Free A Splendid Little War by Derek Robinson Page B

They’d never believe him. Wouldn’t say so. But he’d seen it happen, in France. Chap got a name for dodging the dangerous patrols and soon the whole squadron knew about it and nobody would drink with him, he was odd man out, you could tell from the way they gave him a sideways glance, nothing said. It was solitary confinement in the crowd. He wasn’t going to risk that. He’d sooner die.
    Ten minutes later, the Flight attacked Tsaritsyn from out of nowhere. “We go in low,” Griffin had said. “Low is ten feet. Line abreast, flat out, fire when I fire. Non-stop strafe.”
    Bright sunlight sent shadows of the Camels racing ahead of them. The Gnome rotary engines flung back ribbons of burnt oil. The engines were past their best and flat out meant little more than a hundred miles an hour, but at ten feet up it felt a lot faster. Maynard enjoyed it. Speed was like brandy to him. Suppose he sneezed now, jolted the joystick an inch, he’d hit Russia with a bang like a howitzer. That would mean goodbye, Michael. Instant cremation. Well, who wants to linger? Uncle Stanley lingered for years and years, poor devil … Tracer rounds werestreaking from the next Camel. Maynard had missed Griffin’s signal. His thumbs squeezed the triggers and he felt the shudder of twin Vickers pumping bullets at the houses.
    Bellamy didn’t care whether or not his guns hit anything. His hands trembled and the houses were a wandering blur. The ground raced by, treacherously close. All he wanted was to finish. Get it over. Escape.
    Griffin found himself singing. A hymn,
Guide me, Oh Thou Great Redeemer
… The Red defence got over its surprise and rifle fire flashed from windows. He hunched behind the solid shield of his engine. A Camel made a very thin silhouette when seen head-on. Only a lucky bullet would find him. Then it was time to escape, and his Camel vaulted the houses as if on springs.
    Tsaritsyn was a seriously big city, and it was a mess. Half of it lay in ruins and the other half had been knocked about. This was not the first time that Wrangel’s men had tried to capture it, and when Griffin took his Flight up to a safe height, they could see why he wanted it. Tsaritsyn sat beside the Volga and the river was a mile wide or more. There were ships on the river, with steam up. Whoever held Tsaritsyn blocked a supply line that reached deep into Russia, above and beyond Moscow. The Reds couldn’t move south without it, and Wrangel couldn’t move north. This would be a bloody battle.
    Heavy machine-gun fire failed to reach the Camels. The shooting was wild, and artillery fire was worse: the shell bursts were too high. Spent bullets and shrapnel fell back on battered Tsaritsyn.
    Griffin signalled his formation to spread out. It took both hands to unclip a 20-pound bomb and drop it over the side; and with the stick between the knees, the aircraft lurched about the sky. The pilots tried, and failed, to track the fall and see what they hit, but too many bangs were going flash down there. And a 20-pounder was only a firework.
    They came together again in a loose arrowhead and flew back to the southern defences. During the strafe, the ground had been empty. Now it was seething. Wrangel’s infantry, thousands of them, were running at strongpoints. Their banners made tiny splashes of red, green and white, and already their dead lay in hundreds. The Camels’ strafe had been a gesture, a threat. Maybe they had killed a few Reds, maybe not. What mattered now was the enemy’s machine guns and, further back, his artillery. As the pilots watched, Red shells were blowing holes in the White assault. But Wrangel had more infantry, more banners.
    The Camels cruised up and down. Nobody bothered them. Who cares about toys in the sky when the real fighting is on the ground? After twenty minutes, they saw a sudden change. A strongpoint, maybe two, had fallen. The infantry stormed through the