Read Online War Story by Derek Robinson - Free Book Online Page A

don’t like rivers.” This was not true, but he wanted to put Lacey in his place.
    â€œActually, it’s a canal.” Lacey let the pencil fall, and this time did not catch it; instead he kicked it before it touched the floor, sending it flying into a corner. “The Somme canal. The river’s weedy, so the officers swim in the Somme canal.” Lacey was brisk now, dusting his hands. “It cleanses them of the corruption of combat, you see. It washes off the sweat of death.”
    â€œWhat rot.”
    â€œYes.” Lacey turned and smiled a smile of pleased surprise. “Rot sums it up nicely. What rot is war. Its stench is everywhere. Nothing can resist it. What rot.”
    â€œHow long have you been with the squadron, corporal?” Paxton asked.
    â€œEighteen months.” Lacey waited until Paxton’s mouth began to open and added:”Sir.”
    â€œEighteen months and still only a corporal, corporal.
Very
slow.”
    â€œYes. Sinfully languid, in fact.” He took a small brush from his desk and began tidying up his moustache.
    Paxton had had enough. “Come and get me when the adjutant surfaces,” he said, and made for the door.
    â€œDon’t lend him any money,” Lacey called. Paxton turned and stared. “He’ll try to borrow money,” Lacey said. “Don’t lend him any. It’s bad for him.”
    â€œWhat a preposterous idea,” Paxton said. “Corporal.”
    â€œHe picked it up in Egypt,” Lacey said. “Sir.”
    Driving back from Brigade headquarters, Rufus Milne had a lot to think about. To his surprise he found himself thinking about other matters. In particular, about his war and the number of times it had nearly killed him.
    This was something he never discussed, never mentioned in letters. He didn’t keep a diary. His response to danger was to forget it as soon as it had passed. This policy had worked very well: he suffered no nightmares, no spells of depression,none of the crippling anxiety which he knew some other pilots suffered when they were getting ready to fly. For nearly two years, Milne had done his job day by day, sometimes boring, sometimes exciting, and reckoned himself lucky to have it. Now, suddenly, as the car charged along a dead-straight road, wheels drumming, poplars flickering by, he saw himself in a plane that was cartwheeling across a turnip field like a blown-away windmill, and he felt sick.
    The plane was a Maurice Farman so the crash must have happened in 1914, soon after the squadron came to France. No trenches then, just armies and battles and confusion. Nobody knew where the enemy was (or, if they claimed they knew, they turned out to be wrong) so the RFC flew from dawn to dusk, endless reconnaissance patrols. The roads were crowded but the skies were empty; anyway, in those days enemy planes couldn’t hurt you. Milne was at five thousand feet, busily marking troop columns on his map and wishing he had some chocolate, when the engine stopped. No coughing or spluttering, no hesitation: sudden silence. It was a very final decision.
    He glided westward for several miles. The field he picked out looked green and smooth, but over the last two hundred yards the wind turned boisterous and blew him sideways, across a turnip field. He knew, as he saw the rows of turnips rushing past, slantwise, that his wheels would never run; and when they touched he wrapped his arms around his head. He felt like a man in a barrel over a waterfall: the machine was flailing itself to bits, smashing its nose and tail and wings, the earth and sky whirling, until the fit of rage had exhausted itself and Milne found himself sprawled in a battered cockpit and not much else.
    That was his fifth forced landing but his first real crash. He had seen nothing of it at the time, but now, driving this car, he could follow it all in his mind, perfectly clearly. Ten seconds of cartwheeling chaos, and he’d