‘Sir, our night patrols strongly argued that the emplacement has been missed by our shells. We would be risking an awful lot of men.’
A small twitch of disappointment was discernible in Culver’s cheek. ‘Captain,’ he began, with a slow shake of his head, ‘even if your reports are correct, we must accept that, in this sort of engagement, casualties are inevitable. The corridor running beneath Anselm Copse must be secured to allow our cavalry through. We may lose some men in the event – but sacrifices have to be made. Hmm?’
It occurred to Will he might as well be arguing with him about spirit mediums, or universal suffrage. He could make life easier for himself and everyone else by admitting that the Brigadier-General wasn’t going to budge. But a moment of unanticipated scorn goaded him on. ‘Sir, with the greatest respect, if we “accept” that casualties are inevitable, then of course they will be inevitable. But if we saw a man about to kill himself we wouldn’t merely stand by and watch – we’d try to stop him –’
‘Be very careful what you say –’
‘– so by the same reasoning, is it not one’s duty to try to prevent self-destruction on a larger scale?’
Will’s voice had risen, and the room around him caught its breath. The hum of background chat of a sudden had ceased, and he observed the Brigadier-General’s expression pass from narrow-eyed wariness to darkly congested fury. He turned to Reggie and said, in a tight voice, ‘Kindly wait outside, sir.’ Reggie, looking nervously from his uncle to Will, seemed about to speak, and then thought better of it. They waited for Reggie to exit the room, then Culver addressed him in a tone of profound displeasure.
‘You dare to bandy talk of “duty” with me, sir, and yet show no evidence of understanding the word. When an order is given to a subordinate, it becomes his duty to obey it – otherwise he is not worthy of serving in this army, or of calling himself a soldier.’
Will’s voice, though naturally soft, did not waver. ‘Sir. I have never acted in a way to dishonour either my rank or my superiors. But I take my duty to mean more than mere obedience. I owe a duty of protection to the men of my company. It obliges me to assess what danger I may expose them to – they deserve that much – and the sort of risk entailed in B Company’s battle orders, I must tell you, is wildly irresponsible.’
‘It is not your place, sir, to speculate on the fitness of operation orders,’ Culver snarled disbelievingly, and turned to one of the staff officers. ‘Good God, are you listening to this, Drew? Is this the kind of fellow we’re expecting to strike terror into the Boche?’
Drew stepped forward and muttered conciliatingly into the Brigadier-General’s ear. The latter emitted a sequence of gasps and tuts as he listened, his cheek now twitching fiercely. At length, having given ear to his adviser, he said coldly, ‘Get him out of here.’
Will, trembling with his own suppressed indignation, felt he had nothing to lose now, and said, ‘May I expect an answer –’
But the Brigadier-General had already turned away – had dismissed him – and Drew had taken over, advancing on Will’s space and backing him towards the door. He could have shouted over Drew’s shoulder at his recent interlocutor, like an aggrieved defendant to a judge, but the surprise of being so summarily ejected had robbed him of impetus. Drew, having shooed Will out of the room with no more ceremony than a sheepdog with a flock, called to Reggie: ‘The old man wants to see you.’
Left alone in the corridor, Will thought back to another time his out-spokenness had landed him in trouble, only that time he was in a hotel dining room arguing for his friend’s career. And he had won, after a fashion. Now, with his men’s lives at stake, he had come up against an opponent of intransigent purpose, and been swatted away. Had he really expected any other outcome? Perhaps he was of that peculiar strain of character who could only pledge himself to a cause once it looked sufficiently lost. On the other side of the door he could hear Brigadier-General Culver’s querulous bark, and other, lighter voices trying to soothe it. When Reggie emerged some minutes later he shot Will the grimacing look of a schoolboy who’d just been given a ferocious dressing-down by the beak. Neither exchanged a word as they retraced their steps through the chateau and out into the courtyard. Their horses were clear of the estate before Reggie let out a sigh and turned to Will, ambling at his side.
‘Next time you decide to cross swords with the brass, William, kindly don’t ask me for an introduction.’
Diverted from his brooding, Will said, ‘I’m sorry. I suppose he thought I was windy, but … it was just my appeal against a death sentence.’ Reggie was silent for a few moments – apparently in chastened acknowledgement of the 1st M—shires’ unenviable mission tomorrow morning – and when he eventually spoke there was indeed regret in his tone.
‘I don’t suppose Uncle Bertie will want to see me at the regimental golf dinner.’
Will, stunned for an instant, considered replying to this, but not knowing how to begin he held his tongue, and listened instead to the guns echoing around the exhausted sky.
III
He had welcomed the dawn, for it meant the waiting was almost over. They had crept along a dismal communication trench and reached the forward line an hour ago. He looked at his wristwatch. Seven ten. Ticking down to zero. As he passed down the line he felt every third or fourth man give him a sidelong look, as if they might read in his face an indication of their chances in the coming storm. And a storm was now all it was, the barrage of artillery fire so tidal, so consuming, that it vibrated thinly down their bodies. The air did not move; the noise was packed solid around it. When he gave the order to fix bayonets, how would they be able to hear him? Bailey was helping to distribute the rum ration, a tin cup full of viscous, overproofed intoxication. Oppressed by the blank-eyed look of the men, Will busied himself checking bits of equipment – Verey lights, mortars, picks and shovels – and glanced at his watch again, like a commuter waiting for a train. About fifty yards up the line he spotted Louis. As he pushed through the press of bodies, he wondered if he should have told him or Marsden about his abortive appeal for clemency to Brigadier-General Culver. But what would have been the point? We shall destroy all we know and then live on.
Beneath his helmet Louis’s face was pale and slick with sweat. He offered a ghastly smile as Will approached, and leaned forward as though to yell something into his ear. But, perhaps sensing the impossibility of being heard above the din, Louis merely planted a kiss on Will’s cheek, and they stood there for a moment, looking at one another. The next instant the earth seemed to tilt sideways as one of the British mines in no-man’s-land detonated, and twenty-odd tons of explosive reverberated along the trench. When they righted themselves Louis’s expression was shaken, defenceless. Will spontaneously put one fist over the other and made a swinging gesture: the swish of a cricket bat. Louis nodded, understanding, and then saluted. Their dumbshow was over. They melted away from one another into the khaki crush of men waiting by ladders. Back among his company, with all eyes fixed on him, Will felt his limbs move with the slowed, dislocated sensation of a dream: his actions no longer seemed his own. Some stranger was inhabiting his body, directing him onwards. The men had fixed their bayonets, therefore he must have given the order. The minute hand on his wristwatch was about to touch six. The barrage had lifted for a moment, and all was silent. His lips tasted metal, and he found the whistle was in his mouth. Then the men were scrambling up the ladders, so they must have heard its shrill.
And he too was over, hurrying along the parapet, helping up men who struggled beneath the burden of their sixty-pound pack. Around him long lines of soldiers were climbing out, rifles at the port, and he heard a voice, imperturbable, urging them on. His voice, it seemed. They were moving forward, uphill, with the same mechanical stride he remembered at Loos; the difference was that they were not immediately being fired upon. Keep steady, he said, hold that line. Two hundred yards ahead of them the shells began to rain down – the Germans had launched their co
unter-barrage – and Will could see them flash and burst in an eerily straight line. Fountains of dark earth flew up, showering clods and stones hundreds of yards around. The noise closed in, thrumming on their skin. He looked to his left, in time to see a shell burst on the Dartmoors’ line and men hurled backwards, limbs flying. If they could only make it to the cover of the woods …
Between the ground, which trembled as if a train were passing just beneath them, and the deafening thunder of guns overhead, there seemed a little cocoon of space through which they might stagger. Just as Will thought they had reached safety a screaming, hissing sound rent the air, and he froze in his tracks – it was too near. A shock wave from the blast sent him flying, he somersaulted with the force of it, and as he landed something else slammed painfully into his jaw, flush on the chin strap of his helmet. He lay there dazed for a few moments; more than anything he dreaded the mauling of a high-explosive shell, being torn to pieces by fragments of white-hot metal. A bullet between the eyes would be a mercy in comparison … He could feel his legs, which was good, but there was blood trickling down his face from what had caught him on his way down. Something, a man, was lying on top of him, and as he rolled the lifeless weight of him off he saw that half of the face had been lacerated by the shell. What remained of his body he didn’t want to look at. The stink of burnt flesh and the fumes made Will gag. A private he didn’t recognise had squatted down on his haunches to check on him, and to his enquiring look – voices were torn away by the noise – Will nodded, and allowed the man to hand him up. The dead man’s blood had soaked his tunic, and he knew then how lucky he had been. Smoke had blanketed the field, but he felt himself gravitating on unsteady legs into the sheltering cluster of woods.
The bombardment had transformed parts of the wood into gaunt blackened silhouettes, yet here and there a few trees still clung to their natural colouring. Their bark was brown, and leaves shivered feebly on their branches. Men had gathered on the edge of the wood, from where the ground sloped downhill. Will took stock of their surroundings. The company had made it this far without encountering any German machine guns; now they had to pass by Anselm Copse on their right and head for the farmhouse beyond. He marvelled for a moment at the accuracy with which Marsden’s model had reproduced the battlefield; only the colour of the land was different, blasted and scarred by the pounding of the six-day bombardment, where no living thing seemed to move. Just as that thought entered his head, Will saw the Dartmoors emerge from the far side of the wood and begin their descent of the slope. Seconds later a dull metallic staccato began, a single German machine gun concealed on the ridge, exactly as Marsden had warned. Men dropped down, one after the other, as the chattering fire swept along the wave; if part of the wave was missed by the machine gun’s first enfilade, back came the traverse of fire to mow down the survivors. Jesus God … Will almost swooned at the horror of what he was seeing: it was like the dream he’d had of Tam walking into enemy fire with his toy gun, only now it wasn’t one man, it was scores of them. This was a form of suicide, too, he thought. Organised suicide. The men, ordered to walk across exposed terrain, had no better hope of survival than a man who put a revolver to his own temple and fired. The Dartmoor infantry kept pouring out, twenty, thirty of them in a line, and went no more than a few yards before the curtain of fire scythed them down. It was an open-air slaughterhouse.
Will felt a hand on his shoulder and wheeled round. Bailey, the young subaltern, stood there, with a look of wild-eyed entreaty. ‘… sir …?’ was the only syllable he caught above the roar. He knew his question without hearing it: what should they do? Will knew there was only one thing they could do, and he pointed the way to Bailey: forward. The machine gun could only fire in one sweep at a time. If the M—shires could move quickly enough they might escape the enfilade that was cutting down the Dartmoors. Swallowing hard, Will waved his right hand and burst from the cover of the trees, his men following. His only plan was to get past the shrine from which the gunfire was issuing. He was half running, half creeping, aware that once they were in view of Anselm Copse they would converge with the rest of the brigade and provide an even more convenient target. Keep moving, he told himself.
Up ahead he could see a shallow ditch that ran beneath the ridge, not much more than a hundred yards away, but at that moment the ragged line of Dartmoors who had eluded the fire now came into his lateral vision. Some were making a dash for a shell hole, and he recognised the lean figure of Captain Marsden among them. They were yards from safety when they fell (six, seven, eight men) beneath the remorseless strafing. Marsden himself spun round, an arm flailing up, a plume of blood fountaining from his neck. He had dropped at the exact spot he had predicted, directly below the copse. Will broke into a run: he had to make it to that ditch. Seven or eight of his men were following, but by the time he was within jumping distance of cover, the death rattle was upon them. How could one gun do for so many? From the groans and shrieks he knew that most of them had been hit.
He rolled forward into the protective runnel of earth as bullets continued to spit and chew up the ground. They were pinned there. He felt a burning sensation in his hand. Still panting, his body pressed flat, he drew back the glove on his left hand and saw that a bullet had grazed the cushiony heel of his thumb. From above he heard a man moaning, almost lowing with pain. As the machine gun’s patter briefly moved away, he raised himself on his haunches and risked a look over the brim of the ditch; behind him stretched a field of corpses in khaki. But a few yards from him lay Bailey, who had plainly been at his heels ever since they rushed from the wood. He was still twitching. Will crawled out of his shelter, heaved the stricken body over his shoulder and carried him back to the trench. The colour had entirely fled Bailey’s face. His breathing was quick and shallow, and Will saw that he was bleeding profusely from his stomach.
‘Bailey?’ he said, dipping his head low. The boy showed no sign of responding, though his eyes were upon Will. ‘Mark, I’m going to give you these,’ he said, scrabbling blindly in his pack for morphia tablets. He placed them under Bailey’s lolling tongue; he coughed, and a thread of dark blood leaked from the side of his mouth. He felt for Will’s hand, and with great effort he forced out a noise from his throat. It was a single unmistakable word: ‘Mum.’ Will didn’t know what to say to that, so he kept hold of Bailey’s hand, and watched as the life ebbed out of him. A tiny convulsion ran through the boy’s face, and Will put a hand to his neck. The pulse was gone.
He began crawling along the ditch. Up on the slope he heard a massive detonation, and some moments later a couple of the M—shires hurled themselves into the space ahead of him. He caught up with one, and after an exchange of close-quarter yelling he learned that the machine-gun nest on Anselm Copse had at last been hit. ‘One of our mob landed a mortar on it!’ the man said proudly. As they scuttled along, crablike, Will spotted another line of infantry advancing towards the German trenches, a captain at the head. It was Louis, who must have gone over in the second wave. They were about four hundred yards from the wire when a shell loudly scattered them; squinting through the smoke he saw that Louis was still going, and instinctively he jumped out of the ditch, revolver in hand. The two M—shires followed after him. Instead of a machine gun he could now hear discrete metal reports, like farthings pitched at a bucket: a sniper’s fire. Jesus-God-keep-going. At that moment he conceived a violent, almost panicky urge to be alongside Louis, to shield and protect him in a way he had not been able to protect his own men. He had followed orders and led them into a death trap. Let the guilt of it be on my head, but please God let me save this one man. He knew – the certainty of it exhilarated him – he knew he would jump in the way of bullets if it would spare Louis. And there he was, still rallying his men forward, indifferent to the barrage falling around him.
Will was closing the gap on him. If he had shouted his name at this distance on any other day he would have been heard. But this was not a day like any other. The human voice would
not pass through such close-packed tumult. They would yarn about this one day, he thought, Louis charging towards the German wire, oblivious to Will thirty yards behind him. He could even imagine Louis’s incredulous laugh – ‘You were following me all that time?’ – and the head-shaking wonder that both of them had made it through those acres of hell. Distracted for an instant – a bullet had just hissed by his ear – Will fixed his sights back on Louis, who had stumbled briefly and was now trying to right himself. He gave a little shake of his head, like a long-distance runner who had just pulled a muscle, and slowly, slowly, sank to his knees. He’d have to carry him, he thought – that would be fine, he wasn’t a big man – when Louis sank face forward to the ground. Will was aware of himself crying, madly, uncontainably, as he caught up to the prostrate figure, and knelt by him. His helmet had rolled off, revealing the smoking crimson hole where Louis’s left eye used to be. The body was still warm as he held it. Not even this one had he saved. You should have taken me instead, he thought, and, as though in reply, he felt some indescribable molten pain shooting through his chest and lifting him off his feet. All he remembered was a sudden glimpse of sky whirling across his eyes before he tumbled down into oblivion.
18
WITH GENTLE FINGERS Connie peeled back the stained dressing on the thigh and saw that the wound was purplish black and suppurating; the flesh around it looked angrily swollen. But it was the putrid odour that gave it away, filling the nostrils with its warning of morbid decay. The patient groaned and turned his head on the pillow. She watched his eyes slowly open, as if the lids were ungluing. His name was Matthew Mullen, a twenty-year-old private who had been among the first convoy from the Somme three days before. One shattered leg had already been amputated in a field hospital before he was evacuated home. She put her hand to his forehead and felt a feverish heat pulsing beneath the skin.
Half of the Human Race Page 35
