Covenant with Death

by John Harris

  As I stumbled to my feet among the litter of burst sandbags and scraps of equipment and humanity that had been pounded into the chalky tangle, I noticed there appeared to be others with me, and I looked round quickly to see if Locky had turned up. But there only seemed to be Tom Creak whom I knew. His eyes were wild and frightened and he seemed to have been hit in the hand. As I looked at him, he shook his arm and a couple of fingers fell off. He stared at the mutilated limb for a moment then sagged weakly against the trench wall, his mouth hanging open.

  Even as we fought for breath, grey-uniformed figures with dirt-stained faces and earth-matted hair seemed to emerge from under the broken baulks of timber and out of what I’d thought were mere holes in the earth. They had grimy bloodless faces and glaring eyes, but they had weapons in their hands. In a moment I seemed to be lost in a heaving, scuffling mass of men, kicking and cursing, striving to get my bayonet up and finding it impossible because of the crowd, and using my fist instead because it seemed easier. I fired without raising my rifle, then someone staggered against me and knocked me down and I couldn’t get up again for the number of men about me, and I was terrified someone would kill me before I could defend myself. All round me I could hear the grunting, gasping, breathless striving of men, and groans and sobs and shouts of pain and the crack of bursting bombs. Everybody seemed to be yelling at once, praying and using every kind of filthy word I ever heard. I saw Tom Creak with his bayonet in a screaming German who was struggling to pull it out with crimson clutching hands, and someone else with bloodshot eyes shouting, ‘Kill the swine, kill the bastards!’

  Then suddenly I had room to move, and everyone round me seemed to have red-tipped bayonets and sweating faces. We stumbled about, tripped by strands of wire that had been blown into the trench, slipping in the muddy puddles and stumbling over squirming bodies. We all seemed drunk, demoralised, and staggering with incomprehending terror, but we seemed to have control of that unspeakable ditch at last.

  We were all covered with dirt, and blood seemed to have been scattered about as though it had been thrown from a bucket. It splashed the sides of the trench and lay in puddles on the floor, and was smeared on hands and faces, and on the lolling bodies under our feet.

  There was a dying German drumming his heels on the duckboards and moaning, ‘Wir sind Kameräden, wir sind Kameräden,’ and two prisoners, both wounded, who seemed to find it difficult to stand up, either through fear or because of their injuries.

  Now that the fighting had stopped, we became aware of the bullets, which seemed to be plucking at the parapet from both sides now, and we had to keep our heads down, our equipment bumping and catching against the projections of the trench. Tom Creak was leaning against the trench wall again, his face white and sick, his hand a bloody mess of mangled fingers.

  ‘Any chance for us, Fen?’ he said. We were huddled together like a lot of sheep, and they were all looking at me for a lead, all except one who was bending over a man shot through the chest who sat clutching his knees, rocking to and fro in the bottom of the trench.

  ‘The rest’ll be up in a few minutes,’ I said.

  Tom shook his head. ‘They won’t find nothing but stiffs,’ he said.

  In the distance on my right I saw a wave of men going forward up the slope. It was almost as though they were flights of partridges being driven towards waiting guns and as I stared I saw the whole line crumble and begin to fall. A few isolated figures swept on, no more, leaving whole rows on the ground behind them. I could hear a bugle and drums somewhere and once the skirl of bagpipes carried to us by some trick of the atmosphere, then a thin cheer as the last fragments of the wave swept towards the German parapet.

  Tom Creak started to shout and point.

  ‘’Ere they come!’ he yelled. ‘’Ere they are! Right on time! We’re all right now!’

  I swung round and saw the third wave coming up behind us, the sun gleaming on their helmets as they emerged from the sunlit smoke that lay in front of our trenches, in a perfect line, each man a yard or so from the next, their backs bent, struggling under that idiotic load they were carrying, their rifles across their chests, their bayonets catching the light.

  We picked up our rifles and prepared to join them, crouching against the trench wall with the heat on our backs.

  ‘Don’t bunch!’ I screamed, but I heard the hidden machine guns begin to fire again and I saw the whole line stagger as they were caught in the criss-cross streams of bullets. Mason’s body, still hanging on the wire, supported inside its clothing, began to do a crazy dance as the bullets ripped at it, and whole bunches of the advancing men fell. The rest kept on coming forward, but their legs seemed to have turned to jelly, and they stumbled on splayed feet, their knees sagging, almost like Charlie Chaplin in the pictures I’d seen, then the whole line seemed to vanish into the grass until there were only one or two isolated figures left, standing almost stupidly, like calves smelling blood, their eyes dazed.

  As I watched them, my eyes burning themselves out in my head, there was an awful crash behind me and we all went down under a shower of stones and flying dirt and shards of steel. A man had flung himself down across me, and when I pushed him off blood welled across my trousers and I saw there was a hole in his temple and his skull was shattered at the back.

  When I’d recovered my wits, I saw the fourth line coming forward just as the others had done, like a human wave against an iron shore, but they were moving faster now, running at a stumbling trot.

  Oh, God, I thought. Not another lot!

  Tom Creak was beside me, fuming.

  ‘Where the ’ell’s t’barrage?’ he was saying, his eyes glittering with a sort of drunken hatred. ‘Why don’t them bloody staff bastards bring it back?’

  The Germans seemed to have recovered a lot, now that the bombardment had moved on to the rear, and I saw the advancing line disappear just as the previous one had, staggering in groups as though they’d been caught by a high wind, and falling in heaps among the other dead. I don’t think a single man even reached the wire.

  There was a cheer from the German trenches, then they swung their machine guns round, and the blast of bullets made us all duck. One man was a little slow and he slid to the bottom of the trench, staring stupidly, his bright blue eyes wide, his mouth lolling open.

  Tom Creak stared at him, then at me, then the bullets came popping into the side of the trench again, sending the dirt flying, and we all huddled there, not certain what to do. The attack seemed to have sunk into the ground.

  For a while, I stared at the dirt wall of the trench and the crouching stupefied figures among the burst and tumbled sandbags, then I forced myself to try and take stock of things.

  There seemed to be only half a dozen of us – Tom Creak, and a few others I didn’t recognise from the first wave, and a few wounded – all of us with clothes, hands and faces besmeared with blood. I couldn’t see where I was because the smoke, which was charged with fumes, was opaque and coppery in colour.

  Murray and Locky and the Lewis-gun seemed to have vanished, and we had no wire with us. But there appeared to be no shells falling near us just then and we seemed safe if we kept our heads down.

  I wondered what had happened to Bold and wished he’d appear as he always seemed to do at times of stress, with his strong upright figure and that harsh nagging voice that always seemed so confident.

  ‘We’ve got to look after ’em,’ he’d always said. ‘There’s precious few of us know how to.’ The memory of it seemed to snap through my stupefaction and I forced myself to make decisions.

  Tom was leaning against the trench wall, hugging his maimed hand to him, his face white and taut with pain.

  ‘You all right?’ I asked, shouting to make myself heard above the din.

  ‘I’m not ’urt,’ he said. ‘Well – not much. But t’place’s a bit of a mess, ain’t it?’

  He seemed to stagger and his face became empty and expressionless.

  ‘Steady on,�
� I said. ‘Where are the Mandys?’

  ‘I dunno. I lost ’em out there.’ He gestured with his rifle towards the open grassland we’d just crossed. ‘They just disappeared.’

  ‘We’ll find ’em eventually, I suppose,’ I said. ‘For the time being, get that bloody load off your back. You’ll move easier.’

  He looked at me and saw I’d got rid of my equipment and he shrugged out of his own pack and dropped it to the trench bottom.

  The others started to do the same, then someone indicated the two gibbering Germans who still crouched together, their eyes rolling, their hands wavering above their heads. ‘What the hell are we going to do with them two?’ he asked.

  Someone said he’d heard that prisoners were shooting their captors in the back and Tom shoved himself upright, his face bitter and savage.

  ‘Send ’em back,’ he shouted. ‘Send ’em back through t’bloody barrage, like we ’ad to go, and all them lads lying out there!’

  Before I could stop him, he started buffeting the two wretched men one-handed with his rifle, and they scrambled out of the trench and started back the way we’d come, their hands in the air. They didn’t seem to have gone far when they were caught by one of their own machine guns, and they rolled sideways, lolling spinelessly, and fell out of sight.

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ Tom said flatly.

  I felt I ought to have stopped him, but there didn’t seem to be much point in worrying about that now and I tried to concentrate on the problem of saving ourselves.

  I scrambled to where the German machine gun was lying on its side, half-covered with earth and debris, the bodies of the gunners draped across it, their blood soaking the chalky soil.

  ‘Let’s try and get it going,’ I said.

  We dug out the gun, but it was choked with earth and the man who was crouching over it, trying to make it work, looked up at me with stupefied eyes.

  ‘Keep at it,’ I said. ‘I’ll see what I can find farther on.’

  At the back of my mind was the certainty that I should come across Locky somewhere along the trench, crowded in with other missing men. I felt sure I’d see Tim Williams and Murray as well, and all the others who’d disappeared. It was as though the mind rejected the possibility of them not being there.

  I knew we were still a long way from our final objectives and I wondered if I ought to try and press on. But the few men I had with me wouldn’t have lasted two seconds in the sleet of bullets that was flying overhead, and I decided instead to see if I could find anyone else before making a move. The biggest problem was the confusion. I didn’t know where anyone was or even if there were anyone. We had no weapons beyond our rifles and no means of getting in touch with the reserves.

  I left the others struggling with the gun and, scrambling over the bodies that choked the angle of trench, half-fell into the next bay.

  As I straightened up, a grey-uniformed figure lurched blindly round the corner right into me. Without thinking, I lashed out and he went flying on to the tumbled sandbags and I realised I’d still got an entrenching tool in my hand.

  ‘God, sorry!’ I turned to the German who was lying on his side moaning, his face covered with blood, and I realised how absurd it was to be apologising.

  The blade of the entrenching tool had carved a hideous wound in his shoulder right by the neck. He was obviously dying, and I stumbled away again over the rubbish. There were a lot more bodies lying about in the wreckage, both German and English, but there was no one I knew. I tried to avoid treading on them, but it was difficult because there were so many, and I was terrified of hanging about. I’d seen rockets poised in the air above me and guessed it was the Germans appealing for artillery support.

  As I reached the next deep stretch of trench, a shell burst on the parapet and I was covered with a shower of fine earth and small stones. When I looked up, I saw Ashton in front of me. His hand was roughly bandaged but he seemed to have been wounded again in the chest and his tunic and shirt were open, as though someone had tried to get at his wound to attend to it. He’d lost all his equipment except his little orange flag – even his pince-nez, so that his eyes had a curious peering look about them.

  ‘We must get on,’ he said immediately. ‘Get the men together.’

  ‘There aren’t any men,’ I said. ‘There’s nobody left.’

  He nodded dully and sat down, not far from fainting. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know. Those machine guns. We’re wiped out.’

  Catchpole was with him, crouched against the sandbags, scared-looking, his jaw hanging open. He managed a weak grin and the three of us huddled together while the shells banged and cracked just above us, throwing us against the trench wall again and again with the concussion.

  ‘Is there anybody else?’ I asked, cupping my hands and yelling into his ear.

  ‘I think they’re all dead,’ Catchpole said, his eyes blinking at every explosion.

  ‘Well, we’d better see if we can find someone. There’s nobody on the left except Tom Creak and a few more. I’ve just come from there. Stay here and I’ll go and look.’

  I scrambled farther along the trench, feeling better now I’d got my breath back. Down there in the trench I felt fairly safe.

  Farther along, I found three or four more men from the third wave, all of them unwounded, but no more. I took a chance and stuck my head over the parapet and saw in the distance tiny figures running forward.

  ‘It must be the York and Lancs,’ one of the men I’d found said. ‘There aren’t many of them.’

  I didn’t know what to do. There weren’t enough of us to be of much use, but the Germans seemed to have abandoned the trench we were in and I thought we’d better stay where we were and see what we could do about holding it.

  ‘He’ll be counter-attacking soon,’ one of the men with me said. He looked dazed and his eyes were full of tears. ‘If he does,’ he went on. ‘I’ll give myself up.’

  ‘You bloody well won’t,’ I told him.

  ‘Well,’ he said hysterically, ‘we can’t stop ’em if they come!’

  ‘We’ll be all right when the reinforcements arrive!’ Ashton said when we got back to him. ‘They’ll be here soon.’

  I didn’t believe him. The Germans seemed to be in complete control of that strip of open ground behind us, and I couldn’t imagine anyone getting anywhere near us.

  Then, startlingly close, a machine gun opened up, stopped and started again, and we all stared round at each other.

  ‘They’re coming,’ Catchpole shouted.

  As he spoke, a figure appeared round the corner of the trench and I was just on the point of throwing a bomb when I saw it was Bold. He had a head wound and his hair was dusty, his face ashen, but I could have hugged him. We’ll be all right now, I thought immediately. Bold will know what to do.

  He grinned as he saw me and I felt it was wonderful just to have him near.

  ‘How many have we got?’ he asked Ashton, who merely leaned against the trench wall and shook his head, too far gone to know.

  ‘Just what you can see,’ I said, and Bold stared round us. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Is this all? I’ve got another dozen round the next corner, and that’s the lot. None of our mob. We’d better try and form that there strongpoint. Got any guns?’

  ‘Not any more. I’ve got a couple of the lads trying to get a German job going.’

  ‘Good lad! We’ll have to do the best we can.’

  He disappeared round the corner again and came back with a few men, all of them blank-faced and dazed-looking, all covered with dirt and blood, until there were about three dozen of us crouching in the trench, staring back the way we’d come, in the hope of help. The German gun had a smashed breech, we found, and it was impossible to repair it.

  I could see Germans on our left only a hundred yards away, standing on their parapet and shooting at anyone near their wire who tried to move. One group had even dragged a machine gun into the open and were traversing over the open field, the bullets
slapping along the ground, ripping and tearing at the bodies of the already dead. The men in the trench with me crouched together, almost as though they drew courage from each other. They all looked shocked. They’d seen a thousand men die before their eyes in a matter of minutes. Ashton’s face had gone inhumanly white now, but he still clutched that silly little flag of his. Tom Creak’s face was like stone and Catchpole’s raffish good looks were marred by a stare of stupid bewilderment. Only Bold seemed unmoved.

  ‘We’ve got to get forward,’ Ashton kept repeating.

  He clearly didn’t know what he was doing, only what his orders were. But there was no sense in trying to obey. There weren’t enough of us.

  An aeroplane flew over us, a small yellow machine, and I remember looking up and thinking how clean it must be up there away from all the filth and foulness below. It turned beyond us and swung back, the sun glinting on its varnished wing surfaces, then the pilot waved and I heard its klaxon horn droning.

  As it came over us again, an object like a truncheon trailing coloured streamers dropped from it. But it fell short and disappeared into the trench near the German machine-gunners and we could do nothing about it.

  In the end, Bold told me to send a runner back, and I hadn’t the courage to send Tom Creak or Catchpole and I picked one of the strangers.

  He stared for a second, his face suddenly empty, then he nodded and scrambled out of the trench without a word.

  ‘He’s hit,’ someone shouted almost immediately, and I turned away with a feeling of guilt and looked at Bold.

  ‘Not worth trying another,’ he said. ‘He’ll only cop it too.’

  The shells were still droning overhead like a million birds in flight. There seemed to be noise everywhere, above us, to right and left, almost coming out of the ground underneath our feet. The whole world was full of noise, and not much else, except flattened figures sprawled like sagging khaki bags on the torn chalky grassland and among the black tangled wire.