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Authors: Derek Robinson

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BOOK: Hornet’s Sting
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He was constantly fiddling with the throttle-adjustment, which meant looking down, and when he looked up the aircraft was wandering, either sliding towards a collision or drifting into a hill of cloud. For the first time in his life, his size and strength were not enough; the effort of flying sapped his brain and the battering cold had no pity. Despair began to win, and the enemy did the rest.

Gerrish, his head rotating like an owl, saw them high above and behind the Pups: a cluster of biplanes, falling fast. He fired a couple of rounds to alert his wingman and wheeled the formation to face the attack. Morkel, head down, heard nothing, saw nothing. He looked up and was alone. For a long moment he was too weary to be surprised. White-hot eruptions of pain in his right leg changed all that. Bullets had ripped his calf, smashed his shin and his ankle. He collapsed onto the joystick and the Pup dived, which saved it from the guns of the next Huns. By the time they turned, Morkel was circling inside a large cloud, not because he wanted to but because his right foot was jammed on the rudder pedal. By gripping the leg with both hands he dragged the foot free. When the Pup flew into clear air he got the machine level and he pointed it at a glimpse of sunshine, which he knew must be west. Morkel was a better pilot than he knew. He was also more badly wounded than he knew. A bullet had nicked an artery. Blood pulsed into his flying boot until it leaked out of the bullet holes. Morkel flew the Pup until he fainted. After that it flew itself into the ground, which happened to be a flooded shell-hole. Nothing special about that. There were a million shell-holes, and all flooded.

* * *

The adjutant waited three hours before he told Wing, and Wing ordered the standard telegram to the next of kin, regretting to inform and so on. Morkel had not had time to unpack, and his batman was an old sweat who always left the bags on the bed until he saw the new pilot back from patrol.

Heeley was lying on the other bed, chewing on an unlit pipe, when Brazier arrived with a soldier to collect the bags. “You didn't lend
him anything?” the adjutant said. “Toothbrush, pyjamas, money?”

“No.”

“He didn't give a letter to post? You know what I mean.”

Heeley made a sour face. “Rotten job you've got, Uncle.”

“You don't give a tinker's cuss about my job.” The adjutant had opened Morkel's valise and was looking for a diary or pornographic pictures or a military secret: anything the family should not see. He tossed a pair of goggles to Heeley. “Those won't be any use to anyone in South Africa.” He shut the valise and gave it to the soldier and they went out.

Heeley put the goggles on and looked at the other bed. Morkel had been its third occupant in eight weeks. Flying was good fun; Heeley liked every minute of it. Coming back to earth wasn't so enjoyable.

Still, these were jolly good goggles. Heeley cheered up. Time for drinks, dinner, some poker, a bit of a singsong, and clean sheets in a warm, dry bed, which was more than the Poor Bloody Infantry got in their squalid trenches.

* * *

The weather stayed dry but very cold. All three flights went on Deep Offensive Patrols. Nobody died. If a flight was not on patrol, it went up and practised close-formation flying and manoeuvring by hand signal and how to attack in arrowhead or echelon or line-astern. One Pup lost a piston. Another overheated because of an oil leak. Both got down safely.

“A quiet day,” the adjutant said aloud as he wrote up the squadron diary. “It seems the Hun fliers have no stomach for the fight.”

“Possibly,” Lacey said. “But on the whole I feel they are more likely to be on leave in Frankfurt.”

“All of them? In Frankfurt? What on earth for?”

“For the opera. Paul Hindemith is conducting a new production of
Der Rosenkavalier
. The reviews have been ecstatic.”

The adjutant leaned back and linked his muscular hands behind his heavy head. “Ecstatic ... I don't believe I've ever met an ecstatic Hun. Not much to laugh about when you've got half a yard of bayonet through your giblets.”

“That reminds me. Mr Dash's cousin sent him a large box of best
Worcester pork sausages. We are lucky that the sergeant at the fuel depot has a passion for English sausages. He gave me five hundred gallons of diesel. The generator will carry on making electricity for another month.”

“If I got you a Hun, sergeant, a nice fat Hun, would you bayonet him?”

“Only if he had tickets to
Rosenkavalier
, sir.”

Brazier made a sour face. “You're not much of a fighting man, are you? Sausages and diesel, instead of blood and guts.”

“True. But then, you're not shaving by candlelight, sir.”

They sat and stared at each other across the adjutant's desk.

“This war has ruined the army,” Brazier growled. “I should be at the Front, not listening to cocky little pricks like you.”

“Well, every prick serves its purpose,” Lacey said mildly. “Otherwise none of us would be in this world. Not even you, sir.”

“What?”
Brazier flung the squadron diary at him, and missed. Lacey was out of the office before Brazier could untangle his legs. Lacey kept going. His assistant, a corporal clerk, grabbed his cap and followed. “You mustn't say things like that, sarge,” he said. “Honest.”

“It was irresistible. Besides, I know where to get soft toilet paper for the officers' mess, and Cleve-Cutler has piles, and Brazier knows it.”

“Strewth,” the corporal said.

“He has the bayonet,” Lacey said, “but I have the bog-roll. The way to the C.O.'s heart is through his sphincter.”

* * *

Next day the sun came up as dull as a counterfeit sovereign. It was only ground mist that dulled it, and half of A-Flight took off to make the first patrol. The other half followed after breakfast. Now the sky was blue as a lagoon. The barometer was high and steady. It was a good day for a spot of high-flying slaughter. By noon, B- and C-Flights had done their stint and nobody had fired a shot except to keep the guns from freezing. It was odd. Even the German Archie lost interest after a few inaccurate rounds. The squadron sat down to lunch with nothing to boast or bitch about.

“What do we eat today?” the count asked a servant.

“Brown soup, sir. Mutton. Steamed treacle pudding.”

“Oh.” His shoulders slumped. “Brown and brown and brown. All English cooking is brown.”

“Steady on,” Munday said. “Burnt toast isn't brown. And what about porridge?”

“Porridge is the revenge of the Scots upon the English,” McWatters said.

“Come to Russia,” the duke said. “We give you soused herring, smoked eel, quails' eggs with paprika, red cabbage, white cabbage, green cabbage, baby venison stuffed with . . . stuffed with ...” He looked at the count.

“Russian stuffing. Impossible to describe.”

Soup was served. “Also vodka,” the duke said. “Russia has three hundred different kinds of vodka.”

“Which is best?” Simms asked.

“All are best.”

McWatters sniffed. “I bet the average serf doesn't eat too many five-course meals washed down with buckets of vodka.”

“No serfs in Russia,” the count said. “Serfs abolished. All free.”

McWatters was taken aback. “Free,” he said. “You mean free as in a democracy?”

“Not in Russia,” the duke said firmly.

“If Russian people need democracy, Tsar will decide,” the count said.

“Don't need,” the duke said. “Tsar told me.”

Cleve-Cutler had coffee in the anteroom with Spud Ogilvy and the duke.

“This duel has to be settled,” he said. “I have decided on the time, the place and the weapons.” Ogilvy frowned at the sugarbowl. The duke was impassive. “Your weapons will be Sopwith Pups. The place will be the sky. The time will be thirty minutes from now.”

The duke did his best to be calm. He nodded, and he stirred his coffee until he made it overflow, and then he abandoned it. “Very well,” he said. He put his hat on and saluted and went away.

“I do wish he'd stop doing that,” the C.O. said.

“What d'you want me to do?” Ogilvy asked. “Apart from not kill him.”

“Look, Spud. Wing says Brigade says the politicos say we've got to keep the Russians happy. So he must have a duel to save the precious
honour of his Tsar. This is the best I can think of. Put on a show. Maybe he'll settle for a draw.”

“Maybe he'll die of fright.”

Cleve-Cutler finished his coffee, and drank the duke's coffee too. “I wish I'd never taken this bloody silly job,” he said. “The war's all right, but the people are impossible.”

* * *

The two Pups took off, side by side. At two hundred feet, the duke swung away and came around in a full circle, seeking an early chance to attack. Ogilvy was not there. He was climbing hard. A job-lot of broken cloud was drifting in from the northwest, and Ogilvy wanted to take advantage of it. The duke climbed after him, but he lacked Ogilvy's cleverness at the controls and he was always lagging behind.

The rest of the squadron was out, watching. “This is just makebelieve,” the C.O. told the adjutant.

“What if a make-believe bullet kills someone stone dead?”

“Dunno. What do
King's Regulations
say?”

“They call it sacrilege. It comes somewhere between sabotage and sodomy.”

“Very uncomfortable.” The C.O. aimed his binoculars at the sky. “Hullo, action.”

The pop-pop-pop of a Vickers sounded faintly.

“That's the Russian,” Gerrish said. “Miles out of range. No patience.”

Ogilvy had levelled out at four thousand feet. He throttled back and flew a wide circle to let the duke catch up. He could see the man's head moving as he looked up and down, fussing and fiddling with the controls, peering through the telescopic Aldis sight, ducking again to search for more power. Ogilvy reversed his turn and offered his Pup as a distant target. The Russian fired, made no allowance for bullet-drop or deflection or the price of apples, and missed by a street.

Ogilvy shook his head. He persisted with his turn until he was pointing straight at the other Pup. The closing speed was about two hundred miles an hour.

In only a few seconds the duke saw Ogilvy's machine charging and enlarging, and almost upon him. Instinctively he raised his arm in
defence, and saw the underside of wings and fuselage flash above his head. Ogilvy knew the clearance was a comfortable ten feet; but the duke was startled by the extra roar, and felt his aeroplane wallow in the wash, and was amazed that they had not collided. He dragged his Pup around in the hope of getting a snap shot as Ogilvy went away. The sky was empty. Again.

It could not be true, and it wasn't. As Ogilvy hurdled the duke, he tipped the Pup onto its wingtips and let it fall away. He lost five hundred feet but gained such impetus that when he pulled out and climbed again, the little fighter went up as if it were weightless. Within a minute he was cruising along, two lengths behind the other Pup and slightly below it. The machines wandered about the sky, one trailing the other like a faithful dog.

On the ground, this earned applause.

“Why?” the count asked.

“Captain Ogilvy is sitting in a blind spot,” Gerrish said. “The duke can't see him.”

“That is not a duel.”

“Be thankful. Spud could have blown his head off a dozen times.”

The duke dipped his wings to help him search left and right. He was puzzled, and he felt cheated, and also mocked by some childish English joke, sending him up here for no purpose. Then a red signal flare fizzed past him and soared away. It came from behind. He twisted in his seat and saw nothing. Ogilvy reloaded the flare pistol. This time the streak of red was even closer. The duke swore, and dived away. Ogilvy followed.

For ten minutes, Ogilvy chased him all over the sky. No matter how abruptly the Russian skidded or rolled or plunged, Ogilvy was always there. It was a circus act. People on the ground were laughing. The duke looked up when a shadow darkened his cockpit, and saw Ogilvy's Pup exactly above him. He could have hit the wheels with a billiard cue. This was a mockery. And then clouds came and saved him.

His Pup charged into the biggest cloud and he relished the blessed grey oblivion. He came out, one wing down, and made for the next nearest hiding place, and the next. When he popped out, nose up, engine straining, he was into dazzling sunshine.

No sign of the frightful Ogilvy. Excellent.

He cruised around for a couple of minutes. The duel had turned into a farce. So that was a second insult to add to the first.

The clouds parted and he looked down and saw Ogilvy's Pup a thousand feet below. Perhaps the duel wasn't over yet. He shoved the stick forward and said a short Russian prayer. It was time for God, who blessed the Tsar, to do a little something now for the Tsar's cousin.

* * *

Ogilvy landed in a break between the showers.

“I didn't kill him, sir,” he said, “but he's not back, so I don't know what's happened.” They were in the C.O.'s office, drinking coffee.

“You put up a hell of a show, Spud. You had him by the throat, and he must know that. Honour is satisfied, for God's sake.”

“Honour may be. What about pride?”

Cleve-Cutler grunted, and went to the window. Clouds the colour of coal dust were gathering. “Winter isn't good for aeroplanes,” he said. “Mildew in the canvas, rot in the spars, rust in the cables ...” The telephone rang.

He answered it, and said, “Yes, he's one of mine.” He listened some more, and said, “I'm sorry he bothered you. Can you put him on the line?” After that he did a lot of listening and grunting. “I see ... Well, refuel and return. That's all.” He hung up.

“Where is he?” Ogilvy asked.

BOOK: Hornet’s Sting
4.11Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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