All, without exception, were showing signs of wear, their hulls streaked with rust, decks and accommodation patchy. On runs like this Stephen knew there was no time for cosmetics, no time to do any but the most essential maintenance. It hurt his professional pride that after only four weeks on this run the Damaris was beginning to look like an old tramp. But what were a few streaks of rust compared to structural damage and loss of life? The important part was the engine room.
With a familiar twitch of alarm, Nordic and her old tricks sprang to mind. But this was a relatively new ship, and thanks to Mac, the engines were tuned like Her Majesty’s Rolls-Royce, every valve and pump in excellent order, fire-fighting equipment and breathing gear in a state of constant readiness.
Fire drill and boat practice: no longer exclusive to Saturday mornings, no longer a light-hearted run through to comply with regulations. Outside the Gulf Stephen insisted on the full emergency drill every trip. He even had the crew blindfolded. Search and rescue were all very well in practice, but in reality, with generators gone, no lights, and the accommodation full of smoke, it would be hard to see anything. So he made them all pretend. So far to the crew it had been a great game occasioning much merriment; having seen that blitzed tanker, he wondered whether they would laugh next time.
They spent the day at the northern holding anchorage off Ras Tannurah, a day in which a hot, searching wind blew dust off the desert’s face and the sun could have fried eggs on the steel decks. A day like any other, with the sudden, heart-stopping scream of low-flying jets and the more sustained anxiety of reconnaissance aircraft.
Aboard the ships, nothing stirred until sunset, when there was a sudden flurry of activity. Like lizards that have been as dead as stones in the heat of the day, once the sun had gone those ships began to slip away, one after the other, on their various journeys through the night. Another twelve hours of anxiety, with the safety of Dubai just after dawn; then a day and a night of heat and inertia, of eating and dozing and reading in the sea-cabin, while the officer of the watch paced back and forth across the bridge.
Stephen tried to write to Zoe, but there was so much that could not be said, it left little to describe. With the imprint of that stricken tanker still on his mind, it was hard to avoid mentioning the dangers, and an hour later, reading the letter through, his observations of Kuwait sounded almost childishly resentful. In three pages he described the numbers of Soviet supply ships off-loading arms, presumably en route to Iraq, and went on to complain about the nitpicking levels of bureaucracy – worse than anything he had ever encountered – and the fact that no one from a foreign ship was allowed ashore in Kuwait. None of it endeared him to that tiny country, and the fact that he was risking his ship and his life to maintain the war and the oil-sheiks’ riches, made him hate everything connected with it.
Anger and a sense of his own inadequacy depressed him. He would have liked to tell her how it felt, being here, but that was somehow too frightening to contemplate.
They left again after dark, part of a general movement of ships that clustered together for safety like an old Atlantic convoy; except that here were no corvettes or destroyers to protect them. Only a bevy of little minesweepers doing their bit by the Straits.
The air was heavy and close, visibility poor with dust in the atmosphere. In another few weeks the monsoon winds would be blowing in earnest, creating yet another hazard. He longed for news from London which would release him from this hellish contract, but did not seriously expect it before his leave was due. This run was too lucrative. One thing was for sure, he promised himself: they could beg, plead and threaten, he would not accept another posting to this hell-hole until every other Master in the company had taken his turn. And at that rate, Stephen calculated, he should be ready for retirement.
Just before dawn they gathered themselves for the final, nerve-shattering dash through the Straits of Hormuz in broad daylight. Even hugging the coast of Oman, the Straits were too narrow, too uncomfortably close to Iran and all those ferocious heroes of the Islamic Revolution for anybody to risk going through at night. With the thought of Exocet missiles for breakfast, however, Stephen was hardly comforted by the Radio Officer’s news that three men aboard that ravaged tanker had been killed and two injured.
An improvement upon his imagination’s score, but that was all. Unarmed men, part of nobody’s war, they were victims of murder. And for what? Politics? Religion? Profit? Was the reason so important? He thought not. All that mattered was that they were dead.
And there but for the grace of God, thought Stephen, go I.
Twenty
On 1st July 1916, on the slopes of rolling chalk hills north of the River Somme, more than 20,000 British soldiers met their deaths in flower-strewn meadows, mown down by machine-guns, trapped by giant caterpillar rolls of barbed wire.
At Fricourt, three miles from the little country town of Albert, Robin Elliott advanced with the 7th Battalion Green Howards and watched his friends fall around him. In the shelter of a shell-hole just before the German line, pinned down by a ferocious hail of bullets, he applied inadequate field dressings to the wounds of one man, and a rough tourniquet to the arm of another. He comforted them, fed them sips of water, and waited for the day to pass.
It was long and hot and cloudless, a day to sear the memory, the sun like a branding-iron, the air thick with the smell of lyddite and blood. The cries of the wounded were harrowing. One of his companions, the one with abdominal wounds, died just before sunset; the other, with his hand a mangled mess of bone and tissue, moaned constantly. At full dark, which was not until after eleven that night, he hoisted the barely-conscious man out of the shell-hole and proceeded to crawl with him back to the point from where they had set off. It was not very far, perhaps a little over fifty yards, but it took him more than two hours to reach the safety of their own lines.
Under fire in the trenches opposite Messines in Belgium, Liam knew nothing of it. The Germans facing them were not only alert but intensely serious about the business of killing.
It was a long time since Liam had been quite so nervous, and when, after another ten days of noise and rain and squelching, stinking mud, the company was relieved, Liam could have kissed the incoming British troops. But one man was killed going out that night, and the fifth member of Liam’s team, Jim Smith, was caught by the same scythe of fire. Half-groaning, half-laughing, with the fleshy calf of his leg in tatters, he hung onto Liam and Jack, the Number Two, while they dragged him through the mud to safety.
‘The bastards got me,’ he kept saying, ‘the bloody bastards got me!’ Then it seemed to dawn on him that he was wounded, and he said delightedly, ‘But it’s a Blighty, this one – it’s got to be a Blighty! I’ll be out of this bloody mess for a bit, won’t I?’
‘Oh, he’s a lucky sod, this one,’ somebody else remarked. ‘Clean sheets for him, and angels with wings waiting on his every whim!’
‘You’re getting quite poetic, Vic – careful, they might give you a commission.’
‘Heaven forbid, Corp – I’m staying with you!’
But that wound put a slight dent in their feelings of invincibility. They had been together as a team since the early days at Bailleul; as Smithy was handed over to the ambulance team it occurred to all of them that they were one less, that for the first time they needed a replacement.
Euphoria at leaving the line was further dampened by the weather. In the midst of an electrical storm they marched back to camp to find it flooded out. The morning was spent digging drainage ditches round tents and canvas bivouacs. Too tired to sleep and needing suddenly to get away from the press of other human beings, Liam went for a walk. The storm had cleared the air, leaving the sky pale and fragile, reflected like a string of pearls in puddles along the road.
Beyond the woods which flanked the camp he heard strange noises, hammering and tapping which bore no resemblance to gun-fire. Investigating, he came across an army of engineers laying track-beds and rails at a
tremendous rate. Fascinated by their activity he stood and watched for a while, noticing as he did so that much horse-drawn artillery was moving south on a road close by.
Sauntering past a group of pioneers who had stopped to brew up, he asked what was going on.
‘Don’t you know, mate? It’s for the advance. All that lot’s going down to Amiens, and this here track’s for the armoured trains.’
‘What advance?’
‘Lord, son, where ‘ave you been? Australia?’ The old sergeant cackled at his own humour, while his men shook their heads. ‘Big push north of Verdun. Helpin’ the Frogs out, we are – doing all right too. We’ll soon ‘ave Fritz on the run!’
Against a hard little kernel of disbelief, Liam’s spirits lifted; because he wanted it to be true, he laughed, said it was tremendous news, and wished them well with their task. On the way back his step had a spring to it, and almost in spite of himself he repeated the story as though it were gospel fact. It certainly fitted with what they knew already, that the Germans locally had been rattled into vindictiveness, and probably by the news that they were being defeated elsewhere.
Next day the machine-gunners were issued with revolvers for range-finding, it having been decided at long last that rifles were too cumbersome to carry along with gun barrels and tripods and heavy boxes of ammunition. They had some fun practising, and even greater fun later at the baths in Neuve Eglise. Cleanliness and a fresh change of clothes worked wonders; tiredness evaporated and suddenly life was worth living again. Pay and an issue of mail completed everyone’s satisfaction.
Liam returned to their camp in the grounds of an old moated manor house, his disappointment that there was nothing from Georgina intensified by an awareness that his weeks-old request for leave was hardly likely to be granted now. Artillery was still moving down that road beyond the woods, and if the push was as big as was rumoured, no doubt the Australians would soon be moving with it. On these sombre considerations he settled down with his back against a tree-trunk, lit a cigarette and prepared to read his mail. Most unexpectedly, there was a letter from Tisha, which in her hurried scrawl announced the fact that she was married.
It had been very short notice, she wrote, because Edwin was about to leave on active service, something for which he had been applying regularly, but not really expecting. At her description of his rank and background, Liam felt his lip begin to curl, and not even a lingering affection for his sister could prompt much sympathy for their situation. He knew already, from Georgina, that Tisha had landed on her feet in London, and suspected she took as much advantage of people there as she had always done.
It was a shock, however, to read that Robert Duncannon had given her away at the short ceremony before a registrar.
‘Mother and Dad weren’t able to travel down, you see, as Dad’s not been so well lately. I’m writing to Robin, too, but if you should see him give him love from me and Edwin. Edwin is just longing to meet you both, but I don’t suppose it will be until this dreadful war is over. We really must get together then, don’t you agree?’
Liam swallowed hard, wondering why Tisha should still, after all this time, have the power to infuriate him. All those throw-away lines, no real news, just a series of by the ways. ‘Dad’s not been so well lately.’ What did that mean? There was nothing from Edward this time, only a brief note from his mother.
He scanned it quickly, looking for any reference to illness, but there was none. She said Edward was very busy at work, and what with that and the difficulty of travelling at short notice, they had not been able to go to the wedding. ‘But I don’t expect that will have upset Tisha very much,’ was added in a telling statement, ‘and I gather the young man’s parents were also unable to be present.’
There was nothing surprising about the letter, yet for some reason it made him uneasy. Why should Tisha refer to illness, and his mother not mention it? If either of them suffered so much as a cold, she usually saw fit to remark on it. What was so wrong with Edward that it must be hidden? Or that – God forbid! – he was unable to write? Disturbed, Liam promised himself that he would ask some searching questions in his next letter home. And he would ask Georgina, too. She communicated with his mother; she would know.
Suddenly, they had orders to pack up and leave. The fairy-tale beauty of the old manor house, reflected with such purity in the glassy waters before it, slept on in the morning sun, oblivious to the activity around. The men packed limbers and field kitchens, hitched horses, filled in latrines, folded tents and prepared for a lengthy march to Bailleul, their original base near Armentieres. From there cattle trucks took them overnight to Doullens, where everything had to be unloaded from the train for a rapid march south through Picardy.
It was beautiful country, a place of misty woods and hidden valleys, of winding country lanes and thatched, half-timbered villages. Gentler than Flanders, more secretive somehow, and less intensively farmed, it was also much poorer. The people had little to sell and nothing to give. Two years of war had destroyed their harvests, and the troops moving back and forth had consumed everything else. Bread was a luxury and fresh meat a legend. Liam had the impression at every halt that despite their forced smiles, the locals could not see much to choose between the marauding Boches and defending British. Their own sons were dead and dying at Verdun, and for those few who returned, a pathetic inheritance of shell-holes and fallow fields would be all that was left.
That atmosphere of sadness seemed to colour the landscape, beauty and tragedy mixed, as in some old romantic poem. Lovely but neglected chateaux, their gardens a wilderness of roses in full bloom, and picturesque old farmhouses whose quaintness hid emptiness and hunger within. Ponds without ducks, barnyards without geese, watermeadows which supported no more than a wealth of wild flowers.
Standing outside one of those ancient barns at sunset, Liam heard the guns and imagined the destruction. He was a lover of beauty and solitary places, of land that was fruitful and lovingly tilled, and to him this march of men, of guns and battle and sudden, violent death was like rape. And he was a necessary part of it; that was what hurt, what made him long with a force that shook him for this battle to succeed.
The English newspaper he had bought in Bailleul claimed that it was going well, although as they came closer to the town of Albert, the sight of so many exhausted and dispirited British troops made him wonder at the truth of it. Next day, with his first letter from Georgina in almost three weeks, Liam knew that much was being withheld.
Her note was little more than a brief apology. There was no time to write at length, little time to breathe with convoys of wounded coming in almost faster than they could be dealt with. Staff working ridiculous hours, wards full with more beds being added every day. She prayed that he was still in Belgium and safely out of what was happening on the Somme. Had he heard anything from Robin? Louisa had received the usual printed card, ringed where it said, ‘I am well,’ just three days after that first terrible day of battle. But other than that, nobody had heard a thing.
That first terrible day. Georgina’s words had the ring of doom about them, flaring the ever-present embers of his anxiety over Robin. Sixteen days had passed since the initial advance, and the battle had not stopped. It was still going on, he could hear the boom of the guns like thunder just a few miles away. The whole of the Australian 1st Division was on the move, and the battered remnants of the British 29th, with whom they had fought at Gallipoli, were resting in the next village. The ones he questioned all told the same tale: that the Yorkshire regiments had taken the most dreadful battering, some battalions virtually wiped out. And his informants did not seek to shock; their words, like their eyes, were without any discernible emotion.
Recognizing the symptoms, Liam felt a chill enter his soul. He did not ask what the battle had been like, there was no need. He had been there, at Quinn’s Post and Lone Pine and a dozen other places on the Peninsula. So he was gentle with them and shared his cigarettes and patted their shoulde
rs when he left. Their band was playing that evening in the village street, but those rousing, popular tunes were as inappropriate as dance music at a funeral. The lament of a solitary piper would have been more fitting.
They were held outside Varennes until the 19th, and the move, when it came, was sudden. Kit was donned for fighting order, packs marked and handed in, felt hats exchanged for the new steel helmets. Marching through Senlis later that day, Liam saw a group of German prisoners unloading stores under guard, and was astonished by their youth. Such boys they looked, their faces pale and bewildered; then he thought of his brother, and pity evaporated.
Camp that evening was in the open, in a field outside Albert, beside the shell-pocked ribbon of the Bapaume Road. It was a broad path first built by Romans, not curving around hills but tackling them head-on; now it climbed the long slope of ‘Tara Hill’ like a smudged white line disappearing over the crest to rise again in a series of small swells, beyond their immediate sight, to a high point some four and a half miles away, on which stood the village of Pozières.
To left and right of the road, in an arc around the town, stood several other villages from which the Germans had largely been beaten back. In that bitterly defended action, however, they had retrenched themselves on the higher point of that rolling chalk downland, from where they commanded views north to the ridge at Thiepval and south towards the valley of the Somme.
The aim of this push, their officer told them, was to make a break in the line – that never-ending line which ran from the Channel port of Ostend all the way to the Swiss border – so that the German forces could be outflanked at last, rolled up like a human carpet. The Australians’ task, he revealed with awe and pride in his voice, was to dislodge the enemy from Pozières.
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