on that last patrol except a chunk of red-hot archie through the wing.”

Brazier made a note.

“I seem to remember today was damn good fun,” Paxton said.

“You frightened a couple of Aviatiks, I suppose. Put down that he frightened a couple of Aviatiks, adj. And put down that he terrified me as usual.”

“Really?” Paxton said. “How?”

“I’m going to have a bath.” O’Neill went out.

“What on earth did he mean?” Paxton asked.

Brazier shuffled his notes together and put them away. “Bunny’s looking tired,” he said.

“Is he? I hadn’t noticed.” Paxton licked his lips and tasted the salty chemicals left by the blowback of the Lewis. It was a taste he enjoyed. “Dunno what he’s got to be tired about. All he does is drive the bus. I’m the one who does the hard work. Not that I’m complaining, adj. Bloody good fun.”

“So you say. From what you can remember. How about Private Watkins? Can you remember him?”

Paxton laughed. “The spider in the lawnmower…” Brazier raised his eyebrows. “Never mind, adj. Too complicated to explain. Yes, I remember Watkins, poor little chap. I thought you were a bit hard on him, to be frank. I mean, why not—”

“Why not kiss it better and give him sixpence for sweets? Because that’s not how battles are won.”

“Oh, come on! Watkins isn’t going to win a battle for anyone, ever. He’s—”

“He’s tried to desert three times already, so his company commander told me. He’ll never win a battle, you’re right there, but he could easily help to lose it. You let one man get away because he doesn’t feel like fighting and the rot spreads through his platoon, his company, his battalion. They go into battle but they won’t stand and fight. They run, just as Watkins ran. They abandon their comrades on the flanks and leave them exposed to the enemy. Far better to shoot one man now than lose a thousand when the line fails.”

“Good God,” Paxton said, all humour gone,”he’s not going to be shot, is he?”

“If I had my way, yes. I’d parade the battalion in a hollow square, I’d march Private Watkins in, I’d read the charge and the penalty and I’d have him shot, which would save a lot of decent men’s lives later on. But it’s not up to me, and I don’t know what they’ll do with him.”

Paxton had strolled over to a window. “Pity about the rain,” he said. “Just as we got the tennis courts finished.”

“If you don’t want to be thrown through that window,” Brazier said,”you’d better leave by the door.”

Paxton left by the door. Lacey was in the Orderly Room, unpacking gramophone records. “Watkins is quite safe for the moment,” he said. “He was sentenced to death as a matter of form, but in view of the imminent battle it seemed superfluous, so they’ve done the usual thing and given him a chance to redeem his crime… I know it’s a matter of taste, but I wouldn’t have thought Watkins was your type.”

Paxton frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well…” Lacey blew some straw off a record. “He’s quite pretty, I suppose, but sullen. And I’m sure he’s never owned a toothbrush in his life. No ambition there. And you are ambitious, aren’t you?”

Paxton thought about that. It made him uncomfortable, so he asked: “What was all that about redeeming his crime?”

“Don’t you know? I assumed everyone knew. They’ll give Watkins the most dangerous job in the first wave. That will give him the greatest chance to demonstrate enough bravery and devotion to duty and similar abstract nouns to wipe out his offence.”

“Oh,” Paxton said. “I hadn’t heard of that.”

“Oh yes. You’d be surprised what an incentive to heroism crime can be. Young Watkins will emerge with the VC. You watch.”

Cleve-Cutler took Piggott out of a game of poker and led him to the end of the bar, where Foster was standing. “I think you ought to hear this, Tim,” he said. “Just wait a sec while I get Dando.” He went away.