by John Masters
‘What does she do, Probyn?’
‘Wags a finger at me, looking real sad, and angry, and I’m shaking in my shoes, then she disappears … Do you reckon she’s angry at me ’cos I haven’t married my Woman in church?’
A thought struck Cate and he said, ‘That might be it – she was always very particular herself in that regard, I remember. But you say you were carrying poached pheasants at the time. It might be that.’
‘Aye,’ Probyn muttered. ‘Mother always said poaching was a sin. Though my dad was better at it nor me … I can’t sleep proper, thinking. A ghost can stand behind your pillow, making the air round you so that you can’t sleep, but when you look, you can’t see nothing. That’s what Mother’s doing …’
Cate said nothing. Probyn said plaintively, ‘But if I don’t poach, what’ll I do with myself?’
Cate thought of saying, ‘You could be a gamekeeper, you know’; but left it unsaid; and soon Probyn went, touching his cap then shuffling away fast across the lawn, his ginger-dyed hair blowing.
Chapter 6
The Somme: Thursday, March 21, 1918 – the Vernal Equinox
To Archie, tramping carefully along the duckboards in the trench bottom, it was so much the same, and so different. It had been a comparatively dry winter, and the chalky soil of the Somme uplands drained better than the waterlogged clay of the Ypres salient; also there was a better slope to the land for the water to run off into the streams and rivers. The trenches were in much better shape – they looked almost like the illustrations of trenches in the training manuals, with carefully filled sandbags, right-angle-cornered traverses and bays, intact firesteps, parapets, parados, and berms; the wire – when you could see it – standing firm in three or four rows of double aprons on upright angle-irons or corkscrew metal posts. Some of the faces were the same – here was Kellaway walking in front of him, just behind the CO, and the black patch over his left eye served rather to emphasise that it was still the old Kellaway … the RSM, Bolton, small and perky with a large waxed moustache … but the CO was just the same, gruff, peering pop-eyed into every nook and cranny, staring into men’s eyes, glaring at the stubble on their chins, examining the condition of their entrenching tools, mess tins, housewifes: Lieutenant-Colonel Quentin Rowland. Archie had arrived yesterday, at two in the afternoon, and the CO had looked up from the Corps Comic Cuts that he was reading and said, ‘Ah, Campbell, you’re back. Take over as adjutant from Woodruff right away. He’s going on leave to get married’ – and returned to reading the intelligence summary. It was now two in the morning, twelve hours later; and they had not mentioned Fiona.
The CO stopped, barely seen in the darkness ahead, and Archie heard him say ‘Who’s this?’
A voice answered, ‘2nd Lieutenant Cowell, sir.’ Archie caught the gleam of spectacles. He’d studied the roll; Cowell had been out two weeks; had been a schoolmaster in Hedlington, age – forty-four.
‘Everything all right?’ the CO asked.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, make sure the sentries keep a sharp lookout … very sharp … a ground fog’s forming. If it gets worse, tell your company commander. In that case, Kellaway, double sentries.’
‘Yes, sir.’
They moved on. Around two more traverses; another platoon area. Archie heard the CO say, ‘Laurence, is that you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Everything all right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Then the same instructions he’d given Cowell. The CO turned to the bulky figure of the sergeant behind Laurence, and said, ‘How many men in the platoon now, sergeant?’
Archie recognised Fagioletti’s distinctive Italian-cockney accent as he answered, ‘Twenty, sir.… we’re eight under strength.’
‘So’s the whole battalion … the whole BEF,’ the CO growled. ‘Make sure there’s plenty of extra ammunition ready by all your Lewis guns, Laurence.’
‘Yes, sir … Do you think the Germans are going to attack today, sir?’
‘Or tomorrow,’ the CO said. ‘But we’ll get plenty of warning from their artillery preparation.’
He darted sideways through a gas curtain and into a dugout. For a moment the warm glow of candlelight illumined the trench, then snapped back to darkness as the curtain fell. Kellaway muttered to Archie, ‘We’d better follow him, but make sure no light shows … ready?’
They slipped through the curtain and down the steps. The CO was standing in the middle of the dugout floor, arms akimbo, glaring at five soldiers standing stiffly to attention, all fully clothed except for their helmets. In the middle of the floor was an upturned ammunition box, and on it the unmistakable oilcloth square of a Crown & Anchor board, complete with dice box. Kellaway sighed under his breath and the CO wheeled on him, ‘These men are gambling when they’re supposed to be sleeping … or on sentry. They can’t fight the Germans if they’re dead tired.’ He turned back and faced the oldest man, a leather faced soldier of over forty. He snapped, ‘I suppose you’re running the board, Lucas.’
Private Lucas said, ‘We was only passing the time, sir. No money was changing ’ands.’
‘You got it put away too damn fast for me,’ the CO grumbled. ‘You’ve had enough practice, God knows … See that they’re all properly punished,’ he said to Kellaway; and ‘Yes, sir,’ Kellaway answered; but Archie knew he was thinking, what punishment can I possibly give to men who are already spending four hours out of every eight either on sentry or on trench fatigues, and whose presence as fighting men may be needed at any moment to beat off the expected German attack? But then, the CO was certainly thinking the same thing.
They went up, the CO turning just as they were about to slip through the gas curtain. He spoke to the private soldiers – ‘Sleep, all of you. We’re going to have to fight within a few hours … to fight as we’ve never fought before. I rely on you.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Private Lucas said evenly, his face expressionless; the other soldiers mumbled something, looking bashful. Then one large man stepped forward. Archie did not remember seeing him before; but God knew how many privates had passed through the mill since he’d been hit in Nollehoek nearly five months ago. The big man said, ‘We’ll do it, Colonel Quentin, sir … the others are showing me how, and we’ll do it.’
The CO stared at the hulking figure, who must have been nearly fifty and said, ‘You’re … Willum Gorse. How long have you been with the battalion?’
‘Came yesterday, sir, with the last draft … Mr Bolton there sent us all off to companies straight away and …’
‘I didn’t have time to see all of you,’ the CO said. ‘Well, I’m glad you’re here.’ He nodded and left the dugout. In the trench outside he said, ‘Laurence, were those your men gambling in there?’
‘Oh …’
Sergeant Fagioletti broke in, ‘It’s my fault, sir. Mr Cate told me to keep an eye on the dugouts, but I was so busy checking the sentries that …’
The CO said, ‘You see that it’s done, Laurence. And, that new man in this platoon – William Gorse … I know him. He’s simple. I don’t know how they took him.’
‘He volunteered, sir. He told me,’ Fagioletti said.
‘Well, you’ll have to look after him a bit.’
‘I will, sir.’
The CO moved on. Kellaway stood aside, saluting, for they had reached the end of B Company’s sector. The CO turned down a communication trench and slowly returned with his own party to the battalion headquarters dugout in the reserve trench area. ‘That’ll be all till stand-to, Mr Bolton,’ he said.
The RSM disappeared to his own bunk a few yards down the trench; and Archie, who had been stifling yawns for the past half-hour, said, ‘Anything more for me, sir?’
‘No … yes, come to my dugout.’
Archie swallowed a sigh and followed the colonel to the dugout next door. The CO’s batman was inside, dozing on the floor. Quentin said, ‘You can go now, Slater … Sit down, Campbell.’ He reached up and pull
ed down a bottle of whisky from the makeshift plank shelf set in the sandbag wall behind him. In the candlelight he poured whisky into two mugs, splashed in some water and sat down heavily across the ‘table’ from Archie. He said, ‘I don’t like it out there, Campbell … it’s too quiet. I don’t like the fog that’s building up.’
Archie said, ‘The Germans can’t have planned on the fog, sir.’
‘No, but it’s working for them, if they are going to attack.’
‘We’re ready for them, sir.’
The CO shook his head. The protuberant blue eyes stared into Archie’s. ‘The Germans aren’t to be trusted. They’ll have thought up something to take us by surprise. I tell you, you can’t trust the Huns an inch … I keep racking my brains what they’ll do that’s different … use tanks, or something worse? A new type of gas which our respirators won’t protect us against? That’s the most likely … This fog gives me the creeps …’
Archie said nothing. The Germans could not have somehow created the fog, but … the CO was very nervous; he wouldn’t sleep, whatever he told the soldiers to do … pity he couldn’t relax with a little Crown & Anchor himself … or finish the bottle … but that wouldn’t do, either, if he was expecting a severe battle at any minute.
The CO said suddenly, ‘Did you see Fiona?’ His head was down, looking into his glass.
Archie said, ‘Yes, sir.’
‘How is she?’
Archie hesitated. Fiona was not in truth in very good shape, because she was lovesick for him, Archie. He said cautiously, ‘She’s fairly well, sir.’ He drew a deep breath, ‘I told her I could never see her again. I’m afraid she didn’t take it very well … she’s still infatuated, God knows why, me being what I am … but it’ll fade away, sir. You’ll see. When you can go back and she can realise … what you are.’
‘She’ll never be happy with me,’ Quentin said miserably. ‘I don’t understand her.’
Archie said, ‘I think you do, more than you know. And it doesn’t matter. She must understand you, is what I told her.’
‘You did?’
‘Yes, sir.’
After a time Quentin said, ‘Well … you really don’t want to marry her?’
‘No, sir,’ Archie said firmly; and now, it was true.
Quentin said, ‘Well … thank you for what you said … I can only hope, when this is over, that …’ His voice trailed away.
Archie said, ‘It’ll be all right, when you can get back home, sir, and she knows that I’ve gone for good. Now, if I may, I’ll get a little sleep, sir.’
Quentin nodded and Archie, having saluted, stooped low under the beams, his steel helmet touching them, went out and to his dugout nearby.
Quentin rose some inches vertically in bed as a tremendous explosion shook the earth surrounding the dugout, lifting it a few inches, as he had been lifted, and let it fall back. Grey chalk dust trickled on to his face. The hurricane lantern still burned, the wick as low as it could be set. The first crash was blending now with others, some lighter, some even heavier, up and down the reserve trench lines, behind, in front, on both flanks. He was out of bed now, peering at his watch … 4.40 a.m. He grabbed his steel helmet off the hook where it hung, put it on his head and began to struggle into his boots. His batman came in through the gas curtain, fully dressed, equipped, and armed – ‘Are you all right, sir?’
‘Yes. What’s it like out there?’
‘Shells bursting everywhere, sir … Never ’eard such a row, not even before the Somme …’
Then Archie Campbell came down, pale in the dim light.
‘They’ve started,’ Quentin said. ‘Come on.’ He led out of the dugout and along the trench to the battalion command post, with its field telephones, orderly clerk, and sentry. The telephone rang even as they entered and Archie picked it up. It was Captain Ryding, commanding C Company in the front line – ‘We’re stood to, Archie … some 5.9s falling in the trench, but mostly either just in front or just behind … and the fog’s dense.’
Archie said, ‘Same here … I smell something … Gas!’
He ripped open the top of his respirator pack, pulled out the respirator, put it on, adjusted the head straps, and put his steel helmet on again.
He stooped again to the telephone and put the snout of his mask as close as he could. Working the field telephone with the mask on was a bastard. ‘Gas,’ he shouted, distinctly. ‘Gas here … be ready … for gas …’
The voice at the other end was distant and hollow, but Archie made out, ‘All right.’
He turned and saw that the CO and the RSM, who had just arrived, and everyone else in the command post were now wearing respirators. The CO shouted, ‘My eyes are smarting. It’s …’
‘Mine, too, sir,’ the RSM said. He turned to the clerk who was tugging at the side of his mask, ‘Don’t take it off, man! The gas is phosgene … but they’ve mixed something smarting in it so we’ll pull the mask off to wipe them, then … die …’
Quentin began to cough and weep inside his mask. Perhaps this was the trick the filthy Huns were pulling … perhaps there was something else to come. It was five o’clock, raining shells … mortar bombs too, light and heavy … shells of every calibre, whizzbangs, lights, mediums, heavies, superheavies … that was one of the 280-mm shells that had burst close behind the trench to wake him up at the beginning of the bombardment … plenty of those mixed in now. He had thought the bombardment leading up to the Passchendaele offensive on July 31st last year was the loudest and strongest he’d ever heard. This was worse. Perhaps that was the German trick, just a more savage bombardment than anyone had counted on. But they couldn’t keep this up for long; and though they’d do a lot of damage and cause a lot of casualties, this by itself wasn’t enough to break the line … not very deep, at least.
He said, ‘I’m going up the line. Archie, come with me. Mr Bolton, stay here and take messages, please.’
Archie, the two batmen at his heels, followed the CO out into the storm – a thin quarter moon, third quarter, glowing dim through the fog. The stink of ammonal was heavy, choking, even through the gas mask. The trenches that had looked so trim a few hours ago were now falling back into the primeval condition that had epitomised the end of the Passchendaele battle. Bodies were lying in the trench bottom, some moving, some still. Most of the men were up on the firestep, rifles rested, staring into the dark fog. He thought for a moment the Germans were firing star shell, but realised that it was only the bursting of the projectiles themselves.
‘Stand fast, men … stick it out …’ He heard the CO’s voice under the storm, like a soothing recitative in a church a thousand miles away, or from an underground cave … ‘Well done … stand fast, Wealds … How many belts do you have with the gun, corporal? … Good … Keep your head up, Private Penfold, you can’t kill Germans you don’t see.’
But they can kill us, those bloody German guns, Archie thought. Some shells must be going the other way by now, as the British artillery replied to the bombardment, but they could not be heard down here in the catacombs of the trenches.
They moved on … ‘Pull a third of your men down from the parapet, Ryding, let them stay in the dugouts till the Germans come … Change them round frequently … Stand fast, Wealds, stand fast!’
Laurence Cate stood on the firestep beside one of his sentries, Sergeant Fagioletti on his other side. They were all sweating in their gas masks, like everyone else. It was six o’clock, daylight permeating the fog, the land still murkily opaque to the west. The Germans hadn’t come yet. They liked to attack at dawn itself, in that first light when you could just see movement, and trace the beginnings of colour. It was past that by now, and they had not come. This was the good light to go down on the marsh by Sheppey and lie watching in the reeds, as the colour came into flat arms of the sea, and the birds awoke and stirred and called to each other. His father had let him go alone on his bicycle to Sheppey ever since his tenth birthday. Once a bull had charged him in a field
he was crossing … twice he had found horses grazing, and jumped up on one and ridden it round in the dawn, by the marsh and the calm sea …
‘The captain’s coming round again, sir,’ Fagioletti shouted in his ear.
Laurence leaped down from the firestep as Kellaway appeared, followed by his batman. They conversed shouting at each other through the masks, under the bellow of the bombardment – ‘Are you all right here?’
‘Yes, sir … quite …’
‘It’s a bloody noise.’
‘Is it, sir? Yes, I suppose so …’
‘Mind your field telephone is kept in order … Tell the men, stand tight, stick it out.’
Kellaway passed on. Fagioletti said, ‘I’ve got some cottonwool, sir … You’d better put some in your ears.’
Laurence said, ‘Thanks … I don’t need it. Is it so noisy?’ He shook his head. Perhaps it was, but you could pretend it wasn’t, the same as you could be on the Isle of Sheppey instead of here. There was a place, close to where the railway crossed over, where Aunt Alice told him she had once seen a Marsh Harrier … that was rare. He’d go back there one day soon … soon …
The ground fog was bad, too bad to take off in normal days; but today was not normal. Lieutenant-Colonel Freeman, commanding the 9th (Day) wing, to which 333 belonged, had spoken to Guy on the telephone at half-past five in the morning. The first part of his message – that the German bombardment had begun – Guy knew already; he could hear it clearly. The earth was shuddering even back here in Mirvaux. The second part of the message was an order to take the Three Threes into the air as soon as he could, and sweep the front, strafing the German front line and all areas immediately behind it where attacking troops and artillery could be expected to be massed.
The forward visibility was fifty to eighty yards in the pale but dense fog. Upward visibility … who knew? Guy prayed that the fog would not extend more than a hundred feet or so upwards; the river fogs generally did not; but Very lights fired from the ground could go that high, and if fired when the ground staff heard their engines overhead, could enable them to grope their way back to earth. The wing commander had left the takeoff to his discretion and timing. If he made a bad decision, it could be disastrous for a lot of them.