by S C Worrall
‘Hooray!’
‘Hip, hip.’
‘Hooray!’
‘Hip, hip.’
‘Hooray!’
A shell whistles overhead. Heyworth’s face grows serious. ‘You will have had a chance to scan the headlines by now.’ He points to the pile of newspapers on the floor. ‘In the north, the Germans are reported to be less than twelve miles from the main road west to the coast at Saint-Quentin. In the east, they are pressing us here at the Escaut. If the Germans take the canal, there will be nothing but blue sky between them and our forces retreating towards Dunkirk.’ He clears his throat. ‘Our orders are to stand and fight.’ A ripple of emotion flows through Martin and the rest of the officers: at last, they will be able to show what they are made of. ‘And though we are only in reserve, we could be called into action at any moment. So I want all companies to be ready to man their posts at all times.’
During the night, the German gunners down on the canal find their range and a steady barrage of incoming rains down on the village. Martin takes his men down into a cellar for protection. It’s pitch dark, except for the glow of cigarettes. Cripps and the rest of the men sit propped against the surrounding walls. Some sleep with their heads in their hands, others smoke. Topper plays an Irish ballad on the harmonica. They have become used to the sound of shellfire.
But as a blast rocks the building above him, sending shock waves through the cellar’s stone walls, Martin feels a wave of fear. He takes a cigarette and lights it, hoping his men won’t see that his hand is shaking. Ever since that day on the Tournai road, when the column was bombed from the air, he has been having flashbacks. The scream of the Stukas. The smell of burning flesh. Now, as he sits in the darkness, he sees in his mind’s eye the weeping eye of the elephant, hears its pitiful trumpeting and the shot ring out that killed it. The sheer, unbridled horror of war.
Another shell slams into the ground behind them. ‘Anyone fancy playing the pub game?’ he says to distract himself. A grunted assent comes out of the darkness. ‘You know the rules. Someone says the name of a town or village in Buckinghamshire, and the next person has to name a pub in that village. Want to start it off, Joe?’
‘Waddeson,’ Cripps says.
‘Bloody dump,’ Topper snarls.
‘Is that the name of the pub, Topper?’ Martin jokes. ‘Or just your view on Joe’s village?’
Everyone laughs.
‘The Lion!’ Jenkins calls.
‘One point, that man.’ Martin pauses. ‘Beaconsfield.’
‘The Saracen’s Head.’ Cripps pulls on his cigarette.
‘One point for Joe.’ Martin wonders if he will ever get back there with Nancy.
‘Leighton Buzzard,’ says Topper, then does an arpeggio on the harmonica.
Another shell explodes with a loud crump, shaking the cellar walls. Martin’s hand trembles.
‘The Greyhound?’
Their voices are disembodied in the dark, but Martin recognizes them as he recognizes their faces. ‘Well done, Wallingford. One point.’
There’s another, even louder crump.
‘Sounds like a ten-five field howitzer,’ says Cripps.
As though in response, a flurry of high-pitched notes spills from Topper’s harmonica.
‘Can’t you shut the fuck up, Topper?!’ Jenkins’ Welsh voice booms through the darkness. ‘That thing’s getting on my nerves, it is.’
The harmonica slides to a theatrical silence. ‘I once had a drink in a place called the Three-Legged Mare.’ Topper chuckles. ‘The locals call it the Wonky Donkey.’
Laughter ripples round the cellar. Another shell explodes. Martin feels the shock waves in his spine. A long silence, then Topper’s voice. ‘D’you think the Germans have funny pub names?’
‘Nah. No sense of humour, mate.’ Cripps snorts.
A shell whistles overhead.
‘Ze Dog’s Dick,’ Topper suggests.
‘Ze Cock und Ballz,’ Martin chimes in.
The men split their sides with laughter. Then another shell whistles overhead and explodes with an enormous crash above them. The walls sway. Plaster dust falls from the ceiling. The platoon falls silent, waiting for the next incoming.
They emerge from the cellar to find Gibbens and a group of stretcher-bearers herding a group of cows through the village square. Streamers of peach-coloured light float above the eastern horizon. The pépinières are full of chattering sparrows. House martins twitter on a fence.
Martin fills his lungs, happy to be out in the sunshine after the darkness and fear of the cellar. ‘What are you up to?’
‘The medicinal value of fresh milk cannot be overstated,’ the doctor calls, slapping the sides of a dun-coloured cow with a stick. ‘They haven’t been milked in days, poor things.’
Six more cows lollop along behind him, udders jiggling.
‘It’s like the bull run at Pamplona!’ Martin laughs.
‘There’s one for each company,’ shouts Gibbens. ‘Which one do you fancy, Martin?’
A shell whistles overhead and explodes on the other side of the church. The cows break into a run.
‘Whoa there!’ Gibbens slaps the cow’s flanks with the switch, trying to stop it from stampeding into the nursery gardens.
‘This Friesian looks good.’ Martin runs along beside the black and white cow, trying to separate it from the herd. The cow shies away and sends him sprawling across the cobblestones.
Gibbens roars with laughter. ‘Cow herding was obviously not a required subject at Oxford!’
Martin brushes cow shit off his tunic, cracking up at the absurdity of the situation. It feels good to laugh, forget about the horrors of war, if only for a few seconds. ‘We only read about it in Virgil!’
Gibbens begins to recite Latin as he herds the cows into an apple orchard. ‘Quid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram/uertere, Maecenas . . .’ The cows lower their heads meekly, their tails slapping against their flanks. Gibbens slams the gate shut after them. ‘The Georgics. Book One. Always works.’
The laughter soon dies away as Martin takes his Pioneers and leads them towards the edge of the village. Trench digging. Under fire. As a shell sails overhead, they grab their gear and make a run for it, across the nursery gardens, rifles held in readiness across their chests, packs bobbing on their backs. A German box-barrage, a cluster of guns firing in unison at the same target, opens up in the distance. Mortars rain down. Martin waves for the men to take cover behind a red barn. The mortars sail overhead. They wait half a minute, then move on through the pépinières.
They spend the afternoon digging anti-tank defences. Martin strips off his shirt and works bare-chested in the hot sunshine. Bumblebees flit among the strawberry plants, sucking nectar from the white flowers. Suddenly, in his mind, he is back in England, at Whichert House, working in the vegetable garden alongside Aunt Dorothy. Scamp is racing across the grass. Then the scene shifts. He is lying in a field above Penn with his eyes closed, the heat of the summer and his desire flooding through his body, as Nancy tickles his nose with a straw. He flits her hand away but the straw returns a few seconds later. A bumblebee drones into earshot, buzzes about them, then disappears. The next thing he knows, he feels her lips against his, her hair tumbling over his face.
A runner from HQ snaps him back to the present. He has a long, thin face covered in acne. ‘We need some men down at the canal, sir,’ he says.
‘Not more trenches . . . ’ Martin protests.
‘No, sir.’
‘What then?’
The runner pauses. ‘Grave digging, sir.’
Down on the canal the fighting has grown steadily bloodier. The Germans have made a bridgehead near the village of Antoing, gaining a foothold on the western bank of the canal, where the British are positioned. The battalion’s sister regiment, the 4th Bucks and Oxfords, aided by the Cameron Highlanders, who went into battle wearing kilts to the skirling of bagpipes, are fighting valiantly to repel them. But the Scots’
ammunition is running low because of the bombing of the truck on the road to Tournai. Casualties are mounting.
Martin and his men follow the runner. In an orchard, on the other side of the village, they find Padre Dix standing next to a row of dead soldiers laid out on the ground on stretchers, their eyelids closed, their uniforms neatly buttoned. Most of the dead are boys, barely out of school. One has had the side of his head completely blown away. Another has had both legs blown off, so that all that remains are the bloodied stumps.
Martin and his Pioneers take their spades and quickly dig shallow graves. The padre steps forward and, looking down at the bodies, begins to recite a prayer. ‘I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, Write, From henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord: even so saith the Spirit: for the rest from their labours . . . ’
An explosion sends a cloud of earth flying into the air, followed by a squealing sound, like a pig being butchered.
‘Incoming mortars, sir.’
Martin jumps down into the half-dug grave. Yorick, in a tin helmet. The others follow suit, pressing their bodies into the acrid-smelling earth. Martin’s hand begins to shake again. ‘Earth to earth,’ he mutters under his breath, ‘dust to dust.’
‘Lord, grant them eternal rest,’ the padre continues. ‘And let the perpetual light shine upon them.’
From down in the half-dug graves comes a muffled ‘Amen.’
22 MAY 1940
The Escaut Canal
Heyworth pulls up in what had been BB’s Humber staff car. Walnut dash. Leather trim. Driver in chamois gloves. The perks of command. ‘Hop in, young man.’ He signals to Cripps. ‘You, too, Sarge.’
They clamber into the car and set off down a cobblestone track that cuts across No Man’s Land. Along the side of the road the Sappers have laid telephone cable to connect the reserve positions to the front. A cloud of white smoke rises over the Escaut Canal. The sound of gunfire. ‘You haven’t seen real combat yet, have you, Martin?’
‘Not really, sir,’ Martin says, uneasily, wondering where Heyworth is taking them.
They drive on in silence, the sound of mortar and machine gun fire growing steadily louder. At the rim of a quarry overlooking the canal, Heyworth orders the driver to park the car. They get out and Heyworth hands Martin a pair of field glasses. ‘Quite a show going on down there,’ he says, as though he is talking about a theatre performance.
Martin still can’t work out what they are doing here, so close to the front. Is this some kind of test, he wonders, as he looks down on the canal. Strictly speaking, the Escaut is what is known as a canalized river. In other words, a river that has been dredged and turned into a canal for commercial shipping. Normally, it is thick with vessels of every description, moving goods between Belgium and France. Now, the canal barges lie on their sides, sunk to make a crossing more difficult. British forces are installed in a row of industrial buildings on this side of the canal. Less than thirty yards of water separate them from the Germans. Smoke and flames pour out of burning buildings.
Heyworth points to a line of rubber boats on the opposite side of the canal. ‘The Germans are about to launch an amphibious assault. New design: rigid-framed hulls, outboard motors. Kraft durch Technik.’
A column of German soldiers in coalscuttle helmets run out of a factory, leap into the rubber boats and begin to cross the canal, facing forward, like Vikings in a long boat. The gunners on the British side wait till the boats are in the middle of the canal. The German soldiers crouch forward and start to fire. A volley of machine gun and rifle fire pours from a row of brick houses on the British side, knocking enemy soldiers into the canal, like rag dolls.
Another line of boats is launched. The British gunners tear into them, as before. Two men try to swim away, an older man of forty or so and a young man with a dark, matted face. The British gunners open up again, spattering the water with bullets, like hailstones. The two men splash about, then the older man starts to sink. His comrade tries to hold him up, but the older man is too heavy. He lets go of him and his head disappears under the water. The boy swims on, arms flailing and splashing.
Martin watches in horror as he scrambles towards the bank and starts to crawl out. A burst of machine gun fire makes the water leap and dance around him. The boy lurches forward, clutching his chest, as though someone has punched him, then collapses face down in the mud.
‘They don’t teach you that at Oxford, do they, Lieutenant?’ Heyworth’s Mancunian accent is sharp, derisive.
‘No.’ Martin stares at the ground. Is that why they are here? So that Heyworth can humiliate him? Some sadistic rite of passage, like hazing at a boarding school? To see whether Martin is up to it? Ever since that business with the gas course, it has become clear that the new commanding officer thinks Martin is a dilettante, a privileged Oxford University student who is only pretending to be a soldier.
‘A man finds out what he’s made of in battle, Preston.’ Heyworth slaps his thigh with his swagger stick. ‘There’s no hiding in battle. It searches out every crack and crevice of a man’s mind and soul.’ He stares directly at Martin. ‘For weaknesses.’
Martin goes on staring at the ground, but with a new feeling of anger rising in his gorge against Heyworth. At that moment, a bullet whacks into the tree behind them. Martin ducks, but Heyworth doesn’t flinch. More bullets whack into the tree, cutting leaves and branches to shreds.
Cripps points along the canal. ‘Sir, I think we’re in the Oxfords’ line of fire.’
‘Nonsense, Sarge.’ Heyworth snorts. ‘Those are German bullets – I can tell by the noise.’
More bullets whizz by, like angry insects. Martin and Cripps duck.
Martin takes his binoculars and pans along the canal. ‘With all due respect, Brian, I think they are ours.’ Now who’s not a good soldier? thinks Martin, feeling secretly gleeful. ‘They’re waving at us to get out of the way.’
‘Don’t talk bloody rubbish.’
There’s a pop on the opposite side of the canal, then a whistling sound. A mortar shell slams into the quarry behind them, showering them with small rocks and dust.
‘Sir, I really think we should take cover!’ Cripps shouts from behind the staff car.
‘Give me those binoculars.’ Heyworth scans the canal. ‘You’re right, Joe. It is the Oxfords!’ A bullet zings past his head. All three men take cover in a ditch. Heyworth has made a complete fool of himself. Martin has to stop himself from laughing. ‘Why the bloody hell are they firing this way?’
Back at their base in Lesdain, as the men are settling down for the night, orders come through to withdraw to the nearby village of Rumegies, five miles away by direct road. The men are confused and mutinous. So far, their only experience of war has been retreat.
‘I thought we was meant to hold the line here, sir.’
‘HQ has decided to make a . . . tactical withdrawal.’ Martin’s voice is sarcastic.
‘Another one?’
‘We are going to be occupying the Gort Line.’
‘The Gort Line?’ Topper exclaims. ‘I thought they had already given that up as a crappy idea.’
Martin pulls a nervous grin. ‘It seems there has been a change of opinion.’
A heavy mist has fallen by the time they set off. With no headlights it makes it almost impossible to see. Ghostly shapes slip by. The men march, like sleepwalkers, bent forward under the weight of their packs, the slings of their rifles cutting into their shoulders. Left, right. Left, right.
Martin lets his thoughts drift back to England. Since they left Wahagnies, he has not had a moment to write; and, of course, no letters are coming through from England now they are in action. All that remains are memory and imagination. Closing his eyes, he is back in Penn, on a misty night like this, last May. Cycling home with Nancy from the Royal Standard of England. The hedgerows full of daffodils and hawthorn blossom. Her voice ringing out, as they raced down the hill, like excited children.
‘Looks
like the village here, sir.’ Cripps points through the windscreen. ‘Rum-egies.’ He pronounces it like the drink, rum.
‘Room-egies,’ Martin purses his lips in exaggerated fashion.
The next morning, the Panopticon rumbles out to the Gort Line. Last night’s mist has turned to thick fog and Jenkins, the driver, has to take care not to get stuck in the fresh shell craters.
In the distance they can just make out the silhouette of an abandoned blockhouse. Birds are nesting inside it now.
‘Hard to imagine the King coming here, isn’t it?’ Martin looks across at the blockhouse.
‘The King?’ Cripps throws a shovel full of earth out of a trench they have been ordered to re-dig.
‘And Noël Coward.’
‘Noël Coward?’ Cripps stares at him in amazement. ‘What the hell was he doing here?’
‘This was a key location on the Gort Line.’ Martin swings a pick. ‘In December, before we arrived in France, the King made a flying visit to visit the troops. Keep up morale.’ He pauses. ‘Even Chamberlain came to Rumegies.’
‘Can’t believe we are back digging trenches again, like we was in January!’ grumbles Topper. ‘We have just marched all the way to Waterloo and back again, without hardly firing a single bullet, just to dig some more useless trenches at the effing Gort Line, which everyone knows is a complete dinosaur, anyway! It’s like the bloody Duke of York! Who’s running this war?’
Martin feels exactly the same. Plans are made far away, in London and at the force’s top secret HQ, well away from the front, in France. What filters down to Martin and the other officers are snippets of information, and rumour. Most of the time, they move about in a fog as thick as the one they are now working in. The fog of war. But as an officer it is not his place to voice his frustrations or criticism of his superiors. His job is to encourage his men.