The Darkness and the Thunder

by Stewart Binns

  Darling Cat,

  I fear that what follows may depress you. But I hope that the lovely surroundings of Hoe in May and having the little Kittens at your feet will assuage some of the awfulness in what you’re about to read.

  Dear Jack has written a long missive from the Dardanelles. The situation seems worse than I imagined. I think I know Kitchener’s game. He seems to want it to fail so that he can be proved right in the end. As for me, I hope you take great comfort in knowing that soon I may be spending much more time with you in Sussex than previously. My days are numbered. Jacky F. is going to leave me high and dry by resigning, claiming that he was against the whole enterprise from the start. Infuriatingly, he’s now saying that he preferred Borkum, which is somewhat galling in that the bloody island was my idea and he said it couldn’t work! I think his irascibility and tenacity have turned into lunacy!

  But, darling, I must talk about what I have seen today. It chills me to the bone, but I have to share it with you, as you’re the only one I can confide in. You know I have little regard for my own safety and that war fills me with a perverse thrill. Few understand that, but it is my nature. That is my personal relationship with the gods of war, but others are gentler souls, who serve our king and country out of duty, not because they crave the danger and the adventure, as I do. I pity them; they suffer so much and often with naked fear coursing through their bones. How do they do it?

  As for the battle itself – a great coming together of mighty armies – I saw nothing other than shells and smoke and heard nothing other than the boom of their Big Berthas, the whistle of their whizz-bangs and, of course, the awful rat-a-tat-tat of their deadly machine guns. Haig (it was his op) was kind enough to me, but I sensed that he thought my presence was a bloody nuisance! We climbed a tall steeple and got close to the trenches, but it was all deafening noise and choking smoke. It is little wonder the generals are at a loss to know what to do. In the great days of the past, Napoleon or Wellington could see the whole scene and direct their forces accordingly. Now generals are blind, and blindness can inhibit even a military genius, but when it’s combined with incompetence …

  It is what I saw later that shook me the most. I visited a large hospital at Poperinghe, Pop-Hop, which more resembled a slaughterhouse than a medical facility. There were over a thousand poor souls lying outside waiting to be admitted, line upon line of them. Pierced, torn, seared, choking and dying. The ambulances kept coming, each with four or five tortured innocents in them. The orderlies deposited the men into crude but necessary holding areas, which, in simple terms, were: those who had no chance of survival, those who had a small chance of survival, those who would survive with care and those who would survive regardless of care. As you might guess, little regard was paid to the first and last categories. Of the other two, most attention was paid to the men for whom care might make a difference. The rest had to wait.

  Nearby, burial parties were working incessantly to clear the accumulation of corpses. It was medieval in its revolting simplicity – men thrown into pits, side by side, then on top of one another. Good men, many hardly men at all, farm boys, factory hands, clerks, postmen, railwaymen.

  I went past an operating theatre. It was not a good moment. A man was undergoing a trepanning. I could see nothing of him, just those tending him, covered in his blood from head to toe, and, at their feet, a mountain of bloodstained bandages.

  In the middle of it all, calm, professional, but weary to the point of exhaustion, were the remarkable doctors, nurses and orderlies. My host was a Captain Noel Chavasse. A fine fellow, son of the Bishop of Liverpool, good rugger player and ran for us in the Olympic Games in London. He has been in France since the beginning. I could see the sadness and the exhaustion in his sunken eyes. He was pale and thin, but never once did he complain or badger me, he just thanked me for coming.

  I also met some of the remarkable girls of the QAIMNS. Just splendid! They are in the middle of it all. One of them, Sister Margaret Killingbeck, a northern girl of some spirit, had no hesitation in telling me what I could see with my own eyes. She said that Captain Chavasse had told her who I was, so asked me very pointedly if anyone on the War Council had any idea what is going on at the Front. I answered that I thought so. Her response was very apposite.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘are you all monsters? If you know, why do you keep sending men to their certain deaths?’

  I was taken aback, and those around me shuddered. But as a sister she carries the rank of captain, so is entitled to speak her mind. I hadn’t given a very good answer, so I deserved the rebuke. I tried to change the subject and asked when she was due some leave. Her answer was equally to the point.

  ‘Not for some time, sir, Nurse Thomas and I travel to Marseilles tomorrow. We’ve been assigned to a hospital ship supporting the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force.’

  Nurse Thomas was standing next to the sister, a striking-looking girl, a picture of Celtic beauty, no more than 20 years of age; she could have been the raven-haired Guinevere herself. She perhaps thought Killingbeck had been too harsh with me; she looked at me with an intensity that could have melted stone and said, ‘Sir, Sister Killingbeck is a saint; she’s saved dozens of lives. Wherever there are men suffering like these, she’ll be there … And I’ll be with her.’

  She then did a remarkable thing: she got on her tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek and said, ‘I hear you’re a good man, sir. When you see Mr Asquith and Lord Kitchener and the rest of them, tell them what you’ve seen today. It will help us to know that what is happening here is not lost on them.’

  I was moved to tears by her resolve and promised to make sure that anyone and everyone knew what the war is really like. Then she was hurried away by Sister Killingbeck with the words, ‘Come on, Bron, we’ve got work to do.’ I took careful note of their names so that I can have the Admiralty find out which ship they’re on and make sure Jack makes a fuss of them when they arrive in Gallipoli.

  As I left the hospital late in the afternoon, the darkening of which made the scene yet more hideous, the guns were still firing in the distance, the drumming thunder of a cannonade, every beat of which proclaimed that the process of death and mutilation was still raging.

  Forgive the callousness of this note, but I needed to put into words what I have seen and felt. Now I feel a little purged.

  So, my darling, I am now onboard ship heading for Dover. There is a War Council on Friday, which promises to be volcanic, so I will try to clear my desk tomorrow and Tuesday and get down to Hoe on Wednesday. I think I will need the sustenance only you can give to face what lies ahead.

  Much love to the Kittens,

  Your devoted and loving,

  Pig

  The Battle for Aubers Ridge proved to be an unmitigated disaster. The British bombardment of German positions started at 05:00 hours. Thirty minutes later the British infantry attacked from their trenches but immediately came under withering machine-gun fire. German trench work was far too good to be severely damaged by even the heaviest British howitzers. In some places trenches ran in double or triple lines with deep, reinforced, boxed shelters to protect the defenders against bombardment. Communication trenches were deep and well concealed and huge coils of barbed wire were dug into ditches in front of the trenches, sometimes two yards deep and five wide. Machine-gun posts placed at regular intervals were protected by reinforced concrete and faced with steel plate cut with firing holes.

  The lead assault battalions to the south of Laventie were 1st Northants, 2nd Royal Sussex, 2nd Royal Munster, 2nd Royal Welch, 2nd Gurkhas, 7th Sikhs and 4th Seaforths. To the north the attack was led by 3rd Northants, 2nd East Lancs, 2nd Rifles, 1st Royal Irish Rifles, 14th Londons and 6th Jats. It was a roll call of the best of Britain’s empire, an army whose bright-red tunics symbolized an army that conquered half the world. But the army was no longer in imperial red, and this would not be a day that would be remembered with pride, only with grief and ignominy.

  The
infantry was left severely exposed by inadequate artillery support. Shell production in Britain, jealously guarded by Major General Sir Stanley von Donop, Master General of Ordnance, and limited by antiquated contracts to a few accredited suppliers, led to a severe shell shortage. The scarcity led to rationing, which on the day of the attack on Aubers Ridge was eighteen rounds per battery per day. Sadly, when those precious shells were used they were fired from guns in need of repair or replacement. Many misfired, killing their crews, or released lethally short rounds.

  In some places in the British attack in the southern sector men never got beyond the first yard before being mown down. Those who made it further were impeded by the swathes of barbed wire, making them easy targets for the German snipers. The few who made it to the German lines were slaughtered in hand-to-hand fighting in the trenches, or taken prisoner. At 06:00 hours the order was given to halt the attack, leaving hundreds of men pinned down in no-man’s-land.

  Events in the northern sector told the same story, but some units did manage to take the German trenches in three limited areas. The new tunnelling companies had laid mines under the German positions and their detonation at 05.40 hours made for a successful attack on the heavily fortified Delangre Farm. It was one of the few successes.

  When he received reports of good progress by the French on Vimy Ridge, but without a full picture of British losses, Haig ordered a fresh attack in the southern sector beneath Neuve Chapelle. The Allied bombardment started at 15:20 hours. The Black Watch went over the top seven minutes later. Miraculously, some reached the German front line, but only to be killed or captured. A handful even reached a second line of trenches before being massacred by the defenders.

  By the evening and encroaching darkness, chaos reigned. Communications between HQ and officers at the sharp end of the attack had completely broken down. In part it was because roads and paths to the rear were blocked by men carrying equipment and searching for rendezvous points, but mainly because most company commanders lay dead. At dusk Haig called off the attack.

  The Battle for Aubers Ridge lasted but one day. There were 11,161 British and Indian casualties. It gained no ground and did not aid the wider French offensive in any discernible way.

  Saturday 15 May

  St Omer, Pas-de-Calais, France

  Although St Omer is as distinctively French as anywhere else in the nation, it has taken on some very British features. Indeed, Britain could easily be an occupying power. Street and road traffic signs in English have been put up. The shops sell a whole range of British goods; York ham, whisky, American cigarettes and Cheddar cheese are to be found everywhere. However, not all translated signs are entirely accurate. One that has amused British guests is a poster for concerts at the hôtel de ville which asks those attending to arrive on time and addresses them as ‘the comings tardily’.

  Forty-two miles north-west of Lille and twenty-eight south-east of Calais, St Omer sits on the main route to the Channel from the French heartland. It is the home of the HQ of the British Expeditionary Force and the Royal Flying Corps, and base to dozens of other organizations related to the war effort. In fact, the British have requisitioned large parts of the town and are filling its coffers and those of its shopkeepers and restaurateurs to excess. It is like a frontier town, with men and equipment moving in all directions at once, day and night. Despite the often drab uniforms, droves of injured soldiers in a multitude of hospitals, strict rationing and the general exigencies of war, the bars, brothels, cafés and restaurants are full every night.

  The mood is frivolous, the drinking prodigious, and brawling, sometimes en masse, is commonplace. The scarlet-covered service caps of the military policeman – ‘Cherry-nobs’, as the men call them – who patrol in quartets are conspicuous every night of the week. The Provost Marshal deals harshly with repeat offenders, as evidenced by the large number of men in St Omer’s two Field Punishment centres. Two weeks ago a reservist from the Royal Fusiliers was court-martialled and shot at dawn for killing another soldier in a drunken fight at his billet south of St Omer.

  Other draconian restrictions have been instituted. Drink can be served only during the limited hours set by the Defence of the Realm Act in Britain, and absinthe, la fée verte, or ‘green fairy’, of legend, is banned altogether. Prostitution is regulated, at least in part, but has become a growth industry all the same.

  The most popular haunt, especially for young officers needing to let off steam, is Café l’Harmonie on the Grande Place. Besides the raucous atmosphere and modestly priced alcohol, its leading attraction is Jeanne, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the owner, M. Vincent. Jeanne is a very fetching brunette, lavishly endowed, her figure made even more feminine by corsetry that defies the laws of engineering and high heels that defy the laws of gravity. Jeanne captivates all who see her as she flounces between the tables carrying a huge tray of drinks high above her head with one hand. M. Vincent has a simple rule: you may wave, blow kisses, sing to her, whistle at her, or offer her endearments in French or English (but not in Flemish or German, and no suggestive observations of any kind), but you must never touch. Touching means a lifetime ban for a man of any rank. It is said that the rule would apply to Sir John French himself, but the great general has yet to cross l’Harmonie’s threshold.

  Rumours abound that Jeanne has been known to take the occasional fortunate fellow to her room after hours so that they can discuss the situation at the Front or work out how to release her from the tortuous bondage of her corset, so every man who walks through the door lives in hope. However, there are cynics who suggest that the rumours were begun by Jeanne’s very protective but equally entrepreneurial father, who would never dream of letting anyone near his beautiful daughter but is more than happy that his customers carry on drinking and imagining that he might.

  Sitting at a window table of l’Harmonie are Mary Broxup and Cath Kenny. They are trying to gawp in two directions at once: through the window to the Grande Place, where throngs of people mill around the many drinking and eating places, and through the cigarette fug of l’Harmonie itself, alive with laughter and excited conversation.

  The dominant colour on this Saturday night in St Omer is khaki, but there are also French blue and the copious red, pink and purple worn by the ladies of the night, some of whom look well coiffed and expensive; others less so. A few of the women are dressed very conservatively: the British nurses, Red Cross girls, FANYs and others who are arriving in ever greater numbers. Other than the gorgeous Jeanne and the ubiquitous filles de joie, local French women are nowhere to be seen. They know it is better to stay at home in the evenings while the British indulge their penchant for drink and debauchery.

  ‘Sken that lass there, Mary, the black one? She’s got an arse like a balloon! D’yer fancy ’avin one like that?’

  ‘No, ta; am ’appy enough wi’ t’one ave got.’

  ‘Do’st reckon she meks a lot o’ brass?’

  ‘She must ’ave; ne’er skenned so many tarts in one place! It’s more like a whorehouse than a pub.’

  ‘Don’t think thu’s much difference round ’ere, our Mary.’

  Cath turns as Jeanne sashays past, her lips as red as a postbox, her eyes made up like Cleopatra’s.

  ‘Na-then, that’s a figure to die fer. No wonder this place is packed!’

  ‘Aye, not bad, our Tommy’d get reet ’ot an’ bothered if ’e wer ’ere. Mind you, yer ’ave to wonder wot ’appens to all that flesh when she teks off that contraption she’s strapped into.’

  Mary pauses to survey the room. ‘Any dacent-lookin’ lads?’

  Cath has already seen one and has been staring at him for a while. ‘Thu’s one o’er yonder, a pretty blond lad, blue eyes. ’E’s got three pips; wot does that mek ’im?’

  ‘Oh, ’e’s a captain. Very ’ansome. Wouldn’t mind once round t’maypole wi’ ’im.’

  ‘Me too. A bet ’is pole is long and thick!’

  ‘Steady, Cath, tha’s givin’ me ideas.�
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  ‘Ave bin ’avin those ideas ever sin wi got ’ere. Do’st reckon wi can get by wi’out a seein’ to fra our lads? Bet they’re not goin’ short.’

  ‘Don’t, Cath.’

  ‘It’s men’s nature, Mary. Face up t’ it. Am beginning t’think it’s my nature too. All ave been doin’ this last few week is ticklin’ me little button. Ave even bin thinkin’ abaht three in a bed wi Henry Hyndman.’

  ‘Bloody ’ell, Cath! Wot’s to be doin’ wi yer. I ’ope I’m not included in that little trio?’

  ‘Course, y’are, yer silly bugger.’

  ‘At’a tellin’ me, tha fancies me?’

  ‘No, yer daft ’appeth. Am just tellin’ yer am feelin’ as randy as buggery!’

  ‘That’s alreet then. Tha got me moithered fer a minute then. Come on, let’s away, wi’v got them two toff lasses t’see, t’morn. We need clear heeds.’

  ‘Aye, s’pose so; I wager them two do a fair bit o’ button ticklin’ when t’fancy teks ’em!’

  ‘Doubt it, bet thi’ve both got a young stallion tucked away somewheer.’

  Mary walks off, muttering to herself. ‘Henry bloody Hyndman … You poor lass, you must be bloody desperate …’

  The next morning, a day that has dawned clear and fresh with a promise of warm sunshine to come, Cath and Mary walk from their lodgings just off the Grande Place to a large town house on the Quai du Commerce, which fronts St Omer’s Canal de Neuffossé. It is the headquarters of the VAD in France. It is 9 a.m. to the second when, accompanied by two very trim and upright women in VAD uniforms, Katherine Furse and Kitty Stewart-Murray walk into the large belle-époque reception room on the ground floor.

  This is Kitty’s second visit to France to see the work of the VAD in action at first hand. She has left Bardie, whose euphoria about an overseas posting has long since evaporated, as no word has been forthcoming about when it might happen, at Blagdon. She has also left George Grey, her young lover, in London, but only after spending a very raucous night with him en route from North-umberland.