‘It seems such a shame,’ Theo remarked. ‘No Man’s Land looks so pretty sometimes, when the sun shines on the fields of green grass dotted with white and yellow wild flowers and a shower of scarlet poppies. And now we’re blowing it all to Kingdom Come.’
Bertie chuckled. ‘He’s getting poetic now. Just watch he doesn’t go over the top to pick flowers.’
‘Do you think it’s ever going to stop?’ Charlie asked. It was the first time the three cousins had been on duty in the front line and it was nothing like they’d imagined, not even in their worst nightmares.
On their arrival, they’d spent some days in the support trenches, ferrying supplies and getting used to the tedious life. They had to ‘stand to’ at dawn for an hour and then it was breakfast, which might be only a slice of bread and a cup of weak tea. But now, something seemed to be happening. The allied artillery barrage had begun two days’ earlier on 24 June in an attempt to obliterate the German front lines and so open up a way for a massive assault.
‘I don’t know,’ Theo muttered grimly. ‘I reckon they must be able to hear this back in England.’
‘Oh, I hope not. Mam’ll go spare if she does,’ Bertie murmured. Their patriotic fervour was being eroded by the minute by the incessant gunfire and the nervous tension that permeated the trenches.
‘It’s the waiting that’s the worst, isn’t it?’ Theo said. ‘If only we could get going.’ He glanced up and down the short run of the trench where the three of them were standing on the fire step, their rifles at the ready, their steel helmets in place.
‘You know what this is supposed to do, don’t you?’
‘Hopefully kill all the enemy before we get the order to go over the top?’ Charlie ventured.
‘Well, that as well, but no, they’re hoping to breach a gap in the enemy line so that the cavalry can push through.’
‘But what about their artillery, to say nothing of tanks? Have they got tanks?’ Bertie said. ‘Horses against tanks doesn’t sound like a very sensible idea.’
‘Is anything about this war “sensible”?’ was Theo’s only reply, to which neither of the other two had an answer.
Half an hour later they were told to stand down but the bombardment continued hour after hour.
‘I’ll be deaf after this,’ Theo muttered as he led the way down into the nearest dugout. ‘Now, what are we going to have for dinner, chaps? A nice piece of rump steak from Percy Hammond’s shop? Or – I know, what about bully beef and biscuits for a change?’
‘Why not?’ Charlie muttered. ‘Is there any water left?’
‘Not a drop,’ Bertie said cheerfully. ‘It’ll be boiled water from the nearest shell hole again.’
‘Haven’t they brought supplies yet?
‘Doesn’t look like it,’ Charlie said, scratching his chest.
‘Have you got lice again, old chap?’
‘They won’t let me alone.’
‘Come on, off with your kit.’
Charlie stood like some little schoolboy whilst Theo and Bertie stripped him.
‘God, he’s alive with the little blighters,’ Theo said. ‘Let’s just chuck his shirt. I’ve got another one somewhere he can have.’
‘Surely no one over there can withstand that,’ Bertie said, as they stood side by side on the fire step once more. It was 1 July and they’d already been awake since four-thirty. After breakfast an hour later they’d moved forward and there they’d waited until, at almost seven-thirty, a huge mine, buried by the Royal Engineers under the German trenches, was detonated, shaking the ground and blowing tons of earth skywards. Two minutes later, the artillery barrage from the allied lines, which had gone on for days, stopped. Fear gripped every waiting soldier’s stomach. It was not cowardice – these volunteers were the bravest of the brave. They’d enlisted in a wave of patriotic fervour to save their country, prepared to do whatever it took to rout the enemy, but not one of them could have foreseen the carnage or the horror they would have to endure as they stood at the gates of hell on that summer’s morning. Weighed down with over seventy pounds of equipment – entrenching tools, gas helmets, wire cutters, ammunition, bombs, water bottles, field dressings – they’d been ordered to advance at a steady pace to gain, it was hoped, at least two miles of ground on that first day.
The whistle blew, the order came and men climbed the ladders and launched themselves over the parapet and began to climb the hill towards the Germans, who had the advantage of occupying the villages of La Boiselle and Ovillers on the higher ground. Earlier patrols had reported that the enemy’s positions had been obliterated. Surely, no resistance could – or would – be offered.
But something had gone disastrously wrong. As the first line, which included the three cousins, appeared over the top of the parapet, they faced heavy machine-gun fire. They walked on, but soldier after soldier fell to the ground. Another line advanced and then another and another, but the slaughter went on.
‘Run, Bertie, run!’ Theo shouted and grabbed hold of Charlie, pulling him into a shell hole. Bertie tumbled in a moment later, panting and disorientated, but astonishingly, he was laughing. ‘You told me to run once before, Theo. Remember?’
‘So I did, old chap. But I reckon these Germans are even more fearsome than my mother, don’t you?’
‘Guess the artillery assault didn’t work then,’ Charlie muttered. ‘Now what do we do?’
Cautiously, Theo poked his head above the side of the shell hole only to hear the ping of a bullet hitting his helmet.
‘For God’s sake, Theo, stay down.’
Machine-gun fire went on all around them. Another soldier fell into the crater, slithering down the side to lie in the bottom, eyes staring, blood pouring from his chest. The three cousins stared at him and then at each other. He was beyond help. Another rolled in, but he was still alive.
‘I’m hit, I’m hit. Oh, Mother, I’m hit.’
The shelling and the gunfire went on relentlessly and now, added to the deafening noise, was the sound of wounded and dying men screaming in agony, lying in No Man’s Land where not even the most courageous stretcher bearer could reach them. As dusk fell, the three cousins shed some of their equipment and, dragging the wounded man with them, began to crawl back towards their own trenches. Every so often they lay perfectly still, as snipers’ bullets hit the ground round them.
‘We should have waited a while longer, until it was really dark,’ Bertie muttered.
‘There’s another crater up ahead. We’ll wait there a while,’ Theo suggested, as the moaning of their companion brought another hail of bullets, but thoughts of leaving their wounded comrade never entered their heads. They waited again, and not until the early hours of the following morning did they make it back to the trench, falling in with relief, still dragging the casualty after them.
‘Let’s get him to the dressing station,’ Bertie said. ‘You both all right?’
‘Careful,’ Charlie said, straining his eyes through the darkness. ‘There’re men still sleeping. Mind where you tread.’
Theo bent and shook the shoulders of one or two men lying on the duckboards at the bottom of the trench. ‘Charlie, old chap,’ he said softly. ‘They’re dead.’
‘What! All of them?’
In the pale light of the July dawn, they searched among the bodies until they found one or two only just alive. Between them, they made several trips back and forth to the dressing station. When at last they could find no one else who could be helped they retreated into the dugout, white-faced and with dark rings of utter exhaustion around their eyes.
‘Let’s get some sleep if we can. There’ll be more of the same tomorrow – I mean, today – I’ve no doubt,’ Theo said.
The three cousins didn’t know it but that day had been the start of a big offensive that would become famously known as ‘The Battle of the Somme’. It was miraculous that all three of them had survived those first disastrous hours. As they tried to sleep, Theo said to Charlie, ‘Rumour h
as it that the 2nd Lincolns are here somewhere. Your father’s with them, isn’t he?’
‘I really don’t know, but I don’t expect I’ll suddenly find myself in the same shell hole with him,’ Charlie said, half asleep already.
But strange coincidences happen in war and late that same night, as the three young men huddled together in the dugout, they could hear voices outside and Charlie heard his name called softly.
‘Here,’ he answered. ‘In here.’
A dark shadow crouched at the entrance and then crawled in. ‘Don’t stand up, chaps,’ a voice said, ‘I’m here unofficially. In fact, I’m probably being very unprofessional, but I am off duty for the moment and I doubt anyone’s going to argue with me anyway.’
As the man straightened up, Charlie gasped and Theo murmured, ‘Well, I never.’
Bertie just stared at Major James Lyndon.
‘We’re very near you. Just to the north outside the village of Ovillers. We’ve driven deeply into the enemy lines. How about you?’
‘Much the same, sir,’ Theo said. Both Charlie and Bertie were tongue-tied. ‘We’ve advanced – so they’re telling us – but we’ve suffered terrible casualties.’
In the poor light, James’s face was grim. ‘Yes, we have too. That’s why –’ He hesitated and bit his lip. It was hard for the soldier in him to show emotion of any kind. ‘I wanted to know that you were all safe.’ He glanced round at the three ashen faces. They were exhausted and drained of feeling. There was a long pause before he touched Charlie lightly on the shoulder and said gruffly, ‘I’d better be going before I’m missed. Take care of yourselves – and each other. All of you.’
And then, as quickly as he had come, he was gone, crawling out of the dugout and disappearing along the trench, keeping his head low as he found his way through the darkness back to his own position.
After several moments’ silence, Charlie murmured, ‘Did that just happen?’
‘I think it did,’ Theo said and yawned. ‘But I’m so tired, so very tired, I might have dreamed it all.’
And with that, Theo was asleep on the cold, hard floor of the dugout leaving Charlie kneeling at the entrance trying to catch a last glimpse of his father.
The battles of the Somme would rage backwards and forwards for months and would claim thousands of young lives on both sides. When the long lists of the casualties suffered by the 10th Battalion Lincolnshire Regiment – the ‘Grimsby Chums’ – began to appear in the town’s newspapers, the community realized sadly that they had lost a generation of fine young men and all for the capture of about five miles of ground. But somehow, the Lyndon boys had survived. They had stayed close, watching out for each other and fighting courageously together.
Charlie and his father did not meet again, but in October, word came down the line that Major James Lyndon had been killed on the twenty-third of that month in an assault on the enemy to the east of Les Boeufs and Gueudecourt, when the 2nd Lincolnshire were said to have been ‘almost wiped out’.
Theo was now the Earl of Fairfield.
When the news reached Fairfield Hall, the dowager countess took to her bed, overcome with grief, but Dorothea sat down at her desk to write to her son. In the trenches, both Bertie and Charlie began to call Theo ‘My lord’, but he refused to answer. ‘I don’t want the title or the estate. They’re yours, Charlie. You’ll see when we get home . . .’
Annabel received a personal visit from James’s solicitor, bearing the letter, which had been left in his safekeeping. She opened it with trembling fingers. The letter was dated on the same day that the three cousins had visited their families in turn.
My dear Annabel,
Perhaps I haven’t the right to call you that any more, but I hope you will forgive the presumption as, if you are reading this, you will know that I have been killed in the line of duty. I am writing this on the day I met my son for only the second time in his life. I bitterly regret my hasty and unwarranted action just after his birth, for I can see for myself now that Charles is undoubtedly my son. He is a fine boy and I am so proud of the way you have raised him. He will make a fine soldier and I pray he will return safely to you when all this madness is over.
Annabel, my beautiful wife, I was so wrong to believe my sister’s lies. If we had had more time together – you and I – and I had not been so insanely jealous of any other man even daring to look at you, then perhaps things might not have happened the way they did. Dorothea is not a bad woman – I beg you to believe that – but her obsession with seeing her son as my heir robbed her of all sense and reason.
And now I must leave the inheritance in the lap of the gods. Despite Dorothea’s pleas and threats, I have taken no action to disinherit our son, so, by rights, Charles should be the next earl and should inherit the estate too.
I leave it all in his safe hands.
My dear, I hardly dare ask for your forgiveness, but I do so knowing you have a loving and generous heart. With all my heart I hope that in the years to come you find someone to love and cherish you as you deserve.
James
Wordlessly, she handed the letter to her grandfather who read it through and then looked up to meet her gaze. Huskily, she said, ‘Gramps, the next time you go to market and you see Ben, please will you ask him to come to see me – if – if he would like to, that is.’
Edward nodded. I won’t wait for market day, he thought. I’ll go now. He said nothing to either Annabel or Martha, but he harnessed the pony and trap and set off at once to Joe Moffatt’s farm.
‘Where’s Ben?’ he asked Joe after a cursory greeting.
Joe’s smile faded. ‘Bad news, is it, my old friend?’
They were all becoming inured to it; every day they heard of someone they knew being killed or wounded, or a family they knew losing a loved one. The Somme was proving to be a slaughterhouse.
‘The earl has been killed in action.’
Joe nodded sadly, understanding at once why Edward had come. ‘I’ll find Ben.’ He turned and shouted to a young boy who now helped on the farm. ‘Find Mr Jackson, lad, will you?’ He turned back to Edward. ‘Come into the house while you wait, Edward, won’t you?’
‘No offence, Joe, but if you don’t mind, I’ll talk to him out here.’
‘None taken. These are hard times we’re living in. Did you hear that William Broughton has enlisted?’
‘No!’ Edward shook his head sadly. ‘It’ll kill his parents if owt happens to him. Couldn’t he appeal? Farming’s surely classed as “important war work”?’
Joe shrugged. ‘Seems like he didn’t want to. Didn’t want to be thought a coward, I expect.’
Several young men had gone from Fairfield, including Eddie Cartwright, and Thorpe St Michael seemed to have only young boys and old men left walking its streets.
Edward sighed heavily. ‘Where will it all end, Joe?’ But it was a question his friend could not answer. Instead, he said, ‘Here’s Ben coming now. I’ll leave you to it.’
‘’Morning, Edward.’ Ben approached, an anxious look on his face. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘The earl’s been killed in action. Annabel heard this morning.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. How – how is she?’
‘Ben, I want a straight answer, man to man. Do you love Annabel?’
‘You know I do, but—’
‘No buts. You’re coming back with me now to see her. And I won’t take “no” for an answer.’
Ben shook his head. ‘I can’t. I mustn’t. It’d only set the tongues wagging again and . . .’
‘Damn the gossips, Ben! Annabel is more important – and she needs you. You’re coming if I have to put you over my shoulder and carry you there!’
When Edward pulled into the yard, Annabel was watching for him. After only a moment’s hesitation, Ben held out his arms to her and she went into them, laying her head against his shoulder and nestling into his neck.
‘Oh Ben, what if Charlie doesn’t come back?’ she
whispered.
He stroked her hair but could not find the words to comfort this woman whom he loved so much and had done so, he realized now, almost from the very first time he saw her. He could not offer empty words of reassurance, for he guessed what life at the battle front would be like for all the young, innocent soldiers who had marched away in a blaze of patriotic fervour. Already the casualty lists appearing in the newspapers were growing longer with each day. And now James Lyndon’s name was added to that number.
His heart ached for this mother as it did for all mothers. He could even find it in his heart to feel sorrow for Dorothea despite her vindictive treatment of Annabel and her son. Now, both their sons – and Nancy’s too – faced a far greater enemy and family feuds seemed petty and insignificant in comparison. He sighed heavily, wishing that the boys had not gone together. Ben didn’t believe in ‘pals’ battalions’. The losses – and he knew they would be heavy before all this was over – would crush whole communities where every street would lose its sons.
Sixty-Five
April 1917
‘Bertie! Bertie!’ Charlie’s voice was frantic. ‘Theo’s been hit. You must come and help me carry him to the dressing station. Sarg has given me permission.’
‘Oh my God! Is it bad?’
‘Bad enough. He’s been hit in the shoulder.’
The two young men hurried to the trench where Theo lay, propped against the side, other men scrambling over his legs as they ran to take up their positions on the fire step.
‘Keep your head down, Bertie,’ Charlie warned. ‘They’re shelling us.’
‘Leave me,’ Theo gasped as they lifted him. ‘I’m done for. Look after yourselves.’
‘You can’t die, Theo,’ was Bertie’s only response. ‘We won’t let you.’
They carried him to the dressing station and laid him down gently beside the other wounded being brought in thick and fast.
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