A Good Clean Fight is a 1993 novel by Derek Robinson, and a sequel to Piece of Cake (1983), his famous and controversial novel of the Battle of Britain. It continues the story of RAF Hornet Squadron, now posted to North Africa in 1942, during a lull in the fighting. Some of the characters from the previous novel, such as Squadron Leader "Fanny" Barton and erudite but iconoclastic intelligence officer "Skull" Skelton, reprise their roles. As the squadron engages in increasingly suicidal ground attacks to lure the Luftwaffe into a fight, Captain Jack Lampard leads an SAS patrol behind enemy lines and Paul Schramm, a German intelligence officer, tries to concoct his own scheme to beat the SAS at their own game.
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Hornet Squadron
The fictional RAF Hornet Squadron features in several novels by Derek Robinson, most notably Piece of Cake, which detailed their service during the first year of the Second World War. In that novel the squadron was equipped with the Hawker Hurricane but by the time of A Good Clean Fight they have been replaced with the Curtiss P-40 Tomahawks and Kittyhawks. Many of the surviving characters from the previous novel return, including "Fanny" Barton, the squadron's young New Zealander commanding officer; "Pip" Patterson, a Scottish pilot who has been promoted to Flight Lieutenant, "Skull" Skelton, a former Cambridge University don who serves as the squadron's intelligence officer and voices many unpopular theories about the war and Flight Lieutenant "Uncle" Kellaway, the squadron's adjutant and a veteran of the First World War. Unusual for a Derek Robinson novel, A Good Clean Fight also features other branches of the armed forces, such as a patrol of the Special Air Service (SAS), as well as several characters from the Luftwaffe and Afrika Korps.
Plot summary
A Good Clean Fight is set in North Africa in the spring of 1942. The Eighth Army is fighting against Axis forces advancing across Libya towards Egypt. Captain Lampard of the British SAS has led a motorised patrol across the inland ‘sand seas’ to penetrate deep behind German lines. Lampard is a brave officer but he has a serious flaw, a tendency to be overly reckless and to bite off more than he can chew. Infiltrating a German Luftwaffe base at Barce, Lampard's patrol destroy dozens of aircraft without a casualty. They also capture a Luftwaffe intelligence officer, Major Paul Schramm. Whilst the patrol are hiding from a German plane, Schramm escapes on foot. Lampard sends Corporal Harris out after him but by sheer fluke, Schramm manages to kill his pursuer. The major makes it back to Barce and he takes off as a passenger in a Fieseler Fi 156 Storch to search for the SAS patrol. They find Lampard's force but the SAS soldiers damage the plane with gunfire, forcing it to crash-land, leaving Schramm injured. Lampard, disregarding warnings from his men, brings his patrol close to an enemy base. They are fired upon by Italian troops, and one of Lampard's men is killed.
The patrol enjoys a break in Cairo. Lampard indulges in a favourite pastime of seducing the wives of officers who have recently been killed. Whilst he is bedding one widow, an Australian officer who is another of her lovers enters the apartment and in the ensuing confrontation, Lampard kills him. Anxious to avoid the repercussions for this act and for the errors he made on the previous patrol, Lampard eagerly volunteers to lead his men out on another sortie into the desert.
Hornet Squadron arrives in Egypt under the command of New Zealander 'Fanny' Barton, a veteran of the Battles of France and Britain. Since 1940, Barton has become ruthlessly ambitious. Amongst his pilots are 'Pip' Patterson, another veteran but who, unlike Barton, is war-weary. Adjutant Kellaway and Intelligence Officer 'Skull' Skelton are also present. Barton, eager to make a name for himself, proposes to take Hornet Squadron, equipped with US-built Curtiss Tomahawks, out to a forward airstrip LG-181 and commence a campaign of low-level strafing attacks on enemy targets designed to provoke the Luftwaffe into battle; the plan is approved.
In Cairo, two war correspondents, Lester and Malpacket, ill-equipped to cope with the desert, are desperate for a news story that will give them a scoop.
Critical reception
Mike Petty, writing in the UK Independent in 1993, praised the novel, saying that Robinson "picks his way surefootedly through the quagmire of moral complications without ever resorting either to handwringing or to gung-ho posturing, and, most importantly, without devaluing bravery."