A Splendid Little War (24 page)

“They dropped their
hats
to expose themselves?” Dextry said. “What peculiar people. In Ireland they'd say you were away with the fairies.”

“Well, they
were
peculiar,” Duncan said doggedly. “They thought Gerry was an angel. Because of his wings.” That produced a roar of laughter. Duncan didn't join in. He aimed a finger at Dextry. “It's no dafter than half the stuff you Irish Catholics believe about seeing the Virgin Mary up a tree and so on.”

“Not guilty. Since Passchendaele, I'm an atheist.”

“That's nothing. I'm a Protestant,” Pedlow said. “All my family are Ulster Protestants. The worst kind. Ulster Prods are never happy unless everyone's miserable.”

Hackett murmured something to Oliphant. “No religion in the Mess,” Oliphant told them. “No religion, no politics, no women.”

“Not much left,” Dextry said. “Oh, well.” Brandied peaches had arrived. Then there was the unusually sharp Cheddar. They felt well fed and unworried now that Pedlow's crash had become a big joke. They settled down to inventing nicknames. In the R.F.C., every good squadron had lots of nicknames. Drunken Duncan was a start. Jessop talked balls so he was Junk Jessop. Oliphant sounded like an elephant: Tusker Oliphant. Dextry had crashed so often he was called Wrecks. Or even Rex. Tiger Wragge was obvious. The adj was always Uncle.

Hackett wasn't there to comment. He had left with Lacey. Nobody suggested giving Lacey a nickname. He was on the squadron but he wasn't in the club.

“Uncle wants the colonel's nurse to stay on as squadron doctor,” Hackett said. “You've got to be a captain to be an army doctor, haven't you?”

“Commission her,” Lacey said. “Make her a flight lieutenant.”

“Can I do that? Yes, of course. Promoted in the field. Flight Lieutenant Perry. Good. I've done it.”

They were in Lacey's radio room, drinking port while Lacey tried to open the despatch case, using a bunch of keys found in Kenny's bedroom. “Nothing works,” he said.

“That bag's damned heavy,” Hackett said. “He didn't come here just to see we got paid.”

The adjutant came in, carrying his tunic, his sleeves rolled up. “Well, he's cleaned and gutted and sewn up and preserved and dressed in his best and boxed up for London,” he said. “And I hope they say thank-you but I don't suppose they will. Is that port?”

Lacey poured him a glass. “We're stymied here. Maybe the colonel kept the key on his person.”

“We would have found it. She emptied him of everything that mattered. Also a lot that you don't want to hear about. Nurse Perry is a godsend.”

“She's Flight Lieutenant Perry,” Hackett said. “You've got your doctor. Now we need a locksmith. Is there a safe-cracker on the squadron?” Brazier shrugged.

“In the cinema,” Lacey said, “they just shoot the lock out.”

“It's quarter-inch steel,” Brazier said. “A bullet would jam the mechanism.” His meaty fingers prodded the case. “Ox hide.” He opened a desk drawer and took out a trench knife. He hacked and slashed until the case fell open and despatches spilled onto the floor. “What you might call a short cut,” he said.

Much of the mail was routine, but Hackett picked out a heavy buff envelope, sealed with red wax, addressed to Griffin. Inside it was a smaller envelope marked SECRET. Inside that were orders for the squadron to proceed to Ekaterinoslav with all speed. “Good,” he said.
“We're leaving. Off to join Denikin's mob. I'm getting tired of this place.”

“And you've got the D.S.O.” Lacey waved a letter. “Apologies from the War Office. Regrettable delay. They got you mixed up with another Hackett in the Pay Corps.” He shook the envelope. “No sign of the medal. Or the ribbon.”

“Here, take this,” Brazier said. “Belonged to Kenny. His tunic was in tatters but I saved the ribbons.”

Hackett smoothed out the little dark-green-and-blue strip. “Well, hell,” he said. “I must have done something to deserve it, but I'm buggered if I can remember what.” He heard the flat voice and asked himself if that was how a commanding officer should sound. Would Griffin have talked like that? Griffin talked big and aimed high. And was dead. Hackett cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. “First things first. Tomorrow's funerals. Lacey: you'll read the service. Uncle: get the graves dug; drill the pallbearers and the rifle-volley men. No cock-ups. I suppose I should say a few words.”

“Lacey's good at that,” Brazier said. “He'll knock something together for you.”

They sipped their port. Faintly came the sound of singing from the dining car. Lacey took a pencil and poked the ruined despatch case. “Damaged in action,” he said. “Strafed by Bolo fighters.”

“Bastards,” Hackett said. “Ruthless bastards.”

The squadron walked through the morning mist to the graves. Marching in formation was not possible on this springy turf with its patches of wet heather. The air crews and the ground crews formed a hollow square and waited. Nobody spoke, nobody moved. Everything was grey and damp and motionless. Jessop muttered: “What's keeping them?”

“Patience,” Dextry whispered. “Give the poor men their due. They'll only die the once.”

When the burial party came out of the mist, there was no precedence: the air mechanic was carried alongside the wing commander. The pall-bearers trod carefully, looking at the ground: nobody wanted to stumble. The C.O. walked behind, with the adjutant and Lacey. Then came six sergeants with rifles. Brazier had heard all about officers and their nervous trigger-fingers. He wanted trained and reliable men.

“Hats off,” Oliphant said.

Brazier lengthened his stride and got to the graves first. Planks had
been placed across them. He watched carefully as the coffins were lowered onto the planks and the pall-bearers took a pace back. There was ample room; Brazier had been up at dawn, showing the
plennys
exactly where to throw the earth. He nodded to the C.O. Hackett did not respond. He was looking at the eastern sky, at a yellowish hazy blur where the sun was failing to burn through the mist. Brazier turned to Lacey and raised his eyebrows.

“We are gathered here to bury our two comrades,” Lacey said. It sounded fatuous, as he knew it would: everyone knew why they were there. Still, the padre always said it, so maybe it was a legal requirement. “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord,” Lacey announced confidently. “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”

That was a very sound opener. Lacey had given some thought as to how he should handle this burial service, and he knew that he couldn't beat a solid, simple yet familiar reassurance that things aren't as bad as they look. The Church knew how to buck up a glum congregation.
Never die
. Promises. Rich promises. After that, warm their hearts with loud hurrahs. He had some ideas for that too. But first there was Psalm 130.

Apologetic. That was the tenor of 130. It was full of suffering and inadequacy and pleading for help. God knows why the adjutant's
British Army Pocket Book, 1917
put Psalm 130 in Appendix III, Burial Service, but Lacey wasn't going to waste the squadron's time by telling them, for instance, that the Lord shall redeem Israel from all his sins. He was prepared to make a gesture towards the Almighty, and so he read verses one and six:

“Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice … My soul fleeth unto the Lord: before the morning watch, I say, before the morning watch.”

Enough of that. The morning had already begun; this was it. He closed the Pocket Book. Now for the heartwarming fanfare. He filled his lungs and orated:

Now God be thanked
From this day to the ending of the world!
Blow, bugle, blow! Was there a man dismayed?
Who rushed to glory, or the last parade?
Land of our birth, we pledge to thee:
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori!

He glanced at the adjutant. Brazier had a small, sardonic smile. He was shaking his head, almost in wonder. Lacey charged on:

Armed with thunder, clad with wings,
Men like eagles hunt their foes.
At home in the heavens, and heaven's their home.
See! In the sunrise their epitaph glows.

Hackett heard none of it. He was thinking of the other funerals he had attended, a few in England, where pilot training was famously deadly, the rest in France. Too many to remember. Long ago he had learned the trick of coping with funerals: you told yourself that the coffin was empty, the chap had been posted, so forget him. Often it really was half-empty, with sandbags to make up the weight. But this show was somehow different. He hadn't come to Russia for this. He'd come to fly, to put on a show for the Russkis, to bag a few Bolos. Not to put men he knew in holes at ten on a foggy morning.

There was a long silence. Everyone was waiting.

He stepped forward and spoke the few words that Lacey had written for him, sturdy stuff about the supreme sacrifice and the fighting spirit that beat the Hun and about memories that would never fade. He ended with a scrap of verse which Lacey said was written by a British soldier who now lay dead, far from home. “If I should die,” Hackett said, “think only this of me: that there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.”

The pall-bearers stepped forward and grasped the straps. The planks slid away. Lacey said his bit about man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and so on. Wing Commander Griffin and Air Mechanic Henderson vanished smoothly from sight. Brazier gave the order and the six sergeants fired a perfect volley, reloaded, fired again. Those who wished, came forward and scattered earth on the coffins. That was that. Two more chaps had been posted.

A night of rain had cleared the sky over London and washed the smoke away. The lapse was temporary: the smoke would be back; but for one morning at least, London got the full benefit of a summer sun in a cloudless sky, and the warmth put the city in a good temper. In the parks the grass was greener. At street corners the flower stalls were brighter. And on the steps of the Home Office, Jonathan Fitzroy felt too cheerful to stand still, and he clicked his fingers in a bad imitation of a gypsy rhythm. He stopped when an army officer got out of a taxi and limped towards him. “Colonel Johnson?” he said. “I'm Fitzroy.”

“Lieutenant-colonel, actually.” He was grey-haired and his face was as windbeaten as a ploughman's but a lot thinner.

“My apologies. I'm afraid I'm not very clever with ranks.”

“Neither am I. Admiral Kolchak offered to make me a general in one of his armies, but I had to decline.”

“Yes.” They went inside. “How long have you been back?”

“Landed two days ago. Barely had time to get my uniform cleaned.”

Fitzroy glanced at the faded khaki. “It's been in the wars, hasn't it?”

“The wars? That's about the only thing it hasn't been in.”

“Well, you must tell us all about it. We're a small committee on Russian affairs, to advise the P.M.'s office. First-hand news is exactly what we need.”

They went into a conference room and Fitzroy introduced him to the team. “Lieutenant-colonel Johnson commanded a battalion of the Hampshire Regiment in Siberia,” he said. “As soon as I knew he was in London I got in touch. We're very fortunate to meet a man who knew Admiral Kolchak personally.”

They took their seats.

“Hampshires,” General Stattaford said. “Regular or Territorials?”

“Territorials,” Johnson said. “First-class men. It was an honour to lead them. We were all set to fight in France but we got sent to India instead.”

“See any fighting there?”

“A little. Some police action.”

“Oh. No real campaigns, then.”

Johnson sat very still, with his arms resting on the arms of the chair. He kept his head slightly tilted, as if his neck muscles were tired. His eyes had the weary look of someone who has gazed too long at distances too great. “We served where our country sent us,” he said.

“India to Siberia,” Stattaford said. “Somewhat different climates.”

Johnson had nothing to add to that.

“What were your orders?” James Weatherby asked. “When you left India, that is.”

“To take my battalion to Omsk and to assist the White Russian Army to establish a new eastern front against the Germans. Omsk is about a thousand miles east of Moscow, and so not in any danger from the Germans. But that didn't matter because it took us two months to get to Omsk, and by then Germany had surrendered.”

“Two months,” Stattaford said. “Less than speedy.”

“Shipping was scarce. We sailed to Ceylon, then to Hong Kong, and to Singapore, and finally to Vladivostok, on the Russian Pacific coast. From there we took the Trans-Siberian Railway. It's a long way to Omsk, at least two thousand miles, and the train goes slowly. Sometimes not at all.”