Hornet’s Sting (2 page)

The Pup was well-named, being small and nimble and not tremendously fast, and it didn't have as big a bite as its opponents; but the pilots thought it was a great improvement on the FE2b. So did the German Air Force. Much work was done at the drawing boards of Fokker and Aviatik and Pfalz and Albatros and other companies.

Meanwhile, the battle of the Somme had dragged to an end like some great hulk of a beast that takes too long to die. In twenty weeks the two sides had mown down or blown up or drowned or incinerated more than a million men. The cost was probably fairly evenly divided. About a quarter of the casualties were dead or dying. It takes a long time to bury a quarter of a million men, so there would not be another battle for a while. And in any case, it was winter. Field Marshal Mud was in command, assisted by General Freeze.

* * *

Major Cleve-Cutler was C.O. of Hornet Squadron. He looked perky and optimistic, but this was because a flying accident had redesigned his face: since the doctors had stitched it together, one corner of his mouth went up where it used to go down, and one eyebrow had a challenging kink to it. This new face was a useful disguise, except at funerals. Perky optimism did not suit funerals.

Twice a week he met his flight commanders to make sure everyone was winning the war properly. Captain Gerrish led A-Flight. He was nicknamed “Plug” because he was so ugly; he was also tall and powerful and sombre. Only his friends used the name to his face. B-Flight was led by Captain Tim Lynch, M.C.: slim, softspoken and carefully groomed. Captain Ogilvy had C-Flight. His family lived in Ireland, so he was called “Spud”.

“Dull week everywhere,” the C.O. said. “Average casualties and no new types reported, so Wing says. Weather hasn't helped.”

“If the weather stays lousy, the Hun won't be flying,” Gerrish said. “Got more brains.”

“It's not the Hun I'm worried about, it's landing accidents,” Cleve-Cutler said. “One stunt like Pocock's is enough for me.” Pocock had touched down on a stretch of grass so soggy with rain that it clogged
his wheels. The nose dipped, the tail rose, and the Pup somersaulted and fell onto its back. Pocock broke his neck, the petrol tank split open, and two mechanics got burned while bravely failing to drag out a body which they did not know was dead.

“It's depressing to see that black scorch-mark every time you land.” Cleve-Cutler said. “The grass won't grow for ages.”

“We could plant a tree,” Lynch said. He seemed to be serious. Cleve-Cutler watched him, thoughtfully, but Lynch had no more to say.

“Morale's not a problem in my flight, sir,” Gerrish said. “Knocking down a couple of Huns would cheer everyone up, but nobody's complaining.”

“Guns are a problem,” Ogilvy said. “I like the Vickers when it fires. When it jams, it's bloody maddening.”

“On second thoughts, a tree is not a good idea,” Lynch said.

“Well, that's all,” Cleve-Cutler said. “We carry on giving the enemy his medicine. More offensive patrols. I need a word with Tim.”

Gerrish and Ogilvy left.

“You got a balloon this morning, I hear.”

“Yes, sir. Cooper and Simms and me.”

“But not in your patrol line.”

Cleve-Cutler went to a wall map of the British stretch of the Western Front. At the bottom he pencilled a neat cross. “Any further south and you would have been in the French sector,” he said.

“Golly.”

“A Colonel Merrivale's been on the phone. Pop down and see him, would you? There's a landing ground nearby. It's all here.” He gave Lynch a sheet of paper. “And take someone with you, why don't you? For company.”

Lynch and Lieutenant Simms flew to the landing ground. A car was waiting for them. It was mid afternoon, and the sky had the scrubbed, pale blueness that France gets only in winter.

They drove for about five miles, to a smashed village. Troops were everywhere: cooking, washing, sleeping, parading. “This is as far as I go, sir,” the driver said. “They're diggin' up the road ahead.”

Simms believed him. “What on earth for?” he asked.

“Not buried treasure, sir, so it must be sheer bloody spite.”

He went away and came back with their guide, a stubby corporal,
muddy to the knees. The corporal gave them steel helmets and said: “Run when I run. The Jerry gunners got regular habits, thank God.”

The road soon became a track and the track made little detours around flooded shell-holes. The snow had been trampled into a dirty sludge. Few men were about, and those few were all in a hurry; nobody paused to salute the officers. All around, the land was flat and empty except for a few shattered trees and patches of tired black smoke.

The corporal stopped at a heap of rubble. “Colonel's dugout's over there, sir,” he said, and pointed. Lynch saw nothing.

While they walked, there had been distant bangs and crashes. Now a soft, slow whistle suddenly magnified into a howl that became a scream, like an express bolting out of a tunnel. The pilots fell flat. The shell burst two hundred yards away and created a fountain of mud that did not want to come down. The corporal had not moved; he helped them to their feet. “Thanks awfully,” Simms said. The fountain was collapsing, leaving behind a stain of smoke.

“Quick as you can, sir!” the corporal snapped, and ran. The pilots skidded and stumbled. They were carrying pounds of mud on each boot. The steel helmets were flopping around their necks. The corporal was waiting at the dugout entrance, shouting at them. He hustled them down some wooden steps. They stood where they were put and made a lot of noise, gasping for breath. After the sharp sunlight their eyes were nearly useless. There were two candles. Presently someone said, “Thank you, corporal.” The man saluted, and left.

Lynch's eyes began to work again. He saw a colonel: a tall man with a face that made a brave start with a big, boney nose, then fell away to a thin mouth and a nothing of a chin. “You must be the fearless aviators,” he said. There was Yorkshire in his voice.

“I'm Lynch, sir. This is Lieutenant Simms.”

“You attacked the German balloon? Set it on fire?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why did you do that?”

The question was so strange that Lynch looked around, hoping for clues. All he saw was dirt walls, a corrugated-iron roof, a telephonist sitting in one corner, a sergeant and a captain in another, boxes for seats, and the usual military litter: weapons, belts, tinned food,
plates, maps, blankets, bottles, binoculars. “It was an enemy balloon, sir,” he said.

“Who told you to destroy it?”

“Nobody, sir. But —”

“What harm was it doing?”

“Well, sir, presumably the Hun observers were spying on our trenches, and on any activity behind —”

“They're not
your
trenches, Mr Lynch. You know nothing about what goes on here. These are
my
trenches, and
my
men. Come with me.”

They went back up the steps and into the dazzling daylight. Now and then the remote boom of artillery could be heard, and the gloomy crump of a shellburst.

“Look around,” Merrivale said. “What do you see?”

To the horizon, the landscape was empty, streaked with snow, abandoned. “Nothing, sir,” Lynch said.

“Nothing worth shelling? Correct. Shells are expensive,” Merrivale said. “Here comes one now.” The express rushed out of the tunnel, but this time it landed much further away, and the explosion merely buffeted their ears. “I've lost twenty men this afternoon. Twenty good men gone and nothing gained. Not counting the wounded. Harry!” The captain came up from the dugout. “Harry, be a good chap and take these officers over to Major Gibbons' batteries.”

It was another long slog through the same sort of mud. Sometimes the shellfire died out entirely for long minutes; sometimes it awoke and barked furiously. Harry said little. Simms looked at the naked landscape and said: “Must get jolly chilly here.”

“I don't suppose you brought any whisky.”

“Actually, no.”

The batteries were of field guns. Empty shellcases lay tumbled in heaps: it had been a busy afternoon. Major Gibbons turned out to be a thickset, red-headed Irishman. He looked cheerful, but that was just the face he had been born with. “Jesus wept!” he said. “I knew you flying idiots were all absolute maniacs, but is it utterly necessary for you to inflict your lunatic insanity on us? Eh?”

“I'm sorry, sir,” Lynch said. “Evidently I miscalculated.”

“We
miscalculated. We should have blown your idiot heads off when we had the chance. We've got a nice, well-managed war going on here. Stay away!”

Simms was baffled. “Well-managed, sir? I don't see ...”

But Major Gibbons had put his fingers in his ears. Simms looked at Lynch. Lynch shrugged. Then the battery fired. When the pilots turned to look, guns were recoiling and ejecting shellcases and exhaling smoke, and men were scrambling to reload. “Beautiful bang, isn't it?” Gibbons said. “I don't suppose you brought any whisky.”

“Afraid not.”

“Buzz off, then. Fly away. Harry, show them to Tommy Skinner. I doubt he's had much to laugh at today.”

“Oh, thanks awfully,” Harry said flatly.

They followed him across more snow-speckled mud, to the beginnings of the trench system. It was late in the afternoon, and the sun had lost whatever little warmth it had had. “This is frightfully good of you,” Lynch said. “I hope we aren't ruining your afternoon.”

“It was ruined already.”

They trudged along communication trenches and into reserve trenches, squeezing past soldiers whose khaki had long since turned to the colour of mud. The men wore greatcoats, mufflers, woollen gloves; many smoked pipes; all wore steel helmets. They had the slack, resigned air of travellers waiting for a train that has been cancelled so often that it might never arrive. The occasional whistle of a shell or the fizz of a bullet did not disturb them. They were at home. It was filthy, cold and lice-infested, but it was home.

Tommy Skinner turned out to be another major, in another dugout. He wore a balaclava under his cap, two greatcoats and thigh-length rubber boots. He was listening on a field-telephone, and grunting every five seconds. Finally he yawned, and said: “Do my best. Can't say more.” He handed the phone to a signaller. “My compliments to Mr Arbuthnott, and I need a lieutenant and six men for a raid.” He turned to his visitors.

“They're Flying Corps, sir,” Harry said. “They shot down the Hun balloon.”

“Idiot bastards,” Skinner said. “Bastard idiots.”

“It was a mistake, sir,” Lynch said quickly.

“Wrong again,” Skinner said. “It was a crime. We have a tacit agreement with the enemy. Tacit means silent. Silent means they don't shell us and we don't shell them.”

Simms said, “With respect, sir, that's not war.”

“Of course it's not! And I'll tell you something else:
war
isn't war, either. Not all the time.” He fished a Colt revolver from a greatcoat pocket. “I am strongly minded to kill you two sparrows. Nobody would know, would they, Trotter?”

“No, sir,” said the signaller.

“Just a couple of bodies. Add 'em to the pile. Yes?”

“Got hit by shrapnel, I expect, sir.”

“War isn't war?” Lynch said. “Too deep for me, sir. I'm just a simple sparrow.”

“That Hun balloon,” the major said. “It went up every day, took a dekko behind our Lines, saw nothing doing, came down. Likewise with our balloon. Then you winged pricks turn up. Fritz thinks: they popped my balloon, they've got something to hide! An offensive, maybe! So he pops
our
balloon and he shells us like buggery, just in case.” He put the revolver muzzle in Lynch's ear. “How long is the British Front?”

“Sixty or seventy miles.”

He took the muzzle away. “Lucky guess. Can you have a sixty-mile battlefront on the boil, all year round?” He put the muzzle back to the ear.

“No, sir.”

“So why didn't you think of that?” Skinner roared. A rat scampered across the dugout floor and ran up the steps and he shot at it and missed. “See? Even the bloody rats can't stand you.”

Lynch smiled. “What are you grinning at?” Skinner demanded.

“Well ... here you are, sir, threatening to shoot me for being too warlike. I was just thinking how odd that was.”

“Thinking?
Sparrows don't think. You flap about the sky and you shit on the poor bloody infantry and that makes you a golden eagle. Well, go and see the troops. Find out what they think! Harry, take them up to B-Company. Find Captain Vine.” As they climbed the steps, he added: “And next time you visit the Lines, bring some whisky.”

The trenches became more crowded as they moved forward. In places the trench-wall had been smashed by shellfire; the chemical stink hung in the air; men in sheepskin jerkins were repairing the damage, shovelling dirt into sandbags. The pilots made room for stretcher-bearers, who were in no hurry; blankets covered the heads
and bodies but not the boots. The boots were exposed and angled at forty-five degrees to each other, just as the drill sergeant had taught. Simms touched a boot as it went past, and wished he hadn't.

Captain Vine was in the first trench, waiting for the dusk stand-to. Ice had begun to form.

“What the deuce does Jerry think he's playing at?” Vine complained. “Nobody starts an attack in January, for God's sake. This is just a damnfool temper-tantrum.”

Lynch said, “I'm sorry, we bust their balloon and we won't do it again.”

To everyone's surprise, Vine found that very funny. “Take a squint at this.”

Lynch climbed onto the step of the parapet and looked through binoculars, past a fuzzy fringe of barbed wire, across the wide wasteland to the German wire. Behind this was a notice, painted red on white. The setting sun picked it out beautifully:
TELL YOUR FUCKING FLYING CORPS TO LEAVE US ALONE. WE ARE
SAXONS.