The Passing Bells

by Phillip Rock

  “Like Napoleon?”

  “His luck ran out. And besides, I’m taller than he was.”

  Charles stayed at the factory for the next two days—forty-eight hours with virtually no sleep, watching what Ross and Bigsby instructed the mechanics to do. He kept meticulous notes and drew diagrams of each procedure. When the job was completed to Bigsby’s satisfaction, the men from the test center at Hatfield Park who had brought the tank drove it out of the building and onto a flatcar on the railroad siding. They then covered it with canvas, so not an inch of its metal body could be seen.

  “And that’s that,” Ross said. “What do you do now?”

  “Follow it down to the test ground and demonstrate it for some generals and war ministers. Rather like selling a terribly expensive motorcar to people who don’t really want to buy one.”

  “You handle the test, do you?”

  “Oh, no . . . just the selling part. I mingle with the brass . . . answer questions, tell a few jokes, and talk shop. Above all, I keep cheerful . . . even when the damn thing runs off its tracks or the engine explodes. Keep cheery about it . . . make light of the problems with a sort of ‘Well, sir, we’ll do jolly well better next time’ attitude.”

  Ross shook his head in wonder. “Queer way to fight a war, ain’t it?”

  “Yes. I think it is.” He held out his hand. “Good luck in America, Ross. It’s been splendid seeing you again, and I mean that most sincerely. Truly splendid. You know what you can do and you do it to perfection. I admire that. You must be a very happy man.”

  Ross frowned slightly. “Well, sir, I don’t know about that, but I’m satisfied. Is that what you mean?”

  “Yes. I suppose it is, Ross. I suppose it is.”

  There were more people than Charles had expected. The ground was relatively dry except for the mud-filled hollow, which was one of the test obstacles. The absence of rain and the crisp April air had everyone in a good mood, and they strolled about in the sun outside the refreshment tent downing whiskey sodas or drinking tea and munching ham sandwiches. The usual type of crowd had come—army and navy officers, frock-coated civil servants, and ministers. General Haldane did not mingle with any of them. General Haldane, Royal Engineers, chief of NS 5, stayed as far away from them as possible, his pale eyes fixed on the tank as if he were examining every bolt, screw, and rivet. He was sixty-two and had spent forty years of his service life in India and Burma building railroads and steel bridges from Mysore to the Salween. He had no capacity for small talk of any kind. He was waiting for the driver of the machine to signal that his crew was ready. When he did so, he turned to Charles and growled, “Tell ’em all to watch. And keep bloody well cheery.”

  She was dressing for a dinner engagement when he came home, dried mud on his boots and badly in need of a shave. His entrance into her pristine dressing room was almost an obscenity.

  “Charles! You could at least have telephoned.”

  He slumped into a small velvet chair and looked at her, groggy from fatigue.

  “How fragile you look,” he said.

  She turned back to her dressing-table mirror and applied the slightest amount of rouge to her cheeks.

  “Most naked people do.”

  “Half naked,” he corrected. “What do you call those skimpy things?”

  “Underclothes.”

  “Must be more to it than that. Hardly the army manner, is it? Chemise, mark one. Garter belt, model nineteen sixteen dash seven one two H.”

  She glanced over a white powdered shoulder. “Are you tipsy?”

  “God, no. Just worn to the bone. Big Willie did himself proud for a change. Even knocked over a small tree. Went seven miles at four miles per hour and didn’t break down once. No jammed gears . . . no stalls for lack of petrol. Everything clicked. General Haldane was so pleased he smiled—at least I think it was a smile. If an iceberg could smile, it would look like Haldane’s smile. He thanked me . . . and I told him I was chucking it in . . . resigning from NS Five. He wasn’t the least bit surprised.”

  “That’s because he already received notice. Someone on the General Staff informed him this morning.”

  “So I got the appointment,” he said in a flat, weary voice.

  “Of course. You impressed General Robertson favorably, to say the least.”

  “I’m chucking that in, too. I don’t want to be on Wully’s staff.”

  She studied an eyebrow in the glass. “Oh? What do you want to do then?”

  “Go to Windsor and rejoin my battalion.”

  She plucked a solitary hair with a pair of tweezers. “That’s ridiculous. You don’t have medical clearance and you’re on staff. Don’t make gestures, Charles.”

  “It’s not a gesture. I want to be doing something that fits my abilities for a change . . . and my temperament. I just won’t fit on Robertson’s staff. There’s too much politics involved . . . too much spying and skulking about expected. Haig is Robertson’s creature, and any mutterings about Haig from divisional commanders must be quashed. That’s where I would come in—and others like me—hanging about various HQ’s in France and keeping our ears open. I don’t want that kind of employment. I want something clean . . . manly. I want to be a company commander and take my chances in the line like everyone else.”

  “Not ‘everyone’ is in the line.” She put the steel tweezers down very carefully, as though they would smash if she dropped them on the table, then turned in her chair and looked at him. “I fail to see anything manly in wanting to get killed.”

  “I don’t expect to be killed. I expect to serve a few tours in trenches and then be rotated by the winter . . . given a battalion to train. The same kind of process Fenton went through.”

  “Fenton’s a regular army officer,” she said, measuring each word. “What he did in France . . . what he’s doing now . . . is expected of him. You fulfilled your martial duties on Gallipoli. Nothing further is expected of you except the wearing of a uniform and the performance of some useful task. Being a staff officer is such a task, Charles. There’s more to it than ‘skulking about,’ as you put it. It’s a job that requires intelligence and tact—two qualities you possess in abundance. Now, why don’t you take a bath and a shave, put on some clean clothes, and come with me. I’m meeting some people at Claridge’s and then we’re going on from there to the theater.”

  “No, I’m going to get some sleep. I want to be at Windsor first thing in the morning.”

  She stood up and leaned back against the edge of the dressing table.

  “Manly,” she said softly. “That’s the crux of it, isn’t it, Charles? Your periodic bouts of impotence distress you.”

  He looked away from her. She reminded him of an illustration he had seen once in an erotic novel someone had abandoned in a railway carriage, La Passion de Marie. The nearly transparent chemise . . . the lace belt supporting dark silk hose.

  “That’s only a symptom. I know the cause.”

  “And you hope to cure it in the trenches?” Her tone was mocking. “I could cure it in one night! You really make me laugh, Charles. Your conceptions of honor and duty and good form and playing the game belong to another century! What about your duty to me? And I’m not talking about your duty in bed. That failure is no more than prissy ignorance, not a disease. No . . . I mean your duty to me as your wife. There are more than enough widows these days without your going out of your way to create another one!”

  “There’s no point in our talking about it,” he said, getting to his feet. “You simply wouldn’t understand.”

  “Why? Because I’m not of your class? Because I wasn’t initiated at birth into the code of noble peers? For God’s sake, Charles, don’t turn your noble heritage into high bloody farce!”

  He left quietly. He did not slam the door, but there was a finality about his departure that she knew to be absolute. She sat down and looked at herself in the mirror. Lydia Foxe Greville . . . future Countess of Stanmore, German bullets permitting, mistre
ss of Abingdon Pryory and all it contained. Her childhood dream. A dream from an age rapidly fading. No, she thought, smoothing her eyebrows with her finger tips, an age already gone.

  17

  Lieutenant General Sir Julian Wood-Lacy enjoyed speaking to war correspondents. He felt that he owed the breed a debt for their treatment of him after Mons. He had emerged from that debacle as something of a hero, although he had done nothing to deserve it; had simply handled his division in adversity with calmness and intelligence, fighting when he could, pulling back when it seemed prudent to do so. A competent job of generalship, no more than that, but the London press had been determined to wring glory out of defeat for the sake of civilian morale. The adjective “glorious” was tagged on to the word “retreat,” and the old general with his John Bull face and manner was elevated to the military pantheon and promoted from the rank of commander of a division to that of the leader of a corps.

  “I should like to propose a toast to the memory of Lord Kitchener,” the general said, raising his glass of sherry. “I hate to think of poor K’s body floatin’ out there in the North Sea. Indeed I do. No way for a soldier to die. Served under him in the Sudan, don’t you know. A hard taskmaster, but ‘de mortuis’ and all that. Drink up, lads.”

  The sherry was too sweet for Martin’s taste and he merely raised the cut-crystal glass to his lips. Fenton Wood-Lacy, standing with a group of battalion commanders, caught his eye and moved his head in the direction of the terrace doors. Martin nodded in acknowledgment, and when the general began to pace back and forth in the ballroom, warming to an anecdote about some long-forgotten battle on the Nile, he drifted out of the ornate room and met Fenton on the terrace.

  “Well,” Fenton said with a smile, “you’re pretty good at sneaking away.”

  “Almost as good as yourself. How are you, Fenton?”

  “As well as can be expected. Overworked and underpaid, as they say in the ranks.”

  “Are you in Sir Julian’s corps?”

  “Hard to say. They keep shifting our brigade about a bit. We’re in trenches opposite Thiepval now, so I suppose we’re in the old boy’s domain. Anyway, I got an invitation to come for supper, so here I am. Did he give you chaps the picture yet?”

  “Just that the Fourth Army intends to break through the German lines in one day . . . and be in Bapaume with the cavalry within two. The ‘Big Push.’ Nothing new in that. This has to be the worst-kept secret of the war, but he didn’t explain the magic formula.”

  “Just as well,” Fenton said grimly. “It’s more wishful thinking than magic.” He strolled to the stone balustrade and looked out across the neatly trimmed gardens of the château toward the River Ancre, narrow and sluggish, curving past the orchards. On the skyline, brown sausage balloons hung motionless in the June heat. “Fifteen divisions in eighteen miles of trench. They say there are no more than six Boche divisions dug in over there, and two of those are in reserve. We’ve beaten them hollow—on paper.”

  Martin smiled and leaned against the balustrade beside him.

  “Pessimistic—as always.”

  Fenton stared gloomily at the landscape, following the distant flight of some British two-seaters by the trailing puffs of Archie bursts.

  “I can recall a similar observation of mine before Loos. Remember? The Café Bristol in Béthune, you and that fellow from the Daily Telegram telling me I was wrong because the Germans were outnumbered four to one. Machine guns and wire become great equalizers.”

  “I hear hints dropped that Haig has found the solution to that.”

  “No mystery about it—artillery and more artillery. In this case, one gun to every seventeen yards of German trench, with a day-and-night bombardment for a week before Z-Day.”

  “Good God,” Martin said quietly.

  Fenton’s smile was a shadow. “Sounds irresistible, doesn’t it? A total pulverizing of the Hun positions . . . destruction of the wire. But I have grave doubts about it and I’m not muttering alone. How much of the front have you seen, Martin?”

  “Not much. It’s been a controlled tour. No closer to the line than Albert. A German shell or two came over and they moved us back again. Three of us took a hotel room in Amiens. We’ll stay there during the offensive and get fed the communiqués—that is, unless we can manage to sneak up for a closer look.”

  “Won’t do you much good though, will it?”

  “Well, you know, the censors won’t permit anything that deviates too much from the official reports, but I’ve always managed to get a good story through from time to time.”

  “Are you still with the Post?”

  “No. Associated Press. Parted amicably from Lord Crewe. I’m based in Paris now and like it better.”

  “Jacob must miss your company.”

  “No one to clear up after him.”

  A heavy howitzer in a wood a mile away fired a round, the concussion rattling the château’s windows.

  “Firing for register,” Fenton said. “All new guns coming into position are allowed a few rounds to check their range. They’ll hear this barrage in England clearly enough when it gets going. Would you like a front-row seat? I can swing a special pass from the old boy.”

  “I would appreciate that very much.”

  “I wonder if you’ll appreciate it a week from now,” Fenton said.

  Mesnil-Martinsart, June 23, 1916

  This village is approximately in dead center of the British assault line, which begins at the Gommecourt salient seven miles to the north and ends eight miles to the south, where the British link up with the French in the marshes of the River Somme. The objective of the British offensive is the town of Bapaume, nine miles to the northeast, straddling the straight-as-an-arrow Roman road that runs from Amiens. The timetable calls for a total rupture of the German trench system on day one and the taking of Bapaume by the cavalry on day two. Roads and railways radiate from Bapaume to Arras and Cambrai, and a breakthrough there would put the British to the rear of the German armies with a good chance of rolling them up and forcing a major retreat. The optimism of the troops—Fenton and the old sweats excepted—verges on the ecstatic.

  “We’re going to scupper ’em, old chum,” a private in the 13th Yorks and Lancs (Barnsley Pals) told me. This is the New Army for the most part. Volunteers . . . men joining up together . . . battalions of friends and co-workers. Hull Tradesmen . . . Sheffield City Battalion . . . Grimsby Chums . . . Glasgow Tramways . . . Tyneside Irish . . . Liverpool Pals. Pals and chums and post office workers—even a group of footballers, cricketers, and Rugby players who formed a battalion. They have been tacked on to the traditional units of the army, but each group has its own particular and unique ties. A people’s army if there ever was one—like the army Grant led down the Mississippi to Vicksburg—and they are here on the Somme determined to win the war. The enthusiasm is electric.

  June 24

  The barrage began today. Birds flutter in confusion above Aveluy Wood. There is simply no way to describe the power of it. The earth rocks and the air reeks (battle-reporting cliché number 346, but, dammit, the earth does rock and the air does reek). Birds fly erratic patterns across the Aveluy-Hamel road into Thiepval Wood. Not a shred of cloud and the heat is intense. One can see—I’m sure of it—a twinkle of brassy specks far off in the sky as the howitzer shells pause in their arcs before plunging to earth.

  June 27

  In a front-line observation post with Fenton and several other officers. They are checking the effect of the bombardment on the German wire. Fenton and the others grim. The belts of wire with their inch-long barbs are a hundred yards deep in some places. A jungle of steel brambles. Artillery using 18-pounder guns firing shrapnel to cut the thickets. Not too effective. There are gaps here and there, but Fenton explained that the Germans will deliberately leave gaps so as to channelize attacks. Men bunched up going through a gap become easy targets for machine gunners. To compound their concern, one of those freak summer storms has swept in
, and the heavy rains will make the churned-up ground tough going for the infantry.

  Château Querrieux, June 28

  HQ of Sir Henry Rawlinson, commanding general of the Fourth Army. He has called a meeting of his corps commanders, and I have driven here with Sir Julian, who is in fine spirits. I tell him of Fenton’s concern about the wire.

  “Bugger the wire,” Sir Julian says.

  June 29

  Fenton’s battalion HQ. A comfortable old farmhouse. Excellent meal. Plenty of whiskey. Fenton tells it straight to his company commanders. Attack will jump off on the morning of July first. Sir Julian’s unconcern for the uncut wire is now obvious as Fenton reads a message sent down to all battalion commanders:

  “There will be nothing ahead of you but dead or wounded Germans and a few crazed derelicts. Troops may slope arms if they wish while crossing no-man’s-land. The bombardment will roll ahead of you and destroy any semblance of resistance.”

  “We will exercise full caution,” Fenton says tightly. “And we will move at the ready and as quickly as possible.”

  The barrage grows in intensity. Candle flames sway in the shock blasts. Looking outside, one can see nothing but bolts of flame erupting from the German front lines. It seems inconceivable that so much as a rat could be alive over there.

  “Colonel’s a bit of a worrier, isn’t he?” a young captain whispers in my ear.

  Thiepval Wood, July 1

  Men packed into the forward trenches five hundred yards from where I sit in what had once been a fine old wood. Most of the trees cut down, either by German shelling or by brigade artillery so as to give better fields of fire for their guns. Rain has stopped and the sky is clear, sun hot. Barrage has been continuous all night. Suddenly ceases at 7:30 A.M. Silence catches at the heart, and I can clearly hear the whistles blowing all up and down the line. One hundred fifty thousand Englishmen climb out of their trenches and start across. Twinkle of sunlight off bayonets for as far as the eye can see in both directions. Many men with rifles sloped. They are heavily laden and walk slowly, almost casually, in long lines . . . nearly shoulder to shoulder. I think of an illustration in a history book—8th grade?—the redcoats marching up Bunker Hill. A Highland battalion off to my right is being piped across.