“It’s not compulsory, Daddy,” Wragge said.
Borodin cleared his throat. “I don’t think you can expect to receive prisoner-of-war status. The Bolsheviks kill all captured officers and they are especially hard on foreigners. Invaders, in their view. Torture is normal.”
“They nearly cut off Gerry Pedlow’s goolies,” Jessop said.
“That was for religion,” Dextry pointed out.
“Even worse. If the Russian Christians cut off your goolies, what will the Bolos be like?”
“Are you sure H.Q. authorized this?” Maynard asked the doctor. “I mean, suicide’s illegal. Isn’t it?”
Wragge signalled Brazier and Borodin. They left, and walked to the locomotive. “Tell the driver to make a lot of noise,” Wragge said. “Blow off steam, sound his whistle, ring his bell. Then go fifty yards and stop and come back here.”
The racket was impressive. The bell was above the stationmaster’s head and he was in pain every time it clanged. A small crowd of railway workers watched from a distance. They made no move to interfere. “He has probably been stealing part of their wages,” Borodin said. “Most stationmasters do.”
The locomotive spun its wheels, shot out sparks, made a scream of steel on steel, and pulled away, clanging non-stop. The stationmaster shouted but his voice was lost. Some of the pilots looked out from The Dregs and waved goodbye to the C.O. A minute later the train reversed and they waved hello.
Borodin asked the stationmaster a question and got a stammering answer.
“The correct identification plates are in his office,” Borodin said.
“Can you be sure?” Brazier asked.
“He has fouled his breeches,” Borodin said. “An infallible declaration of honesty.”
A couple of plennys cut the man free. He fell on the tracks. They picked him up and carried him, the officers following. He found the identification plates. He had recovered some strength, and he took the plates to the trains and attached them to the locomotives. The plennys marched him outside the station and dumped him in a horse trough. “It’s the least we can do for him,” Brazier said. “Some would say, the least is too much.”
They went backs to the trains. The squadron doctor was waiting. “Your chaps spent all their pay in Taganrog,” she said. “Now they’re playing poker, and they’re using the morphine phials as betting chips.”
They laughed. After the saga of the stinking stationmaster, almost anything was funny. Brazier’s chuckle was brief. Gambling with property belonging to Mission H.Q. was certainly an offence. But, as Maynard had said, suicide was a crime too. Did two wrongs make a right? He gave up.
They boarded the train, Wragge gallantly allowing Susan Perry to go first. “I don’t think I told you,” he said. “We’re all pleased that you decided to continue as squadron doctor.”
“I had to leave Taganrog,” she said. “A brigadier was besotted with me.”
“So is half the squadron.”
“It’s worse than influenza,” she said. “And no cure in sight.”
The new identification plates got two cheers. The trains still had to wait in sidings, but less frequently. There were detours around track repairs. Still, their average speed was much better. By nightfall they were in Kupyansk; by noon next day they entered Kharkov. Four hundred kilometres from Taganrog, the drivers said. Very good indeed.
Parts of the city were still burning, but Denikin’s armies had already gone ahead, advancing fast, aiming for Kursk, only 240 kilometres to the north. Once they took Kursk they would be halfway to Moscow.
Tsaritsyn had been a sideshow; this was the real war. The squadron had been trundling along on these trains for over a week, while the Bolos were going backwards at a rate of knots. Everyone wanted to clobber them while the clobbering was good. Wragge pressed on.
An hour out of Kharkov progress fell to a walking pace. The track had been damaged; repair gangs were at work; all traffic was switched to one line. Even at walking pace the trains swayed and jolted. Soon they had a good view of an armoured train lying drunkenly half off the tracks. The locomotive had one giant rosette of a shell-hole in its boiler and much of the train was burnt-out. No fire could destroy the gun barrels and they made a show of pointing everywhere. “Ours or theirs?” Brazier asked.
“Probably theirs,” Borodin said. “I think I see the remains of half a red star.”
“The whole thing took a pounding.”
“My guess is a lucky shot wrecked the engine. They didn’t want us to capture the train, so they blew it up. Then they destroyed a length of track to slow down our pursuit. Standard tactics.”
They limped past the end of the wreck. The footnotes of battle lay all around: broken artillery pieces; the mounds of fresh graves, some with makeshift wooden crosses, most without; wagons that had shed their wheels but kept their dead horses between the shafts. There were plenty of dead horses, very visible with their black and bloated bodies. A haze of flies hovered around each horse.
“It’s always the same,” Borodin said. “You can smell a battlefield from miles away by the rotting horseflesh.”
Brazier didn’t care. It would take a regiment a month to dig enough holes to bury these horses. What interested him was the why and the how of war. “This was a minor rearguard action,” he said. “The Reds tried to make a stand and failed. Not strong enough.”
“That’s the curse of being on the retreat. Never enough of anything. Soldiers on the run throw their rifles away. I’ve seen it happen.”
“Men will stand and fight if you shoot a few. I saw that happen, too.”
Wragge joined them. “We’re being watched,” he said. He handed Brazier a pair of binoculars and pointed overhead. The adjutant opened a window and searched. He grunted and gave them to Borodin. “Too much dazzle for my old eyes,” he said.
“He’s been wandering around up there for fifteen minutes,” Wragge said. “If he’s one of ours, what’s his game? And if he’s not, it’s bad news.”
“Too high to identify,” Borodin said. “But he’s obviously snooping.”
“If we get strafed we could be wiped out. Can you pass word to the driver? First good siding he sees, pull in. Let’s get the machines off the trains. It’s time you learned how to fly a Camel. There’s a spare you can have. Practise first. It’s a tricky little beast.”
“Thanks awfully,” Borodin said.
The battlefield had been left far behind by the time they rolled into a siding. The grassland alongside it was level enough to make an airfield, once a few anthills had been flattened. The ground crews began unloading the aeroplanes. Lacey rigged his aerials. “Find where Denikin’s mob is,” Wragge said. “Tell them we’re here. Where’s the war? Find anything.”
The watchful high-flying aeroplane had gone. Chef was serving tea. Kid, the mascot, found a patch of giant buttercups and enjoyed some real food at last. The trains would not be moving again today. The afternoon was perfect for a walk, sun sinking, not too hot, and the countryside was inviting. There were gentle hills, patches of woodland, probably a river. The train had passed a meandering stream, just the sort of thing, Dextry said, he had swum in as a boy in County Cork. Maynard said the countryside reminded him of Dorset. Jessop said it resembled parts of Buckinghamshire. Borodin said it looked a lot like Russia. They set off.
“I can see smoke,” Jessop said. “Smoke means a farm. For a cake of soap they’ll give us a pound of butter.”
“Unusual,” Borodin said. “A farmhouse doesn’t need a big fire in this weather.”
“Maybe they’re smoking a ham. Butter and ham. Yummy,”
Maynard broke into a trot and bowled an imaginary ball, a good length, just clipping the off stump. “Run the mower over this lot,” he said. “Get the heavy roller on the batting strip. You’ve got a decent cricket pitch.”