by Sam Angus
Stanley started: the 8th Division? That was this sector. Part of the 8th Division lay in reserve and part in the front lines. Where would Tom be?
Stanley leaped up, dumbfounded, his heart racing. Da? No!
Da was too old, surely? The Remounts didn’t take men of his age. How old was he? Younger than he looked; fifty, perhaps. Lara Bird’s father had signed up – perhaps they were taking old men now. Stanley spun round to the parados – the rear side of the trench – as though amidst the carts and limbers and troops on the move he might see Da’s white head.
Etaples? Stanley had an overwhelming impulse to abandon his post, to run and run, to search every crack and crevice of France till he found Da, to hear the truth from Da’s own lips about Soldier.
Stanley was standing on quicksand, everything shifting around him. Whatever, he thought, whatever was done or not done, Da was out here because he’d come to find Stanley.
The Remounts. There were 500,000 horses on the Western Front. Stanley smiled. That would keep Da busy. Busy and proud again, proud to be doing the work he loved. Da knew as much about horses as any man, more than any man. Still awash with uncertainties, Stanley sat waiting with Pistol. The tangle of weeds on the parapet glowed a violent yellow against the ominous gunmetal sky.
Two hours later he was still waiting for the man who would collect Pistol, the sky now wild and sinister, lashed with streaks of violet and wine.
Hamish! That was Hamish coming, his familiar bulk filling the height and width of the trench. Hamish greeted Pistol – he always greeted Pistol by way of greeting Stanley.
‘Aye, you’re a good ’un. A cracker of a dog. The laddie’s doing you some good, and you’re doing him no harm either, I’m thinking.’ He tousled the dog’s ears. ‘An’ I’m as likely to get an answer out of you as your master.’ Hamish smiled at Stanley and rose, and they stood together looking up at the sky through the camouflage netting.
Hamish sniffed the air, like a hound. ‘I don’t like the look of that sky one wee bit,’ he said. ‘There’s rain in it, round rain.’ Hamish looked down to the scorched plain below. ‘Tens of thousands of men, Stanley, hiding, like rats. In every crack of this plain. Moved here like pawns from every corner of the globe. Tomorrow she’ll give up her men, spew thousands of tons of steel from her very guts—’
Hamish was interrupted by an infantryman who’d approached from behind.
‘Keeper Ryder?’
Hamish’s serious face softened with a comforting, crinkly smile.
‘He’s here, laddie, to take your wee dog away.’
Stanley steeled himself for a brave and brief goodbye.
‘Come back safe, Pistol. Come back safe.’ He handed the lead to the infantryman. ‘Look after him, sir.’
As Pistol turned the corner up to the access branch, his long snout doubled back along his spine towards Stanley, his tail whirring.
‘Stand-to is at three,’ said Hamish. ‘Zero hour is three thirty. Goodnight, laddie.’
He frowned at the sinister sky once more, and left.
Dawn, 24 April 1918
Aquenne Wood, near Cachy
At 3 a.m., all the way along the front line, as far as Stanley could see, the men of the 13th Brigade stood to on the fire step. He heard too the time-bomb tick-tick-tick of Fidget’s watch.
A platoon leader brought the rum ration round in a two-gallon stone jar. ‘Open up, open up,’ he said to each man.
His pulse throbbing like a drum, Stanley took the rum for the first time, hoping to still his pounding heart, but it burned his throat and took his breath away.
Haloes of luminous mist cradled the hollows and crevices of the plain. A whispered word of warning flew like wind along the trench. Stanley’s blood ran cold, fear for himself and fear for Pistol compounded into one.
At three thirty, platoon leaders up and down the front line blew their whistles. The Australians climbed over their parapets, bayonets fixed. Stanley scrabbled for his own bayonet, to poke a hole in the breastwork of the trench, boring like a worm through wood, a rivulet of sand spilling down the parapet wall. Like the gunners, he could now see without raising his head above the parapet. Eye to the hole, he saw buff and grey and blue lines of men bursting the bounds of trenches he didn’t even know were there – to the right the French blue, directly ahead the Australian buff and some English khaki, together, guns raised, bayonets fixed, a flood of men, advancing in silence.
Behind the wave of attacking riflemen followed four Signallers, two carrying a wire on a reel, paying it out as they went, two others carrying lamps, phones and spare wires. The wires would run from the posts the advancing Signallers hoped to set up back to the Signal Station.
The heavy guns burst into fire.
‘Three thousand howitzers – we’ve got three thousand howitzers along this front!’ yelled Fidget, his voice round with pride.
The howitzers flashed and blazed, firing shells that screeched like a vast tearing of linen in tremendous arcs across the sky, leaving red shooting-star trails till, at the top of their arc, they dipped and flashed red in a distant boom.
‘They’re forming a barrage – a barrage of fire, to move along in front of the infantry – to protect them.’ Fidget gestured to the horrifying, terrifying continuous arc of flame that ran for as far north as Stanley could see – perhaps ten miles long. Fidget laughed happily.
‘We caught him sleeping. Jerry was sleeping.’
At four Jerry opened up, and now every gun in the world was firing, the earth upheaving, the whole horizon alight. So long as everything went well, so long as the lines held, then there’d be no need for Pistol. ‘Keep advancing, hold the line, keep advancing,’ the boy prayed, his mouth dry with fear. ‘Hold the line and Pistol will be OK.’
You could no longer tell whose shells were whose. Between the smoke and the mist Stanley couldn’t see more than twenty-five yards ahead, could only see flares and flames, explosions, stabs and flashes of coloured light. Cordite filled the air and drifted towards him. The whistles and shrieks of shells, the roar of the artillery, the swishing of bullets all mingled into one tremendous, continuous roar so that his eardrums tore with infernal, maddening noise that seemed to come from both within and without.
The world was breaking into pieces, Stanley’s heart jumping as chunks of earth and rock and splinters leaped into the air. Pieces of stone and lumps of earth as big – bigger than – a man were falling like hail. Shells burst with a bluish hue, ripping the earth apart, spewing hundreds and hundreds of tons of earth skyward, turning the country into a mass of crawling flame, killing any feeling inside him other than fear for Pistol.
‘Four miles – that’s a four-mile frontage – The enemy’s replying over four miles,’ shouted Fidget into Stanley’s ear. ‘They want Villers . . . ’
There was a new jumpiness in Fidget’s fraying exhilaration, an excessive mobility in his face, in his fluttering fingers. Had Fidget spent too long at the Front? He’d had no leave, Stanley knew, had returned immediately to the Front after leaving Stanley and Bones at the ambulance.
To Stanley’s right a sudden, horrifying cliff of fire rose up, shades of green and brown and grey, all fused together. That was the front line surely – was enemy fire falling now behind the front lines? There to the right – was it falling behind the front line to Stanley’s right? There – just where Stanley had been watching, a Very light went up. That white magnesium blaze was the Allies’ SOS signal. Something was wrong up there on the right, where clouds of smoke bellowed out and shooting tongues of flame licked the sky. How could the lines of communication hold when the bowels of the earth were open? And if the lines failed, what then? They’d not send a dog, surely, into such an inferno?
At a quarter to five a feeble dawn began to creep across the battlefield. Not a bird had risen to greet the day. The Front was being very heavily shelled, the earth beneath Stanley shaking like a jelly, the air trembling and boiling. Seismic quavering rippled to the edge of t
he trench, triggering cascades of earth over his helmet. What was happening? Where was Pistol? Had the bombardment moved closer? Was it aiming for the reserve lines? It was impossible to see what was going on; the enemy might be putting down a smoke barrage. Stanley’s eyes ached and stung.
The heavens finally cracked. A thunderstorm crashed and rolled across the plain. Rain pounded and hammered the earth. Very lights soared like shooting stars above the Allied lines, flaring against the glistening curtains of rain. Things were going very badly.
Would Pistol be sent out into this? Was Tom out there? For a few seconds, Stanley closed his eyes, then turned away. The unbearable fear, the noise and the fear together, might fracture him, split him in two. It was beyond bearing; he must think of something else to fight it off. There – Stanley bent to the streaming wall of the parapet: a crowd of stag-horn beetles trotting up and down. That chalky soil, turned slippery in the rain, was now just the place for a stag-horn. They’d appeared with the rain, hordes of them, with their armoured bodies and antler-type mandibles. The stegosaurus of beetles. Beetles, Stanley remembered, were everywhere, in every niche on earth, from the most arid desert to the swampiest wetland. Everywhere except Antarctica.
Hamish had come up from below and was looking over the top. Stanley shrugged off his raincoat and held it over the two of them to shelter them from the rain that battered down through the netting cover.
‘We’ll never see anything like this again – never. It’s the largest artillery bombardment any of us will surely ever see,’ bellowed Hamish.
‘Are the lines holding?’ Stanley shouted back.
‘Aye . . . so far . . . So far they’re holding . . . but Villers is surrounded by enemy machine guns on the north, west and south. Amiens is under direct observation. The Hun’s got a pocket four miles wide and one mile deep around Villers –’ Hamish gestured towards the two groups of trees to the north-east, barely discernible – ‘and parts of Monument and Hangard Woods.’
There were shouts from the Signal Station, panic and pandemonium below.
‘A Company gone!’
Hamish leaped away down the steps.
‘B Company gone!’
‘C Company OK!’
‘Message from C Company. We are surrounded, sir, what do we do?’
Was Pistol with C Company?
Two linesmen rushed out and scuttled over the top, crawling like rats, forward and downward in the drenching rain.
‘C Company gone!’
Hamish rushed up the stairs and along the trench, stern and grey, his coat running with water like a Highland waterfall. He put his eye to the telescope. A few seconds passed.
‘All gone. All dead.’ There was disbelief in his voice. ‘No communication with the front line.’
Stanley held his helmet over the lens to keep off the rain.
‘Dead!’ Hamish said again. ‘All of them, one by one, all dead.’
The linesmen were slithering onward. Stanley watched them, shaking and horrified. It was impossible, surely, under such rain, such fire, to find and repair the ends of wires, but he still prayed. ‘Find the ends. Please find the ends of the wires. Don’t let them send Pistol.’
Hamish swung the telescope back and forth, back and forth along the horizon. ‘C Company surrounded . . . All forward visual stations . . . destroyed. All gone. All lines of communication down.’ He turned aghast to Stanley. ‘We’ve nothing, no communication with the front line.’ Hamish shook his head in horror. ‘No semaphore. No signal lamp. Pigeons. Nothing in this –’ he gestured to the rain. ‘They can’t send for artillery support, can’t SOS . . . Nothing . . .’
‘Wh-where is he? Is Pistol with C Company?’
Hamish paused and looked shocked for a second. Then he turned and, as though talking to an uncomprehending child, said gently, ‘No, laddie. B – he’s with B Company.’
Hamish left, and Stanley stood under the pounding rain, eardrums tearing with the unending noise. To his forward right, the Allied lines looked thin and confused. No more than a brigade here and a brigade there. The church tower, on the vulnerable spur of the plateau jutting out to the west, was smouldering. What was happening? Where was Fidget? Fidget would know. Had the front line broken? Were men pulling back? Where was Pistol?
Still the drenching rain thundered on. The ditches had stretched out into glistening bogs, the intricate lacework of the streams blocked by the shelling, the ground turned to a quagmire. Soaked to the marrow, a stream of water pouring off the back of his helmet and down his neck, Stanley saw figures dribbling back from the front line, from the wood known as the Monument, stumbling and sinking in the soupy ground.
Everything was wringing wet. The sump ditch had overflown, the trench, already puddled, filled steadily. There was a frog on the duckboards. Funny how the frogs didn’t mind the shelling but the mice had the wind up and had gone underground. If he could only stop his legs shaking, his fingers, his heart shaking, Stanley thought, he could focus his field glasses on that shell hole below, the closest one, and there’d be more frogs, marsh frogs probably, ten or twenty of them in that. Trigger, wherever he was, would be amused by the marsh frogs.
Captain McManus came up.
‘Where’s the dog? Is he not in? Please God they’ll have sent the dog . . . They’ve nothing else . . .’ He started and clutched Stanley. ‘Look, Stanley – he’s here – he’s in – he’s in . . .’
Stanley leaped. There – in the confusion of smoke and fog and the glistening curtain of rain, was Pistol, racing like a silver shadow across the greedy, gleaming morass, skimming it as easily and lightly as a bird. There was that long grey head, the commonplace dog with the laughing eyes. Stanley spun on a Catherine wheel of love and pride.
There was the sudden screech of a heavy shell.
‘Run, Pistol, run . . . run,’ breathed Stanley.
The shell dipped at its arc and crashed to the ground some forty feet below Pistol. The ground beneath Stanley shook and rattled, the earth of the parapet cascaded down, but the dog never so much as flinched – was still running onward.
‘What a dog, laddie, what a dog!’
Stanley pulled aside the sodden, battered Queen Anne’s lace on the parapet to see, then yanked aside the camouflage, ready for Pistol, feeling for the titbit in his pocket, watching with bated breath as the dog leaped over the fire step and, in a single fluid motion, sat, breathless, tongue loose, panting, grinning, panting, grinning. There was something about this dog, this nondescript dog he’d once thought he’d never love, something in those laughing eyes, that gripped Stanley’s heartstrings now like a vice. Stanley knew, at this moment, and with total certainty, that he must never, ever lose him.
Stanley’s hands trembled as he unscrewed the cylinder. He noted the time of departure given on the note – 9.30 a.m. – and handed the message to James.
‘Good boy, good.’ Stanley fed Pistol the bully beef. James bent and patted Pistol, then, sheltering under Stanley’s raincoat, glanced at the note and checked his watch.
‘Nine thirty-seven. I salute your dog, Keeper Ryder. Nearly four miles in seven minutes.’ James looked down. ‘From B Company,’ he said, then read aloud so Stanley could hear. ‘Front-line companies, Second East Lancs and Second West Yorks forced back from the Monument to the north, to railway station, making our way westward along railway line to north-east corner of Aquenne Wood. Enemy troops have taken Villers and Monument, and infiltrating the Aquenne Wood from the Monument. All Signallers in forward Signal Stations killed or captured. All lines of communication down. Remains of Yorks and Lancs are surrounded in the Monument, have no ammunition, no supplies. German position attacking not known. Further attacks expected.’
Stanley looked up at James. The East Lancs? Tom – was he with them, surrounded and with no supplies? ‘Infiltrating the Aquenne’? Coming here? He clutched at James’s coat.
‘The East Lancs?’
But James had already turned, was hurling himself down the ste
ps to the Signal Station shouting, ‘They’ll be decimated!’
The field glasses were streaming – Stanley must wipe them, but his hands were wet, his coat sodden. Men were pouring along the communication trench to Stanley’s right, crowding into the intersection beyond Fidget’s hole, collecting in the back lines – men with no puttees and torn tunics. There were shouts that the right flank was coming back in disarray.
Somewhere an officer bellowed, ‘Retreat! Retreat! Turn round and run like blazes!’
There was shooting in all directions.
‘Take cover! Take cover!’
‘Collect Mills bombs, arm yourselves. Keep moving backwards. Take up position one hundred yards back.’ Stanley’s parapet was whipped by a hailstorm of bullets. Everyone was down on all fours in the sump water of the trench. By Fidget’s hole, men were yelling and firing. In the division of the trench beyond Fidget was a shaft crowded with wounded men, helpless and immobile, a jumble of men of all stripes.
‘Move on! Move on!’
There was a screech. The earth of the parapet spewed up. Dirt rained over Stanley in avalanches. Showers of mud and metal collapsed the roof netting, shells pinging as they hit the corrugated iron cover of the Signal Station.
‘Move on, move on!’
To Stanley’s left, the artillerymen collected on the fire step, leaped down into the stream of wounded men, keeping low, half crawling along the duckboards.
‘Down the trench. Down the trench.’
Stanley hesitated. Where were the Signallers? What would James’s instructions be? He forced his way against the flood of men, towards the Signal Station, knowing without looking that Pistol would be at his heels. Bullets whistled and screeched overhead. There was James on the stairs to the Station. Behind him followed a caterpillar of signallers, runners, a trench mortar officer, the wireless operator – all mud-smeared, lugging boxes, cables, tables, the Fuller-phone, emerging, blinking into the light like strange, earth-dwelling slugs.