Heart of War

by John Masters

  Campbell said, ‘I’ve been very happy in the Wealds, sir. Please don’t have me transferred out of the regiment altogether.’

  ‘Out of the regiment?’ the C.O. growled. ‘What are you talking about? You’re not leaving this battalion. You’ll stay here. I’m not going to start training another adjutant … I’m going round our trenches. Stay by the telephone here. If any message comes from brigade, send to find me at once. It will be important. They might tell us not to retire – that they’re going to break through and reinforce us … I’ll be back in an hour.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  Quentin was on his way back to his command dugout. All was well, the moon was still bright and would last most of the rest of the night, being five days past full. That might mean trouble, if the German machine gunners spotted them as they started their withdrawal, but it was a chance he’d have to take. Withdrawal after daylight would be impossible – and if they stayed they’d be wiped out by the next German counterattack, this time properly organized, and with heavy artillery support; for the fall of the German harassing fire – still in progress – showed that by now they had plotted quite precisely what area of their trenches was held by the British.

  But there was also the chance to give the Boches a bloody nose, if reinforcements came up; or perhaps even to hold onto these advanced outworks of the Hindenburg Line. That attack at dusk yesterday had taken the Hun by surprise; now if only the brigade could get through with some message, bring up reserves, wire, more machine guns, put the artillery onto pounding the Germans opposite – this could be consolidated, held … But no one had got through, neither the men the Wealds had sent back nor those the brigade had sent forward – if any.

  He was three bays from the headquarters dugout when a sentry on the firestep, facing the front, turned round sharply and said, ‘Someone coming from be’ind!’ He swung up his rifle as Quentin leaped up onto the parados – the German firestep a few hours ago – and peered out, revolver outthrust. He saw a figure stumbling, crawling on, and in the moonlight clearly recognized the British steel helmet. ‘Don’t fire!’ he snapped at the sentry. ‘One of ours.’

  The stumbling man at last reached the trench, slid down into it, struggled back to his feet, and peered up – ‘Who’s there? Is this the Wealds?’

  ‘Yes, I’m the C.O.,’ Quentin said eagerly. ‘Are you from brigade?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  At last, Quentin thought! We’re in touch again. To the runner he said, ‘You’re wounded.’

  ‘Not bad, sir. Through the arm … had to drop my rifle, though.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Saw some Jerries back there, so I crawled round them … ran into some of our blokes, too … don’t know what push they was from … They didn’t know where you was, so … kept on.’

  ‘Good man!’

  ‘The message is in my breast pocket, sir … can’t get it out.’

  Quentin eagerly fumbled with the man’s pocket button, found the message and started for his dugout, turning only to say to the nearest soldier, ‘Look after this man.’

  They were through! Anything was possible now … he could almost hear the clink of bayonets as reinforcements came up … the deeper heavier beat from the guns … must remember to put that runner in for an M.M., at the least, for what he’d faced and overcome to bring the message up …

  He reached the double-blanket-shielded door of the dugout, carefully passed through the light and gas blocks, and entered. Campbell and Caffin jumped to their feet as Quentin cried exultantly, ‘A message from brigade!’

  He unfolded the message form and read:

  MOST URGENT

  To: OC 1 WLI

  From: G.H.Q., B.E.F.

  Ref. I.O.D. Lucknow Letter 729573 dated August 1, 1914 and reminders. If Lieutenant C.J.C. Rowland 2 WLI att 1 WLI does not pay Rs. 64-10-1 into Paymaster Funds immediately on account of pakhals lost April 7, 1914, and finding of Court of Inquiry held Lucknow Jul 6 1914 subsequently confirmed by G.O.C. Lucknow District, orders for Lieutenant Rowland’s arrest will be issued by Brigade commander concerned.

  Quentin’s head slowly sank and his shoulders hunched. Slowly he composed himself. This was the Army. Orders – must be obeyed. After a time he said to his adjutant, ‘Give this message to Boy when you can, Campbell. Tell him to give you a cheque, at once, and you send it on.’

  ‘Yes, sir … Then we’ll retire to our old positions fifteen minutes before dawn, as you ordered?’

  ‘Yes … Damn it, damn it!’

  The brigadier general was angry, his face red under the red banded hat, his neck muscles swelling up as he banged the table in his headquarters, two miles behind the front line ‘Why did you not have sentries posted?’ he snapped.

  ‘We did, sir,’ Quentin said. ‘They saw the Germans as soon as they left their trenches, and called the Stand-to.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you halt the attack, then?’

  ‘They came on too fast, sir, before their barrage lifted.’

  ‘You were taken by surprise, then?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Quentin answered after a momentary hesitation. The general wasn’t being quite fair. All standing orders had been obeyed – their own, brigade’s, and division’s. The Germans had just come too fast, and in too great numbers, using the ground well … and the British artillery response to the S.O.S. had been a few seconds slower than it should have been …

  The Brigade Major, a beautiful young man from the 4th Hussars, stood behind the general’s desk, trying to look sympathetic, but only succeeding in looking debonair and bored.

  The brigadier general said, ‘How we ever got your battalion out of the mess you had it in, I don’t know. But with luck – much more luck than you deserved – we did. I had to report to the divisional commander what was happening – as far as I could make out. He was not pleased.’

  Naturally, Quentin thought. It had all been very messy, for nearly twelve hours, until finally everyone seemed to have infiltrated back into the positions they’d been occupying before the Germans broke the peace.

  The brigadier general said, ‘I was seriously thinking of relieving you of command of your battalion, Rowland, but there are extenuating circumstances. And your action in attacking and capturing part of the German front line was most commendable … By itself, that would have merited me recommending you for a D.S.O., but … well, consider yourself lucky you’re still in command.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

  ‘That’s all.’

  Quentin saluted, turned about, and marched out. Campbell was waiting for him and walked back at his side as they headed up the muddy shell-torn pave for the front. Pollarded willows followed the course of a little stream, here poplars lined the road, there a broken brick wall and a calvary marked a crossroads. Just ahead, the path sank into the earth and became a trench.

  Campbell said at last, ‘What did the general say, sir?’

  ‘Said we’d been surprised.’

  ‘That’s a lie!’ Campbell exploded. ‘We were just overwhelmed.’

  ‘He was pleased about our counter-attack. If it hadn’t been for that, he would have stellenbosched me.’

  Campbell broke out violently, ‘The bloody fool! He was the one who was taken by surprise, with nothing allotted to protect that flank, and the brigade’s machine guns put so far forward they were overrun in the first wave!’

  ‘Don’t speak of superior officers like that, Campbell,’ Quentin said. He trudged on, but felt better. The men had done well, whatever the general said.

  Half an hour later they came to battalion headquarters, back in the cellar of the ruined house in the centre of Feuchy. A clerk was waiting at the table, with a sheet of paper held in one hand. He saluted – ‘Casualty list, as reported by companies at ten ack emma, sir … And 2nd Lieutenants Cate and Harbeston have just reported for duty, from the Depot, sir.’

  Quentin took off his helmet and hung it on its peg. To Campbell he said, ‘I
’ll see them in a few minutes – when I’ve had a look at this.’

  He sat down and began to study the list … most from D Company which had been overrun in the beginning. They must have put up a stiff fight, though … died hard … Then B, which had done the counter-attack: not many from A or C. He began to read:

  Killed: Major Green, D. W., Lieutenant Reeves, J. R., 2nd Lieutenant Bevington, P.

  Died of Wounds: 2nd Lieutenant Marlowe, C.

  Killed: Sergeant Bygrave, M., Sgt Braddock, R., Cpl Brooks, G., Cpl Lemon, T., Cpl Smith, G. J., Ptes Scannel, Bartholomew, Shelley, Garner, Farley – old soldier, Farley: was in his platoon in South Africa – Galvin, Cantrell, Faraday, Daly, Bitting, Bracken, Watt, Nealy, Jones, Jevons, Garrick, Constable, Trevithick, More, Donne …

  He found tears clouding his vision. Out there, they were the anonymous dead. To him they were his flesh. ‘Oh my men, my men,’ he gasped … and everything was back as it was, by the Scarpe, except the dead.

  He read on: Bunyan, Turner, Gibbon, Darwin …

  Daily Telegraph, Tuesday, May 29, 1917

  NEW SUCCESSES OF THE ITALIAN ARMY BRILLIANT RESULTS

  From Our Own Correspondent, Rome, Monday. After six days of battle the Italian Army is still fresh and almost intact, as before the offensive. Never have such brilliant results been obtained with so few losses, and never have the enemy’s losses in killed and wounded been so serious … The Austrians have suffered very heavy losses in machine guns, which have been destroyed or captured, but they withdrew their big guns while the battle was in progress. Through a gap made near Medeazza Italian troops are pouring round Mount Hermada, whose fate is sealed. The Austrians are hastily constructing other defences east of Hermada and closer to Trieste …

  Well, good, Cate thought. The Italians and Austrians seem well matched to each other; but they’d better look out if the Germans send some divisions down there. Everything he had read and heard made it clear that the German soldier – officer and man – was a great fighter. Many individual Austrians might be too, of course – but then there’d be Croats and Slovenes and Montenegrins and Hungarians with no stomach for the business, particularly since the unifying grandfather figure of old Mutton Chops, Francis Joseph, had gone.

  He put down the paper. There was to be a meeting of the Mid Scarrow War Problems Committee this afternoon. The agenda that he’d been sent already looked as though they’d be at it a long time – increasing amount of rape and molestation of women on non-corridor trains; care of old people living alone, when so many of those who would in normal times have been looking after them had left home to work in factories hundreds of miles away; day care for children of mothers working in the munition factories.

  Sufficient unto the day: he turned to his mail – three letters: one from Naomi, one from Guy, one from Charlotte, his brother Oswald’s widow; he hoped she wasn’t inviting herself to Walstone for a visit: wouldn’t read that now – it might spoil his kedgeree … Naomi was feeling very restless in London and had just about made up her mind to transfer to the F.A.N.Y. He used his butter knife to open Guy’s letter and settled down to read, with pleasure.

  25

  The Western Front: Wednesday, June 6, 1917

  Guy Rowland adjusted his goggles and looked quickly round the sky … a summer morning over Artois, climbing eastward, altitude ten thousand feet; scattered cumulus cloud to the south, over the Somme; below, the zigzag lines of the trenches, the wide dark carpets of barbed wire, in between and for miles to east and west the pockmarked earth, a patient dying of smallpox. The sun shone on the torn roof of Arras cathedral and the great cobbled ‘places.’ Nearer to hand, flying in tight stepped-up echelon of Vs, were the other S.E. 5 As of Three Threes; to the north, and lower, two squadrons of Bristol F 2 Bs.

  He was flight commander now and, keeping an eye on his squadron commander, he noticed that the major’s machine was climbing a little more steeply than his own. He eased his throttle forward, and pulled the control column a fraction closer to his belly. The little biplane answered like a rocket and in a moment he found himself surging past the level of the major’s left wing tip. The goggled head turned, and he could imagine the punitive glare in the concealed eyes. ‘Sorry,’ he said aloud, knowing that no one could hear; and eased his craft back into position. These little blighters were very light on the controls … wish he’d had more time to get used to them, but they’d only arrived three days ago, and yesterday everyone had had to take his own machine up, individually, to try it out and get the feel of it. Obviously he himself had not succeeded very well. But what bliss it was to have a liquid cooled V-8 engine, and a real working throttle, with total command of power, instead of that mass of machinery whirling round in front of you, and only the most elementary control of it!

  From the corner of his eye he caught an unusual change in the pattern of the Bristols and quickly looked to his own rear. The S.E. 5 A was equipped with two machine guns, a Vickers synchronized to fire forward through the arc of the propeller, and a Lewis gun mounted on top of the upper wing. A dexterous pilot, having stalked an enemy aircraft from below could, while flying his machine with one hand, pull down the butt of the Lewis gun with the other, and send a stream of bullets into the German from underneath.

  The sky beyond the Bristols was dark with what looked like a flock of big birds, brightly coloured – Albatros D Ills, the machines that had caused the Royal Flying Corps to name this past April, 1917, ‘Bloody April.’ His squadron commander tipped over and dived straight toward the Albatroses. Already a Bristol had got one of them, a long trail of black smoke spiralling up from a twisting, falling Albatros. Guy felt the familiar cold settle in the pit of his stomach, the steady warmth in his hands and feet on the controls, his eyes sharp as a falcon’s behind the goggles. He felt the rush of air, heard the roar of the Hispano Suiza engine’s 200 horse, saw the sun glinting on the green paint on his engine nacelle … Twelve thousand feet, into the sun, turning tight, gathering speed … a hundred and fifty … hundred and seventy … He picked out an Albatros and, going straight at him from above and a little behind, fired a short burst at the pilot’s head from two hundred feet. The head disappeared, the Albatros flipped over onto its back and screamed headlong toward the distant earth. Guy pulled the S.E. 5 A into a climbing turn, hung vertically on his propeller for a moment, then fell away into another short dive, this time head to head with another Albatros. He saw the flashes of the other’s tracer passing low overhead, but held his course. When the two machines were barely a hundred yards apart on a collision course, the German pulled up his nose. Guy breathed an ecstatic, sighing, ‘Got you!’ as his thumbs closed on the trigger – again a short burst, this time into the Albatros’s belly as it passed over him. He turned savagely, knowing that he had not wounded the other mortally, and at the end of the turn came out level, four hundred yards behind the Albatros, which was flying starboard wing down. He jerked himself up and down in his seat, swearing, ‘Faster … faster … you swine … faster!’ An S.E. 5 A was 28 m.p.h. faster than an Albatros: it shouldn’t take long. Steadily he closed on the wounded Albatros. He had him in his sights … something wrong with the fellow’s aileron controls … pilot wounded, too, perhaps …

  Something reflected in his goggles, a touch of colour, shouldn’t be there. He thrust fiercely at the stick and kicked the rudder over. The S.E. responded in a spiral dive – a shadow roared over … yellow spinner and wheels, yellow wing ends outside the black crosses, red stabilizer … von Rackow’s own Albatros. He’d been commanding Jasta 16 for three weeks now, and had from that day painted his stabilizer red, the same as Guy’s … So, von R., with four, five, six more of his Jagdstaffel around him. Nearly got him that time. Guy pulled the S.E. out of the spin and began climbing. There they were, circling a thousand feet above … a few S.E.s were climbing with him … it would be a tough fight, with the Germans having the height, and the Three Threes broken up by the earlier encounter from their usual close order, mutual su
pport fighting formation.

  The Albatroses waited for them, like a mid-air version of a scene he remembered from an American film, where the U.S. cavalry waited in the middle of the prairie and the Indians rode out toward them … He found von Rackow’s plane again easily enough from the red stabilizer … Damn, two of the other Three Threes were going for him, from underneath … couldn’t see the flame from the guns, but they were in the attacking position. Von Rackow turned tight, inside the S.E.s, and fired from a beam position. Guy swore, tight lipped, as he saw an S.E. stagger and seem to stop in mid air … it carried the number ‘2’ in blue – that was Graham … but his attack had made von Rackow vulnerable to his companion, No. 3 – and to Guy himself. Range … too long for certainty, but in another two seconds von R. would be out of danger. Guy pressed the trigger and saw his tracer pass over von Rackow’s cockpit. He lowered his nose a touch and fired again … some hits, too far aft, and von Rackow was falling away in the same sort of dive that he had saved himself with a few minutes ago.

  He dived after him. Von Rackow broke away half a second before Guy had expected him to and in a flash was coming up on Guy’s tail, almost in position to open fire. Guy flung the S.E. into a turn so tight that the fabric juddered and the wooden frame members creaked. In the middle of his full turn, wings vertical, von Rackow passed through his sights, and he fired – missed astern – at once kicked the S.E. into a reverse turn as tight as the other one he had attacked from. Where was von Rackow? … he jerked his head round, not in front … neither flank … ah, behind, nearly on his tail again … stick forward, hard, tracer flashing into the canvas of the wing over his head, full right rudder … down … The German had him cold, couldn’t shake him off … wished he could get back and tell them what modifications needed to be made to the S.E. 5 A to enable it to beat the Albatros … speed was fine, but needed more manoeuvreability … Why had he not felt the bullets smashing into him, or seen the engine burst into flames in front of him? He looked round and saw von Rackow a hundred feet behind, the twin guns aimed straight at him – but the muzzles black, and von Rackow jerking furiously at the gun levers … Guy laughed. Guns jammed!