Independent artillery opened up to the rear and he saw the glowing explosions spurting beyond the German lines.
Wyke called to him, ‘Brigadier, sir!’
Jonathan took the handset and pressed it to his ear. He had not even heard it buzzing in its case.
‘Sir?’
Ross was as crisp as ever. ‘Attack’s begun. First objectives taken. This bloody rain! If we get the chance to exploit this . . .’ He broke off as one huge explosion made the air shiver. Then he continued, ‘There are two cavalry divisions in reserve. Be ready to move, Jono!’
Jonathan handed over the handset, suddenly sickened at the minds that could still order horses into barbed wire and machine-guns.
If this rain got any heavier the tanks would be helpless to move, but cavalry were certainly not the answer. He thought of the young officer who had saluted him with his sword. Perhaps he was here too. No breastplate and shining helmet, only a hell of mud and wire unlike anything he had ever known.
While Harry Payne held a shaded torch for him he opened his map, even though it was etched onto his brain. Somewhere ahead was Pilckem Ridge and slightly to the right the beginning of the Gheluvelt Plateau. According to the map the front itself was crossed in many places by brooks: they would be rivers of mud if this continued. It would be hard going. Once across the main Menin Road they would divide the attack: Polygon Wood and then Passchendaele. After that, a smart left-wheel and on to the coast.
He thought of the Australian from Perth. It can’t be done. Now he was out there somewhere in the mud with all the thousands of others. For three miles’ gain at the very most.
The field telephone buzzed again. This time it was one of the brigadier’s staff officers.
‘Whenever you like, Colonel. Bring up your men. The second wave has just gone over. The support trenches are vacant. Good luck.’ The line went dead.
Jonathan wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. On a wall at the Naval and Military Club in London there was a large framed reproduction of a scene at Waterloo: a young, red-coated officer waving his men to the attack. The painting was entitled The Whole Line Will Advance! and it had always stirred his imagination as a boy when his father had taken him to the club.
He said sharply, ‘Pass the word. We’re moving up. A Company will lead.’
He stared up at the hard, sharp line of the trench they had dug and would now have to abandon. How many more horizons?
Sections, platoons and companies began to trudge forward to find their way into the first line of communication trenches. Men bowed down by their weapons and kit. Men soaked through and caked with mud. Men who splashed through the narrow, uneven earthworks, looking neither right nor left or even at the clouds above them. Sometimes they had almost to crawl to keep below the defences where the sides had fallen away, and in other places the trenches were so deep that any heavy shell could bury them alive.
They had gone only about three miles when they reached the rear support lines, but at every slippery step they were aware of the mounting wrath of battle, rising in massive, separate explosions that deadened even the sharper clatter of rifles and machine-guns.
Another communication trench was reserved for walking wounded being sent back to a dressing station: a different army, bandaged, splinted, and bloody. They were clinging to one another like punch-drunk fighters, but still managed to smoke their cigarettes as they went.
One had got into the wrong trench and was trying to force his way past the oncoming marines.
Someone called, ‘What’s it like, mate?’ The hatless soldier did not hear him but struggled on, his eyes staring from deeply-shadowed sockets. Beyond reach and reason.
Sergeant-Major McCann said angrily, ‘Well, it ain’t no bloody picnic, that’s pretty obvious!’
Surprisingly, there were those who could still laugh at his sour frustration.
Jonathan walked with some of the H.Q. platoon, and guessed that they were watching him. Reading their own fate in his reactions, perhaps. He thought of the small boy with his father at the club, and wanted to laugh. Or weep.
The whole line will advance!
The support lines of the sector allotted to the Royal Marines were well constructed but had been heavily damaged in an earlier artillery bombardment, and the H.Q. command dugout was like a slum.
An infantry major handed over the position to the marines with almost guilty haste.
‘We couldn’t dislodge them from the Gheluvelt Plateau.’ He jabbed the map with his scratched and muddy fingers. ‘The Jerries will counter-attack, so you’ll probably be needed in the front line a bit sooner than expected. My lads are being pulled back to rest and eat. I suggest you get your men fed whenever you can.’
Everyone ducked as a shell exploded in the air beyond the trench, and they heard splinters and shrapnel smacking into the mud and piled sandbags. The major indicated the remains of a copse or small wood. ‘German machine-guns there. Lost a lot of men trying to get through the wire. If you take over the front we’ll need more wire there too.’ He sounded doubtful, as if he thought marines unsuitable here.
Jonathan beckoned to Wyke. ‘Senior officers, now!’ Then he said, ‘We’ll manage.’
He turned to watch as his own men hurried past the dugout, weighed down as before but moving swiftly, aware of the nearness of danger. The air cringed to the shriek of artillery, the sharpest being some French seventy-fives far over to the right.
To Major Vaughan he said, ‘Light machines here, Ralph. I want the heavier one on our flank. Sentries on the firestep too.’
Another shell tore overhead and must have exploded near one of the communication trenches: great clods of earth and tree roots burst into the air and there were muffled cries, probably from some of the troops they had just relieved.
‘Hot soup, if you can. More use than rain-soaked food.’ He looked at McCann’s frown of concentration as he wrote in his little book, the way he grinned as he added, ‘Double ration of grog, too.’
When Vaughan returned with two breathless runners Jonathan said abruptly, ‘Take over, Ralph. I’m going to look over our position.’ He shook his head as Wyke began to follow. ‘No. Keep the team together.’
Payne pursued him, watching for deep holes or broken lengths of the duckboard that served to keep the trench dry and prevent noise in the night. The light was still more like dusk than day, and the air was filled with drifting smoke and the awful stench of rotting corpses exhumed in the last artillery barrage. Once, Jonathan stood on the firestep and peered at the next line, and the one beyond that. The front line was completely hidden in smoke and torrential rain, and beyond there was only the enemy. He could just make out the Plateau, and the telltale blink of machine-guns. Mud everywhere, corpses and human remains scattered like garbage, or discarded pieces of statuary broken in battle. In one bright flash he thought he saw someone moving, then he looked away, his stomach contracting. Rats, countless numbers of them moving busily amongst this carnage, oblivious as stray bullets sang through the air or ripped into the ground nearby. In a second flash he saw a face staring at him, but it was another corpse, a Tommy trying to get to the rear. Below his belt there was nothing left, and yet he was still able to stare as if he did not believe it.
Sentries leaning against the trench did not turn as he passed. Other men sat in the few remaining dugouts or beneath crude canvas sheets. A dead soldier lay on his back, uncovered, his eyes screwed up at the moment of impact. The rain had almost covered his boots and one arm, which had been trodden into the mud by hurrying infantrymen. A man abandoned by his comrades. Friends were vital in the trenches, but dead men were soon forgotten. They were things, not people.
He reached the sector where Vaughan had placed the new company from the missing Grenville Division. Young, worried faces beneath the steel helmets, eyes blinking with each savage explosion. Their commanding officer, Captain Alton, lifted a hand in salute and then dropped it. ‘Sorry, sir. My sergeant over there told me not to
do that. A giveaway for snipers!’
Jonathan glanced at the sergeant in question and nodded in acknowledgement. The stripes on his muddy sleeves and the assured way he was standing amidst the chaos and the litter of death marked him down as an old sweat. One who would not break, no matter what. But there were precious few like him here.
He asked, ‘Where’s your other machine-gun?’
‘I was waiting to be told what . . .’
Jonathan interrupted curtly, ‘You command this company. Think it out, and do it!’
He turned back along the line. God, he thought, I’m beginning to sound just like Beaky Waring.
Harry Payne splashed along behind him, lost in thought and yet aware of the nearness of danger.
He felt the rain running down his spine between his webbing and extra ammunition pouches. It was like ice, which made no sense. A few days ago they had been working in shirt-sleeves, sweating even. Payne thought of the house in Southsea, close to the barracks. So warm in his arms, so eager; and with her shyness gone she had wanted only to please him.
He had once thought of setting his cap at her, but he’d never been much of a one for anything serious. She had changed all that. He squinted at the colonel’s shoulders as he strode along ahead of him. What about him, he wondered. How serious had it been for him?
Later they sat in the dugout consuming mess tins of soup which was surprisingly hot, although none of them could identify the taste.
More shells were bursting in and over the sector. The ground shook and writhed under the onslaught, but whistles were heard above the barrage. More men were going over the top, out into the torn battlefield and oblivion.
The rain, like the German counter-attacks, was unremitting. For two days the enemy tried to regain their lost positions and were fought off. At the front the infantry waited their turn, while in the support trenches the Fifty-First made ready to take over the line.
Jonathan had done what he could to prepare his officers and senior N.C.O.’s. That they would be in action was now beyond doubt. The only doubt was the final outcome.
He had reported to Brigadier Ross and had been told that the delay was over. Losses had been greater than expected, gains fewer than hoped.
Jonathan had asked without cynicism, ‘How many this time, sir – after two and a half days, I mean?’
Ross had given him that piercing look. He had not tried to lessen the blow, nor had he called him Jono.
‘Around thirty thousand, as far as they can tell. More reserves are coming up, but I don’t like this weather.’ A telephone had buzzed, and Jonathan had left him and made his way back to his men.
That night after dark, the Royal Marines moved forward and took over the line.
Alexandra Pitcairn stood by the open kitchen door and watched the rain dripping from the trees and drifting over the garden.
Behind her her father sat at the table, the London newspaper spread out to catch the light.
‘Another big attack, Alex.’ She said nothing, and he began to read excerpts to her. ‘After a series of daring and undisclosed tactics, the Second and Fifth Armies, fighting in appalling conditions, have continued to put pressure on the enemy’s front. The advance began after a bombardment by our artillery, described as the greatest man-made explosion ever seen. Troops of the Commonwealth forces are fighting side by side with persistent gallantry . . .’ He paused and looked at her shoulders, and her fingers gripping the door handle. He had not questioned her about her relationship with Jonathan Blackwood, or what had happened between them in London. If he had been able, he would have prevented it. But she was not a child; and he was only grateful that she had told him some of it.
They must be expecting heavy casualties despite the newspapers’ optimism, he thought. More huts had been constructed at Hawks Hill, and he had heard that all hospitals from here to the coast had been warned to prepare to receive unspecified numbers of wounded. Even at Hawks Hill they had been told that shell-shock cases and blind patients would have to take second place.
He looked at the paper again and cleared his throat.
‘The G.O.C. has spoken of his pride in these men from overseas, and has welcomed the additional support of the Royal Marines under his command.’
She gripped the handle so hard she felt it breaking her skin. She had known, as Jonathan had, even when they had been so free of care in London during those six precious days, that such peace and such happiness could not last.
She had lain awake in the quiet nights here, touching her breasts as he had done. Imagined him gazing down at her: the smile, the hunger, so dear to her. It was the lover she remembered, not the man tortured by experiences she had seen mirrored on the faces of patients at Hawks Hill.
He had written recently with such disturbing longing and passion, untouched by the censor although it angered her to think of some stranger sifting through his words, reading his most secret thoughts and hopes.
And now he was there, with all those others of whom he had spoken so often. And it was raining. He had feared that too.
New casualty lists were appearing daily, and she had forced herself to read every one. She had never forgotten the horror of that moment which had so suddenly changed to joy when the post girl had delivered his telegram. Now, every day, she heard voices around her like ghosts, as other villagers read the lists.
‘That’s the butcher’s son!’ or ‘That’s three of them gone in one family!’
She had been there today, standing in the rain, surrounded by the voices. She had broken away from them and whispered fiercely, ‘Not you, darling Jonathan, not you!’
Her father was saying vaguely, ‘You must try not to worry, dear.’
She swung round, her eyes desperate.
‘I love him, Daddy! Don’t you understand? I love him!’
She heard her own despairing cry. Like a small voice in some vast, terrible wilderness.
Seventeen
Overnight the rain had stopped but, Jonathan guessed, only temporarily. At dawn the battalion stood-to below the firestep, wretched in their sodden uniforms and having had no hot food, only bully-beef and lukewarm tea, the latter well-laced with rum.
He watched a marine cleaning the mist from a trench periscope before refitting it against the sandbags. It was better than nothing. A more effective gadget had been left behind by the relieved infantry: a large shovel with two holes punched in it for a man’s eyes. Caked in mud, it would blend well with the parapet, and make a fair shield to deflect a bullet.
Jonathan climbed onto the firestep and peered through a gap in the sandbags. He could sense the mood of his men, their disgust at the front line, strewn with decomposing bodies and with many more who had dropped to the enemy’s fire even as they had responded to the urgent whistles. The stench and the constant reminders of violent death made some of the marines vomit, or stand closer to their companions as if for protection.
The churned-up waste of no man’s land grew sharper in his binoculars as he moved them very slowly. There was no sunlight, only clouds, but any observant marksman might see even the smallest movement.
There was their own barbed wire. A few ragged shapes fallen across or into it, in one of the counter-attacks, he supposed. There was hardly an open space where men had not been killed or abandoned as beyond aid.
A strange grey light was playing on the shell holes, and the charred stumps of roots that stood out from the mud like horns. They were trees that had been flung here by the first bombardments.
There were several gaps in the wire. He recalled what the departing major had said about it and the doubt in his voice. He had been right.
The Germans directly opposite them had probably been in the line a long time, and were tough and experienced infantrymen. It would take only a handful of such troops to wriggle through the gaps and fling grenades into this trench. It would have to wait; there was enough to shore up and reconstruct without bothering about the wire for now. Several of the trench walls ha
d completely collapsed, the sandbags just so much sodden debris, and here and there he had seen half-buried bodies, or a pair of boots protruding to mark where a man had been shot or blown up.
He saw some tin cans swaying very slightly in a damp breeze, each containing a few pebbles or pellets. Anyone trying to cut through the barbed wire in the dark would disturb them, and the sound of rattling cans would be enough to alert any sentry.
He shifted the glasses again. Mist or smoke clung to those craters which had earlier erupted like volcanoes, hurling many tons of earth into the air, but he could faintly make out the slight rise in the ground and the black stumps of more trees. That was the enemy’s wire. Beyond it was a machine-gun position. Someone had described it as well sited. The mud-covered corpses were evidence of that. Immune to rifle fire, and too close to the British front line to call down artillery support, it could best be taken in a night attack. But first, through their own wire.
Major Vaughan climbed up beside him, cat-like for so big a man.
‘Pig of a place, sir.’
‘Where no birds sing.’
‘Sir?’ Vaughan glanced at him curiously.
Jonathan gripped his glasses tightly. He saw something move, only for a second: the pale shape of a face, alive amidst all this carnage, under one of their heavy-looking helmets. Studying his enemy. The start of another day.
‘Fritz is up and about, Ralph.’
Vaughan said uneasily, ‘Well, the wind’s still in our favour. No gas.’ He wiped his mouth with a dirty handkerchief. ‘It might carry some of the stench away. I couldn’t even do justice to a steak-and-kidney pie with all this filth about!’
An anonymous voice called, ‘I could, sir! Just try me!’
Jonathan moved away from the observation hole. Holding together. Trying not to show fear. More testing than fear itself.
Somewhere behind the lines the artillery commenced its morning bombardment. He hoped that communications and powers of observation were better than at Gallipoli, where ships had shelled their own troops. What was the target? Surely not Passchendaele? Any news that came from there told only of stalemate, bloody advances and even bloodier counter-attacks for just a few yards. The Germans retained the Gheluvelt Plateau, and despite constant attempts to dislodge them had held their line.
The Horizon (1993) Page 29