The First Casualty

by Ben Elton

  Just then, almost within sight of home, the German guns opened up once more in earnest.

  ‘Take cover! ‘ Hilton shouted and together they dived into the nearest hole.

  FIFTY

  Waiting it out under fire

  There now began one of the most miserable days of Kingsley’s life. Like thousands of other men hiding in thousands of other holes on that mutilated plain, he was forced to sit tight in the midst of a full-scale artillery bombardment. Most of the shells were landing further up the slope from where Kingsley and the colonel had been heading, but enough were dropping short to make movement impossible. In a hole a man was pretty safe from everything except a direct or near-direct hit, but if he were to venture above ground he would be putting himself in the path of the lacerating side-blasts of every shell that landed within a hundred metres. He would be slashed to pieces within moments. There was nothing to do in such circumstances but to dig one’s hole as deep as possible, jam one’s helmet on low and sit it out. This Kingsley and Hilton did, scooping down into the puddle in which they stood and clawing up handfuls of sopping mud. With some effort they managed to extend their shelter to about three and a half feet in depth, before settling down together, waist deep in water, facing each other, knee to knee, to wait for the storm to lift.

  Fortunately, for the time being at least, the rain had stopped.

  Sitting out a bombardment was one of the most testing experiences of all for a soldier, and one that in itself left many strong men no longer in full command of their senses. To lurk within the stinking earth while all around it shook and moved; to be constantly showered with broken metal, rock and clods of clay, conscious that at any moment one was likely to be buried, possibly alive, and confined to oblivion: such an arbitrary threat came close to defeating Kingsley’s courage. The cannonade grew more swollen with the dawn and the whistles, bangs, throaty roars and constant clatter and clanging of falling debris seemed to shred his nerves by degrees with the coming of the day.

  It was not a hurricane barrage of the kind known to the troops as drumfire, rather a plodding, heavy bombardment which grew slowly in intensity as the day progressed. Some conversation was possible between the most immediate blasts, and the colonel, who could see that Kingsley was shaken, took the opportunity to try to comfort him.

  ‘You mustn’t think about it, Captain,’ he said. ‘That’s the way we old sweats get through these things. Don’t dwell. If you dwell, you go mad. Fellows sit stewing, getting obsessed with meaningless rituals. They start thinking that if they don’t complete some silly song a hundred times or tap their knees a certain way, or get so many pulls at a cigarette before it burns their lips, then the next shell will be theirs. I’ve known men disobey orders just so they can get through some insane mental task they’ve set themselves, thinking it’s all that stands between them and the next blast. Don’t think that way, old boy. Drives a man nuts. Believe me, I have sat in holes just like this one and watched men go mad in an afternoon.’

  Kingsley was shocked at the colonel’s perception. He had indeed begun to count the beats between blasts of certain types and distance, imagining that an order was developing which was known only to him and which he was bound to follow. The notion lacked all logic but nonetheless he could feel himself being drawn into the obsession, thinking that if he did not construct the pattern between each shell in his head, then the one he failed to note would kill him. It was like the times when he had flown in aeroplanes and had become convinced that if he personally stopped concentrating on keeping the machine aloft, it would fall out of the sky.

  ‘You’re right, colonel,’ Kingsley said. ‘I was beginning to…dwell. Thank you.’

  ‘Have to try to think about something else. And don’t let anybody see that you’re scared, that’s the most important thing.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Making the effort to look brave takes your mind off being scared. Everybody feels it. Same as whistling a happy tune.’

  ‘Are you scared, sir?’

  ‘Me? Scared? Of course not. I’m in a small, shallow hole under heavy bombardment from a battery of German howitzers, why on earth would I be scared? Ridiculous notion!’

  The colonel smiled and they both laughed and Kingsley felt grateful to his older companion for sharing a little of his courage.

  ‘Shall we sing together?’ the colonel suggested. ‘I fancy a sing-song.’

  ‘Well, if you wish. Certainly.’

  Kingsley was still deeply unnerved by the shelling all around him and was happy to try any method that might help him get through the ordeal.

  ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary,

  It’s a long way to go, ’

  the colonel began in a rich, full tenor.

  ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary

  To the sweetest girl I know!’

  Kingsley took up the tune and together they sang ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’, ‘Fred Karno’s Army’ and ‘The Quartermaster’s Stores ‘.

  Soon they could faintly hear other voices joining in. Kingsley was struck by the strangeness of it all: a landscape full of little holes in which men crouched, singing cheerful songs, while death fell all around them from the sky. He found his mind drifting back to the conversation he had had with Captain Shannon at the Hotel Majestic about the bizarre nature of modern war. It would be difficult to imagine a more bizarre situation than the one in which he currently found himself.

  Eventually they sang themselves hoarse. It had certainly made Kingsley feel a little better, and so, in a conversation interrupted constantly by massive blasts of ordnance, he turned his mind once more to his investigation.

  ‘Sir,’ he began, ‘seeing as how we’re stuck here for the time being, perhaps I might speak to you again about the death of Viscount Abercrombie?’

  ‘What? Still harping on about that, eh? I wondered why you’d turned up again,’ the colonel replied. ‘Oh well, Abercrombie’s as good a topic as any, I suppose. I was going to suggest we discuss cricket.’

  ‘Colonel, were you aware that, while he was staying at Château Beaurivage, Viscount Abercrombie had tried to lay his hands on a green envelope?’

  ‘Really? No, I hadn’t heard that, but then I don’t issue them.’

  ‘Why do you think he might have wanted such a thing?’

  ‘To send a letter that he didn’t want the army to read, I imagine.’

  ‘As colonel, you would have the job of censoring your soldiers’ mail, is that right?’

  ‘Just the officers’, not the men’s. Horrible job. Loathsome. Can’t stand the idea of reading another chap’s letters but it has to be done. You’ve no idea the indiscretions some of these lads blurt out. They tell their girlfriends positions, strengths, battle orders! As if any decent girl would be interested in that sort of thing anyway.’

  ‘Did you ever have cause to censor Captain Abercrombie’s mail, colonel?’

  ‘Well, yes. As a matter of fact, I did.’

  ‘You never mentioned it to me.’

  ‘You didn’t ask.’

  ‘Did you not think it might be relevant?’

  ‘Not really. I consider it absolutely central to my duties as censor never to discuss the contents of the letters I am forced to read. It’s quite bad enough having to look at someone else’s private correspondence without chatting about its contents afterwards. Imagine what a cad I’d feel.’

  ‘I should like to ask you about that letter now.

  ‘You can ask. Let’s see how far we get, eh?’

  ‘Was it because of this letter that you visited Abercrombie at Beaurivage ?’

  ‘Yes, it was. I wanted to tell him personally that I’d blocked it. I wanted him to withdraw it voluntarily, otherwise I’d be compelled to refer it to Staff.’

  ‘Refer it to Staff. I thought it was your policy never to discuss the contents of the mail you read with anyone?’

  ‘Unless it involved matters affecting security. I would have thought that was pretty bloody
obvious, Captain. Otherwise what would be the point of censoring the letters at all?’

  ‘You felt Abercrombie’s letter represented a breach of security?’

  ‘I found it…disturbing and I wanted him to withdraw it voluntarily.’

  ‘And what did he say to that?’

  ‘He told me to go to hell. First thing he did say, as a matter of fact.’

  All this conversation was punctuated by the fearful blasts of high explosives that were going off above and all around the scratch of ground in which they sheltered. Kingsley was grateful that he had something solid to occupy his mind, for he felt that he had never in his life been in a more nerve-racking situation.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to tell me what was in this letter, Colonel.’

  ‘I’d really very much rather you asked them at Staff. They have it now.’

  ‘I have reason to believe that they don’t any more, Colonel. It’s my supposition that Abercrombie’s letter has been destroyed.’

  ‘Good thing too, if you ask me. The chap wasn’t himself. Shell-shocked. It would be a rotten shame if he were remembered only for some damn-fool notions knocked into him by German shells.’

  ‘What damn-fool notions, Colonel?’

  The colonel shrugged.

  ‘Well, you’re a policeman, so I suppose I have to tell you. He wanted to resign his commission.’

  ‘To go into the ranks?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! The man was a viscount, how could he possibly have gone into the ranks? No, he wanted to chuck the army altogether. He’d turned against the war. Do you understand, Captain? The man who wrote ‘Forever England’ wanted to resign his commission because he was against the war! Decided it was wrong and wicked and all the usual stuff which we all feel most of the bloody time, but that still leaves three million German soldiers sitting in France and trying to get to Britain! What did he expect us to do about them while we’re all chucking it in just because we lost a pal or two?’

  ‘Was that in his letter? The loss of his friend?’

  ‘Oh, the loss of every damn friend. A generation! A generation of golden boys. All the usual bloody clichés. Did he think we’d honour them by giving up? I’ve lost a son, we’ve all lost sons, and the best memorial we can build for them is to kill as many Germans as we can and to win the war they died in.’

  Kingsley was about to reply but instead he waited. Throughout their talk each of them had been entirely alive to the shrieks and whistles of descending shells all around them. Kingsley had very soon learned to identify which noise signalled an approach that would land more closely than the rest and what sort of blast would follow. He and Hilton were listening to just such an approach now, both of them knowing that the whistle which their minds had picked out unbidden signalled that this time they were well and truly underneath one.

  Hilton drew his knees in close to his chest and put his fingers in his ears. Kingsley did likewise and held his breath through the long, plodding seconds that marked the passage of the descending shriek. He thought he heard Hilton wish him luck and then the missile struck.

  Kingsley found himself lifted up and somersaulting, but not through air, rather through earth. It was as if the ground had become a solid but shifting sea and Kingsley was being sucked under by an approaching wave. He rolled over and over inside the mud, entirely helpless, one small element in a mighty cataclysm.

  Then the movement stopped, at least outside Kingsley’s body it stopped. Within himself, every nerve and cell seemed to be in violent motion. He had been utterly shaken as if by some giant’s hand, and now he was so disorientated that he had no real sense of his own form.

  And yet he knew he was alive. And that he was buried. Buried alive.

  Struggling to concentrate his rattling brain whilst his trapped body convulsed with the mud that filled his mouth and ears, desperate to expel it from his throat but having nowhere but solid mud to expel it into, Kingsley understood one thing. He must somehow ascertain which way was up. In the few seconds of struggle that remained to him, in which direction should he attempt to force his body?

  Kingsley had been fighting the dirt, trying to push each of his limbs in a different direction, but now he forced himself to stop. He remembered his fencing master: ‘In a fight, think.’

  He had been holding his breath when the blast had occurred, and there was still some air in his lungs. He had perhaps ninety seconds left to him. He forced himself to count out ten of them in stillness.

  Surely there must be some means of ascertaining which way was up?

  Those few seconds saved his life for in them, even through his blocked ears, he could make out a sort of thudding, a heavy pattering, like a rain of mud. Kingsley knew that he was listening to a great balloon of mud and rock that had been hurled into the air by the blast and was now falling back to earth. That way was up, and it could not be far, for the earth in which he was entombed would dull the sound in no time.

  Twisting with all his might, Kingsley was able to turn his body towards the thudding and then to claw and push at the mud with his arms. For what seemed like the longest while, although it could only have been a few seconds, he felt he was getting nowhere. But then suddenly his fingers encountered nothing: they had burst through the fearful resistance of Flanders mud, and seconds later Kingsley had his face through and was coughing and puking and breathing all at once, trying to empty the earth from his body whilst simultaneously gasping for air.

  Hilton was dead. He had not been buried but instead, by some accident of fate, he had been thrown upwards into the blast and then shredded by the hurtling shrapnel. Kingsley could see a part of his upper chest and shoulders with their colonel’s pips lying quite close by; the rest of him was lost, disintegrated.

  The bombardment was still very much under way and Kingsley knew he must find cover again, and quickly. Flat on his front once more, he crawled in the direction of the British line. As luck would have it, he soon came upon a ruined trench. This must have been an excavation from an earlier stage of the war, he realized, as before the current battle it had been in no-man’s-land. Kingsley was further fortunate in that the slit, or what was left of it, must have been a communications trench, for it was running roughly east to west and so he was able to follow it in the direction he wished to go.

  By this means Kingsley was able in quite good time to reach the British line. This did not mean he was free of the bombardment, for this line was its target, but it did mean he could once more move quickly from trench to trench. He did not, however, do what every straining nerve in him wanted to do, which was run as fast as he could to beyond the reach of the guns. He had a duty to perform to Colonel Hilton and to the stranded men of the 5th Battalion. The British guns would no doubt be shortly commencing their reply to the German bombardment and Kingsley knew that before he did anything else he must inform their rangefinders of the exposed positions from which he and Hilton had crawled so many hours before.

  ‘I have no idea if they are still where we left them or whether they’ve perished under this current fusillade,’ he informed the first artillery officer he could locate, ‘but I can tell you where they were last night.’

  Kingsley made as full a report as he could concerning the whereabouts and disposition of the 5th and also delivered news of the death of its commander. Then, finally, he was able to make his way from the line for what he prayed with all his might would be the final time. Men were laboriously tugging an empty ammunition limber back towards the stockpiles located beyond Ypres and Kingsley used his rank and status as a military policeman to throw himself up on to it, whereupon his entire nervous system instantly shut down and he fell into deep unconsciousness.

  FIFTY-ONE

  A confrontation

  Captain Shannon had been with Sir Mansfield when Kingsley’s message regarding his anticipated conclusion to the investigation had reached London. It had been quickly agreed that Shannon should return to France and find out what, if a
nything, Kingsley had discovered.

  He had an easier journey to Flanders than Kingsley had done. After allowing himself the diversion of a night in Paris and then commandeering a staff car to take him up to the line, he had arrived at the Café Cavell when Kingsley was hiding in his shell hole with Colonel Hilton. Having found his quarry absent he had left a note requesting Kingsley to contact him at the police station at Armentières.

  Late that same afternoon Kingsley finally arrived back at his billet and, exhausted though he was, he gave himself only the briefest time to clean himself up before setting off to make contact with Shannon. The café had no telephone but Kingsley had an idea which establishment in Merville might be sufficiently wealthy to afford one, and so he made his way to the Number 1 Red Lamp establishment. Stepping up to the rather forbidding front door, he rapped upon it and demanded entrance. Dirty and drawn though he might have been, he still wore the uniform of a captain in the Military Police, which commanded enormous respect from an establishment that depended for its survival on its relationship with the British Army. Kingsley was immediately ushered inside, and so caused a mighty panic amongst the sheepish-looking soldiers hovering in the reception area.

  ‘Easy, lads. Easy,’ Kingsley said. ‘I’ve no interest in you. This is a licensed place, it’s all tickety-boo. I just want to use the telephone.’

  A thickly painted Frenchwoman of indeterminate age shuffled forward and, having made a bow and explained how honoured her establishment was by his visit, led him to a little cubicle. As he passed, Kingsley could not help but notice the two or three girls sitting amongst the soldiers, either hoping to be selected or perhaps waiting for a room to become free. Tired and thin, they were a miserable group indeed. The excessive paint they wore gave them a slightly ghoulish appearance, like marionettes. Kingsley felt that Tommy Atkins would find little comfort with these poor used-up creatures whose life expectancy was surely not so much greater than his own.

  Kingsley made two telephone calls from Madame’s little cubicle, one to Armentières and one to the château. He spoke first to Sergeant Banks at the police station, who confirmed that Captain Shannon had billeted himself upon them.