Covenant with Death

by John Harris

  As we tramped homewards to Bos, we passed huge compounds, acres wide, with rows of strong wire wound round thick stakes.

  ‘What the hell are those for?’ Murray demanded. ‘Cattle?’

  ‘Prisoners, man,’ Bold snapped. ‘Prisoners of war. Thousands of ’em.’

  The sides of the nearby hillocks had been dug out for casualty clearing stations, and lorry-loads of stretchers had been dumped there. A party of West Yorkshires were digging great pits.

  ‘What’s all that for?’ Mason asked. ‘Gun positions?’

  ‘Graves,’ Bold announced laconically. His eyes were fixed ahead as he marched alongside us, his expression disapproving, as though these preparations were a grave contravention of the old soldier’s unwritten law that death was never spoken of in camp or barracks.

  Mason’s face had grown hard and pale, and I could see Henny Cuthbert’s had become thoughtful. Catchpole jerked his hand towards the digging men.

  ‘There’s your spot, Eph,’ he called. ‘In the corner. I’ll arrange for Hardacre to be next to you so he can sing you all the way to the Happy Hunting Grounds.’

  ‘Shut your rattle,’ Bold snapped. ‘You won’t think it so bloody funny when it comes.’

  As we neared Bos, the last columns were moving up, thinner now and led by harassed officers anxious not to miss the battle, the last few guns jolting and rattling eastwards into position, men sitting stiffly on weary horses, waggons, field kitchens and limbers, the last mobile Red Cross unit, the last few infantrymen. Once we passed a hole blown in the road and a brand new unit who hadn’t been quick enough off the mark when they’d been caught by shrapnel; and we had to stop to clear up the mess. A splinter had taken the chin off a driver and another had opened the skull of one of their officers, and with all the wounded lying about they were still a little shocked and scared.

  Farther back there were streams of civilians moving to the rear, with handcarts laden with bedding and belongings, mostly black-garbed old women and a few weary children. Even Madame at the farm where we had our bivouacs, who’d been there since 1914, was packing as we arrived, staggering in and out of the door with mattresses and family portraits and kitchenware.

  ‘We’ve been warned to go,’ she said. ‘They say it’ll not be possible next week. There may be shelling.’

  We gave her a hand to tie her things together and she trudged off, pushing a laden pram, picking up what fell off every time the wheel bounced in a rut.

  ‘Well, that’s it,’ Mason said bitterly. ‘If they didn’t know before when we’re coming, they’re bound to know now. It’s only a question of, “Which day is it going to be?”’

  The staff welcomed us back with open arms. We were immediately given back the steel helmets we’d handed in and marched to a valley beyond the railway track at Meycourt for a final rehearsal, eight hundred bored men in full kit and gas masks learning the art of passing through another battalion of eight hundred bored men in full kit and gas masks.

  The hillside had been lined with shallow trenches dug by the Pioneer Corps and as we filed into position we were watched by bitter French farmers who’d had to give up their crops, and by magnificent red-tabbed men on well-fed horses who glanced superciliously at Pine’s sorry mount as we passed.

  They deployed us along the whole side of the valley, all sweaty and damp from the thundery rain that kept falling, all patient, fuming and not very interested.

  ‘Bear in mind,’ Ashton told us, ‘that the men with the flags in front of you are representing the barrage as it moves across the Serre Road. Watch them carefully and keep your distance from them. You’ll be a hundred yards behind the first wave. When the flags disappear, that’ll be the moment when the barrage lifts and moves on to the second line of trenches.’

  He paused to consult one of the bulky sheaves of orders he carried, then went on with an anxious frown as though he were having trouble remembering everything.

  ‘Try to imagine you’re carrying your full kit,’ he went on. ‘Together with the extra equipment you’ll have. You’ll all be carrying something – barbed wire, pigeon baskets, signalling gear, drums of telephone wire, water cans, bombs, et cetera – and, if you remember that, you’ll have an idea of the speed you’re expected to move at. On no account must we move too fast.’

  ‘Christ,’ Eph muttered, ‘with that lot, we’ll be lucky to move at all!’

  The engineers, pioneers, gunners, signallers and staff waited just to the rear of the massed troops, then someone started a battery of smoke pots so that a thick white cloud began to drift across the valley. A rocket flared into the sky on our right, ending in a red star, and we began to advance down into the young wheatfields of the valley and up the other side. As soon as the first wave had advanced a hundred yards, the second was sent after it, and then the third at the same distance, and then the fourth, until we were all moving down the valley together, mounted officers cantering about between the lines shouting instructions.

  ‘Keep your distances,’ they called importantly. ‘Not so damn’ fast, there! Hold on to your men, Colonel! They’re getting out of hand!’

  ‘Into the valley of death strolled the six hundred,’ Tim Williams quoted.

  ‘I’ll bet them queens on ’orseback won’t be out in front there when the real thing starts,’ Eph grunted.

  It was a tremendous sight to see all those men moving forward together, shoulder to shoulder, waving to each other and laughing as they went. Once we set up a hare and someone threw his cap at it to the accompaniment of cheers.

  As we reached the other side, panting and cheering. I saw a staff officer gallop up to the brigadier who sent an officer off to Pine. Eventually the order found its way down to us, and we were faced about ready to march back.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Ashton said, tramping up to us, as hot as we were, his face martyred. ‘Keep your faces straight this time. They say it wasn’t taken seriously enough.’

  ‘I think it’s a lot of bloody nonsense,’ Mason complained when he’d gone. ‘“Take your time.” “Don’t hurry.” Just as if we were on parade. Why don’t they just blow a whistle and let us go full belt. I thought surprise and speed were important. The Infantry Training Manual says so, anyway.’

  Only Murray’s faith seemed undimmed. ‘Good Lor’,’ he said. ‘What a lot you are! Haig and Co. have been doing this all their lives, haven’t they? They know what they’re up to.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ Mason said darkly. ‘That lot at GHQ are just a lot of amateurs who preferred playing polo to learning their jobs.’

  We tried it again, less enthusiastically.

  ‘I hope they let us go faster than this when it actually starts,’ Spring said. ‘At this speed we’ll be sitting ducks.’

  Three times a day for three days we crossed that blasted valley, while the staff treated it as a field day, galloping about with stopwatches, saluting each other and sitting in groups over packed lunches and wine.

  ‘Down with the staff!’ Catchpole shouted in disgust, bull-sensitive to red tabs. ‘They only do it so that if anything goes wrong they can say it wasn’t their fault.’

  Some of the resentment must have found its way upwards because, when it was all over, they lined us up on the slope below the road and a general appeared above us and went out of his way to tell us what a fine lot of men we were, as though someone had decided spirits were sinking under the weight of boredom and needed a little boosting up.

  He was a tall man with a clean pink face and a small bristly grey moustache. He was strung about with equipment, field glasses, map-cases and revolver, and he seemed so different from the smooth-faced men who’d been harassing us that I felt that at last the office generals were being pulled back and the fighting generals were coming to the front for the battle.

  Behind him there was a padre with a colonel’s rank badges, and a staff-captain with a starched collar that picked up the sunshine, and the usual cavalrymen to hold their horses.

  The
general read some fatuous order of the day from the divisional commander, then dismissed it with a wave of his hand as though we were all pals together and he didn’t think much of it, either. Then, in a hearty man-to-man way, he went on to say we’d made a jolly good job of the rehearsal, so that we all began to feel better, but that rehearsals were now a thing of the past and the next time we lined up it would be to face the Germans.

  That bucked us up immediately and we began to listen to him for the first time with interest.

  His instructions seemed clear enough and he put them across in his clean, crisp, businesslike way, so that I felt encouraged by the thought that we were in safe hands after all.

  ‘Men are strictly forbidden to stop for the purpose of assisting the wounded,’ he said firmly. ‘You must be prepared for casualties. Your generation was born to suffer in this war, but it’s got to be won whoever falls, and we rely on you. Never mind your pals. Just keep going. And remember, there must be no looting. You’re British soldiers and you’ve learned the meaning of fair play. Prisoners are to be sent back at once, preferably in the charge of the lightly wounded. We must have them back for the information they can give us. But, remember, white flags must not be regarded as a sign of surrender. If you come across white flags, just let us know about them and we’ll decide what to do.’

  It sounded easy, but we’d just spent hours sweating up and down those blasted hills to verify the fact that semaphore would be as useless in battle, with all the smoke and old iron flying about, as pigeons and wireless and the rockets which nobody would see for all the other flashes that would be going off. In the end, we’d had to compromise with triangles of tin sewn to our packs in the hope that aircraft might spot them shining in the sun and know where we were.

  Obviously the general hadn’t thought of that, or, if he had, it had slipped his mind. He went on to tell us that Englishmen were always better than Germans, even when the odds were heavily against them, but that now the boot was on the other foot, so it should be easy.

  He paused, ruffling through his notes, and when he looked up again he was smiling and enthusiastically matey.

  ‘There may be one or two minor hold-ups,’ he went on, ‘but you’ve got to treat ’em as if they didn’t exist. Once we start, it’s up to us to keep on going until the final objectives are reached. Rip up the duckboards of any trench you capture and lay them across the top for the following troops to use. You’ll have plenty of time. You won’t find a German in those trenches opposite you when you arrive. All they want is to be off.’

  He went on to recall the reputation of the division and the high position it held in the eyes of the army commander, and reminded us of the German treatment of the occupied countries, of the violation and the rape and the bestiality, until it appeared to be our sacred duty to die fighting in such a cause as we had.

  ‘We’ve got him by the short hairs,’ he concluded, ‘and by the grace of God we’ll give him such a hell on earth he’ll wish he’d never created such misery. In three days we’ll be in open country and you’ll see the beginning of the great pursuit to the Rhine. The cavalry’s waiting,’ he pointed out, ‘and we know where all the enemy’s batteries and machine guns are. We’ve just got to kill as many of the swine as we can. That’s all. Good luck to you all. God be with you.’

  He stepped back and gave us a tremendous salute, as though he’d been proud to meet us, and it made us feel good and important. Then the padre with the colonel’s badges stepped forward and conducted a short service and we all sang the old faithful, ‘Fight the Good Fight’.

  We gave three cheers and, as we were dismissed, I turned away, optimism sweeping through me, touched by what the general had said and by the surging enthusiasm I could feel in the men around me. The feeling of being caught up in a crusade reached out to me again.

  Then, as I began to walk off after the others, I heard Blackett turn to Appleby and make a rude noise with his mouth.

  ‘They told us all that eyewash at Loos,’ he said.

  The general was certainly right in one thing. Parades stopped at once and we were told to enjoy ourselves.

  We played football, wrote letters home, or lay on the grass in the fields and orchards, half-dressed, watching the aeroplanes that buzzed overhead; talking about the Trades Union bosses who were making sure, in their efforts to release men for the front, that they were never included themselves, about Bottomley’s hysterical latest in John Bull – ‘What a German Officer Said’ and ‘Lies, All Lies’ – and about the Dublin rebellion which was reputed to be causing the Irish troops farther south a considerable degree of heart-searching.

  The newspapers were full of the offensive and said we were going to go over the top shouting ‘Remember Kitchener’ and ‘Remember the Lusitania’.

  ‘More likely, “Where’s the bloody artillery got to?”,’ Eph suggested.

  Someone had decided that music might rouse a proper martial spirit and the band began to play incessantly. In every valley behind the line, between the brown-green banks that hid a million men and a million horses, there was always some group of instrumentalists playing ‘The Broken Doll’, or ‘They’ll Never Believe Me’.

  The inevitable morbid rumours flew around. The Germans knew we were coming and they were ready for us. They’d captured a prisoner who’d talked, and they had listening posts that could pick up all our staff messages. It was certainly true that junior officers had been forbidden to use the telephone and that everything that was going on could be clearly seen from the German positions on the high ground. Even the mines that were being pushed forward couldn’t be properly concealed because it was impossible to hide the tons of chalky soil that were dug out.

  Nerves grew edgy with waiting and there were a few fights, and people answered NCOs back. Someone punched a sergeant in A Company on the nose and someone else put a bayonet through his own shoulder as he larked about with his rifle, demonstrating what he’d do to the Germans when we went over, and a few angry slogans were chalked on walls.

  Tom Creak and the Mandys redoubled their efforts to catch the fabulous carp in the stream at the bottom of the field, and a few men took advantage of the opportunity to go by lorry into Albert for a meal or a drink, and even – if they could summon up the energy to walk to the railhead – by train to Amiens for a meal of fried eggs, potatoes and wine.

  Murray went once and got himself into a fight with some French soldier, not much older than himself but bearded like a pard and probably in and out of the trenches since 1914, who called him a ‘Bwa Skoo’. At first Murray thought it was a compliment, then it dawned on him that this was the French pronunciation of ‘Boy Scout’ and he felt called upon to show he wasn’t anything of the sort.

  The only work we had to do was sew on the divisional signs that were introduced, pieces of coloured cloth for our collars and ribbons for our shoulder straps, to identify various parties quickly in the expected confusion of the attack.

  Sheets of notices and orders bombarded the camp. THE STRICTEST ATTENTION MUST CONTINUE TO BE PAID TO THE CULTIVATION OF THE POWER OF COMMAND IN NCOS one went with heavy authority, I remember. NO OPPORTUNITY MUST BE LOST TO INCULCATE DISCIPLINE WHETHER IN THE TRENCHES, ON THE MARCH, OR IN BILLETS. THINGS WHICH MAY APPEAR TRIVIAL TO THOSE WHO HAVE ONLY LATELY JOINED THE ARMY ARE REALLY OF THE GREATEST IMPORTANCE – SUCH AS SALUTING, CLEANLINESS, TIDINESS IN DRESS, MANNER WHEN SPEAKING TO SUPERIORS.

  Lately joined the Army. That was us; but it took more than a notice from headquarters to change lifelong friends to superior officers, and we went on much as before.

  As we reached the last days of June, we were plunged into a riot of activity and speculation. The newspapers were eagerly read for some hint of the date, and we started trying to assess from the reputations and prowess of the regiments around us just what was going to happen and where.

  ‘The Royal Welch are here,’ you’d hear someone say.

  ‘And the Ulsters. There’ll be some fun where they’ve stu
ck the Ulsters.’

  ‘The Durhams,’ you heard. ‘The Jocks. The York and Lancs. It won’t be long now.’

  All the complicated processes of war were carrying us nearer to battle. Folders were being taken out of files down at Querrieu and quick sums totted up by clerks. People with big buff envelopes kept arriving at the colonel’s billet and from time to time some middle-aged brigadier would appear with a whole sheaf of orders under his arm.

  ‘It’ll be the end of the month, you see.’ Men were discussing the date now with easy abandon, knowing the secret couldn’t possibly be kept much longer, if indeed there’d ever been any secret from the beginning, and you could hear them at nights in the barns and tents, their voices low and muffled, coming from the humped shapes under the blankets and round the circles of glowing cigarette ends.

  We were told to get rid of all unfit horses and mules and to draw special carts for transporting the Lewis-guns to the jump-off points, and there was a vast sick parade to find the fittest men. Only the strongest were to take part. All others were to be ammunition carriers or were to stay behind with the clerks and the cooks and transport men, to form a new unit in case of disaster.

  Nobody wanted to be left behind now and a lot of lies were told.

  ‘How are you sleeping?’ Eph was asked.

  ‘Like a log,’ he said. ‘Takes me all me time to stay awake, sir.’

  ‘Cheerful enough?’

  ‘Not a smile in me, sir,’ Eph grinned.

  ‘Looking forward to going over?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Scared stiff, sir.’

  ‘What about? Machine guns?’

  ‘No, sir. That somebody’ll pinch me crown-and-anchor pitch.’

  Sick men proclaimed themselves fit and they had to scrape up the cadres from the doubters and the faint-hearts. We’d been together for so long it seemed a shameful thing to back out now. We were all volunteers, and we took a suicidal pride in being front line troops. It was impossible to stand aside at this late hour.