Web of Spies

by Colin Smith

  Pichler was giving orders about the shell fusing to his Feldwebel, a giant of a young Tyrolean who had tried to disguise his youth with the kind of moustache small children hang on. ‘Each gun to have five shrapnel rounds set to ten seconds, five to five, and five to zero.’

  When the NCO had gone off to see about this Weidinger said, ‘Zero settings? Expecting them to get that close?’

  ‘I’m not taking any chances,’ replied Pichler. ‘I’m a conventional kind of soldier, I suppose. I know those machine-guns behind us won’t let us down. I know they won’t jam. I know they have the best field of fire where they are and that they will keep those nasty Tommy toothpicks away from us. But just between you and me and my grandmother’s favourite saint I would feel a whole lot happier if we had some people out in front.

  ‘And there’s another thing. As you may have noticed, we may be hidden from them, but they are also hidden from us. There’s at least four hundred metres of dead ground out there behind the spur which we can’t cover over open sights. You must agree it’s worrying. I’m going to have to send my young gentleman back to where we were lying, with a man on the field telephone to act as a spotter. At least he can lie down and pretend he’s in bed which is where he should be if you ask me.’

  Weidinger nodded. It was true enough. The boy looked as weak as a kitten. But he was still convinced that it wasn’t going to happen.

  ‘Don’t forget you’ve got those mountain guns covering your left flank,’ he said. ‘If the Tommies come at you head on they’d have to face enfilade fire from over there. They’d be slaughtered.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pichler, ‘I suppose you’re right – providing they can get the range.’

  At that moment one of the most unearthly sounds either officer had ever heard floated across the little valley that separated them from the enemy. Others who were with the guns that day recalled that it was like something between an off-key bugle call and a canine’s lunar howl. At the same time a large cloud of dust began to roll towards the mountain, which began booming away at a furious rate. They were soon accompanied by the rattle of rifle fire, and then the machine-guns behind Weidinger joined in. At first they fired short bursts and then longer ones as they appeared to get on target. Weidinger estimated the range at just over one thousand metres, and wondered if they would curb the tendency to shoot high at that distance.

  They’re charging,’ said Pichler. ‘Perhaps it’s the Australians again.’

  Weidinger was looking at the dust cloud through his field glasses. It had now almost reached the Turkish position, and he could see the flashing of steel.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Not this time.’

  Then came that strange doubling note again, slightly closer now.

  ***

  Calderwell felt himself go cold.

  ‘There goes old Toby tootin’ his ‘orn,’ said Mace to no one in particular. To their right two troops from C Squadron, five officers and twenty-nine men, including Colonel Gray-Cheape, seemed to move off after the Worcesters. That left B Squadron and two troops of the Worcesters who had not gone with Albright on the ridge.

  ‘All right, s’arnt-major,’ said Captain Valintine.

  ‘Squadron will advance in half squadrons.’

  It was almost 1.30 p.m. Overhead a late flock of cranes flew south on their winter migration to the Great Rift Valley.

  ‘Squadron advaaance.’

  B Squadron of the Warwickshire Yeomanry, four officers and thirty-eight men, trotted their horses about twenty yards. They were still just below the crest, only their dust showing. The two remaining troops of the Worcesters, about thirty men under a lieutenant called Edwards, came with them, positioning themselves slightly in echelon to the right. Valintine was about a length ahead of everybody else on a grey. He turned in the saddle, his face flushed with excitement, and said, ‘It’s the guns we’re after, lads. Good huntin’ and keep spread out! Chaaaarrrrge!’

  As Valintine’s sword arm went down and his spurs went in so the pair of Skoda guns facing them opened fire on the Yeomanry for the first time.

  ***

  ‘High,’ said Pichler. ‘Down two degrees.’

  The brass elevation wheels were turned.

  ‘Fire! That’s better.’

  Weidinger, peering through his Zeiss alongside him, thought he saw at least three horses go down.

  ‘Bloody ignorant, these Tommies,’ growled Pichler. ‘Don’t read their own history books.’

  But they were not coming in the way Weidinger had always imagined a cavalry charge, a great glorious mass of men and horseflesh advancing on the enemy stirrup to stirrup, as the Uhlans had at Mars La Tour. These horsemen were hardly in formation at all: they were riding in twos and threes, even singly, with as much as ten metres between groups in places. They looked more like Cossacks than regular cavalry, and every few seconds they would vanish into their own dust.

  ***

  When the first whizz-bangs from the Austrian battery came at them, just a little too late to do any harm, Calderwell’s reaction had been the same as most of the other Yeomanry: the sooner they got past those guns the safer they would be. He raked Villa’s sides with his spurs and even began to use his sword like a whip on her rump. At one point he was almost level with Mace, who grinned and shouted something that was carried away by the sound of the next explosion, which seemed directly above them. It was a Derby. Everybody had decided on speed, and the best riders and the best horses, who almost invariably went together, edged into the lead, so that soon Calderwell was squinting into the dust of at least four mounts immediately ahead.

  There was a noise like a hailstorm on an iron-roofed building and for a moment Calderwell wondered whether their own Hotchkiss teams had come up and were giving them cover. Then he had to swerve around an animal that was down in front of him and for a moment he felt Villa falter and break her stride as her hooves caught something. There was a scream, whether from horse or man he could not tell. The hailstorm intensified as the Turkish infantry joined in with their Mausers. ‘Bloody charge of the light brigade,’ muttered Calderwell. ‘Right, you bastards.’

  ***

  Weidinger was standing by one of the .75s trying to make out what effect their fire was having. He had seen some horses go down and others appeared to be riderless, but the dust shrouded most of what was happening. Long bursts of automatic fire went overhead. He looked behind him and saw that the Feldwebel in charge of the machine-gun detachment was now directing two of his weapons at this new threat, while the third continued to cover the attack on the mountain guns on their left flank.

  ‘Five-second fuses,’ Pichler was shouting, his hand over the mouthpiece of the field telephone. Apart from about thirty horsemen who had started after the others, the English were out of sight now. His commands came after the ensign manning the observation post had recorded the distances through his Goertz range-finder and then reeled them off to the gunner operating the telephone set. The nearest horses were now at four hundred and fifty metres.

  ‘C’est magnifique mais ce n’est pas la guerre,’ murmured Weidinger who, like Calderwell, could not get the Crimea out of his head. What sort of a fool sent cavalry to attack a position like this without artillery support? Another hundred metres and the machine-gunners would really start to cut them to pieces.

  He suddenly became aware that somebody else was standing alongside him. He turned and there was Shemsi, leaning on her rolled parasol and peering into the dust as if she was at the race track. ‘What’s happening?’ she said, flinching slightly every time a gun went off. ‘Where have they all gone?’

  ‘They’re just behind that little ridge in front of us, that spur,’ said Weidinger, trying to conceal his astonishment. For the last few minutes he had completely forgotten her existence. ‘I think it might be better if you went back to the lorry. Where’s Major Krag?’

  ‘He’s trying to help get it started.’

  Weidinger looked and saw that
the driver was still tinkering with the engine while Krag stood stooped at the front gripping the starting handle with both hands.

  ‘They almost got it going a few minutes ago,’ she said.

  ‘I think you ought to forget about trying to start it now,’ said Weidinger. ‘Please tell Major Krag that there is a possibility that a few of these English might break through. You must take cover until we’ve dealt with them.’

  ‘But where?’

  ‘Go under the lorry,’ said Pichler, who had been listening to some of their conversation. ‘And go now. They’re three hundred metres away.’ He started to shout down the telephone, ‘You’ve done a good job. I’ll try and get you a medal for it. Now get out of there. Come on! Come back and keep your heads down or you’ll get them blown off by those excellent machine-guns behind us.’

  The Widow Shemsi lifted her skirts and ran back to the lorry. The machine-gun fire intensified.

  ***

  They had almost crossed the valley now and were approaching the slight incline that seemed to conceal the place where the guns that had been tormenting them lay. A riderless horse, a chestnut like Villa, came alongside Calderwell. He glanced across at it and failed to recognise whose it was but saw that the horse had got caught up in some sort of blueish tubing that was clinging to its left flank. Then he realised he was looking at the animal’s intestines, which had sprung from a gaping wound in its side and were now easing themselves a little more into the daylight with every stride it took. To Calderwell’s amazement, despite its impending evisceration, the horse easily overtook Villa and other laden stable-mates. When they reached the crest the hailstorm on the iron roof became noisier, though Calderwell was concentrating so hard on avoiding falling horses that he hardly noticed. He glimpsed a dismounted Yeoman pulling his Lee-Enfield out of his saddle boot, and then he was at the top and his sword arm went down.

  ‘Just point your weapon,’ the instructor had said. ‘Thumb in the groove, and the speed of your horse will do the rest.’

  But what do I point at, sergeant? What do I point at when the dust is so thick I can hardly see the end of my sword? Then the dust cloud parted and he saw the guns for the first time. At almost the same moment the machine-gun fire stopped.

  ***

  ‘Zero fuses,’ Pichler was shouting. ‘Zero fuses. For God’s sake, where’s that boy?’

  ‘Here they come now,’ said Weidinger.

  They were following the field telephone line down. The Hungarian gunner they called Gypsy was in the lead, winding the cable onto the apparatus as he went. Behind him came the ensign, who had the gunner’s carbine slung over his right shoulder and the range-finder in his left hand. He kept looking back. They were about four hundred metres from the guns.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ said Pichler.

  The first horse appeared. It was riderless, and was almost instantly felled by a burst of machine-gun fire.

  ‘Run, man. Come on, run,’ pleaded Pichler, though there was absolutely no chance they could hear him above the din of exploding ordnance. The ensign would run for half-a-dozen strides before he had to pause for breath. Another riderless horse crested the ridge to meet the same fate.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake drop that phone,’ whispered Pichler, ‘I won’t have you court-martialled for losing it.’

  Horsemen were visible now, a man on a grey in the front. Almost as if he had heard him Gypsy dropped the phone and sprinted towards the guns. Weidinger estimated that the nearest Tommy was about thirty metres away from the ensign. For a few seconds the sick teenager looked as if he might keep up a sustained sprint too. But then he stopped again, put the range-finder down, and began to unsling his carbine. Almost at the same moment the machine-gun fire became suddenly much reduced, and for the second time that afternoon the gunners heard that strange double-noted horn.

  Weidinger looked up at the sangers behind him. The Feldwebel in charge was desperately trying to turn his two remaining Maxims to meet a score or so cavalry galloping towards him along the ridge from the left. They had broken through the Turkish infantry protecting the pack howitzers, and outflanked his machine-guns.

  ‘Open sights,’ Pichler was saying. ‘Wait for ‘em.’ He did not think the Yeomanry were quite close enough yet for the instantaneous fuse shrapnel.

  Weidinger tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to what was happening to their rear. Pichler looked, shrugged and then went back to the task at hand. ‘We’ll have to look after ourselves,’ he shouted above the din. ‘The Russkies didn’t have machine-guns at Balaclava, did they? Oh for sweet Jesus’s sake hurry, boy.’

  Gypsy was almost at the guns but the ensign, having unslung the carbine as if he might take a pot shot at his pursuers, had now changed his mind and was running again with the weapon in his right hand. He had abandoned the Goertz. The nearest Yeoman was now about ten metres from him and Weidinger could see the tip of the Englishman’s thrusting sword. Pichler unholstered his Steyr automatic and began to shoot up the hillside, though the range was extreme for a pistol. At least three hundred metres, Weidinger thought. Nonetheless, he produced his Webley and aimed a shot at the horses, but was reluctant to fire more in case he needed the other five rounds for closer work. A one-armed man has to think ahead when it comes to reloading a revolver.

  In any case, it was already too late for the cadet officer. Weidinger caught a momentary glimpse of him standing, it seemed, with his back to the guns and his hands going up as if he was trying to surrender, though this may have been because he had been knocked and turned by a horse. There was a brief equine scrum around the spot where he had last been seen and then the English came on yelling like banshees.

  On the guns the soldiers manning the elevation wheel sweated to bring the barrels near parallel with the ground. The crews from the other two pieces now abandoned shelling the infantry and took cover behind the wheels or under the guns and limbers, their carbines and pistols at the ready.

  ‘Fire!’ yelled Pichler, and for the first time his guns facing the cavalry used the instantaneous fuse shrapnel. In less than a second the two rounds travelled fifty metres from the muzzles of the Skodas before exploding about ten metres in front of the first rank of the advancing English and a metre above them. The effect was devastating. A great tangle of shrieking men and horses went down in front of them. Out of it emerged a horse without forelegs which was trying to gallop, and a terrified mare which bolted past the guns dragging a dead or dying Yeoman by his stirrup.

  ‘This is sheer bloody murder,’ murmured Weidinger to himself. They had not yet had a shot fired at them and their only casualty was the poor boy too sick to run fast enough. Even without the machine-gun cover it seemed inconceivable that they could lose as long as the infantry continued to beat off the few horsemen who reached the ground above. The next wave was upon them and the next rounds were in the breech, only some of the English veered a bit left this time towards the guns that had been firing on Shea’s infantry.

  ***

  Lying beneath the lorry Shemsi had such a restricted view of things that she had decided she could stand it no longer and had to come out. The noise sounded like the end of the world. Yet all she could see through her small window on the proceedings was one of the gun crews, labouring so calmly that they might have been engaged in some methodical industrial process.

  She announced her intention to Krag, who had given up the starting handle and was now leaning against the side of the vehicle taking a cigarette out of the case that had been presented to Second Lieutenant Anthony Buchan by his loving parents. The driver continued to tighten nuts and clean things with a bit of oily rag. When Krag didn’t hear her the first time, Shemsi rapped the side of his boots with her parasol. This brought the sharp retort that she should stay exactly where she was. The English, he said, were behind them on the ridge above. Shortly after that she heard a horse gallop close by, and then the driver squeezed his bulk under the vehicle and explained that even if he did get the thing going they c
ouldn’t go anywhere for the moment because their road out was cut.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Shemsi.

  ‘We’re killing a lot of them,’ he grunted and worked a round into the breach of his carbine.

  Shemsi thought he sounded scared.

  ***

  Calderwell was not aware that the machine-gun fire had stopped. He was not aware of anything other than a flash which had destroyed the three men and horses in front of him and left him seeing nothing but the colour orange.

  Villa had shied off to the left. He shook his head and his vision began to return. He saw that he was galloping down into the hollow where the guns lay on a course that would take him straight through the middle of the battery. The two guns on his left were slightly forward of the other pair. He saw their crews crouched behind the wheels and under the gun barrels firing their pistols, and then a Yeomanry officer he failed to recognise rode up on his inside and shot back from the saddle with his Webley.

  Calderwell nudged Villa away from him towards the other guns, the pair the blinding flash had come from, thinking that the sooner he was past them the safer he would be. He almost immediately regretted this, for standing just inside the wheel of the first gun was a red-cheeked Austrian officer pointing an automatic pistol. The Austrian fired and he felt Villa give a little lurch.

  ‘Just point your weapon and the speed of your horse will do the rest.’ Calderwell did not feel the thrusting sword enter Pichler’s neck. He was only aware of the awful ripping sound it made as his rigid right arm went back and the blade was pulled clear by Villa’s momentum.

  He rode on up the rear of the hollow away from the guns until he was on the high ground where the enemy infantry and their machine-gunners were. Here Calderwell, by now as excited by what he was doing as he had been when the horse bolted on him at Warwick Castle, expected to collide with Turkish infantry armed with saw bayonets. Instead, he was amazed to see that the ridge was already full of Yeomanry, some dismounted, whom he identified as Albright’s Worcesters because they didn’t have the Warwicks’ black diamond flash on their topees. He now understood why he hadn’t recognised the officer alongside him at the guns. He must have been a Worcester who had gone in on their right flank with Albright, galloped along the ridge, somehow lost his troop in the mêlée, come down around the guns and then gone back up again. He looked at his sword, which he was holding upwards. Some of Pichler’s blood had run down the central groove and come to rest against the basket hilt.