The 1st and 3rd Brigades would be going in first, with the 2nd, the Victoria Brigade, held in reserve. The young officer, who had joined them in Egypt, sounded regretful as he imparted that information; hearing it, Liam groaned with the rest. Like them he was keen to get in there, keen to deal the swiftest, most lethal blow, so they could finish the war quickly and go home. But it seemed they were destined to wait on the sidelines, dodging shells, chewing their fingernails, wondering when and if they would be needed.
The Roman road, bearing its evidence of craters, was too exposed for these latter-day legions; all approaches to the ridge were made via two shallow valleys, ‘Sausage’ to the south of the road, and ‘Mash’ to the north. The Division moved in stages to the southerly approach, through the ragged remains of Becourt Wood and along tracks which led to the shallow dip of ‘Sausage Gully’.
High on the ridge beside the Roman road was the chalky detritus of a massive crater, blasted by mines on the first day; below it, criss-crossing the vale like the string of a cat’s cradle, stretched dozens of white lines. The whole area was scarred by shell-holes and old trench-systems: by a chaos of men and horses and transports, field ambulances, kitchens and guns. Amidst the intermittent blast of their own artillery came the distant crump of other guns. At the head of the valley, where the stumps of Bailiff Wood stabbed the skyline, great gouts of smoke regularly obscured the cloudless blue beyond.
Warned to be ready on several occasions, on 22nd July Liam’s unit moved from field to wood to old German trenches overlooking the crater.
The British bombardment began at seven in the evening. It went on for five hours.
In the old, well-dug German trench Liam curled himself against the crushing reverberations, stuffing lint in his ears to block the din. The roars and the shocks were continuous, like being bowled along in a steel drum, hour after hour with no escape. It was worse than anything he had ever experienced. For a while, before his ability to think was eradicated, his pity went out to the attacking battalions, waiting so close to where those shells were landing. They must be going mad with it. How would they gather themselves to attack when the barrage lifted?
And what about the Germans? Were they safe in their deep chalk dugouts, as they had been on 1st July? Or where they being slowly pulverized to oblivion, dying, one by one, from concussion? Eventually his pity extended even to them.
Hour after hour through the long summer twilight the bombardment went on, great pink clouds of dust erupting over the horizon. When darkness came, the night was lit by a continuous flickering band, with star shells bursting and shrapnel twinkling, and red and green rockets curving away into hell. And always the noise, the everlasting noise...
When it stopped, the silence was palpable, eerie, the only sound inside Liam’s head, a dreadful, continuous ringing. For a while he thought he must be dead. As sensation returned, he jerked into life. His men were alive but stunned. Mouths open, eyes flickering, no words. The sharp ripping of machine-guns, the crack of mortars, were crackling insect noises. At last it came to him that the battle had begun.
It was a cold night with a heavy dew. Huddled inside a couple of old German overcoats, Liam dozed towards dawn, half an ear cocked for the call that would rouse them all to action. But none came. At sunrise he went down with three of the team for water and provisions, and saw the stream of wounded coming in. Most of the injuries were slight, in legs and arms, and in spite of the pain the men were jubilant, the battle was going well, they had Fritz on the run. The claim was borne out by the numbers of prisoners being taken down the valley, most of them so dazed they looked like sleepwalkers.
‘Poor buggers, I bet they were glad to surrender,’ the new man, Gray, remarked and Liam was bound to agree. But their own walking wounded were singing.
It was a day of inactivity for the machine-gunners in reserve. Liam obtained permission for his men to explore the nearby deserted village of La Boisselle and went with them to explore the deep dugouts which had enabled the defenders to withstand the initial bombardment of 1st July.
Flights of steps led deep into the chalk hill, with sizeable rooms beneath, all fitted out with wire-sprung beds and dressing tables and electric lights. Awestruck by these creature comforts, they were ill-at-ease down there, feeling like voyeurs, intruders into a temporarily abandoned home. Tunics were still hanging on pegs, underwear in drawers; a broken powder compact beside a very feminine shoe gave shocking reality to the evidence of female names on a duty roster. Apparently women had worked here as telephone operators.
The men were shocked; having women in the front line seemed to verify the Germans’ barbarism. But they were envious too. Perhaps this was the way to go to war, with pretty faces and trim ankles to alleviate the boredom, and a warm pair of arms to welcome you at night. But beneath the coarse jests were gentler longings, an awareness of home and their own women, so totally out of reach.
It was damp and cold underground; the afternoon sun struck Liam pleasurably as they returned to the surface. For a good half-hour he lay sprawled with his team on the warm earth, watching the clouds of dust rising and falling above Pozières. Passers-by related the state of play in cricketing terms. The home team were in and scoring well, pushing through the village, aiming for the cemetery at the northern end. The British 48th would join the game there. Artillery was bowling an isolated outpost of Huns on the western border.
He sat up to identify the spot, amused by the idle discussion of tactics and positions. It seemed, disappointingly, that the reserves would not be needed. Above them planes were buzzing round like gnats, and behind the British lines he counted sixteen observation balloons like silver clouds against a cerulean sky.
Returning, he heard that the 8th Battalion had been called up to reinforce the 1st Brigade. Good news in one sense, but it meant another night of anxiety, wondering whether they would be called in support. They were not. By morning news came through that the village of Pozières had been captured, that the 8th had cut a swathe through enemy opposition and pressed forward to the cemetery. It was tremendous news; the men in reserve cheered and yelled, dancing like cannibals round the field kitchens. But it was by no means over. There passed another twenty-four hours of uncertainty, ferrying supplies up the valley, questioning every stretcher-bearer and runner whose anxious, gasping breaths would allow of a reply. The Australians had the village, so why were they not pressing on? What was the hold-up? But nobody seemed to know.
In the early hours of the morning of the 25th, uneasy sleep was broken by the din of a fresh bombardment, German guns this time, which seemed to be finding their marks. Liam saw many wounded coming down at first light, all of them in a poor way. From what he could gather, the 8th had lost two-thirds in death and injury, the 5th even more.
All through that beautiful day a constant fume of fog hung over the ridge; the Germans were having their innings now, seeking to regain lost ground, and flinging everything at it in the attempt. The bombardment continued intermittently, intensifying at sunset, throwing back the most glorious colours to the watchers in the valley. Elsewhere the front line was quiet.
It seemed to Liam that the world had paused to watch that duel on the hill.
At dusk, the full company of machine-gunners moved up to Bailiff Wood. It was impossible to see Pozières, although no more than a small field lay between the wood and the tiny hamlet of Contalmaison. No longer inhabited by the living, its walls had collapsed into paths and gardens, the orchards torn limb from limb.
Like the dead, he thought. Unburied bodies, in the grotesque attitudes of death, lay strewn where they had fallen, Saxon and Yorkshireman side by side amongst the rubble. Covering his mouth against the stench, Liam searched while the light allowed for any sign of his brother. Fricourt lay less than a couple of miles away down the valley; there the Green Howards had fought to a standstill, and then come back a week later to try again. Had Robin been here? Was he amongst the dead?
But nothing remained which sug
gested the slender body of his brother. Alone, with one of the team watching out for the signal which might come any minute, Liam stopped for a moment in the shelter of a warm farmhouse wall. A few half-ripe apples were scattered amongst debris underfoot; a butter-churn, undamaged, lay beside the mangled remains of a baby’s high-chair, while beneath it, staring up at him with bland, unblinking eyes, was a china doll with a broken face.
Suddenly, he was weeping uncontrollably, broken by this evidence of family life, its senseless destruction. This had been a man’s home, the place to which he returned each night after work in the fields. War had made of it a charnel house.
Anger shook him then. He walked through the stink of death and raged at its indignities, seeing his brother in every distorted face. Why were they not buried? Why were they left here to rot?
He knew the answers to those questions, but the anger sustained him. As he rejoined the group in the wood, Sergeant Keenan strode up, angrily demanding to know where in hell he had been. Bitterly amused by the term, Liam turned away and was threatened by a charge. ‘Looking for my brother,’ he said, and something in his eyes quelled the other man.
Evening deepened into darkness, and from the valley behind them the British artillery opened up again. Watching red-hot shells passing overhead, Liam was sure the call would come soon. From time to time his body winced and shivered, but he was less conscious of fear than of physical tension, a coiled spring which when the order came, released itself in a grunt of praise.
Of the two machine-gun sections to go up, theirs was the first. With his gear already strapped about him, Liam hoisted the 50lb weight of the gun’s tripod and waited for the nod from Keenan. When it came he led his team down past the crossroads at ‘Casualty Corner’ and along the partially sunken road which led eventually to the ridge. They had a guide, for which Liam thanked God; without him in the darkness they might easily have gone blundering on into the German lines. According to directions, they were to take up a position at the south-western corner of the village, relieving two sections of the 1st Brigade who were both undermanned and exhausted. They found the men they were to relieve in a shallow, crumbling trench, but of a village there was no sign.
They dug in as best they could, filling sandbags to support the gun. With the sunrise they were able to distinguish bricks and rubble, the low remains of walls which roughly marked the line of the Roman road; in places where there should have been trees, were uprooted stumps and splintered branches. The farmhouse on the corner which had been fortified by the Germans appeared as no more than another hump on a plateau piled with rubble. In its cellars were the headquarters of the 7th and 8th Battalions.
It was quiet for some time. Unnaturally so, without even the sporadic bursts of gunfire which marked dawn and dusk. In the silence, the sound of birdsong carried clearly from woods behind the lines; a lark, unconscious of the tragedy below, went trilling up, up, up into the blue, praising the sun and its own ecstatic freedom. In their holes in the ground, the men sipped water and chewed on hard biscuits. Matt, the team’s Number Two, had managed to procure a section of hard, dark-brown sausage which he pared into slices and handed round. Spicy but satisfying, Liam thought. He had barely swallowed when with a sudden, head-splitting, synchronized crash the German bombardment began.
The new front line dug by the Australians in the past couple of nights had been located by artillery far to the east. On the stroke of seven those heavy guns exploded into action, firing salvo after salvo, rending the air with hurricane force, sucking up dust, lashing down grit, throwing out chunks of chalk and brick. The men were buffeted by the concussion, it pulled air from their lungs, squeezed chests and ears and noses; it made their hearts pound to the point of bursting.
Overhead, shells screamed and shrapnel exploded like deadly rain; below, the earth groaned and shifted in protest.
It went on, with barely a cessation, for more than sixteen hours.
The Vickers, which had been set up against the parapet, was soon covered in rubble. Expecting an attack as soon as the bombardment lifted, Liam struggled to clear it. As he did so a shell landed not a dozen yards away, lifting two men like rag dolls and dropping them back, dead. A moment later another landed just short of the parapet, caving it in, burying several infantrymen close by. The team rushed to dig them out, scrabbling in the dirt with bare hands; four were alive, shaking and jibbering like idiots, but the fifth was dead, concussed or suffocated, none could tell. Then young Vic caught a blast, knocked flat in the trench by a hundredweight of rubble. Seeing it happen, Liam dived straight for the boy’s head, digging like a dog until he had cleared a passage of air, scooped dirt from his mouth. Alive and crying, choking on earth and grit, he was hauled free and Liam held him fiercely, rocking with the shocks, thumping his back while the boy coughed and sobbed and wept for his mother. With shoulders pressed to what remained of the parapet, and the team forming a protective arc around them, the two men clung together, and then that concentrated storm of death began to pass away to their left.
For a while Vic moaned with shock, burying his face against Liam’s neck. As realization dawned, there came the rising wail of hysteria, the desperate need to get away.
Clamping his arms, Liam held the boy and shook him. ‘You’re all right! There’s nothing wrong with you, Vic — you’re alive!’
Twitching and shuddering, the boy still struggled. Liam slapped his face, hard, and jammed a steel helmet onto his head. ‘It’s moving – the barrage is moving – the shells are dropping somewhere else!’
Livid marks stood out against the bloodless cheek; the eyes were terrified, but registered Liam’s presence, the presence of authority. Before he could slip back into panic, Liam said harshly: ‘Pull yourself together, Number Six, and dig that bloody gun out. As soon as this lot lifts, we’re going to need it! Now move yourself!’
They all jumped to it, entrenching tools clearing the dirt, experienced hands examining the barrel and mechanism for signs of damage. The boy, white-faced, still trembling, did what was required of him while Liam surveyed their position, tried to assess what was happening. Men were still alive, digging out caved-in sections of the trench, giving first aid to the wounded and taking advantage of the lull just here to send messages back to base. He caught sight of Keenan, with another section facing the road, and had the satisfaction of watching him disappear as another salvo lifted clouds of dust behind him. With any luck, Liam thought, he too would know the terror of being buried alive. Moments later, however, his head was bobbing about again. Liam took a sip of water, swilled it round his gritty mouth, and spat.
Within minutes they had the Vickers stripped and cleaned, the tender mechanism oiled and a fresh belt of ammunition locked into place. Liam aimed at a tree root two hundred yards away and fired off a few rounds; it was working perfectly. Moving further down the trench they consolidated their position just as a fresh wave of heavy shells crept closer from the right. Supposed to stay apart during a bombardment, they all drew inexorably together, hanging on against the dreadful buffeting, needing the comfort of physical contact while the earth rocked and thudded beneath them. The noise was horrific. The boy who had been buried edged up to Liam and held his arm, his grip tightening convulsively with every ear-splitting explosion. Needing a hold on sanity himself, Liam started counting, totalling fifteen to twenty heavy 5.9s every minute.
Those concentrated bursts at the south-western end of the village continued all day. The entrance to ‘Gibraltar’, the fortified cellar on the corner, was blown in, and across the road the 6th Battalion’s headquarters in a log hut was buried several times before taking a direct hit. Officers were killed and wounded, runners and stretcher-bearers travelling the sunken road ran races with death; the infantry in the line crawled out of it and took shelter in shell-holes.
As darkness fell, the German bombardment ceased. The ground was pulverized, the trenches dug so painstakingly had ceased to exist; a thick fog of dust swirled constantly, obscuring e
verything.
Concussed and beaten, they waited for the attack. Waited to die.
Afterwards, it seemed a miracle. Had the attack come that evening, it could not have been repulsed. But it did not come. All the Australian positions held, and with the cessation of the barrage sometime after eleven that night, the 1st Division slowly gave way to the 2nd coming up from the valley.
Hardly able to believe they were still alive, hardly able to stand, the machine-gunners were relieved just before two o’clock in the morning of 27th July. Another bombardment was going on, this time by the British artillery, but the noise and reverberations were just the same. It took a couple of hours to reach their old billet near the crater of La Boisselle. Two staggering hours weighed down by gun-barrels, tripods and equipment, on limbs that felt like jelly. On the point of collapse, longing for sleep, Liam could not believe what he saw. A row of massive sixty-pounder guns had been moved up from the wood, and their trench was just beneath them.
‘Can’t we go somewhere else?’ he demanded of Keenan.
‘There is nowhere else, sonny. All the billets are taken. Put up with it.’
In the end the team collapsed into dug-outs just yards from those guns. The constant flash and crash and thudding recoil continued all night. Haggard, deaf to normal sounds, they emerged at first light to find the warm metal monstrosity of the battalion kitchen. Taking pity, one of the cooks brewed tea. Cupping cold, shaking hands around his enamel mug, Liam felt like the walking dead, his heart beating erratically, limbs so heavy he could scarcely move. Inside his skull the noise was still trapped; he wondered whether it would ever go away.
Nobody spoke. When he could raise enough interest, Liam looked at the faces around him, all grey, all filthy; all, like himself, unutterably weary. No jubilation this morning.
The tea was hot and sweet with condensed milk; after three mugs and several cigarettes, he began to feel a slight improvement, enough to respond to the smell of food. After twenty-eight hours of nothing but water and hard biscuits, he was suddenly ravenous. There was cold boiled meat and hot new potatoes, with bread and jam to finish. Breakfast at the Ritz, he felt, could not have been better.
Liam's Story Page 38
