Derek Robinson - War Story

She got up and sat astride him, and held his hands so that his arms were raised. “Tell, tell,” she said.

“It was a Fokker two-seater. We were miles high. He must have come out of the sun – they do that if they can – because first thing we knew, his tracer was buzzing past. It really does buzz, just like a lot of hornets chasing you. He was behind us but we’ve got a really spiffing new gun that fires backwards, over the tail, so I peppered him good and hard with that.” Her fingers tightened. “Then somehow we got behind him and I used the nose gun. We were so close I could see the Hun gunner, he looked very surprised. Then he tumbled back and his gun pointed up in the sky, so I knew I’d killed him.” Now her grip was almost painful. “The Fokker tried to dive but he wasn’t fast enough. I fired the rest of the drum into the pilot and of course the pilot sits on the fuel tanks so I hit those too and all of a sudden, whoosh!” Her nails were digging into his flesh. “The flames are so bright, all yellow and red, and they burst out so suddenly, it’s not like something burning, it’s more like an enormous flower in the sky. Beautiful. Unbelievably beautiful.”

He could feel great tension in her arms and thighs, squeezing and pressing. Abruptly she relaxed and fell on top of him, biting and pinching, not enough to hurt but enough to make him wrestle. At first he tried to win. Then he discovered it was more fun to lose. The fun was becoming serious when she made them both roll into the water, which was too deep for wrestling.

There were towels in the boathouse. They dried each other, which was fun of a different kind, and finished off the claret. “You haven’t asked me how big my machine-gun is,” he said.

“I don’t need to,” she said.

In the air, Douglas Goss had never suffered so much as a scratch. It was always on the ground that things fell on him or collapsed under him, and he was usually limping, or nursing an arm, or wearing a strip of plaster. None of this made any difference to Goss’s skill as a pilot, but sometimes he worried about the danger of having some innate physical weakness. He kept a close watch on all parts of his body, including his head. “I think I’m going bald,” he told Dando.

“Not impossible.” Dando sat him in a chair and ruffled his hair. “Looks perfectly adequate to me.”

“Really? You should see my hairbrush. Dreadful sight. The thing is…” Goss smoothed his hair. “Well, you see, I’m the only son in the family so everyone expects me to keep the line going, and I read somewhere that baldness can also mean problems with the plumbing. You know, impotence and all that.”

“There’s absolutely no evidence that I know of.”

Goss nodded and frowned. “D’you think I could have an X-ray?” he asked.

“Maybe,” Dando said. “It depends which part of the problem you want X-rayed.”

Goss nodded again, and hunched his shoulders. “Bloody tricky, isn’t it?”

“Why don’t you think it over, Dougie? There’s no rush. These things take years to come about. See me when you get back from patrol. I’ll change that plaster on your elbow, too.”

Flying Orders for the day were that there were no orders except to fly and to harass the enemy. Goss and Stubbs took that to mean ground-strafing, which had the great merit of being terrific fun and of not requiring them to spend two hours beyond the Lines: as soon as they had used up their ammunition they could honourably fly home. The sun was up. It looked like a good day to grab half an hour at the pool between patrols.

A new pilot, called Black, asked Goss if he might follow and generally hang about to see how ground-strafing was done. “Be my guest, old chap,” Goss said. “Make yourself conspicuous. If they’re shooting at you they won’t be shooting at me.”

Goss had a nasty moment while he was above the Trenches. The FE got violently buffeted. There was no archie; the wind was light; for a horrible moment he thought a main spar had snapped and thrown the plane out of control. Then it bounced against another buffet and he felt ashamed of his own stupidity. The turbulence was caused by shell-bumps. He had forgotten about the eternal barrage and he was low enough to be caught in the shove of air displaced by the bigger shells. Which meant they had nearly hit him. What a bloody silly way to die, blown up by your own artillery! He climbed hard. Even so, he actually saw a shell, one of the huge projectiles flung by the great howitzers, as it poised for a second at the top of its arc. Stubbs saw it too, and kissed it goodbye.

Goss flew well beyond the German trench-system before he turned. He knew he was unlikely to find any worthwhile target near where the shells were falling, and he had decided to leave infantry camps alone. With so much strafing taking place the Hun was bound to be protecting them. What he wanted was a nice little unit on the march, a couple of hundred men crossing a field or going up a lane, with their rifles slung and no heavy machine guns nearby. That would be perfect.

There was the usual casual traffic wandering about the sky, the usual sporadic archie, a couple of minor scraps too far away to matter. Goss raised a glove to Black, and tipped the FE into a dive. Black waved back, and began circling.

Goss expected a lot of ground fire to start coming up at him, and it did. Much of it was coming from his right, so he swung to his left and ran away from it. The big Beardmore was roaring like several lions and the FE seemed perfectly balanced. It was just like driving a big racing car down a very long, steep hill.

Stubbs pointed to a road but Goss had seen a small river and he chose that because it meant he could get below the surrounding land and then, with any luck, pop up and surprise someone. He raced just above the water and tried not to think about telephone wires. Naked men stopped washing and stood up, or ran, or sometimes jumped into the river. They were not important enough to shoot; and besides, Goss felt squeamish about shooting naked men. A bridge appeared, and then rows of poplars, forcing Goss to turn away. He chased his shadow across a little field, jumped the fence and found what he wanted waiting in a much bigger field. A company of infantry, standing waiting to be killed.

Perhaps they were tired; perhaps they were new to the Front; perhaps they were badly led. They were certainly surprised. Stubbs swung his Lewis like a scythe and shot fifteen or twenty men before they moved. Goss gave the FE a little rudder so that he could aim his own fixed Lewis into the scattering mass, and as he kept firing he could see the line of his bullets advancing as fast as the FE, knocking over soldiers as if they were all tripping on the same unseen obstacle. He flew too low at the end and actually hit a couple of men with his undercarriage. Stubbs saw this, and howled with delight. “No bloody road sense!” Goss shouted.

By the time he had turned and come back, Stubbs had changed the drums and the field was dotted with running men. Goss chased them and Stubbs shot them. He missed a very tall man in a distinctive helmet, who stopped and shook his fist, so Goss came back and chased him until Stubbs cut him down. Rifle fire was beginning to fizz past the FE. A few holes spotted the wings like raindrops. Goss was unworried; panicky troops were rotten shots; it would have to be a very lucky bullet indeed that did any real harm. And so it was. A very lucky bullet struck the engine and smashed the crankshaft. The engine stopped dead. Goss had just enough height to clear the fence and land in the next field.

Stubbs jumped out, Goss fell out. Stubbs had the flare pistol and he shot an incendiary flare into a fuel tank. They ran away from the slaughter.