A Splendid Little War (21 page)

Half an hour was not enough.

The bombs had to be carted from their dump in a distant corner of the aerodrome, and then fused and hung on the Nines. Some bombs turned out to be old and corroded – no surprise – and they had to be replaced. One bomb was too big and broke its hanger; more work. One was successfully hung before an armourer saw that it was a practice bomb: a dud. More delay. Griffin growled at them to get a move on. “You can have it fast, sir,” said a flight sergeant. “Or you can have it good. Which d'you want?” Half an hour was not nearly enough.

The crews, and those not flying who had come to watch, were glad of the rest. They sprawled on the grass and speculated what Russian women might be like. Not the peasants. They all seemed to be short and thick. Probably a bit aromatic too. Noblewomen must surely be different. Also Russian ballet dancers. They had legs, long lovely legs. Where were all the ballet dancers? Maybe in Moscow. “
Na Moskvu!
” Jessop said, and nobody laughed. Moscow was a thousand miles away and Jessop was all mouth and no brains.

The adjutant didn't attend. He was in his Pullman car when his
plenny
came in, highly excited about something, which turned out to be a train, pulling into an adjacent siding.

It was the personal express of Colonel Guy Kenny, V.C. and much more. The V.C. alone was enough to make Brazier suck in his gut and put extra snap into his salute. He knew about Kenny. Kenny was a legend in the British Army. Six feet three inches tall, the build of a rowing Blue, an eye-patch and a cheery smile. A couple of bullets had rearranged his left ankle, so he used a cane to help him walk. He wore a khaki kilt and a Glengarry bonnet and the purple ribbon of the Victoria Cross, the only British decoration whose ribbon carried a miniature replica of the medal, dull bronze, as tiny as a sequin. Brazier himself had a few medal ribbons, but that miniature turned every other award into a trinket.

“I'm afraid there's nobody here, sir,” he said. “They're all at the aerodrome. Preparing for an attack.”

“Perfect. We'll go and watch.”

Three years earlier, Guy Kenny had been a captain in the London Scottish Regiment. He was thirty. The regiment had been given a section of the German line to capture. That was on 1st July 1916, when one hundred thousand troops climbed out of their trenches and walked – as advised; there was no need to run; seven days of shelling had battered the enemy into silence – across the dry plain of the Somme, so much better than the clogging clay of Flanders. Quite quickly, they found that the artillery barrage had failed to silence the enemy. By nightfall – probably by midday – twenty thousand of that army were dead and forty thousand more were wounded. So began the Battle of the Somme. It was to last another eighteen weeks, but Guy Kenny's contribution was all over on the first day.

The London Scottish took their objective. Most attacks failed, but London Scottish was one of a few regiments to get through the German wire and kill the machine-gunners and capture the trenches. At a terrible price. Half the soldiers fell, either dead or wounded. In Kenny's section, all the other company commanders were killed; he was the only surviving officer. Now his men were fighting to hold trenches that had been knocked shapeless by the British bombardment and were cut off by a German barrage that turned no-man's-land into exactly that. They were running out of ammunition. A relief party of fifty-nine men left the British trenches with fresh supplies. Three got through. Yet the remnants of the London Scottish fought off German counter-attacks all day, and Guy Kenny won his Victoria Cross.

He should have been shot. Statistically, and by any military measurement of risk, his leadership in moving from trench to trench across open ground, often standing upright and directing fire where it was most needed, was sacrificial. It should have been swiftly ended by the enemy. They certainly tried. Shot in the ankle, he hopped and hobbled, and kept command. As the day wore on, and ammunition ran out, he had his men firing captured enemy rifles. When night fell, he counted the survivors, made the only sensible decision, and took them back to their own lines. One eye was closed by a sliver of shrapnel. He didn't need it. The night was too black to see much.

Griffin was squatting beneath the wing of a Nine, trying to see why an armourer was having so much trouble with the bomb-release mechanism, when he became aware that a couple of mechanics were suddenly
standing at attention, and he straightened up too quickly and banged his head and lost his cap.

“Colonel Kenny, sir,” the adjutant said. Griffin grabbed the cap; an R.A.F. officer couldn't salute bareheaded; besides, he was the C.O., for Christ's sake. The man he saluted was a giant. Griffin was looking at the ribbon of Britain's supreme award for valour. This was worse than being in the presence of royalty.

“We should have been flying twenty minutes ago, sir,” he said. That sounded apologetic. It pained him more than the bang on the head. “Problems with bombs. Too many duds.”

“I know how you feel. We had the same trouble with grenades on the Somme. Infuriating, isn't it?” Kenny's massive hand squeezed his shoulder. “Never mind, old chap. Soldier on.” It was meant to sound comforting. Griffin didn't want to be bloody comforted. He wanted to get on with his blasted job. He had to say something. He grunted.

“I'm doing a tour of the battlefields,” Kenny said. “Mission H.Q. sent me. While I'm here I give a little talk, tell your chaps how this show fits into the Grand Strategy. These are bombers, are they?”

“Yes, colonel. These are bombers. Those are fighters. And that rabble over there are pilots and observers.” Sarcasm leaked into Griffin's voice. Nothing was going right. Hangover. Unfit pilots. Unready bombers. Now this interfering hulk of a hero.

Kenny laughed. He seemed easily amused. “D'you know, I've never been up in a machine. Could I fit in a, what d'you call it, a cockpit?” He stepped onto the wing root of the Nine. “Ah, the faithful Lewis gun. Jolly reliable weapon, the Lewis …” He paused, and cocked his head to listen. “Are those more of your chaps returning?”

“You're too big, sir. You won't fit.” Resentment simmered inside Griffin. His R.A.F. competence was being challenged by a colonel in a kilt. “Please get off that aeroplane and let these men work on it.”

“Somebody's definitely coming.” Kenny searched the sky, trying to locate the sound. “Hear them?”

Griffin heard. “Not ours. Not Pumas, not Le Rhônes …” He suddenly realized the stupidity of his words, and turned and ran towards the air crews. Some had heard, and were standing. “Take off, take off!” he shouted. “Reds! Reds! Start up all machines! Get in the air!” Everyone ran. Ground crew sprinted. Pilots, heavy in flying kit, lumbered. Kenny got down from the Nine and joined Brazier. “By Harry, this is a stroke of
luck,” he said. “Never expected to be in the thick of the action so soon.”

“There's a dugout nearby, sir.”

“No fear. Front-row seat for me.”

The noise became a roar and ten Red fighters in a ragged line abreast flew over the hangars, fifty feet up, low enough for Kenny to see a pilot's face when he looked down. They passed overhead before they had time to attack. A few were two-seaters. As they went out of range, their gunners squirted brief bursts. The bullets made clods of grass jump like frogs. The line kept going.

“Not interested in us,” Brazier said. “They're after the White squadron over there.”

“Golly,” Kenny said. “Sitting ducks.”

All around, mechanics were trying to start engines. The procedure could not be hurried. Rush it and the engine would choke on fuel. Griffin and Hackett had ground crews who rushed nothing. They got it right and the Camels taxied fast and the tails came up and they were flying. Wragge's machine was moving, but slowly. Dextry followed. Jessop and Maynard made clouds of black exhaust and went nowhere. One bomber began to taxi. The other three coughed as their propellers kicked and stopped, and ground crews cursed and pilots sat and waited.

“I suppose those are Reds, too,” Kenny said. A thousand feet up, a neat arrowhead of three twin-engined aircraft had appeared.

“Big brutes, aren't they?” Brazier said. “Probably got big bombs, too.”

Griffin's Camel was still cranking up its airspeed – seventy, eighty miles an hour. It wasn't a fighting speed. He turned away from the enemy and climbed. Height gave advantage.

Hackett was behind him and below. He counted the Red fighters. Two Spads, two Nieuports, maybe a Fokker, and the rest were strangers. As he watched, the Reds dropped to twenty feet and stretched their line and hit the White squadron with a blaze of fire that was speckled with tracer. It was perfectly timed, lasted three seconds and then up and away. Hot stuff, Hackett thought. Some of the White DH9s had collapsed, others were burning. He looked down. Now Wragge and Dextry were in the air, and the other two Camels were finally moving. Give them a couple of minutes; the odds would be ten to six. Bloody sight better than ten to two. When he looked, the C.O. had gone.

Hackett wasn't altogether surprised. Once you reached five or six hundred feet, the immense sky could quickly swallow a little fighter like
a fly in a ballroom. He searched above him until he was defeated by the glare of the sun. He searched to right and left and saw nothing among the pink images turning green. He tipped the Camel on its side and scanned below. Nothing.

By then Griffin was far behind him, and heading flat-out for the Red fighters.

They were at five hundred feet, cruising lazily while the three Red bombers made their runs over the smoking wrecks of the White squadron. Griffin saw the bombs tumble out, just specks, too small to do much damage but their explosions sent a blast wave that made his Camel shudder. “Damned cheek!” he said. “You think you can just wander in here and …” Then he was amongst the enemy fighters, working rudder bar and stick as he hunted for a target.

Even in loose formation, the ten Reds made a swirling cloud. An all-brown Spad loomed up and soared away just as he thumbed the gun-triggers. Other guns were firing: bullet holes made a slick row of tatters in his lower left wing and he chucked everything into a right-hand bank, the Camel's best escape, made a vertical turn on a sixpence, and he was rewarded when a chequerboard two-seater wandered into his sights and all he had to do was fire and his twin Vickers battered the cockpit. The pilot threw up his arms. “No surrender!” Griffin shouted. That was his last word on the subject. Crossfire from a second two-seater smashed his propeller. Now he was easy meat. A Spad's guns shot him in the back. A burst from a Nieuport tore into his petrol tank. The Camel ignited, blew apart, trailed long sheets of flame on its brief journey to the ground.

Kenny was watching through binoculars. “Damn,” he said. “That doesn't look good.”

“It never does, sir,” Brazier said.

By now the rest of the Camels, and all but one of the Nines, were in the air. The crew of the broken Nine got out and walked away. Mechanics had removed the cowling and were looking at the engine.

“What next?” Kenny asked.

“It's what's called a tactical withdrawal, sir.” The Nines and the Camels had grouped and were droning to the west, away from the enemy. “We're outnumbered. If we do battle, we might lose all our bombers. Let's hope the enemy don't give chase. Low on fuel, perhaps.”

“Perhaps. But they're coming this way.” It was true: the line of Red
fighters was recrossing the aerodrome, dropping low as it came. Now they were in line astern.

“Dugout!” Brazier snapped, and ran.

Kenny frowned, and made a decision. “It is time to stand and fight,” he said. He walked to the Nine and heaved the Lewis gun from the observer's cockpit. A mechanic was running past when he saw Kenny and paused in surprise. “You,” Kenny said. “Bring spare drums.” He moved away, into an open space where he had freedom of fire.

The fighters strafed the Nine. As they passed overhead, Kenny braced himself and fired brief bursts, swinging his body again and again, until the line had passed and the Lewis was empty.

“New drum, please,” Kenny said. “You have to lead the target,” he explained to the mechanic. “Like shooting grouse.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good man. Look and learn, look and learn. You're doing a fine job, laddy.”

“They're coming back, sir.”

Only a very strong man could handle a Lewis gun as if it were a rifle, and even Kenny's arms were getting tired. The Red fighters circled, and attacked again, and this time they strafed Kenny and bowled him over while he still had a full drum. They strafed his mechanic, too.

“Courage above and beyond the call of duty,” the adjutant said. “Complete indifference to his personal safety. Resolution in the face of overwhelming odds. Look, I've written it down. Ah, thank you, Chef.” He took a black coffee and poured a slug of rum into it.

Hackett and Oliphant read the adjutant's notes. The three men were alone in the dining car. “I suppose it's one point of view,” Oliphant said. “The other is he was a bloody idiot.”

“That's unacceptable.”

“If you ask me, he was doolally,” Hackett said. “I've seen it coming. Several screws loose.”

“Not Griffin, you fools. Nobody in London will lose any sleep over Griffin. Casualty of war. Might have been knocked down by a tramcar. But Colonel Kenny V.C., killed
here
, on the premises,
that's
what we have to sort out.” He rapped the table. “
Think
, for God's sake. He'll probably
have a memorial service in Westminster Abbey. You must get it right.”

“I never saw it. I was miles away,” Hackett said.

“Beside the point. You still have to sign the report. You command the squadron now.”

Oliphant groaned, and put his head in his hands. “This is all a bad dream,” he muttered. “Too much vodka.”