Now, God be Thanked

by John Masters

  A minute later they ran through the gap in the British wire, calling, ‘Lucknow! Lucknow!’ – that night’s password – and fell into the trench … twenty-four of them, including three wounded, one seriously – and one German. Four men remained in the German trench – dead or wounded, no one could say for certain. Corporal Heseltine and a private set off at once for Brigade Headquarters with the prisoner, for interrogation.

  Boy Rowland trudged to the rear, his men behind him. C Company was in battalion reserve – that was why they had to find men for such patrols as this. He yawned, still trying to control passing fits of shivering. He ought to be thinking of the raid – the colonel would want details … but he could think consecutively of nothing, images passed through his mind … the German’s blasted face … the silhouetted sentry … Private Grogan’s smashed arm, torn tunic, white bone, gushing blood … Some of that blood stained his own tunic, all up the sleeve above his rank badges.

  He must control himself. He was an officer, and these men expected him to show them an example. All his life he had enjoyed opportunities and privileges that they had not – yet he was no better than they. He must become so, or at least give them reason to believe so. A cup of tea would settle him, laced with a little rum if he could wangle some. The Intelligence Officer first, though. In the reserve area he thanked and dismissed his men, waited while they were served tea and rum, and then plodded to battalion headquarters, close by, in a shell-shattered hovel.

  The IO met him with a smile … ‘I’ve seen your prisoner, on his way back … 35th Württembergers, of the 25th Reserve Division. How did it go? Here, have some tea – laced.’ He passed over a mug.

  Boy sat down on the box top and told his story. When he had finished, the IO said, ‘Good. I’ll pass it on to the CO in the morning. Now I’ve got some news for you … You have been posted to the 1st Battalion.’

  ‘Why?’ Boy said, suddenly indignant. ‘Isn’t the CO or Major Roberts satisfied with me?’

  ‘Just the opposite, Boy. We’ve been ordered to send two officers and twenty NCOs to the 1st Battalion. They’ve had very heavy casualties – and we’ve hardly had any yet. Your uncle’s in the 1st, isn’t he?’

  Boy nodded. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Near Plugstreet, further south. You are to go over tomorrow. So it looks as though you’ve got rid of the albatross, at last.’

  ‘What? Oh, the loss statement and charge for the pakhals. I hope so. Those Indian babus are worse than leeches.’

  He finished the tea, feeling it warm his belly, and started back for his company headquarters. His batman was awake, and a candle burning in the muddy dugout he shared with Terrell, the battalion’s newest 2nd Lieutenant, joined a week before the battalion left Lucknow for France. Yawning, he took off his equipment and gave the rifle to the batman to return to where it belonged. His batman took off his boots while he sat on the edge of the empty crates that raised the blankets out of the mud, thus forming a bed. A newspaper lay on the packing case that was their table, and a headline in it caught his eye: MORE SINN FEIN BOMBS IN LONDON. He muttered under his breath, ‘Good God!’

  ‘What’s that, sorr?’ Reilly asked, looking up.

  ‘Nothing … Thanks. That’s all till … what time’s stand to?’

  ‘Foive-twenty ack emma, sir. But you’re excused, ’cos of the patrol, loike. An’ you being posted to the 1st.’

  ‘All right. I’ll try to sleep till nine. Then I’ll pack up.’

  Private Reilly blew out the candle, and Boy lay back, fully dressed except for boots and tunic, on the bed, his greatcoat spread over all. A letter from home had told him that his Aunt Margaret, after being arrested on suspicion of being involved in Sinn Fein activities, had gone to Ireland and vanished. He wondered whether she had had anything to do with these new bombings. Poor Uncle Christopher, he thought, what can we do to help him? What is …? But the next thing he knew was Reilly shaking him, and watery sunlight streaming into the dugout … ‘Wake up, sorr. Noine o clock, and I’ve won some hot water from the cooks.’

  Boy put down the old copy of the paper with a smile. ‘Guy seems to have covered himself with glory … though you can read between the lines that Sheddy’s heart is still with the forwards.’

  ‘It must have been an exciting game,’ his uncle Quentin said, relighting his pipe. They were alone in the dugout, for Quentin’s second-in-command had had his supper up the line with B Company, and had not yet returned. Quentin Rowland’s A Company of the 1st Battalion, Weald Light Infantry, was in battalion reserve, as Boy’s C Company had been in the 2nd Battalion near Wytschaete. The dugout was not luxurious, but it was in considerably better condition than the one he had shared with Terrell. This was also more professional – articles of equipment were well-worn and had been subtly modified to suit trench conditions: belts, packs, and haversacks hung from German bayonets stuck between the sandbags: half a dozen German potato masher bombs stood in a row on a shelf, ready for emergency use. There was a bottle of red wine on the table, and the meal had been potatoes fried with onions, and a very tasty German sausage. The 1st Battalion had been at war a long time – four months now. Boy said as much to his uncle.

  Quentin said, ‘Yes, we’re experienced, Boy … We’ve paid the price for it.’

  ‘You’ve had very heavy casualties, I was told, sir.’ He had never had anything to do with his uncle in a military capacity before and thought it would be wiser not to claim the relationship even in the privacy of the dugout.

  Quentin nodded. ‘Very.’ He lowered his voice as though the batman in another dugout along the trench could hear. ‘The British regular army’s gone, Boy. We did the job we were supposed to do … stop the Germans outflanking us and cutting us off from the Channel ports. We were fighting four or five to one for two months on end. The Germans used reserve divisions which weren’t supposed to be any good … but don’t believe it. They fought like tigers. So did we … mostly. There was some panic here and there. We’re regulars but no one’s seen anything like this before – French, German, Russian, British, it makes no difference. Some men broke – ours, theirs – officers, too. Some regiments ran that you’d never have believed would … I don’t have one platoon commander I came out with. Sergeant-Major gone – killed the last day we were in the front line by a Boche whizzbang … in the ranks only one man in six or seven came out with us from the Curragh … the rest – ’ he shrugged, ‘ – recruits, reinforcements from other regiments, some Territorials who volunteered to transfer.’

  His pipe was drawing well now and he picked up another paper – the Hedlington Courier, two weeks old. ‘The North Weald had a great day with the bitch pack, here.’ He tapped the paper. ‘A three-mile point. That’s tremendous, in our country.’ He put the paper down and shook his head slowly. The pale blue eyes looked directly at Boy, the forehead wrinkling with a slight frown. ‘I keep trying to think of hunting … fishing … walking your father’s fields with a gun under my arm and a dog at my heel … Guy and Virginia, your Aunt Fiona … the house, all the things we used to do together – when we could be together … Nothing comes. It’s as though what used to be has vanished.’

  Boy felt closer to his uncle than he ever remembered. He said, ‘I know what you mean, sir. I feel something like that and I think it’ll get worse, as time passes.’

  ‘It must come back,’ Quentin said. ‘What else is there?’ His manner was puzzled but determined. Boy thought, he can’t imagine that there can be any other life than the one they all lived before August 4th this year.

  Quentin said, ‘Have you heard about your Aunt Margaret?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘A bad business.’

  Boy had drunk two tin mugs of the red wine and felt that he could not and should not altogether conceal his opinion, though he would have to choose his words carefully. He said, ‘It seems to me, sir, that Carson’s Ulster Volunteers are breaking the law just as much as the Sinn Feiners … but we don’t do anything to su
ppress them. Aunt Margaret always thought we were being unfair in Ireland.’

  ‘Mother taught us all that,’ Quentin said, ‘but Margaret was the only one who believed it.’ He looked at his watch. ‘You’d better be going up the line. I’ll send my batman up with you to show you the way. You’re going to B, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Captain Maclachlan.’

  Boy thanked his uncle, and a few minutes later, heavily laden with equipment, the batman carrying his valise, started up towards the front line. The stars were hidden behind a low white haze, and the air was cold, barely stirring. Ghostly poplars stood with arms raised all about them. The ruins of a nearby farmhouse, pounded to chaos, dull brick and white plaster and broken glass, still exuded a smell of the once-heaped dung, now scattered by shellfire over acres of country. A small brick calvary stood at what had been a crossroads.

  The forward trench system began and they dropped down into it. After ten slow minutes, standing aside as men sloshed back carrying empty dixies and ammunition boxes, the mud six inches deep, the trench walls crumbling, the batman stopped and said, ‘Here, sir – B Company headquarters.’

  Boy pulled the blanket aside and went down five steps, into a candle-lit cave-like room, its roof beams taken from destroyed houses, spread with sacking and covered with earth. Water dripped from the sandbag wail, and gleamed on the floor.

  Boy saluted … ‘Lieutenant Rowland, sir, reporting for duty.’

  Maclachlan was seated on an empty shell box, a company sergeant-major beside him. The staff-sergeant saluted and Maclachlan said, ‘CSM Davies, Rowland – a Welshman, just like our revered Chancellor of the Exchequer.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, sir,’ Davies said, putting out his hand.

  ‘Sit down, Rowland. Have you eaten?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He sat down on another shell box.

  ‘We’re just going to take a look round the trenches. You might as well come with us, and meet your platoon … Except for one other, you’ll be the most experienced platoon commander I have, and you’ve barely got your second pip, eh?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Major Rowland was telling me about the heavy casualties.’

  ‘Ah, your uncle, of course … It’s not only the officers, though they’ve had the highest proportion … A quarter of the men are from Newfoundland, or Chile, or Australia … fellows who left England for England’s good, some of them cashiered, perhaps shepherds, navvies, a hobo, one said he was … They’re mostly brave as lions, but their drill! … The sar’nt major has permanent apoplexy over the things they do and say. They can’t march – only rode, in the outback or the prairie or veldt or somewhere … but they can shoot well, most of them. A few certainly are wanted for murder in Tombstone, or Woolloomooloo, or Grizzly Gulch … Are you ready?’

  They went out into the night. It had begun to snow. Boy realized suddenly that it was Christmas Eve.

  Stand-to was at five-thirty. 2nd Lieutenant Beldring’s batman lit the candle and the two officers, Boy and Beldring, stumbled yawning into their greatcoats, then their equipment, checked that their revolvers were loaded, and went out into the trench. The sentries were at their posts on the firestep, rifles rested beside them, their left hands on the forestock, the fixed bayonet pointing up at an angle. The soldiers were coming out of their shelters along the forward wall, sliding through the mud, muttering under their breaths, coughing. Dawn was the best time to attack, since the assaulting troops could move up in darkness, and hours of daylight would be available for consolidation of captured positions; so all front-line troops and immediate reserves stood to their posts half an hour before first light, and stayed there till half an hour after it. Machine-guns were manned, the Numbers 2 crouched to one side, the Numbers 1 sitting behind the gun on the special raised platform built on the forward wall of the trench so that the nose of the Vickers just stuck through a narrow gap in the sandbags, which were built up two feet higher on either side to give the gunners some flank protection.

  By five-thirty everyone was in position, and Boy, standing on the firestep in the centre of his platoon’s sector, waited, shifting his balance from one foot to the other, and clapping his hands gently in their khaki wool gloves. His parents would be worrying about his being killed, probably. That was a useless worry, there was nothing any of them could do about that … what they should all worry about was getting decent clothes, better protection against the cold, the snow, the rain, above all the mud … Mud! He’d only been in the line a few days and already mud was becoming, in his mind, an enemy to be hated even more than the Germans.

  The snow had stopped some time in the middle of the night, before he’d gone round his lines at 2 a.m. with Sergeant Knapp. He still didn’t know what any of his men looked like, and Knapp was no more than a stocky shape with, he thought, a walrus moustache, and an Old Kent Road accent. He muttered close behind him now – ‘The captain’s coming, sir.’

  Boy glanced round and saw Maclachlan and the CSM splashing through the mud and snow towards him. He stepped down and saluted. ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘Anything to report?’

  ‘No, sir. It’s hard for me to be sure, though, because I haven’t seen the area in daylight yet.’

  ‘You will, soon. Knapp will point out the principal features – such as there are. Plugstreet is not exactly one of Belgium’s beauty spots.’ He passed on, talking to a man here, pausing to examine a plank revetment climbing up on the firestep, making remarks to CSM Davies, who carefully shone a torch on a notepad and made notes with a stub of a pencil.

  The light gradually spread, crawling out of the soil, displaying the stunted poplars, the expanse of dirty snow, already pockmarked with black where shells had been fired during the night, gleaming water and mud, shattered trees, humped ruins, and – two hundred yards away – the German wire, three thick rows of it.

  Boy got up on the firestep again, and Sergeant Knapp said, ‘Keep your ’ead down, sir! There’s an ’Un sniper too good for our ’ealth, somewhere near that pile of bricks behind their front line … Got three of our men, this past week – two right through the eye’ole … horful mess … That’s ’Ill 45, there … sort of an ’ill, anyway. The ’Uns look down on us from there – their artillery observers … we tried to take ’Ill 45 three times last November … got in, then got pushed out, each time.’

  Boy examined the long row of houses on Hill 45, a few seemingly intact, most demolished. Smoke rose – the enemy reserves cooking their breakfast in comfort.

  ‘Them trees to the left is Piugstreet Wood, sir. The next-door division tried to clear it. No luck. Just a horful lot of burying parties.’

  Boy stayed at his place, covering the ground through binoculars until he had a clear picture of it in his head. When the battalion stood down he said to his platoon sergeant, ‘Do we have a really good shot in the platoon?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Private Nichols – says ’e was a shepherd in Chile.’

  ‘See if you can win a telescopic sight for him. Tomorrow night we’ll build a place, between our front and second lines, where he can lie up and get that German sniper … and any other German he spots.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘I’ll choose the place today. Stand down, now.’

  He waited till the daytime sentries were posted, then went to company headquarters to receive orders for the day.

  There were no orders for the day, except to wait, and watch. Play cards. Write letters. Clean equipment. Fill in the latrine bay and dig a new one. Make sure there were no bent or damaged rounds in the ammunition clips. Mend holes in tunics. Clean and oil rifles. Dry out puttees. Stand sentry duty – by day it was two hours on and four hours off; by night sentries were doubled, always stood in pairs, and duty was one hour on and one hour off. Between the innumerable little tasks, the men dozed, curied up in greatcoats in the primitive dugouts, or at the side of the trench. Light snow drifted across No Man’s Land, stopped, started again, stopped. The sun shone bleakly.

&nbs
p; Sergeant Knapp came to Boy where he was restudying the list of his platoon’s names and numbers, length of service and military skills, which Knapp had given him earlier. The sergeant stood in the entrance to the dugout and said, ‘Near ten o’clock, sir.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘The ’Uns always ’as an ’ate at ten sharp, sir. Thought you’d like to come up and see ’oo they’ll pick on today.’

  Boy put down the paper, buckled on his equipment, and came out, asking, ‘What kind of a hate is it? What are the men supposed to do? Get into the shelters?’

  ‘Oh no, sir. The ’Uns might choose that moment to attack. Everyone ’as to be at stand-to stations. It’s five minutes shelling.’

  Boy thought to himself that if the hate was a concentration of artillery fire, surely the best thing would be for the sentries to stay at their posts, the rest of the men to go to their shelters and dugouts. That wouldn’t make much difference if they got a direct hit from a 5.9, but they’d get some protection against anything else, especially shrapnel.

  He waited, looking at his watch. Ten o’clock. Nothing happened … A solitary field gun was firing half a mile to the north – but it was a British 18-pounder, apparently ranging. ‘Funny,’ Sergeant Knapp muttered. ‘P’raps their watches ’as stopped.’

  Five past … ten past … quarter past …

  ‘You can’t trust those bleeding ’Uns,’ Knapp said, very aggrieved. ‘Hevery day for three weeks, and now …’

  ‘Listen!’ Boy said, standing higher and holding up his hand.

  Knapp grabbed him and pulled him down. ‘The sniper, sir!’

  ‘Oh yes. Thanks … but listen!’

  Boy heard a strange sound he knew but had not heard for … how long? Since he left England to join the 2nd Battalion in Lucknow.

  ‘Church bells,’ he said softly. ‘Church bells from Armentières, and Nieuw Kerke and – what’s that village up there called?’