Hornet's sting

"The second of three great Royal Flying Corps novels by Derek Robinson, Hornet's Sting expresses all his trademark qualities: savage humour, vivid air combat, and the heart-breaking dilemma of the young. It also introduces Captain Wooley, later the anti-hero of Goshawk Squadron, a character rich in bleak comedy. And so he needs to be, for this is 1917, the air war is bloody, and a squadron might suffer 100 per cent losses in a month. As Paul Scott no mean novelist himself wrote: "Robinson has a narrative gift that sets up the hackles of involvement. A rare quality.""@en
"It's 1917, and Captain Stanley Woolley joins an R.F.C. squadron whose pilots are starting to fear the worst: their war over the Western Front may go on for years. A pilot's life is usually short, so while it lasts it is celebrated strenuously. Distractions from the brutality of the air war include British nurses; eccentric Russian pilots; bureaucratic battles over the plum-jam ration; rat-hunting with Very pistols; and the C.O.'s patent, potent cocktail, known as "Hornet's Sting". But as the summer offensives boil up, none of these can offer any lasting comfort."@en