“I hate giving people the sack, don’t you?” Cleve-Cutler said, looking jovial. “Much better this way. If a chap’s unhappy…”
“I rather think he thought you were talking about compassionate leave,” someone said.
Cleve-Cutler roared with laughter. It was a sound his Flight was to hear many times every day. “Compassionate leave! That’s a good one.” He wiped his eyes. “The CO warned me you were a mad lot of buggers. Which one of you was it who flew through that Jerry railway station while the troop train was unloading?” He roared again. They glanced at each other, half grinning, half guiltily. It was the first they had heard of it. Still, they felt flattered.
“Oh, one last thing,” Cleve-Cutler said. “I’m sorry to see you all looking so disgustingly fit. It means I can’t try out my Universal High-Altitude Cure-All Treatment. Doesn’t matter what’s wrong with the chap, I take him up to five thousand feet and chuck him out. By the time he’s fallen four thousand nine hundred and ninety feet, the rush of air has completely cured him. Never fails. Marvellous, isn’t it?” He beamed like a bishop.
Somebody had to ask, so someone did. “What about the last ten feet?”
“Well, he’s fit and strong by then, isn’t he? Strong enough to fall ten feet, I should hope.”
“Actually, it’s only the last six inches that hurt,” someone else said. Cleve-Cutler roared with laughter, and this time they joined in. Cautiously. But it was a start.
During the next week, when they were not on patrol they visited all the BE2c squadrons within fifty miles. They learned what some of them had never known and others preferred to forget: that the average life-expectancy in those squadrons ranged from three to six weeks. Someone enquired about tactics. “I pray a lot,” one observer told them. “And when that doesn’t work I curse a bit.”
Morale in Cleve-Cutler’s flight improved. They scored a couple of kills and after that nobody went sick. It was lucky that the Fokker monoplane was in decline, but every good leader needs a bit of luck. Soon Cleve-Cutler became senior flight commander, then acting CO. Now, overnight, he was a major, posted to Pepriac as new CO of Hornet Squadron.
He arrived at noon. The first thing he did was assemble the officers in the mess anteroom.
“Major Milne is dead,” he said. He was pressing a couple of fingers against the side of his mouth to hold his face in a suitably neutral expression. “It seems that he killed himself by ramming an enemy machine on the other side of the Lines last evening. One of our observation balloons saw him cross the Lines, and later saw the collision. My name is Cleve-Cutler and I now command this squadron.” He released his face, and the roguish smile slowly restored itself. “Later on I shall meet each one of you individually. For now, all I shall say is this. There is soon going to be the most enormous battle near here, and the war will be over by Christmas. Which Christmas, God alone knows, and I personally don’t much care, and if the lieutenant at the back doesn’t stop picking his nose I’ll come and pick it for him. Of course, all these umpteen infantry divisions camped around here could be just an elaborate deception. Maybe the real battle will be elsewhere. But in any case, the Hun can’t ignore us, so there will be large numbers of Hun aeroplanes to be shot down, which is all they’re good for. Finally, I invite you to sample Cleve-Cutler’s Patent Pink Potion For Pale People, several gallons of which are now waiting at the bar. For convenience I think it ought to be re-named Hornet’s Sting. That’s all. Thank you.”
Private Collins was at the bar, ladling out glasses of a blood-red drink from a small brass-bound keg. Frank Foster took a glass and sniffed it. “What’s in here, Collins?” he asked.
“I’m allowed to mention the plum brandy, port, eggs, Cointreau, Cognac and linseed oil, sir, but not the special secret ingredients, I’m afraid.”
“Why not?”
“Bombay curry and vodka, sir. You might develop a bias if you knew about them.”
Foster took a sip. His eyebrows came together like shutters being closed. “Jesus wept,” he muttered. “What a wallop.”
“That’ll be the rum, sir.”
When everyone had a glass, Cleve-Cutler stood on a chair. “There is a very ancient squadron tradition which I have just thought of,” he announced. “This drink must always be drunk with both feet off the ground to the words ‘Hornet’s Sting’.” There was much scrambling onto chairs and sofas and tables. Cleve-Cutler raised his glass. Everyone shouted: “Hornet’s Sting!” and drank. Mayo said later that it was like swallowing a whizzbang, only noisier. Douglas Goss fell off his chair, but that was normal, nobody paid any attention. He complained that he had broken his shoulder. Nobody paid any attention to that, either.
After lunch the new CO interviewed the officers one at a time. The interviews were short.
“Brigade want me to put up one of our flight commanders to be CO of another scout squadron,” he said to Foster. “You seem to qualify.”
Foster kept the shock from his face but Cleve-Cutler saw it in his eyes. “No thank you, sir,” he said.
“Why not? Major Foster. Colonel Foster. Brigadier, even. Sky’s the limit in this Corps.”
“I honestly don’t think the war will last that long, sir. One big push and the Boches will crack.” Foster found it hard to breathe properly. He might get posted whether he liked it or not. Today, even.
Cleve-Cutler held his resolutely cheery smile until Foster had to blink. “This Etonian Flight of yours,” Cleve-Cutler said. “Awfully cosy, isn’t it? I’d better break it up, hadn’t I? Then there’s no risk of your chums trying to take advantage of you. Right?”
Foster hunched his shoulders as if to protect himself from further blows. “You must do as you think fit, sir,” he said. “I can only say that I rate the value of friendship very highly.”
“So do I. Just wanted to see how the idea struck you. Personally I think it stinks. If a chap can’t keep his chums, what can he keep? Send in the next customer, will you?”
For a moment Foster’s face tightened with resentment. Then he nodded and almost smiled, and went out.
Several interviews later, O’Neill was facing Cleve-Cutler.
“Australian,” the CO said. “Waltzing Matilda and so on.” O’Neill’s file was on the desk in front of him.
“That was a long time ago,” O’Neill said. “Before I got transported to England.” All trace of his flat Australian twang had disappeared; he talked like an Englishman. “That’s how the colonies get rid of their riff-raff, you know.”
Cleve-Cutler chuckled. “I see you came here with a chap called Chivers.” O’Neill was silent and expressionless. “In fact I see you trained with Chivers.”
Long pause. O’Neill chewed his lip, but that could have meant anything.
“He’s dead, of course,” Cleve-Cutler said brightly,”so we can be quite candid about the bugger. Dirty, greedy, fawning little sodomite who sponged off his friends, hadn’t the guts to go near a Hun, lied like a rug about his so-called kills, and did us all a service by flying into a Jerry shell. Yes?”
O’Neill, his face as stiff as a stone, gave that a lot of thought. “Well, it’s not a funny joke,” he said at last,”so you must have some other reason for inventing all that poison.”
“Good!” Cleve-Cutler said. “Now understand this. It doesn’t matter a hoot whether T. Chivers was shit or sunshine. He’s dead. Agreed? But the entire squadron, including cooks and clerks, tell me that you refuse to accept that fact.” The stoniness of O’Neill’s face was becoming tinged with pink. “Every time you take off you’re looking for Chivers,” Cleve-Cutler said. “That’s bloody silly, and if you keep it up you’ll find him sooner than you think. When you do, remember to ask him what good it did either of you.” He slammed the file shut. “Next!”