‘But how do we know he doesn’t?’ said Scholes.
That evening, we were in our makeshift cribs in the barn, one oil lamp to every two men. Scholes was playing his whistle in the farmyard outside in the dark. He’d said the smoke from the brazier made his eyes smart, at which Bernie Dawson had muttered to me, ‘You know, I don’t think he’s going to like the Western Front very much.’
We’d been warned by Oamer to expect news of a duty that would take us onto the actual peninsula for the first time. Meanwhile we were killing time, and listening to Scholes.
Young Alfred Tinsley, the next bloke along from me, was sucking a peppermint and reading the Railway Magazine – lost in it, he was. On the cover, I read ‘Don’t forget your friend in the services. Buy him a Railway Magazine!’ I hadn’t had that particular number yet. It would probably be waiting for me at Hull, the wife having sent it on from Thorpe. I was just then trying to write to the wife. In my last letter I told her that I was unable to disclose our location, and she’d written back saying, ‘Would it be Kilnsea, East Yorks? Because that’s what the postmark says.’ I was now writing that it might be and it might not be, but she should keep in mind that incoming letters were soon to be read by officers as well as outgoing.
‘Who are you writing to?’ asked Oliver Butler.
‘Mind your own fucking business,’ I said.
‘Everywhere one goes, the spirit of merry badinage in the air,’ said Oamer, who’d just stepped into the barn. (Scholes had also come in behind him.)
‘What’s the special duty, Corporal?’ came the voice of young William, who had his crib on the other side of wooden partition, next to Oamer’s – his bolthole from the twins.
‘Bide,’ said Oamer.
This was the nearest he ever came to saying ‘Shut up’, and he was eyeing the twins, who hadn’t yet left off with their secret whisperings. Presently, Oamer said, ‘Be it known by all …’ which was his way of beginning an announcement. He then told us that the Spurn military railway very nearly was half completed.
‘Oh good-o,’ said Oliver Butler.
According to Oamer, it now ran from a railway pier at the tip of the peninsula to a spot somewhere in the middle. Tomorrow, we were to march to that spot, and there we’d board the train and be conveyed to the pier.
‘That’s a bit of all right,’ said Alfred Tinsley, because here was a railway for him to look at.
‘Why are we going to the railway pier, Corporal?’ asked Oliver Butler.
‘You are to unload a ship,’ said Oamer, ‘… quite a small ship, you will be pleased to hear.’
Digesting this news, we all turned in for the night, and every lamp in the barn was soon extinguished except the one from Oamer’s (and William’s) side of the petition, which continued to burn low. Oamer would no doubt be writing to … well, whoever he wrote to.
I couldn’t get off to sleep. I turned on my side; I heard a sort of grunt from the direction of Oamer, and then the noise hit. It did hit as well; the whole barn rocked, and every man instantly sat up. Every man was talking as well, but I couldn’t make out a word; soft muffles seemed to fall from every mouth, even though I knew everyone was shouting. The Chief had once told me that a bloke in the Riflemen’s Leagues at York had fired one of the big bore ones indoors without ear defenders. He burst both his ear drums, and the way he knew about it was that he couldn’t hear the mechanism when he re-loaded the gun, and then he felt a tickling above his collar – the blood running down from his ears.
I put my hand up to my own neck, and there was no blood, but still my hearing wasn’t right. After a space, the word being repeatedly spoken by Oamer, ‘Bide … bide!’ became clear, but it was no use against the shouting of the others, and one shout I heard above all: ‘It’s the bloody war,’ said Scholes, ‘it’s come here … it’s bloody come here.’ Then the farmer came into the barn dressed in his night shirt with an Ulster coat slung over the top but no bloody trousers or underclothes on, so his privates were in plain view. In a right state, he was. Evidently half the windows in his house had smashed.
‘What in hell’s name’s going on here?’ he shouted at Oamer, but he’d been followed in by Captain Quinn, who addressed us while buttoning up his tunic. He would be riding down to the peninsula to make sure, but he believed that the Royal Engineers had fired one of their 9.2-inch guns – ‘almost certainly not in anger’, but merely to test it.
‘Well, I’d say it was working,’ muttered Dawson.
‘Now if I’m wrong over this,’ Quinn continued, ‘and this is in fact a German battle group firing on us, then that puts a rather different complexion on matters …’ We could rest assured he would be telephoning through to battalion headquarters from the Spurn redoubt directly.
He wheeled about and was gone, at which all eyes were fixed on Young William. He was sitting on the dusty flags and fighting for breath, just as though he’d run a mile at full pelt. Oamer made towards him, and the kid brushed him off, saying in an under-breath something like, ‘Will you leave go of me?’ in a way that could have landed him in very hot water indeed, if our corporal had been a different sort of person.
The Spurn railway terminated hard by a wooden hut that served as an officers’ mess for the Royal Engineers. Someone had chalked a message on the bare wood of the shed door: ‘Tom, Telephone down to Henry. Regards, Max’, and that’s the kind of set-up it was. The officers were easy-going blokes, more university professors than soldiers; they seemed to run Spurn like their own gentlemen’s club.
The mess, and the temporary terminus, were bang in the middle of Spurn, in a part of it called the Narrows. There was beach at not more than thirty yards’ distance on either side of the track. Just then the sea did not threaten the track, but I didn’t fancy its chances in the event of any storm, such as that predicted by Scholes.
It was, in fact, a beautiful early-afternoon, the sea shining, two sailing ships off Spurn, both definitely not German destroyers. The day suited the cheery features of a certain Captain Leo Tate, who stood on the new-laid track, and addressed us as we sat on a sand dune. Our whole group was present save William, who’d been detailed to bicycle between the cottages and the farms around Kilnsea and Easington, giving out a schedule of the times when the Spurn gun would be tested again. He would then return to Cobble Farm in the evening.
Captain Leo Tate was a little older than me – somewhere in the middle thirties. He told us he’d been delighted to hear we’d been given this detail because he was from York himself. Well, he certainly didn’t sound it. He was also a good friend of our own Captain Quinn’s, both of them having been at St Peter’s School, the Eton of the North. As he addressed us, Tate seemed fascinated by the sight of the twins, and kept sneaking sly looks at them.
‘Did you know Spurn is eroding at the rate of a yard every year?’ he began.
‘Yes,’ I heard someone say. (Probably Oliver Butler.)
Tate told us something of what he and his fellows had been about, adding that we would shortly see for ourselves. After talking for five minutes, he asked if we had any questions.
‘What class of engines do you run on the railway, sir?’
It was Alfred Tinsley, of course.
‘Well, you see our modest engine shed,’ Quinn said, pointing to what looked like a glorified beach hut at the end of a siding a hundred yards distant. Steam was leaking from it, and more from the walls than the chimney. ‘At present, it houses just the one locomotive,’ Tate was saying. ‘A Hudswell-Clarke standard, and I don’t need to tell you men the specifications.’
Dawson leant into me, and said, ‘He does need to tell me.’
‘Outside cylinder 0-4-0 saddle tank,’ I said, and Quinn heard and pointed at me, ‘Quite right, there. Are you an engine man, fusilier?’
‘I’m a railway policeman sir,’ I said. ‘Detective division.’
But Captain Leo Tate didn’t seem to have heard me. He was looking along the line, with a big grin spreading over his feat
ures; then there came a gasp from Alfred Tinsley. Something was skimming towards us at a hell of a lick. It was two men sitting in something between a railway wagon and a yacht – for it was propelled by sails.
‘What is it?’ breathed Tinsley, and he was looking the question directly at Tate, even though a private soldier is not supposed to address an officer, but must wait until spoken to.
‘Pump trolley converted by the addition of a lug sail,’ said Tate, beaming, ‘and these chaps are on a broad reach.’
Even he seemed amazed by the speed of it. When the thing came close it looked jerry-built, ridiculous, but you couldn’t help liking the looks of the two blokes who stepped off it – two junior officers in the Tate mould: a pair of overgrown boy scouts. They put their funny little bug in a siding, and at that instant, the barking of steam was heard from the little engine shed, and the Hudswell-Clarke rolled out. ‘Anyone fancy a footplate ride?’ enquired Tate. Alfred Tinsley’s hand was up directly. Mine would’ve been too, had I not been on my dignity. There were no other takers, but Tate pointed to me, asking, ‘How about our railway policeman?’
The engine – which could have done with a clean – was a Standard 14, to be exact, that maid of all work, often to be seen at pit head and factory. It was still in North Eastern Railway colours, and had kept its name: Lord Mayor. We watched it collect an open wagon and take a drink from a water siding. Then we climbed up. It was a tight squeeze on the footplate, since Tate evidently proposed riding there too. The rest of the party climbed onto the open wagon, and all our packs and rifles were slung up there as well. We set off, with our smoke and steam darting crazily in the blustery wind that was getting up. But the sky remained a beautiful pale blue, with just two or three white clouds turning over and over.
‘You can see half the world from here,’ said our driver, a sergeant from his uniform, and evidently a poetic one. Captain Tate, not so poetic, said, ‘Strictly speaking, Spurn is what’s called a Sand Spit …’ and started on another geography lesson. When he’d finished, I asked the sergeant whether the regulator gave gyp, since he did seem to have to wrestle with it. Tate, who’d learnt my name by now, said, ‘You take a close interest for a railway policeman, Stringer.’ I explained that I’d been trained up as a fireman, at which our own fireman stepped aside without a word, and handed me the shovel. I put a bit on, and it did go more or less where I’d aimed it. As Spurn Point was approached, I’d graduated to the regulator, and Alfred Tinsley was trying his hand with the shovel. Well, Lord Mayor was a pretty good steamer, and we were both practically wriggling with happiness just then (although I was trying to hide the fact).
We passed a small boy signalling a semaphore message with two flags much bigger than he was; very soon after, we passed the small girl he was signalling to. Tate informed us that the Spurn schoolkids practised semaphore every day. On our right hand side, the estuary side, was a new sea wall about two hundred yards long, and six feet wide on top. Iron bollards, mushroom-shaped for the tying-up of boats, were placed along its length, and I recall noticing that a length of rope ran from one of these into the water.
‘That’s where the sea does its worst!’ Leo Tate called over the beating of the engine. ‘In the school they call it a promenade. Of course, technically it’s a revetment!’
The end of our ride was the railway pier, and we took our engine onto it after collecting two more open wagons. The steamer was there waiting, just in from Grimsby, and bucking about on its moorings. Around the pier stood three gun batteries, with only one gun as yet in place – the one we’d already heard from. The other emplacements were signified by concrete dishes. There were the makings of what would be a signalling station; also shelters, magazines, workshops, and a largish wooden hut – about the dimensions of a village hall – with the words Hope and Anchor painted in giant white letters on one of its roof slopes. This was the RE boys’ wet canteen. The name was another of their little jokes, the pub in Kilnsea being called the Crown and Anchor. At about twenty yards’ distance from this stood the jakes, which took the form of one single outside lavatory, and another with washroom attached. Both were of a primitive appearance but were brick-built, and so more solid than the hutted village around them, having once belonged to a row of lifeboatmen’s cottages that had stood on the site.
‘You might think it looks like a shack,’ said Tate, indicating the Hope and Anchor, ‘but we have at present … I believe five barrels of John Smith’s bitter in there. Since you’re all here for the night,’ he continued (which was the first we’d heard of it), ‘you’ll perhaps sample a glass or two yourselves.’
I eyed Bernie Dawson as Tate spoke. He looked his usual good-natured self, leaning with folded arms against the boiler frame of Lord Mayor, but I was thinking: we could be in for a bit of bother here.
As we commenced the unloading, the weather gods were putting on a good show. The clouds were mainly black, but there was a kind of light resembling golden smoke whirling underneath them.
That ship held a regular hotchpotch of goods, all too small to be lifted by crane – including shells that we carried one at a time, and very carefully even though the detonators weren’t in. We didn’t know much about shells as yet; I imagined we’d be getting better acquainted in France. As we worked, the wind rose, the pier stakes set up a fearful groaning, and the ship clattered against the side, making the gangplank a dangerous place to walk. Some of the stuff was to be loaded onto the train – which made two trips back up the peninsula as we worked – and some passed hand to hand along the length of the pier to the stores round about. We worked under the direction of another RE sergeant who apparently knew field telephones inside out, and so found a friend in Oliver Butler who would quiz him in between carrying jobs.
We worked right through to evening without a break, for the ship had to get back to Grimsby before the storm came. About five o’clock, by which time all the gold had gone from the sky, we saw the headlamps of a War Department van coming up to the Hope. It had driven the length of Spurn – which would’ve been fun for the driver, since there were no roads to speak of – and held the food for our suppers. (The same van, we were told, would be returning in the morning with our breakfasts.)
Come six o’clock, a fast rain was falling, but the storm hadn’t quite got started. Lord Mayor was pulling away from the pier and moving fast, anxious to get away. All the RE blokes returned to their redoubt at the top end of the Narrows, and they’d taken Captain Quinn with them. He was to be wined and dined on the officers’ table at some function in Kilnsea for every RE man on the peninsula, officers and other ranks. The entry point to the peninsula was being guarded by our opposite numbers, the B Shift. The arrangement of men on Spurn would be a matter of importance come morning.
I was one of the last ones off the pier, and into the Hope and Anchor. The main part of it was a hall with a stove and makeshift stage. There was pile of kindling next to the stove, and Alfred Tinsley was using it to get the fire going. I put my pack and my rifle where the other blokes had put theirs: on the stage. There was a regular warren of little rooms at the back of the hall, behind the stage, and we’d have one of these apiece for kip. After a bit of sluice-down in the jakes it was seven o’clock, and I was ready for my tea. As I walked back into the hall, young Tinsley – who looked odd with a pint in his hand – was talking to Scholes about our absent friend, young William.
‘If he tells me one more time that throwing a bomb is easy as anything … I swear I’ll brain him,’ Scholes was saying.
Tinsley nodded: ‘And if I hear one more time that story about how he had bad teeth, and was worried he’d be rejected as unfit for service, so he went to the flipping dentists, and they pulled them out for free so’s he could do his patriotic duty …’
Oamer strolled over to them, pipe on the go, and Scholes asked him, ‘What exactly is Harvey telling these farmers?’
‘The times when the guns go off,’ said Oamer.
‘But what can they do abou
t it? Clap their hands over their ears?’
‘They’ve to open windows in their houses,’ said Oamer, ‘… it’s to equalise the pressure, you know.’
‘He’ll be popular,’ said Scholes, ‘… weather like this.’
The place was village hall-like. I could just see the RE boys holding smoking concerts here. There was a piano on the stage; propped at the back of it was a giant mock-up of the Royal Engineers’ crest, and our packs and rifles were clustered around that. On the front edge of the stage the beer barrels – branded with the word ‘Smith’s’ – rested. Dawson was alongside them, superintending. I eyed him carefully; he looked all right so far. As a unit we’d drunk together only once before – at the above-mentioned Crown and Anchor in Kilnsea – and on that occasion we’d put the peg in after two pints apiece.
There was a stove in the centre of the room, a pile of papers and a basket of coal next to it for fuel, our supper bubbling away in a dixie on top. Alongside this, a trestle table was loaded with cutlery and enamel plates; jumbled round about were little wooden chairs, some with newspapers on them. From the roof beams hung Union Jacks and hurricane lamps in alternation. There were chalk marks on the floor, which was gritty with sand; these marks had numbers next to them, for the playing of some game made up by the RE boys – and there was a hoops board on the wall nearby, with a full complement of hoops hanging from the hooks.
We all had a couple of pints before setting about the food. Alfred Tinsley served it out, and it was either soup or stew depending on what his spoon brought up. I asked Dawson, who’d spoken to the bloke who’d delivered it, ‘What’d he say this was? I mean, did he give any clue?’
Dawson shrugged. ‘He said it was “something in the way of grub”.’
‘That’s a very good description of it,’ I said.
I was already feeling slightly canned. The beer was John Smith’s strongest variety, or had been made so by the way it was kept. Scholes was at the piano now, playing something slow and grand, which made a bit of a mockery of the clattering of cutlery as the blokes at the trestle table put away their stew.
The Somme Stations Page 7