by Max Hennessy
‘As infantry, sir?’ Fullerton asked.
‘Of course as infantry, man! You bloody cavalry people think you’re too good for that sort of thing, I know, but I can promise you that you aren’t.’
Fullerton’s mouth opened to protest, but he closed it again and gave the order to dismount. Glancing at Dabney, he followed the general into a cottage and Dabney saw them leaning over a map spread on a kitchen table. When he came out, he looked slightly shocked.
‘With farriers, excepted men, and one man in three to handle the horses, a cavalry regiment can produce only two hundred for a dismounted action,’ he said. ‘But they seem to be intending us to hold as much line as an infantry battalion. Are the machine guns up?’
The machine guns were usually given to the man with the worst seat in the regiment and the 19th were no exception. But young Quibell, who could be relied on to fall out of the saddle whenever the regiment broke into anything faster than a canter, had a mechanical turn of mind and a good eye for country and he was already working the guns forward. The horseholders, riding one horse and leading two, were bursting away to the rear and foraging parties were sent into the fields to try to find barbed wire. Barbed wire, that anathema to a horseman, was very much in demand suddenly.
Fullerton was still explaining the situation, ‘We have the Buffs on our left and the West Kents on our right. They’ve pushed the Hussars in on the other side of the West Kents. Are we ready?’
‘Everything’s up. Wagons, guns, supplies, everything.’
‘Right. We’re to get the chaps into the trenches as fast as we can. There’s no one else, it seems, and nothing behind us. If we give way, the whole front falls apart. We’ve been told to hold to the last man – the very last.’ Fullerton’s expression seemed to indicate that he knew that death was just round the corner. ‘We start digging as soon as we arrive.’
‘What do we dig with?’ Dabney asked. ‘We don’t carry entrenching tools.’
Fullerton gave a weary gesture. ‘I told him so. All he said was “Well, you bloody well ought to.” He told me to get on with it and not argue. He’s not a cavalryman, of course. Rifle Brigade, I believe.’
Still stiff from riding, they formed up on their hind legs in the village street and began to march out. The regular crunch of boots sounded strange after the irregular clatter of hooves they’d been hearing for the past fortnight. The old cavalry attitude – the need to give tone to what was otherwise a vulgar brawl – was forgotten, as was the old argument about whether a lance was better than a sword. For years it had occupied cavalrymen’s minds but both seemed as out of date now as the bow and arrow. All that was wanted was men with rifles who could fire fifteen rounds to the minute. All too often before the war the cavalry officer had been regarded by the rest of the army as a figure of fun – it was said that some were so stupid even their brother officers were beginning to notice. They wore their tunics cut with longer skirts than the infantry to give them style, though they said it was necessary for riding, and they had always considered themselves a very special élite. But they were also well aware that exclusiveness had to be paid for and the gap was closed just in time.
The Germans arrived even as the 19th reached their position and extended into line. A deep ditch ran along their front under a line of poplars and they filed into it quickly as a machine gun somewhere in the distance started to clip the leaves above them. Dabney was on the right of the line and in front a beet field rose in a gentle slope. On his left he could see a village from whose church tower hung a Red Cross flag. Beyond, the ground rose in a gentle swell, cut by an avenue of pollarded trees marking the road, straight as a giant ruler across the countryside.
In the distance, tiny figures were moving, which he could only assume were Germans, then his eye fell on a dark column like a winding snake and he saw the sun glittering on it as it caught bayonet points and polished equipment. Between the column and the rise the gold and green sweep of the countryside was flecked with white and yellow smoke clouds from shrapnel and high explosive, some of them cut across with yellow flame, then what seemed to be a salvo from a whole battery of guns fell on the village on his left and he saw the houses crumbling and collapsing as if an invisible giant hand had swept across them.
Even as they divested themselves of unnecessary kit and the machine guns were set up and rifles laid along the eastern edge of the ditch, they saw small spikes sprouting over the curve of the slope in front. The spikes became cloth-covered helmets and then heads. Then the whole horizon seemed to sprout men as they came in masses across the flower-strewn fields, toiling up the slope, fully expecting to find nothing in front.
Nobody ordered firing to start. Ellis Ackroyd, who was near Dabney, was the first to pull the trigger and Dabney saw a German officer riding a horse in front of his men fall backwards over the tail of his mount. Immediately, the masses of grey-clad men seemed to move faster. They were extended to not more than two paces and keeping a very bad line, but they came forward to the music of bugles and brass bands and the loud singing of ‘Deutschland Über Alles.’ From the ditch it sounded like an insane chorus, and the Germans, like the Uhlans they had captured earlier, seemed from their behaviour to be new to war, and weary of marching in the hot sun.
‘One thousand yards! Open fire! Rapid independent!’
The machine guns, those derided instruments that had always seemed to be no part of cavalry equipment, had been sited under a bush on the edge of the ditch where they were difficult to see, and Dabney saw young Quibell’s arm sweep down. As they began to stutter, the line of men in front began to waver and crumble, then the rifles began to spatter out a steady fire. The grey mass in front wavered and came on again but finally broke into groups which, in turn, shredded into single men running for cover like rabbits. Some of them threw themselves flat among the beet and, as the firing died, rose and bolted back over the crest.
‘We’ve stopped them!’
But another wave of men came up the slope, led by officers waving swords. One after the other the officers fell but the soldiers still tried to advance, coming on in short rushes until they were almost on top of them; almost, it seemed, reaching out to climb the parapet of the ditch. Then the line crumbled, faded to nothing and vanished. Dabney was only barely aware of bullets until he heard a man cry out and saw him sit down heavily alongside him, then he realised the Germans had gone to ground and were returning their fire until reserves could be brought up.
The 19th had entered the ditch not in squadrons and troops but just as they had arrived, and now they were digging with anything they possessed. Moving along in a half-stoop behind them, Dabney found the line petered out at a point where the ditch angled backwards. Here, small groups of men were lying in the long grass, in tenuous touch with the West Kents. He was about to call some of his men up to extend the line when the machine guns started again and along the whole front, from the left of the 19th to away on the right beyond the Kents, he could once more see rolling masses of grey.
Solid blocks of men in spiked helmets were trudging forward again, their rifles held across their chests. They were so packed together it wasn’t even necessary to aim, and as the firing restarted the whole mass seemed to shudder, recoil on itself, tried to struggle on, then began to fall back, leaving heaps of dead to mark where they had been.
‘More conscripts called up and given a few weeks training,’ Dabney said to Leduc. ‘Before long, it’ll occur to somebody to call up the artillery, so we’d better make our position deeper.’
The hole Dabney scraped for himself was barely big enough for his binocular case, and the bullets were whipping over him as he lay down to watch. There had been a heavy shower of rain and the men were soaked to the skin and caked with mud. The trench was already in a state of disrepair, and where attempts had been made to deepen it water had appeared. There was no proper communication with left or right and
the field of fire was limited to the slope of the hill. On the right a barn was in flames but fortunately the wind was blowing the smoke away from their front and, with the aid of a battery which gave support against snipers, they were holding.
The bullets were still whipping over Dabney and he had to remain motionless until the firing died away, then he turned, and ran, bent double, for the ditch again. One of the sergeants from C Squadron met him.
‘I think you’d better move along the line, sir,’ he said. ‘Major Fullerton’s been hit.’
He scrambled along the ditch behind the troopers lying against the forward bank, the straps of their cheese-cutter caps under their chins, sucking at pipes and cigarettes, their eyes bleak as they stared across the empty ground in front that was still now and empty of Germans beyond a few squirming bodies. One of them tried to heave itself up, lifting itself on its hands, and for a horrible moment it reminded Dabney of the horse Ellis Ackroyd had shot.
Reaching Fullerton’s squadron, he came upon a little group of men. In the middle of them, Fullerton was lying on his back, a small neat hole just above the bridge of his nose.
‘Sniper, sir,’ the subaltern said. ‘You’re in command.’
‘Right.’ Dabney glanced about him. ‘Then we’ll not stand round like a committee of enquiry. It doesn’t require this many, I’m sure. Let’s have him lifted out of the way so we can move about.’
‘Where can we put him, sir?’ The subaltern seemed on the point of tears. ‘The ditch’s not very wide.’
What the boy said was correct. But they obviously couldn’t leave Fullerton where people would stumble over him.
‘Lift him on to the rear parapet.’
‘For God’s sake, sir—’ The subaltern looked shocked. The idea of leaving his late commander’s body in the open where it could be hit again by flying bullets seemed vaguely indecent to him.
‘Dammit, do as you’re told, man!’ Dabney snapped. ‘He won’t object and nothing can harm him now.’
Unwillingly the boy had the body lifted and pushed out of the way on the reverse parapet. And only just in time, because as Dabney had expected, the German artillery began to open up on their positions. A Very light curved up into the sky and burst in a red glow, and almost immediately with a white star-shaped flash two shells burst just in front of the ditch. More shells fell, but they were all just short and the men at the extremities of the position used the craters to extend the line.
Experienced only in the bombardments in South Africa, Dabney couldn’t believe the ferocity of the one that fell on them now. The peppery reek of high explosive was drifting back as the Germans probed for the range, then they were cowering awkwardly as the missiles came whimpering and shrieking down on them. A gale seemed to howl overhead, piling up great barriers of sound, and there was a wild eruption of the earth, clods and stones and bits of rubbish falling on top of them in a shower. The ditch side bulged with a tremendous grunting noise and another shower of pulverised earth filled Dabney’s eyes and ears and mouth. A man had been buried and they scratched with their bare hands to free him, but it was difficult because of the huddling figures and the narrowness of the ditch, and when they dragged him free he was found to be dead.
This time there was no argument. In the holocaust of sound, they needed elbow room, and the corpse was lifted up and rolled over the back of the ditch without question, and they all cowered down again, flinching and ducking as the shells cracked nearby. Next to Dabney, Ellis Ackroyd was crouched, his face grim, and just beyond him Leduc, his face haggard, was blinking and gasping for breath with each crunching blow.
‘Where’s our artillery, for God’s sake?’ he demanded. ‘Those bloody Germans are concentrating again behind the rise.’
Through his glasses, Dabney could see that what Leduc said was correct. It was difficult to see the Germans, but small movements, occasional glimpses of spiked helmets or crouching men indicated that they were preparing for another rush. But as they rose to their feet and came over the crest, two shells burst right among them. Bodies were flung right and left and as the smoke drifted away they saw forty or fifty men squirming or lying still among the beet tops. More shells burst along the crest and the Germans turned and bolted back out of sight, followed by rapid fire and loud cheers from the ditch.
‘That’s shook ’em,’ somebody said. ‘Didn’t think nobody was in front of ’em.’ There was a pause. ‘’Ow long we been ’ere, anyway?’
‘Gawd knows—’ the reply came slowly ‘—I reckon I was born in this bloody ditch.’
Dabney smiled. It wasn’t the chatter of downhearted men.
‘Have the ammunition collected from the dead and wounded,’ he told Leduc. ‘Together with field rations and dressings. We shall probably need every one before we’ve finished. And let’s have patrols pushed forward in case they come again.’
As the wounded were moved back to the shelter of a cow byre where the medical officer and his orderlies were working, the supply column came up, bringing ammunition and food.
Desperate for men and remembering the extenuated flank barely in touch with the Kents, Dabney considered for a moment impressing the supply column into the trench but he realised they were probably needed to carry supplies elsewhere. The food they brought was cold bully beef and biscuits, but it was snatched up without question by the starving men.
During the evening, Brigadier Farrar arrived with the wounded staff officer, who looked by this time as though he were ready to faint, the bandage on his hand saturated with blood. The brigadier wasted no time sympathising about Fullerton, and Dabney attacked straight away. His father had always told him that if he had anything unpleasant to say it was best to say it as soon as possible and as unpleasantly as possible, so there was no mistake about how he felt.
‘We need spades,’ he said.
‘We haven’t got spades,’ Farrar snapped.
‘Then you might as well accept that we shall have to give this place up, sir,’ Dabney retorted. ‘It’s not our fault the cavalry don’t carry entrenching tools and, with respect, sir, nobody can hold this place unless we make it deeper.’
‘And then?’
‘Given spades, I’ll hold it as long as you like, sir.’
Farrar stared at him for a moment then he nodded. ‘I’ll get you some spades up as soon as it’s dark,’ he said. ‘Can you hang on that long?’
‘Yes, sir, we can. I’d like wire, too, if there’s any available. Then I can get it out in front tonight.’
‘I’ll do what I can.’ Farrar searched his face. ‘You’re a Goff, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The general’s severe face relaxed momentarily. ‘Knew your father. Served under him in India. You’ve got a reputation to keep up. See that you do. I’ll try to get hot food up tomorrow. In the meantime, it’s up to you to do what you can. You’ll have to hold on here at least for another day. I’ve got the Gloucesters coming up but they can’t possibly be here until tomorrow night. I can scrape up a few base wallahs like cooks, clerks and so on to help. How about your horseholders?’
‘I’d like them up here, sir. They belong to the Regiment and they’ll do a lot better than clerks and cooks. Have you some grooms who can look after our horses?’
‘I can see to that. I’ll send your men up as soon as I get back. Everybody’s holding, but the Hussars seem to have been hard hit. They had no shelter and God alone knows who’s running the show at the moment. A wounded man brought the news back. I’m going up there to try to stiffen them. I’m also getting my clerks and cooks to prepare a strong point in the village just in case. There’s a railway that runs through it and we can man the embankment. Just hold on and we shall be all right. You’re doing all right so far. But you have no choice. Your orders are unequivocal. There’s nothing between you and the Channel ports.’
&nbs
p; When the 19th were relieved six days later they were mere shadows of the soldiers who had gone into the line. They moved like phantoms, a ghostly trickle of men in which the will to move struggled with the wish to sleep.
An infantry battalion whose identity Dabney didn’t even bother to enquire took over from them, fresh soldiers, clean and unstained with mud or blood, their packs neat, their rifles clean.
‘Well played, the Clutchers,’ one of them said. ‘Are we downhearted?’
The yell went up immediately from the men round him. ‘NO!’
One of the exhausted Lancers lifted his head and stared at them with red-rimmed eyes from a haggard black face. ‘You bloody soon will be,’ he observed.
Dabney’s face was foul with dirt and his clothes were torn and covered with blood. He was dazed, a hundred years older and grimmer, but unhurt. Leduc stumbled alongside him, also untouched. He was licking his lips and his tongue seemed curiously pinker and cleaner because of the filth on his face. He looked taut and distressed and he carried a pack that was full of the identity discs and pay books of the dead.
The whole place reeked of the acid fumes of high explosive, the smell of death and the stink of human excreta, because they had never been able to dig latrines. Here and there on the grass were flecks of dried blood where they had dragged a wounded man to die, and behind the line was a group of neat mounds in which they had buried the grey-faced dead. It had been a dismal job in the slow-falling rain.
‘Poor devils,’ Leduc had muttered as the padre intoned a prayer. ‘Their graves are full of bloody water.’
As they stumbled back to Mortigny, men wearing bandages startlingly white against the grime of their faces were supported by their friends. A man with his arm in a sling had his other arm round the shoulders of a weeping boy far less badly wounded. ‘There, there, mate,’ he was saying. ‘You’ll be all right.’