The Darkness and the Thunder

by Stewart Binns

  Bronwyn and Margaret have only seen men die after battles; now they are witnessing the horror of death on the battlefield itself. It is a slaughter, like every murderous battle since the war began nine months ago. During those battles, 5 million men have been killed and 8 million wounded, an attrition rate of 43,000 casualties every day since hostilities commenced.

  The British men falling before the tear-stained eyes of Margaret and Bronwyn are adding to the 900,000 British casualties sustained since the first fatality, seventeen-year-old John Henry Parr, a private in 4th Battalion Middlesex Regiment who was killed at Mons on 21 August 1914. A former butcher’s boy, he had lied about his age when he joined up in 1912. He said he was eighteen and, although he was no more than five foot three inches tall, they believed him. In fact, he was only fifteen.

  Margaret draws in a deep breath. ‘Bron, let’s get our sleeves rolled up. This is going to be a long day.’

  Despite previous failures, Aylmer Hunter-Weston has been promoted to Lieutenant General and continues to send massed ranks of men – five for every four yards – across open ground in broad daylight. He commits 30,000 men to the attack: the Indian Brigade – the Gurkhas and Sikhs – to the left; Lancashire Fusiliers, Hampshires, Worcesters, Scottish Borderers, Royal Fusiliers and Manchesters in the centre; and the Royal Naval Division and the French to the right.

  Other than the Manchesters, no one makes any headway against withering fire, especially on the right, where the French Senegalese retreat, leaving the Royal Naval Division cruelly exposed to enfiladed fire. Having arrived from England only four days ago, the RND’s Collingwood Battalion is all but wiped out, sustaining 600 casualties out of 1,000, including all its officers except one. The Collingwood Battalion will never be re-formed and becomes yet another part of the growing Gallipoli legend.

  The first of the battle’s 6,000 casualties begin to arrive on tugs and fishing boats mid-afternoon. They have to be hoisted aboard the Essequibo one at a time, secured in coffin-like boxes constructed by her ship’s carpenter. The delay, for men packed like sardines in the blistering heat, is agony, but it gives Margaret time to decide what each patient needs.

  It is a baptism of fire for her, the first time she has had to cope without senior medical staff and the resources of a hospital environment, but she issues her orders calmly and clearly: ‘These three must go under cover. The corporal needs a tourniquet on that leg and is a priority for surgery on Lemnos.’

  Followed by a second group of nurses, she moves on. ‘These four can walk. Get them up and get their stretchers back to the tugs. Give them canteens of water and tell them to help give it to those below decks.’

  One of the four, a private in the Hampshires, hears what Margaret has said. ‘Can’t do that, Nurse. I’ve been shot in the leg.’

  Margaret barks at him. ‘First of all, I’m a sister, and I’m in charge here. Your leg wound is a graze and you have dislocated your elbow. Now do as you’re told, or you’ll go back to the beach on the next tug.’

  Bronwyn has the gruesome task of checking the seriously injured to see if they are still alive. They have been put in the hold close to the bow, where an area closed off by a curtain of blankets serves as a mortuary. Any who die have their blankets and stretchers taken from them and their bodies added to those awaiting an overnight burial at sea. In the last hour she has helped the orderlies add eleven more to the growing heap of corpses. She is on her way to check the port side of the Essequibo when she feels a tug on the hem of her uniform. The hand responsible belongs to an officer from 9th Battalion Manchester Regiment. Not older than twenty, he is ashen-faced and sweating profusely. He finds it hard to speak coherently and Bronwyn has to lean forward to hear what he is saying.

  ‘Nurse, would you reach into my top pocket? I have a little notebook and pencil in there.’

  Bronwyn pulls back the young lieutenant’s blanket and shudders at what she sees.

  ‘Yes, I know, I’m a bit of a mess, aren’t I?’ he says.

  His right arm is missing from below the elbow, his left from just above. His legs are intact but are fully bandaged, with tell-tale spots of blood where he has been hit by shrapnel. His face, once handsome, with striking green eyes beneath a mane of thick brown hair, is now pockmarked with bloody craters, each containing a fragment of shrapnel. One piece has gouged a quarter-inch incision in his scalp from front to back. Bronwyn tries, not too successfully, to reassure him, but he just smiles.

  ‘You’re very kind, Nurse …’

  ‘Just call me Bron.’

  ‘Well, Bron, I’ve been keeping a diary for my fiancée since I left Manchester and I’d quite like to finish it. Do you mind doing a couple of sentences for me?’

  ‘ ’Course I will, but my writing’s not the best.’

  ‘Neither is mine. I was never much good in school. My father is a publican – he runs the Cheshire Cheese in Hyde.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Near Ashton-under-Lyne, east of Manchester. Ninth Battalion is Ashton’s Reserve Battalion; we’re part of the Manchester Regiment.’

  Bronwyn tells the orderlies with her to carry on checking the men and tries to extricate the notebook from the lieutenant’s breast pocket.

  He suddenly winces with pain, and blood begins to seep from the bandages that bind his chest. His tunic has been put back over his shoulders after his wounds have been dressed. Bronwyn decides to turn him a little so that she can remove it. When she does, she sees so much blood on his back that it has turned the blanket he is lying on into a sodden puddle.

  Bronwyn is astonished that he is still alive. She is reminded once again how strange it is that some men die surprisingly quickly from their wounds, usually from shock, while others with much more appalling injuries seem to survive for hours, or even days. Realizing that he has little chance of surviving the night, she rests him back down again.

  His precious notebook is soaked in blood, too, but Bronwyn wipes it on her apron and opens the front page. It reads, ‘To 2nd Lieutenant Allan Harrison Hudson, with love from your loving mother and father, Ann and Jervis, May 1915.’

  Bronwyn places her hand on the lieutenant’s forehead. Although wet with perspiration, it is deathly cold. His end is near. Bronwyn whispers to him, ‘What would you like me to write, Allan?’

  His breathing has become very shallow, but he suddenly convulses in pain; blood spews from his mouth, soaking Bronwyn’s face and uniform. He tries to speak, but cannot; his airway is full of blood, choking him to death. His head turns towards Bronwyn, his expression imploring her to help him. But there is nothing she can do except hold him tightly until his life slips away.

  One of the orderlies comes over and asks Bronwyn if she would like a clean apron and if she would like him to help her wipe the blood from her face. ‘No, thanks, I think I’ll leave it for a while. It’s still warm.’

  She begins to leaf through his notebook. It is full of little anecdotes and sketches, and Bronwyn decides she would like to read it before handing it over to the Manchesters’ adjutant.

  Even though the lunchtime attack has made little progress, General Hunter-Weston decides to throw in nine more battalions in a second-wave assault. It also fails, with severe losses and many tales of heroism and senseless brutality.

  Brigadier-General Noel Lee, Commander of the Manchester Brigade, is shot through the throat by a sniper. His wound is so severe he cannot speak but, after hasty surgery on the beach, he refuses an evacuation stretcher, preferring to mingle with his men, encouraging them to fight on, until he falls to the ground unconscious. He later dies of his wounds at the Blue Sisters Hospital on Malta.

  On the evening of 4 June Lieutenant Dallas Moor of the Hampshire Regiment shoots several soldiers for retreating in the face of the enemy. His action prevents a wholesale flight by his company. In due course he will be awarded the Victoria Cross for killing his own men. Lieutenant Moor is eighteen years old.

  As dusk falls Hunter-Weston orders his men t
o dig in. Almost no ground has been gained, and in most sectors the Allied troops are back where they started from.

  At two in the morning, except for the pervasive coughing, spluttering and moaning of her stricken cargo, an eerie silence has descended over the Essequibo. The half-moon has not yet risen, so the night sky over the Dardanelles Peninsula is pitch black, the gleaming Milky Way so bright its intensity is almost audible. From the days of Ancient Egypt, Phoenicia, Greece and Rome, countless warriors have passed this way, but the heavens remain the same. The celestial deities have no regard for the armies and navies of mortal men; they are as nothing in the aeons of time they have witnessed. However, today, they have observed a tragedy that even they will have rarely seen.

  The Essequibo has buried her dead at sea, including the wretched Lieutenant Hudson, and she is about to up anchor and sail for Lemnos. Margaret and Bronwyn are on deck enjoying a cigarette and a swig from Bronwyn’s hip flask, a flagon she refills every night from her supply of Spanish brandy. An orderly appears in the gloom.

  ‘Sister, one last shipment is on its way – a dozen or so.’

  Margaret is so tired she can hardly speak. ‘Thank you; we’re on our way. Tell the captain not to sail until they’re all aboard.’

  She turns to rouse Bronwyn. She has fallen asleep with the drooping ash of her half-finished cigarette perilously close to falling on to her blood-spattered apron. Her hip flask, although held in her fingers, is in an unconscious grasp, and its position is precarious.

  ‘Come on, Bron. There’s more!’

  Bronwyn wakes with a start, dropping her flask with a loud clang and sending grey ash cascading on to the deck. She rubs her face to wake herself and realizes that it is still covered with Lieutenant Hudson’s blood.

  It takes over an hour to deal with the new shipment of men. The last one, the least seriously injured, is sitting on deck staring at the night sky. He has a large bandage covering half his head and the right side of his tunic is drenched in blood. However, Bronwyn can see the cross-swords, bugles and stripes of his rank of colour serjeant.

  ‘Colour, it’s your turn. What have you been doing to yourself?’

  ‘Fritz has shot my –’

  As the serjeant turns, there is a sudden look of amazement on his face. ‘Bron! What the hell are you doing here?’

  Bron screams for joy. ‘Hywel! Good God, I can’t believe it! Are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah, fine. But, as I was about to say, Fritz has shot my ear off.’

  ‘Margaret! It’s Hywel! He’s over here.’

  Margaret rushes over to help Bronwyn take off Hywel’s bloodsoaked bandage. He has been very fortunate; a bullet has excised the middle part of his earlobe from front to back, leaving the top and bottom parts totally unconnected.

  ‘It didn’t half hurt, Bron. I must have just been turning away – otherwise he would have got me between the eyes! He’s been after me for a week; definitely German-trained; I nearly got him a couple of times.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘I came over with the Lanky Fusiliers at the end of April. You two?’

  ‘Just arrived.’

  ‘If I were you, I’d go straight back again. This place is a nightmare. If Fritz doesn’t get you, the Gallipoli Trots will.’

  Margaret starts to re-dress Hywel’s wound. ‘Well, neither is going to get you for a while. You’re going to Lemnos until this ear heals, or it will become infected for certain. Bron, pass me the iodine.’ She pours some on to a ball of cotton wool. ‘This will sting but should clean up that wound.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I said, this should clear up this nasty wound.’

  ‘Sorry, I can’t hear you; I’ve been shot in the ear’ole!’

  Margaret realizes that Hywel is play-acting. ‘Very amusing. Be careful I don’t box you on your other ear.’

  The three of them laugh out loud, bringing a fleeting moment of happiness at the end of yet another horrendous day in the endless trauma that is the Great War.

  Wednesday 16 June

  Cambridge Road Trench, Bellewarde Ridge, Hooge, West Flanders Belgium

  ‘It looks like this is the real thing, ’Arry.’

  ‘ ’Ope so. Can’t remember the last time I did for a Fritz.’

  ‘Bloody silly time to be up an’ about, though. It’s the middle of fuckin’ June, and there’s no sign of the old currant bun yet.’

  ‘That’s because it’s ’arf two in the bleedin’ mornin’!’

  ‘Wot a fuckin’ silly time t’start a ruck!’

  ‘I know. I’m off to get my lads sorted. Good luck, mate.’

  ‘And you. See you tonight for an old nag.’

  Since their escapade in no-man’s-land with Hywel Thomas and Major Hesketh-Pritchard at the beginning of March, when they shot three German snipers, life has been far more tedious than dangerous for Colour Serjeants Maurice Tait and Harry Woodruff of 4th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers.

  Fourth Fusiliers have been alternating between billets and trenches on a regular basis and have changed locations several times. Life has been monotonous, except for the adrenalin caused by the menace of sniper attacks, the relief of a few beers in the mess and the occasional night in Pop to partake of some female company. Mercifully, improved weather has changed life in the trenches from a living hell to just a nightmare.

  Major battles have been fought nearby but, even though the men have heard huge volleys of gunfire, seen blinding flashes of explosions, sometimes at close quarters, and witnessed streams of dead and wounded, 4th Battalion has been spared.

  At the end of the 2nd Battle of Ypres, the German trenches between the Menin Road and the Ypres–Roulers railway formed a significant salient bulging into the British line. From Bellewarde Ridge, on the eastern side of Lake Bellewarde, the Germans are able to overlook the greater part of the ground east of Ypres. So British High Command has decided to attack the salient and take possession of the ridge. The attack is to be carried out by 9th Brigade, 3rd Division, with 7th Brigade in support.

  Dawn is not far off. It is exceptionally quiet and the ground is shrouded in a thick mist, reducing visibility and creating an eerie calm. Across a very narrow section of no-man’s-land, German troops of 248 and 246 Reserve Infantry Regiments (Wurtembergers from Stuttgart) – and 132 Sub-Alsace Infantry Regiment (Alsatians from Strasbourg) are also swathed in mist. Except for their sentries, the German defenders are asleep. As all soldiers in this most terrible of wars, they have few comforts, and sleep is the most treasured – except for those whose slumber induces nightmares worse than the horrors they experience by day.

  Beneath no-man’s-land a parallel war is being fought. All along the Front, German, French and British tunnelling companies are making underground warrens that are almost as extensive and complex as the trenches above them. ‘Hell-fire Jack’ Norton-Griffiths is still dashing around in his Rolls-Royce, recruiting men with or without their commanding officer’s permission. Corporal Basil Sawyers is a case in point. He has just been recruited to 177th Tunnelling Company. Only a week ago he was a Canadian corporal sitting in a tent just south of Ypres, and Norton-Griffiths, looking much more like a general than a major, jumped from his cream-and-brown Silver Ghost and asked for the twenty-three-year-old from Vancouver.

  The subsequent conversation lasted only a couple of minutes.

  ‘Sawyers?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I see from your records that you studied engineering at McGill?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘It’s an excellent university. You got an upper second?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I’m recruiting for new tunnelling companies to undermine the German defences. Are you up for it? There’s a commission in it …’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good, your CO will get a billy-do in a couple of days. Give this to him with my compliments.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

  Norton-Griffiths h
anded over a bottle of vintage Burgundy and clambers back into his car. He then turned back to Sawyers with an afterthought.

  ‘I assume your vocabulary extends to more than “yes”, “sir” and “thank you”?’

  ‘Not really, sir, I’m an engineer.’

  ‘Good answer; you’ll do for me.’

  Two days later a billy-do arrived for Sawyers’ CO. It read, ‘Second Lieutenant Sawyers to report, RTO Steenvoorde, for transportation to 171st Tunnelling Company, RE.’

  Despite the inducement of a Nuits-Saint Georges Premier Cru from Clos des Argillières, Sawyers’ CO is furious. Nevertheless, not even his plea up to divisional level to have the transfer blocked can prevent Hell-fire Jack from getting the man he wants.

  Sawyers is now deep underground at the bottom of a shaft that leads to a tunnel under the German trenches on Bellewarde Ridge. He is with Mick Kenny, one of 171’s originals, and several other clay-kickers, waiting for a report from a listening team at the clay face. Some of the men thought they heard German tunnellers on the last shift, so two ex-miners from Barnsley, a pair of case-hardened, barrack-room comedians called Laughton and Bickley, have been sent forward with a new listening device, a geophone, to try to detect German digging.

  When the two return, young Sawyers is anxious to hear the news from the grey-bearded colliers, men more than twice his age: ‘So, gentlemen?’

  ‘Aye, we could ’ear ’em. Sounds like they’re ’avin’ a fuck, sir.’

  ‘What, the Germans?’

  ‘No, the rats!’

  Much to Sawyers’ embarrassment, Mick cannot stop laughing.

  ‘Give me a break, Serjeant Kenny. A week ago I was a corporal with a degree in engineering, but my speciality was civil engineering – roads and railways – now I’m down a hole the size of a sewer pipe commanding men twice my age.’