by Pat Kelleher
“Christ, what am I doing?” he muttered.
All the rage at being grounded, at the loss of his squadron mates, at the lack of understanding; he balled it up and screamed at the unearthly world in frustration.
The indifferent roar of the engine drowned it out.
AS THE RIOTOUS din rose and fell about them, Atkins and the rest of 1 Section stood to arms in the trench outside Battalion HQ. Thin columns of smoke rose into the air from indiscriminate arson.
“You can’t blame them for rioting,” said Pot Shot, remonstrating. “We’ve had no rest or pay for five months. We haven’t suddenly found ourselves back on Earth, and it doesn’t look like we’re going to, either, does it?” The lanky Fusilier shot a sullen glance at Atkins. “Don’t you think the rest of those poor buggers deserve to know, too?”He was talking about the Bleeker party, and Atkins knew it. They all did.
He wanted to do the right thing, and of course, he had sympathy with those rioting, all of which made his choice to stand here right now all the harder.
He shook his head. “That’s not our problem. Lieutenant Everson ordered us to keep it secret, remember? And for good reason.”
“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” countered Pot Shot. “Even so, if there isn’t a way back, then we’re not exactly anybody’s army anymore are we? Maybe we should all have a vote,” he suggested.
“What, the women, too?” said Porgy, never usually given to deep political thought.
Gazette poked him in the shoulder. “You’re only worried that if they get to vote on everything, they’ll never let you walk out with them again,” said the taciturn sniper.
Atkins watched the mob approach the Battalion HQ, hands bristling with trench clubs, sticks and rifles. Porgy, Gazette and Pot Shot stood beside him, blocking the way.
“Go back,” he warned them.
Bains stepped to the fore, the shaft of an entrenching tool in his hand and a greasy smile on his face. “Well that’s the whole point isn’t it? We haven’t gone back, have we? We’re still here. All we want is a chance to make a new life for ourselves.”
Impatient, the men behind Bains began to jostle, bracing for a fight.
Atkins raised his voice and addressed the rabble. “Is that what you all say?”
Bains took a step forward, daring Atkins to react. “They’re not going to listen, Atkins,” he said, “not even to you. You don’t have any believers here. In fact, most of these men think you’re a bit of a sham. Those campfire tales of you fighting Jeffries, magic bolts of lightning, demons, all that?” He wrinkled his nose in contempt. “Don’t believe ’em. You’re no better than I am. You’re just a jumped-up lance jack who wants a bit of glory. Well, they don’t give out medals for bullshit.” He paused and shrugged. “Unless you’re on the General Staff, of course.”
“You ain’t half pushing it, Bains,” said Porgy.
“On the contrary. It’s Everson that’s been pushing it for far too long, and it ends here. Where’s Everson?” He looked around and began singing. “‘If you want to find the CO, I know where he is, he’s down in the deep dug—’”
A gas gong rang out. Everson stood on the trench bridge above them, the artillery shell casing hanging at the end of the bridge still swinging where he’d struck it with the butt of his Webley.
“You men! Stand down. That’s an order. I’ve asked once. That’s more than generous, given the circumstances. I won’t ask again.”
“We don’t take orders anymore,” yelled Bains. “We’ve done our duty, but there are no Huns left to kill, no King to tell us what to do, no country to fight for.”
“It doesn’t excuse mutiny,” said Everson, looking down at him.
“It does if you don’t recognise military law anymore.”
“Your uniform says different. Now disperse and go back to your dugouts,” Everson ordered.
From around the camp, indiscriminate rifle fire popped and crackled.
“You hear that?” he said. “Every bullet you and your fellow mutineers squander means one less creature we can kill, one less horror we can dispatch. So each round you waste only hastens your own deaths.”
“Or yours,” countered Bains with a sneer. “At ’em, lads!”
The mob rushed the Tommies in the trench.
Porgy grabbed a sandbag from the parapet and swung it round. It smacked a mutineer on the side of the head with a thick, wet thud, slamming him into the trench wall.
Atkins hooked the shoulder stock of his Enfield behind a mutineer’s knee, snatching the man’s leg out from under him. A shunt of his shoulder sent him over.
Striding forward, he drove the shoulder stock of his rifle into a stomach of another and brought it up, cracking the gas-masked man on the chin as he doubled over, then swung it down on the back of his head, driving him onto the duckboards.
He never thought he’d be fighting his own. But he fought with a desperation born of fear, knowing that everything he held dear depended on Everson staying in command. Every man jack of these mutineers was an obstacle to a goal that was his guilt and his disgrace. He knew that they were stuck here. He knew with more certainty than these poor bastards did. He chose not to believe it. He chose to hold on to a possibility so slim it could be said to be barely there at all. It was the one Everson had pinned his hopes on, too. Every moment he was stuck here in camp was a moment lost, a moment when he could be pursuing Jeffries, the only man who might conceivably know of a way back. Back home to Flora, his missing brother’s fiancée and, to his eternal shame and joy, the mother-to-be of his own child.
Bains grabbed Atkins’ rifle.
“What makes you better than me, eh? What really happened in Khungarr between you and Everson and Jeffries?” he grunted.
“Really?” snapped Atkins, snatching the rifle from his grip. “I saved a Chatt’s life.”
A shadow crossed his face and he flinched instinctively. Bains took advantage of the distraction and melted into the mob.
Atkins glanced up at the parapet to see Sergeant Hobson leaping over the sandbags, using the firestep below as a springboard as he leapt into the fray, swinging his trench club. Atkins didn’t envy the mutineers now. He’d seen Hobson in trench raids and he fought with a brutal efficiency.
Atkins’ brow furrowed with mock concern. “I was worried you wouldn’t get here in time, Sarn’t!”
“Thanks for saving me a few, lad,” said Hobson, raising his trench club, and as he waded into the skirmish, skulls cracked and punched faces flung bloody mucus into the air.
BAINS, SEEING THE tide turn, scrambled up the side of the trench and made for the makeshift bridge that spanned it, where Everson stood. All pretence at negotiation was gone now. This was a bloody coup.
Everson caught the dull yellow shine of a brass knuckle-duster and a glimpse of a short blade. A dirty little weapon, he thought, as Bains charged him; a Hun souvenir.
He moved off the footbridge to meet Bains, blocked the first punch thrust and grabbed Bains’ wrist. He stepped past and brought the handle of his revolver down on the back of Bains’ head. Bains’ momentum carried him across the bridge into the gas gong. It clonged as he slipped, lost his footing and tumbled over the edge into the trench.
His unconscious body lay awkwardly on the duckboards below, a red stain spreading over the wet wood of the duckboards and bleeding into the muddy sump below.
Standing on the footbridge, Everson combed his hair back off his forehead with one hand, establishing order and decorum in his own mind once again. He looked around for his cap, picked it up by the peak and placed it on his head, just so, with a nod of satisfaction.
“Mop this lot up, Atkins,” he said.
INTERLUDE ONE
Letter from Lance Corporal Thomas Atkins
to Flora Mullins
29th March 1917
My Dearest Flora,
We’ve been back in camp for a while now. Don’t worry. It was still here when we returned, despite my fears. At least we hav
e fresh rations now, if you can call what the mongey wallahs cook up fresh.
I thought coming back to camp, I’d find some peace, but it seems there’s none to be had anywhere here, least of all here. Some of the lads are unhappy with the situation and want to be somewhere else, but ‘C’est la Guerre’ as they say. Lieutenant Everson is trying to do his best, and believes it’s for our own good, but there’s always some barrack-room lawyer who thinks they know best.
I’ve been thinking about what happened between us. Sometimes, I think of nothing else. I don’t regret it for one moment, but I feel so helpless stuck here so far from home, so far from you. I know some say that what we did was wrong, but that night I didn’t believe it, I still don’t, and I hope you feel the same.
It’s human nature, I suppose. You’d think with everything else out there against us, that we could show some common sense. Sometimes we can be our own worst enemy.
Ever yours,
Thomas
CHAPTER THREE
“I Was Their Officer...”
EVERSON WALKED DOWN the hutment ward towards the padre’s bed. Captain Lippett, the MO, had assured him that the chaplain’s injury wasn’t serious, although it had resulted in a mild concussion.
Hearing of the padre’s assault had a profound effect on Everson, perhaps more so than the riot itself. How was it that the morale of the soldiers under his command had slipped so low? A chaplain, of all people. He was glad that the man who did this was under guard and would face retribution under court-martial.
The padre looked wan and older than his years. A bandage was wrapped around his head. An odd, almost comic tuft of sandy hair stuck up from the middle of it, like a tonsure in reverse. He sat in bed reading the black-leather-covered Bible that rarely left his side. It was, as he had said many times, his only weapon. As he saw Everson approaching, he put the Bible down and smiled for him, but it was a weary smile that took effort.
A chair had been put out for him. Everson took off his cap and sat down.
“You look tired,” said Everson.
The padre waved a hand. “I haven’t been sleeping well. A few... nightmares.”
“Night terrors, Sister Fenton said. You wake up screaming.”
The padre shrugged off his concern. “So do many here,” he said, gesturing around the small ward. “You forget, Lieutenant. There are no reserve trenches here. You can’t take them out of the line. There is little relief for them, even here.”
“Or you, Padre. You seem... troubled,” said Everson.
The padre ignored him and continued to press his point. “The men have a legitimate grievance,” he continued gently. “They have homes and families far away, with no knowledge of if they will ever see them again. They’ve endured more than they ever should. They have done far more than you expected of them. But even they have their limits, John.”
He was more forgiving than Everson. But then, Everson reminded himself, that was his job.
Everson bowed his head. “They’re not men,” he corrected. “They don’t have that luxury right now. They’re soldiers. They have to be. It’s the only way they’ll—we’ll—survive. We have to maintain discipline. Unless we stay together, unless we remain as a battalion, we’re going to get picked off, one by one. Each man that dies or deserts lessens our collective chances of survival.”
The padre looked into his eyes and clasped Everson’s hand in both of his. “Then you have to find a way of keeping them together. You need to give them hope.”
WHAT FEW OFFICERS there were, along with the NCOs and compliant soldiers, managed to re-establish order and calm within the camp quite quickly, suggesting perhaps that ill-feeling didn’t run as deep as the ringleaders had hoped. It took less than a day to round them up. Everson surveyed the camp in the aftermath. In truth, the rioters had caused less damage than they might have, but that wasn’t the point. They could be dealt with swiftly, but it would take much longer to deal with the consequences of their actions. In the wake of the Khungarrii attacks, the Pennines had sought to ally themselves with local nomadic Urmen enclaves, offering them protection from Chatt attacks. Now, thanks to the riot, and the behaviour of some of the men, those alliances were in jeopardy as some enclaves prepared to move out.
Most of the men, their immediate frustrations spent, returned reluctantly to the routines that had structured their lives these past few months. Most of the men complied because it was all they knew. Ultimately, they sought comfort in the companionship of their comrades.
Everson didn’t fool himself into thinking that this was an end to his problems. For months he had held the battalion together. He had been relying on their respect for him, but that currency had diminished rapidly. He had been given a warning. How he dealt with the mutineers would send a warning back.
The courts-martial ran for two days. The court dealt with most minor charges by forfeiture of pay or field punishment. It heard the more serious charges toward the end. They were the cases that Everson dreaded.
The bell tent requisitioned for the courts-martial was humid and smelled of damp tube grass, sweat and fear. Army justice was often brutal and uncompromising.
Everson sat at the centre of the table, with Lieutenant Baxter, of the Machine Gun Section, to his left and Lieutenant Tulliver to his right, as they dealt with one case after another.
The padre’s assailant was one Everson took a particular interest in. He sat impassively as Second Lieutenant Haslam, prosecuting, read out the charge sheet. “The accused, number 9658798, Fusilier Francis Rutherford of the Pennine Fusiliers, as soldier in the regular force, is charged with striking a superior officer, being in the execution of his duty. The maximum punishment is death. How do you plead?”
The prisoner Rutherford, who stood to attention in front of his escort, looked visibly shocked. “Not guilty, sir.”
Despite the plea, the case itself was straightforward. Rutherford had taken part in the riots by his own admission.
“I was trying to stop Private Wilson, sir,” he protested. “There was a struggle. During the incident, I may have struck the padre by accident.”
“By accident,” said Haslam, unconvinced. He waved a sheaf of papers. “There are eight witnesses—eight, including Private Wilson— who testified that you struck the padre deliberately, in an act of malice and insubordination.”
“What? But that’s not true, sir,” Rutherford protested. “Ask the padre!”
“Unfortunately the padre isn’t fit to give evidence at these proceedings. And may I remind you that you have already admitted to taking part in the mutiny. Do you wish to further address the court?”
Rutherford, when faced with these facts, merely hung his head, realising the futility of any further protest. “No, sir.”
To his dismay, Everson felt no satisfaction in pronouncing sentence.
Wilson got away with field punishment.
Private Nicholls’ intervention on behalf of the nurses had seen him acquitted as he had done all possible to prevent the actions.
The ringleaders, though, were of a different cloth and were courtmartialled jointly. They stood together surly and resolute: Bains, Swindell and Compton.
Bains stood to attention, his face swollen and bruised with a dark red hatching of scabs on his left cheek. He refused to make eye contact with anyone in court, a look of undisguised insolence on his face.
The charge against him and his fellow conspirators was mutiny.
He offered no plea, just a sullen, defiant silence.
“Bains,” said Everson wearily before he passed sentence. He waved a fragile piece of paper in Bains’ direction. “You drafted these demands, I believe.”
Bains looked straight ahead, refusing to be drawn.
“Damn it, Bains. We’re all trying to work together here. You don’t think we all want to get home?”
Everson saw Hobson behind the prisoner lean forward and whisper something he didn’t catch. Bains’ eyes flicked to the side before staring strai
ght ahead again.
“This is your chance, Bains. Your only chance,” Everson said. He read from the scrap. “Your demands here: one, to recognise the fact that we are no longer at war and that our duty to King and Country is done. Two, to allow those that wish to do so to leave and seek their own fortune. Three, that those men who wish to stay be allowed to do so on equal footing, that a council should be elected and voted on by all.
“Laudable sentiments, Bains. But I’m afraid I can’t allow it. You signed up for the duration of the war. And, if you haven’t noticed, we are still at war—with this entire world. Our lives and safety depend on well-ordered military discipline. It represents our best chance of survival.
“The court sentences the accused to suffer death by being shot. However, the court recommends the accused mercy on the ground that they have been present in the line without relief for over four months and this may have gone some way to contributing to their behaviour.”
Bains’ Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. He didn’t meet Everson’s gaze, but he nodded.
“May God have mercy on your souls,” said Everson heavily.
EVERSON ORDERED ALL men fit for duty on parade at dawn the next day. This was not something he wanted to do, but punishment had to be seen to be done.
The prisoners were marched out, under guard, past the Union flag, out across the rings of defensive trenches and between the waiting ranks; the two full companies that were all that was left of the battalion, a couple of orphan platoons from the remaining two and several loyal Karno platoons. The men were escorted to the old bombed-out Poulet farmhouse, which now served as a gatehouse and watchtower to the camp.
Everson stood stiffly to attention as he addressed the condemned men, his voice hard and cold. “If I carried out the sentence as required it would, frankly, be a waste of what bullets we have left, and mercy has been recommended by the court. Privates Bains, Swindell, Compton and Rutherford, I hereby exile you from the camp. You will be sent forth with such provisions as we can spare and forbidden to return on pain of death. Is that understood?”