‘Thank you, Prime Minister. I will be brief. Nobody here needs me to reiterate how dire the position is in France, and how long it will be before we can put Lord Kitchener’s courageous new army into the field. But, if you will indulge me, I will reiterate one sentiment once more: thank God for the courage and elan of our French friends and for brave little Belgium, who are both holding their ground so fearlessly.’
Even though every man there wants the gathering to be as brief as possible, Winston holds them enthralled for twenty minutes as he not only summarizes the situation but does so with such bravura that he resembles a Shakespearian thespian rather than a politician.
‘For my sake, I’m wholly committed to a plan that Jacky Fisher and I have designed – a ferocious, direct attack on Germany from the north-west. First, we will seize the island of Borkum in the North Sea. Then, using Borkum as a springboard, we will hurl ourselves against the foe in vast numbers in Schleswig-Holstein. We will take the Kiel Canal, bring in neutral Denmark and launch a daring naval attack into the Baltic. Finally, with massed ranks of Russian infantry at our side, in the greatest amphibious assault in history, we will put a hundred thousand men ashore on the Pomeranian coast and smash our way through to bring Berlin and the Kaiser to their knees.’
Winston sits down with a self-righteous look on his face, raises his tumbler and takes a deep draught of his whisky. His peers, their faces creased by admiring smiles, are quiet for a moment. They are impressed by the plan, but much more by the way Winston has described it.
David Lloyd George then stands up.
‘Winston, you are a hard act to follow. But let me say that, if things get worse and there comes a time when – as Henry V at Agincourt, or Queen Elizabeth at Tilbury – someone has to make a speech to save this nation, then you’re the man to do it.’
Lloyd George begins his peroration with a distressing portrayal of the plight of the men in the trenches, enduring the kind of conditions that ‘would destroy the morale of the best of men’. He argues vociferously that the war cannot be won in France without casualties on an as yet unimagined scale. He then describes in detail a ‘Southern Strategy’, which he finishes with a summary.
‘So you see, Salonika is the key on one side, engaging the support of all those who hate the Austrians: Serbs, Montenegrins, Romanians and Greeks. Then, on the other side, Syria, where we strike the Ottoman Turks at their weakest point.’
Kitchener has said nothing. Although he has some sympathy for a southern offensive, he remains convinced that the war will be won or lost on the Western Front, if only because that is where such hordes of men face one another and where the thousand-year rivalry between the Germanic and Gallic civilizations is being played out.
Winston senses the exhaustion in the room, which is not helped by the dwindling contents of the whisky decanter. He sees that both the ‘Northern Strategy’ and Lloyd George’s ‘Southern Strategy’ have merits.
‘Prime Minister, if I may, there is a middle position, which Fisher and I would both support. First, a feint of the kind I have described in the North Sea, with fewer Russian forces, which would disorientate the enemy, followed by another disguise, as David has described, towards Ottoman Syria through Alexandretta. Thirdly, an additional feint attack from the north on Constantinople from Bulgaria and, finally, a major amphibious landing from Greece, Malta and Egypt through the Dardanelles, probably on the Gallipoli Peninsular. From there, Constantinople beckons.’
Following the mention of the evocative name ‘Constantinople’, a debate ensues, sometimes heated. Reference is made to the traumas of the Crimean War of 1854, and even to the Christian Crusades of 800 years ago.
The name ‘Gallipoli’ does not strike a chord with anyone, but it soon will.
After the gathering, which does not end until 9.45 p.m., the senior protagonists of Britain’s war effort make their way home. Winston goes back to the Admiralty; not to Clemmie, who is still at Lympne, and not to his bed, which will not welcome him for several hours yet, but to the Admiralty Map Room. He gathers two sleepy marines on sentry duty to help him lay out the huge maps of the Eastern Mediterranean. They pin some on the wall before Winston lets them resume their duties.
He then pours himself another whisky – this time his favourite, Glenmorangie – and studies the Bosphorus, especially the landing sites on the western and southern coasts of Gallipoli. After several hours of note-taking, analysis and scrutiny, he marks three crosses on the Gallipoli Peninsula: Cape Helles, Suvla Bay and a small cove north of a headland called Gaba Tepe.
Satisfied that he has done his homework, he retires to bed. It is 3.45 in the morning. As he passes the marines on duty in the Central Hall, he bids them goodnight. They snap to attention.
‘Do you need a wake-up call, sir?’
‘Yes, thank you; six thirty sharp!’
Kemmel, West Flanders, Belgium
Christmas Day on the Western Front begins inauspiciously. The air is cold, the sky leaden and a haze hangs over the land as if the clouds have descended to drape a dank blanket across the ground. There are patches of snow in places, especially up against trees and hedges, but the immediate landscape is as it has been for weeks, a sea of Flanders mud.
Everywhere and everything is scarred or destroyed. Not a single building stands undamaged, and most are in ruins. The fields are pockmarked by the impact of shelling, which makes the landscape resemble the craterous surface of the moon – even more so in the silvery glow of the moon itself. Hedgerows are shredded, trees shattered and the deep ruts of artillery gun carriages, ordnance lorries and field ambulances criss-cross between the craters, creating random lines and patterns.
Like rats scampering in sewers, some creatures survive in this wasteland. They live in snake-like scars in the ground, parallel to one another, in separate colonies, competing for territory and the means of survival. They kill their rivals without provocation and in vast numbers and, like lemmings, will occasionally rush at the other’s lair in suicidal attacks. These creatures were once ordinary men; now they are part hero, part beast.
The trenches are the worst horror of this wretched environment, where the front-line troops live, eat, defecate and die. It is all but impossible to keep dry, and certainly impossible to keep clean or retain simple human dignities. They are foul places in every sense of the word: a place to eat, but usually standing up; a place to sleep, but only fitfully; a latrine, but with no privacy; and a charnel house, where decaying corpses, or parts of them, protrude from the walls.
The pristine appearance of the professional soldier on both sides of what is now being called ‘no-man’s-land’ has long gone. Every item of clothing has had to be modified or improvised and there is a plethora of garments to insulate or waterproof the body. Following the delayed arrival of greatcoats, sheepskin body warmers have arrived from Britain, as have heavy-duty woollen balaclavas, socks, mittens and gloves. Long johns are a godsend, and most men would prefer a pair of those from the Red Cross than any amount of cigarettes or chocolate.
Indulgences like chocolate are all but meaningless when hot food and clean water are difficult to find. Scavenging for anything that strays nearby is essential, and Flanders’ entire population of domesticated animals was consumed before winter began. Now, nature’s larder of rabbit, hare and birds, especially the highly prized pigeon, is diminishing rapidly. The latest source of meat for those with the strongest stomachs – meat that is both the scourge of the trenches, and sometimes its finest delicacy – is roasted rat. At least a consignment of coke braziers has arrived, making it easier to heat food and warm cold fingers.
Lice and sores from a lack of cleanliness only add to the misery. There is also the return of an ailment not seen since Napoleon’s Grande Armée made its infamous retreat from Moscow. Caused by long-term exposure to wet, cold and unhygienic conditions, the soldiers’ feet become sore, infected and even gangrenous. The medics have begun to call it ‘trench foot’. Its only cure is to reverse the ci
rcumstances that cause it.
Diseases spread rapidly; many bodies still lie in parts of no-man’s-land, unburied since they fell, sometimes many weeks ago. So bad is the smell that men wear scarves around their mouths and noses, even when the weather is mild, just to try to keep at bay the stench of open latrines and human putrefaction. A strong wind is like a blessing from heaven. It plays havoc with the accuracy of the snipers and drives away the stink.
All the local civilians have long gone so, around Ypres, where British troops face their German foes, both sets of men are alien to one another, surviving in an alien land without people, which lends yet another surreal dimension to an already bizarre world.
Occasionally, an intrepid soul will wander into the fields of death. A farmer may walk for miles, managing to evade the sentries guarding the roads, to bring a chicken or a piglet to sell for an exorbitant price. Other, less savoury, characters will offer contraband: stolen cigarettes, wine, or various highly intoxicating concoctions produced by home-made stills.
Then there is the ‘little chocolate girl’, a tiny mite, no more than eleven or twelve, who appears once a week with a knapsack full of chocolate. She will never say who sends her, or where she gets the chocolate from, but does admit that she took the knapsack off a dead British soldier; ‘un homme portant une jupe’ she says, whenever she is asked, which at first meant nothing to the soldiers, until an officer explained that it means ‘a man wearing a skirt’. Then they realized the dead man must have been from a Scottish regiment.
The chocolate she brings is instantly recognizable to the men: ‘Caley’s Milk Chocolate, made by A. J. Caley in Norwich’, with its emblem of crossed Union Jacks on the wrapper. So it must have come into the possession of her family, or fence, illegally. But it is of no concern to the men as she will exchange a bar for two cigarettes or a couple of coins of any denomination.
It is a mercy that, as winter has bitten ever harder, the clashes between the men in the trenches have diminished. Sniping is still an occasional hazard, and there have been sporadic artillery exchanges, but the will to fight seems to have been dulled on both sides.
That is a blessing in more ways than one, for both sides are desperately short of ammunition and men are finding it hard to clean and maintain their rifles. As a consequence, improvised weapons are commonplace.
Close-quarters encounters have taught men that a long rifle with a bayonet attached is not the most manoeuvrable of weapons. So a multitude of improvised knives, clubs and axes has appeared. A toothed gear from the gearbox of an abandoned vehicle jammed on to a pickaxe handle is a particular favourite, as are various ‘trench cleaners’, small daggers made from kitchen knives, or farm implements. Knuckledusters, billhooks and chains are in common use, and some men carry barbed wire to use as a garrotte.
Home-made grenades – ‘jam tins’, as they have come to be known – where an old ration tin of jam or condensed milk is filled with dynamite, loaded with shrapnel of stones or nails and fused by a roll of gun cotton, prove to be very effective.
However, on the whole, the greater enemies are now mud, lice, hunger and lethargy. Inevitably, morale has plummeted and indiscipline escalated. The annihilation of the greater part of the officer cadre and of the experienced NCOs has left men without leadership. Those officers and NCOs who remain are finding it difficult to maintain basic discipline, let alone preserve the men’s willingness to fight.
Harry Woodruff and Maurice Tait have been assigned to separate companies in the 4th Battalion Royal Fusiliers for the first time in their army careers. Maurice has remained in C Company as its colour serjeant, and Harry has gone to be colour serjeant in B Company.
After Colonel McMahon’s pugnacious charge in early November at Hooge, they soon had to withdraw from the advanced position they had gained. They ran the risk of being isolated at the small farm they had captured, which was 100 yards beyond the British line, so Harry and Maurice led their fusiliers back. It was a well-executed withdrawal. Even so, it cost six men their lives, and a dozen more were wounded, but it earned them a message of thanks from Brigade HQ.
After resting in dry billets at Festubert for over a week, they have been back in the line at Kemmel, six miles south-west of Ypres, since 21 December. Their two companies are adjacent to one another in the trench, but the men in both are hardly recognizable as those who left Albany Barracks with Harry and Maurice in August. Between them, they can count just eighteen men they remember from those days in the summer.
Harry has been given the bar to his DSM and has become a regimental legend. Maurice is also of legendary status, and the survival of both is thought to be close to miraculous. Needless to say, under their firm rule, both B and C Companies of the 4th Battalion Royal Fusiliers are tight ships with few of the morale and discipline problems affecting so many other battalions.
The new commanding officer, Major John Hely-Hutchinson, is a strong disciplinarian and has immediately imposed his authority on the battalion. Captains Lee, Pipon and Magnay arrived at the end of November. But Lee broke his leg two days later, after falling into a shell hole, and Magnay had a breakdown – an ‘attack of the shakes’ – during his first artillery bombardment.
Four more officers and thirty reinforcements arrived in Belgium on 11 December, followed by two more young lieutenants on the 19th. Maurice likes his new CO, Captain George Marshall, fresh from duty in Hong Kong. Harry liked his new man, Captain Francis Bovey, but he was killed by a sniper late on the afternoon of the 21st.
Harry was standing next to him and had warned him about putting his head too far above the parapet. He was lying on top of the trench using his field glasses to survey the German position barely 150 yards away. Harry left him to check on the men; when he returned, Bovey was still in the same position. Harry spoke to him, but there was no response, so he pulled him down into the trench.
He was already dead. His face was unharmed, save for a small bullet entry hole above his left eyebrow. But the back of his skull was missing, the shoulders of his tunic drenched in blood. He had been at the front for just seven hours after an eighteen-year career with the Indian Army dealing with civil disturbances and border patrols. Yet again, Harry had no CO and, as its colour serjeant, was temporarily in charge of B Company.
Coming back to a trench after a leave of absence is almost as bad as an extended stay in one. There are the familiar deprivations, filth and lice to deal with but also, at first, the detritus and squalor of other men. The 4th Royal Fusiliers have relieved the Worcesters – good men, heroes of the charge at Gheluvelt – but they are not their own, and it is never the same.
The battalion had been inspected by the King on 3 December, which, apart from the honour, was a major boost to morale as it meant delousing, hot baths, clean shaves, neat haircuts and laundered uniforms. For the first time in many weeks, they looked and felt like proper soldiers. The fusiliers lined up along the Menin Road outside Ypres, but the King kept them waiting for forty-five minutes, in the cold, presumably because he was inspecting several other battalions in different locations. He arrived in a fleet of cars, accompanied by a host of brass hats, and began his inspection immediately. He looked impressive as he walked past in his army greatcoat with its dark-brown fur collar, an added luxury that many men looked at enviously. He nodded appreciatively at the men from time to time. A quick chorus of ‘three cheers for the King’ was shouted; then he was gone.
It snowed on the 22nd and the men talked briefly about a white Christmas. But then it thawed, and the mud returned.
Harry and Maurice have agreed to meet first thing on Christmas morning at the section where their two companies adjoin in the trench. Dawn has just broken. Each has an enamel mug of tea in his hand.
‘’Appy Christmas, Mo.’
‘’Appy Christmas to you, mate.’
‘Quiet, ain’t it?’
‘Too right, ’specially for your Captain Bovey; ’e’s gonna be quiet for a long time.’
‘Silly bugger
, I told ’im to keep his noggin’ down! Poor sod, ’e’d only just got ’ere. How you gettin’ on wiv Captain Marshall?’
‘Oh, ’e’s all right, a bit quiet. He’s gone off to Brigade, left me in charge, said he’d be back tonight; I reckon he’s gawn off to get pissed.’ Maurice points in the direction of the German trench. ‘Did you ’ear Fritz singin’ carols last night? Sweet, it were. Some of our lads joined in; they was singin’ “Silent Night” in Fritz, but our lads could follow it and sang along wiv it.’
‘You need to be careful, Mo. The boys are s’posed be fightin’ the fuckers, not singin’ Christmas carols wiv ’em.’
‘I know, ’Arry, but it’s Christmas.’
‘Bollocks, it’s no different from any other day. It’s dog eat dog, like it’s always been.’
Maurice smiles at his friend, good old ’Arry, just the same.
As the two men swig their tea, they hear a distant voice.
‘Happy Christmas, Tommy!’
The voice, in heavily accented English, is clearly coming from the German trench.
Harry is immediately alert.
‘What the fuck!’
As he throws the dregs of his tea into the bottom of the trench, several young fusiliers come running.
‘Colour Serjeant, it’s Fritz! They’re shoutin’ at us all along the line, in English. One of ’em has a Christmas tree with candles on it. ’E’s put it on top of the parapet and is sittin’ next to it, large as life. What do we do?’
Harry does not hesitate.
‘Shoot the bugger!’
He rushes towards where the young soldier came from, pursued by Maurice.
‘Fuck a duck! What’s goin’ on?’
The Shadow of War Page 42