They dropped anchor. They’d made it and it was grand to think they would soon be walking on dry, sound land. Grand as well to get the welcome they had. The crowd out there on the docks cheering them in put Auckland right in its place, the ladies clapping and the lads throwing their caps in the air and shouting.
It was a pretty place, he thought, looking about him at the sea and the low, softly rounded hills. But they were at war all right. Even without all that was going on in the harbour he could see the fortifications that had been set up and the big guns set towards the sea.
It took some time getting the whole four hundred of them off the ship, then the officers had them fall in and they marched through the town. Though he tried to keep his eyes straight ahead as a good soldier should, he couldn’t help glancing about at all there was to see: the great shipbuilding yards close by the harbour, the masses of steel and the activity of men working. The buildings of the town were bigger even than in Auckland and there in the centre was a cathedral with grand arches and steeples and stained-glass windows beaming out in the sunlight.
The houses were three, sometimes four storeys high and all of them joined together and close in to the road with women and girls and young lads and old men coming out of the doors to join up with the other townspeople already crowded behind following them.
They see us as heroes come to save them. The thought struck him and he felt puffed up with pride to be marching through this town, all of them smart and straight and fit in their uniforms with their boots polished and their buttons shined up. He wondered if the other lads were feeling the same way. He thought of his talk with Tam and what he’d made his mind up to and he was glad to have made the change in his thinking. What he’d thought before, how this was an escape and an adventure, was naught but stupidity and boyishness. But what he’d come to after that, that the war was wrong and he was to be killed for nothing, was downright cowardly.
Sometimes what his dad said to him, after he’d stopped shouting and was just sat there with his head in his hands, came back at him. Haven’t I said it often enough to you, son? The working men of the world must unite together. We shouldn’t be taking orders from those who think they’re above us and know better, to kill each other. At the end of all this, there’ll be good young lads hurt and dead and those that sent them will have lined their pockets with the profits from it.
He respected Dad’s beliefs; he knew they’d come from years of reading and listening and talking at the union but still, he couldn’t know everything. What he’d like to say to him now is that the Hun started it off in the first place and that was bad enough but how they were going about it proved how evil they were and how they had to be stopped. For a start-off there was all that they’d done in Belgium, then there was planting explosives and blowing up men from the ground under their feet and as well as that they were using gas in the trenches. He’d heard lads talking about the first gas attack, how the men were blinded by it and then there was the agony of the three or so days it took the poor bastards to die with gobs of yellow muck pouring out of their mouths and noses from the burning in their lungs. That was from the chlorine gas but then there was the mustard gas as well that covered a man in blisters, oozing pus and big as your hand, and leaving him with his lungs buggered for the rest of his life most likely.
He’d tell Dad, as well, about what the bastards were doing at sea. War’s a man’s game and any decent man could see that hurting and killing innocent women and children is outside the rules but the buggers had sunk the Marquette, which was a hospital ship carrying nurses and doctors to the front. The Lusitania was another one. What kind of mongrels would be so low as to make war on nurses or on a passenger ship? A hundred and sixty-seven were lost on the Marquette, ten of them their own New Zealand girls going to nurse soldiers in France, and twelve hundred were killed when the Lusitania went down. He’d read in the newspaper how a mother was swept off the ship, her baby daughter in her arms, and how she’d held on to her in the ocean until she fell into unconsciousness and her only child was dragged off by the waves.
Well, he was in it, now, heart and soul he was, and there they were, in England, Mother England, being cheered onto the train with the crowd still there waving and hooraying as they began to move out of the station and still more folk out along the way waving their handkerchiefs and their flags. The train heaved and puffed and grunted to a stop at a station signposted Falmouth and there were bands waiting on the platform, the men kitted out in uniforms and striking up as they came off the train.
After all the weeks at sea they weren’t accustomed to the stability of the ground and there were a few jokes going around about having the staggers before even the chance of a drink. They fell into line and were marching again, the bands out in front and at the back of them making a show for the people lining the street. More pretty girls; this England was a good place, by God it was, and Falmouth with the white cottages with high-pitched roofs and the sea below the road and the fishing boats anchored and bobbing on the water was like something out of a picture book.
He saw, as well, the coils of barbed wire the same as had been on the sea edges in Plymouth. That and the armaments and guns. All that had given him a start when he’d first seen them because, while New Zealand was at war, there were no signs of it other than in the newspapers and the posters in the shop windows and men in khaki. Here, the sense of the danger of an invasion was all about them.
The band led them up the steps into one of the grand buildings that surrounded the town square; the Town Hall it was, and then they were in a room, bigger than any he’d ever been in before, with rows of tables all laid out with flowers and white tablecloths stiff as cardboard and polished silverware and china. Well, he’d never seen anything like it. The Mayor of the town, all decked out in his robes and chain, welcomed them and there were pretty girls serving them as much dinner as they could’ve wanted and he’d never been treated to that kind of feast: roasted beef and pork and mutton and roasted spuds along with mashed and greens and carrots, all served up with beer and then pies and puddings and jugs of custard alongside.
Rising above the stage the Mayor had stood on there were flags: the Red Cross for England, the Union Jack and their own New Zealand flag with the four stars. He felt that pride puffing up his belly again. They were wanted here. They were needed to protect England from invaders and to make sure that the mothers and children that were now without their husbands and dads had the chance of getting them back.
Not only was it them from New Zealand that had come to stop the Hun but miners from all over the Commonwealth and he knew they would do whatever they had to because they were fighting on the right side and that made them stronger. You only had to look at what the Belgian army had done to know the truth of that. There they were, only two hundred thousand soldiers against the million Germany sent in; a million soldiers against two hundred thousand and didn’t those German generals think they had it all their own way? They’d be in Paris within thirty-nine days, they had that all planned out, right down to the number of shoelaces needed for the soldiers marching their way there.
What they hadn’t taken into account was the way brave men will fight for what’s right even when their uniforms are in shreds and they have to tie slabs of wood to their feet because their shoes are gone. The Germans aren’t in Paris yet.
He drank the last of his beer and a girl came over right away to fill his glass again. He said, ‘Thank you, love,’ and heard how his voice slurred. She gave him a bit of a look. Dark, she was, her hair black and her eyes almost the same colour; he’d heard it said the Cornwall folk were dark. He watched as she served someone else. Her hair was like Pansy’s, lustrous in its thickness and darkness, though Pansy had the paler skin and blue eyes.
He drank down his beer again and she filled it and he thanked her, this time without adding love to it. She was a nice girl, a good girl, he could tell by the way she was keeping hers
elf back from the lads. Though she was friendly in the way she talked to them and smiled, she was a good lass who kept herself to herself.
Pansy. Ah, Pansy.
He was feeling light-headed, the fires were fair roaring in the grates and the room filled with the music from the bands and all the talking and he’d eaten more tonight than he had in a long while, rich food too, and then there was the beer. He’d be glad to get a bit of fresh air and get his head down at the end of this.
It was fresh air, all right, that they got when they came down the steps and black as pitch into the bargain. The rain was driving down, freezing and soaking them in minutes. In a way he was glad of it against his face because it put the life back into him. Then they were marching again with the bands in front leading the way. They were heading up a rise, a man could hardly see where he was putting his feet in the darkness with the rain pouring down and all of them with bellies filled with their dinners and the beer. He thought anyone looking out would think them a rum old lot, stumbling about, trying to march.
‘Smarten up, lads.’ Now they had the officers after them. You could push a man too far, he thought. Most of the boys were fit for the knackers after the day and night they’d had.
He thought of a song Mother used to sing when he was little and he started whistling, the words of it following the tune in his head. The grand old duke of York. He had ten thousand men. He marched them up to the top of the hill and he marched them down again. The lads around shoved him and laughed but then they picked it up and were singing it.
He thought he’d never forget the way they belted it out with the rain like ice pouring down on them And when they were up they were up. And when they were down they were down. He wanted to laugh out loud, he wanted it always to be like this, marching with his cobbers through the dark.
They were wet as dogs when they got to what was to be their camp. On the Hornwork they were told they were, though nobody knew where that was nor could they make much out of it. They were stood outside an hour or more waiting for their huts to be allocated and then they had to find them in the dark. There were no kits waiting for them there either, no spare clothes for changing into, and he looked around at the lads with water still running down from their sodden caps.
‘Bloody drenched us with their hospitality and then they had to send their rain down to make sure of it,’ Sly said.
Clem stripped off, lay down on the mattress, settled his blanket over his body and despite his soaking and the cold of the hut he slept well enough.
Now he sees a soldier coming up towards him, a Tommy going by the look of him. ‘You’re one of them Kiwis came in last night.’
He’s never been called that before. It could be an insult, these Tommies over here being clever about the colonials, but the way the soldier’s grinning, most likely he’s being friendly.
‘Kiwis. That’s a new one.’
‘Best get used to it.’
‘What do you call that?’ He points upwards.
‘That’s Pendennis Castle.’
They stare up at the mass of stone buildings. Four storeys high, Clem works out, as he counts the open gaps set into the walls, and at the top of all that there’s an open roof with a turret. There’s a tower with an open platform running around it and a ditch running around the whole get-up. It’s a moat, Clem thinks, remembering the stories and poems about knights Mr Kennedy used to read them, and that heavy wooden bridge must be the drawbridge they’d pull up if there was to be a battle. There’s what could have been the guard house and another great building, though there’s nothing much left of it that’s not ruined and crumbling. But he can see the grandness of what it would’ve been with the great doors and the windows built to jut out from the lower floor. ‘How old’s this, then?’ Clem asks.
‘I’m not from around here meself but I’d say give or take four hundred years. See that there royal coat of arms set in over the front? There’s the lion and the shield and the dragon. That’s Henry Tudor’s, the king that had himself six wives.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘I’m from London, matey.’
‘This king. When was he alive?’
‘That’s what I’m saying. Around four hundred years ago, take or add a few.’
‘He lived here?’
‘Blimey, no. This place wouldn’t have been near grand enough for him. It would have been a fort. Old Harry might have come here but he had palaces way flasher than this all over the show.’
Tommy gives him a half-salute and he’s on his way as Clem stares upwards. Almost he can see it: those knights sweeping out of the castle and over the bridge on horses all decorated up with their shields and swords and armour shining. There’d have been some battles here, by God. He remembers bits of the stories Mr Kennedy told them about what happened when a castle was under attack. Those trying to get in would have a crack at using battering rams to beat down the doors while row upon row of men behind them would be sending up streams of arrows. They’d light the arrows, as well, try to burn the place down. And while all that was going on those inside the castle would be sending down their own arrows and pouring boiling oil on anyone trying to get up the walls.
These walls could tell a few yarns, he thinks, as he takes in the thickness of the rough-hewn stone. And look at that now, those little carvings of nasty-looking animals and men set into the walls. What were the battles over? Fights over who owned what or to take down one king and put another in his place. He’d never listened properly to Mr Kennedy; it was hundreds of years ago and on the other side of the world to boot. But standing here made a man think. He hears the bugle call for reveille and walks back to the hut.
For the next weeks, it’s drill and training again. They have this sergeant, O’Brien his name is, all over them and marching them up and down. Doesn’t matter if it’s raining and blowing like a bastard, they’re still out there with O’Brien shouting at them they’re a pack of lazy buggers.
5.30 reveille, dress and tidy up the quarters, 6.30 parade, 8.00 breakfast. Then drill: Ma-ark time, about tu-urn, forward, squad atten-shun, stand at ease, squad will turn to the left in file, left turn. He dreams it, hears the others in the hut shout it out in their sleep, squad will turn to the left in file, left turn squad will turn to the left in file, left turn. Marching, piling arms in order, cleaning kit, shining boots, marching, digging trenches, marching. Digging trenches. Marching.
‘Digging trenches for practice,’ Tam says, ‘I’ve been digging all my bally life. I can dig a hole bigger and better and faster than that bastard could any day of the week. What about letting us over there where we can dig a hole for a purpose?’
There’s a difference between Auckland and here, though, because they’re also flat out in the dirt shooting at targets. That and the training in bayonet combat. Long thrust. Short thrust. Parry.
Forward. Forward, man. Right foot forward. For Christ’s sake, right I said. Thrust. Jesus, is it a pack of girls I’m training here? Thrust, dammit. Well, Fritz has had his bayonets in and out and has hacked off your heads into the bargain while you ladies’ve been buggering about.
You’re dead, Bright.
Bright, you’re dead.
He gets better at it. But every time he plunges the end of the rifle — razor-sharp it is, you have to watch your hands near it, by God, you do — into the stuffed bags he wonders if he could have a man’s face and his eyes in front of him and shove that thing into his belly and twist it and tear it out again. He looks at his cobbers and wonders if they’re thinking the same. They’ve been told that a good soldier doesn’t think of the enemy as men the same as them, but rather thinks of killing as the job that has to be done. But another man’s face near to yours, the look in his eyes, fear perhaps or pleading to be let to live. He doesn’t know if he’d have the stomach for it.
In the end, they’re lined up with General Roper hims
elf in front of them along with other bigwigs. They watch them going through their hoops and there’s a bit of flag-raising and bugles sounding out, then General Roper pronounces them fit for service. Before they can leave there’s all the horses and wagons and motorcycles and lorries and the mining equipment that has to go along with them to be seen to. They’re given short leave so they can see a bit of England before they go; after that they’ll be ready to leave for France.
25
Eight hours digging solid chalk and by the end of a shift you’re coated in the dust that comes from it; it’s in your mouth and your hair, up your nose and clogging your ears. There’s the trek back through the trenches and you’re up to your knees in mud more often than not. Though it’s only a couple of miles to the billet, it takes an hour to walk it through the tunnels that spread and connect then spread out again.
You look around at your cobbers coming in and they look a sight and you know you look the same, coated in dust with the mud sticking to your boots and your pants. Sometimes you’ve been laying explosives and there’s the ammonal staining your hands yellow. Into the bargain you stink; mud and rot and death have a way of sticking to a man.
Well then, after you come in you get the rum ration you’ve been looking forward to along with your dinner and you have a few smokes then you’re that tired you sleep until the next shift. There’s the walk back again and the digging. Only difference between one day and the next is weather and the seasons. The winter freezes the balls off you and turns everything into mud. Summer’s hot as buggery so the trenches are dry but the stink and the flies are worse.
The job to be done is dig out new galleries, either that or widen the ones made by others before them. They’ve already made their own mark in the building of them; so far as they’re concerned, there’s the Royal Engineer way of building the tunnels and there’s the right way. For one thing their lads need more room than the 4’6” x 3” it says in the manuals to swing a pick so they’ve made them wider and they’ve changed the way the timbering’s done so that it’s stronger and safer and faster to build. To hell with the regulations — it’s them that’s down there.
Through the Lonesome Dark Page 20
