by John Masters
Boy said, ‘Our patrols reported it was cut two days ago.’
‘Not ours, Boy. Patrols of the battalion that was holding the front then, and supposed to make all preparations for our attack …’ He slid back into the bottom of the crater. ‘Organize these men, Boy. I’m going to see how many others we have, then I’ll come back here. Get ready to resume the attack …’
He pushed himself up out of the crater and then, walking fast but not running, went to another shell hole nearby. A solitary German fired one shot, apparently at him, but missed, and Quentin disappeared into the shell hole.
Boy turned on a York and Lancs corporal – ‘What’s your name?’
‘Hatfield, sir.’
‘Put half the men here and half there. Check ammunition, grenades, gas masks. Fill up pouches from the dead. Get those two Lewis guns off the dead out there and use them here.’ His voice failed him. The corporal, pale and strained, waited. Boy finished, ‘Get on with it!’
He sat down on the sloping side, his legs turned to water. A voice nearby said quietly, “Tis a mess, an’ all, Boy.’
He looked up. Father Caffin’s tunic was covered with blood, as were his hands. He muttered, ‘You’re wounded.’
The priest shook his head, “Twas one of the boys I was holding in my arms just now.’
‘You weren’t supposed to come forward with us,’ Boy said.
‘Ach, I know, but how would any good Irishman be missing a fight like this?’
Boy looked round to see that none of the men could hear him, then said, ‘All these poor fellows … gone … and we’re nowhere …’
The priest laid a hand on his shoulder, “Twas not your fault, anyway. Or the colonel’s. They all know that.’
Colonel Rowland came tumbling into the crater behind them. He shouted, ‘B Company’s in the German trench! Up, everyone! Follow me!’
Private Niccolo Fagioletti stood frozen in the bottom of the German trench, his rifle gripped convulsively in his right hand. Men passed, hurrying, stumbling, bent on their own errands. Five dead Germans, all apparently destroyed by a single shell, were plastered in pieces against the walls and floor of the trench a little farther along, near the first traverse. From a great distance he heard voices, and recognized the sharp cockney twang of Sergeant Thompson, his platoon sergeant. Opposite him, sprawled back on a sort of seat cut out of what had been the front wall of the German trench and was now the back wall, Lieutenant Beldring stared at the sky, his skin chalky white, spittle dribbling from the corner of his half open mouth, both hands clasped over his belly, hiding the entry wounds of the three machine gun bullets that had hit him just before they reached and fell into the German trench.
Fagioletti realized that he himself was still alive. He could not believe it, and moved his left hand up in front of his face and stared at it. A violent trembling broke out all over his body, and he became aware of the sodden weight in his trousers, and the vile smell surrounding him.
‘Wot the bleedin’ ’ell do you think you’re doing, Dago?’ Sergeant Thompson was in front of him, screaming. ‘Gawd, you stink, man!’
‘I … I shitted myself,’ Fagioletti stammered.
‘There’s plenty done that. Clean yourself up and put on Jones ’65’s trousers – there. He won’t need ’em any more and ‘c’s about your size. Then get up on the firestep. Jerry’ll come back at us, and ’e won’t wait till you’re ready.’
Fagioletti unbuckled his equipment with trembling, clumsy fingers, took off his puttees and trousers, and wiped himself with water standing in the trench. After a long struggle he managed to get the trousers off the corpse of Private Jones ’65, and put them on. Now that he was dressed again, fear returned. Machine guns were opening up again. The trench was in bad shape, severely damaged by the long preliminary bombardment, but the deep dugouts were mostly untouched. He sneaked into the doorway of one, and started down the steps.
A roar behind him made him stop. ‘You, there! Come out … So it’s you, is it, Dago?’ Sergeant Thompson’s sharp face contorted as he grabbed Fagioletti by the ear, nearly wrenching it off as he dragged him back up the dugout steps. ‘There!’ he screamed, ‘there’s the firestep, that ammunition box, stand on it, face that way … Freeman, shoot this dago if he tries to sneak off.’ He bustled on, shouting oaths.
Gradually the line of men on the makeshift firestep – the real firestep faced the wrong way – lengthened and strengthened. Two captured German machine guns were in position, facing the Germans. It was nine o’clock, the sun climbing fast in the summer sky, aeroplanes – all British – buzzing and circling far and near.
Beldring began to moan. Fagioletti stole a glance behind him, and saw that the officer’s eyes were closed. Sergeant Thompson was on one knee beside him, speaking close – ‘You’ll be all right, sir … We’ll ’ave you out of ’ere in no time …’
Fagioletti turned again to face out over the shell-torn earth, the barbed wire, some cut, some undamaged, that protected the German reserve trenches, and the sunken concrete pillboxes, which did not seem to have been damaged much, if at all.
He heard a strong voice behind him speak sharply, ‘Who’s in command here?’ and Sergeant Thompson’s reply, ‘I am, sir.’
Fagioletti glanced round again and saw that the speaker was the C.O. of the battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Rowland. He had only seen him once, when he had addressed a few words to the draft, but Fagioletti had a good memory for names and faces. In his business, it meant a lot in tips to call a customer by his right name, especially if he hadn’t come in for some time. With the C.O. was the adjutant, whom he had seen two or three times, and knew was the C.O.’s nephew.
‘How’s Mr Beldring?’ the C.O. asked. Sergeant Thompson dropped his voice to reply, as though the wounded officer could hear – ‘Bad, sir.’
‘Have you given him morphine?’
‘Yes, sir. All I ’ad. ’E caught three or four in the stomach.’
‘Don’t give him any water then. It’s bad for stomach wounds. We’ll try to get him back when we can … Ah, Stratton, what’s the situation in your sector?’
‘Bad, sir,’ another voice answered. ‘My platoon was all but wiped out in the attack. I had three men when we got here … I’ve picked up a dozen more from other platoons, dozen Yorks and Lancs, and a few Devons.’
‘I’ll come and take a look. Boy, how many have we got together so far?’
‘About a hundred and sixty, sir … seven officers.’
The soldier on Fagioletti’s right shouted, ‘Here they come!’
A hurricane of German shells hit the trench. Fagioletti found Colonel Rowland standing on another ammunition box beside him, a rifle in his hand, glaring out into the flying earth, mud, and smoke. German soldiers were coming out of their reserve trenches a hundred yards on, in groups and bunches, darting forward, disappearing, reappearing. The captured machine guns were in action, with all available rifles and Lewis guns. The colonel began to shoot, aiming and firing methodically.
The colonel turned his head and snarled, ‘You’re not aiming, man! Aim! Kill a Hun each shot or by God they’ll kill you!’
Fagioletti tried to concentrate on the flitting grey figures out there … picked one out … steadied his sights … fired. The man fell, bounced, half rose, fell again.
‘I kill a man,’ he cried. ‘Oh God, I kill a man!’
The colonel did not respond. He must think I am mad, Fagioletti thought, and fired again, and again, increasing his rate of fire as the attacking Germans worked closer.
Now they were forty yards away … twenty … He never missed now, the wooden stock was hot to his left hand, the cordite acrid in his nostrils. The captured machine guns were eating great bites out of the German groups … not lines, Fagioletti noticed, but independently moving bunches, some sprawled or hidden, firing, others coming on at a run.
Potato masher bombs whirled through the air, to burst in the trench or on the earth in front of him, hurling mud into
his face.
The colonel leaped to his feet, ‘Up, Wealds! Give ’em the bayonet!’
He scrambled up and into the open. Fagioletti felt a hand shoving him from behind, and he was up, out. There was another officer beside him, the one he’d got drunk with in the Mess – Mr Campbell, now with rifle and bayonet in hand … They were on the Germans, face to face, hand to hand. He lunged at a big German at the moment that the man paused to fire at Mr Campbell. The bayonet slid into the German’s neck, grated on bone. Fagioletti pulled the trigger. The blast freed the bayonet from the German’s spine and he fell, crashing across Fagioletti’s feet. To the side, Mr Campbell was darting under the guard of another German, his bayonet sliding into the man’s belly just above the belt buckle.
The adjutant was out there, too, and seventy men of three battalions, milling together with the twenty Germans who had reached this far. Suddenly the Germans turned and fled, disappearing into the smoke. For a moment the British stood in the open, braying after them like triumphant cavemen, waving rifles in the air, blood dripping from the bayonets. Colonel Rowland grabbed Fagioletti’s arm and yelled, ‘We showed them!’
A wild exhilaration filled Fagioletti. He’d bayonetted two Germans … he’d shot half a dozen … he was alive … He screamed in his native Venetian, ‘Ligàvemo fermai – gàvemo copà quei porsei! ‘
Colonel Rowland shouted, ‘Back to the trench … hurry!’
They jumped back and down, just in time, as the German artillery observers, having seen the defeat of the counterattack, reopened fire on the captured trench.
Fagioletti was back on his ammunition box, facing out over the new No Man’s Land. A group of officers was just below and behind him, and he listened to them with a professional competence, just as he used to listen to diners’ conversation at two or three tables at once, separating out the voices from his post several yards away.
‘Another wave should have passed here long since,’ Colonel Rowland said. ‘If one doesn’t come soon, we ought to attack. Maintain the momentum of the attack, at all costs … that’s what the training memoranda all stressed.’
Boy Rowland said, ‘The pillboxes in their second and third lines don’t seem to have been damaged by our bombardment, sir. Nor the wire …’
‘They’re disorganized … just had their counter-attack beaten back,’ the colonel said. ‘But we’ll have to wait till dark … Meanwhile, we’ve got to let Brigade know what’s happening up here. No one’s seen any brigade runners or staff, have they?’
‘Not likely, sir.’ That was Lieutenant Fred Stratton, Fagioletti knew, his brother-in-law … or had been, until he divorced Ethel. He was glad he had not been put in Fred’s platoon. The Strattons were all angry with him.
The colonel said, ‘Then we’ll have to send someone … to make them understand we must have reinforcements here if we are to hold what we have, let alone continue the attack tonight … Mr Campbell, you’ll go.’
After a pause the officer answered, ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Get back to Brigade any way you can. Take one man as escort. Tell them that I have about a hundred and fifty men and seven officers …’
‘Six, sir,’ the adjutant cut in. ‘Major Dodson was killed in that last German attack.’
‘Take over his company, Boy. And when you come back, you’ll act as adjutant, Campbell. … Tell them we’re holding the old German front line trench from the edge of Mametz Wood to a point about three hundred yards east of it. The German wire is uncut in front of us, and their concrete pillboxes are undamaged. I need information about the position on our flanks … and reinforcements – quickly.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Fagioletti felt a tap on his legs. ‘You, Private Fagioletti … come with me.’
Fagioletti slid down into the trench. The colonel said, ‘Go with Mr Campbell. You’ve done well today. What’s your name?’
‘Fagioletti, sir.’
‘I’ll remember you. Mr Stratton, take command of the sector from here to Mametz Wood. Make sure that the Germans can’t infiltrate past you through the wood.’
‘There’s not many trees left standing now, sir.’
‘Boy, go and take over the right sector … and, of course, what’s left of D, wherever you can find them. And send me C.S.M. Dalley, if he’s alive … I want him as R.S.M.’
‘Come along, Fagioletti,’ Mr Campbell said. ‘We’ll have a tot of rum at Brigade … if we get there in one piece.’
‘Very good, sir,’ Fagioletti said. He unfixed his bayonet, made sure his magazine was full, and followed Mr Campbell up into the open, running from shell hole to shell hole, among sporadic explosions, under the random rattle of machine gun fire, past still smoking craters, over uncountable silent dead, and moaning wounded.
Candles guttered in the crowded dugout. Colonel Rowland continued, ‘The two companies from the 17th Connaught Rangers are due to join us here by midnight, and attack with us. You’ll have guides in our old front line trench, Mr Campbell, to bring them forward from there.’
‘Aye, sir … yes, sir.’
‘The artillery barrage will begin at first light, when the spotters can see the targets. The heavies will be directed specifically at the German pillboxes and wire … We will attack in two waves, at seven-thirty ack emma. Our first objective is the new German front line trench, but there will be no delay on that, and troops will advance straight on to the second objective, which is the German reserve trench … lines of advance will be by compass, bearing 20 degrees magnetic … that line will be adhered to at all costs …’
He went on … creeping barrage … rate of advance … necessity of keeping close behind the barrage … forming waves … wire … unexpended portion of the day’s ration, if any (the men haven’t had any rations, or fresh water, all day, Boy thought, as he listened, taking notes, an army message pad on his knee) … intercommunication … success signals … It was all a repeat of the scene the day before, except that that had been by daylight, and this was in the dusk, in a German dugout … and so many faces, grown familiar, had gone … Dodson, Burke-Greve, Beldring, Jackson, Le Fevre, Nichols, Foy, Scott, Jerram, all dead … Kellaway, Garvey, Gates, Churchill-Gatty, Stroud, Buchman-Smythe, wounded … and the men – over five hundred.
The German dugout still smelled of German cigar smoke, German officers’ equipment still hung on nails from the beams, the crowded British faces wavered in German candle light – Campbell, the old Scotsman he’d barely seen, come here under a cloud for getting drunk with an O.R. in the Depot Mess – he’d done all right today, though: Fred Stratton, confident, assertive, a new man … young Dale, gawky as a scarecrow but otherwise very Sandhurst, didn’t need to shave yet – he’d done well, too … a York and Lancs subaltern just out from home, and almost dumb with the shock of what he’d seen … Father Caffin, there was a good one; he’d be pleased to see the Catholic Connaughts when they came up … but he was just as good with the Kentish and Cockney Protestants of the Wealds …
What had happened today? He ought to find out. Everyone ought to know, to make sure it didn’t happen again. On this part of the front it had certainly been a disaster, only the stubborn courage of the men shining through the murk of failure. But it was all going to repeat itself tomorrow …
His uncle said, ‘Any questions?’
No one spoke and Quentin said, ‘Dismiss, then, and good luck tomorrow. I’ll be round soon after midnight, when I’ve seen the Connaughts in, and made sure they understand the orders.’
The officers rose from the bench and ammunition boxes and sandbags they had been sitting on, saluted, and filed out into the trench. There was no moon, and starlight gleamed dully on the bayonets of the sentries along the firestep – one-third of all men were on sentry duty, the rest sleeping at their feet in the bottom of the trench, their rifles cuddled in their arms.
The Yorks and Lancs subaltern had been appointed Boy’s second-in-command, and the two now stumbled along one behind the other, trying not
to tread on sleeping soldiers, edging round traverses, squeezing past N.C.O.s patrolling the trench, until they reached the dugout in the middle of Boy’s sector where he had established his headquarters. Sergeant Thompson was waiting there, and Boy said, ‘I’ll give all N.C.O.s orders in ten minutes, Sergeant, here.’
‘They’re eating now, sir. We found a string of Jerry sausages, and a sack of bread – black bread, it is.’
Boy led into the dugout, dropped the gas curtain into place, fumbled for a match, and lit the solitary candle that stood in a bottle on the table. He sank down wearily onto the backless chair on one side of the table, the subaltern onto the other, facing him. He was about twenty. He stared fixedly at Boy, his mouth working, and finally burst out in a marked Lancashire accent – ‘It will be joost the same as t’day! We’ll all be killed!’
Boy said, ‘Not all … some.’
‘Boot …’
‘It’s a dangerous war,’ Boy snapped. Privately he thought that if the Germans were guilty of atrocities, the British generals certainly were for the planning of today’s attack. Any other soldiers would have shot their officers in the back and run. Perhaps it would be better if they had. Then the brass hats back there would have had to face the facts. As it was, nothing went through … pale, frightened, hungry, thirsty, filthy, the British infantry stuck it; and the brass hats could report … victory.
‘Smarten up,’ he said sharply to the subaltern. ‘The N.C.O.s will be here in a minute and I don’t want them to think we don’t believe entirely in what we’re going to do.’ God, he thought, my voice was exactly like Uncle Quentin’s when I said that.
Quentin Rowland sat on an ammunition box in the dugout where he had given his orders. It seemed much larger now, with only himself, Father Caffin, and Campbell in it. A half empty bottle of German champagne stood on the battered table between two guttering candles. He was puffing on his last fill of tobacco, and his arm still hurt, but he felt a slow, solid content. The battalion had done magnificently. No other soldiers could have done it … just citizen soldiers, too, for the old regulars he’d commanded at Mons and Le Cateau and First Ypres were long gone. In spite of the tremendous artillery preparation, in the end the work had had to be done with bare hands. Tomorrow they’d finish this part of the job … and the day after, the next … and then the next …