Heart of War

by John Masters

  ‘They’re the best things he’s ever done,’ Fiona said angrily, ‘and do you know why?’

  ‘No, I can’t think.’

  ‘Because Quentin’s perverted him, so that he feels more for those men, the soldiers, than he does for anything or anybody else. He’s painted me a dozen times, clothed, nude, head and shoulders. None was half as good as these. He knew … But now he sees the soldiers as Quentin always has, as a lover should, as a mother would … he was my lover, but I could not arouse that insight.’ She laughed again, high and bitter – ‘He used to make love to his models … I was never jealous. He didn’t love them, he loved me. I would never lose him to any of them. Now I have lost him … to my husband! What do you think of that?’

  Stella waited a minute before saying, ‘I really think I must be going now, Aunt Fiona.’

  El Paso, Texas

  The ancient Hupmobile taxi wheezed to a stop outside the open iron gate with the big white-painted arch over it proclaiming HEADQUARTERS 16th U.S. INFANTRY. ‘Not allowed to pass here ’less I’m carrying an officer’ the driver said in a Tex-Mex singsong. Johnny scrambled out, pulling his heavy suitcase after him, and stood a moment, stretching in the sun. The buildings of the barracks shimmered in the heat, white waves of sun glared off the gravelly dust of the parade ground. A company of soldiers in faded khaki, their campaign hats ringed with the blue cord of the infantry, marched and counter-marched, the dust swirling round their leggings, rifles steady on the right shoulders. Johnny listened to the barked commands of the sergeants – ‘Left face! … Left shoulder – arms! … About – face!’ … sergeants calling the cadence, bawling imprecations and oaths … silence again, but for the tramp tramp of the boots.

  From behind him the driver called, ‘Hey meester, pay opp so’s I can go. I seen more of these sonsabeetches than I want to awreddy.’

  Johnny turned and gave the man his fare, passed under the arch and trudged up the dusty road, lined with whitewashed stones, that led to a building set between two white flagpoles, one flying the flag of the United States, the other the crested blue flag of the 16th U.S. Infantry. After a while he paused to rest, lowering his suitcase, finding a handkerchief in the breast pocket of his Brooks Brothers seersucker suit, and mopping his forehead. Another man passed him, this one carrying nothing, a squat young man about five foot seven inches tall, and almost as wide, his face dark brown and square as the body, on his head a tall black cowboy hat, domed, an eagle’s feather in the beaded band, from under which hung down on both sides shiny locks of straight black hair. He was wearing a pair of old torn khaki drill trousers and a cotton shirt of the same colour; and on his feet deerskin moccasins tied with a thin strip of leather – an obvious Indian. Johnny picked up his suitcase and trudged on, the Indian now a few paces in front of him.

  As they neared the building with the flags, Johnny saw a sentry standing at parade rest outside the door, under a thatched awning. The Indian had stopped, staring from side to side. Johnny stepped in front of the sentry, and said, ‘I want to enlist. Where do I go?’

  The sentry jerked his head over his shoulder – ‘In there, second door on the right.’

  The Indian had listened, but not spoken. Now, as Johnny picked up his suitcase, and entered the building, the Indian followed. They turned down a narrow passage, hot and airless. Johnny knocked at the second door on the right. No answer. They waited. Johnny knocked again. A deep voice from behind the door roared, ‘Come in!’ Johnny opened the door. The room contained a table covered with papers, and behind it a chair, occupied by a huge man in his forties, in uniform, three chevrons on each sleeve. He must be six foot two or three, Johnny thought, and over two hundred and thirty pounds. This terrifying apparition bawled, ‘This is the Army, you dumb hayseeds, not a ladies’ piss house. What do you want?’

  ‘I want to enlist, sir,’ Johnny said.

  ‘Don’t call me “sir,” ’the sergeant snapped. ‘I’m Sergeant Leary and I’m the poor son of a bitch who has to train recruits.’ He turned to the Indian – ‘You want to enlist, too, Chief?’

  The Indian nodded. The sergeant said to Johnny, ‘What do you want to enlist for?’

  ‘We’re at war, for democracy,’ Johnny said. ‘I think it’s every able-bodied man’s duty to …’ He said no more; whatever it was, it would sound pompous. The sergeant turned to the Indian – ‘You, why do you want to enlist? You a patriot, too? You’re a Navajo, aren’t you?’

  The Indian said nothing and the sergeant shouted, ‘Don’t you speak English? I got enough troubles without trying to teach poor bastards who don’t understand what I’m telling ’em!’

  The Indian said, ‘No food. Four days.’

  The sergeant, whose Irish accent was becoming more marked as time passed, said, ‘You walked in from the reservation? In four days?’

  ‘Gallup, in wagon,’ the young Indian said. ‘Rode Santa Fe freight, Belen … two days, freight to here … No food at home.’

  Johnny listened in horror. If he’d known, if the man had told him, he could have stood him a meal, at least. There was a taco stand right outside the gate … It was too late now; the sergeant was pulling a sheaf of papers toward him. ‘O.K.,’ he said, looking up at Johny. ‘Name?’

  ‘John de Lisle Merritt … River House, Nyack, New York … and in case of injury you’d better notify my wife, Mrs John Merritt, The Cottage, Beighton, Kent, England.’

  ‘By special cable? Any more addresses? What about your club? … All right then. Grade school?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Did you get through grade school, dummy?’

  ‘B.A. Harvard, 1914, sir – sergeant.’

  ‘Christ!’ the sergeant said, ‘and you’re married. You must have murdered someone to be enlisting.’ He turned to the Indian – ‘Name?’

  ‘Chee Shush Benally.’

  The sergeant laid down his pen – ‘Mother of God, spell it – slowly.’

  The Indian said nothing, and Johnny cut in – ‘Perhaps he doesn’t know how it’s spelled, if he can’t write.’

  ‘When I want your help, rookie, I’ll ask for it … Say that again, Chief.’

  ‘Chee … Shush … Benally.’

  The sergeant wrote painstakingly, muttering, ‘I suppose that means Rain-on-the-Mountains or Two-Dogs-Fucking.’

  The Indian spoke unexpectedly, ‘Red Bear’s Grandson.’

  ‘Eh? O.K., there’s half a dozen other Indians in the outfit and three of them are Navajo, I know. You won’t be seeing anything of them till you’re fit to wear our uniform off the post here … Raise your right hands … Swear after me … Sign here … Make a mark, Chief, an X – like this, see … All right, now you’re sojers in the United States Army. You’re recruits in the best goddamned regiment in the Army, which means in the world. And the latrine rumour is that we’ll be heading for France soon, because Black Jack Pershing knows us and he knows we’re the best, so he has asked for us.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Johnny said.

  The sergeant glared at him – ‘Did I ask you to open your big mouth, rookie? … How do you know?’

  ‘The Secretary of War, Mr Baker, told me. That’s why I wanted to enlist in this regiment, particularly.’

  ‘Oh, is it?’ Sergeant Leary said. ‘Well, next time you write, give Mr Baker Sergeant Leary’s compliments and tell him his little friend’s starting his very first K.P. this very evening … Now, listen to what I’m going to tell you, and you’ll be O.K. There are three ways of doing anything – the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way. You do it the Army way, always! … Johnson!’

  An old soldier came in, chewing on a dead cigar – ‘Take these men to the supply sergeant and have them fitted out. Then they go to the Recruit Barrack, beds 47 and 48, both in Corporal Jalnik’s squad. Then take them to the mess hall and have Cookie give ’em some chow. They’re starving … least, the Chief is. Don’t suppose you’ve ever known what it is to be even a bit hungry, eh, Harvard?’

  Johnny
thought carefully and said, ‘No, sergeant. Not yet.’

  The Western Front

  The headquarters of the 1st Battalion the Weald Light Infantry were in the ruins of Feuchy, beside the Scarpe on the Arras front, with B and D Companies in the front line of trenches, and A and C in reserve. Most of the brigade machine guns were massed on slightly rising ground in the south sector of the front, under brigade control, where they could enfilade the brigade’s front. The brigade had two battalions up, two back. The 1st Wealds were left forward, the 9th Leinsters right forward, the 11th Devons left rear, and the 24th South Wales Borderers right rear. The corps had occupied these and many more trenches of the area between April 6th and 10th, when patrols had revealed the unbelievable – the Germans had abandoned them without a fight, slipping off eastward in the night.

  Lieutenant Colonel Quentin Rowland was in his battalion headquarters dugout, until 1915 the cellar of one of the little village’s larger houses. He was sitting at a makeshift table, puffing at his pipe, half listening to the soft brogue of Father Caffin, just outside the dugout, telling a story to the battalion runners. ‘So Doctor Geoghegan took his little black bag and drove the trap round to Mrs Murphy’s cottage and asked, “An’ how’s the diarrhoea this morning, Mrs Murphy?” and Mrs Murphy sez, ‘A little thicker, thank you, Doctor.’” The soldiers chuckled, the priest began another story, Quentin frowned … damned Irish … damned Germans … damned war … He took his pipe from his mouth and said, ‘The Boches must have known about our offensive and just pulled back, so that we’d hit empty air. Clever swine.’

  His adjutant, Lieutenant Archie Campbell, looked up from the Army form he was filling in, reporting the number of skilled blacksmiths and plumbers they had in the battalion, and said, ‘Yes, sir … There wasn’t much secrecy about that French push … or ours, since we were conforming.’

  ‘Pity we didn’t patrol harder,’ Quentin said. ‘Then perhaps we’d have caught them on the move … with one foot off the ground, so to speak.’

  Archie said nothing. His commanding officer often talked more or less to himself.

  Quentin said, ‘Well, they won’t slip away next time we attack. They’ll have to hold the Hindenburg line.’

  ‘It’ll be a tough nut to crack, sir,’ Archie said. ‘Concrete machine-gun posts, tunnels fifty feet down for the men to shelter in until our bombardment lifts. That last Intelligence report from interrogation of P.O.W.s was very interesting.’

  Quentin said, ‘One thing I don’t understand, is why they didn’t include that little rise on the right of our sector, Hill 44, in their line. They could have done it perfectly easily, but … ’

  A series of deafening crashes shook the ground about them. Bricks from ruined walls tumbled onto the cellar’s corrugated iron and earth roof. Five in the afternoon, Archie thought, strange time for the Hun to have a hate. The colonel was on his feet, reaching for his steel helmet. His gas mask was already slung on his chest, the leather Sam Browne buckled, the Webley .455 in its holster. ‘Better take a look see,’ the colonel said. ‘Come along.’

  He walked up the cellar steps until his head and shoulders were above ground. Archie quailed a moment, then followed and stood beside him. All round, shells were bursting with a continuous roar, fountains of mud rising, falling back, splashing on the heavy earth. ‘Hitting our front lines,’ the C.O. muttered.

  The telephone in the cellar rang and Archie ran back down inside, glad of the excuse – ‘Hullo … battalion headquarters here.’ It was Captain Kellaway, commanding B Company – ‘Heavy artillery fire on our positions, Campbell … and now the Germans are assaulting across our front, aiming at D, I think … I’m putting up the S.O.S. Very lights.’

  ‘How many enemy attacking?’ Archie shouted, for he could hardly hear above the sudden din.

  ‘Looks like a battalion, at least. It’s … ’

  The line went dead. Archie swore and ran up the steps. ‘B Company reports a German battalion attacking D, sir,’ he said. ‘There goes the S.O.S !’ A red Very light rose and burst and hung in the bright sky, followed by a green and another green. The British artillery began to fire, shells of light and medium calibre whistling overhead.

  ‘Why aren’t the machine guns firing?’ the C.O. said. He raised his binoculars, stared a moment, then muttered, ‘I can see Germans. The whole hill’s gone … Here, we’d better get forward.’

  With Archie at his heels he ran across a patch of open ground and dropped into the communication trench. The German artillery had blocked them off on all sides, so no reinforcements could come forward. Well, they’d taken the words out of his mouth … staged an attack to correct what experience had shown them was a tactical fault in their line.

  C Company, now commanded by his nephew, Boy Rowland, was standing to, as he passed. Boy was there, white faced, hands shaking but face set, standing on the firestep, looking forward.

  ‘Watch your right flank, Boy,’ Quentin snapped. ‘They’ve got Hill 44 … probably wiped out all the machine guns … the swine must have attacked before their barrage lifted.’

  ‘I think they walked right into it,’ Boy said. ‘Must have lost a lot of men to their own guns, but they were into our machine guns before anyone was sure that they’d left their trenches.’

  ‘Hold tight,’ Quentin said, ‘they want Feuchy, and they’re not going to get it.’

  He hurried on up the muddy trench, with its dugouts all facing the wrong way, but deep, well revetted and roofed, and still smelling of German tobacco, German socks, German garlic sausage. Ten minutes later, struggling past many wounded lying in the bottom of the trench, Caffin and Campbell at his heels, 5.9 shells still crashing and exploding all round, he found Kellaway on the firestep, a rifle in his hand, aiming and firing at unseen targets. He scrambled up to join him, and as soon as he could see over the top, gasped, ‘My God!’

  The ground in front was full of Germans, coming with bayonets agleam, groups here, running forward, groups there tumbling into shell holes for cover. A single machine gun from the Leinsters had seen what was happening and opened fire across the front. Archie Campbell was at his side, thrusting a rifle into his hands. He rested it on the sandbags and began to fire.

  ‘They’ve overrun D, sir,’ Kellaway shouted, between the rapid crack crack of his shots. All along the trench the soldiers were firing, not the murderous rapid fire of the old regulars of Mons and Le Cateau, but good enough. Five Lewis guns rattled in short, vicious bursts.

  Ten Germans reached the British wire, which had been cut in several places by the savage bombardment. Campbell got one, Kellaway another, and Quentin had a third in his sights when a potato masher bomb, landing just in front of him, sent splinters clanging off his helmet, half stunned him and threw mud into his eyes. He fell back into the trench, wiped his eyes, picked up his rifle and rejoined the others. In the minute or so that he had been down, the German attack had withered. The few visible were dead, hanging over the wire, kneeling with their faces in the mud, lying on their backs, arms thrown out … one crawling blindly on hands and knees, his entrails dragging. A soldier to Quentin’s right took aim and fired. The crawling man dropped, at peace.

  Quentin said, ‘Take a look round, Kellaway … Plenty of ammunition?’

  ‘For a few hours, sir,’ Kellaway said.

  ‘Just hold hard. They’ll attack again … Come along, Campbell. Got to find out what happened to D.’

  Swine, he thought, as he worked his way along the trench, attacking without a real barrage, at five in the afternoon … clever swine. That machine gun from the Leinsters had saved their bacon, in B Company … too late to save D, apparently.

  They came to a knot of men facing a traverse, rifles aimed at the point where the trench itself turned at the traverse. Lieutenant Fred Stratton was there, with a sergeant and half a dozen private soldiers. Two dead Germans lay in the trench bottom, near the traverse. He said, ‘What’s the matter, Stratton?’

  Stratton did not move.
He was pressed back against the parados, his revolver drawn and aimed, his eyes never leaving the traverse ahead, ‘Germans in D Company trenches, sir,’ he said briefly over his shoulder. ‘Those two came on and were round the traverse almost before we knew it. We got them, but …’

  A group of potato masher bombs, four or five almost together, whirled over the traverse and landed in the trench. As they exploded the sergeant dropped, screaming, a private soldier fell back against the parapet, slowly slipping down. A German officer came darting round the traverse, Mauser blazing, soldiers hard on his heels. Quentin whipped up his rifle and fired. The officer fell. German bullets, fired from the hip, smacked by Quentin. Stratton’s revolver was barking, the heavy lead bullets slamming into the Germans at five paces. Quentin shouted, ‘Bayonets, Wealds, bayonets!’ and rushed forward, stabbing fiercely. For a few moments the bay was a scene of total turmoil, men pushing, shoving, stabbing, shooting, falling, dying in the confined space. More Germans stormed round the traverse. From the other direction Captain Kellaway arrived with a dozen men, each man’s pockets full of Mills bombs. They threw them over the traverse into the next bay, where the Germans were coming from. As they burst in a long boo-boo-boo-boom-boom, the Wealds finished off the Germans in their own bay. No more came round the traverse.

  ‘Any wire here?’ Quentin asked.

  Stratton said, ‘Some, sir. We were going to do some rewiring out there tonight.’

  ‘Bring some rolls here. Block the trench at the traverse, where you can cover it … Watch your reserve trenches, Kellaway, they may try to come in through there … Any communication at all with D?’

  ‘No, sir … Battalion headquarters called me to ask where you were. They say they can’t get D by any means.’

  ‘Assume they’ve been wiped out, then,’ Quentin said.

  He walked back along the trench, thinking. His right front company had gone, his left front holding, but with difficulty. German artillery was still isolating the battalion from help … they’d have to help themselves. Could he get through to the guns? Counter attack with A and C, to recapture D’s position? … Do it from B’s area, laterally along the trenches, not up across open ground from the reserve area?