Jonathan considered the state of the immediate front: a place so full of craters and mud that even if they reached the enemy’s front line troops would be further hampered by the havoc caused originally by their own artillery.
He climbed down into the trench. ‘We’ll need a wiring party tonight, Ralph.’ He saw Wyke watching them and thought suddenly of Livesay as Vaughan asked, ‘Volunteers, sir?’
Perhaps Vaughan and Livesay had learned their trade together.
He shook his head. ‘One section should be enough. The companies in the line will need to rest. Better select men from our H.Q. platoon. Maxted will be the best guide.’ He touched the major’s wet sleeve. ‘They’ll only get jittery if they think it’s so important that it needs the second-in-command to organise it.’ He realised suddenly that Vaughan had been thinking just that, and that he might be asked to go out there with them.
At least it should be a lot safer than at Gallipoli. There, the ground had been so hard on their front that it had been impossible to move without making a noise.
All the same, most of these men were untested by close combat, and it was no joke to stand out in no man’s land and be prepared to remain stock-still if an enemy flare or starshell burst overhead.
Vaughan was saying, ‘There’ll have to be an officer, sir.’
‘Ask Maxted. They’re his people.’
Machine-guns chattered into action from below the ridge. The combination of mist and smoke concealed even the flashes. But the bullets were here right enough, cracking into stones and spurting mud into the trench. As the invisible guns traversed on their fixed arcs, the bullets hummed so closely overhead that it seemed the gunners could see their target. The marines on the firestep pressed themselves into the earth, fingers gripping their rifles, their soaking, muddy figures becoming a part of the slime and filth of battle.
Soon afterwards German heavy artillery opened up, hurling shells in high trajectory to fall with enormous vibrations, which were more a sensation than sound.
Maxted appeared. ‘From Brigade, sir!’ He stared at the collapsed trench, the protruding boot. ‘The enemy’s bombarding the support lines. The reserve troops are getting the worst of it, and a supply column too!’
So the brigadier had already guessed. A mostly untested battalion in the line, the supply and reserve infantry bogged down in a heavy bombardment. It meant only one thing: the enemy would attack.
Jonathan said, ‘Warn all positions. Machine-guns under cover until the last moment. Ralph, have more ammunition brought up.’ He saw each word striking home like a fist.
‘Now, sir?’
Jonathan had already turned away. ‘We’ll need grenades.’ He could feel his words going along the line of men nearest to him. He did not need to see their faces.
Old Blackie says the bastards are coming! We’ll kick their arses for them!
The new men fiddled with their clips of bullets; the older hands felt for their vicious trench knives or handmade cudgels. A few had even ground their entrenching tools so that they were razor-sharp and lethal.
Jonathan saw Harry Payne frowning as he checked his rifle and opened one of his pouches, remembering how Payne had broken all the rules and gone out into no man’s land at the Dardanelles, just for his sake. He could feel the pressure of the long Turkish knife right now in his boot. Very deliberately he took out his pipe and gripped it in his teeth. It was too damp to fill and light even if he had wanted to. It was only an act. For all of them.
‘How’ll they come, Sarge?’ Nervous, unsure.
Then Sergeant Timbrell’s harsh Cockney voice. ‘Well, they’re bleedin’ Germans, ain’t they? They’re bound to ’ave a bloody brass band leadin’ them across!’
Jonathan climbed onto the firestep again. The enemy guns were firing higher now. Another bluff, to convince them it was too dangerous to show their faces over the parapet. He swallowed hard to moisten his mouth. ‘Pass the word, Sergeant-Major. Fix bayonets!’
He wiped his binoculars with an already damp piece of cotton four-by-two. They kept misting up in this wet, lifeless air.
Payne murmured, ‘You watch yourself, Colonel.’
Jonathan looked down at him and smiled. ‘You too.’
Then he was pressed against the same observation hole, cursing the mist and trying to recover his bearings.
He saw the sloping ground and dead trees, but there was a difference. Not mist this time. Men. Hundreds of them, coming out of the wire, hunched and moving in long crouching lines.
He shouted to Vaughan, ‘Stand-to!’ He blew sharply on his whistle and heard it repeated along the twisting trench. ‘Here they come!’
He found that he had drawn his revolver. There was not much point, if they got near enough to lob their grenades; it was only an automatic reaction. A machine-gun was firing from the left front, bullets scything over the parapet like maddened hornets.
The enemy soldiers were loping forward, bayonets quite grey in this strange light. He even found time to notice that they were not burdened by unnecessary kit, so confident were they that they would overwhelm this trench or live long enough to retire to their own lines.
He watched them weaving about, some falling headlong as if hit by soundless bullets. But it was the other enemy, mud, which had dragged them down. It might warn his own men what to expect. He saw the light machine-guns with their wheel-shaped magazines wavering slightly while the marines tested the range and waited for the order. The bigger machine-guns he could not see from this command position, but he guessed that Bert Langmaid and his mates were also waiting with cold anticipation.
The German infantry were shouting to one another, and he saw a great mass of them swerve towards the gap in the English wire. Men caught mid-way through the wire were easy targets as the dangling, scarecrow figures there had already demonstrated.
Jonathan moistened his whistle with his lips but they were like dust. On either side he saw the bayoneted rifles waver and guessed what some of his young marines were thinking. A few shots banged out; some of the Germans were firing from the hip even as they stumbled over the pitted ground, but nobody moved.
Seventy-five yards, fifty yards. Dear God, let it work!
The whistle’s blast brought instant response as rifles and light machine-guns ripped into the oncoming infantry, so that those half-way through the gap in the wire slowed down and peered round for alternatives. From either flank the heavy machine-guns opened fire with deadly effect. The gaps were filled with falling men, and heaving piles of bodies as others trampled them down in an effort to escape the well-sited guns. One running soldier paused and raised his arm, and prepared to hurl a grenade at the marines’ nearest length of trench. Then he seemed to pivot round before dropping to his knees in the mud, his mouth making a black, terrified hole in his face just seconds before his grenade exploded beside him. It cut down a handful of men, and their cries were lost in the insane clamour of weapons.
Two more grenades reached the parapet and Jonathan heard shots and then weak screams as they exploded, mercifully outside the trench.
‘Cease firing!’ Jonathan thrust his revolver back into its holster as like a tide broken on the beach the enemy began to recede. There was firing here and there, but they were eager to reach safety beyond the wire, so that their own line could rake the British defence and force their heads down.
He heard men gasping for air as they wedged fresh clips into their rifles, or slammed magazines and belts of ammunition into the machine-guns.
Vaughan said harshly, ‘Determined bastards!’ He too was breathing fast and heavily. ‘The gaps in our wire were some help after all!’
‘Only in daylight, Ralph.’ He glanced round as Wyke called, ‘Four casualties, sir. One of them dead, Private Ellerman, and another going fast!’
‘See what you can do for them. But there’s bound to be artillery brought into it, so the wounded will have to wait until darkness before we send them back.’ He knew it sounded hard, callous to
some of the new men, but all he must think of was what they had just done. They had repulsed a German attack, probably of company strength, with more waiting in reserve in case they had managed to bomb the front-line trench.
The rain had begun again and he heard Harry Payne murmur, ‘Oh, sod it!’ Jonathan watched two men carrying a stretcher past the dugout, blood-soaked canvas draped over it. They saw McCann and one asked, ‘Where do we put ’im, Sar’ Major?’
McCann retorted brutally, ‘Tip ’im over the back. No time for a state funeral just now!’
Jonathan knew what those close enough to hear would think, the youngsters anyway. McCann was good, damned good, but here, as on any barracks square, the sergeant-major was rarely seen as a friend.
Another bombardment made the yellow water in the puddles and shell holes quiver as if it was being boiled from below. More guns joined in from either side. The Germans were trying to find the supply column again and maybe the promised reserves. The British gunners were trying to crush any more attacks before they could begin.
Hot soup was coming from somewhere, hunks of half-stale bread packed with bully-beef and mustard. The marines’ jaws worked on it busily, their tired eyes and stubbled chins so much at odds with their habitual smartness, something highly prized in the Corps.
The corpse of Private Ellerman sprawled over the rear of the trench, his clothing in bloody tatters where the grenade had riddled him with splinters, with all the others who had died here over the days, the weeks and the months. A man or a good mate to a thing, and now just another liability to be endured.
Two more marines were to fall, but the constant bombardment seemed to have beaten the men of both front lines into a kind of dulled torpor. The two marines had been hit by well-aimed solitary shots. A sniper somewhere, watching for a careless moment, a face or shoulder showing just seconds above the parapet, the sandbags and makeshift defences they had built from fallen trees and piles of what had once been the bricks of a small village here.
Jonathan ordered his men to stand down, and the sentries to be careful of their own safety.
He sat in the command dugout with the map outspread on an old packing-case, and wondered when the enemy would strike next, and where. Vaughan was struggling with a tough hunk of bread, and he was sharing a mug of tea and rum with Lieutenant Maxted. Even down here they could hear the screams and anguished moans from the wire, where so many of the German infantry had been abandoned. There was nothing anyone could do for them, even if somebody was crazy enough to crawl out and try to help. It was more than likely that he would soon become one of the dead.
Sergeant Timbrell ducked through the rough curtain and handed Maxted a small bag.
Maxted looked at him without understanding and the sergeant said dully, ‘Personal belongings and identity tags, sir. An’ a few francs.’
Vaughan said, ‘Put them in the book. There may be time to send letters to . . .’ He did not go on.
Timbrell said, ‘I’ve detailed the section to draw their gear at sunset, sir.’ He had to repeat it before Maxted looked up at him again.
‘Oh, good. Thanks.’
Jonathan said, ‘Are you in charge tonight, Sergeant?’
He replied, ‘Yessir. I done it before. We won’t let you down – they’re all good marines.’
Jonathan indicated the earthenware jug. ‘Have a tot.’ He watched the foxy-faced sergeant as he poured a full measure of rum into an unwashed cup. Anything was better than just sitting, listening to the distant roar of guns. Some were probably Captain Alton’s great howitzers, hurling their challenge with all the others. How could men stand it? How many had sat here or in miserable holes like it and listened to the relentless thunder, always expecting a box barrage to move over and then fix upon their particular part of the defence line? At the other end of the trench and behind them in the next support line, men were already unable to lie down except on the firestep. Water was knee-deep in places, and the rain showed no sign of stopping.
If only there was somewhere he could find solitude, even for a few minutes, so that he could read a few lines of her letters.
Maxted said sharply, ‘I’d like to take charge tonight, sir.’ He stared at the sergeant. ‘I don’t see why you should take all the risks!’
Jonathan put the letters to the back of his mind. ‘I thought you already had an officer?’
Timbrell looked down at the jug. ‘Mister Rooke, sir.’ He made another effort. ‘I’spect ’e’ll be up to it, sir.’
Jonathan watched them gravely. Rooke would not be missed was closer to the truth.
Like an intrusion they heard Rooke’s petulant voice as he snapped, ‘I don’t care what you’ve done, Private Vickers! Just follow my example and do as you’re told!’
Timbrell scowled and turned to leave but Maxted said evenly, ‘Have your rum, Sergeant, if the Colonel doesn’t object.’
Outside in the steady downpour Maxted found the subaltern, hands on his hips, glaring at the marine in question.
‘Over here,’ he said. The pain was devouring him, and he knew why he had just volunteered to take charge of the wiring party. It had been wrong; he knew that. Others would suffer because of it.
‘Sir?’ Rooke squelched across the mud and sagging duckboards. ‘Is everything all right?’
Maxted found that he hated this pompous, self-satisfied little prig who would one day be a general. Upbringing and influence. Unbeatable. He asked quietly, ‘Must you always try to make the men look like peasants? Vickers is a good man. Brave too.’
Rooke gave a small smile. His complaint to the adjutant had obviously worked. Maxted was almost subdued.
‘There are standards, sir.’
Maxted stared up at the sky, the rain cleansing his desperation and his anger. ‘Remember what I told you. Or you might get yourself shot in the back!’
Rooke gaped at him. It was not what he had expected. ‘Shoot me?’ He sounded outraged. ‘An officer?’
Maxted gave him a contemptuous glance. ‘In their place, I think I would!’ He lowered himself into the dugout and sat down, rain making puddles around his boots.
Vaughan said uneasily, ‘Well, I suppose he’s got to learn sometime.’
Sergeant Timbrell picked up his rifle and gave his lieutenant a quick smile. ‘Thanks, sir.’
Maxted stared emptily at the curtain after Timbrell had departed. Thanks. So simply said. And for what? For allowing them all to be killed, to die decently like the corpses they had tipped over the parapet?
While I pay a much higher price even than death . . .
Sergeant Ned Timbrell climbed carefully up and onto the parapet, every sense and nerve straining to detect danger. It was like being suddenly naked, alone in this terrible place, without cover and completely vulnerable. He could feel the rest of the wiring party moving to the parapet, doubtless ready to drop out of sight if he were suddenly shot down by a sniper. He could still taste the rum on his tongue and wondered if it might be his last. He made himself stand quite still, his ears and mind reaching out like signals from a wireless set.
It might conceal their movements and hide any unexpected sounds, but the unending chorus of groans and pitiful whimpering from the German wounded and dying grated on his nerves. They seemed not only men who had fallen in the attack through the wire but all those others who lay dead in the mud, becoming a part of the ground they had once fought over.
Timbrell pushed the mysterious caller at the base camp from his mind. It could not matter now. One lapse and they might all be lying with the rest in this haunted place.
He bent over. ‘Ready!’ He did not call him sir, even though he guessed that the subaltern was close by in the darkness. Sod him, he thought.
It was strange about Maxted. Always a cool one under fire, and ready to help anyone who needed it. He was growing more moody and intolerant by the hour and Timbrell guessed that the adjutant had noticed it as well. He said hoarsely, ‘Up you get, you layabouts!’
They
climbed out of the trench where their comrades were already in position, ready to cover their return if the worst happened. Timbrell picked out each man, everyone a black shadow; but to him they could have been lit by torches.
Corporal Geach was almost the last. ‘Hey-oop, Sarge! The rain’s stopped!’ Then finally came the second lieutenant, peering round like a terrier after a rat. If he were a dog there would be plenty of things to hunt out here, Timbrell thought.
‘Sir?’
Rooke touched his mouth with his hand. ‘You just carry on, Sergeant.’
Timbrell drew a deep breath. What they all say.
They gathered around him so that he could speak in a whisper.
‘We go through the wire at the two main gaps. We’ll withdraw after we’ve done the wirin’. Nothin’ fancy. Just like I told you. Corporal Geach and I will mark the gaps with white tape. Don’t want to lose any of you, eh?’ Nobody even grinned.
They began to move away from the trench. Only three of them were armed with their rifles, with every loose piece of gear on the weapons from piling-swivel to webbing sling laced and taped tightly into place. There was less chance of them making a noise with these precautions. The drums of barbed wire were carried by two pairs of men, with a stout spar through the middle and leather gloves to offer some protection.
As they crept and slithered closer to the wire the sounds of men in agony became louder and more insistent. It was unnerving. From time to time there was a shrill cry as one of the marines trod on what he had thought to be a corpse. Once a German soldier reared up on his buttocks, hands clawing at their clothing as they stumbled past.
Timbrell thought savagely, it could be us. Could be us!
A corpse pirouetted like a ragged puppet as if to watch them pass. He must have been there since the wire was originally laid out. Not enough flesh or bones left to hold the thing in position.
The Horizon (1993) Page 30
