by Phillip Rock
There is a sound like rolling thunder ahead of us. We have heard it since dawn, but intermittent, extremely far away. Now, it is closer, a continuous bumping and thumping, as though hundreds of empty freight cars were rolling back and forth inside a long tunnel.
Congestion on the road. Peasants from the north, driven from their farms by the fighting that must be raging ten or fifteen miles away, push against the oncoming troops. They pull carts and wagons loaded with their belongings. Children sit crying on top of bundles of goods. The refugees are oblivious to the soldiers, who yell at them and try to make them leave the roads. Mixed in with the refugees are wounded soldiers. Some are in horse-drawn ambulance wagons. Others walk as though in a daze, clutching bloody bandages. The troops seem embarrassed by the sight of them. A colonel lying in the back of a wagon with a blood-caked bandage wrapped clumsily around his chest mutters over and over, “C’est une castastrophe.”
Hannogne-St. Martin
The battery has been moved at the gallop along dirt lanes and across fields to this village, which is seven miles closer to the front. It is late afternoon and the beech trees and poplars are pale gold in the waning sun. The guns are drawn up on a low hill screened by thick clumps of grapevines. 75mm guns. An ammunition limber is beside each cannon. A seven-foot metal ladder has been bolted to one of the limbers, and the major stands on the top rung behind a narrow metal shield, powerful binoculars in his hands. He scans the woods and fields ahead of the battery and then shouts, “Fantastique! Magnifique! C’est incroyable!”
Martin put aside his notebook and climbed out of the transport wagon. The major was coming down the ladder, shouting directions to the gunners for range, elevation, and type of shell. He tossed the binoculars to Martin.
“Have a look! Oh, my God, the poor bastards of infantry!”
Martin climbed up the ladder and focused the binoculars. He could see French infantry advancing out of a valley and up the grassy slope of a hill toward a dark line of woods. They were in long lines, shoulder to shoulder and walking slowly, rifles held at the hips, the long bayonets catching the sun. Officers with drawn swords walked in front of them. The red and blue of their uniforms and the white gloves of the officers created a living flag—the tricolor rippling across the green hills of France. On they moved, a thousand or more in three waves. A hundred yards from the trees the first wave began to falter—to stumble and fall—to wither away as some unseen, unheard force scythed through them. They fell over in heaps, and the second wave moved on over their bodies.
“Guns ready!” a sergeant cried out.
“Fire for range on command,” the major shouted. He clambered up on top of the limber and stood on the ladder, holding on to Martin’s waist and grabbing the binoculars from him. “Fire!”
A gun barked, and a few seconds later the shell burst above the treetops. Leaves and small branches disappeared in a froth of debris. The infantry was still advancing—tumbling forward, sinking to its knees, turning and twisting in a slow, silent dance of death.
“Machine guns,” the major yelled. “The damn Boche! Down a hundred . . . fourteen degrees . . . fire! Fire! Fire!”
Every gun in the battery began to slam shrapnel shells toward the tree line four miles away; black bursts of smoke blossomed violently in the shadowed wood. Breech blocks clanged, and empty shell cases rattled against the iron tailpieces of the guns. The artillery fire was accurate and devastating, but it was too late to save the soldiers. The Napoleonic formations had disappeared. There was nothing on the slope but windrows of corpses, wounded struggling to crawl back down the hill, and a few men running for cover, the tall grass rippling around them as machine-gun bullets mowed through it.
The major tugged at Martin’s clothes. “Get down before you lose your head. The Germans have cannons too.”
A Renault whined up from the village in low gear. A colonel of artillery stood in front beside the driver, clutching the windshield.
“Drag your battery out, Duchamp,” he shouted over the cracking reports of the guns. “The whole front’s caving in. Pull back to Omicourt, and be quick about it.” He spotted Martin climbing down from the observation ladder, the civilian clothes showing under the artilleryman’s cloak. “Who in God’s name is that?”
The major shrugged. “An American . . . from Chicago.”
The colonel tugged at his Vandyke beard. “I won’t ask you how he got here, Duchamp. I’m in no mood to listen to your tall tales. Get him into the car before someone shoots the bastard as a spy. I tell you it is all falling apart. A debacle!”
There was a roaring sound above their heads, a short, sharp whistle, and then a shell exploded in a patch of woods behind the village. The shock wave sent Martin stumbling off his feet. The noise cracked against the skull. Trees and soil rocketed upward in a cascade of smoke and flame.
“Howitzer!” Major Duchamp yelled. “Two hundred ten millimeter! Those damn Boches!” He grabbed Martin and propelled him toward the car. “Write about that. Tell them we can’t fight against two-hundred-ten-millimeter howitzers with our seventy-fives. Tell them—”
But what else the major wished him to tell was lost in the shriek of heavy shells, one following the other, the explosions rocking the hill. Geysers of earth and shattered trees blew upward in a whirlwind of blinding flashes. A field gun lurched brokenly into a yawning, steaming hole. An ammunition limber began to explode, the hot rounds whirling off across the vineyard like giant pinwheels. Martin half fell, half dove into the back of the Renault. He felt the car turn and twist crazily as the driver gave it full throttle and spun the steering wheel. Martin lay on the floorboards, his face pressed against the bottom of the seat. Clods of dirt and bits of wood showered down on his back. Oh, God, he thought wildly, I wish I was on Maxwell Street. . . . I wish I was on Maxwell Street.
9
“I’m afraid I’m lost, sir,” the driver said.
“It’s not your fault,” Fenton said, scowling at his map. “That was Givry we passed through, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s the map then. Bloody work of fiction. This road doesn’t go to Villers–St. Ghislain or anywhere near it.”
The driver tapped his gloved hand against the steering wheel and whistled softly between his teeth.
“Stop that bloody whistling,” Fenton snapped irritably.
He was immediately sorry that he had lost his temper and thought of offering an apology. That wouldn’t do, of course. One didn’t apologize to a man in the ranks under any circumstances. Poor chap was only whistling in the dark. It was an eerie feeling being alone in the middle of God knows where. The road they were on might lead them straight into the German Army for all they knew. Ninety thousand British troops in France, the French Fifth Army off to their right somewhere, and not a man to be seen. It was damn discomforting. He settled back in the seat and glared at the map. Why would a cartographer mark a road that didn’t exist? Perhaps one had been planned and the map maker had simply jumped the gun in marking it down. That was a possibility. They weren’t on a road, not a proper pavé, but rather a cow path that wouldn’t have warranted inclusion on a map. He tried to figure out its eventual destination. Bray? Spiennes? A score of place names were clustered east of Mons. The path could lead to any one of them—or to none. He removed his cap and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. Lord, it was hot, the noonday sun beating down from a cloudless, brazen sky. His batman was groggy from the heat, slumped sideways in a listless, soggy bundle. Poor old Webber, far past his prime. The driver, Lance Corporal Ackroyd, was a thin, wiry Londoner of the Middlesex Regiment. He’d hold up all right. Fenton reached into his pocket and took out a tin of cigarettes.
“Care for a fag, Corporal?”
“Thank you, sir,” the driver said, perking up noticeably. “Been ’alf dyin’ for a smoke, sir.”
“Take a handful of them.”
The driver did as he was told. “Blimey. Abdullahs.”
“Might just sp
oil your taste for Woodbines.”
“Might at that, sir.”
Fenton smiled and the man grinned back. A certain amount of familiarity was unavoidable. They were, in a manner of speaking, in the same boat. He lit the corporal’s cigarette and then his own.
“Bloody dismal country.”
“Yes, sir. Mucked up a bit.”
It was an ominous landscape, chilling even in the brightness of an August day: dank, overgrown patches of woodland, untilled fields, the sour smell of neglect. Weed-dotted slag heaps and conical structures of rotting timbers marked the sites of abandoned coal shafts. This was the edge of the Borinage—coal, slate, and darkly polluted streams.
Fenton folded the map and slipped it into its case. “Drive on another couple of miles. We’re bound to reach some sort of village that’ll give us a fix.”
Lance Corporal Ackroyd put the car into gear, and they rolled bumpingly along the narrow, deeply rutted road, past eroded hills of slag, the edge of a gloomy wood, and then into more open country; flat fields of unharvested oats stretched away on both sides of them. Ackroyd suddenly braked and pointed ahead.
“Look at that, sir! Comin’ straight for us.”
The airplane had sideslipped over a line of poplars and was flying toward them no more than thirty feet off the ground. It banked sharply, and the pilot leaned far out of the cockpit and pointed toward the field.
“One of ours, sir?”
“Yes,” Fenton said, studying the slow-moving machine carefully. “An Avro, I think. What the hell keeps them in the air?”
“Thinkin’ the same thing, sir. Looks like a Chinese laundry cart, don’t it?”
The plane’s tiny engine popped and fumed, and the ungainly contraption of canvas, wood, and wire made a sickening lurch, straightened up scant feet from the surface of the field, and then glided to a perfect landing, nosing over slightly against the bamboo skids fastened in front of the wheels.
Fenton and the corporal got out of the car and ran across the field. The pilot was climbing carefully out of the cockpit, threading his way through the maze of wires connecting the bottom wing with the top.
“Hello, chaps,” the pilot called out. “Any idea where I am exactly?”
“Only roughly,” Fenton said. “You’re somewhere between Givry and Villers-St. Ghislain. About eight miles east of Mons.”
The pilot removed his leather helmet and scratched his head vigorously. He looked no more than eighteen years old to Fenton.
“Oh, I say. I thought I was west of Mons. No wonder I couldn’t find the ruddy place. Been circlin’ for hours, it seems. Can you spare some petrol? I’m down to my last few drops.”
“There’s a five-gallon tin in the boot,” the corporal said.
“Thank the Lord. I can get to Le Cateau on that.”
“Is it all right, sir?”
“Yes, of course,” Fenton said. “Go fetch it.”
The corporal ran back toward the car, and the pilot leaned wearily against the edge of the plane’s lower wing.
“F.A.M. Weedlock here . . . Lieutenant Weedlock actually.” He held out a grimy oil-smeared hand. “And you are?”
“Fenton Wood-Lacy.”
The pilot glanced at the pips on Fenton’s sleeve. “Nice of you to help me, Captain. I shall do you a good service. Turn your car around. There’s absolutely nothing ahead of you but Huns. Bloody hordes of ’em.”
“How far away?”
“Ten miles or so. I’ve been as far as Nivelles and Charleroi this morning. Germans on every road . . . crossing every field. Bloody bunch of locusts. Never seen anything like it. Flew very low over ’em and the silly bastards waved at me. Thought it was quite a lark, they did.”
Fenton drew out his map. “Where are they exactly?”
“Oh, Lord, everywhere.” He drew his finger across the map, leaving a faint smear of oil. “From Charleroi all across to just north of Mons. There must be two hundred thousand of ’em. Looks like a gray river from the air. And artillery . . . miles and miles of horse-drawn gun transport. I’ve got to get my report to HQ . . . if I can ruddy well find it.”
“Yes,” Fenton said dryly. “I think they might be interested. See any French troops on our right?”
“Well, some of their cavalry—tossing plumes . . . breastplates shining in the sun. All that fancy-dress rot. A few infantry . . . all going south. If our chaps are at Mons, then their flank is in the air. I went up to ten thousand feet over Charleroi, and I could see nothing but battle smoke from the Meuse. Poor old Frenchy must be catching hell. Looked as though their whole line of battle was caving in.”
The pilot ate some cheese and bread from the hamper in the car while Ackroyd refueled his plane. He then instructed the corporal on how to spin the propeller without decapitating himself and flew off, the plane rising as effortlessly as a swallow from the field. He made one stuttering turn around the car at a hundred feet and then headed south. They stood in the road and watched until the little plane was lost to view.
“Rather a pleasant way to travel,” Fenton said quietly.
They reached the brick schoolhouse in the village of Frameries that was now 3rd Division HQ shortly after nightfall. The road to Mons was jammed with horse-drawn artillery and supply wagons, pipers of the Gordon Highlanders skirling away to help ease the tempers of the cursing drivers. Fenton dismissed Lance Corporal Ackroyd and Webber for the night and then made his way through the building, which was crowded with staff and line officers. There was an atmosphere of frenzied confusion, but Colonel Blythe assured Fenton that everything was firmly in hand.
“I suppose you know by now what’s ahead of us,” Fenton said.
The colonel nodded. “We’ve been getting reports in all day. It’s the bulk of a German army . . . von Kluck’s, we believe. The field marshal ran up from Le Cateau to tell us there’s no more than two corps facing us, but we know better. The cavalry wallahs have been out all day and doing damn well too. They even brought in some prisoners. We’re horribly outnumbered, but the old boy convinced the corps commander that we can stop them along the canal. I hope to God he’s right. How are the Guards settling in at Villers–St. Ghislain? Do they have enough artillery in support?”
“They may . . . wherever they are. We finally found that damn village after driving around in circles for bloody hours, but there are no troops there. Not one. Your flank is, if you’ll pardon the expression, naked.”
“Good God,” the colonel muttered. “Old Woody won’t be happy to hear that, although I imagine he won’t be terribly surprised either. High command is trying to run this show from thirty miles back: abysmal roads, faulty telephone wires, wretched maps. . . . It’s a bloody ball-up is what it is. Well, I’ll go tell him the good news. We have a mess of sorts down that hall. Get yourself a hot meal and a whiskey. It may be your last of both for some time to come.”
Cooks were opening five-pound tins of stew and heating the contents over a kerosene fire. Foxe’s Fancy Old Irish Stew, Fenton noted wryly. He wondered what Archie would be dining on at his London club. Not his own stew, surely, although it was certainly tasty enough. He ate two helpings and washed it down with a large whiskey and soda. One of the other officers who sat squeezed at the long table which had been designed for children’s legs eyed him sourly.
“Where the hell is the First Corps? Should be in position on our right flank by now, shouldn’t it?”
“Should be. But it’s not . . . and it won’t. There’s nothing on their right flank. The French are falling back all along the line.”
The glum officer toyed with his stew. “Could have told ’em that. Knew it would happen. We should have landed at Antwerp and let the bloody Frogs fight their own war.”
So much for allied cooperation and friendship, Fenton thought as he sipped his whiskey. But why should officers of the II Corps of the British Expeditionary Force have a feeling of comradeship for the French Army when they didn’t have it for their own I Corps? A major in the Manches
ter Regiment was glaring at his Coldstream Guards badges with open hostility. Fenton downed his whiskey and left the room without bothering to thank anyone for the hospitality of the mess.
The HQ was cleared by 2:00 A.M. as battalion commanders and their aides returned to their units. General Wood-Lacy, slurping away at a mug of steaming tea, continued to pace slowly back and forth in front of a wall map—a pathetically inadequate map but the best one available. Fenton sat behind a child’s desk in the schoolroom and watched his uncle in silence. After ten minutes, the general turned away from the map and sat on the edge of a desk, tapping a wooden pointer idly against his booted leg.
“Well, Fenton, tomorrow will be all battle, and Second Corps will go it alone. No matter. We can cut it. We’re blessed with Smith-Dorrien as corps commander. A good infantryman. Knew him well in Africa. Zulus almost scuppered him when he was a subaltern as they almost scuppered me. By God, this division won’t let him down.”
“What do I do, sir? Seems to me I’m a bit of a fifth wheel around here now.”
“Oh, I dare say I shall keep you busy scurrying about. I can’t send you back, can I? Lord knows where your brigade is right now . . . stuck along the road someplace well out of it. No, no, you’ll stay attached to my staff for a few more days and earn your keep. You may also learn something about soldiering—that it isn’t all walking Buck guard, seducing women, and playing cards.”
Church bells tolled for early mass, but that was the last peaceful sound to be heard that Sunday morning. Fenton slept fitfully in the schoolroom, hunkered down at a desk. He woke to the sound of the bells and the distant clatter of rifle fire. Mess orderlies brought dixies of tea into the rooms for the sleepy-eyed staff officers. The field telephones began to ring.