The Steel Fist

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  On the Allied side the same kind of work went on, surely under the eyes of German spotters.

  “How much of the ground did you find you had memorised, last night, Rodney?”

  “Sweet F.A., old boy. But you’ll be all right. You’re brighter than I am: you can learn lines without forgetting them five minutes later.”

  A wry grin from Dempster.

  “Thanks for the compliment. But the parts I’ve played haven’t had all that many lines to learn and memorise, I’m afraid.”

  Three

  Major Eugster tried always to bear in mind the distinction between decisiveness and haste. When an eighteen-year-old second lieutenant on the Somme in 1916, he had nearly been killed by an ill-considered order given by a company commander who was in too much of a hurry. At Cambrai in 1917 he had narrowly missed death resulting from a command given too late by another company commander who always procrastinated.

  Taggart took him by surprise.

  “Could I take a stand-by section up to one of the forward casemates, sir? To go out if anyone sends up an S.O.S.”

  Eugster hesitated.

  “It’s a useful idea, a back-up section. But you should make the most of your stand-down, Rodney.”

  “I’ll be up, waiting for the patrols to come in, anyway. And the chaps and I who went out last night know the terrain and what it’s like to be in a fight in the dark.”

  “It’s hardly fair on the men to send them out again tonight.”

  “They can doss down in the casemate, sir. And we probably won’t have to go out.”

  Precautions were never wasted, Eugster reminded himself. He had soldiered for three years in the last show, and come out of it with a Military Cross. During the next eight years, working ten hours a day at his job, and night school for an external Batchelor of Commerce degree, he had sloughed off his military veneer. Joining the Territorials at the age of twenty-nine, it had taken him two or three years to begin feeling like a soldier again. Since the outbreak of his second war he had often taken a dispassionate look at himself and wondered what the hell a salesman of bath and W.C. porcelain was doing in command of the lives of 120 men and five officers.

  The Colonel or he himself, he admitted, should have thought of the precaution that Taggart had suggested. He supposed that it was out of consideration for the men who had already done a patrol that they hadn’t thought of it. But in the Army that kind of concession had no place.

  I’ll never pick up a Distinguished Service Order if I don’t remember not to be too humane he told himself.

  “Very good,” (Sound military phrase, he thought) “Rodney, I agree. I’ll have a word with the Colonel. But you can take it as read.”

  Take what as read? Taggart wondered. He had not mentioned reading anything. Why did people rely so heavily on jargon? He waited for the next stereotyped phrase; and out it came.

  “I’ll put him in the picture. Whom will you detail? You’ll have to do without a senior N.C.O.”

  “I’ll take the survivors from last night, sir.”

  Does that sound line-shootingly intrepid, “survivors”?

  “And it’ll do Fish-Smith good to be on his own. Give him confidence.”

  “I hadn’t noticed that he was in need of any.”

  “Let’s say, if we do have to go out and give someone a hand, it will confirm Smith’s opinion of himself. I know he’ll put up a good show.”

  “Very good. Take it as read and I’ll put the Colonel in the picture.”

  Taggart winced, but thanked his company commander politely just the same. It was his view that Eugster was such a damn good company commander very largely because he didn’t have a very high I.Q., was well aware of it, and strove all the harder on that account.

  So now there he was in the shivering darkness, a biting wind ripping across a snowscape that put him in mind of a film he had seen about a trapper in Alaska.

  The Maginot Line was built, as far as possible, on the slopes of hills or into ridges. Ahead, the low steel cupola over a casemate dully gave back the moonlight, its rusty patches showing as dark blotches; it was like a scabrous toadstool.

  Corporal Fysshe-Smith and five others followed Taggart in single file. Nobody had shown any sign of reluctance to come out again so soon. Perhaps they were all a little jealous of the other patrols that were out that night and would make theirs no longer unique. Taggart knew that their feelings about another action were ambivalent. No one in his right mind actually wanted to be shot at; but at the same time, if they did have a fight tonight they would be the only six men — and he the seventh — to have fought twice: thus they would maintain a sort of supremacy and uniqueness. Taggart knew the value of pride and hoped that their aid would be called for. Apart from anything else, it would justify the time and discomfort.

  The entrance to the casemate was at the rear. Over a deep, narrow ditch a removable bridge awaited the patrol. A sentry at an observation slit exchanged passwords with Taggart and let them in.

  Taggart had already registered the differing smells emitted by soldiers and sailors of various nationalities. As the war progressed he would become familiar with the unvarying and unmistakable odour of German occupation. Now, he inhaled the smell of French troops: the stuff of their uniforms, boot polish, the pungent tobacco of their Gauloises and Gitanes; garlic, coarse red wine, blankets, warm bodies, oiled weapons and greased ammunition.

  The casemate was already crowded and the lieutenant in command greeted him with that amalgam of courtesy, contempt and cynicism of which only the French upper and middle classes are capable.

  Taggart had benefitted from Francophile parents who took him and his siblings to Dieppe or St. Malo for a month every summer. His father was a suburban doctor in a well-to-do area and well able to afford a locum. At his preparatory school, French had been taught by a native of Limoges, so he had acquired a correct accent. Nobody, including the Headmaster and governors (it was the junior half of distinguished public school), questioned the French master’s preference for life in Dorset to Central France. Had they known that he had come in pursuit of his scoutmaster lover, his tenure might have been less secure than it was. At public school, Taggart’s Head of Modern Languages was also French, from Alsace: thus his accent in both French and German had never suffered the usual flaws acquired from a British education; however expensive.

  The French lieutenant, who had already met Taggart the previous night, was uncertain — like all his kind —whether to resent this sacre Englishman’s easy command of his language or admire it. He compromised by a grudging friendliness. He knew all about the small battle that Taggart’s fighting patrol had fought. He had been in three or four himself. It established a bond that overcame his chauvinism.

  “So, it’s you again; already?” Then, with a sardonic grin that made Taggart’s fist ache to plant a straight left on his syphilitic nose, “No lack of volunteers, surely?”

  “We don’t call for volunteers: we know that every officer and man will step forward. Fighting patrols are mere routine: for us.”

  Which was partly true. Everyone in the battalion had to take his turn: but Taggart had volunteered to be the first and the section he took with him had been picked from his platoon’s volunteers.

  The Frenchman looked as angry as Taggart had intended.

  “A cognac?”

  “No, thank you. It’s likely to be a long wait.”

  “You mean you’d rather have a shot of cognac immediately before having to go out?”

  This chap was begging for more than a punch; he deserved a knee in the balls.

  “Je n’ai pas besoin de m’armer de courage... I don’t need Dutch courage... even if you do, before you venture out.” The Frenchman glowered. Taggart hoped he would raise a fist: he was in the mood to knock the fellow down. Nothing happened. “If my men may sleep on the floor, I’ll be grateful. As for myself, I’d like to watch through an observation slit.”

  The Frenchman shrugged. “Make yoursel
ves as comfortable as you can. Anyone who wants coffee has only to ask: it will be brewing all night.” He picked up a book. “As for me, I shall keep awake with the help of black coffee and Flaubert. “Have you read Salambbo?”

  “No. But I admire Madame Bovary.”

  “Strange, isn’t it, that a dirty pederast who thought nothing of buggering beggar boys in Egypt and caught a deserved dose of pox in consequence, could write such fine novels and analyse women’s emotions so accurately.”

  “Flaubert was not only a pederast, he was also...”

  “Of course: everyone knows he went with harlots also; and it could have been one who infected him. But nonetheless I find it hard to equate his insight into female nature with...”

  “It’s not unusual. We have successful writers — Maugham and Coward, for instance — who would be insulted to be called heterosexual, yet write penetratingly about the female sex. And actors who have affairs with males in private but can convincingly play the lover of a woman on stage.”

  “I would like to pursue the conversation, mon lieutenant, but I must not keep you from your duties. I have a horror of unnatural vice. What is more, with such a superabundance of available women in the world — God be thanked — one hardly has time, in the space of a normal lifespan, to reap one’s share of what Nature in-tended; without straying along the paths of perversion.”

  “I entirely agree, mon lieutenant.”

  Taggart saw his men settled, then took up his place at a peephole which allowed him a generous view of the ground over which the patrols were hunting.

  He smiled to himself, deprecating but forgiving the French officer’s condescension. At least the fellow had some healthy ideas: even if, typically, they related to sex rather than to sport. He was plainly not a Regular, but had adopted the traditional cavalier Army attitude to women; tempered discreetly by overt intellectualism.

  That was a hell of a conversation to have as a prelude to a possible sortie into battle, Taggart reflected. But one never knew with the French. They seemed to be born with a measuring, uninterested look in the eyes that made them appear distant; intellectually and emotionally un-reachable. He could not imagine discussing literature or sodomy with a British officer in any circumstance at all, let alone in a fortification on the edge of no-man’s-land.

  He looked at his watch. George Dempster had been out just over an hour. He heard the distinctive frenetic chatter of a Spandau: with a rate of fire of 1200 rounds a minute, it sounded like one continuous ripple of angry noise.

  Silence. Another two quick bursts of Spandau. The heavier, slower rattle of a Tommy gun. A plodding burst of Schmeisser. A Bren gun. Then automatic weapons firing simultaneously, the Spandau dominant. The Bren, the Schmeisser Maschinen Pistole 40, an improvement on the Erma-designed MP38, firing 500 r.p.m., and the Thompson, 700 r.p.m., each contributed its characteristic note to the nerve-twitching din.

  The sounds of a separate engagement began. Taggart judged them to be 500 yards apart. Which, if either, involved Dempster? He began to feel the gathering of excitement which, in a later decade, nourished on half-baked journalese pseudo-medical jargon, would be described as “the adrenaline beginning to flow”. In 1939, the general public had never heard of adrenaline. Taggart was better-educated than most people, and all he knew was that he was beginning to spoil for a fight, that he had a pleasant sensation of being stimulated (the same people who would one day talk carelessly of adrenaline would, in a future age, refer to this as “euphoria”), and that it made him restless.

  Far away a star shell burst. Some British or French patrol must have gone much deeper than usual; probably further than it had intended. The star shell had come from the direction of The Siegfried Line.

  Three... four... five Verey lights flared, two fairly close together, the others widely dispersed: it was impossible to tell which side had fired them. Business seemed to be getting brisk out there.

  Taggart caught a whiff of Gauloise smoke and became aware of the French redoubt commander at his side.

  “I have not heard our Chatelleraults.”

  The Chatellerault 24/29, a peculiarly French conception in the way of a machine-gun, made a hysterical note when fired. It shook violently. Taggart, who had seen it in action from a redoubt and a forward post, thought of it as a prima donna singing an aria expressive of indignation.

  “There’s a Bren... two of them... and a third.”

  There was a workmanlike sound about the Bren gun that complemented its sturdy appearance. No temperament there; apart from a small matter of stoppages caused by damage to the lips of the curved, top-loading magazine.

  Taggart turned to his corporal, who had been either sitting with his back against the wall or standing beside him to look out. “Better tell the chaps to stand by.”

  “Sir.”

  The night glasses that Taggart had brought were of little help. The rolling ground and abundance of shadows yielded no secrets.

  All very well on the bridge of a destroyer, Taggart grumbled to himself. No damned good... hang on!

  His hands tightened their grip in involuntary perturbation. He had seen a stooping figure running back from the shelter of a leafless tree. It was helmetless, so neither French nor German. Then he saw three more men scurrying towards The Maginot Line, with tracer fire nibbling the air around them. He held the glasses fixed on the spot. More figures appeared. Some wore German helmets. Eight hundred yards? About that.

  A green-on-white Verey cartridge exploded over the patch of ground he had been watching.

  He heard the corporal’s quiet “All standing by, sir.”

  “Let’s go. S.O.S. eleven-o’clock of us, about eight hundred yards. Looks as if Jerry’s almost on top of them.”

  He ran out of the blockhouse and across the bridge, his men at his heels. He jerked out words as they moved at the double.

  “I saw something by a Verey from the Jerry side... looked like one of our patrols being chased back... Jerry very close and putting down heavy Spandau and Schmeisser...”

  He was interrupted by the eruption of flames far ahead where grenades were bursting. They had just rounded the redoubt and his Verey pistol was in his hand, loaded with a green flare. He fired it, in answer to the S.O.S., shoved the pistol into its holster and took a grip on his Tommy gun with both hands.

  They ran along a narrow gully, stumbling over hidden small boulders. They climbed to flat open ground and he gestured the others to fall prone. From there he searched with the night glasses.

  “We’ll work our way to that tump with a copse on top, at ten-o’clock. If I’ve got it right, we’ll be on the flank of the place where the patrol’s gone to ground... we’ll be able to work a flanker on Jerry... yes, there they are.”

  A flare lit the scene and they could see a scattering of men lying behind a low ridge, no more than a rumple on the surface, some 100 yards long and five or six feet high. The near side had been in shadow until the flare shed its light there.

  Grenades burst along the short length of rising ground. Tracer licked over it. There was answering fire. The bursting of grenades on the far side cast a red glow here and there.

  “Come on... at the double.”

  There was no time for concealment. It was improbable that an enemy patrol was close enough to bother with, anyhow. There was a wood 200 yards on the left of where they were going, and that was the most likely choice for Germans to lie in wait.

  They would find out soon enough.

  The cold air burned in Taggart’s lungs, snow gathered on his boots. The Tommy gun seemed to grow heavier. Blood thudded in his ears. Hurry... hurry... hurry...

  Spandau, Bren, Schmeisser, Tommy gun, grenade, tracer. Smoke, twinkling bullets, red and yellow flames. The wind whipped in their faces. Gusts tore loose snow from hummocks and flung it into their eyes. Men lost time and the rhythm of their pace when they paused to wipe it away. If they didn’t slow down they would stumble and fall. If they fell they would fill the muzzles of
their weapons with snow. Snow would cover their webbing, turn to ice and freeze closed the flaps of their ammunition pouches. They must not fall. Lose a few seconds, but don’t fall.

  Eight hundred yards? Distances were deceptive by semi-moonlight and on snowcovered terrain. It seemed to be an elastic eight hundred.

  Men’s voices thrust through the momentary silence as firing paused. The shouts of soldiers charging the enemy. From behind the ridge, forms rose out of the shadows and scuttled towards Taggart’s patrol.

  No time to work that flanker.

  “Down! Fire over their heads... Jerry’s coming over the skyline.”

  Bullets sizzled from Taggart’s Tommy gun, from the Bren, from a second Tommy gun in the hands of the senior private. The four riflemen each shot off a clip, rapid.

  The enemy hesitated, three fell. The rest threw themselves back on the far side.

  Taggart cupped his hands to shout.

  “Come back. We’ll cover you.”

  There was no movement.

  A Cockney voice said, with disgust, “Windy sods.” Taggart doubted it. He didn’t want to believe it. He waited, then called out again.

  From the wood on his left, beyond the copse they had almost reached, came a long streak of tracer accompanied by the zip of a Spandau.

  “Damn!”

  “Looks as though we’re the kosher chicken between two slices of Hovis this, time, sir.”

  There was no inflection in Corporal Fysshe-Smith’s voice but Taggart could picture his rueful look.

  “When the next cloud gives us some darkness, we’ll go hard towards the wood. Jerry won’t expect that. With luck, we’ll get to within fifty yards of it. Then we’ll wait till they open up, and shoot at their muzzle flashes.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  Taggart shouted. “George?”

  “Yes?”

  “Wait for the next cloud.”

  And make what you like of what I said.

  He did not say more, in case the enemy understood. It was up to Dempster to retreat as far as he could; or to stay, expecting the attackers to come over the ridge again. Either way, his own most useful contribution would be to move as close to the wood as possible.