‘The chaps,’ he said. ‘They always like Dundee cake.’
‘And must I make cakes to feed the chaps?’
‘Not just them ‒ we share things,’ he said. ‘We always share what we get in our parcels. It’s good stuff, you see, and we’re pretty nearly always hungry.’
‘But why?’ she exclaimed. ‘Why on earth don’t they feed you properly?’
‘A lot of the food gets flogged,’ he said. ‘There’s chaps that sell it to the shops and cafes. Or so I’ve heard, anyway, and I reckon it’s true.’
‘But that’s terrible! It makes my blood boil to hear such things! There ought to be better supervision.’
‘There ought to be, but it ent easy, out there.’
The fire collapsed in the open stove, and Tom leant forward to put on more logs. He looked at her for a while in silence.
‘I was sorry,’ he said, awkwardly, ‘to hear the captain was a prisoner.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I hope the Germans don’t treat him badly. He says in his letters he’s all right, but I can’t help wondering all the same.’
‘I don’t think the Germans is all bad. Some of them must be, but not all. He’ll be all right, Bet, don’t you worry. ’
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep calling me Bet! You never used to in the old days.’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the habit off the chaps.’ And he went on to explain to her about the letters. ‘We share them as well. We read each other’s. Except when they’re private, from wives and that. The chaps always like it when I hear from you. Your letters go round like hot buns. You cheer them up and make them laugh. They always say it’s a real tonic.’
‘I shall have to be careful what I write.’
‘You don’t mind, do you, Bet? I didn’t think you’d mind about it.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t mind.’
In fact the knowledge gave her pleasure. She felt herself closer to the men out there, suffering, enduring as they were. It was little enough, in God’s name, and she must try to write more often.
‘Tell me about them, these mates of yours,’ she said, and, seeing him smile: ‘What’s the joke exactly?’ she asked.
‘I was thinking about Big Glover. He was always talking about you. He said once to ask if you’d marry him.’
‘Tell him I’d have to see him first.’
‘Big Glover is dead now. He was killed last summer on the Somme. He came from outside Bromyard somewhere. So did Ritchie and Flyer Kyte. Kyte was clever with a jew’s harp. Ritchie was always full of tales. They was both good chaps, Kyte and Ritchie, but they’re dead now.’
And so it went on: Tom’s own roll of honour: Cuddy; Evans; Mustow; Braid; Veming; Reynolds; Privitt; Smith; all good men but dead now.
‘Good God,’ Betony said, ‘are none of them left alive at all?’
‘Not many,’ he said, ‘but there’s new chaps coming up all the time.’
‘It’s all wrong,’ she said, ‘that so many men should be sent out to die, cut down like cornstalks in a field.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s all wrong.’
Looking at him, she thought him changed. He had always had a haunted look, but now he was old before his time. His eyes had seen things no eyes should see.
‘Dicky’ll be called up next spring,’ she said.
‘Ah. I know. He was telling me.’
‘Where will it end, Tom? Where will it end?’
‘I dunno, but it’s bound to end somewhere, I suppose.’
‘Shall we beat the Germans, do you think?’
‘I reckon we’ve got to,’ Tom said, ‘or all them lives will’ve gone for nothing.’
‘Take care of yourself,’ Betony said, ‘and tell your mates the cake will be coming.’
‘Don’t let the war be over yet,’ said Dicky, ‘’cos I want to be in it and have some fun.’
‘Dicky, be quiet!’ Beth exclaimed. ‘You’ve got no notion what you’re saying.’
‘Ah, you jus be quiet, son,’ Jesse said, ‘and give Tom a hand with that there kitbag.’
‘I’ll be knitting you something,’ Granna said, ‘just as soon as I find the time.’
‘I hope you ent losing your touch as a craftsman,’ said Great-grumpa Tewke, thumping Tom’s back as he climbed up into the trap. ‘You should practise carving whenever you can, to keep your hand in for when you come home.’
And Tilly Preston, waiting outside The Rose and Crown, watching for the pony and trap, ran out into the road and threw a knot of ribbons, red white and blue, into Tom’s lap.
‘Keep them, Tom, and they’ll bring you luck.’
Tom stuffed the ribbons into his pocket. Jesse, driving, glanced at his face.
‘D’you like Tilly Preston, Tom?’ he asked.
‘She’s all right,’ Tom said, shrugging.
Chapter Six
The Sixth Battalion, having moved south into France again, was re-forming, absorbing men of the Tenth Battalion, disbanded after heavy losses, and being made up to strength again with new drafts just out from England. Tom and Newers were now old sweats. They felt entitled to give themselves airs. They were veterans. Men of experience. It was their duty, Newers said, to take the new recruits in hand especially when they got to the trenches.
‘See as much as you can, hear as much as you can, and do sod-all about either,’ he said. ‘It won’t be long now. We’re dying of boredom on both sides. And what’s left of the B.E.F. will all go home in the same boat.’
The new men were teased without mercy.
‘Have you brought your sugar card?’
‘The sergeant likes you to call him Dad.’
‘Six months as san-man and you get the D.S.O. Twelve months and you get the V.C. Two years, you retire on a pension.’
One young lad, entering his dugout, was horrified at the number of rats scampering and fighting there.
‘Ugh!’ he said, drawing back. ‘I don’t like rats.’
‘You’d better get to like ’em,’ Newers said, ‘’cos they bloody well think the world of us!’
‘Hey, Toss,’ said Danson. ‘There’s a chap here asking to see Jack Johnson!’
‘That’s nothing,’ said Rush. ‘I’ve got one here complaining about his thigh-boots. He says he never takes nothing but number nines!’
The weather turned cold. There was deep snow. The men had been issued with leather jackets. They sat huddled close in the tiny dugouts, woollen comforters pulled down over their ears, sandbags tied like gaiters round their legs.
‘I find myself thinking of featherbeds, and my missus beside me, warm as toast, tickling my back,’ said Chirpy Bird. ‘Pathetic, ent it?’
‘I think of my furnace,’ said Bert Moore, an ironworker from Wolverhampton, ‘and the heat in my face as I push a load in on the jib.’
‘I think of summer days and cricket on Pitchcroft,’ said Bob Newers, who came from Worcester, ‘sitting in the sun in my white flannels, waiting my turn to go in and bat.’
‘I think of damn-all when I’m cold,’ said Baines, ‘’cos my brainbox is froze and won’t work.’
It was very quiet along most of the front during the cold spell early that year. Too quiet, Newers said, and they feared the worst.
‘Nip and see what Jerry’s doing and tell him not to, will you, Cox?’
‘D’you think it’s true he’s getting ready to give us hell?’
‘Nasty rumours are always true. He’ll have a go at smashing us before the Yanks get organized. It won’t be much use his trying after.’
The rumours became established fact. German prisoners, coming in, all spoke of a big offensive, and from the forward observation posts, German reinforcements could be seen massing behind their lines, just out of range of the British guns. The weather was improving. March winds were drying the ground. In the little salient near Cambrai, British troops, working to strengthen the defences there, were caught unawares by a heavy bombardment of mustard gas. Two men in three w
ere incapacitated.
Tom, delivering a message at Montevalle, saw a long string of these gassed men, blinded, voiceless, filing hand-in-hand along a zig-zag communication trench, making their way to the rear line. He counted a hundred and thirty-three.
‘Will they recover?’ he asked an ambulance man at Chesle.
‘After a fashion,’ the man said.
On the night of the twenty-first, the Germans began an intense shelling of the British line, all the way from Croiselle to La Fère. It was heavier than anything known before, and in the forward defences the British garrisons crouched low under the storm, deafened, concussed, as the earth split around them on all sides.
‘This is it,’ Newers said. ‘Once this stops they’ll be all over us like flies on a cowpat, God rot their wicked souls.’
From where they lay they could see British shells exploding in St Quentin. Gunflashes turned the night to day. Some distance away, on their right flank, a machine-gun post was blown sky high, and, further on still, three shells in a row fell into a trench sector.
‘Poor bastards,’ Newers said. ‘That’s Wilkie gone up with them emma gees. I liked old Wilkie. I’ll miss him a lot. He owed me a shilling from a game of poker.’
First light came, struggling through a thick fog, but the German bombardment continued all morning. Then at nine-thirty it moved over and the German infantry were seen advancing, grey-clad men coming out of the grey fog. The forward posts opened fire.
The fog was helping the enemy, and they came not in waves but in separate groups, working their way through the weakly manned British defences, then turning on them from flank and rear. The forward posts were soon overwhelmed. The few survivors were falling back.
In the main line, there was confusion. Officers strode up and down the trench, calling to the men to keep their heads. One young subaltern ran to and fro several times.
‘Keep calm! Keep calm!’ he shouted to the men on the firestep. ‘Keep quite calm and choose your target carefully.’
‘Hark at him,’ Newers muttered. ‘He’s the one that’s getting excited.’
But Captain Highet, their company commander, watching over the parapet, was calm and quiet to a degree, ready to give the order to fire. A group of Germans emerged from the fog out in front, coming across at a steady pace. The order was given and there was a burst of rifle fire. The group of Germans disappeared, its place was taken by another, and other groups loomed up behind. Elsewhere, in many places, they had broken through the main line.
The Sixth Battalion, in Artichoke Trench, had the enemy strong on both sides and was in danger of being cut off. Bombers were posted in shell-holes at either flank, to cover withdrawal, and Tom was in the party on the right, with Newers, Danson, Grover and Coombes. The battalion fell back, fighting fiercely as it went, till it reached the safety of Sandboy Redoubt. The bombing parties were the last to leave. They stayed until all their grenades were thrown, and then made a dash for it, every man for himself.
On the way, Tom came under fire from a German machine-gun, and was hit in the calf of each leg. He crawled to a shell-hole and lay low. The machine-gun was firing from the rim of a crater fifty yards off. There came an explosion and the machine-gun stopped. A well-aimed bomb had found its mark.
His puttees and trousers were ripped from the back of each leg and hung in tatters, sticky with blood and fragments of flesh. He was trying to open his field-dressing when a voice spoke and there was Newers, coming towards him, crouched low, unlit pipe between his teeth.
‘Bloody fool!’ Tom said. ‘Coming back through all this!’
‘I thought you might have a match,’ Newers said.
He knelt beside Tom and broke a phial of iodine over each wound. The dressings were soaked with blood instantly, so Newers took off his own puttees and used them as extra bandages. Tom then fainted and knew nothing more.
Newers gathered him up in his arms and set out across the stretch of open ground now overrun by enemy troops. His only cover was the fog, but he reached the rear lines unharmed and carried Tom to the medical aid post at Vraine St Marie, a distance of almost two miles. When Tom recovered consciousness, Newers had gone.
Tom spent three weeks in the field hospital at St Irac, and was then put on a long period of light duty, in the stores at Aubrille. He fretted, rather, away from his mates, for the news coming in was grave indeed. The Germans had broken through everywhere, and the Allies were falling back all the time, fighting desperately over every mile of ground yielded. The Commander-in-Chief had issued a message to all his troops. They had their backs to the wall, he said, and every man must fight to the end.
By the end of May, however, the German offensive was losing its force, and the British line began to hold. Hope was reviving, growing strong, and soon there was confidence in the air.
In the middle of June, Tom rejoined his own battalion, in reserve at Chantereine. Three months had passed and many friends had disappeared, killed or sent home badly wounded, but Bob Newers was still there, and Pecker Danson, and Dave Rush was back again.
‘And we’ve still got Fritz with us, of course. That’s him over there, across the way, but don’t provoke him if you can help it ’cos he’s lost his sense of humour lately.’
‘I thought you’d got a Blighty one,’ Pecker Danson said to Tom.
‘Not Toss,’ said Newers. ‘He’s a lot tougher than he looks.’
Twice in June the Germans attacked nearby Bligny, but were beaten back. Afterwards, the attacks died down in that sector, and things were quiet for the Sixth Battalion. Away on their right, the besieged city of Reims still held, and away on their left, the enemy advance had been stopped in the woods on the banks of the Marne. In the middle of July the Germans attempted another thrust, but were checked by Foch and thrown back to the Vesle, and by the end of the month the German offensive had come to a halt everywhere.
In the lull that followed, the Allies had time to nurse themselves back to strength again. They counted their losses and re-formed. Soon they were ready to strike the blow that would end the war. The American forces were building up. The French spirit was on fire again. This time it really would be over by Christmas.
August and September saw the turning of the tide. The Allies were advancing, driving the enemy back across France. By early October the Hindenburg Line was in Allied hands.
‘What’ll you do when you get to Berlin, Pecker?’
‘Dance the Blue Danube with the Kaiser.’
‘And then what?’
‘Catch the next train for Blighty, of course.’
The Sixth Battalion was on the march. They had seen little action in the past six weeks, but now, after careful and strenuous training, they were on their way to the front line again.
At a small town called Vaillon St Jacques, the people turned out to watch them march through. Women ran forward with cups of coffee for the soldiers to drink; old men wanted to shake their hands; children waved small tricolour flags. At one house, plainly a brothel, a group of women stood on the iron balcony, blowing kisses and baring their breasts.
‘Tommees, come in! We give you good time! Soldats anglais, we surrender to you!’
‘On our way back!’ the soldiers answered. ‘Mind you keep the offer open!’
And, marching on, they sang their own version of a popular song.
‘Keep the red lamp burning …
We shall be returning …
Though a soldier’s pay is poor
He can spare two francs …’
Outside Vaillon, as they marched through, they could hear the noise of guns some miles away towards the east, reminding them that the war was not quite over yet.
‘Here we go!’ Danson muttered. ‘Back to the bloody mincing-machine.’
‘Only one more river,’ Newers said in a comforting way.
In pouring wet weather in late September, they marched through Les Boeufs, Le Transloy, Rocquingny, Chenay. It was a district they knew all too well. Many friends
were buried there. They knew the kind of weather too. Did it never stop raining in this country? It was worse than Manchester, Shuttleworth said. A few days later they passed through the ruins of La Bouleau, and, on another dark rainy night, went into trenches in the front line.
Their objective was called County Point, a strong-point in the enemy line. C and D Companies were to attack together and press on to the sunken road known as Bull’s Alley. A and B Companies were to follow up on their right flank and take the position called Cock’s Spur. At five in the morning, first light, the British guns opened fire and the four attacking companies advanced behind the creeping barrage, over slippery ground that rose slightly.
In front hung a curtain of thick choking smoke as the barrage fell, moving forward, perfectly timed. The first wave of troops was now straggling, thrown out by the broken ground, unable to see because of the smoke drifting past in coils. Orders were shouted but were lost in the noise.
Coming out of the smoke, Tom found himself stumbling against a thicket of barbed wire surrounding a German machine-gun emplacement. The gun was in pieces behind the shattered breastwork and the gun-crew were lying dead. He swung to the right, going round the entanglement, and half a dozen men went with him. Two of them fell, hit by snipers hidden somewhere in no-man’s-land, and the others went forward at a trot. But the rest of the line had disappeared, somewhere under the drifting smoke, and in front of the few lay a waterlogged wasteland rising to an empty sky. Rain was falling heavily. Visibility was bad. It seemed to Tom they had gone past their mark. The little group stopped to confer.
‘If this is the Cheltenham racecourse,’ said Bird, ‘it seems there’s no meeting today, lads.’
‘Do we go back or go on?’ asked Tom.
‘On,’ said Brownlee, ‘and hope for the best.’
They had gone perhaps three hundred yards when a shell exploded in front of them. The five lay low, then went on again, and now they could see the enemy line, in the dim distance away on their left, marked out by the flash of guns and the puffs of smoke hanging in the rain. They could also see their own men, like ants in a swarm, seething on the slopes there.
‘Jesus wept!’ Newers said. ‘We have gone astray and no mistake.’
The Sorrowing Wind (The Apple Tree Saga Book 3) Page 10
