The Darkness and the Thunder

by Stewart Binns

  ‘Exactly. That’s why we need these.’

  Norton-Griffiths gets out an engineering drawing and spreads it across the table.

  ‘It’s a Stanley Heading Machine, made in Nuneaton. They use them for cutting the Underground in London. One is on its way as I speak. Captain Cropper, I want you to try it. Your objective is Wytschaete village. The shaft and tunnels, SP13 at Petit Bois, that Horace’s men, Serjeant Kenny and his crew, have been working on will be ideal.’

  Cecil Cropper, a dour Northumberland mining engineer, does not like taking orders, or working in a team. ‘If it’s Hickling’s hole, then he can look after the machine.’

  ‘Cecil, Horace is a brilliant tunneller; you’re a mechanical engineer. I want you to work together.’

  ‘Will the beast cope with the thick blue clay here?’

  ‘The manufacturers are modifying the cutters, but they say yes, and it will cut a tunnel six feet in diameter at a pace of two feet per hour.’

  ‘But the Germans will hear the bugger.’

  ‘Well, let’s wait and see.’

  Norton-Griffiths then leads the way to the top of the shaft, where the Burnley moles are working. There are half a dozen men at the top, waiting to relieve Mick Kenny and his crew. ‘When is Serjeant Kenny due up?’ he asks.

  ‘Sixteen hundred hours, sir.’

  He looks at his watch. ‘Five minutes ago. Typical. Mick always wants to do an extra yard.’

  There is a moment’s silence as the gathering listens for the sound of the winding gear coming to life. However, instead of a mechanical clank and grinding, there comes the sound of a small explosion followed by an ominous rumble. ‘It’s a camouflet! Get them out now!’

  Norton-Griffiths turns to Hickling. ‘They’re new. The Germans have been using them for a couple of weeks. If they hear us, they bore towards the sound with an auger, six to eight inches or so, put a pipe bomb down the hole and bang!’

  Everyone looks towards the shaft. The relief moles have gone down to see what has happened. All goes quiet for a while, so Norton-Griffiths scampers down on the ladders. When he reaches the bottom, he witnesses a terrible scene.

  Amidst the stench of the explosive charge and pools of runny clay made liquid by the explosion, the relief crew has leaned two crumpled bodies against the shaft wall. One is just about recognizable, his features visible beneath a covering of thick clay. The other has no face. Where it was, a craterous lump of bloodied clay sits in his skull.

  ‘He took the brunt of it, sir. They’re both dead.’

  ‘The others?’

  ‘Sagar’s back there. He’s breathing, but he’s got a lungful of mud and I think he may have lost an eye.’

  ‘Serjeant Kenny and Sapper Haythornthwaite?’

  ‘Don’t know, sir. They must have been on the other side of the blast. They’re digging now.’

  ‘I’m going up.’

  ‘Don’t, sir. Wait here – you’ll be in the way up there.’

  Norton-Griffiths knows he is right, so sits and waits. Despite his passion for clay-kicking, he is not a clay-kicker himself and not enamoured of confined spaces. His fascination is geology and the engineering and skills to conquer its challenges. He looks at his claustrophobic, cold and wet surroundings and quakes. For his men, where he now sits is only the beginning of a subterranean world that stretches for hundreds of yards into even smaller nooks and crannies. His tremors turn to real anxiety, and he glances upwards to see the light 60 feet above. But it is no longer there; darkness has fallen. The serjeant of the relief crew notices his all-too-obvious unease.

  ‘You alreet, sir?’

  ‘I will be when we’re out of this little hole. What’s your name, Serjeant?’

  ‘Postlethwaite, sir.’

  ‘Do you have a brother?’

  ‘Did, sir. He were a tunneller, copped it back in June.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. There’s a Haythornthwaite down there.’

  ‘I know. Nearly as daft a name as Postlethwaite.’

  The two men stare at one another for what seems like an eternity.

  ‘If you don’t mind me askin’, sir; you’re CO Tunnelling, but you don’t reckon t’bein’ in one?’

  ‘I used to dig tunnels for a living. I’m an engineer. Now I build them to help us win this war.’

  ‘I don’t like ’em either; never have. But wheer I come frae, tha goes down t’pit whether tha likes it or not.’

  ‘How do you cope?’

  ‘When I’m down an’ a get a bit freet, I ollus imagine am crawling around in t’long grass in t’hay meadows, like when I wer a little lad. Sky’s blue an’ sun’s shinin’. That sorts me.’

  ‘Your accent sounds like you’re from the same part of the world as Mick and his men.’

  ‘Nay, sir! Miles away; they’re Lankies. I’m frae Barnsley; different world. Sun ollus shines i’Barnsley; it’s ollus rainin’ i’Burnley.’

  Norton-Griffiths smiles to himself as he tries to decipher the difference between two northern accents, which, to him, sound identical. Another long silence follows.

  It is finally broken by the sound of men dragging themselves along the tunnel.

  After a few minutes their exhausted, mud-splattered faces appear. One man has a rope in his hands, and pulls on it with all his might. Another shouts out as he approaches: ‘Got ’em both on this dolly!’

  Norton-Griffiths questions the man with the rope anxiously. ‘Do you need the Novita?’

  ‘Yes, oxygen for one of them. He’s breathing, just, but he needs help. They survived the blast, but the roof buried them.’

  ‘Serjeant Kenny and Sapper Haythornthwaite?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Kenny’s dead.’

  ‘Dreadful way to go.’

  ‘Nothing worse. Married man, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Serjeant Kenny told me his wife’s out here driving an ambulance.’

  ‘Better make sure we don’t put him in hers then.’

  ‘Good point. Let’s get them up top.’

  ‘He was a brave man, sir, and very strong. When we found them, Kenny was on his hands and knees, with Haythornthwaite underneath him. He must have been trying to protect him. I don’t know how he held all that weight. Anyway, there was clear air between him and the man under him. Then he must have run out of air, but he still held his position. He saved Haythornthwaite’s life – bloody amazing.’

  Twaites is concussed by the blast but is alive. He is taken away to a waiting ambulance.

  Vinny Sagar has lost an eye and his lungs are damaged by the blast. He is taken to a dressing station, where a surgeon operates on his broken eye socket. But it is his breathing that is causing the greatest concern. He is not getting enough oxygen and is unable to gather enough breath to speak. He begins to panic. ‘Nurse! Morphine, please.’

  The morphine has the desired effect and Vinny begins to relax.

  Norton-Griffiths appears and asks the doctor on duty how he is doing.

  ‘Fifty-fifty, Major; no better than that. The biggest issue is infection in the lungs before they can get rid of all that blast material.’

  ‘We had a couple of fatalities today in the same incident. One of them has a wife out here, driving an ambulance – FANY or VAD.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Cath Kenny.’

  ‘Bloody hell! Feisty sort, she is. Lancastrian. Calls a spade a fucking shovel!’

  ‘That’ll be her. Mick was a hard-case; ex-miner, tough as old boots.’

  ‘Not any more. Now he’s just fertilizer for the farmers of Flanders.’

  ‘He was a good man, Doc. Show some respect.’

  ‘Sorry, Major, but we don’t see them as men, can’t afford to; we’d go doolally.’

  ‘How do I find Mrs Kenny?’

  ‘She does the Ypres–Pop route. Mainly to Pop-Hop. The big military hospital in the old lace mill. Ask for Noel Chavasse; he’ll know where to find her.’

  ‘Thanks, Doc. Do what you can for Haythornthwaite; he
’s another good lad.’

  ‘They’re all good lads, Major. That’s the tragedy of it all.’

  Vincent Anthony Sagar, fine amateur cricketer and footballer, who once came close to playing for his beloved Burnley Football Club, dies in the middle of the night. His lungs cannot cope with the damage caused by the blast. The morphine he has been given means that he is not too conscious of his predicament but, just before he dies, he wakes up. He looks around; all he can see with his one functioning eye is the light of sporadic oil lamps and row upon row of stretchers, each with a man lying on it covered by a blanket and a sheet. There is a nurse in the distance with a torch, checking the patients one by one, but she is too far away for him to attract her attention.

  He hopes to see Mick and Twaites; he does not know that Mick is dead. He wonders how Tommy and John-Tommy are and what has become of Cath and Mary. Then his chest tightens and he finds it harder and harder to get his breath. He raises his hand as high as he can, appealing for help, but none comes. His hand falls back to the stretcher and his life slips away. Today is his nineteenth birthday. He had planned to celebrate it with Mick and Twaites after their shift. Twaites had asked their favourite café in nearby Vormezele to bake Vinny a cake. It sits on the bar waiting for them.

  Sunday 12 December

  Maison de Ville, Grande Place, Poperinghe, West Flanders, Belgium

  Cath Kenny and Mary Broxup are drinking in Poperinghe. It is their day off. They have had lunch, during which they consumed a carafe of wine. They have now returned to the beer they were drinking before their food arrived. Cath is now five months pregnant and is beginning to show.

  Cath’s tears usually accompany their discussions about Morgan Thomas’s baby. Today is no different.

  ‘Sometimes, our Mary, I feel like drinkin’ a bottle of gin an’ gettin’ shut of this little lad, but a lost one afore, an’ am not losin’ another.’

  ‘Then tha’ marsant, Cath.’

  ‘But what abaht Mick? He puts up wi’ me, but it’s a lot to ask on ’im to accept another lad’s babby.’

  ‘Tha’ll ’ave to tell ’im sooner o’ later. Perhaps wi should see if we can find ’im?’

  ‘Aye, perhaps we should – next week? When’s our day off?’

  ‘Friday.’

  ‘Reet, Friday it is.’

  The two women have not noticed Major Jack Norton-Griffiths stride into the Maison de Ville. He speaks to the barman, who points him towards Cath and Mary.

  ‘Good afternoon, ladies. Jack Norton-Griffiths, Royal Engineers.’

  Cath stiffens. She remembers the name of the man Mick told her was called Hell-fire Jack. She also remembers Mick’s description of a tall, imposing man with a full moustache and a deep, gravelly voice.

  ‘I’m looking for Cath Kenny, the wife of Serjeant Mick Kenny.’

  Mary looks on anxiously. Cath tries to stay strong.

  ‘That’s me, lad. Sit tha’sen down. So Mick made Serjeant – don’t know ’ow t’big lummox managed that.’

  ‘By being a fine soldier.’

  Norton-Griffiths sits down. As he does so, three large brandies, which he ordered when he spoke to the barman, are brought to the table. Cath stares at the amber liquid as it laps gently in her glass. Her eyes fill with tears. Mary grabs her shoulders as they start to heave.

  ‘S’pose you’ve come t’ tell ’e’s now a dead soldier?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, Mrs Kenny.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘In a tunnelling incident at St Eloi, south of Ypres.’

  ‘What sort of incident?’

  ‘He was underground, digging a tunnel towards the Messines Ridge. The Germans must have heard them. They fired a camouflet – a pipe bomb. It killed some of Mick’s team outright, but he was buried. Unfortunately, when we got to him, he had died.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, that’s what he always feared most, being buried alive.’

  Mary interrupts. ‘What about Vinny Sagar an’ Nat Haythornthwaite – we call him Twaites?’

  ‘Twaites survived, thanks to Mick, who shielded him with his body in an extraordinary act of strength and courage. We got Vinny out, but he died that night in a field hospital. You should be very proud of them.’

  Cath is trying to compose herself. ‘Aye, wi are. Wheer are they?’

  ‘In a new military cemetery just behind St Eloi.’

  ‘Reet, Mary, we’ll go in t’mornin’.’

  ‘But we’re on duty, Cath.’

  ‘Not any more. I’m goin’ to see me ’usband’s grave.’ Anger begins to rise in her voice. ‘Then I’m goin’ back to St Omer to hand in t’keys o’ t’ambulance. Then am goin’ home.’

  ‘T’Burnley?’

  ‘No, t’London. I’m goin’ t’see Henry Hyndman.’

  ‘Whatever fer?’

  Cath begins to shout at the top of her voice. ‘Ave ’ad enough! Should never o’ come in t’first place. Drivin’ ambulances fer them toff lasses who look down their noses at us – we must be bloody barmy. Now Mick’s dead, buried alive in a fuckin’ tunnel! I almost got raped by a drunken soldier, an’ they shot Morgan in the back cos he was tryin’ to deliver a message! I’m joinin’ t’anti-war lot. Henry will know how to find ’em. I’m gonna speak up abaht wot’s goin’ on out ’ere!’

  Cath turns to Jack, who looks shocked by Cath’s outburst and, for a change, is lost for words. ‘I hear thi call thi Hell-fire Jack?’

  ‘Apparently so.’

  ‘Well, it’s apparent to me that thi should be buyin’ us another brandy – an’ mek it a double.’

  Two hours later Norton-Griffiths helps Mary put a very drunk Cath to bed in their one-room apartment in Poperinghe.

  ‘Cath is a formidable woman,’ he says.

  ‘She is that.’

  ‘Do you know how to get to St Eloi?’

  ‘No, but we’ll find it. Thank you fer comin’ in person to tell us abaht Mick and t’lads.’

  ‘Not at all, the least I could do. Mick, Vinny and Twaites are a credit to you and Burnley, the kind of men who are going to win this war.’

  ‘Do you think it can still be won?’

  ‘Yes, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not sure – Cath may be reet. Is it reet that we should be feighten’ in t’first place?’

  ‘I leave that to the politicians, Mary.’

  ‘Aye, trouble is, Cath’s a politician. I don’t think she’s sure yet, but I think she’s beginning to realize it.’

  ‘Well, I wish you and her all the best. If you or Cath ever need anything, you can contact me via Royal Engineers HQ in St Omer, or at the tunnelling companies recruitment office, Central Buildings, Westminster.’

  The next day Mary and a very hungover Cath drive to St Eloi to visit Twaites and see the graves of their menfolk. Twaites is sedated but recovering well from his ordeal. Mercifully, he has no recollection of the explosion and has not been told of the deaths of his friends. Mary and Cath decide not to wake him and add more woe to his predicament. St Eloi’s cemetery is a small patch of levelled, open ground in a desolate landscape ravaged by war. The nearby hamlet of St Eloi is just a pile of ruined cottages. The graveyard is no more than three lines of small mounds of earth, perhaps three dozen graves in all, each topped by a simple wooden cross.

  The two Burnley names are not difficult to find. The black paint forming the lettering on their whitewashed crosses is the most recent. The paint is still tacky as Cath touches her husband’s name: ‘Serjeant Michael Kenny, 172nd Tunnelling Company’. She is sitting on the ground, talking quietly to Mick, as if he were sitting next to her in the pub. She is explaining to him in a very measured and earnest way why she got involved with Morgan and why she is sorry to have let him down. She does not spare him anything and explains that she is pregnant. Then she stops, her anguish preventing her from saying any more.

  Mary, trying not to listen, is laying flowers on the mound belonging to Vinny. It is raining hard and the air is cold, so the rain begins to turn to a
harsh sleet, but Cath is so distressed she does not feel anything.

  Eventually, Mary lifts Cath up and guides her back to the ambulance. Cath rests her head on Mary’s shoulder. ‘Yer know wot, Mary,’ she says, ‘Mick ne’er stopped me bein’ who I wanted to be.’

  The drive back to Pop is a harrowing one for Cath. She knows it will be a long time, if ever, before she can visit his grave again. After a while Mary breaks the silence. ‘Were yer serious last neet abaht goin’ t’London?’

  ‘Aye. Wil’t tha come wi’ me?’

  ‘ ’Course a will, if that’s wot yer want. But ’ow will wi live?’

  ‘Henry’ll tek care on us.’

  ‘I’m sure he will! But tha knows what ’e’ll want in return.’

  ‘I know, but am a single woman wi’ a child on t’way. There’s nowt fer us i’ Burnley, so I ’aven’t got much choice, ’ave I?’

  ‘But ’e’s an old man, Cath.’

  ‘Aye, but a very clever an’ attractive one.’

  ‘Do’st really think so?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Mary, but he’s very likeable an’ very kind. That’s not a bad start.’

  ‘Well, I’m not gettin’ involved in any o’ that three in a bed malarkey.’

  ‘Neither am I. That wer just drink talkin’.’

  ‘An’ wot abaht this pacifism? Is’ta serious abaht it?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘But Henry reckons it’s a just war, an’ that everythin’ will change when it’s over.’

  ‘Well, Henry’s wrong. Nothin’s worth wot’s ’appenin’ out ’ere. An’ things aren’t changin’ quickly enough. Our Mick and Vinny are cold in t’ground, killed feightin’ fer Britain. But they weren’t allowed to vote fer the politicians wot sent ’em ’ere. An’ when they got ’ere, wot did they find? They ’ad to doff their caps to toff officers who still had bum fluff on their chins, who parade around wi’ their own horses, grooms an’ personal servants. They can’t eat wi’ ’em, drink wi’ ’em, or even shag the same tarts! And think abaht ’ow many poor buggers wiv ’ad in t’back o’ this ambulance – blown to bits, blinded, gassed, maimed fer life. Even t’ones in t’trenches who aren’t injured ’ave diarrhoea an’ t’pox!’

  Mary looks thoughtful; she stares straight ahead, not taking care to avoid the many bumps and hollows in the road.