by John Masters
Vaughan stroked his heavy moustache and shook his head slowly from side to side. He said, ‘Has anyone asked you to speak to me? Have you told your tutor that you were going to? Or Yeoman’s?’
‘No, sir. I just thought I ought to do it. I spoke to Yeoman’s father yesterday on the telephone, warning him that, Dick was very upset. I told him that Dick’s the same boy he has always been, but I’m afraid he doesn’t see it that way. Dick will be rejected at home, too.’
Vaughan said, ‘I wish I could show mercy, Rowland … but we would have the most bitter protests from parents if this sort of thing was condoned. Someone would tell the press, and soon Wellington would not only have no reputation, but no boys – parents would not send them here.’
‘If you could have Yeoman transferred to the Beresford, sir, I promise you he would never do this again.’
‘I’m sure you could, Rowland … but there is an extra factor here which I am afraid cannot be overlooked in any circumstances – the Lower School boy, who was being perverted by the others. I have administered a sound thrashing to him which I hope he will never forget, and he will not be expelled. The others must be. I am sorry.’
‘So am I, sir. Thank you for listening.’
Vaughan said, ‘Wait a minute … you are a strange young man, Rowland. I see now why your tutor has been pressing me to do what I only decided yesterday to do … I was about to send for you to tell you that you are a school prefect … from today. There are already two in your dormitory, I know, and I was unwilling to make a third … but I was wrong. You are an exceptional boy.’ He held out his hand – ‘Congratulations.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Guy shook the Master’s big hand, turned, and left. Outside the door of the Lodge, he put on his cap, from force of habit. Then he took it off, grinning to himself, and put it back in his coat pocket: school prefects were the only boys in the school who did not wear caps, except football caps and those only on games afternoons. Then he headed into the school, and ran up the Hill-Lynedoch stairs.
He went to Yeoman’s room near the far end of the dormitory, knocked, and went in. Dick was sitting on his bed, his suitcases standing ready on the floor by the door. He jumped up as Guy came in. He had the look of a hunted animal; then he recognized Guy and cried, ‘Don’t come in, Guy … they’ll think … No one’s spoken a word to me all day. I thought Fairway was my friend, even though he discovered us … I know he had to report it – but when I went to say goodbye to him and hope he gets into his father’s regiment, he turned his back on me.’
‘Come on, Dick,’ Guy said, ‘time to start for the station, or you’ll miss your train.’
‘Don’t come with me,’ Yeoman pleaded, ‘I can carry the suitcases, and the Steward’s sending on the tuck box later.’
‘Come on,’ Guy said, ignoring him. He lifted one of the cases. Unwillingly, Dick picked up the other. They went out into the dormitory hall and started the long walk down it, between the green and brown painted wooden partition walls. A small crowd of boys in the middle of the hall, standing round the mute dormitory gramophone – on Sundays it was not allowed to be played until after chapel – parted and made way as they approached: all except one, a tall fair youth with his hands in his pockets, and no cap on his head.
He stood his ground and said, ‘Who gave you permission to come in here, Rowland?’
‘No one,’ Guy said, setting down the suitcase.
‘It’s customary to call a school prefect by his name when you speak to him.’
‘So it is. My name is Rowland.’
Then the other saw that Guy was not wearing a cap and his scornful expression changed to anger as he snapped, ‘I’ll beat you for this!’
‘I don’t think so. I am a school prefect. Now get out of the way please. We have a train to catch. After chapel I’ll meet you behind the rhododendrons, if you like.’
Fairway stood aside then, saying, ‘The further I can get from a pervert the better. And perverts’ friends are usually perverts, too, aren’t they?’
Guy put the suitcase down again, as Yeoman behind him muttered desperately, ‘Let’s get on, Guy … please … please!’
Guy said, ‘I toss off, Fairway. So do you. So does everyone else in this dormitory, except perhaps your newest squealer, whom you haven’t taught yet … Don’t forget the rhododendrons.’
He started on again, the boys standing back, Fairway scarlet in the face, someone giggling behind his hand.
So Dick and Guy went out together, along the cloisters of North Quad, South Quad, the Path of Duty gate, past the Master’s Lodge, and Turf, and the copper beeches, and Big Side, and along the footpath to the station. The mist clothed every object round them in opalescent grey.
‘I’ll never see any of this again,’ Dick said. ‘I’ve loved my time here … thanks to you. And congrats on being made a school prefect.’
‘There’ll be other Wellingtons,’ Guy said.
‘You’re missing chapel.’
‘I know.’
‘But …’
‘Don’t fret about it, Dick. I’m not.’
They walked on together, each weighted down with a heavy suitcase. Guy thought, it’s true, what I have just said to him – that I’m not fretting about missing chapel. And it was true, as he had told Dick several times, that the world was not going to come to an end because of this unfortunate incident. But he was beginning to feel, as he read the newspapers and studied the pictures in the Illustrated London News, that over there in France the world that his parents had known, and that he had expected to grow up into, and take his place in, as generations before him had, would indeed come to an end if the fighting continued for long on its present scale. And he felt certain that it would go on longer – much longer; and, hard as it was to imagine, that it would grow bigger, much bigger, much more primal – and at the same time much more sophisticated.
Daily Telegraph, Tuesday, December 22, 1914
BATTLE OF CORONEL
Vivid Story by a Participant
November 4. Have just entered the Straits at noon today, after two and a half days’ run. The place where the action took place was near Coronel, about 800 or 900 miles north of here, so we’ve had a long run. I do hope you stick the news all right, because I’m certain that we should be reported sunk or sinking, and it will be another two or three days before we can send news from Port Stanley.
Stokers Singing
The ship’s company have been complimented upon their coolness during action. Down below the stokers were singing ‘We’ll all go the same way home,’ and ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary,’ whilst other witty sayings were common, such as ‘Don’t get dizzy,’ ‘There’s another sausage for you, and English at that,’ as each shot went. One of our subs had his hat taken off … another (man) remarked, as a big shell missed him by a hair’s breadth, ‘Humph, I thought my birthday had come’ and continued unhooking 6-in. shells from the ammunition hoist. Another gunner said, ‘I’ve got a jam,’ to which someone replied (thinking of our rations of late), ‘Try marmalade.’
Still, apart from all this, it was really awful.
The letter had been written by someone on board HMS Glasgow, and presumably mailed when the ship reached some port. It was over six weeks since full reports of the battle had been published in the press, with maps and diagrams, and Cate knew just where Coronel, Punta Arenas, and the Falklands were … names that he had hardly heard of two months ago.
Only three days to Christmas. He must check the list of Christmas boxes and pay a visit to the bank in Hedlington to make sure he had enough cash for the purpose; and enough small silver coins for Mrs Abell to put into the Christmas pudding … talk to Norton about which horses to ride for the Boxing Day and New Year’s Day meets … think of a proper present for Probyn: the old rascal would really appreciate a .22 short rifle to supplement his folding .410, but if he gave him one of those, Swanwick would have a fit … some weatherproof clothing would be more suitable,
though such a gift would smack rather of a Lord Bountiful attitude, which was very far from his true feeling for Probyn Gorse.
He went out of the front door and stood a moment, folded newspaper in hand, looking out at the frosty garden and the spreading white-barred landscape, the spidery trees. A northeast wind moaned in the roof and shook the rimed boughs of the trees. A pair of mallards raced down the wind, and swung, wings glinting in the low sun, to circle back to the Scarrow.
‘… on earth peace, good will toward men,’ Cate said aloud; then swore under his breath and went back inside the manor house.
18 Near Wytschaete, Belgian Flanders: Wednesday, December 23, 1914
The big crescent of the moon sank soon after one in the morning, and Charles ‘Boy’ Rowland took his patrol out twenty minutes later. Before the moon set, while he waited in the primitive front line trench with the men who were to accompany him, the dim bulk of the Messines Ridge had seemed to tower over them to the east and north: as soon as the moon sank, the ridge also vanished – the land might as well have been a sea, dark, clouds obscuring the stars, and only paleness from a light fall of snow during the evening making a glow along the ground at the level of the eyes.
Colonel Gould had given him the orders himself – raid the enemy trench opposite and bring back a prisoner, or a body. ‘Brigade wants to know who’s opposite us,’ he’d said, ‘and I think it’s Division pressing Brigade. For all I know, Sir John French himself may have ordered this raid, originally. So get us a Hun, Boy. Take twenty or thirty men, and Major Roberts will arrange all the support you need – but try not to let a battle develop. In and out quickly. Understand?’
Roberts was Boy’s company commander, and what could be arranged had been – machine-gun fire to cover the flanks; an artillery officer in the front line trench to bring down SOS fire to right and left of the chosen section of German trench on a Very light signal; stretcher-bearers in support. Every man of the raiding party was carrying six captured German ‘tortoise-shell’ grenades, all their faces were blackened with plenteous mud from the sodden trenches, and their ammunition pouches were full. The whole raid was timed to be over in twenty minutes from first to last: the Germans were barely seventy-five yards away.
They were lined up ready in the crowded trench – Corporal Tompkins with eight men to his left, Corporal Heseltine with eight more to his right, Sergeant Swain further along with another eight, to follow as close reserve. Jimmy Gosnell, the platoon commander of the sector, was there to see him off. The trench was little more than a series of shell holes, loosely linked to form a straggling deep ditch. In some places sandbags riveted the parapet and parados, in others there was only the slippery wet earth. A smell of death and human excrement, mixed with cordite and lyddite fumes seemingly absorbed into the soil, pervaded the night. It was the first taste of battle in France for all of them. One of the corporals had fought in South Africa, and Sergeant Swain had fired a few shots in anger in Upper Burma in 1892, when he was a young soldier. That was the total of the raiding party’s battle experience.
Gosnell muttered, ‘Here they come …’
Two figures took shape out of the darkness close in front, worming forward like lizards, on their stomachs. They slipped head first over the edge of the trench, to be caught by the men of Boy’s patrol, who lowered them awkwardly to their feet. ‘Our wire’s cut, sir,’ one of them said, straightening up and scraping mud off the front of his tunic. ‘Straight ahead, six feet wide.’
‘And the gap’s marked, for when we come back?’ Boy asked.
‘As ordered, Mr Rowland. Bits of white cloth on the ground, like arrows pointing to the gap, about ten yards further out, on the Hun side.’
‘Did you hear anything?’
‘Not a thing, sir … except some barnshoot of a machine-gunner loosing off over our heads. Gawd knows where they went.’
‘We heard them … He wasn’t aiming at you, you think?’
‘Not a chance, sir.’
‘All right … Well, we’ll be off, Jimmy. Ready, Tompkins? Heseltine? Sergeant?’
‘Ready, sir.’
‘Good luck, Boy.’
‘Thanks.’
His stomach a tight knot, shivering only controlled by an immense effort, he scrambled up the forward face of the trench, pushed by two men of Gosnell’s platoon, and once on top began to crawl forward on hands and knees, holding rifle and fixed bayonet ready in his right hand, but keeping them out of the mud. His revolver was in its holster at his belt but he did not expect to have to use it tonight; the bayonet, or one of the grenades in his haversack, would be the more likely.
He found the gap in the British wire without difficulty, crawled through, went on another ten yards and waited. The men crawled through after him and spread out to either side, the corporals closest to him. Sergeant Swain waited at the gap in the wire. ‘Ready?’ Boy whispered. The corporals muttered, ‘Yes, sir,’ and they all started forward again, still crawling. Boy felt a momentary pang of embarrassment – what a ridiculous thing for grown men to be doing in the middle of the night! That feeling passed, but it had settled the near panic that had gripped him just before he left the trench. The clouds were thin and fast moving. A chance clearing would bring out more stars and the danger that there would then be enough light for the German sentries to make out the moving humps in No Man’s Land. The wind soughed in his ears and he gave thanks for it; the worst moment of the patrol would come soon now, when they reached the German wire, and then they would need all the help they could get. His hands were cold in the woollen gloves, his head cold under the khaki Balaclava helmet which he, like all the men, was wearing. He would have given a lot to have it start to rain, or sleet, with thunder … All the men were flat on their stomachs now, crawling forward in a line over the broken ground, thin snow, half-frozen half-liquid mud … sliding in and out of scattered shell holes … momentary gleam of an abandoned mess-tin … a face, bodyless … a clip of ammunition … a German rifle with bayonet fixed, clutched by a fallen body, stiff in death … this ground had been fought over since the beginning of October, nearly three months.
The German wire … the men with the wire cutters slid forward. Everyone else lay silent, stretched flat, rifles out-thrust, fingers on the triggers, safety catches off. Each corporal held a grenade ready. All eyes, except the wirecutters’, were fastened into the darkness ahead where, twenty feet away, Germans were sleeping, waking … Half left, Boy caught the flare of a match being lit in the trench, saw the gleam of a bayonet on the parapet, and the hunched silhouette behind it. He touched Corporal Tompkins’ arm and pointed, muttering in his ear – ‘Sentry!’
Tompkins nodded and shifted his position minutely. The wirecutters clacked once, cutting a strand of wire. Boy stiffened, sweat breaking out on his forehead. How could they not have heard? Click … clack … He was trembling again … but they had not heard … The German machine-gunner in their second line trench fired again, a steady ratatata, the bullets clattering far overhead and to the left. That’s marvellous, wonderful, Boy thought, breathing out heavily while he could – for the machine-gun’s noise hid that, and the rapid snicking of the last strands of wire. The wirecutters pulled five feet of wire aside and Boy waited. One more row of wire – not thick, as they had seen through binoculars during the afternoon – but now they were barely twelve feet from the trench … another breathless, sweating five minutes, no nervous machine-gunner to mask the sounds this time, but again the wire was cut, and pulled aside.
The cutters crawled back to him. One whispered in his ear, ‘Ready, sir.’
Then the cutters crawled a little aside, and waited with the reserve. Their job, under Sergeant Swain, was to guard the gap in the wire until the patrol came back through it, and then keep the Germans’ heads down for a few seconds longer.
Boy started forward, crawling through the gaps, the patrol close on his heels. At the lip of the German trench he waited. The sentry they had seen was twenty feet to his left. He wa
nted the men to be up with him so that they could all jump into the trench together, on a wide front, rather than one behind another. But when only four men were up, a dark shape emerged from directly under Boy, stretched, turned, and found himself looking straight at Boy at three-feet range. Boy pulled the trigger of his rifle instantly and the man was blasted back, his face a blur. ‘Now!’ Boy yelled, hurling himself into the trench. His men tumbled after him, running quickly to right and left along the trench. The sentry was the most dangerous enemy, because he was awake. Boy ran towards him, but Tompkins was there first, shouting fiercely, ‘Hands up!’ The German jumped down, leaving his rifle on the parapet, and raised his hands. Tompkins pushed him back up the forward wall of the trench, yelling, ‘Look out, Nobby, it’s me with an ‘Un!’
To the right a head appeared out of the side wall of the trench, where there was obviously a dugout. A British soldier fired and the head snapped back. Corporal Heseltine jumped close, threw aside the blanket covering the dugout entrance, and hurled in a grenade. The explosion was followed by screams and groans. But bombs were beginning to come the other way now, from other sections of the German front line. A private was down, his right arm smashed, groaning, ‘Don’t leave me, sir.’
Boy found his whistle on its lanyard, tugged it free of the pocket and blew it three times. They had their prisoner and could start back now. Then with Heseltine’s help he pushed the man with the smashed arm over the parapet and waited, shouting, ‘Wealds! Retire! Now!’ The men came running and stumbling, firing back into the darkness, grenades bursting. Another man was down, motionless in the sudden flare of a German starshell. No chance to get him out, even if he were alive. Then they were all scrambling up the trench wall, running through the gaps in the wire. Machine-guns were firing, much lower and closer than before. Boy knelt, found the Very pistol in his haversack and fired it straight up. The red flare whooshed, hissed, burst, and hung there, a radiant red glow. The patrol ran on, as two British batteries of 4.5-inch howitzers began to pour shells into the German trenches which Boy and his men had just left.