Regret's Mission - Inspired by the great Bernard Cornwell Sharpe

by Leigh Barker

Chalky White woke Regret by kicking him in the leg, and he opened his eyes to see that it was barely light. “What did you do that for? I was having this lovely dream about—”

  “Don’t start that again,” Chalky said. “You’re always dreaming about girls.”

  “No, well, not this time, I was dreaming about fresh-caught rabbit cooking over a pinecone fire.”

  Chalky licked his lips, then shrugged it off. “Come on. Needle says we’re to stand to.”

  “Do you mean Sergeant Major Needle, our protector and father to us all?” Regret shook his head and struggled stiffly to his feet.

  “That’ll be the same sergeant I was referring to.” Chalky looked around quickly in case Needle was standing behind him, as he had a habit of doing when somebody said something that he shouldn’t hear. “God bless his soul,” he said, looking up to heaven. “And may he take it really soon.”

  “Amen to that,” said Regret with real conviction. “Stand to?”

  Chalky nodded. “Stand to.” He pointed out across the canal at the rolling mist beyond. “Germans are coming, that nice Sergeant Major Needle says so.”

  “Oh, then hang on while I polish me bayonet.”

  Chalky straightened his flat khaki cap and tried to see beyond the mist. “You could walk by a whole regiment of Germans in this,” he said with a grin.

  Regret stamped the chill out of his feet, leaned his rifle on the lip of the shallow trench and… stood to.

  Chalky might have been joking, but the truth was much worse than anyone could have suspected. The mist wasn’t hiding a regiment; it was hiding the whole German First Army. While Regret and Chalky joked and squinted out into the morning mist, they had no way of knowing that their enemy outnumbered Smith-Dorrien’s thin line by almost six to one. Not that knowing it would have made any difference, they would stand, just as men like them had stood at the battle of Waterloo in these fields a hundred years before almost to the day.

  The canal was as still as glass, and they could clearly hear the clink and clatter of breakfast being prepared in the cottages scattered along the far bank, but breakfast would come and go for the men in the trench, as would food of any kind for the next three days.

  Regret saw his first Germans, but only for a moment before they vanished in the mist. Slowly the mist melted in the new breeze and revealed a cavalry patrol riding slowly down the main Nimy road right in front of them. Off to his right he heard Sergeant Major Needle issue the familiar order in a steady voice that carried across the trenches, as it had carried across the parade ground. “At five hundred yards, five rounds rapid fire.”

  A sudden excitement swept through the men in the trenches. “Steady,” Needle said, and despite his awe of the man, Regret felt reassured by the familiar voice.

  “Fire!” Needle spoke again in that same even voice.

  Eight years of constant training kicked in, and Regret squeezed the trigger, snapped the bolt back and fired again and again, then lowered his rifle and reloaded, but in the moments it took to reload, the cavalry was already thundering back the way it had come.

  He glanced at Chalky and saw the big grin on his friend’s face. This was the first time they’d fired their rifles in anger, and both were happy they had passed the test.

  “Steady now, lads,” Needle called out calmly, and the men settled against the trench and waited for the enemy. They didn’t have to wait long.

  At nine o’clock, the first shells landed in the canal, sending plumes of water up and over the waiting Fusiliers. The bombardment continued for an hour, but with little effect because shallow as the trenches were, they provided just enough cover from the shrapnel screaming above them, and only a very few boys fell back on the wet earth.

  Then the infantry came, thousands of them in columns six abreast. It was an insane tactic against seasoned regulars who could kill everything in their sights at fifteen rounds a minute.

  Sergeant Major Needle called out the range. “At twelve hundred yards, ten rounds rapid fire.”

  They waited for a few moments while the advancing troops marched across the open ground on the far side of the canal; then Needle barked a single order. “Fire!”

  The mass of grey seemed to ripple as the first and second ranks fell under the withering fire. The Vickers machine guns joined the deadly accurate rifle fire. Aiming was barely necessary, and one bullet killed the intended target and the man behind. It was a slaughter, but they came on, climbing and stumbling over their dead as the hail of bullets tore into them. They were mown down like hay, and every straw was a person, someone’s son.

  Needle called for independent rapid fire, and his sharp voice cut through the din. Regret glanced along the trench at Chalky and grinned. He knew he should be afraid, but he wasn’t, he was excited, and—god forgive him—he was having a great time. This is what he’d trained for, what they’d all trained for, hour after hour after hour, rapid fire at a moving target, and Needle would have their guts for garters if they missed. Now all that training was paying off, and the men of the Royal Fusiliers and the Middlesex fired out from the relative safety of the shallow trenches while the enemy’s big guns rained shells on them and into the canal that seemed to be the target for every German gun in the country.

  The enemy poured machine-gun and artillery fire onto the British trenches, but the relentless rapid fire continued, and at last the front ranks faltered, then broke, and the attackers ran, taking the rest of the following ranks with them.

  Regret reloaded from his pouch without even thinking about it. His hands were steady, but he could feel his body shaking, and glanced at the soldiers lying in the trench next to him to check if they could see his legs trembling, but they were all reloading, most of them grinning like idiots with relief that they weren’t dead.

  Then the Germans came back, swarming across the fields in such a mass that Regret couldn’t see the earth for them. He licked his dry lips and waited for the order to fire.

  Shrapnel whistled around them and machine-gun fire raked the trenches from dozens of hidden Maxims. Regret looked around quickly and saw men falling and sliding back into the trench, dozens… hundreds. He was no longer having a great time; he was truly scared. Then the order to fire came, and the fear just vanished as he slipped into the routine that was now as natural as breathing. Aim, fire, slide the bolt without lowering the rifle, fire again. He barely saw his man fall before he sighted the next. He was a crack shot, but didn’t need to be, he couldn’t miss, none of the Tommies along the canal could miss. But a small voice was telling him there was just too many of them. And the voice was right.

  The Germans had got a machine gun up on the road bridge across the canal that the Fusiliers had been ordered to hold and were firing straight down the main street through Nimy. Regret and Chalky saw it at the same moment, shifted their rifles, and dropped the crew of four in two shots each, but almost before they stopped twitching, they’d been replaced. And when Chalky looked at his friend, Regret could see his own fear mirrored in his friend’s face.

  The infantry was now swarming up to the opposite bank, firing from their hips as they came. It was a hopelessly inaccurate method, but their sheer number meant their bullets found flesh. Men were falling all around Regret as he emptied another magazine into the men trying to push pontoon bridges over the water. It was just a matter of time; he knew it and so did they.

  Needle stood up. Regret could not believe it; it was absolute insanity.

  “Withdraw!” Needle ordered, and walked along the trench urging the men out and back, seemingly oblivious to the bullets stirring up the soft earth at his feet and zipping past him like angry wasps. “Come on now, lads, let’s be having you.”

  The men were not eager to leave the illusory safety of the trench and cross the completely open ground between them and the houses and mining building to the rear.

  “On your feet, lads, we haven’t got all day.” Needle pointed his swagger stick across the canal as if to illustrate the obvious.<
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  Regret slapped Chalky on the shoulder, and they jumped up and ran. The air was alive with shrapnel, and bullets splattered the ground like rain in mud. There was no way they were going to make it without getting shot to rags.

  They half fell, half jumped into the safety of a building that lay in ruins from the shellfire. Regret checked himself over and found no sign of the blood he expected; he did find two neat holes through the edge of his jacket. It had been that close. He glanced up at Chalky and got a thumbs-up. It was a miracle. Now all they needed was a few hundred more miracles to get the rest of the men out of the trenches and across the strip of open land that seemed to be alive with bullets streaming from the machine gun up on the road bridge.

  Regret stood up with his back against the broken wall, swung up his rifle, and killed the enemy machine-gunner with a single shot. Chalky got the idea and steadied his rifle on the brickwork. While Regret killed everything that moved on the bridge, Chalky did the same to the men trying to get a gun back into action between the burnt boats across the canal.

  Every time a gunner ran forward to man the gun, he died. It didn’t take long for the rest to get the message, and fewer and fewer made the suicidal attempt until, at last, the two guns that had been putting down a hurricane of fire on the trenches fell silent, but it would only be for a minute.

  Sergeant Major Needle saw what was happening and barked at the men to move. They moved, one or two at first, then all of them, but it was no mad dash for safety; this was a disciplined withdrawal.

  Regret was aware of the men backing off across the open ground and firing as they went, and he was aware of the effect on the Germans, who had thought this was their chance to charge forward. The moment any man stood to rush the canal, a calmly aimed shot dropped him. The far canal bank was littered with the dead and dying men who’d thought it was over, and the rest stayed down, with their officers swearing at them and ordering them forward to die.

  By the time the enemy could be pushed forward, it was too late. The Fusiliers were out of the trenches and into the shelter of Nimy village.

  Sergeant Major Needle clapped a hand on Regret’s and Chalky’s shoulders. “Well done, lads.” He smiled. They smiled. That was a mistake.

  “You did a grand job there.” He pointed at the machine-gunners working to get their guns back into action. “Now you keep doing that while the lads here stroll on back to Mons for a nice cup of tea.”

  Regret opened his mouth to say what jumped into his mind, but training and a well-honed sense of self-preservation shut it again, and Needle nodded. “You see that gun up there?” He pointed up at the railway bridge, and they could see three Fusiliers manning the last of the battalion’s two Vickers machine guns. “You give those boys some cover, there’s good lads.” It didn’t sound like an order, but there was no mistaking that it was just that.

  Sergeant Major Needle stepped out of the shelter of the houses and onto the open ground where he could see the whole trench and be sure all the troops were out. He rapped his leg with his swagger stick and looked up sharply as the machine gun on the road bridge traced a line of bullets past his feet, then sighed and followed the departing troops without a backward glance.

  Chalky leaned forward and squinted through the smoke at the boys with the machine gun. “Who the hell is that up there?”

  “Volunteers, I’d say.” Regret shrugged. “Anybody else would have the sense to run.”

  “Brave buggers, though.”

  Regret couldn’t fault that. “Yeah, they are that. But holding off that lot will give our boys time to get away.”

  Chalky nodded and watched the German troops surge forward, only to be swept from the bridge by the machine gun.

  Regret aimed his rifle at the mass of grey charging in suicidal waves onto the bridge, then lowered it. “It’s like spitting on a forest fire.”

  Then they saw a British officer on the bridge bend down and lift a fallen man, oblivious to the bullets zinging around him. Lieutenant Steele leaned forward and spoke to the man firing the machine gun, then stepped between the railway tracks and set off with the dead weight of the soldier on his shoulders.

  The sight of Steele staggering back across the bridge gave the Germans heart, and they charged again. The Maxim opened up, but there were hundreds of them sweeping forward, now more afraid of the officers and NCOs among them than the machine gun.

  Regret’s head was pounding and his ears ringing from the whump of shellfire, and he shook his head in an attempt to clear it. Suddenly he saw a tufted duck rise from the canal amid the inferno of shell and gunfire and sweep up and away, and he was back in Ashdown Forest with the sound of the game birds replacing the chaos around him.

  The Germans were swarming up onto the bridge as Lieutenant Steele staggered back with his burden. Regret killed the first German officer with a shot to the chest, then the second. He sighted on the third, but Chalky had already dropped him. They worked their way down the ranks, officers first, then the NCOs, and when the ten rounds in the magazine were exhausted, the most senior officer on the bridge was a corporal, and he was already lying beside the track with his hands over his head.

  Half a dozen Fusiliers opened up from behind a wall off to the right, and Steele stepped off the open ground even as the machine-gunners found the range.

  Regret tapped Chalky, and they set off to join the others. By the time they covered the twenty yards or so to their new position, the man Lieutenant Steele brought from the hell on the bridge was already being carried away to one of the Red Cross stations back in the village.

  Regret ducked as machine-gun bullets whipped around the small band of men. “Should we be going, sir?” he shouted above the howl of shells and explosions.

  Lieutenant Steele looked back over the wall at the man still manning the Maxim on the bridge. Shells were bursting all around, and bullets were ripping into the sandbags that were the man’s only protection.

  “Covering fire!”

  It was always hopeless. The men behind the wall were all that remained of a platoon that should have numbered almost fifty, but now was barely a squad. Even as they raised their rifles in a doomed attempt to save the man on the bridge, a shell exploded next to him, knocking him backwards.

  “Godley,” Steele said almost under his breath.

  The Germans let out a roar and raced forward, but Godley was back on his knees, and the Maxim sprayed the last of its bullets into the charging men. Godley fell again, and again he got to his knees. This time he calmly lifted the Maxim and threw it into the canal below before falling on his knees and crawling back across the bridge. The Germans ran past him, completely ignoring him. Regret couldn’t believe it.

  Sergeant Naylor, in charge of the remains of the platoon, put his hand on the lieutenant’s shoulder. “Let’s join the others, sir.”

  Lieutenant Steele nodded, then stopped. “You go ahead, Sergeant. I have to check on Dease.”

  “But, sir.” The sergeant put his hand on Steele’s arm, then withdrew it quickly. “The Germans, sir.”

  Steele shrugged. “Yes. Now you get along, Sergeant, and take these lads back to the main body, there’s a good fellow.” He smiled fleetingly and walked off towards the Red Cross station to check on the wounded man he’d carried back.

  Regret pointed at the canal and the enemy pouring across both bridges, and Sergeant Naylor nodded emphatically.

  Unlike the main body of troops who’d made what the army liked to call a strategic withdrawal, Regret, Chalky and the others just ran for it, expecting the enemy to erupt from the canal side and shoot them to pieces, but not a shot was fired at them as they ran up through the centre of the village and out onto the Mons Road. Gradually it occurred to them that the Germans had stopped, but it made no sense; there were thousands of them, and the road was completely open.

  They slowed to a walk, looking back over their shoulders every few seconds, but they were not being followed.

  The Germans had stopped, or
more accurately, they had been stopped. The desperately few battalions of the British Expeditionary Force had hurt them so badly they were stopping to recover, treat their wounded and collect their dead, and there were many dead to collect.

  But Regret and the other Fusiliers had no way of knowing that the battle of Mons was over; all they knew was that this squad of six men was alone on the road with the whole German Army right on their heels, and it was this that kept them moving, even though with the battle over and the adrenalin gone, they were tired to the point of collapse. Exhausted as they were, Regret knew that to stop now would mean capture or worse. The enemy would not be stopped for long. So they marched on through the evening and into the dark, asleep on their feet.

  Sometime in the night it rained; then it poured, and Regret silently thanked god for soaking him to the skin, then went back to sleep as he trudged down the muddy road. Several times he woke and stared out into the night, straining his ears for any sound of the enemy, but there was nothing moving behind them or anywhere else. It was as if they were completely alone in the jet-black night. But a few miles behind them, the Germans were resting in readiness to mop up this contemptibly little army, and ahead, the exhausted Tommies crammed the roads that led to the villages beyond Mons, where they would make another stand.

  Regret opened his eyes when dawn broke bright and sunny as if to deny the torrential rain that had soaked him. He looked around and saw that they’d lost two of the squad while they’d sleepwalked their way along the country road. He hoped they’d simply walked more slowly, but he knew that they were probably asleep at the side of the road, unconscious to the fate that awaited them.

  He shook Chalky’s shoulder, and the big man opened his red-rimmed eyes and took several seconds to focus. “Are we still alive?”

  Regret nodded. “Just about.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Somewhere between Mons and…” Regret shrugged and looked along the deserted road. “Someplace else.”

  “Oh, that’s good, then. For a minute I thought we was lost.”

  “Le Cateau,” Sergeant Naylor said as he walked past, stretching his arms in the warming sunshine.

  Chalky glanced at Regret and shrugged. “How does he know that?” he whispered.

  “Because I asked a nice officer what road this was, that’s how,” Sergeant Naylor said without turning.

  Regret and Chalky exchanged glances again, but this time kept their surprise to themselves.

  “And officers know everything,” the sergeant said without any hint of irony. “They are our fathers and our mothers.”

  “If you say so, Sarge.”

  “That I do, son,” said Sergeant Naylor with authority.

  “What’s the plan, then, Sarge?” Chalky asked with the look of a man who expected disappointment.

  “What?” Sergeant Naylor said as if suddenly awakening from a deep sleep.

  “The plan, Sarge,” Regret prompted.

  “What plan?”

  “The one our mothers and fathers told you about, Sarge.” Regret tried not to let his voice betray the doubt he felt. “This… this readjustment of the line plan.”

  Sergeant Naylor looked at the men on the road, four exhausted soldiers standing between cornfields in the deserted countryside. In the distance in every direction they could hear artillery and the crack of rifle fire, but here on the quiet road, they could be out for a picnic. He could have laughed at the situation, but after the horror of the last hours, he doubted he would ever laugh again.

  He was right.

  He was already too old for the army and should have retired, but he was a highly experienced veteran of the war against the Afrikaans, and the army could ill afford to loose such men, so they overlooked his age. There’d been many such men in the BEF at the start of this campaign, but there would be none by the end of it.

  Sergeant Freddie Naylor had less than an hour to live.

  “We march,” he said, turned, and started to march smartly down the long, straight road.

  By the time the others had processed the information, the sergeant’s parade-ground drill had returned to the same slow, painful walk they had maintained all through the long night.

  Regret opened his pack in search of the food he’d stashed there before the battle, but all that was left was part of a very stale loaf. He tried to remember what had happened to the loaves, but his brain seemed to be almost entirely focused on the effort of putting one foot in front of the other, and when he forced himself to think, he stopped walking. He vaguely remembered handing the food out to the men beside him in the trench, but it was as though it had been someone else. He sighed in frustration at the exhaustion that seemed to reduce the years of disciplined training to nothing. He caught up with the rest of the squad, split the meagre rations, and handed them to the others, who took the bread and ate it without acknowledgment.

  It may have taken an hour or a year to reach the top of a long hill that felt as though it was a mountain and forced them to stop for the hundredth time. Regret knew he was looking at something that didn’t fit, but it took long moments before he realised it was a black staff car with its nose in the hedge. He gradually roused himself to something near consciousness and opened the car door. There was no driver, and after a few seconds he checked the back to find that was empty too. Why would someone leave a car in the middle of nowhere? He stepped back and looked it over. There was a wheel leaning against the front mudguard, and the tyre was flat. Strange.

  He looked up sharply as two men suddenly appeared from behind the hedge as if by magic. A lieutenant dressed as a cavalry officer, complete with knee-high leather boots, accompanied by an overweight sergeant. Why where they hiding in the hedge?

  “British, excellent!” the officer said a little too loudly. “Thought you were the Hun. Good show!”

  What was a good show? Regret shook his head and screwed up his gritty eyes. “Sir?”

  “You,” said the cheery officer, “we thought you were the Hun.”

  Regret looked at the rest of the squad. They were wearing khaki short-skirted jackets, flat caps and khaki puttees over black boots, not exactly standard dress for the grey-uniformed Germans. He decided the man was an idiot, but tired or not, he had enough sense to keep his deduction to himself.

  “No, sir, we’re Fusiliers,” he said, still feeling he was stating the obvious.

  “We got ourselves a bit of a flat,” the officer said, pointing at the flat.

  The squad were just staring at him, trying to think, but struggling.

  He clearly decided more information was necessary. “I’m Lieutenant Shaw, and this timid fellow is Sergeant Martin.”

  They looked from one to the other in silence, and Lieutenant Shaw shifted awkwardly. “Give us a hand with the car, there’s good fellows.” He pointed at the car in case they hadn’t seen it. “We seem to have misplaced the jack.” He shrugged. “Bit of a hurry, you see.”

  They didn’t see.

  “Got to get a despatch over to HQ.” No response. “Le Cateau, you know?”

  No.

  Lieutenant Shaw gave a sudden start. “Bloody hell!” He pointed urgently down the long hill.

  Regret turned slowly and looked down the road. A troop of German cavalry was riding casually down the road, a patrol of twelve or more, looking for all the world like they were out for a Sunday stroll, with the commander smoking a huge cigar adding to the appearance of a casual outing.

  Regret was suddenly awake, and the rush of full consciousness made his head swim for a moment before he blinked his eyes clear.

  Lieutenant Shaw recognised their blue tunics, red trousers and ash lances as belonging to the Austrian Uhlans. Damn, he’d been on field manoeuvres with men from their regiment. These troops were part of the elite guard regiment, and he knew their lances were not for show. He unclipped his holster, took out his revolver, and fired.

  One of the troopers jerked and rolled off the back of his horse and onto the ro
ad. Shaw couldn’t believe it, at a range of over eight hundred yards!

  Regret snapped the bolt back to chamber another round, shifted his aim a fraction, and fired again. A lancer slammed back off his horse and crashed under the hooves of those around him. The troopers were stunned, but it wouldn’t last. Regret shifted his aim and dropped another one.

  The whole action had taken just three seconds, but the Uhlans were already recovering and urging their mounts up the long hill, lowering their lances as they began the charge.

  Chalky aimed and fired without even thinking; then the others snapped out of their exhausted state and fired at the cavalry, who were now at full gallop.

  Regret shot the officer in the chest and saw him slide sideways from the saddle, and part of his mind realised he had learned a valuable lesson on the railway bridge—even the most disciplined troops come unravelled when they see their officers fall.

  The deadly rapid fire from the Lee-Enfields stopped the charge before it had covered a dozen yards, and Regret lowered his rifle. The road was littered with dead and wounded men, and the horses reared and shied away from the falling men and smell of blood. Only one rider remained mounted, and he stared in horror at the road and at the British soldiers standing in a line across the top of the hill with rifles pointing down at him. He wrenched his horse’s reins and galloped away.

  Sergeant Naylor shot him without a thought.

  They looked down the road at the dead men bleeding into the mud and the horses milling around their fallen masters.

  Sergeant Naylor sighed and started walking down the hill.

  “Where are you going, Sergeant?” Lieutenant Shaw asked with obvious concern that the man was going to shoot the wounded or rob them or do something ungentlemanly.

  “A couple of those horses have broken legs, sir,” Naylor said. “It’s not their fault they’re with the Hun.”

  “Oh yes, of course. Decent thing and all that.”

  Sergeant Naylor continued down the hill without looking back, but Regret could hear him mumbling under his breath.

  “I could shoot the idiot,” Chalky said quietly. “Nobody would know.”

  “No,” Regret said, “they don’t really like enlisted men shooting our officers. Other way round is all right, though.” He shrugged. “Come on. Let’s get the car fixed.”

  They turned and began to walk back to the car, where Sergeant Martin was still holding on to the headlamp as if he was afraid it would fall off.

  “Anyway, if anybody’s going to shoot this idiot, it’ll be me,” Regret said under his breath.

  Sergeant Naylor was still mumbling to himself about having to walk while jumped-up little boys like the lieutenant got to ride around in staff cars. He walked up to the nearest horse, whose foreleg was flopping excruciatingly. “Easy now, boy, nobody’s going to hurt you.” He raised his hand slowly and patted the terrified animal’s neck. “You remind me of my own Billy Bar back home. Easy now, boy.”

  He unslung his rifle very slowly, put the muzzle right against the animal’s head to muffle the sound, and fired. The horse dropped without a murmur, and he stepped around it. The second damaged animal was lying on its side, desperately trying to get up onto its broken leg. Naylor didn’t need to soothe this one because it was clearly not going anywhere, but he did anyway as he slid back the rifle bolt as gently as he could.

  “I know you’re scared, boy. Hell, who wouldn’t be.” He aimed the rifle from his hip. “It’s all over now; go to sleep.” He pulled the trigger.

  At the instant the horse died, Naylor’s body exploded in pain, and he staggered forward. He tried to turn, but something was preventing him. Confused, he looked down to see the long point of a lance sticking out of his belly. He tried to turn again, but the lance suddenly jerked and twisted, ending any more resistance.

  It was Sergeant Martin who saw what was happening, as he was the only one not involved in lifting the car and changing the wheel. What he was seeing didn’t register for several seconds. At last he understood and screamed.

  The soldiers looked up from the car and followed Martin’s terrified stare to the road below. Sergeant Naylor was still on his knees, but only because the long lance sticking through his body was keeping him from falling backwards.

  Regret groaned, “Oh, God!” as he picked up his rifle and stepped onto the road.

  The lancer had jumped onto one of the horses and was already reaching the bend in the road that would shield him from the squad. Regret raised his rifle.

  “Save your ammunition, Regret. He’s out of range even for you,” Chalky said with a shake of his head.

  Regret took a deep breath, steadied his rifle, let his breath out slowly, and fired. The lancer seemed to jump up in the stirrups, then fell forward, grasping the horse’s mane for a moment before sliding from the saddle and into the hedge.

  Nobody spoke for a long time, their eyes fixed on the body of Sergeant Naylor crucified by the ten-foot lance imbedded in his back.

  “God!” Lieutenant Shaw said as he came forward and clapped Regret on the shoulder. “That was the finest shot I’ve ever seen. That must have been a thousand yards at least!”

  Regret glanced at him for a moment and shook his head.

  Chalky spoke without taking his eyes off the lancer hung up on the hedge. “That was eight hundred and fifty yards. Sir.”

  “Eight hundred and fifty? How do you know that?” The lieutenant was squinting down the road, trying to judge the distance.

  “Because, sir,” Chalky said, “that’s what His Majesty’s army pays me to know, sir.”

  Lieutenant Shaw nodded. “That’s over half a mile! You shot that lancer at full gallop from half a mile away! I’ve never seen anything like it.” He turned to Chalky. “Have you?”

  “Have I what… sir?”

  “Seen anything like that shot. Well, have you? The effective range of the Lee Enfield is what? Six hundred yards? An amazing shot!”

  He was getting on everyone’s nerves, and Chalky wished he’d ignored Regret and shot him.

  Regret clipped a new magazine into the rifle and began reloading the used one from an ammunition pouch. “I’m not proud of what I just did.”

  “Not proud? Not proud?” Lieutenant Shaw took off his cap and wiped his sweating brow. “It was a stunning show. He would have got clean away and brought reinforcements.”

  Regret stepped up close to the lieutenant, and Chalky moved closer in case he had to stop his friend from doing something that would get him a cigarette at dawn.

  “It might have been… stunning, sir, but if I’d done it properly in the first place, the sergeant would still be alive.”

  Chalky put his hand on Regret’s shoulder, as much to restrain him as to comfort him. “It wasn’t you what missed that trooper; it could’ve been me, or any of us.”

  It didn’t help.

  “Let’s get the car fixed and get out of here before more of those pretty cavalry turn up.” Chalky steered his friend back to the car, where they turned, crouched and lifted it off the flat wheel. It seemed easier to Regret, lighter somehow, but he knew it was the anger burning in him that was giving him added strength. He hadn’t missed that trooper, he knew that, but he hadn’t shot him when he was on the ground either. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  They dropped the car onto its replacement wheel and automatically rubbed at their dirty hands, but no amount of rubbing was going to shift the mud and the blood.

  “Where are you going, sir?” Regret asked.

  “Bertry, near Le Cateau, General Smith-Dorrien’s HQ.” The lieutenant tapped the replaced wheel with the toe of his immaculately polished riding boot. “Excellent job, lads, obliged.” He climbed into the back seat and started to say his farewells.

  Chalky got in beside him, and Regret climbed in the front seat and turned to face the stunned officer. “Lots of room in here, sir.”

  The lieutenant closed his mouth with a click.

  “Don’t mind g
iving these lads a ride, do you, sir?” Regret said and, without waiting for a reply, leaned over the seat, and opened the back door. “Hop on, lads. The lieutenant has offered to take us the rest of the way in his nice car.”

  By a process of elimination, Corporal Gail was now in charge and looked to heaven for guidance that wasn’t coming, then got in the back of the car, squashing the lieutenant between him and Chalky, while the others pushed their rifles through the windows and climbed onto the car’s running boards, where they hung precariously with their arms hooked around the door pillars.

  Bertry was less than ten miles away, but it took them almost two hours to get there. The roads were clogged with exhausted soldiers and refugees weighed down with their most precious possessions loaded onto carts and wheelbarrows.

  Regret stared out of the car window in disbelief. Two days ago, this road was full of promise, with cheering crowds and Tommies eager to get to grips with the enemy. Now it was a chaos of shuffling and stumbling troops in torn and bloody clothes that were only just recognisable as uniforms. He couldn’t believe it had gone so wrong so quickly. Eventually he closed his eyes and immediately fell into a deep sleep.

  The car door opening woke him, and he looked out to see they were parked on a gravel drive in front of a big villa.

  General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, commander of the II Corps that had stopped the Germans at Mons, was coming down the steps of the villa that was temporarily the British Expeditionary Forces’ HQ in Flanders. He stopped and watched the overladen staff car pull up in front of the building and the scruffy soldiers climb off it.

  Lieutenant Shaw snapped to attention and threw a salute that could have damaged him. Regret and the others stood to attention and resisted the glaring need to brush off their dirty and torn uniforms.

  Smith-Dorrien walked over to them and looked them over as if inspecting an honour guard. “I see you decided to borrow one of my cars, gentlemen.”

  Corporal Gail was senior NCO so got to speak for the others, much to their relief. “Err… yes, I mean, no… we err…”

  “We hitched a ride sir,” Regret said, unable to watch the man suffer any longer.

  “Yes,” said Smith-Dorrien, “I can see that. At ease, Lieutenant, you look like you’re about to strain something.”

  Shaw lowered his hand but remained rigidly at attention. “Thank you, sir. I have a despatch for General Allenby, sir.”

  Smith-Dorrien pointed at the villa, and Shaw blinked at him. “In there,” Smith-Dorrien said softly, but Shaw’s brain was stalled. “General Allenby is in there, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.” Shaw nodded but didn’t move.

  “The dispatch?” Smith-Dorrien raised his eyebrows, but the poor lieutenant was fixed. “Take the dispatch into the villa, Lieutenant!”

  Shaw bolted towards the chateau, and a moment later Sergeant Martin ran after him, clutching a briefcase.

  Smith-Dorrien smiled and shook his head. “I should have said boo!” He seemed to recall the ragged men, and his smile vanished. “Well, gentlemen, you look like you could do with a meal.” He looked them over. “And a bath.”

  They gave in to the urge and brushed themselves off.

  “The meal I can arrange.” He waved at a group of staff officers waiting for him on the steps, and a full colonel trotted down the steps.

  “Get someone to arrange a meal for these lads, will you?”

  Regret’s stomach tightened, and not only because of hunger. Officers were never nice to him. Not unless they wanted something.

  “And, Colonel, I think we have our volunteers.”

  The colonel turned and nodded.

  Regret sighed, he knew it.