by John Masters
‘Any news from the forward platoons?’ he said.
Irwin, standing beside him, mug in hand, said, ‘Nothing, sir. They had trenches a couple of feet deep when I went round, about twenty minutes ago. It’s good soil to dig in.’
Quentin gulped down a mouthful of tea. ‘Think I’ll take another look round … something ought to be happening soon.’
The bell in the Town Hall struck six. Then sharper sounds exploded overhead and behind with sharp cracks. The batmen looked up from the fire as four more cracks followed the first.
‘Well, their guns are in action,’ Irwin said. ‘Their infantry will be close. Or cavalry.’
Rapid rifle fire broke out from ahead, where two of the company’s platoons were lying in their hastily dug trenches in an orchard. The distinctive rattle of a German machine-gun filled the air with a continuous clatter, and ricochets whined off the walls and showered them with brick dust, to blend with the yellow powder that already covered them from days and nights of continuous marching and fighting.
The shelling increased.
‘What are our guns doing?’ Quentin muttered worriedly.
‘Trying to work out their bloody sums,’ his second-in-command said from close by, standing against the wall of a little house.
‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ Pierce said, ‘I don’t think we’ve got any guns supporting us now. Fifty-two Field Battery went back to its brigade.’
‘So it did. The colonel told us. Well, we …’
A lieutenant of artillery cantered up on a sweating magnificent bay, followed by a trumpeter. The rumble of gun wheels echoed from the cobbled street behind. The subaltern reined in, saluting, ‘Number 2 section, D Battery, RHA, sir! … We got separated from the battery. Where are the enemy?’
‘Straight ahead, by the sound of them,’ Quentin said. ‘Look, I can see horses.’
The artillery officer swung round in his saddle, bawling, ‘Take post! Cavalry advancing, front!’
The teams cantered out into the open and wheeled so that the gun muzzles now faced the enemy. The crews leaped off their horses, and took post by the 13-pounders, while the horse-holders trotted their horses back into Le Cateau. The officer was shouting, ‘Eight hundred! Corrector 130! Gunfire, gun control, fire!’ The guns barked and bounced, smoke jetting from their muzzles.
‘There’s the Germans!’ Quentin’s batman breathed in excited awe. ‘Uhlans!’
‘All German cavalry aren’t Uhlans, Stubbersfield,’ Quentin snapped. ‘Uhlans have flat-topped hats.’
The 13-pounders were firing fast, the explosive barks very close. The artillery subaltern stayed on his horse, his binoculars to his eyes. German shells began to burst over and among them. A gunner beside the breech of a gun doubled over and lay still; another crawled away, dragging a shattered leg.
The subaltern said, ‘Oh, I should have told you earlier. The East Surreys, or part of them, are to your right. We passed through them.’
Quentin said, ‘Thanks. That’s giving them something to think about!’
From in front a soldier, bent double, ran towards them, rifle at the trail. He pulled up panting beside Quentin and knelt. ‘Germans getting past us, sir. Mr Hedges said to ask you if he can retire to the barns there.’
Quentin said, ‘Tell Mr Hedges, no. To hold the position. Tell him I’m going to push the enemy back with the reserve platoon.’ The runner said, ‘Yes, sir,’ turned, and ran back the way he had come. Quentin said, ‘CSM, where’s Mr Tate?’
‘I’m here, sir.’
‘Your platoon ready?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Work along the northern edge of Le Cateau, the houses and fields, that way, for three hundred yards from here. There are Germans in there. Probably cavalry. Drive them back, then return.’
‘All right, sir.’
The young officer blew a whistle and in a moment he and his twenty men moved off through hedges and toolsheds, rifles at the high port, bayonets fixed. Almost at once firing broke out from the direction they had gone, and bullets began to fly round the house where Quentin had set up his company headquarters. A runner arrived from battalion, with a written message: ‘We have linked up with E Surreys AAA Germans heavily infiltrating B Company position, also East Surreys AAA Prepare to retreat to high ground south-east of your present position, on my order only AAA Acknowledge.’
CSM Pierce was already scribbling the acknowledgement on a message pad. Quentin scrawled his signature. Men staggered out of the mist, bleeding, arms hanging shattered. ‘Mr Hedges is dead,’ one mumbled. The CSM said, ‘Go on back, you – that way. ’Ere, put a field dressing on that one, or he’ll bleed to death.’
Quentin said, ‘Irwin?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Take a couple of men and go back in the direction we’ve been ordered to retire. I expect Major Bergeron will be there, co-ordinating. If he isn’t, choose a good position for us. We’ll find you, or you’ll find us, by the firing, if the Germans follow up.’
The shelling had died down, but the main sound of firing had circled round from north-east to north and now to northwest and even west.
The Horse Artillery officer said, ‘If you’re going to withdraw soon, I’d better get the guns back a bit, so we can cover you.’
Quentin said, ‘Right. Do it now, as fast as you can, while there seems to be a bit of a lull.’
The subaltern shouted to his sergeant and the teams galloped out of Le Cateau, limbered up, and took the guns to the rear. The subaltern said, ‘I’d better go back with them, sir. I’ll get a good position on the slope so that we can shoot at whatever we see coming at you.’
‘Good man!’
‘Wish we had some 18-pounders. They do a lot more damage than we can … Well, good luck, sir.’ He saluted, jammed his cap down on his head and spurred the bay into a full gallop, followed by his trumpeter.
A soldier ran up, and leaned against the inner wall. His pale eyes shone like beacons though the three-day layer of sweat and coal dust and brick dust. ‘Mr Eden’s dead, sir. A shell burst near took his head off. Sergeant O’Leary sent me back to ask whether he could retire now.’
‘Not yet,’ Quentin said, ‘hold hard. Make the Germans pay for every yard.’
The man ran. Quentin turned away. It was time he found another reserve, if Tate didn’t come back soon … but here they were, slipping through the mist in twos and threes, heads up, and seeming not to expect anyone to be following. Tate appeared, limping on his stick. ‘Gave ’em a bit of a bloody nose, sir,’ he said cheerfully. ‘We reached a big hedge, and there was a squadron of cavalry right in front of us. They weren’t Uhlans. They were trotting across our front in close order. Couldn’t believe my eyes! Gave ’em ten rounds rapid from the whole platoon, and then charged. They bolted – what was left of them. But I saw an awful lot more coming on behind – infantry.’
‘And you?’
‘Bullet grazed the calf, sir. Nothing broken. It hurts a bit but I’m all right.’ He lowered his voice, ‘I’ve lost Foster, sir.’
‘Your platoon sergeant?’
‘Yes, sir. Can’t think what happened to him. One moment he was there, then he wasn’t. Suppose he got hit and fell into the bushes somewhere, and no one saw him. Should I go back and look for him?’
‘No,’ Quentin said decisively. He had always had his doubts about Sergeant Foster; it was very possible that the fellow had not been killed. He set his jaw. ‘Well done, Tate. Get your men back to where you were just now. If we get the order to withdraw, you will cover the rest of us.’
Another runner arrived from battalion with another written message: ‘Carry out retreat orders as my P.9 AAA 2-i-c co-ordinating new defensive position.’
Good, Quentin thought. Bergeron was up there. Irwin would have found him, and there’d be a good position to fall back on.
He turned to the CSM. ‘Runners to the forward platoons, Sar’nt Major. Withdraw south-east as ordered, at –’ he looked at his watch
‘ – seven-twenty a.m. Number 3 platoon will cover from present position of Company Headquarters.’
He filled his pipe with French tobacco. An old lady had given him the tobacco out of her little shop in the early light of dawn, when the sound of men digging and cursing and giving orders in a strange language had awakened her and she had found, to her astonishment, that the war had come to Le Cateau in the shape of a battalion of British infantry. The tobacco would probably taste vile, thought Quentin, who had a deep distrust of everything foreign, but it would be better than nothing, and he had five minutes to wait before the withdrawal began. He checked that the machine-gun, just come back from a forward position, was in place, and ordered Tate to be sure to provide a couple of men to help carry it back when No. 3 platoon, too, withdrew. Those Vickers guns, which many people, himself included, had derided as mechanical toys not worthy of British soldiers, had proved themselves invaluable complements to the skilled riflemen’s fire at Mons, and it looked as though they would do the same here.
The crack of 13-pounder shrapnel fired from behind Le Cateau showed that the Horse Artillery section was in action again. Quentin thought, good. But back there, Bergeron would give them other tasks: A Company would no longer have its own private artillery support.
The sun was beginning to paint the houses of Le Cateau and reveal, as a drawn blanket reveals a sleeping nude, the village of Bazuel a mile down the road to the east. From overhead Quentin heard the buzzing of aeroplane engines, and thought, they haven’t been much use so far … strange, to think that war would ever be waged from those moth-like machines, wheeling about in the huge sky.
German machine-gun fire, in volume, began to tattoo the houses to his left, breaking windows and knocking off slates. Shrapnel burst overhead in irregular rapid whipcracks, the cotton-wool bursts in air reinforced by the loud booms of high explosive shells from heavy howitzers. Fountains of earth rose and dropped back, clouds of choking yellow-black smoke drifted low over the grass, through the orchards, and among the houses. On the British side, at least one 60-pounder battery was in action from somewhere across the Selle, the shells bursting three or four miles down the Roman road to the northeast of Le Cateau, to judge by the sound.
The Germans would attack any moment … not the original formless infiltration, but a planned, lined-up assault. That was good. Infiltration was more dangerous, because you never knew where the strength of it would develop; it was like water trickling, finding a path through the defenders’ fire. But when they lined up and attacked in mass, not even heavy artillery support could douse the rifle and machine-gun fire that would burn them away, like chaff along the edge of a wheatfield.
Seven-twenty. The rifle fire forward increased, then died down. He was standing beside Tate, houses behind, fields ahead. ‘Be ready now,’ he muttered. Figures appeared, some running, some walking steadily, a few being supported. They passed, and Quentin called out, ‘Well done! Well done, Sergeant. Back up the hill there! Captain Irwin will give you orders.’
‘We killed a hundred of the buggers at least,’ an older man muttered, a reservist … Quentin remembered his face from Bareilly; or was it Lahore? – but could not recall his name.
‘Well done, well done!’ Sergeant Miller passed. ‘That’s all, sir. No one left, except the dead, and a couple of men too bad to move.’
‘Good. Stand by, Tate.’ He puffed on his pipe. He ought to be afraid, but he was not. Tate knew fear, but was visibly conquering it. The men close by, lying prone, rifles ready, were looking at him out of the corners of their eyes. He felt nothing. Tate was the brave one, and these private soldiers facing death, and worse, just because – they were afraid not to.
‘Here they come,’ Quentin said quietly.
The grey men took form among the scattered trees, spiked helmets covered with grey cloth – a mass, such as Quentin had seen across the Mons Canal, and fired into again and again with a rifle taken from a dead solder. Officers in front, swords drawn, the soldiers in the foremost ranks firing from the hip. A private near Quentin grunted, staggered to his feet and fell, coughing blood over Quentin’s boots.
He said, ‘Let them have it!’
Tate dropped to one knee, bellowing, ‘Number Three Platoon! Two hundred!’ Every man’s left thumb slid his backsight down – ‘Front! Enemy advancing! Ten rounds …’ each man pushed his safety catch off with his right thumb: ‘rapid, fire!’
The platoon opened the devastating fire which had held the canal at Mons – at least fifteen aimed rounds a minute, and many of the men capable of twenty-five rounds – the rifle steady as a rock in the tripod support of left elbow, right elbow, and right shoulder, head steady, nothing moving between each shot except the right wrist, licking the bolt back and forward.
A storm of shrapnel from the Horse Artillery’s 13-pounders burst over the reeling Germans. The Vickers machine-gun opened fire with a full belt in a long, swinging, traverse. The enemy, half a battalion in mass, wilted, turned and ran, stumbling, falling, dying. By 7.30, there were no enemy on their feet within three hundred yards. Quentin said shortly, ‘Retire, Tate.’
He turned and trudged back as the platoon rose, spread out, passed the last hovels of Le Cateau, crossed the railway in a deep cutting, and climbed the hill. A few shells from German 77-mm guns cracked overhead, but from the ground there was no fire, only silence, and grey and brown corpses strewn in the orchard and at the edge of the town, and men groaning with many wounds, writhing in their own blood.
The hours passed relentlessly. At nine, the clock in the bell tower of the Town Hall played a cheerful carillon before striking the hour. At eleven the Weald Light Infantry retreated another thousand yards to the south-west, with the East Surreys on their right as they faced the enemy. The sun continued its steady circling of the southern horizon and everyone’s tongue was swollen and mouth parched, except for the lucky ones whose post or path was by the Selle. The mist of dawn had been replaced by the fog of war, for the higher commanders, at least. To the Weald Light Infantry and the East Surreys, on the high ground south and south-west of Le Cateau, the situation had been becoming clearer all day: large numbers of Germans were between them and the rest of their brigade, and the original plan of rejoining them was out of the question. The two battalions were making a slow fighting retreat, with Germans coming at them continually, sometimes head on, more often passing across their front up the valley of the Selle in an apparent attempt to find the right flank of the main British line, and turn it. This they were beginning to do, to judge from the sound of the firing, and the actual sight across the valley of grey figures swarming up the opposite slope. The Wealds had been, if not ignored, then at least treated with disdain for the past few hours, as though the Germans were aware that there were not enough British on their left flank, but isolated east of the Selle, to stop their incessant slow forward trickle. The Germans paid heavily for their disdain – the battalion’s two machine-guns, and the concentrated fire of the riflemen, all shooting in enfilade, had done murderous damage as the Germans passed across their front: but von Kluck’s corps commanders had long purses, or acted as though they had.
Before noon Quentin had been mystified by the sight of smoke rising from many chimneys in Le Cateau – until he realized that the housewives were preparing the midday meal for their men. The war had come, yes, but men had to eat, too. Now a denser, more evil smoke was rising from part of the town, as houses burned; and south-west of it, on the slope across the Selle from his position, the : 8-pounder guns of a British Field Artillery battery were in action, as they had been for the past few hours from the same exposed and forward position. Earlier the guns had been firing towards Le Cateau and west of it; now, with Germans infiltrated round their flank, they were pointing almost directly at the Weald’s positions. The shrapnel burst white over the valley bottom directly below. The gunflashes were bright even in the sunlight, and from time to time an empty shrapnel shell case would ricochet and hurtle overhead, wailing like a b
anshee. The grey flow of German infantry crept on, not regularly, or fast, but without cease.
Quentin put his pipe away. Time to visit his platoons again – check how many fresh casualties they had suffered, whether they had been taken to the rear, check the ammunition situation, see the men, be seen …
A soldier appeared, hurrying laboriously up the back slope of the hill. He tapped the sling of his shouldered rifle in salute and said, ‘Post, sir.’
‘Post? Post what?’ Quentin growled.
‘Post’s up, sir.’ He fished in his haversack and dredged up a bundle of letters and a few small parcels.
CSM Pierce took the string-tied package and shook his head as the man saluted again and ran back the way he had come. ‘No post since we left the Curragh, and now it comes right in the middle of a battle!’
Quentin said, ‘Don’t distribute it now Sar’nt Major.’
Pierce said, ‘Begging your pardon, sir, I’d like to try. I was round the company half an hour ago and some of the young ’uns are getting jumpy, seeing the ’Uns passing by in front and ’earing firing from behind as well Sergeant Tilehurst had to stick his bayonet a couple of inches into one young fellow’s backside, who was sort of sneaking off, easy like.’
‘You’re right. There seems to be a lull … but get a move on. Some sort of orders must be coming soon now.’
‘One for you, sir,’ the CSM said, handing over a letter. ‘And another.’ For a moment, seeing a blue envelope, Quentin thought it was from Fiona. But that was not her handwriting. It was his mother’s. He opened the envelope.
It was dated August 24th, the day after Mons. Father had heard of the battle when lunching with the Prime Minister the day before. The letter had really come quickly then. They all hope he is well and unhurt. Guy played for Kent against Yorkshire and took two wickets for seventy-two runs, which is really very good for a schoolboy, isn’t it? Fiona will give you the news, of course (but Fiona will do no such thing, of course). Richard is proposing to start a factory to make lorries, and has asked for a loan from a Mr Stephen Merritt, an American banker, whom we met at Henley. Tom is on HMS Monmouth, but no one knows where. Father and Alice are fit and well, and she herself is as well as can be expected (what does that mean?) …