Out of the showers, they towelled themselves dry and walked through a stores shed, collecting new uniforms, all of it roughly sized and their responsibility to sew up to fit, but new and clean. There were boots as well, needing to be worked up but clean and solid.
They completed the circle, picking up their personal possessions under the eye of the Sergeant Major and collecting their rifles before forming up into companies and marching to their tents. A group of defaulters from another battalion was piling up their uniforms, pitchforking them into a cart and taking them off to firepits, to be soaked in petrol and burned.
There were medical orderlies observing as they dressed, running their eyes over the men for boils and rashes and festering cuts and scratches, unnoticed at the front by the men themselves.
“Healthier than permitting them to be louse-ridden, sir. Waste of uniforms, maybe, but the only way of keeping the men clean. Can never get all of the lice out, no matter how much you try.”
Richard had seen the men sat in their dugouts, ‘chatting’ – running a candle flame along the seams of their trousers and tunics, listening to the lice pop and knowing that a few would survive and breed into hundreds within days. They did their best, could never succeed. It was said that some forms of typhus were spread by lice or other bugs. They had to try to keep them down.
“What’s the word on work parties, Hawkeswill?”
“One week on, two off, sir. Not so much coming up at the moment and a labour battalion to hand as well. We should have Christmas week completely free, sir, which is lucky. Poor sods up in the lines won’t be so pleased.”
“Neither they will. It won’t kill them.”
“No, sir. The Hun will do that!”
Richard did wish that Hawkeswill would not try so hard to be funny.
“One thing, sir. We have got a Mess to use this leave. Brigade has taken over a pair of barns and converted them for the officers’ use. Not entirely luxurious, shall we say. A lot better than tents.”
They retired to the building as snow began to fall, found a large room with a fire in the middle and chairs and tables set out. A row of cabins had been built down the far wall, graduating in size from colonel’s office and bedroom to second lieutenant’s hutches.
“Paraffin stoves as well, sir, keeping them warm, if a bit smelly.”
There was a substantial bar, thinly laden with bottles, and a door through to kitchens behind it.
“Up to us to buy in anything we want to drink, sir.”
“Step into my room a moment, Hawkeswill.”
Paisley was there, had his personal belongings arranged already. Richard picked up the small and heavy attaché case, dug out a large drawstring bag, tipped it out on the desk on the side of the room that was his office.
“Let me see… Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty.” He set out five piles of shiny sovereigns. “Should be sufficient to keep us going for a week, do you think? Arrange a whip round if we need any more. Don’t make any fuss about where this money has come from.”
Hawkeswill glanced at his watch and grabbed the coins and ran.
“Time enough to get to town and back, sir, before dinner, if I can grab transport.”
Richard was disturbed as he changed for dinner, hearing yells of approval from the big room.
“Sounds as if the Adjutant’s back, sir.”
“So it does, Paisley. Let’s see what he’s got.”
Even at wartime prices, fifty gold sovereigns went a long way, the French shopkeepers being willing to give a hefty discount for gold rather than paper.
Hawkeswill was more than pleased with himself.
“Good brandy and bad, sir - most of this lot won’t be able to tell the difference. White wine and red, some of it good, all of it palatable with dinner. Belgian beer, being as a refugee has established a brewery. Not comparable with an English pint, to my mind. Drinkable, though. Sufficient of everything to keep us going up to and over Christmas. If we start to run out, there’s more where this lot came from, provided there’s cash to buy it!”
Some of the officers had private incomes, none had been able to spend their pay in many months. A mess fund was organised on the spot and Hawkeswill promised to show them the way round in the morning.
Major Vokes gave his measured approval.
“Get them all pulling together, sir. What a Mess is all about!”
Vokes had his suspicions about the source of the first funds, said nothing. It was in no way out of tradition for a wealthy colonel to subsidise his Mess, though less common in recent years. The young men would enjoy themselves far more with a glass to hand and he would ensure that they did not go too far, drink too heavily for their own good.
“Have to say that I am pleased to be back in a Mess again, sir, even if only for a few weeks. Feels more like the proper Army. Haven’t enjoyed pigging it in a trench. Mind you, it’s not too much unlike conditions in the Peninsula on occasion, from what I have read in the Regimental History. Not what an officer wants for years on end, however!”
Richard agreed. It was not what he wanted at all… It was doing him a deal of good, he had to admit. His life had been turned upside down by this war. He had been made prosperous and must expect to continue to flourish when peace eventually came. If he remained as a soldier, he had a certain career ahead of him; should he choose to leave the Army, he could almost make his pick of occupations, walking into virtually any boardroom that he chose. Add to that, he would have a wife - not the least of his rewards, by a long way. It was a lousy war, literally so, yet he was profiting from it.
He sat with a glass to hand after dinner, removed a little from the mass of his officers, as was correct, quietly thinking, musing over his immediate past and looking to the future.
Provided Haig did not manage to kill him – and French had not achieved that and Haig was probably brighter than him – then he was a made man.
Ridiculous, was it not?
He smiled a welcome to Vokes and Caton as they came across, thinking that the colonel should not be left without company, that it was only courtesy to sit with him.
“The boys are letting off a bit of steam tonight.”
There was a lot of noise coming from the end where the youngsters had congregated, distant from their superiors.
“They are alive, Vokes. Just coming to appreciate the fact and aware that six of their number are not. Eighteen and nineteen years old, most of them – too young to be made aware of mortality and needing a drink or two to dull the edges of that realisation.”
“Very philosophical, Colonel?”
“Sat back like this, one can think of those who have not made it, Vokes. I left a good few of the Third Beds behind and have seen too many of these youngsters go down. I can afford an hour of memories. Not two, however!”
They agreed – there had never such a sustained level of losses in the history of the Army. The junior officers especially had been killed off wholesale.
“Too many youngsters who volunteered in August are not here now, Colonel. A lot of families have lost all of their sons, have been effectively wiped out. Letters from Home tell me of estates coming on the market every week, their men all gone.”
All three had heard of military families – father a major or colonel, sons gone as subalterns – who had been lost, all of them falling to the machine guns. It seemed likely that every family of the aristocracy had lost at least one young man.
“Not quite,” Richard corrected them. “I have memories of being told that the passenger lists on the Cunard and Union Castle and White Star and P and O liners were absolutely full in the months before the war broke out. When it became obvious that there would be a war, a good few chose to take a holiday in South Africa or Australia or to visit relatives in the United States.”
“Not the sort we need out here, Colonel. We can do without them.”
“We wouldn’t see them in any event, Caton. If they finally deign to don khaki it will be with staff officers’ tabs. None of that part
icular sort will be spotted at our sides!”
They agreed, signalling to a mess waiter for refills.
“You hear the songs the men sing in the dugouts, Colonel, off duty, in privacy, more or less. Some of them are the old ones from the Boer War and before. The newer sort are a damned sight less polite and some are very pointed.”
“I don’t hear them, in the nature of things, Caton. I appear in the trench and the whisper goes ahead of me.”
They laughed, knowing that to be true. The first sight of the Colonel led to the word being passed so that the Crown and Anchor boards could be hidden and the pontoon schools could tuck their stakes away, gambling being unlawful. The men were sure that Richard would turn the blind eye, thought it only polite to save him the bother.
“Do the men sing much, Caton?”
“A few have good voices, were always used to sing in the church halls or down at the Sally Ann or in the local pubs.”
“Sally Ann?”
“Salvation Army – very popular for teaching reading and writing and a bit more, getting the boys who want to learn ready to go to evening classes. Surprising just how many wanted to better themselves and had few places to go for help. Add to that, always a cup of tea at the Citadel and a few pretty girls to talk to. If you were musical, they would teach an instrument or put you in their choir, no great worry about what you did on Sunday either.”
Richard added that to his store of knowledge. His experience of the Salvation Army had been to see their brass band at a distance and avoid it.
“Those who have a voice are forever singing – the men like it, most of them. Passes an evening, listening to the old songs. Funny thing is, the old sweats all of them want the Boer War songs – I am sure I hear ‘Sarie Marais’ at least once a week.”
That was new to Richard.
Vokes agreed it was popular, one of the better songs even if it was Dutchy.
“It’s the new songs I don’t like so much, Colonel. ‘They were only playing Leapfrog’ you hear every night and that is definitely crude!”
“Heard it at a distance, not to pick up all of the words.”
Vokes obliged, croaking in a broken baritone.
‘They were only playing leapfrog,
They were only playing leapfrog,
They were only playing leapfrog,
When one staff-officer jumped right over another staff-officer’s back!’
“Oh! Not especially subtle, is it?”
“Anything but, Colonel!”
“Can’t forbid it – any attempt to ban it would make it far more popular and would make an unnecessary act of defiance out of it. Just hope it dies away. You don’t hear ‘Von Kluck’ now. Perhaps all these things get old hat after a while.”
Major Vokes had never heard ‘Von Kluck’. Caton had and enlightened him.
“Oh, I say! Not what we want to hear shouted out. Not at all!”
Wincanton had drifted within hearing range, offered a little valuable information.
“Still the catchword in the 3rd Battalion, Major. If a man drops something they still say ‘Von Kluck it’. Apparently one of their officers said it in August ’14. You were there, Colonel. Do you know how it started?”
Richard was sure the question was innocent, that Wincanton was not prodding him.
“Yes, Wincanton. Started when my company was first put into the line in Belgium, the 3rd trying to hold against six battalions with field artillery. There was a lot of swearing that morning.”
They said no more, simply adding another story to his name.
Chapter Eleven
“Torpedoes, forty degrees on the starboard bow!”
“Coxswain!”
Simon jumped across to the cord that activated the steam siren, three double tugs, the emergency signal to the half-flotilla to follow his lead to comb the tracks of torpedoes, to turn bows on so as to lessen the target. He stumbled as Lancelot rolled deep under full rudder, grabbing at a handrail as McCracken bellowed down the voicepipe to the engineroom.
“Emergency speed!”
He stared ahead as the ship came back to level keel, picked out four torpedo tracks parallel to each other, the nearest a good ten yards abeam. If the three ships behind were alert and followed him precisely, as he expected them to, they would all miss.
Four torpedoes – that said a destroyer not a submarine, off their bows and waiting, already in the sights and them closing to point blank range with only the bow guns bearing.
“Hard aport! Engage destroyers starboard beam.”
He whooped the siren again, three single blasts, code for surface ship action.
Guns flared off the starboard bow and five inch shells landed alongside, five ships in line abreast and closing fast. Without the last-second turn, those shells would have all been hits. The three four inchers and the thirty-seven mil were firing fast over open sights, should be landing some shells home, further reducing the German accuracy. They had a chance of surviving now.
A five inch exploded in the forecastle, penetrating the deck and blowing in the men’s messes, empty at action stations. A fire started – there were wooden tables and benches there as well as the contents of the men’s lockers. The First Lieutenant ran to take charge of the damage control party.
Simon heard the cough of compressed air amidships, knew that Rees had seen a target for his torpedoes, had fired on his own initiative, as were the instructions for action.
There was a loud explosion astern, on one of the three behind him, taking the bulk of the shellfire as they passed the German destroyers on opposite course.
“Lightning, sir. Hit amidships. On fire. Ready use blowing.”
Strachan came running back to the bridge.
“Fire extinguished, sir. Lost the crew to the forward four inch. Splinters. Gun is u/s, sir.”
“Bring her round to starboard, Coxswain, across the sterns of the Hun.”
The German destroyers were three to five knots faster than Lancelot, depending on their class. There was no point to attempting to chase, them, particularly with no forward gun. The shapes were disappearing already, guns falling silent for lack of targets.
An explosion out in the dark, a torpedo warhead blowing.
“Bring us onto the torpedoed ship, Coxswain.”
Two minutes and they smelt fuel oil, slowed to look for survivors, found a knot of a dozen clustered around a pair of life rafts.
“Get them aboard!”
Survivors must be picked up, irrespective of nationality. The Germans did the same.
Almost all were wounded as well as part drowned. At a guess, they were sailors who had been on deck, manning guns or tubes or on the bridge. Those belowdecks did not normally survive a torpedo strike on a small ship.
“What’s the word from Lightning?”
“Gone, sir. Lynx reports taking the most of her men aboard, sir. She was able to get alongside.”
That was well done, must be highlighted in his report of the action. Bringing one’s own ship so close that men could jump from the burning deck to safety was out of the ordinary run. Williams must be recommended for a gong for that.
“Anything from Lucifer?”
“Taken casualties, sir. Five inch hit amidships. Jettisoned torpedoes.”
“Well done her Gunner! What’s the time, Number One?”
“Forty minutes till first light, sir.”
“Signal ‘Search for survivors till dawn.’”
An hour later, the three ships remaining formed a line and made course for Harwich.
“Going home with our tails between our legs, sir.”
“Defeated, Strachan. Not a pleasant feeling. At least we sank one of them in exchange. What has Lucifer reported?”
“Twelve dead and eighteen wounded, sir. No officers whole, sir. Midshipman has the bridge, Commissioned Gunner in charge of damage control. Pumping but able to hold the inflow of water, sir. Engineroom taken damage and casualties, able to make twelve knots.”
/> “Eleven hours to Harwich. Message Commodore. ‘Position such and such. ETA Harwich, 1700 hours. Severely wounded in urgent need of medical attention. Figures for half-flotilla forty dead, sixty wounded. Prisoners number thirteen, all in need of medical assistance.’”
Strachan ran below with the message, adding the precise position.
A first message with the bald facts of the action had been sent almost as soon as the guns fell silent.
Twenty minutes and there was a reply.
“Medical aid despatched. ETA 1300.”
“That should be one of the light cruisers, sir. They can make the better part of thirty knots and carry a doctor.”
“Inform Lynx and Lucifer.”
Eight of the wounded had succumbed before Arethusa appeared at full steam, lowering her boats as she reached the three ships.
“Looks like a doctor in each going to Lynx and Lucifer, sir. Must have put extra bodies aboard at Harwich. Sick berth orderlies coming to us. Engineer in the boat for Lucifer as well, sir.”
An hour and Lucifer reported that repairs had been impossible, she would continue at twelve knots on one shaft.
“Orderly from Arethusa requesting to speak to you, sir.”
Simon went belowdecks, found the orderly and his party of three packing their bags.
“Patched up the prisoners, sir. All should make it to shore hospital, though one at least has swallowed fuel oil. Done his guts no favours at all! Might I request a boat, sir, to one of the other ships?”
“Certainly. Thank you for your help. Lucifer was worst hit, I will send you there.”
The orderlies were often Quakers or others who would not shed blood but wished to serve, refusing the commissions their education and class would normally have expected. They were commonly to be found where the need was greatest.
They reached the yard at Harwich, tied up at spaces hastily cleared for them. There were ambulances waiting and photographers from the Press, accompanied by a Lieutenant.
“Orders from the Admiralty, sir. Pictures of survivors from the ship you sank, rescued at great risk. Lightning’s loss will be announced tomorrow.”
It seemed more than ordinarily dishonest. Lieutenant commanders did not argue with the Admiralty.
The Death of Hope Page 20
