Mary is charmed by the story. ‘Very cosy.’
‘Yes, it was, very! As a farmer, I was a big help to her father, Pieter. But the Belgian police came looking for me. They must have worked out that Riet might have helped me get away. I managed to hide in one of the barns. Then it got tricky. The police took Riet in for questioning, and there was a German officer there. She was petrified. They made it clear that I would be shot if they found me, as would anyone who helped me escape. The family weren’t sure if they could trust their neighbours. Most locals were collaborating with the Germans. They didn’t really have a choice.’
Vic interrupts. ‘So where is their farm?’
‘Not far from here. It was near a village called Kruipuit, which is between Ghent and Bruges, about 45 miles east of Ypres. Trouble was, there was an airfield nearby, full of German planes doing reconnaissance, so everyone was very edgy.’
‘So you had to leave?’
‘It was a terrible wrench. I had learned some Flemish and was happy with Riet and her parents, who were lovely people, but it had to end. It was too dangerous for them. So they stocked me up with provisions and gave me a bicycle, and Pieter gave me a shotgun, and off I went.’
‘Thank God for the shotgun!’ says Mary, thinking back to the first time she ever pulled the trigger of a gun.
‘Funny thing was I never checked if the thing was loaded. I covered it in hessian and strapped it to the frame of the bike then forgot about it until this afternoon.’
‘So how did you get across no-man’s-land?’
‘It wasn’t easy. But near Diksmuide, to the north, the Front is the Yser river, which the Belgians have turned into a drainage dyke. The locals opened the dykes at the beginning of the war and flooded the lot. There are some trenches there, but they’re not like round here. There are gaps because of the water. So I waded across the fields and swam the Yser at night, then started moving south. I remembered Pop and hoped my regiment would still be nearby, so I made my way down here. I was hiding in that barn, trying to think of what I would say and whether I needed a uniform or not, when Mary and Cath were dragged in. I couldn’t believe it was happening – Welshmen from my own regiment!’
Vic shakes his head. ‘A lot has happened since you were captured, Thomas.’
‘So I gather, and to my brother and twin sister.’
‘Twin! So Bronwyn’s your twin sister?’
‘Yes, but I’m the older one.’
‘What are you going to do now?’
‘Rejoin the Fusiliers. I’m fit and strong again, thanks to good food and hard work on the farm.’
‘Well, let’s fix that in the morning. We’ll find the Royal Welch and I’ll come with you to the adjutant and vouch for what’s happened. Enlisted men aren’t required to try to escape, so they might pin a medal on you, especially when I tell them about today.’
Cath empties her glass. Her teetotalism ended when they arrived in Flanders, and she has developed a liking for strong Belgian beers, as has Mary.
‘And you can stay with Mary an’ me t’neet. Wi’v got a sofa yer can ’ave. Me an’ ’er bunk up together in t’double bed, but thu’s not room fer three – shame, tho’!’
They all laugh out loud and Vic limps off to get more beer.
‘Aye, let’s celebrate!’ shouts Cath. ‘It’s not every day a girl is saved by a ’andsome young Welshman with a big shotgun! And one wi’ two barrels!’
‘And by her best friend, who actually did the shooting,’ adds Mary indignantly.
Later that night, with Pop’s clock striking midnight, Mary is woken by Cath slipping out of the bed they share.
‘Wheer yer goin’?’
‘Fer a pee.’
‘But the’s a pot under t’bed.’
‘Aye, a know, but thought ad go an’ see if Morgan’s alreet.’
‘ ’Course ’e’s alreet. Get back in bed, yer ’orny cow.’
‘Can’t ’elp it. T’lad saved us both today. Those bastards wud ’ave slit our throats once they’d done wi’ us. Reckon ’e deserves a goodnight kiss, if nowt else.’
‘Bloody ’ell, Cath. Wot abaht Mick?’
‘Oh, Mick knows wot am like. He knows a can’t do wi’out it fer long.’
‘Well, don’t mek too much noise. I need t’sleep.’
‘I’ll try not t’, but can’t promise!’
Cath bends down and kisses Mary on the forehead. ‘Come an’ join us if yer want, but give me ten minutes first.’
‘Bugger off, you old tart!’
Sunday 25 July
Hoe Farm, Hascombe, Surrey
Although he still has a seat in the War Council, Winston’s voice is frequently heard but rarely listened to. His mood continues to become more and more sombre. He writes to his brother Jack frequently, keen to receive letters in return, which give him a much better understanding of what is happening in Gallipoli than official War Office memos.
He and Clemmie have taken Hoe Farm for the spring and summer, a Tudor house recently renovated by Sir Edward Lutyens. It is an idyllic, quintessentially English house, surrounded by meadows, woodland and a beautiful garden. Moreover, it is keeping Winston sane. During the week, he uses a room at 19 Abingdon Street, yards from the House of Lords, where he has been allowed to retain Eddie Marsh as his private secretary and Harry Beckenham, his Admiralty shorthand writer. However, his weeks are a misery as he watches from the periphery as the war drags on with no end in sight. In one of his letters to Jack he writes, ‘The certainty that the war will not end this year fills my mind with melancholy thoughts. The youth of Europe – a whole generation, will be shorn away.’
But weekends are different. Amidst the flowers and butterflies of an English summer, the horror of war is a long way away, and his heart begins to beat normally as he is driven along the Portsmouth Road to Surrey every Friday evening.
‘Goonie and the Jagoons are here, Winston. Just coming up the drive.’
‘Excellent! Time for a Pol Roger! Eddie, would you oblige? And apple juice for the little ones.’
Winston rushes into the garden to greet the children, who are already halfway across the lawn. He makes a sound like he has been shot and falls on the ground.
‘You got me, you English Schweinhunde!’ he shouts, which persuades his children and Jack’s to jump all over him, celebrating their kill.
Clemmie is furious. ‘Winston, don’t you dare use that language. I don’t want the children to end up like you, unable to resist a battle.’
‘But we’re in a battle, a battle for our lives!’
Clemmie ushers the children into the house and helps Goonie with her things. Winston is fascinated by the easel she has under her arm. ‘I didn’t know you painted.’
‘Just started. It’s wonderful therapy now that Jack’s away.’
Inevitably, the conversation over dinner turns to Gallipoli. Goonie is worried about Jack. ‘He says it is horrible beyond belief, and getting worse.’
Winston frowns. ‘I know, and Kitchener is planning a new landing and a big push next month. But I fear the Turks are getting more men into the field, and more quickly than we are, so every time we attack we’re outnumbered and outgunned. We need at least twenty thousand more men, and many more guns. If they’re not available, we should wait until they are. But they won’t listen to me any more.’
Goonie pats Winston’s arm. ‘Poor you.’
‘Poor Jack; he’s out there. K asked me to go out and give him a detailed report. I could have spent some time with darling Jack. The Old Block and Arthur Balfour said yes, but word got back to Bonar Law, who kyboshed it.’
‘The old sod!’ Clemmie never had liked Bonar Law.
Winston is in full flow. ‘The trouble with the War Council is that there are too many powerful and talented people in there. Their arguments cancel one another out. Also, the OB listens to them all but never chooses the best argument and then endorses it, so nothing ever gets decided, except by political expediency, usually to sa
ve his own skin. His decisions are not based on logic or balanced judgement but on self-interest.’
The next morning Winston rises late to find Goonie already at her easel in the garden and goes to greet her.
‘Good morning, Winston,’ she responds. ‘Look at the light; it’s so wonderful.’
Winston looks towards the meadow and the fringe of trees behind Hoe, which seem to be the subject of Goonie’s picture.
‘Yes. Very pretty.’
‘More than pretty, Winston. Look at the sun playing on the buttercups; they’re sparkling, like yellow diamonds on a dappled green carpet. Splash on the turpentine, lots of yellow and white. Make yourself the master of your brush and your canvas, make them cower before your assault; wide, wild brush strokes. Then you have the scene under your spell, and it doesn’t answer back.’
Winston smiles. He likes Goonie’s choice of words and her description of what he always thought was a rather dull pastime. He looks at the scene again, then watches as Goonie tries to capture it. After about fifteen minutes he exclaims, ‘Goonie, you’re a darling. Now I know how to relax amidst this dreadful war.’
He marches off towards the kitchen, where Clemmie is clearing breakfast. ‘Clemmie,’ he announces. ‘I’m going to get Harry B. to drive me to Guildford. I’m going to buy some paints and an easel.’
‘Whatever for, darling?’
‘So that I can start painting, of course!’
Clemmie, thinking nothing could be more unsuitable for Winston’s temperament, humours him. ‘Very well, Pug. Don’t be long, and no detours via the White Horse.’
‘What a good idea. Where’s Eddie? Eddie, come on! We’re going shopping!’
Two hours later, with the painting materials safely lodged in the car, and several glasses of beer to the good, Winston, Eddie Marsh and Harry Beckenham get up to leave Hascombe’s White Horse.
As the pub door closes behind them they hear a voice from within, followed by much laughter. The voice issues a cry that Winston has heard only once before, when he was crossing the road from Abingdon Street to the Houses of Parliament, but it is one that will haunt him for the rest of his life: ‘What about the Dardanelles?’
Eddie Marsh tries to be sympathetic. ‘Ignore them; they don’t know anything, except what they read in the Daily Mail.’
‘I shall, don’t worry. I’m more concerned about the future. Our boys need leadership, not sloth and folly. If only K would commit the kind of numbers he’ll send into battle in Flanders, we’d be in Constantinople and the eastern world would be ours. The men facing death out there deserve a plan.’
Winston looks to the exhaust of the car, which Harry has just started. ‘Gas is the answer, Eddie; shiploads of it. The Turks shoot our men in cold blood when they try to surrender; they have massacred over a million Armenians, Greeks, Assyrian Christians. Let’s gas the buggers! The Germans are happy to gas us. What’s the difference between chlorine gas and a high-explosive shell?’
Eddie is shocked. ‘The Geneva Convention of 1906, Winston.’
‘Bugger the Geneva Convention. We’re in a fight to the death, a fight to save civilization. God will forgive us if it brings the slaughter to an end. And if he doesn’t, then I for one will pay the price in hell!’
Winston, having been castigated for being late back for lunch, spends the rest of the afternoon and the next day at his new easel. He copies everything that Goonie does and paints feverishly.
That evening, he is alone with Clemmie. ‘Cat, the Laverys, ’he says, ‘they both paint, don’t they?’
‘Of course. Sir John is very highly thought of.’
‘I know, but he’s too clever for me. Doesn’t Hazel paint as well? She could give me some advice.’
‘Yes, she’s very good. She’s also very beautiful … that wouldn’t have something to do with it, would it?’
‘Of course not; it’s her skill with a paint brush that intrigues me. Let’s invite them over next weekend.’
Winston is hooked; painting is a passion he will enjoy for the rest of his life.
Thursday 29 July
Hooge, West Flanders, Belgium
With Harry Woodruff in a military hospital in Boulogne, Fusilier CSM Maurice Tait is going into battle without his friend for the first time in his nineteen-year military career. It is a strange feeling. As far as 4th Fusilier comrades are concerned, Maurice is the last of the Old Contemptibles, the last of his species, part of a regular soldier tradition stretching back over a hundred years to the Peninsular War.
As no one has had time to replace Harry as Company Serjeant Major, Maurice has been asked to take charge of both his company and Harry’s. They are both acting as support companies in the trenches at Hooge, south-east of Ypres. The small village has become strategically important because of a huge crater created by a British mine ten days earlier which allowed the Middlesex Regiment to capture the village. In this tragically bizarre war, the protection from direct fire which the crater offers has meant that a hole in the ground has become something over which it is worth fighting.
With Maurice are two reservist serjeants, Joe Smith and Kenneth Bryce, both Winchester men from the 2nd King’s Royal Rifle Corps. It is their first week at the Front. In the advanced trenches in front of them are men of 8th Battalion, Rifle Brigade, mainly from Kitchener’s New Army, among the first to arrive in France.
‘Right, boys, Fritz’s guns have started. Get your heads down.’
A terrible whining begins, followed by short bursts of explosives. A look of dread plays across Joe Smith’s face.
‘What the fuck is that, Colour?’
‘That’s a Fritz heavy trench mortar, a Minenwerfer; we call them Moanin’ Minnies. Nasty little bastards.’
The bombardment continues for several minutes before there is a sudden silence.
‘Right, fellas, Fritz will be on his way any minute. Let’s hope those Rifles boys up front have been well trained.’
Pandemonium breaks out in front of Maurice and the two serjeants. From their vantage point they can see a wide sweep of ground before them, and the men of 8th Rifles pouring rifle and machine-gun fire into a phalanx of field-grey German infantry running across no-man’s-land. The Germans lose many men. Then the nature of the assault changes dramatically. Maurice has never seen or heard anything like it. Serpent-like, powerful hisses echo across the scene, followed by jets of flame, like jets of water from a fire-hose.
‘Fuck me! Stand to, lads!’
Realizing that he is seeing something new and lethal, Maurice orders his companies to stand ready. ‘Kenny, go an’ find Captain Downin’ an’ tell him to get his arse over ’ere!’
Moments later Maurice’s new CO arrives. ‘What the hell are they, Colour?’ he asks.
‘They’ve got cylinders on their backs, sir – must be full of petrol. There’s a nozzle at the front with a trigger. It’s spitting flame nearly twenty yards!’
As Maurice describes what they can all see, the British riflemen in front of them begin to pile out of their trenches in droves and run pell-mell towards the Fusiliers. The trenches they leave behind have become pits of burning fuel; many men, screaming in agony, are being burned alive. Some of the men running for safety are also ablaze. They do not get very far before succumbing to the heat and pain, and fall to the ground in heaps. Only ten yards from the Fusiliers’ trench one poor soul, lying on the ground in an inferno of flame, feebly waves his hand, begging for help. Maurice raises his rifle and shoots him in the head. Captain Downing appears to be frozen in horror, so Maurice bellows at his men. ‘Pick your targets, lads! Let’s nail those fuckin’ flamin’ things!’
Galvanized by Maurice’s order, the men unleash a hail of bullets which cuts down the German attackers, including all but one of their Flammenwerfer. The only one still standing is heading straight for Maurice’s position.
Maurice takes steady aim at the encroaching German and hits him square in the chest. He recoils backwards but does not fall at fi
rst. Instead, he stumbles forwards, pressing the trigger of his weapon as he does so. A jet of flame squirts along the ground and into the Fusiliers’ trench. Maurice, thinking quickly and using all his experience, clambers out of the back of the trench, yelling as he goes: ‘Get out! Everyone out!’
His cries are too late for the two serjeants and Captain Downing, who are soon up to their waists in flames. Maurice rushes back and manages to help Downing out by grabbing the shoulders of his tunic. Other men rush forwards to pull out Bryce and Smith. Maurice takes off his own tunic and begins to attack the flames on the men’s uniforms. He rolls them along the ground in an attempt to extinguish their burning clothing.
The last of the Flammenwerfer is now dead, but there are many more infantrymen still jumping over the deserted British trenches.
‘Colour, leg it! They’re all over yer!’
Maurice hears the warning from his men just as he feels a bayonet in his midriff. It feels like he has been stabbed by a hot poker. He turns in fury, grabs his assailant’s rifle and uses it to throw him to the ground. But as he does so the German presses the trigger, propelling a bullet into Maurice’s shoulder, shattering his collarbone. He falls to one knee. He has made a mistake no soldier should ever make: in his haste to get out of the burning trench, he has left his Lee-Enfield behind. He looks around in desperation.
‘Take this, Colour.’
The thin, plaintive voice is that of Captain Downing, at his feet. He is offering him his Webley service revolver. Maurice grabs it and empties it into the Germans around him. Others are hit by his own Fusiliers, who have formed up in a rear trench 20 yards away.
‘Keep firin’, boys!’
Despite the deep wound to his side and his shattered collarbone, Maurice manages to get Captain Downing to his feet and helps him back to the rear trench. Then, with two lance corporals to help him, the three of them go back to collect Serjeants Bryce and Smith. Under Fusilier covering fire from their trench, they manage to get the two KRRC serjeants back but, as they are helping them down into the trench, Maurice feels a searing pain in his left buttock. He has been hit in the backside and knows the bullet has shattered his pelvis. He falls head first into the trench and loses consciousness.
The Darkness and the Thunder Page 29