A Splendid Little War

by Derek Robinson

Genres: Historical Fiction; Black Humor

Synopsis

The war to end all wars, people said in 1918. Not for long. By 1919, White Russians were fighting Bolshevik Reds for control of their country, and Winston Churchill (then Secretary of State for War) wanted to see Communism 'strangled in its cradle'. So a volunteer R.A.F. squadron, flying Sopwith Camels, went there to duff up the Reds. 'There's a splendid little war going on,' a British staff officer told them. 'You'll like it.' Looked like fun. But the war was neither splendid nor little. It was big and it was brutal, a grim conflict of attrition, marked by incompetence and corruption. Before it ended, the squadron wished that both sides would lose. If that was a joke, nobody was laughing.

Release date: December 20, 2012

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Print pages: 340

Sample

Bennett had lost the aerodrome.

Embarrassing. Damned embarrassing.

It couldn’t be more than a mile or two away, but the Camel was shaking like a wet dog. Whatever was wrong with the engine resulted in this huge vibration. His compass was a blur. Smoke swirled into the cockpit and made him choke and cough. Something in the engine had probably broken, maybe a piston rod or a cylinder head, Bennett wasn’t terribly au fait with the workings of a rotary engine. It stuttered and threatened to quit. It was throwing oil: his goggles were spattered with the muck. If he ducked his head to avoid the oil he couldn’t see where the Camel was going, and he knew he had to find a field, any field would do. But when he raised his head and searched, the oil spatter got worse and he couldn’t see through the smoke. He could switch off the engine and stop the spray of oil but he knew the Camel would glide like a brick and he hadn’t much height anyway. What he didn’t know was this Camel was old and tired. The squadron always gave a new boy the worst aeroplane. He glimpsed the top of a pine tree racing past. Crash meant fire, he knew that, knew he must be able to get out fast. He looked down to unfasten his seat belt and didn’t see the next pine. It clipped his left wing. The Camel spun. Bennett got flung into a black and spiky forest at a speed that left his wits far behind him, which spared him the knowledge of what he hit and what it did to him. The Camel flew on, sideways, and met a tall oak tree. Birds panicked for half a mile around. Then silence again.



Butler’s Farm aerodrome was three miles from Epping Forest. The airfield had been hastily built in 1917, when Germany began sending formations of Gotha bombers to raid England, and fighter squadrons were hurried back from France to reassure the frightened civilians. The Gothas couldn’t guarantee to hit any target smaller than a town, and sometimes not even that; and the number they killed would have been less than a hiccup on the daily death toll in the Trenches. But the idea of total war was new and shocking to civilians, and so a squadron of the latest Camels came to Butler’s Farm in Essex. The pilots liked it: London was just down the road. A few enemy machines got shot down in flames while Londoners applauded. The threat receded. The Camels returned to France for what, to everyone’s surprise, turned out to be the last year of the war. Not everyone lived to be surprised: air combat killed several, and a few Camels went out of control and buried themselves and their pilots deep in the mud of the Western Front. It could be a lethal little fighter.

After the Armistice, the surviving pilots flew back to Butler’s Farm and the squadron set about rebuilding. Jeremy Bennett was one of the new boys. Eighteen, tall, captain of rugby and cricket at Lancing, he passed out top at Flying Training. The war was over, but his type was exactly what the new Royal Air Force was looking for.

Now the adjutant couldn’t find him.

He’d taken off two hours ago, so he was probably out of fuel, and phone calls to all the local aerodromes drew a blank. The adjutant had asked a couple of pilots to go up, fly around, make a search. Nothing. It was early March, cold and grey. The day was wearing on. A mist was forming.

Then the adjutant’s phone rang. The police had heard from a farmer who’d seen a plane go overhead, sounding wrong, making smoke. Heading? Sort of north, he’d said. When? Hour ago, maybe hour and a half. Why had he waited so long? Harrowing his field. Finished harrowing, went home, reported it. The adjutant pencilled a cross on a map.

It wasn’t much of a search party – two officers and a sergeant mechanic – but then it wasn’t much of a clue. They took the adjutant’s car, got lost in the lanes but eventually found the farm, and the farmer. “Seemed wrong,” he told them. What sort of wrong? “Well, you know. Sounded bad.” He coughed harshly, to demonstrate. “Worse than that. And I saw smoke, too.” Asked how high it was, he pointed to a flock of crows heading homewards. “Twice as high as them.” They got in the car and drove on.

They were both pilots: Wragge, an Englishman, and Hackett, an Australian. At twenty-two, they were hardened veterans of the air war. They had gone to France in the autumn of 1917 and were lucky enough to have joined a flight whose leader could count up to one. He held up his index finger. “Look after Number One,” he told them. “For Christ’s sake, don’t make the Supreme Sacrifice. That’s not going to win this bloody stupid war. The clown who said it’s noble and honourable to die for your country never knew what it’s like to get a bellyful of incendiary bullets at ten thousand feet. Are you listening? Make the other silly bugger die for his country. Then whizz home, fast. Got it?” They got it. They learned more skills from others, and helped a number of German pilots make the Supreme Sacrifice. They were flight leaders when the war ended, with a reputation for quick and efficient killing. Instead of saying damn and blast, the squadron said wragge and hackett!

That was in France. Now they were sitting in the back of the adjutant’s car, watching the Essex hedgerows go by while the afternoon slipped away; looking for a lost Camel that might be hiding behind that haystack for all they knew. “This is bloody silly,” Hackett said. Just an idle remark. Not serious.

“What was he doing out here?” Wragge asked. It wasn’t really a question. “If it was him.”

“I told him to learn the landmarks. Stay in sight of the aerodrome. Bloody idiot.”

Rain speckled the windscreen. “You get these nasty mists in Essex, sir,” the sergeant said. “Bad for navigation. Fogs, too. Spring up out of nowhere. Mists and fog.” He sucked his teeth.

“I hope you know where you’re going,” Wragge said. “I’m completely lost.”

“Remember that ginger-haired Irishman when we were on the Somme?” Hackett said. “Kelly. Got lost in a fog, flew into a hill, lickety-split. Always in a tearing hurry, Kelly.”

“Not easy to find a hill in France.”

“Well, he was very lost. Why have you stopped, sergeant?”

“Epping Forest, sir. D’you want to go in? It’s big.”

They got out and looked at the forest. Rain flickered through the headlights. Nothing was in leaf; the trees were black and gloomy. “It would take a regiment a week to search that lot,” Wragge said.

Hackett put his chin up and sniffed. “Funny smell.”

“Charcoal,” Wragge said. “It’s a wood. Charcoal burners.”

Hackett kept sniffing. “Smells funny. We’ve come this far. Let’s go and ask the natives. Maybe they saw something.”

The sergeant had an electric lantern. They followed Hackett’s sense of smell, and after a hundred yards they found the oak tree with the Camel wrapped around a fistful of branches. A petrol tank was still dripping. Chunks of hot metal had dropped and started a small fire at the base of the tree and it still glowed, but amazingly the flames had not reached the Camel. It was shattered, but the bits were intact. The cockpit was empty.

They walked in increasing circles and soon found Bennett. He lay with every limb twisted so that they pointed the wrong way. They carried him back to the car. It had a rumble seat, and that seemed the obvious place to put him. It was open to the weather and the rain was hammering down but Bennett didn’t care.

The car jolted up the lane and sent brown bow-waves flying into the dark. “Take it steady,” Wragge told the sergeant. “We don’t want another accident.”

“Bloody awful climate,” Hackett muttered.

“Well, it’s England,” Wragge said. “It’s what we English call a baking hot day in Essex.”

“It’s rained like a bitch every day for a week. Where the hell does it come from?”

“We import it from the Atlantic, old boy. Been doing it for centuries. Steady, reliable, phlegmatic stuff. Very traditional. You Colonials wouldn’t understand.”

The sergeant said, “It’s not like Australia, Mr Hackett. You planning on going back?”

“Back to what? Sheep and cricket? No thanks.”

“Get used to the rain, then,” Wragge said. “Settle down here and breed goldfish. The fun’s over.”

“It was the war to end all wars,” the sergeant said. “Everyone says so.”

“By Christ, I hope not,” Hackett said. He sounded annoyed.



They delivered the body to the Medical Officer and gave the news to the adjutant, who thanked them. “Don’t thank us, Uncle,” Wragge said. “He killed himself, poor bastard. We just got wet feet.” The adjutant knew better than to argue. He was an ex-cavalry major, aged forty-five, felt like sixty-five in the company of these casual assassins. He reminded them that tonight was Dining-In Night in the Mess, distinguished guest present, look smart, be sharp; and he watched them go. Younger than my sons, he thought, older than Methuselah.

He phoned the Medical Officer and confirmed that Jeremy Meredith Tobias Bennett, aged eighteen, really was dead and not the makings of a practical joke. The Royal Flying Corps had become the Royal Air Force, but it retained its undergraduate humour. Only a week ago, the Egyptian ambassador in London had telephoned him to discuss the proposal by His Majesty King Mahomet to make the squadron honorary members of the Royal Camel Corps, in recognition of its pluck and courage. He was pretty sure that the voice belonged to Flying Officer Dextry. Bloody idiots. Problem was, they hadn’t enough to do. Peace was boring.

The adjutant fished out some papers from his in-tray. Restaurant in Chelsea demanded payment for damages caused by horseplay leading to food-fight. That was “B” Flight. They’d blamed it all on a crowd of American aviators. Self-defence, “B” Flight said … Metropolitan Police were looking for the officers who hired some horses and raced them down Park Lane and up Piccadilly. Probably Hackett’s doing. And somebody’s Camel went and flour-bombed the Brighton Express as it left Waterloo, so now Air Ministry was furious. One flour-bomb actually hit the dining car. Few pilots had that kind of skill. In the margin, the adjutant wrote: Jessop?

The last paper was the worst of all. The accounts for the Officers’ Mess showed a loss of £483, a horribly huge amount. Flying Officer Bellamy was President of the Mess Committee, but he claimed that his predecessor, chap called Champion, must have pocketed the money, lost it at the races, spent it on floozies, who knew what? The trouble was, Champion was dead, got into a spin, made a hole in the heart of Essex. Left a hole in the Mess funds.

The adjutant tossed the papers back in his in-tray. Tomorrow was soon enough. Nothing would change, of course. He’d still be surrounded by bloody idiots.



The camp at Butler’s Farm was built fast, mainly from Nissen huts. Luckily, part of the airfield had been a cricket field, and the pavilion became the Officers’ Mess. Long yards of creamy linen covered trestle tables. There was much silverware, looted in the final advance when the squadron had occupied an aerodrome suddenly abandoned by the German air force.

Flying Officer Bellamy’s disasters had not yet been made public and he had decided to go out with a bang, if not a cheer. There was a lot of wine. Bellamy knew what the chaps liked: game soup, baked stuffed haddock, roast rib of beef, jam roly-poly with custard, welsh rarebit. No fancy frog names, no mucky sauces. Plenty of mashed potato with the beef. He told the waiters to be ready with second helpings. Bellamy was no good at sums, but he knew the chaps.

Dinner went well.

The C.O. got them to their feet for the loyal toast, and then introduced their distinguished guest.

“A man,” he said, “whose achievements in our recent difference of opinion with the Boche have become a thing of legend, both as a pilot and as a leader. He took air fighting to a new level, as the enemy soon discovered, because invariably he was above them, and shortly afterwards they were descending at a great rate of knots, usually without a tail or a wing.” (Laughter.) “I’m sure everyone here knows his astonishing record. Gentlemen: our guest … Wing Commander J.E.B. Griffin.”

Few fighter pilots were tall. If your head stuck outside the cockpit, it was the equivalent of facing a gale on top of the Alps, which didn’t help eyesight or breathing and exposed you to the enemy’s guns. So nobody was surprised to see that Griffin was short, with broad shoulders. He didn’t look like a hero; but then most heroes look like ploughboys or bricklayers: compact, strong, quiet. The squadron got ready for a few words about how we won and what an honour it had been to serve, and Griffin surprised them all.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “We thought it was all over. But there is still a certain amount of what the infantry calls mopping-up to be done, and I have been asked to lead a new squadron. It seems that our Russian friends need a hand to help put their house in order.”

He took a sip of water and let the rumble of comments subside. Russia? Wore fur hats and had snow on their boots, didn’t they? Russia. Crikey.

“For those of you who are looking for a complete change of scenery, I recommend northern Russia. We have bases at Murmansk and Archangel. They are on or about the Arctic Circle and both need pilots. If you relish a challenge, this is the place for you. The natives are treacherous, and the enemy – the Bolsheviks – are savages. The cold is brutal. Last month a general took his gloves off to pin a medal on a chap, got instant frostbite, and pinned his own fingers instead. Fact.”

They enjoyed that. Griffin allowed himself a small smile.

“You will live in hovels and share them with lice and fleas. No beer, and the vodka is foul. Nothing can stop your engine oil from freezing. Your pay is good but there is absolutely nothing to spend it on except funerals. Yes, north Russia is a challenge.”

They laughed, and applauded. “What’s he playing at?” Wragge asked Hackett, and got a shrug in reply.

“So, if that’s your meat, I can arrange it,” Griffin said. “Meanwhile I shall be leading my squadron to south Russia, down on the shores of the Black Sea. Climate like the French Riviera. Rich farming country – melons as sweet as honey, cherries as big as plums, beefsteaks as thick as thieves. I don’t care for caviare but maybe you do. You’ll have to sing for your supper, of course. The White Army holds the south. The Red Army wants it. General Denikin leads the Whites. Brilliant commander, splendid patriot, and if Russia has any future, the saviour of his nation. Britain has sent him supplies worth millions of pounds. Our task is simple: we help him duff up the enemy, who are a complete rabble, and we escort his march on Moscow. Oh, and by the way: you’ll get paid one grade higher than your rank for doing it.”

A storm of applause. The adjutant looked around and counted Dextry, Jessop, Bellamy, Wragge and Hackett on their feet, cheering. Good. That should thin out the bloody idiots and make his in-tray lighter.



Two-thirds of the squadron volunteered for south Russia. “I’ll take half,” Griffin told the C.O. “You can keep the drunks and the sex maniacs and the ones who like pulling wings off butterflies.”

“Oh, thanks enormously,” the C.O. said. He began going through the list with a red pencil.

“Is it really true that everyone will get paid above his rank?” the adjutant asked. Griffin nodded. “The only reason I ask,” the adjutant said, “is the squadron hasn’t converted from R.F.C. to R.A.F. ranks. Not totally, that is. Some chaps are captains, some flight lieutenants. What’s the R.A.F. equivalent of a colonel?”

“Don’t know. What matters is each chap gets a bucket of roubles every week.”

“Simpson,” the C.O. said. “Isn’t Simpson the one who wears a corset?” He didn’t wait for an answer. The red pencil thudded through Simpson.

“Roubles, you say,” the adjutant said. “I don’t think we can wait for roubles. Not if you want these officers immediately.” He frowned hard at a mental picture of complex problems. “It’s their Mess bills, you see. I fear they can’t pay them now. In fact I know they can’t.”

Griffin looked him in the eye. Neither man blinked. Each knew that R.A.F. Butler’s Farm wouldn’t have a hope in hell of getting money out of a pilot once he was on his way to south Russia. Each also knew that the red pencil had not yet finished its work. The C.O. became aware of their silence, and he looked up.

“The pity is,” the adjutant said, “sometimes the best pilots owe the most money.”

“How much? To wipe the slate clean?”

The adjutant thought fast. “Five hundred pounds.”

While Griffin wrote a cheque, the C.O. finished his list. “Hackett,” he said. “Australian. Tenacious bugger.” He twirled the red pencil.

“Oh, you’ll like him,” the adjutant said quickly.

“Chuck him in,” Griffin said. “I’ll take him instead of a receipt.” He waved the cheque to dry the ink. “This is War Office money. Cash it fast, before they change their minds about saving the Russian Empire from the Reds. By all reports, the Reds are winning hands down.” He saw the look on the C.O.’s face. “Joke,” he said. “I haven’t the faintest idea who’s winning. A pal of mine at the Foreign Office reckons the Reds are surrounded on all sides by White armies. He’s guessing. Hoping, too, probably. All I know is this bloke Denikin’s running the show in the south and he’s been asking for British squadrons for months.”

“I hope you hammer the Bolsheviks good and hard,” the C.O. said, “After what they did to the Tsar.”

“Dirty work. Mind you, we can’t talk,” Griffin said. “We chopped off the king’s head once. Be sure your chaps are at Air Ministry tomorrow, ten a.m. prompt, drunk or sober. Long journey ahead.”

Long, slow journey.

Griffin had collected about twenty pilots from the best squadrons. The first plan was to send them by train to somewhere in Greece, probably Salonika, and ship them the rest of the way. They got as far as Calais and were recalled. Nobody knew why. Next plan was to put them on a ship in London docks, a Swedish freighter unloading timber. It had no passenger accommodation. Griffin got on the phone to Air Ministry, who called the Ministry of Shipping, who called the War Office, by which time it was raining so hard the spray was knee-high, and everybody went back to their hotels and unpacked. The train plan was revived and this time they got as far as Paris. But several big avalanches in Austria had closed the line to Salonika and they went to Marseilles instead.

The city was pleasantly sunny in the early spring. Lots of bars, open all day and half the night, unlike the tight-laced pub hours in England. Wine was cheap. On the pilots’ improved pay scales, very cheap. The Marine Landing Officer had his hands full with ships taking troops home to be demobilized, but he managed to find berths for Griffin’s party on a small French liner, got them cheap at short notice. Griffin couldn’t round up his pilots fast enough and the ship sailed. It took the M.L.O. a week to get them on board another vessel, an old Mediterranean ferry that called at Nice, Genoa, Naples and Palermo before it limped into Malta with engine trouble. The captain didn’t trust the Maltese repairs. The ship crawled along the North African coast and finally quit at Alexandria. The captain was Egyptian. He felt at home here.

Griffin was due some luck. A Royal Navy cruiser was about to leave for – thankfully – the Black Sea. The pilots slept four to a cabin. The weather was fine; they lived on deck, playing poker, watching the Aegean Islands drift by, guessing their names, getting them wrong. Past Gallipoli (bloody steep, bloody rocky, you wouldn’t want to attack up there, not with the Turks firing down, what a shambles) and the cruiser didn’t stop at Constantinople, which was on the left while most of Turkey was on the right, very confusing.

After that, the Black Sea turned out to be not at all black. “Red Sea isn’t red, either,” Hackett said. “And the Indian Ocean’s green. I’ve seen it.” That started an argument. It was easy to argue with Hackett and difficult to stop. Prove him wrong, and he said: “Yes, that’s what most people think, but most people have brains fifteen per cent smaller than mine.” He went on, dodging and ducking, slipping and swerving. Angering some, amusing others. It passed the time. There was nothing to look at except the Black Sea. Very boring, the sea. All water. Nobody could understand why the Navy got so excited about it.

Nobody had much to say about Russia because nobody knew much about the Russians. Griffin said the Bolshies needed to be taught a lesson, and that was good enough. There were chaps from all over the British Empire in his squadron, and the Empire was good at keeping the natives in line. None better.

A major from the British Military Mission to Denikin (D.E.N.M.I.S.) climbed onto a broken packing case that was leaking puttees, khaki, infantry, for the use of, and raised his megaphone. The dockside at Novorossisk was loud with the bangs and whistles of unloading freighters.

“Keep together!” he shouted. “Put your luggage on that wagon. It will be safe. It has an armed guard. Keep together and follow me! Do not speak to any civilians. Beware pickpockets. Do not buy, sell or exchange anything. Ignore all corpses, beggars, prostitutes, Frenchmen and mad dogs. Keep together! Follow me!” He climbed down.

The sky was gloomy grey to the horizon and it leaked bits of rain that stung like hail. The wind was from the north, fierce and cold as charity.

The pilots climbed onto two lorries. Bellamy found himself sitting next to the major. “Somewhat chilly for the time of year, sir,” he said.

“About normal. Gets a damn sight colder. Sea of Azov is still frozen.”

“My goodness.”

“You don’t know where that is, do you?”

“Um … to be brutally honest, no sir.”

“Offshoot of the Black Sea. Between us and the Crimea. Hundred and fifty miles across. Solid ice.”

“Heavens. We were led to expect something more like the French Riviera, sir.”

The major hadn’t smiled since he came to Russia and he saw no reason to start now; but he looked at Bellamy and allowed his eyelids to sink a little. “Russia has two seasons. Too bloody cold and too bloody hot. Who told you that French Riviera twaddle?”

“The C.O., sir. But I’m sure he was misinformed.”

“You’re sure, are you? Congratulations. You’re the only person in this bloody country who’s sure of anything.” Already the major was tired of Bellamy. He looked away.

In the other lorry, Jessop and Wragge were trying to decide whether Novorossisk was a dump or a dead loss. “Look at the mud,” Jessop said. “The place is all mud. The streets are deep in mud. It’s supposed to be the biggest port in these parts and everywhere you look it’s mud.”

“But it’s busy. Crowds of people.”

“All mud-coloured. Maybe that’s what they export: mud.”

“Some of them are waving at us. And cheering. Holding flags. So it’s not a dead loss, is it?”

They waved back. Nothing extravagant. A nod and a smile to the grateful natives.

“I’ve just seen a man eating a slice of mud,” Jessop said. “If it wasn’t that, it was a portion of rhubarb crumble, which seems unlikely, don’t you think?”

The lorries splashed through potholes and delivered them to the Novorossisk headquarters of the British Military Mission, in a requisitioned girls’ school. Servants took their caps and greatcoats, brushed them down as if they were prize stallions, and showed them to the cloakrooms. The washbasins were small and low, but the water was hot and more servants stood by with towels, and bottles of hair lotion from Trumper of Bond Street, and boot-polishing requisites to offer a quick brush-up to such footwear as was less than officer-like. Then to lunch.

The dining-room walls were hung with group photographs of unsmiling girls, immaculately dressed in school uniform. So there had been a time when Novorossisk was not entirely made of mud. A portrait picture of the headmistress, with eyes that could penetrate sheet steel at fifty yards, looked down on the crowd of young men drinking sherry. They were many, and a lot of sherry was going down. Lunch at the Mission was clearly an important occasion.

The airmen joined in. A tall, hawk-nosed flight lieutenant called Oliphant, balding and therefore looking older than his twenty-three years, was sinking his second sherry and looking for a servant with more, when Griffin prodded his ribs. “Spread the word, Olly. I’ve just got orders. We entrain to somewhere called Ekaterinodar this afternoon. Off to the wars! Bloody good, eh?”

Lunch was a leisurely affair and excellent. Nobody seemed in a hurry to get back to work. Each pilot had been seated among the hosts. “We don’t get many visitors,” a chubby captain said. His hair was dark blond, as sleek as beaten gold. He stopped a passing waiter. “Rudyard, my dear fellow … Bring butter. Quantities of butter. And fresh mustard. This mustard is medieval. Now be off with you!” He clapped his hands.

Pilot Officer Maynard watched this. He was nineteen, looked seventeen, shaved twice a week whether he needed it or not. “Is his name really Rudyard?” he asked. It was a safe question.

“It is now. He’s what we call a plenny. We have lots of them. Plennys are Russian prisoners-of-war, deserters mainly, quite safe, they make jolly good servants. This one’s Russian name sounds like someone knitting with barbed wire, so we call him Rudyard. He likes it, he’s a happy man, didn’t like fighting for the Bolos. Bolsheviks,” he said before Maynard could ask. “We call them Bolos. What they call us I don’t know. Never met one. Poisonous lot, by all reports. Eat with their mouths open, I expect. You know the sort.”

“You don’t see much of the Front, I take it,” Hackett said.

The captain looked startled. “Good grief, no. We’re the Supplies Mission. The warriors are all up-country. We make sure the ship unloads its cargo. Once the goods are on the quay they belong to Denikin’s lot. Russian responsibility, not ours. What brings you to Novo, may I ask?”

“We’re Royal Air Force,” Maynard said.

“Pilots.” Hackett pointed to his wings. “We fly.”

“Ah, yes. Balloons. Spotting for the guns.”

“Aeroplanes. Scouts, I hope.”

“Flying machines. How amusing. My advice is, do lots of stunts. The Russians will be tremendously impressed. They admire anything modern enormously. Looping the loop, and so on.”

Hackett breathed deeply and ripped a piece of bread in half. Maynard said: “The docks were awfully busy. Is all that stuff for the Russian troops?”

“So my sergeant tells me. I stay away from there. Can’t speak the language, for a start. I write reports.”

“How amusing,” Hackett said through a mouthful of bread.

“Keeps the general happy,” the captain said. “Thing I learned in France, you can’t have too many good reports. And if I say it myself, I’m jolly good at it. Ah … butter. And mustard. Bully for you, Rudyard. Now be about your business, my boy.”

Griffin had been given a seat at the top table, next to the Mission Commandant, an amiable brigadier who told him he wouldn’t have any trouble with the Russians provided he remembered his status. “Training and maintenance, old chap, that’s what we’re here for. Help the White Russians fight, but stay out of the scrap. Advise but don’t intervene. What’s the name of your outfit?”

“Hasn’t got a name, sir. Just an R.A.F. squadron. Should have a number, but …”

“Better off without one, in my opinion. Put a foot wrong, and some base-wallah in London knows who to blame. Ah, soup.”

Griffin supped his soup. “A squadron’s like a club, sir. Pilots like to belong to something. I know numbers are out, but still … In France, there was an outfit called Hornet Squadron. Stung a lot of Huns.”

“A nickname,” the brigadier said. “Let’s see: bees, wasps, termites. No. You want something Russian. A bird? Charles is our resident birdwatcher. Charles! We need a good Russian bird. Something exciting. No sparrows, no pheasant.”

Charles, a tall, tanned lieutenant, didn’t hesitate. “Goshawks, sir. Goshawks are everywhere.”

“Goshawk has been taken already,” Griffin said.

“Oh. Well, I’ve seen larks, some tawny owls, magpie, and of course great tits in abundance. Very handsome.”

“Great Tit Squadron,” Griffin said. “That’s asking for trouble.”

“Bigger and tougher,” the brigadier told Charles.

“Um … let’s see … golden eagles? They’re all over Russia. No? What about the great bustard? Lots of them on the steppes, although I suppose the name is unfortunate. Might lead to jokes in bad taste.” Charles thought hard. “Doesn’t leave much, I’m afraid.” Then he brightened. “Merlin. I’ve seen merlin. Bird of prey, small but dashing, chases and kills other birds.”

“Merlin Squadron,” Griffin said. “Yes. Merlin Squadron.”

“Thank you, Charles,” the brigadier said. “I’ll put you in for a D.S.O.”

Griffin turned to Oliphant. “The squadron’s got a name. Merlin Squadron. Bird of prey. Like a hawk. Merlin Squadron. Pass it on.”

“Certainly, sir. Good choice.” Olipha