Ramsay grunted. “It’s worked so far. Fritz has punched a huge hole in our lines. The gunfire is miles to the rear now.” He peered into the darkness of No Man’s Land. “We are doing no good here. Our line has collapsed and once the Prussians realise how few there are of us they will just roll over us. As soon as it’s full dark we will slip away and head for our lines.” He paused for a second. “Wherever they are.”
“That suits me, sir,” Flockhart said. “If they leave us alone for another half hour we can slip free all the easier when night falls.”
“Maybe so, Sergeant,” Ramsay was less cheerful, “but if the Germans are making progress, the longer we stay here, the further through enemy-held territory we may have to travel.”
He ducked as a shell burst overhead and shrapnel pattered down. Others exploded in a volley of explosions around the trench. A column of mud rose and fell leaving only the reek of lyddite and the song of a single lark. There were always larks. “They were ours,” Flockhart said, “so it looks as if we’ve given up on this section of the line for now.”
Ramsay glanced at his watch. “Half past seven,” he said, “what happened to the time? No matter. We’ll move in half an hour. Pass the word.”
“Aye, sir.” Flockhart glanced around. “Shall I try and find some scran, sir? The men have not eaten since breakfast.”
“Good idea.” Ramsay cursed silently at this subtle reproach of his leadership. As the officer his first priority should be the wellbeing of his soldiers. “Off you go, Flockhart.”
He watched as Flockhart slipped away, his stocky figure alert yet somehow relaxed as he merged with the semi-gloom of the trenches. Ramsay touched the pistol in its holster and wondered: Why are you not dead? Amongst all the shambles of this murderous war, why do you survive when I need you dead?
There was no reply. There were only the usual night time sounds of the front, augmented by the sound of singing. Ramsay struggled to make out the words; he knew the tune well. Out there in the gathering gloom, a thousand voices were singing an Easter hymn: in German. Somehow he knew it was the Prussian Guards and that the monacled, shaven-headed officer was leading the chorus. Tomorrow that man would lead his men forward and there was nothing that his battered handful of Royals could do to stop them.
There were always the guns, rumbling away at Ypres to the north as they had for the past three and a half years, but apart from that there was a strange hush in the lines. The muted chatter of a distant machine gun was irrelevant, the whine of the breeze through the tangled wire a familiar melody, and the quiet murmur of the men a soothing reminder of the continuance of humanity despite the slaughter of war. Ramsay checked his periscope for the tenth time that hour. What had so recently been No Man’s Land was quiet save for the writhing wounded. He saw a lone German crawling back through the wire, dragging a shattered leg with him. Somebody was sobbing, the sound so poignant with grief that Ramsay fancifully thought it was the Earth itself, crying for the folly of the Masters of Creation in thus committing collective suicide in such a long, drawn out manner. He shook himself away from such idiocy and concentrated on matters in hand. Somehow he had to get his men to safety, through an unknown number of Germans, across an unknown number of miles to reach the relative security of the British lines.
By some miracle, Flockhart had managed to locate food. Nothing grand, just cold sandwiches and hot tea, but at least the men had something inside them before the next stage of the ordeal. Only a veteran sergeant could do that, but why did it have to be Flockhart? Could he not just die quietly and relieve me of this burden I carry?
“Do you think Fritz has broken right through?” McKim sat in the lee of the newly rebuilt wall of sandbags, sucking on his empty pipe.
Ramsay shrugged. “I could not say, McKim, but I doubt it. We’ve hammered at his lines for years and he’s tried ours and the French…” He trailed off. He was about to say he thought the war would last forever, or until every man on both sides had been killed, but no officer should voice such sentiments to a man from the ranks.
“Oh, well, we’ll see soon enough.” McKim glanced at the sky. “Ten minutes until full dark, I’d say. Shall I have the lads stand to?”
“No,” Ramsay decided. “Let them get another few minutes rest. God alone knows what we will face out there.” He checked the periscope again. “There is no movement. Fritz has other things to worry about rather than a wee handful of Royal Scots.” The sound of the singing had diminished, but Ramsay knew the Prussians were still there, gathering their strength for the advance.
“Aye, sir,” McKim said. He removed his pipe for a second. “Maybe Fritzy will find out he’s made a mistake then.” He grinned. “Haul away, lads, we’re no deid yet. Up the Royals!”
“Up the Royals.” Ramsay smiled at McKim’s slant on the oft-repeated saying that was so common in the streets of Edinburgh. “How long have you been in the regiment, McKim?”
“All my life, sir.” McKim touched the faded medal ribbons on his breast. He took the pipe from his mouth and looked at it as if contemplating his entire past in the dark bowl. “I was always with the Royals. My father was a Colour Sergeant and I was born when the regiment was on campaign in China…” He tailed off and looked away as if he had released too much information.
Ramsay narrowed his eyes. As far as he knew, the Royals had last been in China in the war of 1860. If McKim had been born then, he would be 58 now; a very old soldier, yet a man who was fitter and hardier than any of the youngsters in the regiment.
McKim replaced the pipe between his tobacco-stained teeth. “My mother was a regimental wife, she just followed the drum. For all I know she was born into the strength as well. I never asked her. I think she married three sergeants in a row, maybe it was four. I called two of them father.” He shrugged. “I was a barrack room bairn and the regiment brought me up.”
Ramsay looked at him, noting the hard grey in the moustache and the white in his eyebrows. He had to ask. “How old did you say you are, McKim?”
“Thirty, sir,” McKim said at once. He held Ramsay’s eyes in an unblinking stare.
“I see.” Ramsay leaned closer. “You must have been young when you won that then,” he pointed to the faded medal ribbon on McKim’s breast. “The South African War? If you are thirty now you must have been about 12 at the time.”
McKim nodded. “Aye, sir. I lied about my age.” His face remained as inscrutable as an Oriental Buddha.
“That’s hard to believe.” Ramsay tried to keep his face expressionless. “An honest man like you.”
“Yes, sir, but I wanted to join the men you see; it was the life I grew up with.” McKim looked up as a flare rose in the darkening sky; it cast a greenish glow over the trench and over every man there. “Fritz is getting restless, sir. He might be thinking of sending a fighting patrol across to visit us.”
Ramsay nodded. He thought of these huge, professional Prussians pitted against his ragged handful. “It’s time to move then, McKim.” He passed the word softly to the men. “Take all the ammunition you can carry, walk soft and try not to talk too loudly.”
The German bombardment had destroyed the communication trench so McKim climbed on to the sandbags of the rear wall and quickly rolled into the disturbed ground beyond. He vanished as silently and efficiently as any Red Indian in the Fennimore Cooper novels that Ramsay had read as a boy. “Don’t let your silhouette be seen, lads. German snipers just love that.” His words came as a quiet hiss through the dark.
Ramsay was last to go, ushering the slowest of the men over. He frowned as Flockhart turned back. “Where do you think you are going, Sergeant?”
Flockhart glanced over his shoulder. “I’m going to leave old Fritz a present, sir.” He slipped a primed grenade under a dead German body. “Remind him that we’ll be back,” he said. He had a last word to the sole remaining, grievously wounded Royal; the other had died during the night.
“Good luck, Sergeant,” the man whispered. “Leave m
e a rifle and I’ll take one with me.”
“You lie quiet, lad, and let Fritzy look after you. You’ll be fine.” Flockhart patted the man on the arm and looked up, his eyes gleaming in the reflected light of a star shell.
Ramsay jerked a thumb in the direction of the British lines. “Right, Flockhart. Now come along, man.”
Only descending flares provided light as Ramsay slipped over the ravaged ground behind what had once been the British front line. He followed in the wake of his own men, allowing McKim to find the safest route through the tangle of trenches and shell craters. Once or twice men gave a curse or an exclamation of disgust as they encountered the mangled remains of soldiers or horses. Twice they halted as a star shell exploded above them and slowly drifted down, they were illuminated as stark figures in a nightmare world. They moved slowly, step by careful step, a succession of frightened, determined men moving across a landscape made unfamiliar by shelling.
“Watch the rear, Flockhart,” Ramsay ordered curtly, and pushed forward, past the dim figures with their shouldered rifles and steel helmets tipped forward over their eyes. They looked up as he passed, but nobody spoke. Although they were united in danger and regiment, rank divided them as surely as a bayonet parted flesh.
As it should be. I am an officer and a gentleman, they are rankers.
There were dead men here, some blasted to fragments, others huddled in tattered lumps, and a few peaceful, as if asleep. Many wore British uniforms, but there were also dead Germans here, scores of them, lying in windrows where machine guns had cut them down, in ragged groups around the rim of shell holes or singly, where they had died alone, victims of rifle or bayonet.
“Listen.” McKim held up his hand. German voices echoed through the night, harsh, guttural and confident. Somebody laughed and others joined in, the noise level rising and then fading away to a low murmur.
“Bastards,” a voice said in the unmistakable accent of Leith. “Dirty Hun bastards!”
“Keep the noise down, Cruickshank,” Ramsay growled. He eased to the front of his men, counting them as he did so. There were fourteen left, most wounded in some way. There were bloodied bandages around heads and arms, roughly cobbled uniforms, torn tunics and anxious eyes. Fourteen, he had lost more than half his men in one day and he had not even had the time to learn their names.
What sort of officer am I? All I can do is get wounded and lead my men to defeat and slaughter.
There was a short burst of gunfire ahead, the unmistakable staccato rattle of a Lewis machine gun and the irregular bark of rifles. Ramsay held up his hand. Should he lead his men to this obvious British presence? Or should he try and avoid trouble with his battered handful of men? It could be a determined stand by a sizeable force, or even the beginning of a counter attack. However it might only be a last hopeless stand by another group of men left behind by the hasty British retreat.
McKim had no such qualms. “That could be the Royals sir,” he hinted. “Are we going to help the lads?”
Ramsay looked over his men. They came close, tripping over the ragged ground as they gathered around him. They all looked at him, eyes wary in the night, hunched with weariness but their hands still gripping the rifles that were slung across their shoulders. Most carried packs, the rest had lost them in the bombardment.
“Right, men,” Ramsay spoke quietly, aware his voice would carry in the night. “We are heading toward that firing and let’s see if we can help.”
They nodded, accepting his decision without outward question. He was their officer. I wonder what they really think. I hope they follow me after this bloody shambles.
“Keep together, lads, don’t straggle,” Flockhart encouraged them. “Fritz just loves stragglers.”
They bunched up, stumbling over ground that shells had blasted beyond recognition, swearing in low undertones as they moved toward the guns. They were British soldiers; it was their job to fight; gunfire meant fighting. There was really nothing more to say. Now that the decision had been made for them, the men relaxed and began to talk amongst themselves.
“Jesus Christ, Fraser. Mind yourself, can’t you? You’re trampling on my heels.”
“Is that you, Aitken?”
“Has anybody got a light? My matches are damp.”
“Here’s another body. It’s Blair, poor bugger, blown to blazes.”
The communication trench was only a memory, blasted beyond recognition by accurate German shelling; the machine gun posts, located to provide support to the front line, were merely a succession of craters and the light artillery pieces were ripped to shreds. They stumbled over an alien landscape, cursing softly, moving cautiously, making slow progress toward the distant musketry.
“There’s Major Campbell’s dugout, sir.” Flockhart pointed to a deeper shadow in the dimness of the night.
“Wait here,” Ramsay ordered and slid down the shell-battered steps and into utter darkness. He took a box of matches from his pocket and scraped one alight, but immediately wished he had not bothered. German storm troopers must have caught the inhabitants by surprise. Major Campbell was still inside, but his lower body was shredded and another man was equally dead. Some unknown German had thrown a grenade down the steps and followed it up with a blast of bullets. The occupants had not stood a chance. The map had been ripped from the wall, the table was a memory, but the Germans had left an unopened bottle of Younger’s Ale on the table. The Glenlivet bottle was broken into a thousand shards of glass.
Ramsay spent only a second shuffling through the scatter of papers on the ground. He considered looking through them, then realised that since the German advance, all the information he required would be out of date. However, there could be some information about troop formations useful to the enemy. Ramsay cursed as the match burned down to his fingers, he dropped it, lit another and bent down to set light to the nearest sheet.
“Sorry, Major,” he muttered, “but I don’t know what Fritz could learn from these.” He gave a brief salute and waited until the flames took hold. “Rest easy, sir.”
“All right, sir?” Flockhart asked; he sniffed at the smoke that had followed Ramsay up the steps and indicated the orange glow of flames.
“Major Campbell’s funeral pyre,” Ramsay said. “Now let’s get away before Fritz sends a patrol to investigate.”
They marched in the direction of the musketry, keeping quiet, holding their rifles ready; wary, scared but defiant. The firing continued, at times dying away and then increasing in volume to a frenetic crescendo. There was the barking cheer of a German charge and the firing gradually decreased, ending in a few isolated cracks and then one final shot and silence. The Royal Scots stopped moving to listen. A solitary laugh drifted through the night.
“Christ,” Niven said softly. “That’s they boys gone by the sound of it.”
“The Huns are wiping us out,” an anonymous voice sounded from the gloom. “Hell and damnation to them all!”
“They’re getting us one by one,” somebody replied, “one by bloody one.”
“Maybe this is it,” Aitken said. “Maybe this is the German push that ends the war.”
“Keep your chins up, lads. Mind we’re Royal Scots,” McKim muttered quiet encouragement. “We’ll get the bastards back, don’t you fear.” He raised his voice slightly. “Up the Royals, lads. Come on, up the Royals.” But there were no takers until Flockhart repeated the words:
“Up the Royals, lads. Don’t let the Kaiser get you down!”
There were soft growls from the men, a rattle of equipment and a half-stifled cough as one man fought the gas that had seeped into his lungs.
“Roll call, boys,” Ramsay decided. They had been moving away from the burning dugout for an hour now and were beginning to straggle as the weaker and more badly wounded men lagged behind. “Gather round.”
There was a shuffling of tired feet, an occasional grumbled mutter, an urgent whisper and the men circled around. They were ghosts in the shattered gloom of the
battlefield, hunched men with long coats and haggard faces, part illuminated by the occasional soaring star shell.
“Take the roll, Flockhart,” Ramsay did not want to admit he did not know all the men’s names yet. I should know them. They are my men. It is my duty to know the men I lead to death.
Like the good sergeant he was, Flockhart knew every one of his soldiers. In the tense darkness of that lunar landscape, he steadily intoned all thirty names that had been under Ramsay’s command, waiting after each for a response.
“Aitken …”
“Sir.”
The voices were soft in the night, but there were far too many silences after each hopeful name. Each silence meant a death; each silence signified a grieving family somewhere in Edinburgh or the Lothians; each silence was a broken-hearted mother or wife, orphaned children and a future hacked away by shellfire or bullet.
“Beaumont …”
Silence.
“Arbuthnott …”
Silence.
“Cruickshank …”
“Sir!”
Oh, thank God. Thank you God for preserving a young life. Thank you for one minor mercy in this cataclysmic horror.
“Dickson …”
Silence. Someone coughed. Then silence again: heavy, oppressive, prickling with apprehension.
“Mackay …”
“Sir!”
That was a very young voice indeed.
“MacNulty …”
Silence.
The silences were frightening. They hung over the loose band of men as if populated by the accusing ghosts of the dead; circling them, running sharp-taloned fingers up their spines, easing memories of laughing faces and frightened faces into their brains. The silences were too loud to be ignored – they screamed an abyss of nothingness into minds incapable of adding tragic loss to their packed burden of horror and fear and guilt.
“Nixon …”
Silence.
Oh God; how many more of my men?
When Flockhart finished the roll there were only twelve men left. Twelve terribly fatigued men who nursed wounds and whose eyes were shaded with memory. Ramsay stood in the centre and wondered how to lift their morale. Shoulders were drooping, but was it tiredness or despair? He looked around, unable to decide.
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