Web of Spies

by Colin Smith

  ***

  ‘Get down! Get down!’ Weidinger was shouting. ‘They can’t get at you if you’re under the gun.’

  Weidinger was not in fact under the gun himself but crouched behind the wheel besides which his friend Pichler had collapsed, his head almost severed from his body, those apple cheeks already drained to a marble white. The eyes still stared in dull surprise, quite oblivious to the flies feeding on the gore at his neck.

  It had all happened so quickly. Weidinger had been standing about a foot to Pichler’s left when the Tommy, the first one to get that close to them alive, was on them. Pichler had fired one shot, made a faint gasping sound and then sat rather than fallen against the gun wheel, his head at a ghastly angle. His cap had fallen into the dust. Weidinger had ducked to one knee and fired two shots at the rider coming behind the man who had killed Pichler and thought he had at least winged him, for he seemed to veer off.

  Those gunners who had not already done so now followed his example – some had even squeezed themselves beneath the axles of the guns, where they could be reasonably certain that mounted men with swords could not reach. In any case, apart from the inherent dangers of standing up, it was pointless to continue manning the guns because there was nothing left to fire at. All the English cavalry that had survived were now the other side of their muzzles. Weidinger was not alone in thinking that the best thing was to make themselves as inaccessible and as prickly as possible until the infantry pushed the Tommies back.

  The ground around the guns was burnished with spent shell cases, and there were at least a dozen dead or dying horses in the immediate vicinity. It seemed certain that no more than a handful of the English who had charged them were left alive. Weidinger looked up at the ridge where the machine-guns were, but there was so much dust it was impossible to be certain what was happening. He had to admit that there might be more horses up there than he had at first imagined. Even so, it had been a very ragged charge. Hardly a cohesive mass at all. It was inconceivable that there was anything like enough cavalry to take on a regiment of infantry. Even cavalry as willing to die as these English boys had been.

  Weidinger found Pichler’s cap on the ground near him and put it over the Austrian’s face. He could do nothing about the flies. He suddenly felt very lonely and longed to hear those machine-guns start up again. For the first time it occurred to him that if they didn’t it would mean that the English had won. He began to wonder if these cavalrymen would take prisoners after all they had had done to them.

  ***

  As he approached the high ground after killing Pichler, the first thing Calderwell was aware of was the shouting. It was the kind of noise you might hear outside a crowded football stadium, and it was the sound of the Yeomanry colliding with the Turkish infantry. Only when he got closer did he realise that men were not only screaming at each other but screaming for other reasons.

  He glimpsed Mace, hatless, blood running down his face, put his sword through the shoulder of a Turk who had lunged at him with a fixed bayonet. Nearby one of Fifth Mounted Brigade’s most popular NCOs, a stocky little Worcesters sergeant called Allen, was engaged in a furious duel with a large German machine-gunner who had picked up a rifle with fixed bayonet. The Yeomanry were now all over the machine-guns and there was no chance of the Germans using them.

  Calderwell went to help Allen but was distracted by a broad-shouldered figure with his back to him and a rifle in his hands who popped up a few feet to his front. He pointed his sword and kicked some speed into Villa, only to pull up in horror at the last moment when he realised the man was wearing a British rifle bandoleer. Up until then he had not noticed that there were a number of dismounted Yeomanry about who had removed their rifles from their saddle buckets.

  For a moment it looked as though the charge might have lost its momentum, but then another fifty horsemen crashed into the scrum. These were the two troops from the Worcesters who had charged at the Austrian battery slightly behind the Warwicks, plus the men Colonel Gray-Cheape had led behind Toby Albright’s squadron and then around the ridge to capture the 5.9 howitzers. Gray-Cheape’s men were the last to arrive. They had come at the infantry who had been covering Pichler’s guns from what the Turks still considered to be the friendly side of the ridge, and it had been too much for them. They began to fall back – in ones and twos at first, then by sections, then by platoons, then whole companies that were no longer firing and retiring but simply running madly downhill.

  Those among the Yeomanry who had not already killed now made up for it. Men on foot, some still burdened by rifle and pack, were trying to outrun baying men on horseback who were both hounds and huntsmen combined in this most exciting sport of all. It was a downhill race in which the majority of the quarry were, in fact, overtaken unhurt because there were simply too many to kill.

  Those who had, for some capricious reason, caught the eye of a horseman – perhaps because they were bigger built or had made themselves a more tempting target by becoming detached from the mob – were collected like litter at the end of the Baden-Powell swords. It was the work of a moment to impale a man and then let the onward rush of the horse pull the thirty-six-inch blade free of bone and gristle. Here and there a Turk brave enough to have retained his weapon turned and fired, and sometimes a horse would go down or a Yeoman’s grip slacken on his sword.

  Calderwell spotted one man throw himself to the ground and pretend to be dead. He dealt with this by leaning low out of the saddle like a pig-sticker and piercing him as he lay there gasping in terror. This produced a shriek so ghastly that for the first time it began to occur to him exactly what he was doing. It was shortly after this that Villa’s forelegs suddenly buckled and he somersaulted over her head to land heavily on his back. As the horse went down Calderwell’s pack came off the saddle and burst open, scattering the contents – among them his copy of The Complete Letter-Writer.

  ***

  Krag at last joined them under the lorry, squeezing in between Shemsi and the fat driver. ‘I’m afraid it does not go well,’ he announced. ‘It looks like we’re surrounded.’

  ‘Does that mean we might be captured?’ asked Shemsi.

  ‘It’s possible,’ conceded Krag.

  ‘My God!’ said Shemsi, whose thoughts immediately turned to rape.

  Krag divined her fears. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m sure the English will treat you with respect.’

  Shemsi thought she detected a certain irony in this but said nothing.

  ‘I’m going to the guns,’ said the driver.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ advised Krag. ‘A man with a long sword is quite likely to reach you before you reach them. What’s more, you would draw attention to the fact that we’re under here. If we have to surrender it’s better to do so when the fighting’s over and people are calmer. Their blood’s up now.’

  ‘No, I’m going,’ the driver insisted. If the worst came to the worst he wanted to be with his mates, not stuck with this desiccated Prussian and his tart.

  ‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ snapped Krag, who was not going to tolerate insubordination from the ranks of the Imperial Austro-Hungarian army any more than he would his own.

  ‘You’re not my officer,’ said the Austrian, who was very frightened. Suddenly it was more important than ever to get back with his friends. He rolled onto his back and got his head and shoulders out from under the lorry, still gripping his carbine in both hands.

  Krag pulled him back, grabbing him by his tunic, just under the armpits. The fat man, frantic now, began kicking. Krag went onto his left side and began to reach for his pistol holster.

  ‘Oh let him go if he’s that desperate,’ said Shemsi.

  There was a shot, deafening under the lorry. Shemsi turned her head away. From the moment it had started she had known Krag would end up doing this.

  The wriggling had stopped. Krag was breathing heavily. She sensed it was him.

  ‘There was no need,’ she sai
d. ‘No need for that.’

  ‘He’s gone,’ said Krag in a hoarse voice.

  She turned to face him. Krag was lying on his back, his mouth slightly open, both hands pressed tightly against his lower right side. His pistol was still in its holster. There was no sign of the driver.

  ‘You’re quite right,’ he said. ‘No need for that at all.’ And he opened his hands to reveal the bubbling red underneath. ‘The fat swine shot me with his carbine. I think it hit the cigarette case.’

  From outside came two single rifle shots, then the machine-gun fire started up again. They were short, almost hesitant bursts at first, but after a few seconds they became longer, more confident-sounding.

  ***

  A metre or so above Weidinger’s head a rifle round pinged off the breech-block of the gun.

  The Oberleutnant was lying on his stomach, his face pressed in the dirt against his field-glasses and more or less in line with Pichler’s knees. He had been there ever since the Tommies had shot the fat driver when he tried to make a dash from the lorry, a movement that had encouraged them to start peppering the guns as well. It would be suicide to attempt to man them again, and Weidinger very much regretted he had not joined the rest of the crew under the axle while he was still able to move.

  When the machine-guns started up again Weidinger had felt a momentary spurt of hope. He had even forced himself to use his Zeiss to examine the top of the ridge four hundred metres away, though he had half expected the glass to attract the bullet which had just ricocheted off the breech-block. It had not been worth the risk. As he had feared, there was nothing but khaki moving up there. Whatever else that machine-gun fire meant, it was not the remains of the English cavalry being beaten back.

  Pichler seemed to twitch back into life as some part of his body was hit by a .303 bullet from above. Besides him, Weidinger tried to lie stiller than his lifeless friend.

  ***

  ‘Look at the boggers run, Caldy,’ said Mace, who was squatting behind the German machine-gun they had just turned round while Calderwell fed the belt in from the ammunition box. Those Turks who were not dead or prisoners were off the ridge and running north along the dirt road, where the two troops Colonel Cheape had taken around the right flank had intercepted the 5.9 howitzer battery as its gunners tried to pull it away. They could see the four guns spaced along the road in a ragged single file, with some dead horses lying next to them.

  Theirs was the last of the three captured machine-guns to be brought into action against the Turks. This was because it had so many bodies around it that had to be moved, the strangest being those of Sergeant Allen, the little veteran from the Worcesters, and the large Feldwebel who had taken him on with rifle and bayonet. In death the two were literally pinned together, for Allen’s hand still gripped the sword which had disappeared up to its hilt into the man who had killed him.

  ‘I reckon the old sarge ‘ere wanted to make bloody sure,’ Mace had gasped as he gently prised Allen’s hand off his sword and they moved him aside.

  Calderwell had said nothing. Just as he said nothing now as they watched the Turks below them try to run all the way back to Etline. His main concern was Villa. The mare was lying down a few feet behind him making strange rasping sounds of a kind he had never heard from a horse before.

  As soon as he had got his breath back he retrieved his sword and walked over to Villa. She had struggled to her feet as he knelt besides her and asked, ‘What’s up with yow, old girl?’

  He had walked her back to the top of the ridge, passing some small scattered groups of Turks who put their hands up as soon as they saw him and walked in front of him. After a while he had about thirty Turks in front of him like this and he thought he had captured them single-handed until he realised that Mace and another man were walking alongside him with their rifles at the ready. Of the three of them he was the only man who still had his horse.

  When they got to the summit a couple of men, including the signaller who had borrowed the colonel’s ash walking-stick for the charge, were firing at the Austrian .75s they had galloped through. ‘Some of them fuckers are still movin’,’ the signaller explained, extracting another five-round clip from his bandoleer. He was lying in the approved prone position as if he was on the range, and Calderwell noticed the crossed rifles of a marksman on his sleeve.

  It was then that he had examined Villa carefully and found a small hole in her neck which he guessed was caused by a bullet from the pistol of the Austrian officer he had killed. Shortly after that she had gone down for the second time. He had looked over the bodies and found a half-full water-bottle on the belt of one of the German machine-gunners, and then picked up a helmet, because he had lost his own, and walked over to the mare and poured all but a swallow for himself into it. Villa had barely had time to drink it before he was ordered to lend a hand with the machine-guns.

  ‘Keep the fuckers on the run,’ a wild-eyed corporal had urged. ‘If they find out how many of us are left they’ll be back at us like a fuckin’ ferret up a sick bunny.’

  Calderwell had stared at him in amazement. The NCO’s left sleeve was all red rags, with something terrible hanging inside. Yet he was holding a Lee-Enfield in his right hand and seemed quite oblivious of his mutilation.

  Luckily for the Turks, Mace fired the Krupp gun with more enthusiasm than skill. Of the three captured guns his had been fired for the longest bursts with the result that the barrel had become too hot and its rifling almost reduced to smooth-bore accuracy. Inevitably it jammed when a slightly misshapen cartridge case refused to eject.

  At this point, when almost all the captured guns were out of ammunition, some brave Turks attempted to save the most northerly of the abandoned howitzers on the dirt road by hitching a team to it. Calderwell thought they might have succeeded – and in a way he would have been glad of it, for he was tired of killing – had not the Yeomanry’s own Hotchkiss gun teams at last caught up with them, finicky men equipped with the latest in Barr and Stroud range-finders. This last piece of mayhem, which took place barely an hour after General Shea had so politely asked the Yeomanry to charge the guns, marked the end of this particular skirmish, though it took a while for most of its participants to realise that this was the case.

  On the ridge some of the Yeomanry started to collect the wounded of both sides in readiness for the ambulance wagons. Calderwell found some more water and went back to Villa. Mace wandered off in search of cigarettes. On his return he announced that Toby Albright was dead and that, by the look of him, Captain Valintine was dying.

  ‘Oh ar,’ said Calderwell, accepting the proffered Woodbine. He had taken Villa’s saddle off and extracted his .303 from the rifle boot, and was squatting by the mare, who was still on her side, drawing finger patterns in the dust between the clumps of tussock grass.

  Mace had knelt briefly beside him and put an arm around his shoulder before walking away with a party who were going to take what prisoners were left of the Austrians before Sixtieth Division or, even worse, the Australians arrived and claimed them for themselves.

  ***

  Weidinger looked at his watch. The hands told him it was five minutes to two. He found this incredible, and put his right ear over the watch to see if it was still going. It was. The whole action had taken just less than half an hour.

  It was several minutes at least since the English snipers had last fired at them. Then they had obviously been laying down covering fire for something that came rattling by at a great pace, either horse artillery or a Hotchkiss squadron. Shortly afterwards the machine-gun fire intensified, and he guessed it was the latter.

  He raised his head a centimetre or two off the ground, conscious that this might be all a good sniper was waiting for: the moment when curiosity or cramp overcame fear. Above the drone of the flies feeding on Pichler he thought he heard a footfall, perhaps several footfalls. He managed to push aside sufficiently thoughts of telescopic crosshairs on his cranium to raise his head slightly more, just e
nough to look over the upper part of Pichler’s thighs and through the wooden spokes of the gun wheel. He could see the wheel of one of the other two guns, the pair that had been manhandled around to face the cavalry, and that was all.

  There were voices. Loud, confident voices. Weidinger could not understand what they were saying at first. Then he caught the words ‘Hande hoche!’ Even then they were only comprehensible because they were repeated several times, along with English exhortations he did not understand at all such as ‘C’mon, Fritz. C’mon out of it, you silly buggers. Game’s over. Kamerad? You savvy? Kamerad?’

  Weidinger took a deep breath and almost sprang to his feet. A crowd of Tommies, young men in cord breeches and cloth puttees from knee to ankle, were around the other two Skodas, where those gunners who were capable of it were standing with their hands raised. He noticed that the young Feldwebel with the moustache had had to be helped to his feet by one of his men. The Tommies began to walk towards him and he was relieved to see that they were carrying rifles rather than swords. He raised his own hand thinking, as he did so, that at least as a prisoner-of-war he would remain on the active list. He wondered what Kress and von Papen would have to say.

  Mace was the first to reach him. He assumed that the German officer who could only manage to raise one hand was wounded, and was a bit taken aback when he realised that most of his left sleeve was empty. He took Weidinger’s Zeiss binoculars, almost knocking his cap off with the strap as he brought it over his head, before he bothered to remove the holstered Webley, which he tucked in his belt. The Uhlan hardly noticed. For the first time he had the opportunity to look at almost all the battlefield, apart from the dead ground above which the ensign had died arranging air bursts. There was a trail of dead horses and men which started just before the guns and led up to the ridge, at the base of which he could see two riderless horses. It had never occurred to him that a successful charge would look so much like a defeat.