War Story Read Online Free

it.”
    â€œYes, sir,” said Faxton. He had been expecting a hot bath and a change of clothes.
    â€œAnd while you’re up,” Milne said lazily,”after you’ve gone round the houses a couple of times, you might as well finish off with … what shall we say … six practice landings? And let’s see you do the last one from … oh … three thousand feet with a dead engine. Suit you?”
    â€œYes sir,” said Paxton. The day was very warm and he desperately wanted to scratch his armpits and his crotch, but he dared not. “I don’t suppose there’s the chance of a cup of tea before I go, sir?”
    â€œListen to those birds!” Milne said, and strolled away.
    â€œBugger the birds,” said a fitter when the CO was out of earshot,”begging your pardon, sir. Let’s have a listen to this engine.”
    They listened, and the fitter wrinkled his nose. All the plugs had to be changed. While that was being done, someone took a blowtorch and a dixie behind the hangar and made a quick brew-up. They gave Paxton a pint of sweet, milky tea. He drank it with such obvious enjoyment that they gave hima refill. The Quirk sounded much healthier with new plugs. He flung the dregs of his tea onto the grass and clambered into the cockpit.
    â€˜A’ Flight came back as Paxton took off. Milne heard the fading buzz of the Quirk being absorbed by the deepening drone of four Beardmore engines. He opened his office window, perched his backside on the sill, and watched the tiny pattern of dots grow into a neat diamond formation. The FEs were no more than a hundred feet up as they passed. Milne knew the flight leader was watching him, so he raised an arm, and got half a wave of a gloved hand in return. That meant: quiet patrol; nothing doing. He watched the flight curl away and lose formation. FEs in the air reminded him of dragonflies. Not from the way they moved, which was hardworking rather than brilliant, rather like a London taxi; but from the way they were put together. Just like a dragonfly, everything important was clustered at the front, the machine was all wings and nose, with a few long bare poles reaching back to keep the tail in place. Milne closed one eye and half shut the other. He ignored the pusher propeller spinning behind the wings and the tricycle wheels hanging down and the Lewis gun poking up and the struts and the wires and the British markings, and all he saw was a khaki blur in the sky. But when he opened his eyes it still reminded him of a dragonfly.
    The grub is Okay specially if you like bully beef but what I wouldn’t give for a pint of mild at the Dukes Head as the froggeys got no idea how to make beer and the vin blong gives me wind something chronic.
    You wont never guess who I met last week Bert Dixon what a surprise! His mob just come out the Trenches he says half got trenchfoot and they all got lice big as your finger! Bert says to me Ted you got a nice cushy number you stay out them trenches Ted they are murder which I am sure is correct, Bert should know. Bert says any time a plane comes near they all fire at it they never waits to see is it a Hun or not they all fire nobody better tell our major!
    â€œHave no fear,” murmured Corporal Lacey. He was a slimyoung man in well-tailored khaki. He had an auburn moustache, full and heavy, which made half his face look bigger and stronger than it was. He dipped a small camelhair brush into a pot of india ink and painted out almost all the second half of the page, starting with the line
His mob just come out the Trenches
… He gave the jet black shape neat, rounded corners and straight sides, so that it formed a deep frame surrounding the only words he had not obliterated. These were:
which I am sure is correct.
”And who dares deny it?” Corporal Lacey said. He put the page in a patch of sunlight to dry.
    He was alone in the orderly room. A kettle was simmering on a Primus