The Horizon (1993)

by Reeman, Douglas

  The Belgian coast, the original goal, had been just over thirty miles away when they had started. The whole advance had probably captured three miles of that, and nobody really believed any more that the plan was going to work. He listened to the distant crump crump crump of an anti-aircraft battery. Probably trying to shoot down a German reconnaissance aeroplane, not that there was much left to see or photograph from the air. The front line was now some four miles from Passchendaele where the Canadians were fighting to hold what they had gained, as were the Australians at Polygon Wood.

  The Fifty-First battalion had taken part in the last advance at Broodseinde. At the beginning they had been held in reserve, then later they had been ordered to make a diversionary attack to divide the enemy’s defences. It had been unfortunate that the weight of the enemy’s immediate counter-attack had fallen on Captain Conway’s company of raw recruits.

  There had been no real line left to defend, and attacker and defender had fought hand to hand, with knife, bayonet and grenade, often disappearing completely in shell holes brimmed with rain-water. By the time reinforcements had struggled up from the reserve trenches more than two hundred marines, including Captain Conway, had fallen.

  Place-names meant nothing any more, and the maps with their ranges and plotted fortifications could have been from another war entirely. Jonathan had become very aware of the mood of his men. There was no longer much sign of fear, except during one gas attack, but that had changed to insane cheering when the wind, perverse as ever, had veered to drive the deadly clouds back over their attackers.

  He sensed the closeness as well as the bitterness, as each day was followed by another. They no longer spoke of the next leave, and time had shrunk to tomorrow and no further. Everything was shared, even the pathetic possessions of someone who had just been killed. In other times, impossible to believe now, they would have saved them or sent them home to the family of the deceased. Now when a man’s body was disposed of, his only memory became a bar of chocolate, a few cigarettes, and maybe a watch.

  The Germans still held the higher ground, and had taken to using carefully-timed shells that exploded directly above a trench or a wiring party out in the open. When that happened there was no body to bury, no belongings to pass around. It was oblivion.

  Sometimes the mail got through; sometimes it did not. But Alexandra’s photograph with the lock of hair arrived in perfect condition. Jonathan had seen men break down, collapse completely merely from looking too long at such photographs, reminders of a world most of them now believed was gone forever.

  In the reserve trenches there were still a few dugouts where men could hide, eat and sleep. In one of them Jonathan had held that particular letter to a candle while Vaughan and Wyke had leaned against one another, their greatcoats stiff with clay, their gloved hands thrust into their pockets in an attempt to find warmth.

  My darling Jonathan . . . At Hawks Hill it is raining now. When that happens I pray for you. May God keep you safe . . . I feel so selfish, for I want you all to myself. To offer myself to you and none other, to have you take me as your need demands. For that is how I want it to be, forever . . .

  Jonathan glanced around for his trench coat. It was still raining. He recalled exactly when the first heavy drops had fallen on his helmet, and then on his shoulders. They should have known then that there was no more hope. He stood up and watched Harry Payne cleaning his razor and shaving mug as if he were in the barracks, or on the China Station. Perhaps that was what made the marines different from the others. Routine, the comradeship born in cramped ships’ messdecks; whatever it was, it was right here in bloody Flanders.

  He and Wyke had seen some infantry returning from their rest periods behind the lines: they seemed to have no such talisman. Faces like masks, eyes sunken with fear, they had gone marching up the tracks, the duckboards and finally in the mud. Then they were nothing, merely a part of the whole, like the blackened trees and the abandoned, flooded trenches.

  Wyke said suddenly, ‘I think Lieutenant Maxted is ill, sir. I offered to send him back to the dressing station but . . .’

  Jonathan looked at him. ‘Well, it’s too late now. Three days’ rest.’ He waved one hand around the filthy, dripping dugout, ‘In these palatial quarters. So we’ll be on the move fairly soon.’ There was an edge to his voice. ‘I need every available officer – right?’

  Wyke nodded. ‘Right.’

  Harry Payne waited to catch him by the anti-gas curtain. ‘No Scotch left, Colonel.’ He sounded as if he had been betrayed. ‘Managed to get some Froggie cognac from the Sussex Rifles.’

  Jonathan grabbed his wet sleeve. ‘You are a bloody marvel.’ He turned up his collar and listened to the rain hissing into the trench. A mouth-organ was playing plaintively from somewhere along the line and he remembered the wounded soldiers by the Savoy Hotel.

  I don’t want to die! I just want to go home!

  He stopped suddenly and thought of her beside him in the little restaurant. He had hoped she would like it; it had been small, intimate, friendly, and they had treated her like a princess. It had been wonderful to see the pleasure in her eyes, which had been shy and uncertain.

  He heard Payne sloshing along behind him, lost in thoughts of his own. The mouth-organ pursued them.

  Don’t want to go to the trenches no more

  Where whizzbangs and shrapnel they whistle and roar

  Take me over the sea where the Alley-man can’t get at me . . .

  ‘All right, sir?’

  Jonathan turned and looked at him. ‘Sorry. I was somewhere else.’ The air cringed to a tremendous explosion. A long way off, but it made wet earth and stones splash down beside their boots. Then he said very steadily, ‘It’s such a bloody waste. But they can still sing and yarn about it.’

  Payne held his breath, not daring to interrupt. The colonel was speaking to her, not him.

  Jonathan took out his briar pipe. ‘I once thought I would be afraid. But I have something stronger now . . .’

  He turned back into the rain and Payne did not hear the rest of it. Payne had not had an easy life, and he had built a shell around himself so that he would be neither shocked nor hurt. He had thought he could never be moved by anything ever again. He was wrong.

  It was mid-afternoon when Jonathan eventually returned from Brigade H.Q., slowed down by a sudden bombardment across a stretch of torn land where two villages had once lain astride the Menin Road. The road had led directly to Ypres, or ‘Wipers’ as the Tommies had nicknamed it. Now there was nothing left to distinguish it from the rest of the battlefield. With Payne close on his heels he had passed some of the field dressing-stations where men were lying in the rain with dull grey faces while they waited for the overworked surgeons to attend to their wounds. It could have been no worse at Waterloo, he had thought. An old trench, long abandoned, had been near one such field hospital, and he had seen medical orderlies laying out corpses before putting them in that for burial. Even worse, there had been men trying to put the right limbs with the various remains, like some grisly and horrific jigsaw. A padre had been with them, his clothing black with rain and mud, his little book in his hands. From his appearance he was in constant demand, like the doctors and stretcher-bearers.

  He had found the brigadier in his new H.Q., another cellar, which the sappers had emptied for him and installed some kind of drainage at the same time.

  Ross had been using one of his telephones, a half-eaten sandwich and a bottle of red wine nearby on a trestle-table amongst his maps. He had waved Jonathan to a scruffy-looking deckchair, while his batman poured a generous glass of wine.

  Ross had put down the telephone and taken another from his brigade-major. ‘Sorry about this, Jono. Damn rude of me. But try the wine – pretty good stuff.’ He blinked as the ground shook to a solitary explosion and added dryly, ‘Considering.’ Before he began his next telephone conversation he had indicated a thick official envelope. ‘I’ve read it, but it concerns you in man
y ways.’ His voice was very matter-of-fact, but Jonathan knew that nobody could be that calm in his vital position. Ross had turned to grope for his sandwich and said, ‘Thank you for letting me know, Sir John. Yes, I’m afraid it does look that way.’

  Jonathan, reading, had barely heard him over the ever-present rumble of cannon-fire. It was an official despatch, probably from that same great office at Royal Marines Headquarters in London. It seemed unreal, a message from another planet. All the way from the Adjutant-General, through Major-General Sir Herbert Loftus who was still at base camp on the French coast with his untested Grenville Division, on to Corps H.Q. and eventually here, to this smelly Flanders cellar. Surprisingly it had only taken a few days to arrive. He had massaged his eyes to ease the strain, to try and make sense of it. He was reading about somebody else, even though the despatch heading was his own name and rank.

  He was going mad. It had to be. His battalion, weakened by the heavy casualties in poor Captain Conway’s company, was resting. He had left them as soon as he had shaved . . .

  Ross had still been speaking on the telephone, and another was already buzzing in its case until a hand reached out to silence it.

  Crump crump crump. The Archies were at it again. Some German pilot and observer circling around again to watch out for reserves moving up; more artillery. Nothing could move, nothing heavier than a man anyway. Jonathan had removed his helmet and run his fingers through his unruly hair.

  Concerning Lieutenant Colonel (brevet) Jonathan Blackwood, D.S.O., R.M.A. Officer Commanding the Fifty-First Battalion. This officer will be relieved from his command when convenient and will return to Eastney Barracks for transfer to London. In due course arrangements will be made for his replacement to be appointed.

  It was unbelievable. He could picture her face when he eventually wrote and told her.

  He had seen Ross watching him, some breadcrumbs uncharacteristically on his medal ribbons.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Do you know what it means, sir?’

  ‘I know the army. There’s not that much difference, no matter what they say.’ He had sat back in his chair, fingers interlaced, his features expressionless. Then he had said, ‘Staff appointment in all likelihood. Makes good sense. To them.’

  ‘It’s a bit of a shock, sir.’

  A hand had come out and their glasses were refilled.

  ‘I know what you’re worried about, Jono, probably more than anything else.’ There had been a massive thud and distant shouts.

  Ross grimaced. ‘A dud. Bit of luck for us.’

  Jonathan had felt the others looking at him. He said quietly, ‘There’s to be another push, isn’t there, sir?’

  Ross had glanced at his big map, which hung from a salvaged coat-stand. Probably from the same place as the deckchair.

  ‘It has to be.’ He had picked up his swagger-cane and pointed deliberately. Poelcappelle, about five miles north-west of Passchendaele. A better gradient – would be drier if we have to halt there before the winter takes over. My staff tell me it’s chalk there, ideal for cutting out better defences, as the Germans are always quick to discover.’

  ‘When, sir?’ He had tried not to imagine her at the station, running to meet him.

  ‘Four days.’ He had seemed to come to a decision. ‘Look, Jono. You’re not God. Neither are you irreplaceable. From what I know of you you could have been killed a dozen times already, just as it could happen to any of us. If you consent I can have you out of here tomorrow. Nobody will or could blame you – you’ve done as much as anybody, and probably more than most. Men will die and keep on dying until it’s finally over, and neither you nor I can do much about it.’ He paused. ‘You have a competent enough second-in-command, I’d have thought? And they do need officers of your calibre where it counts. Not a silly lot of old duffers bewailing the South African War or the Crimea.’

  It had gone suddenly quiet. As if the last bugle had just sounded. Jonathan had thought of Wyke and Vaughan, and Maxted who was quietly going out of his mind. And all the others, old and new, whom he had come to know. Men he had seen suffer and die; others who had rallied, even cheered when he had needed them.

  He had asked, almost abruptly, ‘What would you do, sir?’

  Ross had eyed him coldly. ‘In God’s truth, I don’t know. In your case, I would at least consider it.’

  Another telephone had made itself heard.

  Jonathan had found himself on his feet, his dark hair brushing the cracked ceiling.

  ‘I have considered it, sir.’ His whole being had protested. He was betraying her: their love, their hopes, everything. ‘It does say when convenient. I’ll stay until it is, if you don’t mind, sir.’

  The brigade-major had held his hand over the telephone.

  ‘It’s Corps, sir.’

  ‘Tell them to wait!’

  The major added unhappily, ‘It’s the General, sir.’

  Ross had repeated testily, ‘I said wait!’

  Without any sign of relief or emotion he had held out his hand. A firm grip, like Captain Soutter’s had been.

  Jonathan had heard himself say, ‘I know it will eventually come through in orders, but as a favour please let it remain between us until then. It might be misinterpreted, and I never want any of my men to think there was any doubt about my staying with them.’

  When he reached the reserve sector again he was still struggling with his conscience and the aftermath of what he had done.

  He saw the usual groups of marines, either queueing for food or curling up somewhere to eat it. Huge vats of baked beans and sausages, fannies of steaming tea, hardtack biscuits covered in thick treacle. It was not a banquet, but it would fill their bellies and make them feel like men again. More ominous was the heady aroma of rum. Preparing them.

  N.C.O.’s straightened up as he passed; the lump of Bert Langmaid, sheltering beneath a groundsheet while he spooned the hot beans down his throat, merely glanced at him. McCann and Timbrell, Geach and Seagrove the colour-sergeant who was still feeling his way. A quick nervous smile from some of the younger ones, a cheeky grin from the old sweats.

  In only a few days they would be up the line again, attacking a small, unimportant place of which none of them had ever heard. They might question the reasons and the sanity of it, but they would do it. Not for King and Country, not because ‘England Expects’. But for the Corps, and mostly for each other.

  He paused, staring along the frieze of muddy figures.

  How could I leave them now? Alex . . . try to forgive me.

  When he ducked into the dugout the other officers, who were eating their first hot meal for days, looked up expectantly with a question on every face. Harry Payne put a plate in front of him and darted him a quick glance. He had some idea of what had happened, and he could guess the rest. He need not have worried after all. There was nothing to show the cost of that decision.

  He was the colonel again.

  Before dawn on the ninth of October the Fifty-First battalion was in position, crouched low in the collapsed and shattered trenches, finding what cover they could, as much from the heavy rain as from their own shell-splinters. The bombardment had gone on for two days, and it was impossible even to guess how many thousands of shells had been fired. Some of the guns must be getting worn through, and there was a real danger of shells falling short onto the waiting troops and marines.

  Poelcappelle was on their left front and Passchendaele somewhere to the right. There could be little left of either.

  Jonathan leaned against an upended ration cart and peered at his watch. He saw the others doing the same and could sense their apprehension, dismay even, that they were being ordered to advance in these impossible conditions. He hoped he had managed not to reveal his own hopelessness, which had grown steadily since their return to the line. News of the unrivalled courage and determination of the British infantry had been matched only by their casualties. Days ago, when they had been resting, the infantry had forced
an advance despite the awful weather and the enemy’s stiff opposition, and gained one mile along the whole front. At Corps H.Q. it must have seemed like the long-expected breakthrough, and a cavalry division had been brought up for the anticipated collapse of the German centre. Their assault failed, and most of the horses had been killed by machine-guns. Their surviving riders retreated on foot.

  Jonathan stared into the rain. He could feel the water like ice around his ankles, and recalled a memo he had seen. Any man reporting sick with trench-feet would be dealt with as a malingerer, until proven otherwise. He moved his frozen toes and tried to smile. What would they say if he reported sick?

  ‘Runner, sir!’

  A small soldier, his breath puffing loudly, lurched through the collapsed firestep where the H.Q. platoon had mounted its machine-guns.

  Jonathan ducked under a canvas screen and switched on his torch. Vaughan and Wyke stood outside, cursing luridly as more mud tumbled down while shells hurled up columns of smoke and earth in no man’s land. The West Riding Division, blooded on many occasions, would be waiting and watching. This bombardment was to lay waste the heavy barbed-wire entanglements along their sector.

  Jonathan stepped out into the rain. He was shivering badly; the wind was colder than he had first thought. Or was it the wind?

  He handed a folded message to the runner and said, ‘We go over the top at five-thirty.’

  He knew from the silence that they must have dared to hope for some last-minute reprieve.

  He said, ‘Brigade reports some machine-gun pill-boxes to the left front of us. The R.F.C. spotted them when the sun showed itself a couple of days ago. The infantry haven’t a hope in hell of getting through with those in position. They haven’t fired a round as yet – we’d have seen them – but they must know about the attack. They’ll just sit there and wait.’

  More shells burst to the right, the flashes giving life to the funnelling smoke and reaching up to touch the clouds with fire.

  He continued without expression, ‘I’d like to send a separate party over before the real attack begins. They’d stand a fair chance of reaching at least one of the pill-boxes.’ The enemy would be on their toes for the main attack, he thought, but they were doubtless in their deep bunkers now, making the most of their protection and comparative dryness.