Thirty minutes later, with the moon casting deep shadows and the air as clear as a bell, all four men are in position. Except for the sentries on duty, the men of Maurice’s C Company and Harry’s B Company, 4th Fusiliers, have been told to get into their bivouacs and sleeping holes and to stay there in silence.
Silence also pervades the battlefield. Only rarely is the Front without artillery or rifle fire. But the quiet lasts only for a couple of minutes. Huge, soundless flashes to the south-east herald a bombardment by nearby French artillery. They are soon followed by a thunderous reverberating rumble that echoes around Flanders’ empty landscape. The Allied volley wakes up the battlefield. Single shots ring out; the German Scharfschützen are out hunting.
The four British men are determined to stalk their hunter and make him their prey rather than become yet more of his many victims. Maurice and the major position themselves as spotters ten yards either side of Hywel. He has disguised himself inside his camouflage balaclava and created a discreet firing position between the piled sandbags of the trench parapet. He has also donned his now-famous black glove, the first time it will be used in earnest. Harry has his dummy Tommy ready, replete with a casually cocked service cap and a brightly glowing cigarette.
In a hushed voice, Hesketh-Pritchard issues his order: ‘Raise the target, CSM Woodruff. Keep it quite still for now.’
It does not take long for the Germans to respond. ‘Tommy’ is soon hit through the temple, sending him spinning into the bottom of the trench with a splash. His cigarette hisses as it is extinguished by the freezing water.
Maurice rushes to retrieve it to do the alignment trigonometry. He makes an excited but muted observation: ‘He must be to the right. I can’t see ’im through this bit of kit, but he must be near that pile of stones.’
With his powerful telescope and using Maurice’s estimate, the major soon spots the German’s gun-metal barrel in the bright moonlight.
‘The blighter’s hidden in the bottom of that pile of stones. I can see his muzzle; it’s poking out on top of that half-empty sandbag. He’s got a big Mauser sporting rifle.’
Hywel responds. ‘I need to move a few yards to the left: my angle is wrong. He may have put his head down by the time I get there; let’s put Tommy up again.’
As Hywel repositions himself Harry retrieves Tommy and moves ten yards down the trench. The major and Maurice move with him. Harry turns Tommy’s head the other way round. He then pulls his service cap down to hide the bullet hole and inserts another cigarette. Hesketh-Pritchard quickly issues a new order.
‘Wait a couple of minutes; only reveal a quarter-head, Colour, a back quarter. It mustn’t be too much like the last target.’
The response from the German sniper takes longer this time, as if he is trying to understand why two easy targets have appeared so readily. But, eventually, the bullet strikes as truly as before. There is a hiatus of only a few moments before Hywel fires. The major exclaims, this time without any attempt to quieten his voice, ‘My God, you got him! That’s all of 180 yards, and at night! Astonishing!’
The four men gather to celebrate. Hywel remains calm but knows he has accounted for one possible assassin of his Welch Fusilier comrades. Hesketh-Pritchard produces a large silver hip flask from his tunic pocket.
‘Drink, gentlemen? It’s a rather good Armagnac. Drink well – Greaves is nearby with plentiful reserve supplies.’
They take a ten-minute breather before Hywel offers a challenge. ‘One more – what do you call them, sir?’
‘Scharfschützen.’
‘Yes, sir. One more of those before we call it a day? I have a feeling I haven’t got the one I’m after.’
They all nod in agreement. The major suggests a new position and target: ‘A hundred and fifty yards to the west. Let’s put up my Stetson – that will tempt Fritz; he won’t be able to resist it.’
Fifteen minutes later the four assassins are in position again. A new cigarette is lit and the major donates his hat to the cause. Harry moves the dummy much more quickly this time, as if the man under the Stetson is in a hurry. Almost immediately, several shots ring out. All of them miss, and Harry pulls the target down beneath the parapet. Hywel puts up his hand, signalling for everyone to pause and be quiet.
The silence lasts for minutes on end. Hywel’s three accomplices dare not move; their anxious breath fills the air around them. The artillery falls silent, adding to the eerie tension. It is so quiet they begin to think that their racing heartbeats are audible. They hear distant coughing from a man sleeping nearby and the scurrying of rats in the bottom of the trench, followed by Hywel whispering, ‘I can see you, Fritz, but where’s your mate?’
More silence follows. Harry needs a pee, but does not move a muscle. Maurice shakes his head at him as if to say, ‘Cross yer legs!’ Then another urgent whisper comes from Hywel.
‘Now I see both of you!’
An instant later a single shot rings out, cracking in the night air. Two seconds later there is another. Moments after that Hywel’s voice booms into the air. ‘Got them! Two of the buggers! One behind his steel plate and another hidden in the timber of the parapet.’
His three accomplices rush over to congratulate Hywel.
‘That was incredible, Colour – two in quick succession. I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘Your Magnum helped, Major. It cut through that plate like a knife through butter.’
‘Have you got your man now?’
‘I think so – the second one. I don’t know why – hunter’s instinct, maybe – but I think it was him. I feel better now.’
‘So now I can have you at my new training centre?’
‘You can. I’m all yours.’
Harry and Maurice shake hands with the major.
‘Sir, your kukri and golok. Thanks to you, we don’t need ’em now.’
‘On the contrary, CSM Woodruff, I think trench warfare is going to get bloodier and bloodier. I’m sure you will make very good use of them in the future. Please keep them. I know where to get many more from my friends in the Far East.’
‘Thank you for your ’elp, sir. Mo an’ me appreciate it.’
‘Not at all, Colour. It’s been my privilege to meet the two of you.’
As Hesketh-Pritchard moves off down the trench, Harry and Maurice shake Hywel by the hand and slap him on the back. Harry is beaming.
‘Where the fuck did you find ’im?’
‘I didn’t; he found me.’
‘Well, ’e’s a proper soldier. If only we ’ad a few more like ’im.’
33 Bangor Street, Caernarvon, Wales
While their comrades from Burnley – Mick Kenny, Twaites Haythornthwaite and Vinny Sagar – are coming to terms with the horrors of life at the Front in Ypres, Tommy Broxup and John-Tommy Crabtree are spending their second week at their new training base in Caernarvon, North Wales.
When it came to the time when the five Burnley volunteers had to go their separate ways, not much was said between them. Overt emotion is rarely seen among men who think tears are for children and women and that affection is a sign of weakness. Even so, beneath the facades of stoicism, each felt a great sense of loss at their parting and very real apprehension about the future that awaited them. They shook hands and told one another to ‘tek care o’ tha’sen’, and off they went.
It was not much more affectionate when Tommy parted from Mary, and Mick from Cath. There were kisses, and the women shed a few tears, but they were in uniform, in the company of dozens of men who know them both as ‘cocks of their middens’, so too much sentimentality would break the mould. Mary walked away at the last moment, too upset to say anything, but Cath captured the mood perfectly when she shouted to Mick: ‘And don’t come back until t’Germans are on t’run.’
The Accrington Pals left their home towns in Lancashire on Tuesday 23 February. In celebration, in each of the towns the mills and pits were closed for the day, children were allowed out of school and tho
usands gathered to send the men on their way. There were brass bands in the vanguard of the marching men as they made their way to the three specially chartered trains. The people lining the routes, sometimes ten deep, cheered and waved. Many cried, but on the whole their tears were not of sadness but of pride. Over a thousand officers and men, looking immaculate in their khaki, kept time perfectly, their boots rattling the cobbled roads with the cadence of warriors seeking glory. It is a scene being witnessed all over the country as Kitchener’s mighty New Army takes its first steps on the road to the Flanders fields.
Leading D Company, the Burnley lads, was Raymond St George Ross, recently promoted to Major. He sat tall in the saddle on his bay horse, his fellow officers mounted behind him, and led 274 men to Bank Top Station, where their train was waiting for them. Burnley’s deputy mayor, Alderman Keighley, sent them on their way with a brief address, which concluded with a Lanky send-off for Lancashire lads: ‘On yer way, lads. We’re all proud on yer. Do yer bit over theer and come ’ome safe.’ The train left just after 11 a.m. and, by mid-afternoon, after a warm welcome from the townspeople of Caernarvon, the men were in their billets in time for tea.
There have been several changes to 11th Battalion East Lancs, the most notable being the arrival of a new commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Wilmot Rickman, a career soldier who served with distinction in the Boer War with 2nd Northumberland Fusiliers. Colonel Sharples, a close friend of John Harwood, Mayor of Accrington and founder of the battalion, is far too old to continue to be Colonel of the Pals, so he has stepped aside. Rickman is the son of a general, a fine horseman and a respected soldier. His first address to the entire battalion in Castle Square at 8 a.m. on Monday 1 March went well, especially as he then dismissed the men and gave them the day off. He has been less generous since.
Despite the gloom and chill of March mornings in North Wales, parade now commences at 7 a.m. in Castle Square, after which the men return to their billets for breakfast. Drilling and exercises begin in earnest at nine fifteen, when the battalion marches across the Aber swing bridge to their training ground for long days of strenuous activity, including nine-mile forced marches with full kit to Penrhyn Park in Bangor. After lunch in billets, the men repeat the same programme in the afternoon. The exercises include communications and signalling, skirmishing, rifle and bayonet practice, and mock-attacks in both daylight and night-time against entrenched positions, a new army training exercise designed to respond to the current dire situation at the Front.
Rickman has also changed the names of the companies, for reasons that have baffled the rest of the battalion. A Company – the Accrington lads – has become W Company; B Company – Other Districts, mainly Blackburn boys – has become X Company; the Chorley men – C Company – is now Y Company; and D Company – the Burnley boys – has become Z Company. The new names have already led to much mirth; W has been called ‘Where?’, because you can never find them; X has become ‘Illiterate’, because none of them can write their name; Y has become ‘Why?’, because none of them understands why they are here; and Z has become ‘Dozy’ because they do not understand any instructions. ‘Dozy’ is thought to be particularly apt for the Burnley men. In the East Lancs pecking order, the folk of Burnley, as the most remote of the cotton towns, lost in the mists of the Pennines, are thought to be particularly inbred and backwards.
As an experienced soldier, Rickman knows what to expect in Flanders. Perversely, the War Office issues only vital pieces of field equipment when battalions are about to go overseas, so Rickman has given John Harwood a shopping list of things that are needed and can be incorporated into the training. It includes range finders, electrical signalling kits, extra binoculars, field telephones, police whistles and various medical supplies. The mayor has organized a public subscription to raise the £125 required, which has been achieved within three days.
While the battalion’s thirty-one officers have been accommodated in considerable comfort in Caernarvon’s best hotel, the Royal on Bangor Street, Tommy and John-Tommy have been billeted together in a modest boarding house further down the road at number 33. It is a street in two parts. Although the Royal is only a few yards away, set back and hidden by trees, lower down Bangor Street becomes a lively thoroughfare running north-east from the centre of the town and is noted for its many pubs, boisterous weekend evenings and as the haunt of ladies of the night.
But number 33 is a pillar of spartan respectability. It is run by four spinster sisters, the Ensors, aged between fifty and seventy-five: Mary, the eldest, Jane, Margaret and Hephzibah, the youngest.
Both Burnley lads like Caernarvon. The air is clean and the wide vistas of mountains and sea contrast dramatically with the murk of Burnley’s mills and pitheads. The local pubs serve beer a little maltier and sweeter than Burnley’s hoppy bitters, but it’s perfectly drinkable, except on Sunday, when, to the consternation of the Lancastrians, no beer of any kind can be found anywhere. As far as the East Lancs men are concerned, it is the town’s only drawback.
And Caernarvon likes the Accrington Pals. Quite apart from welcoming the Lancastrians out of a sense of patriotic duty, the arrival of over a thousand unattached men with good money in their pockets and few household costs to bear is an economic windfall for the borough, especially out of season.
Concerts have been laid on; football, billiards and roller-hockey matches have been played. Tournaments have been held between companies, between officers, NCOs and men and against local teams. Tommy boxed in a series of bouts in the Caernarvon Pavilion, winning all his fights as a middleweight. But the star of the card was seventeen-year-old Harry ‘Kid’ Nutter from Rishton, who stopped all his opponents in less than a round.
The Ensor’s boarding house is a modest abode which has seen better days, but it is clean and serves a good breakfast, lunch and dinner. Some men have taken to the local delicacy, laverbread with bacon and cockles, but not all. Burnley is a long way from the sea, so seaweed and cockles are an acquired taste. The ladies also make and sell highly thought of cakes and pastries, which are very welcome additions to the menu.
Tommy and John-Tommy share a room facing Bangor Street, and there are two more pairs of Pals in rooms at the back. There is a communal indoor lavatory and a large bathroom with a big porcelain bath. Both are veritable luxuries for men used to an outside privy and a tin tub hanging on a nail by the back door.
Their accommodation also has other benefits. It is only 100 yards from Caernarvon’s Castle Square and the six-hundred-year-old stone bastion of English rule that towers over it. The castle is thought to have been modelled on the mighty walls of Constantinople, and certainly casts a huge shadow across the town. Compared to Burnley, the town is quaintly picturesque and in summer attracts visitors from Liverpool, Manchester and even the English Midlands. Perhaps even more enticing for the Burnley lodgers at number 33 is the Royal Oak and the Prince of Wales, two popular pubs, one next door at number 35 and the other next door but one at number 37. For six nights a week the aroma of malt and hops and the babble of conversation and laughter waft up to the men’s rooms, tempting them to walk just ten short yards to join the merriment.
‘ ’Ow dost think Mick an’ t’lads are doin’ in France?’
‘ ’Ope they’re alreet, John-Tommy. I wouldn’t fancy wot they’re laikin’ at. Feightin’ in little ’oles in t’ground.’
‘Nay, me nayther; if I’m gonna feight t’Germans, I’d ratha look ’em in th’eye.’
The two Pals have been seduced once more by the temptations of the adjoining building. They are savouring the Royal Oak’s Welsh Dragon, a bitter made for the landlord by his brother, who owns the Black Boy in Castle Square, the town’s oldest public house, and who brews on his premises. The pub is full of Burnley men, as it is every night. The beer is flowing in torrents and, like the landlord, the local professional girls are doing a roaring trade.
‘Not bad, this ale.’
‘Aye, I reckon to it. You know wot, John
-Tommy, we’ve coughed up alreet ’ere. Good digs, good ale, trainin’ in t’fresh air.’
‘Tha’s reet; it’s champion; it’ll do me. I’d be ’appy to stop ’ere fer a bit.’
‘ ’Ow long dost think we’ll be ’ere?’
‘Major Ross told me at least three month, mebbe until t’summer.’
‘What dost mek o’ t’landladies; queer owd biddies, aren’t thi?’
‘They’re alreet, as spinsters go. Must ’ave bin comely lasses in their time; reet odd that no on’em’s wed.’
‘Aye, couple o’ t’lads at t’back are single – mebbe they’ll be tempted by older women. When all’s said an’ done, it’s a nice little business they’ve got ’ere.’
John-Tommy laughs at the thought. ‘Nay, lad. Youngest, Hephzibah, must be fifty-odd!’
Tommy shakes his head, acknowledging that his suggestion is unlikely to come to pass. ‘I ’eard ’em talkin’ Welsh to one another this mornin’. Reet daft tongue it is; can’t understand a word on it.’
‘That’s cos it’s a different language, Tommy. Margaret asked me t’other day to speak slow cos she couldn’t understand me. So it cuts both ways, our Tommy.’
‘S’pose so, but it still sounds reet odd t’me; it’s like they’re coughin’ up phlegm.’
John-Tommy drains his jug of beer and asks the bar-boy to bring two more. He then looks at the clock behind the bar.
‘Last one, Tommy … Wonder ’ow Cath an’ Mary are doin’ in London. Wouldn’t fancy that either. Ne’er been down south, but they reckon it’s ten times bigger ’an Manchester; too many folk fer me.’
‘Expect they’ll be alreet, tha’s nowt much bothers them two.’
John-Tommy has a sudden thought. ‘Fancy goin’ up Snowdon at t’weekend?’
‘Yer mean on t’railway?’
‘Nay, hikin’ it.’
‘ ’Aven’t yer ’ad enough marchin’ in them ’ills?’
‘Don’t be a soft appeth, it’ll do us good. If I can fettle it at nearly twice thi age, thee can.’
The Darkness and the Thunder Page 15