We were now running surrounded by skeleton trees with a look of winter even in late July. The tracks had been put down quickly and roughly, and we were shaking about a good deal. The narrowness of the line gave a heightened idea of speed, and we would seem to rush up to a smashed tree at a great rate before diverting away at the last moment. Tate was giving us a lecture about the engine. It was a Baldwin, built in America; a pretty good steamer, but the high boiler made it unstable and liable to tip over, which gave cause for concern if you might happen to be pulling, say, three tons of high explosive shells, which might become a normal sort of load in time. I looked back over the shaking coal bunker. Dawson sat smoking on the wagon. Oliver Butler stood on the coupling unit at the rear, holding onto the wheel of the handbrake, and not seeming to enjoy the ride over-much. After a while, he returned my gaze, saying, ‘Keep your eye on the road, mate, will you?’
He was exposed to the rain, and he minded that, or perhaps he minded that I had the protection of a cab roof, even if it did extend only halfway across the footplate.
The man Butler …
According to Tinsley, he had been firing from the sap on the first day of the battle. Scholes would have been within his range, and it had seemed to me that he might have taken a bullet before the shell hit. Scholes had threatened to speak out about what he knew – whatever that might be – if Thackeray returned to give him another roasting, and it seemed that Thackeray did intend to return, and we all knew it. Oliver Butler had certainly overheard Scholes’s threat. He’d been standing behind him when he made it.
Might Oamer have heard it as well? He had stepped out of the billet only a moment later – and he too had evidently been firing from the sap.
Thackeray had not yet come to the Dump, but he had been seen about in Albert. Well, Tinsley – sent there on an errand – had seen him, on his horse outside the cathedral, apparently watching every private soldier that went past. Blokes fighting and dying for their country … You’d think he’d lay off …
We were rolling past a bloody great shell crater. The edge of it was about six feet from the tracks, and the rain was trying to fill it.
‘Crikey,’ said Tinsley.
Tate, following his eyes, said, ‘Jerry’s got some pretty big stuff pointed this way.’
‘How close would a Boche shell have to be to set off our load?’ Tinsley enquired.
‘About as close as that,’ said Tate, indicating the crater under discussion. I was glad when we’d left it behind – out of sight out of mind. Except that Tate didn’t drop the subject. ‘You see, our shells don’t have their fuses fitted, but what is a fuse? Heat and air pressure. An enemy shell could easily provide that.’
‘Watch your level,’ I said to Tinsley, because the water gauge was a little low; and he practically leapt on the injector. Tate was nodding in an absent sort of way. I didn’t doubt that he could have driven this engine half asleep, and it annoyed me to think so. Was he really superior, or just of a superior class? After a brief pause he took up his lecture again, all about the difficulty of getting stuff to the front by MT. This stood for Motor Transport: lorries. But Tate preferred to say MT. Horses weren’t in it, and he never gave them a mention. Horses were the past. He hoped to have a dozen trains a night running to the front before long. At this, I thought again of Oamer: he would be returning to the line over the next day or so, minus his finger, and would be joining our detachment at Burton Dump as supervisor of the running office, which would control the movements of the little trains. His experience in the York ticket office fitted him for that role; and his all-round braininess.
We were shaking in a different way now, climbing out of the wood. More coal was needed.
‘Steep hill,’ said Tinsley, swinging his shovel.
‘Now locomotives don’t really go up hills, do they?’ said Tate. ‘I would call that …’ And he thought for a good ten seconds. ‘I would call it a knoll.’
The engine danced in a yet different way, and harsh rumbling came from underneath.
‘Girder bridge,’ said Tate. ‘Would you believe our boys put that up in less than two days?’
I would’ve actually, since the thing moved as we went over it. I looked down and back as we came off it, and saw a demoralised-looking black river that had given up flowing anywhere.
‘The River Ancre,’ said Tate.
It certainly wasn’t up to much. The big river hereabouts was the Somme, but that was off somewhere to the south and I’d never seen it. We went past a wooden post with a sign on it.
‘That was the first of our stations,’ said Tate, facing backwards on the footplate, and looking back at the post with affection. I hadn’t been able to make out the name.
‘Old Station,’ said Tate. ‘We made it ten days ago. There were gun positions either side – behind that hummock, and in that ditch.’ He pointed to shadowy features I could barely see in the dark. ‘Abandoned now, they’ve done their work.’
The noise of the Hate was becoming louder as he pointed over to a wrecked house. The queer thing was that the roof remained, supported by only two and a half walls.
‘Holgate Villa,’ Tate said, grinning. ‘Part of Ovillers, technically.’
I was getting the idea now. There was a Burton at York, also an Old Station. And Holgate Villa was a grand old house that had been swallowed up by the York railway lands, and was used – last time I’d been in there – for storing masses of dusty restaurant car crockery.
I looked back at Holgate Villa. The Verey lights flashing on it – red, green, yellow, flickering red again – and I knew the situation was unstable. I didn’t believe it could be there for too much longer.
We rolled slowly past another post.
‘New Station,’ said Tate. ‘German second line, as was. Gun positions … there!’ And at that instant the gun position in question – out of sight behind a low hill – loosed off a shell. A whistle came from the German side; then another whistle, then the two crumps. In the field next to us, two trees made of mud arose and collapsed. I heard again the steady beat of the engine. Tinsley eyed me, nodding.
‘Steaming nicely,’ he said, in a confidential sort of way.
One hundred and sixty pounds of pressure; faint ghost of smoke and steam over the chimney. Tinsley and me … We trusted the engine to take us through the scrap over Ovillers. But then came another Boche shell, and two more sent over from our side; we were approaching another of the Somme woods, another graveyard of trees. I pulled on the regulator. I would feel a bit safer in the trees, such as they were, but as we closed on them under the falling shells, the engine gave a lurch. Tate crashed into Tinsley, and called out, ‘We’re over!’ But we stabilised the next moment.
‘Track gang missed that spot,’ said Tate.
Our track gang was Andy and Roy Butler – they’d gone ahead in the afternoon to walk the track and make good. We were to collect them at the dropping off point for the goods.
‘They’ve done a decent job up to now,’ I said, for we’d had a smooth ride given the conditions. Tate began to speak but a shell came down, so he stopped and then started again: ‘Rather uncommunicative, that pair.’
The trees came around us, and formed up either side in their dead parade; a shell came into the woods causing a disturbance in the rear ranks of the trees and setting two fires. I was sweating. It was a hot night, though still raining somewhat. I looked back at our two passengers, and both Dawson and Butler gazed in the direction of the burning trees with a look of wonder. I was feeling a drag on the engine; I could see no incline, and I wondered whether Dawson had screwed down the brake a little, having been scared by our near-spill, or just in order to spite me. He was more of a brakesman than a guard, and his control of the brake was the only power at his command.
I saw a moving light ahead and what appeared to be the side rails of another girder bridge.
‘This is us,’ said Tate.
I knocked off the regulator, and we cruised up to the light,
which gradually turned into a hurricane lamp held by Roy Butler – or was it Andy? Impossible to tell in the dark. The lamp gave a whitish glow. In their ganging days back in York, there would have been red and green filters. There would have been a ‘responsible person’ to stand in advance of them on the line, and they would have carried twice as many tools as they presently did. One held a shovel and fish bolt spanner, the other a mallet and a track gauge, for making sure two feet stayed two feet.
Oliver Butler braked his wagon, and climbed down to his brothers; Tate also jumped down, and he addressed the twins, I noticed, as though they were normal.
‘Well, we’ve had a fairly smooth run out … Anything in particular need of attention?’
The twins gave a shrug. They looked sidelong at their brother.
‘Come on now,’ said Tate, ‘what did you have to do?’
‘Tightening,’ said Andy, who held the spanner.
‘Flattening,’ said Roy, who held the mallet.
And then Andy, turning to Roy and laughing while squirming strangely, said, ‘… Frightening,’ drawing the word out.
Tate looked up – I remained on the footplate – and frowned.
Tate said, ‘You’ve been having a warm time of it, have you?’
From behind the twins came a great bang – like somebody deciding that enough is enough – and a shell went climbing, scrambling into the air at hundreds of miles an hour. It was one of ours, there was a battery hard by but out of sight in the trees.
‘Place is in uproar!’ said Roy, and for once he did offer a direct glance at Tate.
Another shell was loosed from a bit further beyond.
‘Oh mother!’ said Andy, and now he too was looking directly at Tate, while grinning. Tate turned back to me, evidently knocked by the sight of Andy’s face. I heard the whistling in the black sky, over the broken trees. One was coming our way. I counted to five, and it came down a hundred yards off, and the only effect on us was a quantity of sticks blown towards the engine.
I heard the cracking of tree branches, and saw men coming towards us, rifles in hand. Four silent men, soaked in sweat and with tunics undone. They were from one or more of the gun placements. They contemplated the Baldwin with amusement, as it seemed to me. At the sight of the blokes, Tate called out, ‘Fusilier Dawson!’ and Bernie Dawson, who’d been sitting on the edge of his wagon, scrambled to his feet, saying, ‘Right, who wants some bombs?’
Tinsley was brushing some coal dust off the footplate, which was hardly necessary, and I contemplated with anxiety the thin twists of smoke and steam coming up from the chimney.
‘You know, I can’t believe she’d give us away,’ said Tinsley, seeing where I was looking. ‘Daft isn’t it?’
It was, but I knew what he meant. On the other hand, we were just another fire in the woods. There seemed to be several going on about us. The gunners, Dawson (with Woodbine on the go), and the twins had begun carting the shells to the guns. One man could lift one shell, just about. Oliver Butler was standing by his wagon. Lugging shells was beneath him, or so he thought, but Tate, who’d been scrutinising the wheels of the Baldwin, suddenly eyed Butler.
‘What are you doing, man?’
‘I’m superintending the train,’ came the reply. ‘It’s the first duty of the train guard.’
‘Well this is not the Scotch Express,’ said Tate. ‘Lend a hand with the shells.’
And so Butler picked up a shell, or tried to. He had a job to keep hold of it.
‘Want a hand?’ I said, my aim being not so much to help him as to save us being blown to buggery if he dropped it wrong end first. But he’d got a grip on it now, and fairly staggered off into the woods without replying. Tinsley, meanwhile, was peering at a particular tree, which I now saw had a short plank nailed to the upper trunk. He caught up the lamp that was hooked on the locker door. He jumped down from the footplate and held the lamp up before the tree. There were two words painted on the sign, and they came and went as the lamp swung.
‘Naburn Lock,’ he finally pronounced, in triumph.
Well, I knew Naburn Lock. It was only a mile or so south of Thorpe-on-Ouse – a popular spot with picnickers. The village of Naburn was picturesque, and there was a tea place at the lock. People would sit by it and watch the boats go through, marvelling at the pleasure cruisers of the York swells, and hoping one of them would collide with the lock gates, or somehow come a cropper.
The shell carters were now returning, having cleared the wagon. Tate, standing by the side of the Baldwin, had satisfied himself as to the soundness of the wheels. He said, ‘Naburn Lock, that’s right. Let’s have the lamp, and I’ll show you why.’
Tinsley handed him the light, and Tate walked over to the little ditch traversed by the track. The lamp showed a quantity of smashed and rotten wood in the black water. ‘A gate,’ said Tate. ‘A gate in the water – that’s what a lock is, so … Naburn Lock. My mother would take me there. We’d have ices at Martindale’s, and I’d watch the operation of the lock gates.’
That was the name of the tea rooms, and it was operated by a little old woman with a sweet face but a hunched back. She had some young assistants – generally one or two lasses who were real lookers – but I recalled that old Ma Martindale looked so frail, yet so anxious to please her customers, that you felt sorry for her rather than the opposite when the place was full.
Tate was climbing back up, and I was readying to pull the reversing lever (we would be returning to Burton Dump backwards), when I happened to glance over to Oliver Butler, who was standing by the wagon, eyeing the plank nailed to the tree, his brothers either side of him. All three looked mortified.
One – Roy, as far as I could make out in the gloom – was saying, ‘What’s going off, our kid? What’s to do?’ and both were looking to their brother in search of an answer to something. Oliver Butler seemed about to speak – to address some remark to Leo Tate, as it seemed to me – before deciding at the last moment to keep silence.
Was it the naming of the halt that had bothered him?
‘Know Naburn Lock, do you?’ I called out, and the three Butlers turned to me as one man, while making no remark. ‘It’s a pretty spot.’
Of course, every railwayman in York knew the village of Naburn because the London line was carried over the river Ouse by a swing bridge just a little way outside it. ‘Decent pub in Naburn,’ I called out (for I seemed to be able to hold the three of them in suspension just by speaking of Naburn), ‘… The Horseshoe. It had a dining room and a dram shop but …’
Shells came flying, landing either side of us, as if telling me to get on with it. Everyone climbed up; I gave a tug on the regulator and we began rolling back towards Burton Dump. I had been about to say that for all its good points, the jakes at The Horseshoe was at the bottom of the garden, which was a bugger when it rained. I’d sometimes bike along the river for a pint there when the children were in bed, and I’d hear the roaring of the weir – which was next to the Lock – from half a mile away.
On the rattling wagon, Dawson sat smoking again, while the twins stood, exchanging whispers. Roy was nodding at something Andy was saying, at the same time fishing about in his pockets, perhaps looking for his own fags. Oliver Butler was at his post on the coupling gear, and since we were rolling backwards, he was now at the front, like the figurehead on a ship. Even though I could only see his back, I somehow knew he was thinking hard. Leo Tate, cause of all this disturbance in the Butlers, was now climbing over the coal bunker, and down onto the wagon. He stood in the centre of it, perfectly balanced and looking to left and right. He’d long since forgotten about Naburn and its lock, and was on the look-out for … what? Some new problem to solve. Something out there in the ruined trees he could set to rights. We came out of the trees, and rolled past Old Station – I only saw it because I was on the look-out for it – and then I knew where to look for Holgate Villa. It still stood. Then came the New Station, followed by the different rumble of the girder bridg
e over the Ancre. What had been an ascent was now a tricky descent, and I knocked off the regulator, so that we coasted down towards Aveluy Wood, rattling and clanking in the sudden silence. There hadn’t been a shell for five minutes and we’d shortly be back at base, but I didn’t care for the way that Tate was prowling on the wagon, looking to left and right.
He turned and raised his hand to me, indicating that I should stop. He was walking forwards to Oliver Butler, to warn him of same. He’d found something to fix. He was speaking to Dawson, who kept throwing anxious or half-amused glances back to me, as Tate lectured him on the subject of a filthy puddle on the edge of the trees we were approaching. It was a shell hole, about fifteen yards off. I could make out the black shine of the water, and I didn’t like the look of it. As Butler screwed down his brake, Tate was saying something to the effect: ‘I mean to have a sample of that water.’
‘Why, sir?’ said Dawson. ‘In ten minutes you can have a glass of ale in the mess.’
But I knew what Tate was about. His plan was to fit all the engines with a hose and a lifting injector to take on water from the shell holes. That way, the Boche would be helping us by putting down shells near the tracks – a notion that appealed no end to Tate. On the other hand, the two-foot lines were never likely to extend far enough for the engines to run low on the water put into them at Burton Dump. And muck floating about in a boiler caused more trouble than it was worth. Tate was muttering something about ‘a simple filter to stop priming’ – it was all Greek to Dawson. Oliver Butler, standing over his brake, was eyeing me. I believed he was thinking of different water – Naburn Lock – and it was then that I had my idea of writing to the wife to ask about the late history of that spot, and whether the name Butler was involved in any way.
Tate jumped down from the wagon. He called out, ‘Does any man have a billy?’
Tinsley leant into me and said, ‘There’s one in the locker.’
I said, ‘Don’t bloody encourage him,’ but too late: Tinsley was repeating the information out loud. Tinsley opened the locker and handed over the can. As Tate made towards the shell hole, I switched my gaze to the twins who were sitting cross-legged on the wagon. ‘Fine style … Fine Style,’ I heard, and having lit their cigarettes, they both turned to look at Tate, as though expecting to be entertained. They, at least, seemed to have put Naburn Lock from their minds. Tate was standing by the edge of the pool, contemplating the water. He hadn’t yet bent down to take the sample when the whistling started. At that point Tate did crouch down – not for fear of the shell, but to collect water – and so there was one thing going up and one thing going down. I knew after the count of three that the shell would be close, and if I’d been stone deaf, then Alfred Tinsley’s eyes – he was frozen in the act of sweeping the footplate – would have told me as much. I had my hands over my ears when the thing came down. The night became day for an instant, and I saw Tate dive into the water, at the sight of which Tinsley leant away from the engine and spewed, for only the top half of Tate had dived. His legs had been slow off the mark, had remained behind, and for a moment they had remained standing. The shell had been shrapnel, not high explosive, and the last of the bullets were now raining down into the black water. I turned my head towards the wagon. I was listening to my own breathing, and it seemed a bloody cheek, disrespectful to Tate, that it should be carrying on, even if the breaths were coming too fast. Oliver Butler was crouched behind his brake wheel; Dawson had simply turned about so that he now sat facing away from what he’d just seen. But the twins continued to stare at the spot where Tate’s legs had toppled.
The Somme Stations Page 16