The Horizon (1993)

by Reeman, Douglas

  He knew Wyke was beside him with his own glasses, and heard him gasp as he saw the scattered remains of corpses: in the wire, beyond it, everywhere. Some were so broken and torn or decaying that only their rusting helmets gave any clue to nationality.

  Wyke was recalling what the Rifle Brigade lieutenant had told him when he had asked him about the stench.

  He had replied casually, perhaps indifferently, ‘Corpses, old chap. We bury our dead as best we can without getting chopped in the process – then bang, at the next bombardment they come flying back into the trench. Bits of them, anyway.’

  Jonathan had overheard the conversation. The lieutenant was not callous, not brutal; he was merely trying to retain his sanity.

  He had observed the same black humour at work even in the comparative safety of the communication trench, which was so high and so narrow that it would bury men alive if it collapsed under shellfire. He had seen an arm protruding from the top of the trench, with a torn khaki sleeve and a clenched fist, devoid of flesh, raised against the sky like a last rebuke. Some sapper or signals unit had run a telephone wire through the ragged fingers as a sort of macabre defiance, but mainly to disquiet newly joined men who had to run their own fingers along this line every night to ensure there were no faults. As Payne had been heard to remark, ‘Right lot of little comedians round here, and no mistake!’

  The enemy front line swung away to the right with the British trenches attempting to follow it. Once there had been grass here. Jonathan stared at the charred tree stumps and thought of the copse at Hawks Hill. How many had fallen in this one sector? How many would die tomorrow?

  Somewhere, a machine-gun opened fire and the first sunlight glinted on something beyond the ridge. Like a tiny insect, flying in tight turns to avoid drifting balls of smoke, dirty stains against what would be a clear summer morning.

  He heard the impartial tap-tap-tap of the plane’s machine-gun, although what it was shooting at was impossible to judge. They had seen two of them on the march here. The war’s new dimension: a private aerial world for brave and reckless young men who had been schoolboys not so long ago. One had drifted away in flames and crashed in a field. The other had flown slowly away, like someone bored and cheated by the ease of the kill.

  Ross said quietly, ‘In your view, Colonel, do you think it can be done?’

  Jonathan let his binoculars drop across his respirator haversack and tried not to think of the Australian colonel, Ede, who had been blinded.

  ‘It can be done, sir, now that we know about the mines.’

  The brigadier waited for some further comment, and then snapped, ‘But?’

  ‘I know this is a different sort of war, sir, but at Gallipoli the major fault was the failure to exploit any small gain or success we had. The enemy was always given too much time to prepare, or to hit back.’

  ‘That kind of folly is not unknown on the Western Front! But this time there is an impressive plan to make certain we maintain the impetus. If we fail before the weather changes . . .’ He did not need to elaborate. He said sharply, ‘What do people call you?’

  ‘Well, Jonathan, or Jono, sir.’ It was startling how this cold-eyed man could change tack.

  ‘Jono it is then. Unlike some, I need to know my officers. And it seems you’ll be just that, until your Major-General Loftus can bring his ponderous division into play.’ He sounded pleased about something. ‘Now I’m off to breakfast.’ The air cringed to the first artillery strike of the day. Further up the line the German guns had reawakened too, and the sky was soon hazy with drifting smoke.

  Ross began to descend the crude ladder. ‘Glad you met someone you knew.’ He turned and looked up at him. ‘I fear the Anzacs may get the worst of it tomorrow.’

  Major Vaughan, who had also accompanied Jonathan to the dugout, said in a whisper, ‘Do you really think they can do it, Colonel?’

  Jonathan waited for the next salvo to pass overhead, with a sound like a giant tearing up canvas. Then the fall of shot: columns of smoke far away, earth and debris erupting high into the air. There were men under that bombardment.

  Eventually he answered, ‘I think they might, Ralph.’ He looked at Vaughan’s battered face. ‘But what then? You noticed the brigadier made no mention of the French.’

  ‘Well, yes. I thought it a bit odd.’

  ‘It means the French have told Haig that it’s all his show. We’re on our own.’

  A shell burst directly over the line and shrapnel ripped into the command post and along the support trench. The Germans might be seeking the reserves. As the echo of the explosion died away Jonathan heard someone screaming inhumanly, like some tortured creature.

  ‘Stretcher-bearer!’ But the scream had stopped.

  He saw concern in Vaughan’s eyes and smiled. ‘But it’s not the first time, is it?’

  He liked Vaughan, as much as he allowed himself to like anyone amid the hazards of war, but it was pathetic to see how he brightened up at a few cheap words of optimism.

  He saw Harry Payne. ‘Can you rustle up some breakfast, d’you think?’

  Payne almost winked. ‘Got some eggs, sir.’

  Around them the land was in torment, exploding under towering columns of smoke. Eggs? But he knew better than to ask.

  ‘I think we’d better go back,’ he said. ‘Getting noisy around here.’

  He walked into the communication trench and stared up at its high side, black against the sky. The horizon.

  Tomorrow, then.

  Captain Christopher Wyke groped his way to the forward command position and found Lieutenant-Colonel Blackwood alone in the observation post. The whole front seemed unusually quiet, unnerving. As if the enemy out there in the damp smelly darkness knew what was planned and was merely waiting to open fire. What if the mines which were supposed to herald the full attack failed to detonate; or some German sapper had rendered all or some of them safe? He said quietly, ‘Battalion at stand-to, sir. Ready to move forward if needed.’

  Jonathan had his pipe in his teeth but it was not lit. As at Gallipoli, it was always a comfort when he got the chance to smoke it. God knew they were rare enough.

  ‘Thanks, Christopher. Tea?’

  Wyke realised that Payne was also here, covering his cigarette with the palm of his hand. ‘No, thank you, sir.’

  ‘I think you should. It’s one of Payne’s specials.’

  Wyke took the mug from the shadows and sipped it. Special was right. It must be one-third rum.

  ‘Won’t be long now.’ Jonathan was using his binoculars, but it was like staring into nothing. That would soon change. All along the six-mile front men were crouching low beneath the firesteps. If the mines worked as planned, there was a chance that any soldier could be injured by flying rocks and all the other debris which must litter no man’s land from end to end.

  He had the gradient, the distances and the obstacles on this particular sector fixed in his mind like a map. Gallipoli had taught him that, and far more than he would have thought possible.

  ‘Are the lads all right?’

  Wyke had to drag his mind back to reality. ‘Pretty good, sir. Bit restless, not much else.’ He thought of the machine-gunner Bert Langmaid; he had been the only one not wearing his steel helmet. Instead he wore his old Broderick cap on the back of his head, more like a Jack than a Royal Marine. But nobody had bothered to mention it, and that would probably irritate that great lump of a man more than a proper dressing-down. He recalled Maxted with his H.Q. platoon, slumped against the side of the trench smoking quickly in sharp, nervous drags. They had not spoken. It was not the time.

  Sergeant-Major McCann had been smoking his pipe and talking very quietly with the new colour-sergeant, Bill Seagrove. Wyke had come to know the sound of so many voices, even in the dark like this. Dialects from all over the country, with many young faces which would never have been seen in the Corps but for the war. Errand boys and waiters, farm hands and bus conductors whose jobs were now in the charge
of women and girls.

  Eventually, Wyke asked what was uppermost in his thoughts. ‘Do you think the mines will work?’

  Payne groped over to him with his jug and answered for them all.

  ‘Put the kibosh on this little lot if they don’t!’

  Jonathan tried to see his watch but it was a waste of effort. It would be ages yet before the artillery opened fire. At least it would seem that long. So many moving along those foul communication trenches: old sweats and boys, the hard cases like Langmaid and McCann shoulder to shoulder with the others who would crack if things went against them. An army made on the barracks square and fashioned into fighting men in the dirt and lice of Flanders.

  Jonathan said, ‘If nothing happens . . .’ It was as if he were thinking aloud. ‘I still believe the attack will go on.’ After all, what else could they do? He recalled the Australian Major Duffy when they had first met, in another dugout at Anzac Cove. I’m just a soldier, but I tell you now, it can’t be done. Chilling words, but all too true.

  Was this to be another heroic failure? He gripped his pipe so hard with his teeth that it was a marvel he did not snap it.

  Wyke seemed to need to talk as the minutes ticked past. Somewhere far behind this position the gunners would be consulting their maps again, fuses to be checked, each shell to be treated as something holy as it was thrust home into every eager breech.

  He asked, ‘Will you stay on in the Corps after the war, Colonel?’

  Jonathan saw something in the darkness. A careless match, or somebody trying to look at his watch. But not in the front line. It was as if every man there was either asleep or dead. Soon he would see the crashed aeroplane again, the tangled wire. He considered Wyke’s question, surprised that he had never doubted it before. Even in the presence of death no such idea had occurred to him. Now it did, and Wyke had innocently laid it bare without knowing what he had done.

  He tried to make light of it. ‘I don’t know. I shall be so used to power by then, maybe I won’t want to drop the rank and its privileges. I might try something else.’

  Wyke sounded surprised. ‘Even if I drop to lieutenant, I wouldn’t want to quit the Corps. My father says . . .’

  Jonathan smiled. Yes, the major-general wouldn’t want the boat rocked. Like his own father, and all the others before him. He pictured Hawks Hill as he had last seen it. Not the poor shambling officers, or the ambulances and the tired-looking nurses, but the other part of it. That sea of daffodils, the unchanged hedges and birdsong. A sense of continuity if you had the wit enough to see and use it.

  He thought of her hand on his arm, her skin already tanned when they held one another so briefly at Salisbury. She was a local girl. She would not want the upset and separations of service life, or the pressure of engagements which were part of an officer’s progress.

  He shook himself, angry at the futility and the utter hopelessness of it.

  ‘Bit lighter, I think, sir.’ Payne was patting his pockets, checking his weapons and equipment.

  Jonathan levelled his glasses once more. Again, it was like a film developing: a creeping monochrome of various depths and shades. First the Messines Ridge, as if that was where the world ended. Then the darker brush-strokes: burned trees and the empty spaces where the shell craters would eventually reveal themselves. As if the film had been spoiled or badly exposed, or the image were too terrible to focus fully upon.

  Flash . . . flash. The guns began to fire, their wrath making his ears cringe as they tore over the trenches. Sharp, vivid explosions lit up the enemy lines and the upended aeroplane. Somewhere a machine-gun and then others began their harsh rattle, as they probed for raiding parties or a full-scale attack.

  Jonathan said, ‘Test the line to Major Vaughan, Christopher. Just in case!’ There was a sharpness to his voice, and he could feel his senses heightening with the bursting shells and the raking fire of automatic weapons.

  ‘Answering, Colonel!’

  Jonathan turned to speak to him and then saw the whole post laid bare with yellow fire as the first of the massive mines exploded. The roar of the next mine robbed him of any thought but the total destruction it would bring to the enemy’s front line. The artillery had opened the range to concentrate on the German support lines even as more mines ripped away the dawn, the flames revealing the tons of falling earth and rocks, burying hundreds in tombs that had once provided confidence and shelter against the British guns.

  He thought of the R.E. major who was no doubt watching his handiwork. In mufti he would look more like a prosperous farmer than an explosives expert.

  Payne murmured, ‘God Almighty, something worked for once.’

  Jonathan glanced at the paling sky. No sun today, it was far too cloudy. It would be wrong to have sunshine. That belonged elsewhere, away from fear; away from death.

  He said, ‘Tell Major Vaughan to be ready to move to the first support line. Any minute, I shouldn’t wonder!’

  Two more huge mines hurled tons of earth into the air. One appeared to explode immediately behind their front line. The R.E.’s must have been working like moles to get so close, for both sides maintained listening posts for something like this. Some puny sunlight broke through the motionless clouds, but no man’s land remained in smoking shadows, as if the earth itself was ablaze.

  There was a momentary lull, and above the far-off artillery fire he heard the sudden shrill of whistles. Six miles of whistles, the scene the same in every trench. He could see it clearly enough: he had been there. The soldiers dragging themselves up from the firesteps and onto the parapet, staggering like old men under their weight of gear and weapons, led and urged on by their officers. A whole division in this sector alone. Very faintly, before the machine-guns took up the challenge, he heard them cheering, wildly, hopelessly, as the well-sited guns found the prongs of the attack and cut into it like a steel wire.

  ‘Shall I tell the major, sir?’ Wyke sounded breathless, as if he had been running instead of crouching over the field telephone in its webbing case.

  ‘Not yet.’ He lifted his glasses and tried not to swallow as a mass of running infantry was caught in cross-fire from below the ridge. Men were falling like slaughtered animals; others pressing on from behind seemed unable to climb over the piles of dead and wounded alike, and they too were seen to fall. A handful of men, almost hidden in smoke, had somehow got through. Jonathan saw their arms jerk like puppets and then they threw themselves down by some tangled wire as their grenades exploded. One of the machine-guns had been knocked out, and like a surging wave another mass of infantry charged through the gap. He was losing the picture as the lines of khaki figures vanished into the smoke, but not before he had seen many others fall, and the bayonets cut down any foolish enough to plead for mercy or surrender.

  More whistles, and the artillery was firing again to cover the leading infantry when they reached the breached line. Then more grenades, the handy little Mills bombs that could wipe out anyone left alive in a ruined trench, or be tossed into smoking dugouts to silence any survivor.

  The next line of men was climbing onto the parapet, and whistles from the Anzac sector sent more reinforcements into the attack.

  Jonathan said evenly, ‘Tell him now, Christopher. Get them moving.’ He had to repeat it for Wyke to hear above the clamour of weapons and grenades. Amidst the carnage and thickening smoke he saw some of the wounded trying to crawl to safety. One, all alone, was on his hands and knees creeping in a circle, unable to see.

  Jonathan could hear Wyke’s voice on his handset, cracking with excitement and perhaps relief.

  ‘Yes, sir! That’s right, sir! They’re through! The enemy’s falling back!’

  Patches of red and white flitted through the corpses and destruction: medical corps stretcher-bearers with their familiar armbands. The crawling man tried to turn round as the stretcher-bearers lurched and ducked towards him. Jonathan made himself watch, as he had at the peninsula; he must forget nothing. The man had no face.r />
  Tap-tap-tap. Such an inoffensive sound above the smoke, beyond the reach of their desperate, struggling figures. Two young men in a private dog-fight. What could they know of this horror?

  ‘Come on there! Tell off by platoons! Move yer bloody selves!’ Sergeant-Major McCann, concerned as always that his marines would not let him down in the eyes of mere soldiers.

  They were slowing down in the cratered waste of no man’s land. Sappers and machine-guns were moving up to the captured trench before the enemy counter-attacked. It would be a long day. Then night would hide it all again, when only the teeming horde of rats would appear to profit from it.

  Major Vaughan clumped into the observation post, sweating fiercely. ‘All in position, Colonel.’ He banged his hands together as if it were cold. ‘What a show, eh?’

  ‘We should be quiet for a bit, Ralph.’ He felt drained, as if he had been out there where so many had fallen. ‘The ridge should hold off an attack on this sector.’

  He heard somebody screaming. A lost soul amongst the dead, waiting for help, for anyone who might care.

  He took a mug from Payne, unaware of his troubled expression. He could smell the rum without effort, and knew that he must ensure that his men had their ration a little earlier than usual. But just for the moment he needed solitude, if only to convey that he, at least, did care.

  At the end of that June day Jonathan received his orders from Division. The Fifty-First would remain in reserve.

  The attack had been a complete success, and the advance along the whole front had been at least two miles. For that modest accomplishment they had paid the price of twenty-five thousand lives.

  Fifteen

  The two girls sat on the grass in the walled garden and admired the baskets of strawberries they had picked throughout the afternoon. Alexandra Pitcairn swept her chestnut hair from her face and plucked at her blouse. ‘We’ve done well. I’ll take some up to the hospital later on.’

  Her companion, Kitty Booth, was dark and vivacious, like a fairy-tale gipsy girl. She had her skirt pulled up over her knees and said, ‘What wouldn’t I give to be able to strip off everything and run naked into the sea!’