by Pat Kelleher
Porgy looked up as that sank in and seemed to rally, turning on the sentry loitering off to his side. “All the way to the Hun wire, an ambush by Jerry, and I get shot by my own bloody side!” he growled, attempting to get up, but Gutsy held him down.
“Och, sorry mate how wis ah tae know? This isnae your section o’ the line. You could a been Kaiser Bill hisself fer all I knew!”
Atkins looked up as a grubby mud-slathered Hobson stood over him. “That,” he spat, “was a bloody stupid thing to do.”
“Couldn’t leave him, Sar’nt.”
“Quite, right lad,” said Hobson, gently patting him on the shoulder.
As if that were all the permission he needed, Atkins felt great sobs well up within him and his shoulders started to shake.
“You’ll be all right son. You did well tonight. Take Porgy to have his scratch seen to. Don’t want him missing out on the fun later, do we? Then go and get yourself cleaned up and get some kip. Big day tomorrow.”
“Sar’nt.”
Atkins and Gutsy made their way along the fire trench, carrying a dazed and bloody Porgy between them, his head now roughly bandaged with a field dressing. They turned down a communications trench and weaved their way to the Regimental Aid Post. The MO wasn’t very happy about being woken up, but soon cleaned and stitched the wound before packing them off.
Atkins went back to the water butts in the support trench to clean himself up.
Ketch caught up with him.
“I heard what you did, Atkins,” he said.
“Any one of us would have done the same.”
“But they didn’t did they? It was you, weren’t it? Bit of a glory hound are we? Your mates might think you’re the bee’s knees right now, but I know different. You’re bad news, Atkins. I’m watching you.”
Atkins was too weary to argue. He crept back into the dugout, crawled under his ration blanket and dozed fitfully as the rats scurried across the floor beneath him.
INTERLUDE ONE
Letter from Private Thomas Atkins
to Flora Mullins
31st October 1916
My Dearest Flora,
As I write to you tonight I have no further news of William. Last week, out of the trenches, I tramped around the field hospitals again. I showed his picture about and, though I feared what I might find, I visited the army cemeteries hereabout. I even buttonholed a relief column to ask if they’d seen him. I can bring you no peace, I’m afraid. But do not despair. He may still turn up. It might be that he is only lost and taken up with another regiment, or else been wounded and travelling between hospitals. It is too soon to give up. We must both hope that he will come home.
Tomorrow we’ve a mind to go and bother the Kaiser for some sport. We’re taking a stroll up to the woods to see what mischief we can make! My only fear is that I shall not see you again, but do not fret for I am determined that I shall. Tell my mam I’m well and will see her soon. I know she worries so. Tell her I got the socks she sent. If she can send some lice powder I would be very grateful.
Ever yours,
Thomas
CHAPTER THREE
“This World’s Verge...”
HE WAS SAFE. A million miles from the front line. He was home. Home on leave. In his uniform he waited anxiously outside the factory gates for her shift to end, afraid he’d miss her as the workers swept out. He saw her first, picked her out amongst the crowd of women surging towards the street, arms linked with her workmates, walking in step, laughing. He stood across the street, waving eagerly. “Flora! Flora!” She looked up and saw him. And smiled...
“Wakey, wakey, ladies!”
Atkins jerked awake and sat up in his bunk, cursing as he caught his hair in the wire of Ginger’s bunk above him. Already the dream was slipping away. Sergeant Hobson, cleaned up and dressed for battle, his moustache as prim and proper as ever, stood in the dugout’s doorway, his appearance sending the rats scurrying for cover.
“Oh God, what time is it?” groaned Mercy.
“Time you were in Jerry’s face before I get into yours, Evans,” hollered Hobson.
“It’s not even dawn, Sarn’t!” said Pot Shot. “What about me beauty sleep?”
“No amount of sleep is going to make you ugly bunch any better looking, and that’s just the way I like it. I want Fritz to feel his balls shrivel when he sees you lot coming. Now get up and get yourselves sorted. Stand To in fifteen minutes.”
Bleary eyed, Atkins rolled out of his bunk, his mouth dry and his empty stomach churning as he jostled over cold water and tarnished shaving mirrors, braces hanging limply from his waist.
They all clustered about Porgy with his new bandage, demanding all the details of the night’s events, which Gutsy duly gave them, building up to Only’s heroic dash and rescue.
“It was nothing,” said Atkins awkwardly. “Besides, I couldn’t let him stay out there. He promised me he’d introduce me to Marie down at the estaminet in Sans German.” Never ones to learn the local language if they could get away with mangling it, it was one of the Tommies’ jokes. St. Germaine was the nearest town to Harcourt Wood, well behind the British lines and so long as it remained behind British lines it would bloody well remain ‘Sans German’—without Germans, too.
“Going to have quite a scar, the doc says,” beamed Porgy. “The old ‘war-wound,’ it’ll have the girls flocking to me, it will.”
“Luh-looks like a Buh-blighty wound to me,” said Ginger quietly. “Why you still ’ere?”
“What, and desert me mates, today of all days? Bloody hell, Ginger, what’s got into you?” said Porgy.
Atkins felt the knot in his stomach tighten. His teeth were furred up and his mouth tasted rank after vomiting last night. He pulled his braces up onto his shoulders, slipped into his tunic and fastened it before shrugging on his webbing. It was an attack so it was Battle Order equipment; rifle, helmet, backpack with iron rations, water flask, bayonet and 150 rounds small arms ammunition. Then they’d have to pick up spare sand bags, entrenching tools, grenades, spare grenades, flares and wire cutters, smoke candles and picks from the QM.
Atkins joined the queue with his dixie tin for his bit of bacon and fat. His mouth was so dry he could barely swallow. The tea was lukewarm and made with petrol-contaminated water, from using petrol cans as water carriers. It made him gag.
Then Lieutenant Everson and the Quarterbloke made their way down the fire trench, issuing rum from a stone SRD jar. Atkins gratefully accepted the slug of liquor that Everson measured out into his greasy dixie tin and tipped the contents down his throat. He felt the rum burn all the way down.
Afterwards Gutsy kissed his little rabbit’s foot on its leather thong and tucked it into his shirt. Porgy shuffled his pack of pictures, hoping that the one he drew as his Queen of Hearts for the day was one he actually fancied. Gazette listened for the crump of an artillery shell and tried to count to twenty before the next one landed. Ginger quietly confessed his sins to the pet rat hidden in his tunic. Atkins took out of his tunic pocket a much-read letter, the last letter he’d received from Flora, and eased it, like a sacred relic, from its envelope. He raised the letter to his lips and kissed it softly, almost reverently, then parted the folded corners, held the paper to his nose and gently inhaled as if smelling a delicate flower; if he could still smell her scent on it, even here amid the malodorous mud of the trenches, then he was convinced that he would survive the day. Finally, everybody touched or kissed Lucky’s steel helmet with the two Jerry bullet holes in it.
They all had their little rituals.
JEFFRIES WAS GOING through his own ritual, quite literally. It had served him well in the past and garnered him a reputation as a fearless soldier on the battlefield, taking life-threatening risks as if he had no care for his own life, when in fact the opposite was very much the case.
He knelt in his dugout, within his salted circle, incense burning on the table next to him. He breathed deeply as, slowly, his mind centred on the Gre
at Working at hand. Today, on the feast of Samhain, he would prove them all wrong. He had no need of fear. He had Seeston. Last night’s ritual of protection should shield him from harm. And from this calm, centred place he offered up a prayer.
“I bless Enrahagh, fallen from the light, I bless Croatoan dwelling in the night, I bless the sword of Raziel that all the heathen dread. I bless the dirt beneath my feet, the earth on which they’ll tread.”
The clatter of rifles and shouts outside shattered the serenity of the moment as men scurried about the narrow culverts and alleys in readiness for the attack. Beyond the immediate shrill shouts, he heard the persistent dull bass thud of artillery shells. Dirt sifted down from the ceiling. He got up, put on his tunic and Sam Browne belt then searched for his hair brush and applied it in slow, considered strokes though his Brilliantined hair. Picking up his steel helmet, he placed it on his head and adjusted it just so before a shard of mirror. He admired his reflection for a moment and, irritated, turned to brush some slight dirt from his shoulder pips.
There were times when he really missed having a batman, but he needed privacy and they only got in the way. It had been a shame about Cooper. Good at laundry but a little too inquisitive for his own good. He’d proved useful in the end though, just like Seeston. Luckily the disposal of bodies at the front was less problematic than it had been back in England.
As he left, he turned and took one last look round his dugout for old times’ sake.
This was it. All his preparation had brought him here, to this place, to this hour. After today nothing would be the same again.
OLIVER HEPTON CHOSE his position and had set up his tripod in the cover trench by a loophole, the better to catch the costly advance of the Pennines as they went over the top. He began to crank the handle of his camera. He panned round the trench slowly, not an easy task when trying to maintain a steady camera speed.
Don’t want to make the people at home feel motion sick. He’d been filming for three days in the reserve lines, getting shots of soldiers coming up the line, waving their steel helmets, full of fun and bravado, posing for family back home. Plucky British Tommies waiting to give the Hun hell. But today was different. The men didn’t care about the camera. They were tense, too preoccupied to give it anything more than a cursory glance and a weak smile. Hepton didn’t mind. It was all good stuff and he began composing the accompanying caption cards in his head.
ATKINS STOOD IN the fire bay as dawn grazed the sky; Ginger and Porgy closest to him, Gutsy, Pot Shot, Mercy and Lieutenant Everson to their left, Lucky, Half Pint, Gazette, Ketch and Jessop to their right. C Company’s other three platoons on either side of them. Behind them in the communication and cover trenches, A and B companies readied themselves for the second wave of the attack. In front of him on the firestep the scaling ladder stood up against the brushwood revetment and sandbagged parapet. Atkins stared at it with deep resentment. How could something so mundane hold such sway over his life? He hated it. Every rung left him more exposed, lessened his chances. It might as well have been a ladder to the gallows.
From along the trench Corporal Ketch glowered at them. Atkins knew he wanted them to funk it and he wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction, but to Atkins’ left Ginger was fidgeting uneasily, like a child on the verge of tears.
“I heard they got summat new lined up for Fritz today; them watchercallems, Boojums they used up Flers,” said Pot Shot.
“What, here? Oh, what I wouldn’t give to see one of them,” said Gutsy.
“Boojums?” said Ginger.
“Like prehistoric monsters they is,” said Porgy. “They knock down trees and eat houses. Bullets and bombs just bounce off ’em, I’ve heard,”
“Jerry up!” said Half Pint, pointing up into the sky. Glad of the diversion, Atkins looked up with the rest into the calm autumn dawn. Above, he saw a great long train of tall white clouds stretching almost from horizon to horizon moving in a slow stately procession across the sky. There, beneath their great white bellies but high above the scattered smudges of black air burst, were two small dots flying toward the British lines.
“Albatrosses, I’ll be bound,” said Porgy, shielding his eyes.
“There!” called Lucky. Atkins turned. Three small black dots were making for them slowly, almost casually, flying out across the British lines to meet them. The Royal Flying Corps. Atkins willed them on as if wishing could give them speed enough to smash into the enemy like jousting steeds of the air, dashing their foes from the sky and sending them plummeting to earth. Instead they drifted slowly toward each other, almost lackadaisically, then seemed to weave in and around each other, dancing like mayflies on a summer evening. Atkins watched the dumb show, spellbound. One of them left a dark soft streak across the sky as it began a slow balletic tumble towards the earth. Atkins held his breath.
“One of ours or one of theirs?” he asked nobody in particular as he craned his head.
“Dunno,” said Jessop.
“Wait,” said Mercy squinting his eyes. “It’s one of theirs. I think.”
Grasping for a sign, any sign, and fanning a small flame of hope for the day ahead, a ragged cheer went up along the line. They joined in.
Ketch growled and took a step towards them. “Quieten down. How can you listen out for the enemy, making a racket like that?”
“Well it’s not like they’re going to attack at the same time we are, is it?” said Mercy.
But the mood was successfully punctured and the cheer subsided. Satisfied, Ketch returned to his position with a smirk.
Indistinct barks came down the line.
“Fix bayonets!” bellowed Hobson.
Atkins slotted the handle of the seventeen inch blade onto the end of his rifle. He’d done it so often he could do it in his sleep.
Then they waited.
EVERSON LOOKED AT his wristwatch. The second hand swung its way inexorably round to zero hour. Ten minutes to go. He licked his lips to moisten them for the pea-whistle that waited in his hand. Everything that could be done had been done. He could feel the weight of the revolver in his hand but his world had shrunk to that small disc on his wrist, to that needle-fine finger rotating, as if winding up the thread of his life onto some celestial spool.
Once more he had to lead his men into battle. Except that this was never battle; no glorious charge, no smashing of shields or clash of swords. There was little honour or glory here; only death, despair, pain and guilt. You never saw the enemy. Death strode the field, no longer cutting men down with a scythe, but with a threshing machine, gathering in its harvest in commercial quantities. Death had been industrialised.
Everson had never wanted responsibility. When he joined up he’d just wanted to be one of the men, a small cog in a big machine, but when your father was twice mayor of Broughtonthwaite and owner of the largest brewery in town there were bigger wheels turning against yours. So he’d been given a commission. Men he’d known before the war, men whose families had been intertwined with his for generations, now depended on him for their lives and he didn’t want the responsibility. But now that it was his he wasn’t going to shirk it. He’d done his damnedest to keep them alive through the bloodshed of the preceding summer, and by God, he’d do the same today.
He ran a finger around the inside of his collar and unconsciously began chewing his lower lip.
THE ARTILLERY BOMBARDMENT began. It started in No-Man’s Land and, every minute, crept forwards another hundred yards towards the German lines—a barrage designed to shield the advancing soldiers from enemy fire. They would then move behind the line of smoke and shells, with the huge armoured hulks of the ironclad landships crushing paths through the German wire. At least that was the theory.
The ground began to shake. A loud rumbling filled the air. Atkins felt himself flinch involuntarily, expecting a shell burst or trench mortar, but the sound went on and on, increasing in volume. Dirt started dancing off the sandbags on the parapet.
“What t
he hell is it?” said Porgy, looking round. Down in the trench it was difficult to tell where the sound was coming from.
Along with the deep bass roar came another noise now, a squeaking and whining, a repetitive metallic clank.
“Blood and sand!” said Atkins as, several bays down, a fearsome metal monster belching white smoke from its back rolled across the reinforced bridge over the trenches into No Man’s Land.
It was an ironclad landship; armour-plated, its side-mounted sponsons seemingly bristling with guns. He’d never seen anything like it, not even in the adventure stories he read. On the side he could make out a painted identity number, I-5, and then underneath, painted in a scruffier hand, the legend, HMLS Ivanhoe.
“Boojums!” yelled Pot Shot ecstatically.
“Tanks! Read about ’em on leave,” said Mercy. “The papers were full of ’em. Oh, we’re going take that wood now. Fritz’ll shit himself when he sees these coming at him, eh Ginger?”
Ginger managed to crack a weak smile but then, as soon as the huge great armoured rhomboid rolled over the firing trench, he began flinching and jerking.
Not now, thought Atkins. Not now.
If Ginger fled, the Battle Police would get him. If they didn’t, Ketch certainly would. This close to a show, he wouldn’t get the courtesy of a court martial before they marched him out to a stake and his mates had to shoot him.
“Ginger, quiet!” But before he could say anything more to calm the boy there came the dull repetitive clang of a cracked warning bell and the cry of: “Gas! Gas! Gas!”
The Germans, now aware that something was going off and having the prevailing wind in their favour, had opened their gas canisters and, heavier than air, the sluggish green cloud had begun to slue down the incline toward the British trenches.
At once, Atkins put his rifle down, took off his helmet and began to fumble at the canvas bag on his chest, undoing the buckle to get at the P. H. gas helmet inside. Well, the Quarterblokes called it a helmet. The men called it “the goggle-eyed bugger with the tit”. What he pulled out was a cloth hood. He flapped it to open it out and pulled it on over his head, tucking its neck down into his shirt collar to form a rudimentary seal. He bit on the rubber clamp inside and took a couple of breaths, in through the nose and out through the tube in his mouth with its distinctive red rubber valve. Peering out through the greenish eye-pieces, he picked up his battle bowler and placed it back on his head before feeling around for his rifle.