War Story

by Derek Robinson

Filled with thrills, this novel by Booker Prize nominee Robinson also serves as a frightening exposé of the absurdities of the First World War. In 1916, Oliver Paxton enters the Royal Flying Corps a naïve young patriot. Pompous, foolish, and enthusiastic, he is determined to prove himself. But, as the realities of war, as well as the lax morals and casual cruelty of his fellow pilots, take their toll, Paxton becomes as disillusioned as those who surround him. "...superlatively well done..."-- Times Literary Supplement .

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Aviation, World War I, War, Military Fiction, Modern

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Derek Robinson is a British author best known for his military aviation novels full of black humour. He has also written several books on some of the more sordid events in the history of Bristol, his home town, as well as guides to rugby. He was nominated for the Booker Prize in 1971 for his first novel, 'Goshawk Squadron.'

After attending Cotham Grammar School, Robinson served in the Royal Air Force as a fighter plotter, during his National Service. He has a History degree from Cambridge University, where he attended Downing College, has worked in advertising in the UK and the US and as a broadcaster on radio and television. He was a qualified rugby referee for over thirty years and is a life member of Bristol Society of Rugby Referees. He was married in 1964

Reviews

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first 80 pages are largely tedious scenes of lads behaving badly and polished-to-the-point-of-contrived witty repartee. But I say, old chap, if you can struggle past those, the vivid descriptions of patrols and air battles, the bravado and the fears, in fragile, primitive flying machines over the trenches before and during the 1916 Battle of the Somme are worth your time.

[TheIron Paw · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great story! The plot surrounds the gradual deconstruction of the main character's reality. It is full of humour (black and otherwise) as well as providing a vivid image of the (un)reality of the "Great War".

[Blake Hiatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent read and good insight as to the ridiculousness of WW1 and how it was fought.

Usually, I'm not much for fictional history, as I find the real thing to be beyond anything most writers can come up with.

Mr. Robinson being a rare exception.

Highly recommend.

[Tom Blacklock · Rating 1 out of 5]

Picked this up because I absolutely loved Goshawk squadron.

However this book was boring and fragmented, so I gave up half way through

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bleakly comic antiwar novel. Would recommend.

[Stephen Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

1916, and airborne warfare over the muddy trenches of France is fought in open cockpit biplanes made of string and fabric. In the officers’ mess the young pilots behave like the boorish public schoolboys they recently were, and at a freezing 15,000 feet they count the days, or the hours or the minutes before a wing falls off or a German bullet hits them in the small of the back.
Derek Robinson describes the day to day lives of these terrified young men with humour and brutal reality in equal measure. This book, “War Story”, is the opening to a series following the evolution of the men and boys of the Royal Flying Corps in WW1.
Cleverly, the author maintains links throughout the books with the same characters, the few who have survived anyway, often scarred and always changed by the terrifying experience of living through the hellish dangers of this particular kind of warfare.
It’s funny, stirring and frightening, and once you have read this, you will want to read the next, “Hornet’s Sting”, which follows the same squadron on into 1917.

[Peter · Rating 1 out of 5]

poor

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Writing with an edgy dark humor, Robinson relates the transformation of entitled Oliver Paxton from 18 year old school boy full of simplistic patriotic bravura to, well, a human being.

[Campbell Mcaulay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oliver Paxton is a young, inexperienced subaltern in the RFC. His first mission is to lead four of his comrades, in their shiny new BE2c fighters, from England to the front in France. What should have been an afternoon's flight takes five days, during which time Paxton misplaces all of his flight, gets horribly lost himself, crashes (twice) and pisses his pants quite spectacularly. Things couldn't get much worse, could they? Apart from alienating everyone else in his squadron including his room-mate, his c/o and his batman, probably not...

What a fine discovery this was; I came upon Derek Robinson's RFC/RAF series literally by chance while browsing Amazon for something else and my eye was caught by the lovely cover art. I was entirely unaware of Robinson and I am surprised he's not a more well-known, widely read author because, if War Story is anything to go by, he really should be. This is a beautifully crafted novel about an RFC squadron in war-torn France in the lead up to the Somme offensive. It is a gloriously subtle tragi-comic blend - wittily written, there are plenty of laugh out loud moments in a novel that is populated by a number of characters of various degrees of eccentricity. But it soon becomes very clear that these eccentricities are a by-product of the stresses and horrors of their day-to-day existence in a vast and impersonal war; it is a defence mechanism against the uncertainty of the pilots' own personal mortality and the certain and obvious mortality of their friends and associates.

War Story reads like a mash-up of Heller's Catch-22 and any of Patrick o'Brian's "Master and Commander" series; blending the war-weary, fatalistic cynicism of the former with the languid, witty and unhurried story-crafting of the latter. While War Story captured me in it's opening chapter and I couldn't put it down. Very highly recommended.

[Chris Manning · Rating 4 out of 5]

When young men were being sent to join the RFC (Royal Flying Corp) in France as soon as they had soloed, it was not unusual for them to crash the first time they went up in one of the RFC's new Bristol Fighters. And if they survived their first flight, they were certainly not going to live much longer. With a life expectancy of three to six weeks, it was not surprising that their commanding officers had difficulty even remembering their names.

In "War Story", the second of Derek Robinson's fictionalized accounts of the RFC in the First World War, we gain a clear insight into the short-lived lives of the young men, many still in their teens, who made up the Corps. The author also paints a vivid picture of what it must have been like for the men in the trenches on both sides of the "war to end all wars".

[Mackay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining and interesting about the Royal Flying Corps, but I'm unsure it deserves the raves. I liked it but it wasn't revelatory, original, or deeply moving.

[Derrick Grose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Derek Robinson's War Story is a vivid account of the insanity of war, particularly the trench warfare in the first world war and the tidier but riskier aerial war above the trenches. The novel follows a pilot from the misadventures in his flight from England to his base in France, through his struggle to find acceptance at his new post, to his enthusiastic engagement with the game of war as a pilot and then as an observer, through the ecstasy of being a war hero in love, to his ultimate disillusionment with war and the lies that support its continuation. Although this novel contains historical facts and technical details, they are seamlessly woven into a well-told story with the ring of truth.

[Anndra Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that essentially serves as a deconstruction of, as Robinson refers to it in the author's note at the end, "an upperclass appetite for violence and an educated taste for destruction". From Old Etonians going full Bullingdon Club at their annual Fourth of June dinner, destroying the entire venue after hearing an old boy give a speech in Latin, to the very young and very posh pilots revelling in killing until such time as it catches up with them. This was my second read (first time was about 4 years ago) and I loved it all over again. Some lines are going to stick in my mind for quite a while I think.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Didn't expect this to be as good as it is. It steadily grew on me....as does the transformation in the central character's outlook on the futility of their war. Almost reads like a WW1 'Catch 22' in many ways.



Written with well-formed and believable characters throughout, the steady loss of which throughout the narrative conveys the tiniest of senses (if it were at all possible) to the reader of what that tragic generation must have endured. This book will stay in my mind for some time, and I will definately read others by Robinson.

[Roger Burk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eighteen-year-old Second-Lieutenant Oliver Paxton joins a fighter squadron on the Western Front a few months before the Battle of the Somme. He's annoyingly immature and self-centered. His squadron-mates turn out to be neurotic, self-centered, and nasty. They know it, but are past caring, because war is hell and they're all going to die pretty soon. Somehow Paxton survives long enough to become as self-centered and nasty as everyone else. It's hard to see how such a squadron of loonies could carry out its duties, or be allowed to continue in combat.

[H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bleak but humorous

WW1 flying squad novel.

Not quite as much fun as Goshawk Squadron however it works a lot better if you read them in timeline order:
War Story, Hornets Sting then Goshawk Squadron. I didn't the first time round, and did the on reread. Much better, you get to know who is who and what happens to them as the war grind moves on.

[Bex_ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable and detailed novel. Preferred this novel over Goshawk Squadron. Hoping to find Hornet's Sting to complete the RFC trio but difficult to find.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Akin to the Bandy Papers, this is chock full of the blackest humour so naturally I loved it.

[Lil · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have rated this more than 3 stars had I not hated nearly every character. I understand that some people just don't like each other but they were all awful people.

[Pete · Rating 5 out of 5]

outstanding, truthful portrayal of WW1 air combat