‘I told them I didn’t want a parson.’
‘I thought you might have changed your mind.’
‘I have not changed my mind.’
‘Are you a chapel man, perhaps? I can find the Methodist padre if you want him, you know.’
‘No, no. I was brought up Church,’ Evans said. ‘But I’m nothing now. I’m an unbeliever.’
The padre was silent, looking at Evans in the light of the candle. His hand, with the crumpled prayerbook in it, was long and slender, like a woman’s. His face was childlike. He was trying hard to understand the condemned man’s mind.
‘Obviously, then, it is lack of faith that has brought you to this sorry state.’
‘Go away,’ Evans said.
But the padre remained, hesitating. He felt it was his duty to try again.
‘You call yourself an unbeliever, yet when you were arrested you were found sitting in a village church.’
‘It was quiet there.’
‘If you cannot believe in God, can’t you at least have faith in your fellow men?’
‘I come from South Wales,’ Evans said. ‘I have seen where certain men have laid their hands, and the place is left black and smoking ever after. I have seen where other men have laid their hands, and the place is greener than it was before.’
‘So? What then? It follows that you believe in good and evil.’
‘They exist together, and will do always.’
‘You don’t believe that good must ultimately win a victory over evil?’
‘It is a victory that good exists at all.’
‘I could give you comfort, you know, if only you’d let me.’
‘I don’t need it,’ Evans said.
The padre went. The two halves of the stable door were closed and bolted. Light came gradually in at the round hole above and Evans douted the flame of his candle. He put the stump into his pocket.
Tom, in the cowshed, sat on his bunk with his knees up and his arms clasped round them. He watched the daylight growing brighter through the slatted window. Outside, in the yard, the hens had been released and a cock was crowing. Someone was working a chaff-cutter. Next door, Evans was making himself tidy.
When the escort came to take him away, Evans stood up and knocked on the wall.
‘So long, Toss. Look after yourself. Thanks for sitting up with me.’
‘So long, Taff.’
Tom got up and looked out through the slats of his window. He saw them marching Evans away. In the straw-littered yard an old woman with a black knitted shawl over her head was scattering a panful of grain for the hens. She came to a standstill, crossing herself, as Evans passed by between his guards. Tom craned his neck and looked at the sky, overcast with purple stormclouds, under which the morning light shone out levelly over the earth. He saw three seagulls flying over, silver-white against the dark clouds. From somewhere not very far away came a quick volley of rifle fire. The old woman got down on her knees.
Tom, appearing before the court martial, was charged with refusing to obey an order. He admitted the charge and was found guilty. Townchurch, of course, had been in the wrong. Tom knew it; the officers knew it; but discipline had to be maintained, so no one asked what the order had been.
He was sentenced to five days’ Field Punishment Number One. This meant extra fatigues, parading on the hour in full marching order, and confinement in the guardroom. It also meant that every evening of the five-day period he spent two hours tied to the wheel of a gun limber, stretched crossways with his feet off the ground, his wrists and ankles strapped to the spokes. Sergeant Townchurch was there to see that the straps were pulled tight; he was there again later to see Tom released; and every evening, as the straps were removed, he would ask the same question.
‘Well, Maddox? Don’t you wish you’d obeyed that order?’
Tom never answered the sergeant’s question. He tried to pretend the man was not there.
Chapter Five
At the end of July, the Sixth Battalion left the Somme and moved north into Flanders, up to the martyred city of Ypres, under bombardment day and night. A group of signallers stood watching as they marched in.
‘Welcome to the capital of the salient! ‒ Kindly leave it as you find it!’
‘Come to Wipers and be wiped out!’
‘Hope you’re nifty, catching whizzbangs.’
‘The barracks is over there on your left, or it was this morning.’
‘The password is knife. You never get time to say nothing more.’
That evening, Tom and Newers explored the city, once a place of proud spires. They gazed at the ruins of the old cathedral, the skeleton of the Cloth Hall.
‘Someone’s going to have to do some building here when it’s all over. I wonder how they’ll ever have the heart to begin.’
‘Will you come back?’ Tom asked. ‘Afterwards, I mean, to see how it looks?’
‘It’s an idea,’ Newers said. ‘How about us two coming together? Ten years after the end of the war, say, on a special trip?’
‘Right, it’s a deal,’ Tom said, ‘so long as we’re alive to do it.’
‘If we’re dead we’ll come in the spirit. There’ll be plenty of ghosts wandering through France and Belgium in the years to come.’
Throughout the salient, troops were massing for the new offensive. Every acre of open space was packed with men, horses, guns, equipment. And the enemy, occupying the higher ground north-east of the city, could look down over the bustle below as though looking on a human ant-heap. His observation posts were supreme. His gunners could place their shells as they chose. The bombardment intensified every day.
‘Talk about sitting ducks!’ Dick Costrell said to Newers. ‘What the hell are top brass waiting for, for God’s sake?’
‘They’re finishing their game of bowls.’
‘Another day or two of this and there’ll be nothing left of us to attack with.’
Costrell spoke bitterly. The waiting was getting on his nerves. Rain had begun falling now. The ground was receiving a thorough soaking.
On the last day of July, as first light came, the British guns redoubled their fire, and all along the salient front the British infantry climbed out of their assembly trenches and, following the creeping barrage, advanced towards the enemy lines. The great new offensive had begun.
The Sixth Battalion was in support. They had orders to push through the line established by the Worcestershires and press on to the next objective. Tanks were coming up to assist. But the ground had been thoroughly soaked with rain and the tanks were either bogged down in the ditches or moved so slowly that they were destroyed by enemy shells.
The Sixth Battalion went into the attack but were beaten back by murderous gunfire. They had to dig in short of their objective. And in the evening came more rain.
They lay out all night in shallow trenches full of water. The rain continued all next day, and the day after.
On the fifth night they were relieved by a sister battalion. They marched along the Menin road and went into camp outside Ypres. They were given dry clothes and hot sweet tea with rum in it. Food when it came was bully beef stew ladled piping hot into mess-tins, but, because of the undiminished shelling, it contained a few unwelcome ingredients.
‘What’s this?’ Newers asked, fishing out a piece of shrapnel and showing it to the sergeant cook. ‘Iron rations?’
‘That’s something you leave on the side of your plate.’
While they ate, they tried to glean news of how the big attack was going, but nobody seemed to know for sure. They heard only rumours and some of these were bad indeed, like the post corporal’s story of how the British guns had pounded a position already captured by British troops. They heard, too, of a whole company of the Third Three Counties lost for eight hours in the darkness up near Pilckem Ridge. And they heard ‒ was it true? ‒ that the Fifth Battalion West Mercia had lost three quarters of its strength in the action outside Rannegsmarck.
‘The bloody Somme all over again,’ Pecker Danson said to Tom, ‘only bloody worse if anything.’
August was always a wet month in Flanders, but August 1917 was the worst known for forty years.
‘It’s the guns that bring down all this rain,’ Danson kept saying. ‘I’ve noticed it time and time again ‒ get a big bombardment and down it comes!’
They were in trenches near Hooge, soaked to the skin for days on end. There was no sleep because of the shelling. Tempers were short and nerves ragged. Only Newers remained cheerful.
‘You should’ve brought your brolly, Pecker.’
‘I should’ve brought my bleedin’ canoe. I can see why Fritz is so keen on his submarines. He’ll be using them in the trenches soon.’
‘Listen!’ said Newers, a finger to his lips.
‘What the hell is it?’ Danson asked.
‘Darkness falling. Stand-to!’
‘I’ll bloody well brain you in a minute.’
The enemy bombardment, heaviest at dusk, gradually lessened as darkness came. Shells were fewer. More widely spaced. ‘Fritz is getting ready for bed,’ Newers would say, as the shelling eased. ‘He’s putting the cat out and leaving a message for the milkman.’ Womp. Womp. Away on the left.
‘Two pints,’ Newers said.
Womp. Womp. Away on the right.
‘He’s fallen over the milk-bottles.’
Womp. ‒ Womp. ‒ Womp. ‒ Womp.
‘Now he’s going upstairs to his missus. She’s lying there listening to his steps on the stairs. She’s been warming the bed like a good wife should.’
There followed a silence. Newers sucked at his empty pipe.
‘I don’t like to think what they’re doing now.’
Womp. Womp. Very close.
‘Seems he’s fallen out of bed.’
‘Don’t you ever shut up?’ Costrell shouted suddenly.
‘Sometimes I do,’ Newers said.
‘I’m sick to death of your endless clacking! For God’s sake let’s have some peace and quiet!’
‘All right, keep your hair on,’ Newers said. ‘I can take a hint as well as the next man.’
Costrell was in a state of nerves. He twitched and trembled all the time. Tom was reminded of Lambert and Evans. He leant across the tiny dugout and offered Costrell a cigarette. Costrell knocked it out of his hand. ‘Steady on,’ Danson murmured.
The next night, wet as ever, Tom and Danson were on sentry. So was Costrell. Tom heard a commotion in the next bay and went along to see what was wrong. Costrell lay stretched out on the duckboards, a rum-jar beside him, and the other sentries were trying in vain to wake him up. ‘He’s dead to the world! Where’n hell did he get that jar?’
‘What shall we do?’ Rush whispered, and there was panic in his voice. ‘If Townchurch sees him like this he’ll end up the same as poor Taffy Evans.’
They raised Costrell and slapped his face, but he remained lifeless in their grasp. Tom ran back to his own bay and called Newers out of the dugout. Newers came, turning his pipe-bowl upside down, and lifted one of Costrell’s hands. He put his thumb-nail under Costrell’s and pressed down hard into the quick. There was a sudden loud cry. Rush put his hand over Costrell’s mouth and Danson rubbed the boy’s wrists. They stood him on his feet and ran him quickly to and fro. He was soon sick and began to recover.
‘Where’n hell did you get that jar?’
‘I dunno. I won it somewhere.’
‘Can you stand now? Can you walk about?’
‘Think so,’ Costrell muttered.
‘You better had!’ Danson said. ‘You know the penalty for being drunk on sentry, don’t you?’
‘Christ!’ Costrell said, and began crying. ‘I feel so ill!’
‘Pull yourself together, lad. Townchurch’ll be along in a minute.’
‘Oh, Christ!’ Costrell said, but he stood up straight and took his rifle from Dave Rush.
‘If it wasn’t for Newers you’d still be out cold,’ Danson said. ‘We couldn’t do nothing to bring you round.’ Costrell’s glance slid to Newers.
‘Thanks, chum. I’ll buy you a drink in “Pop” on Friday.’
‘Chew some of this,’ Newers said, and handed him a plug of tobacco. ‘It’ll maybe soak up the smell of rum.’ Newers went back to his own dugout, taking the half-empty rum-jar with him. A few minutes later, Townchurch came by with the platoon officer, Mr Coleby. All the sentries were up on the firestep. Everything was as it should be.
The low-lying land north of Ypres had long ago been reclaimed from the sea; it was kept drained by a series of dykes; but these dykes had been broken down by the British bombardment and the waters, overflowing, were turning the area back to swamp. Over this swamp the Allied forces were attempting to advance, against the Germans firmly entrenched on the ground above.
‘Talk about Weston-super-bloody-Mare!’ said Dave Rush, dragging one leg from the mire as he spoke. ‘It’s only sheer will-power that’s keeping my boots on my bloody feet.’
‘The continong is not all it’s cracked up to be,’ said Pecker Danson. ‘I’ll stick to Skegness in future.’
‘I’ll stick to everything after this!’
Newers had been caught in a shell-blast that had bowled him over into the mud, yet he still had his empty pipe in his mouth and was blowing through it to clear out the muck.
‘A mud-pack is said to be good for the complexion. We’ll come out looking like the Oxo Boy. There’s ladies in London who spend a mint of money to get what we’re getting here for nothing.’
‘I bet their mud-packs don’t smell like this.’
‘You mustn’t mind that ‒ it’s only the smell of rotting bodies.’
‘Yes, my pal Jim Baker’s buried here, somewhere. He was out in 1915.’
‘Well, we won’t stop and look for him now, Pecker. We got an appointment with Fritz in the morning.’
It was towards the end of August, a night of rain and intense darkness, and they were moving up to the line, feeling their way yard by yard into the forward assembly trenches, ready for the engagement next day.
‘What we need,’ said Dave Rush, ‘is an electric torch with a black light.’
‘No smoking!’ came the order, passed along from man to man.
‘I ent ready for this engagement,’ Pecker Danson said to Tom. ‘I haven’t bought the bleeding ring.’
‘No talking from now on!’ shouted the corporal, just behind them.
The columns of men filed forward very slowly, slock-slock, through the mud. It was still raining. The assembly trenches were all flooded. The water reached above their knees.
Dawn, when it came, showed itself first in the flood-water lying out in front. No-man’s-land was a waste of puddles and the light in the water seemed paler, brighter, than the light in the heavily clouded sky. Rain was falling steadily, a grey curtain reluctantly letting the daylight through, to reveal the desolation on the ground. Ruined field-guns lay lopsided in the mud and smashed tanks were bogged to the turrets. One great tank had lost its tracks. Dead men and horses lay everywhere, sunk in black slime, unrecognizable except that in places, here and there, a hand or a hoof stuck out and pointed to the sky.
‘If I get out of this war safely,’ Dave Rush said to Tom, ‘I never want to see another dawn as long as I live.’
Communications were difficult. They lay out all morning in the rain waiting for orders. At two o’clock the British guns opened up an intense fire. The attacking platoons crawled from their trenches and began pushing forward through the mud, following the barrage as it moved slowly up the slope.
Weighed down as they were with battle equipment, moving through mud which in places reached to the very thighs, their progress was dreadfully, painfully slow.
‘It’s all right for Jerry,’ Danson said. ‘He’s got the best place up there on that ridge.’
‘Then you know what to do ‒ take it from him!’ said the young lieutenant commanding the platoon, and pushed forward, hi
s rifle held high.
‘Easy, ent it?’ Danson said, as Newers drew alongside. ‘Nothing to it, if Jerry’ll just wait while I get my bleeding feet up, out of this bleeding rotten muck.’
Townchurch, ahead, had stepped up onto a slab of concrete and was urging the men to make more effort.
‘Come on, you grubs! Shift yourselves and get a move on! I want some progress bloody forward! I want my platoon up there in front!’
‘We know what you want!’ Costrell shouted, hardly aware of what he was saying.
‘Yes, Costrell, what do I want?’
Costrell was struggling in the mud. Townchurch splashed across to him and helped him on with a shove from behind. Costrell fell forward onto his face.
‘I said get a move on!’ Townchurch bellowed. ‘I said to shift yourselves and show some spunk! You’ll get on forward up that slope if I have to push you all the way!’
Costrell floundered onto his knees, choking and crying, trying to wipe the mud from his rifle.
‘Just look! Just look! How the hell can I use that? I can’t go on without a rifle! What the hell am I going to do?’
‘You’ve got your bayonet!’ Townchurch said. ‘If you ever get close enough to use it! Now get on or I’ll bloody well put you on a charge!’
Tom and Newers helped Costrell up.
‘Keep with us,’ Newers said, ‘and if one of us falls, grab his rifle.’
Townchurch was now splashing forward to another group stuck in the mire.
‘Shift yourselves, can’t you? I want you up there behind that smoke! If I can move, so can you!’
The barrage, creeping forward, was gradually leaving them behind. They could not keep pace with it, slow as it was, and now, as the smoke around them drifted away, there was nothing to hide them from the enemy. They were out in the open, in a sea of mud, though the enemy lines were still some way off, under the smoke and the driving rain.
‘Which way? Which way?’ a man was screaming, off his head. ‘I don’t even know where the Germans are!’
‘Nor me neither,’ Newers said. ‘I’m following them two up there.’ He pointed to Townchurch and the subaltern, moving twenty yards ahead. ‘Let’s hope they know where we’re going!’
The Sorrowing Wind (The Apple Tree Saga Book 3) Page 8