by John Wilcox
The enemy were falling all across the line, for they were tightly bunched together and presenting an unmissable target to the British rifles. Yet they still marched on with great courage into that devastating fire. The front rank were near enough now to break into a lumbering trot, their bayonets presented to the front and the rising sun glinting on their strange, spike-topped pickelhaube helmets.
‘Bloody ’ell, Jimmy boy,’ Jim heard Bertie cry. ‘They’ll be on us in a minute.’
‘Keep firing,’ hissed Jim. ‘When they’re a few yards away climb out back, away from the trench and get behind me. They’ll have to reach across the trench to get to us.’
‘I’ll not be fightin’ behind yer, lad, that’s for sure. But I’ll be awful glad if you’ll stay with me …’
But these desperate measures were not needed. Within some ten yards of the flimsy entrenchments the grey line suddenly seemed to pause, stop and then turn and run back up the slope, leaving behind it groups of bodies, some of them still moving and emitting a low moan of men in pain. A faint cheer ran along the British line.
‘Keep firing, don’t stop, bugger it!’ The sergeant’s voice rang out from the shell hole to the left of the two men. ‘You’re allowed to shoot the bastards in the back if they run away. Rapid fire still!’
Hickman kept sighting down the barrel of his Lee-Enfield, firing and banging the bolt down until his hand felt bruised and perspiration ran down his forehead and into his eyes, affecting his aim. He looked across at Bertie. The little Irishman’s head was lying, cheek down on the soil to the side of his rifle. A surge of fear ran through Jim.
‘Bertie! Have you been hit?’
The familiar round face turned slowly and regarded him. ‘No, but I’m fair knackered, Jimmy. And, I don’t mind confessin’, more than a touch shit scared, darlin’ boy. I thought we were done for.’ The grin came back. ‘Think of it, Jimmy boy, our first battle and killed in it in the first mornin’. Now that wouldn’t have been fair, would it? Gone without a sniff of the altar cloth. Snuffed out with no chance of enjoyin’ it all and gettin’ medals and stuff like that. Eh?’
Hickman grinned back. Then he half rose and looked at the dead men in heaps before them. The smile disappeared. ‘Well, I’m right glad, Bertie, that you took a look over the top. Otherwise we’d probably have been done for. Strange we didn’t hear the bullet that got the lookout, poor bugger. Must have been a sniper.’
He indicated the bodies. ‘We shot well, though, didn’t we?’
‘Couldn’t miss at that range. Lucky we’d got the new rifles, though, eh?’
The sergeant’s voice called from their left. ‘You Terriers all right?’
‘Yes, Sarge.’
‘Good shooting. You knew what you were doing.’
‘Ah well.’ Bertie’s voice had pride in it. ‘We was both marksmen with them long rifles, Lee-Whatsits, but it was even easier with these new little darlins.’
‘Will they attack again, Sarge?’ asked Jim.
‘Oh yes. But I can’t understand why we weren’t shelled first. We’ll probably get it now. Use your bayonets to scoop out ’oles in the side of the trench and crawl into ’em when the shelling starts. At least they won’t attack when we’re being shelled. Well done, lads.’
The two removed their bayonets, laid down their rifles and began scraping away at the side of the trench. As if to give their efforts urgency, the German guns began to boom and they felt for the first time the fear that comes from being shelled and knowing that there was absolutely nothing at all that they could do about it. They were lying virtually out in the open, like rabbits sprung from the last vestige of corn as a field is harvested – except that the rabbits could run. Here, all the two men could do was to press into the slight depressions they had made in the trench wall, put their hands to their ears and pray.
At first, the shells exploded behind them, further down the slope towards Ypres. Ah, thought Jim, they’re targeting the support tracks and trenches, to stop reinforcements coming forward to the line. Clever bastards! Then the explosions began to creep nearer until they seemed to be all around them, landing everywhere and sending clouds of soil, rock and steel fragments into the air to rain down onto the trench. The hiss as the shells soared down, and then the crash and crump as they landed, were deafening and caused Hickman’s tongue to cleave to the roof of his dry mouth.
As he pressed, foetus-like, into the scraping he had made, Jim thought of the German wounded, lying even less protected, out in the open the other side of the low parapet. Would the gunners think of them? Would they lift their sights to avoid killing their own kind?
They did not. The shells continued to rain down, exploding with less ferocity as they landed among the soft bodies of the fallen, sending remnants of what had been living men high into the air. An arm, torn from its body, landed at Hickman’s side as he crouched. He noticed with disgust that a watch was still fixed to the wrist. He wrinkled his nose and shuddered. None of the wounded could have survived that. If this was modern warfare, then it was disgusting!
‘Are you all right, Bertie?’ he called.
‘No. I’d rather be somewhere else, Jim boy.’
He had no idea how long the bombardment had lasted but suddenly it ceased. Immediately, the sergeant’s voice came from the shell hole to their left. ‘They’ll come at us again now. Fix bayonets and man the edges, but keep your heads down. I’ll shout when you have to fire.’
‘Oh, bloody hell, Jim,’ said Bertie. ‘You’d have thought that they would have had enough—’
He was interrupted by the arrival of a young Gordon Highlander, his knees grimed and his kilt filthy. ‘Move up, boys,’ he said. ‘Sergeant’s sent me to give a hand. We’ve had reinforcements, the noo. All four of ’em. Very crowded in our shell hole.’
‘Stand to!’ The sergeant’s voice was high and it cracked now. ‘Rapid fire!’
The three men immediately thrust their rifles above the rim of the trench, resting them on the soil piled there. ‘Blimey,’ exclaimed the Scotsman. ‘They’re coming over as thick as before. Stupid. They should be in open order, yer ken. If only we’d got a machine gun.’
Jim realised that he had not heard a machine gun fired from the British lines and, for a brief moment, he wondered why. Did the British Expeditionary Force in France not possess the things? But the thought was soon replaced with a mixture of twin emotions: fear and a new kind of elation as, through his sights, he saw the grey mass dissolve into a line of individuals as they neared – men, like himself, except that they wore funny hats and grey coats. They were coming once again to kill him and he must kill them. He squinted down the barrel, fired, worked the bolt and fired again, as the fragmented British line sprang into life in a blaze of yellow flashes.
The German attack this time, however, was a little more sophisticated. Its front line fell – some men, indeed, as casualties as a result of the British fire, but others because they intended to do so. They fell, levelled their long rifles and delivered a volley at the British lines, reloaded and then fired again. It became apparent that the second line had been kept further back, for it now stepped through its supine comrades and charged ahead, bayonets levelled.
That volley had had its effect, because, as bullets thudded into the turfed mound and whined overhead, Jim, Bertie and the Highlander instinctively ducked their heads. As they lifted them again, the German line was closer, considerably closer.
‘Bloody hell,’ shouted the Scotsman. ‘Rapid fire, boys. Rapid fire.’
The fire was effective but not completely so, for six men bounded ahead of the German line and were within ten feet of the three men kneeling in the trench when the bullets of the defenders caught three of them and brought them down. The other three, however, presented their long bayonets low and came on, so close that Jim could hear the sound of their heavy breathing.
‘Out and back, Bertie,’ he shouted, scrambling to his feet and climbing up the trench wall behind him. Immediat
ely, he found the little Irishman beside him. But the Highlander was too late. The leading German’s bayonet caught him in the shoulder as he attempted to rise to his feet and he spun round, to be bayoneted again in the chest. Bertie jerked back his bolt and fired, catching the German in the breast, so that he toppled into the trench in front of his comrades.
This gave a moment of precious respite to the two Territorials who worked their bolts and fired again, bringing down both men. They had no time, however, to do anything more than present their bayonets to the next two Germans, who jumped down onto the bodies of their fallen compatriots and thrust upwards at them, stabbing fiercely at their ankles and calves, forcing them back.
Hickman swung his own bayonet downwards, locked it onto the steel of his opponent and swung up and to the side, allowing him to bring the butt of his rifle into the man’s face. He had time to mark the look of surprise in the German’s eyes – blue and staring – before he swung the bayonet back again and plunged it into the man’s neck. He withdrew it, remembering instinctively the drill of ‘twisting and pulling’, and then, turning, he thrust it deeply into the back of Bertie’s opponent. The man fell without a sound.
For a moment, Jim and Bertie stood facing each other, gasping across the bodies of the two men slain. Then they turned to face what was next to come – to find the Germans retreating once more, leaving a new line of bodies, like seaweed detritus on a beach after high tide had receded.
‘Mother of God bless us,’ exclaimed Bertie, wiping his brow. ‘That was close. Thank you, Jimmy. He was a bit big for me and I don’t think I could have taken him. God bless you, boy.’
Hickman stayed for a moment staring into the eyes of his friend, then he switched his gaze to the end of his bayonet, which was dripping with blood. He felt suddenly sick. Plunging a blade into straw effigies of Germans on the training ground, urged on by the instructors screaming, ‘Go on, stick the pigs, kill ’em,’ had been one thing. This was very, very different. With both thrusts he had felt his bayonet scrape against bone – someone’s bone, the bone of a man of flesh and blood. The bone of a man he had killed. He shuddered and turned away.
He felt Bertie’s hand on his shoulder. ‘It had to be done, Jimmy. I’m feeling, sonny, that this is a terrible war, so it is.’
‘Get down, you bloody idiots.’ The sergeant’s voice rang out just in time, for as they half jumped, half fell on top of the bodies in the trench, the machine gun began its chatter; not on a fixed traverse this time, but aimed at them, for the bullets thudded into the soil just above their heads.
Hickman turned to the Gordon Highlander, but the man was quite dead, his face contorted into an expression of wounded surprise, his eyes staring. The Germans, too, were dead and they realised that they were kneeling on corpses.
‘Ugh,’ exclaimed Jim. ‘I think we’d better throw ’em up on the top, if we can. But keep your head down.’
Somehow they were able to lever and then push the bodies up above the side of the trench and then give them a push so that they rolled away, but only a few inches.
‘Jesus,’ said Murphy. ‘I don’t fancy resting me rifle on their arses.’
‘Here,’ muttered Hickman. ‘Give me a hand to drag the Jock into the shell hole. There’s no room for the poor devil here.’
Together they pulled and pushed the Scotsman the few yards into the crater where the sergeant was kneeling over a wounded Tommie, applying a dressing to his stomach. The man was groaning and three others lay dead, spreadeagled, their faces half buried in the soil, having slipped back from the rim. Of the original seven men, plus the four reinforcements, who had defended the crater, only six were left.
The survivors lay sprawled along the walls of the shell hole, still breathing heavily, their rifles with their fixed bayonets in their hands.
The sergeant looked up, perspiration running down into his moustaches. ‘Gawd, you two know how to look after yourselves, I’ll say that for you,’ he said. ‘You, Lofty,’ he nodded to Hickman, ‘take post as lookout. When the shellin’ starts again, you take what cover you can. They won’t attack then. You, Paddy, go back down the line and try and find company headquarters. It’s down that so-called communications trench leading down the ’ill, though I doubt if there’s much left of it after that shellin’. Tell the major that I doubt if we can ’old on if they attack again unless we get reinforcements. Oh,’ he nodded to the wounded man, ‘find stretcher-bearers and tell ’em we’ve got a bad one ’ere.’
‘Very good, sorr … Sergeant.’
‘Come back, you bloody fool.’
‘Sorr?’
‘Take yer rifle with you. Never move without it when you’re in the line. Oh, and see if you can scrounge a couple of spades while you’re gone – and sonny …?’
‘Sorr?’
‘Don’t call me “sir”.’
‘No, sorr.’ And Bertie crawled away, one long strip of his puttees trailing behind him.
Hickman took up his post, removing his cap and showing only a few inches of his face above the rim, a few seconds at a time. He also moved his position along the edge so that he did not offer a set target for a sniper. He became aware that Sergeant Jones was at his side.
‘Sarge?’
‘You’re doin’ well, lad. Seen you movin’. You’ve got sense. ’Ow long ’ave you been in the Terriers?’
‘Oh, only about ten months. We joined at seventeen.’
‘Well, if you stay alive, you’ll make a bloody good soldier.’ His voice dropped slightly. ‘Better’n these Regulars ’ere, who just can’t think for themselves. Look – what’s your name again?’
‘Hickman.’
‘Right, Hickman. If I cop it when they come over again and we don’t get reinforcements, take charge of this little lot. Make sure they spread out along the top of the crater and don’t present a bunched-up target. Get a report on ammunition. If there’s not enough left, then take ’em back down the line. You can’t ’ang on without bullets. ’Ow many ’ave you got?’
‘About forty rounds.’
‘Good. The others ’ave got about twenty-five or so each. Just about enough to defend this bloody ’ole. Below two apiece move out. Now, I’m just goin’ along the line to see what’s either side of us. ’Aven’t ’ad a chance yet. With any luck I’ll be back in about ten minutes. If the lieutenant comes, explain to him. Right?’
‘Right, Sarge.’
The weathered face broke into a smile. ‘Good lad.’ He moved away and as he did so, Jim noticed that he was limping and a thin trail of blood, dried now, had dripped down from a tear in his trousers at the thigh. Hickman looked round at the men in the crater. Everyone was now sleeping, except for the wounded man, who lay softly moaning. He could see no regimental badges but he sensed that they were a mixed bag, made up from different battalions, including probably some service troops, drivers, clerks and the like. He gulped. He had been in the front line, in action, for less than twenty-four hours and already he had his first command, of a sort. He closed his eyes and hoped that the Germans would not attack again while the sergeant was away. Then he opened them again when he realised that the alternative was probably worse: shelling.
He was moving himself along the rim, with great caution, when a crisp voice called up, ‘Where’s Sergeant Jones?’
‘He’s gone along the line, sir,’ Jim called down, ‘to make contact with the blokes on our left.’
The young lieutenant looked even older in daylight, for his face was lined and his cheeks and chin were covered in stubble. ‘Right.’ The young man looked at the bodies. He bent down and shook awake two of the sleeping men. ‘You two. Get up and put the bodies out of the shell hole. Tip them over the front, on the enemy’s side, and they will help to protect the lip. Can’t bury them, I’m afraid. There’s no time and nowhere to put them anyway. Lookout …’
‘Sir?’
‘Has someone gone to find bearers for this wounded man?’
‘Yes, sir. My mate’s gone.�
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‘Good.’ He looked around again. ‘You’ve done well. I’ll see if we can reinforce you but we are very thin on the ground. Hang on here. It’s vital that you do. So far the line has held and it’s important that it does. There’s nothing between here and Ypres, so it’s backs to the wall, chaps. Take it in turns to sleep. I don’t think they’ll come over again today, but the fact that they’re not shelling means that they might. Good luck.’
He raised a languid finger to his cap and was gone.
The Germans did not come again that day, for their attacks across open ground had cost them dearly. The machine gun remained active, as did the snipers, but the little redoubt sustained no more casualties and, for some reason, the shelling did not recommence. The sergeant returned to say that a company of Bedfords were holding the shell holes and ditches to the left ‘in good order’, so that flank seemed to be soundly covered. To Jim’s relief, Bertie returned after about an hour, carrying two shovels and bringing with him two stretcher-bearers, who gently loaded the wounded man and disappeared with him, at a crouch, down the hill.
‘Where’s the battalion of Grenadier Guards that I asked you to bring back with you?’ demanded the sergeant.
‘Well,’ said Bertie, ‘I did find an officer and gave him your message, sorr, but he told me to fuck off, so I thought I’d better. Mind you, I pinched two shovels when his back was turned so it served him right to be rude. You know, it never pays to be rude, sorr, it never does.’
Sergeant Jones sighed. ‘Don’t call me … oh, never mind.’ He threw the shovels at two men, half asleep. ‘Here, you men, deepen the trenches either side. Get crackin’ before the shellin’ starts again.’ He turned back to the two Terriers. ‘Get some rest, both of you. It’ll soon be dark.’