“Do what you can, if you can.”
“Engineers are due today, sir. We are to have electricity. Light in some of the bunkers and power for drainage pumps. More efficient than the petrol motors, they say. Signals are putting in field telephones this morning. Line to Brigade and another direct to the battery of eighteen pounders on call for our part of the front.”
“Useful to be able to call for support, Hawkeswill. Quicker.”
The Adjutant shook his head.
“No, sir. We can inform artillery of the target. Permission to expend shells has to be obtained from Division. Too short of rounds to waste them, sir.”
There was nothing to say. The comments were all too obvious.
“Lucky it’s no better on the German side, sir. Takes them just as long to set up new shell-filling factories and chemical plants to make the explosives as it does us. Neither side will be able to fire freely before Christmas, sir.”
“Oh, good! We can give each other presents!”
Hawkeswill smirked.
“Heating for the dugouts, Hawkeswill. Are we still using coke?”
“No. Supplies of coal are available, sir. I am doing what I can to build up a stockpile before hard winter comes in. Rules from Division – probably from Corps, in fact - are that fires can only be lit when the temperature falls below forty degrees Fahrenheit, sir. The sole thermometer is in my bunker. In my cool room, to be fair, as I have an oil stove of my own.”
“Your storeroom is ten feet deeper than the rest of the trench, is it not?”
“Yes, sir. Had it deepened to protect my stocks from casual shellfire, sir.”
“What’s the normal temperature in there?”
“Oh, about thirty-five, sir. I would expect it to vary little from that, summer or winter.”
The old Army had its ways, Richard knew. Mostly they were concerned with obeying every rule of military existence, except where they were inconvenient.
“Right. Do we need any coal stores dug while the Chinese are here?”
“No, sir. Did that yesterday. Set up a space for battalion small arms ammunition as well, sir. They have a few good carpenters among them, built racks for us.”
“None of my business, I expect, old chap… How did you fiddle that?”
Hawkeswill tapped his nose.
“Old dog knows a few tricks, sir. You dropped the knapsacks when the men made the assault on the line. That left a greatcoat on each. We lost forty-five dead and thirty seriously wounded – eight of them died since, by the way, sir – and a round dozen of walking wounded who had to go back for a dressing and were held for a day or two. Eighty-seven packs recovered, each with a greatcoat cut and bloodied in action and needing to be replaced, which has been done, sir. Each had a pair of spare boots, also lost in action. Their personal effects have all been sent to next of kin or held pending their return to the battalion, of course. As a result, I had an amount of warm clothing to offer the labour battalion, who have been kept short of their issues. There were also three days rations in each of those packs, recovered and officially destroyed as spoiled, sir. Together with a few other items available in my store, sir, we had more than enough to give the Chinks in exchange for the few extras requested.”
“Well done. I would not have known how to do that.”
“There’s a right way of going about everything in the Army, sir. If you know the wrinkles, that is. We old hands have a few uses, sir. Most of us, that is. One or two – well, a few more than that – are no use at all. Have you had word of Captain Draper, sir?”
“Brigade confirmed that he took ship from Marseille. Desertion if he had not – too big a risk for him to take.”
“He’ll be working out how to swing the lead, I don’t doubt, sir. If he can’t go sick, he will probably volunteer for the general’s staff when he reaches Mombasa.”
Richard shook his head.
“Fotherby knows the general from a long time back. They served in South Africa together and then were in the same garrison in India a few years later.”
“Best way of doing it, sir. The word will go out and Draper will be a marked man. He will be right out at the front for the whole campaign with the medical officers tipped the wink to kick him out of the sickbay whenever he turns up. I could almost feel sorry for him.”
“Could you?”
“No, not really, sir. No use for the yellow, sir. First officer I have ever seen who was shy. Rare among the men as well. Might be a few if conscription comes in. ‘When’ rather. It’s due from January, is it not?”
“Yes. Don’t like it. If a man’s not willing to sign up as a volunteer, what use will he be as a conscript? It’s a bad idea. You watch – we will find all of the dregs of the gutters sent out and proud volunteers having to mix with criminal scum in their companies and platoons. Utterly unfair on good men to dump the trash on them! We have already been told that the bulk of conscripts will be sent out as replacements, not as new battalions.”
Hawkeswill had not considered that aspect before. He was much struck by it.
“Need to have a word with ‘Major O’Grady, I think, sir. He will speak to his sergeants and corporals. Make them ready for any little tricks the new objects think to pull, sir.”
“Sensible. I’ll leave that to you, Hawkeswill. Probably better that I am not involved.”
The Adjutant gave an approving smile.
“That’s the ticket, sir. You can be all innocent if a man is discovered thoroughly beaten or happens to stumble into a latrine pit. Sort of thing that happens, accidentally in the night, in the darkness.”
“Could that happen, you know, falling in…”
Richard was close to retching at the very thought.
“Only once, sir. Amazing what an object lesson that can be. Even the least amenable reprobates find it in themselves to behave after that. Just one of the worst is all it takes. An object lesson, you might say, sir.”
“Good God! I think I might have preferred to retain my innocence, Hawkeswill.”
“The Army has its ways, sir. Been about since Cromwell’s day. Bound to have picked up one or two ideas about how to deal with hard cases.”
“I did not think I was soft, you know, Hawkeswill. Innocent as a new-born lamb, so I am.”
Hawkeswill laughed.
“We all have to learn, sir. Thirty years from now and you will be looking back and laughing at yourself. Field Marshal Baker will be entertained by the callow colonel!”
Another one! Richard wondered how it happened, how it came about that experienced officers were willing to hang on his lips, to treat him as a prodigy. If only they knew!
“What’s the position regarding wire?”
“Difficult, sir. We can’t put wire up until it is clear that we shall not be moving from this location. The battle is still in progress and the High Command believes that there will be a breakthrough any day. Such being the case, it would be wrong, wasteful, to put up wire. I am doing all I can to get hold of some. So is every other adjutant and the supplies are just not available.”
“It makes sense, if one is sat in a chateau thirty miles behind the lines and listening only to the reports brought in by the staff officers who planned the battle and have invested their careers in it.”
“More than that, sir. If this battle fails, French is finished. He knows it, too. He will keep pressing for more action, more pushes as the only way to save himself.”
“Using gas, still?”
Hawkeswill thought not. Gas had been a failure due to the vagaries of the wind on the day of the attack. Where it had been used the chlorine had rolled back on the advancing troops in some places, had formed dense pockets in low-lying areas and had generally done more harm to the British than to the Germans.
“What I have heard, sir, is that future use will most likely be by means of shells fired by the big howitzers. Guaranteed to land it in the German lines then. Same for smoke, sir. Not very effective. Basically the smoke served to identify
where the attacking troops were and enabled the Hun to lay down an area barrage. Not well thought through, sir. Among other problems, our troops could not see when they got into the smoke. There will be an issue of proper respirators, gasmasks, as well, within a few months. Most of the troops had no more than a wetted handkerchief. The masks they put out just had a pad of damp cotton wool inside. They did not work well.”
“I was told that the handkerchiefs were wetted with the men’s own urine.”
“That’s right, sir. From the little I know, the ammonia in piss neutralises chlorine. So I was told.”
“God help us all. Hawkeswill. What sort of war is this?”
“It compares well with South Africa, sir. The battles were smaller there but no better run. As for the Crimea! The less said the better!”
“Is there a chance of hot food in the near future?”
“Not if you mean today or tomorrow, sir. By the end of the week, quite possibly. The cookhouses were all packed up, ready to move forward behind the cavalry. Now they have to be set up again and brought back to their previous efficiency, which wasn’t that bad, all things considered.”
In all honesty, it probably was good food for the conditions. Where the general at Division cared, the cookhouses produced recognisable meals. They had to send them a mile or two forward on handcarts then, so they were not hot when they reached the men; that could not be helped.
“Some of the bully beef the men are getting is of very poor quality, Hawkeswill. Fat and gristle more than actual meat in some of the cans I have seen.”
“I have sent samples back to Brigade, sir, and I know they have forwarded them to Division. Whether the complaints have got any further, I don’t know. The whisper is that the contractors who supply the stuff have their hands in the politicians’ pockets – or vice versa, thinking on it. Corruption, in any case. War profiteers are said to be making millions and putting hundreds of thousands into outstretched hands in Westminster.”
“Nothing to be done then. When that amount of money is floating about, forget about honesty. I suppose we could make a list of all the men who are given peerages during the war and shoot them afterwards. Might get back at the biggest thieves that way.”
“Unlikely, sir. Men that rich will own the guns as well.”
“You grow cynical, Hawkeswill! So do I. For wire, keep nagging, if you would. I will see what we can do with what we’ve got.”
Richard took his field glasses into the forward trench and peered carefully out into the wide no man’s land in front of them.
“Caton! Have they any snipers set up yet?”
“None, sir. Any day now, I would bet. A pair of machine guns that sweep across at random – not more than three or four times a day, that’s all. All their concerns seems to be for the big defensive works.”
The fortified bunkers were made stronger each night, displaying more wire and low concrete machine gun nests. They were untouchable other than by artillery.
“A solid thirty yard apron of wire all the way along, sir. If you look carefully, you can see that it’s pegged down tight to the ground by short metal stakes. I would bet there are alarms there as well, like the bells Mr O’Grady set up.”
“Must be routes through it for their own people to get out on working parties. Can’t see them, would never find them at night.”
“No, sir.”
“Forget about trench raids until we work out some way of getting through the wire unheard and quickly.”
Both men knew that to mean never.
“That leaves us with no means of taking offensive action, sir. We will simply have to stay put in cover and act as a garrison.”
The effects on morale would be severe if they left the men idle, doing nothing other than wait.
“Put snipers out, ideally on the other side of our own wire, in hides in no man’s land. The company will be able to make a few kills that way. See if you can get a forward observation post out, manned overnight. If we can get a pattern for their wiring parties, it will be possible to set an ambush, to put up flares and wipe one out. You might be able to put a section forward to throw Mills Bombs over the wire into their trench and then run. Anything to be active, Caton. See what ideas you can come up with.”
Captain Caton wished he had kept his mouth shut. There was such a thing as too much of offensive spirit.
“Yes, sir. Can do.”
Richard assessed the confident smile on Caton’s lips, suppressed his own grin. It was necessary to keep the men active, to make them believe that they were killing the enemy, winning the war.
“Now, Caton. Wire.”
“Barbed wire, sir? We are short of it. Unlike the Hun.”
“Exactly. The sole immediate answer seems to be to use what the Hun has left us. Ideas to me at morning prayers, tomorrow.”
Caton was comforted somehow by Richard’s use of army slang for the morning orders meeting; it suggested that he was a soldier, a professional, not just a jumped-up newcomer given command for being lucky.
Richard spent the rest of the day going from company to company and holding essentially the same conversation. They must keep up the offensive spirit, somehow. He noticed how rarely he had to duck for incoming fire. He doubted there had been a dozen shells fired at them all day and he had heard no call for stretcher-bearers. There was an irregular rattle of machine gun fire, just sufficient to tell soldiers on both sides to keep their heads down. He heard occasional rifle shots, presumably snipers, possibly bored soldiers firing at rats – he had heard that occurred occasionally.
‘Desultory’ was the word, he decided. Just sufficient activity to keep the ball rolling. Somehow, they had to do better than that.
“Gentlemen, we are fighting a war. No fighting – no war! We cannot indulge in trench raids, I know. Therefore we must display other forms of hostility. What do you suggest?”
His own words were thrown back at him. Snipers, attacks on wiring parties, bombing raids – everything he had said on the previous day.
“We really need new weapons, sir.”
“Such as, Captain Harris?”
“Mortars, sir. Little ones, no more than a one or two pound bomb. Quickly set up and dismantled and shifted. Mortars can be very accurate, sir, if the range can be calculated. Saw them used in India. Bigger ones, carried on mules. Their gunners measured the distance to the target – some sort of surveying kit like a theodolite.”
There was an indrawn breath all round the dugout. ‘Theodolite’ was a word unknown to almost all and they were impressed at Harris’ erudition. He preened and continued.
“Saw them drop their bombs to the yard, directly on top of sangars – rifle pits, you know – on the opposite hillside. Utterly precise - one sangar, one bomb and quickly to the next. Those were four inch, I think. Took them a few minutes to lay a baseplate precisely on the horizontal and then set up their tube. Using a small mortar, we could have fixed bases – concrete or brick platforms – for them to quickly set down on. Take post, check the range and rattle out five or six bombs then shut up shop and trot along the trench to do the same somewhere else. Could cause the Hun no end of bad temper, sir.”
“So it could, Harris. Damned good notion! Write it up in proper form, Sandhurst style, and I’ll take it to Brigade. Make sure your name is on the paper. You deserve recognition for your own idea. Same applies to all the rest of you. If you have an idea, present it properly and make good and damned sure it’s properly topped and tailed with your name prominent. Staff will still probably pinch it as their own but at least your name will be heard.”
Most proposals that left battalion had the colonel’s name on them and no other. They were impressed by Richard’s integrity, which was his intention in giving the instruction. Promotions would come from his recommendation in any case and their innovations would have little effect on their wartime careers. They might work the better for thinking they would be recognised in the outside military world.
Richard took t
he mortar proposal to Brigade, received a brief hearing.
“Can’t be done, Baker. The plum-pudding mortars are to hand and have been tried out. They invite counter-battery fire – they are noisy, give off a lot of smoke and a flash and the projectile is slow, can be observed in the air, they tell me. Effective enough, with a forty pound charge, thereabouts. They look a bit like a toffee-apple, you know. Shove the stick down the barrel, fire the charge at the bottom and duck. The head goes flying off and the ‘stick’, which is made of steel, cartwheels back. Bit dodgy if you get one round your ears. Decision has been made to give them to the artillery. They will set up their batteries of them in saps off the main trench and use them for bombardment according to orders from above. Wire cutters, mostly. Might be for trench bashing as well or counter-battery work if they can locate a minenwerfer in the German trenches. Not available to the infantry.”
“A pity, sir. We could use light artillery right at the front.”
“Stokes mortar is due out from sometime in the late winter. New design and smaller than the plum-pudding. That may well be put in your hands. You will get them if I do. Now, this demand for wire. Bit of a problem there, Baker. Are you sure you won’t be able to mount a push? Another couple of hundred yards might be enough to make a breakthrough, you know.”
“The RFC says the defences are three miles thick, sir. A series of redoubts supporting each other laterally and gunnery emplacements separately. Where there are gaps in their wire, it is to channel us more efficiently in front of the guns. We can be sure they are digging in as well, setting up a new line of trenches.”
Braithwaite nodded gloomily.
“You heard what happened on the second day, directly in front of Loos, Baker?”
Richard had not.
“No, not making a song and dance of it. Trying to keep it quiet. The reserves, which were held too far back to come in on the first day, mounted an attack, directly into unbroken wire. Ripped to pieces. Artillery and machine guns both. The word is that the Germans ceased fire unilaterally, sickened by the butchery, let the remnants pull back with their wounded. There are dozens of bodies still hanging on the wire, they say. Total casualties are in excess of forty thousand, killed and gravely wounded. The body pits are full. French is scrabbling for any advance on the flank that may enable him to bring the cavalry round and in behind the German defensive area.”
The Death of Hope Page 15
