Fall of Giants

by Follett, Ken

  Da said: “People think there’s a big push coming at the end of the month.”

  Billy nodded. “The officers won’t say a word, but everyone else is talking about it. I expect that’s why there’s a sudden rush to get more men over there.”

  “The newspapers say this could be the battle that turns the tide—the beginning of the end.”

  “Let’s hope so, anyhow.”

  “You should have enough ammunition now, thanks to Lloyd George.”

  “Aye.” Last year there had been a shortage of shells. Newspaper agitation about the Shell Scandal had almost brought down Prime Minister Asquith. He had formed a coalition government, created the new post of minister of munitions, and given the job to the most popular man in the cabinet, David Lloyd George. Since then, production had soared.

  “Try to take care of yourself,” Da said.

  Mam said: “Don’t be a hero. Leave that to them that started the war—the upper classes, the Conservatives, the officers. Do as you’re told and no more.”

  Gramper said: “War is war. There’s no safe way to do it.”

  They were saying their good-byes. Billy felt an urge to cry, and repressed it harshly. “Right, then,” he said, standing up.

  Gramper shook his hand. Mam kissed him. Da shook hands, then yielded to an impulse and hugged him. Billy could not remember the last time his father had done that.

  “God bless you and keep you, Billy,” Da said. There were tears in his eyes.

  Billy’s self-control almost broke. “So long, then,” he said. He picked up his kit bag. He heard his mother sob. Without looking back, he went out, closing the door behind him.

  He took a deep breath and composed himself. Then he set off down the steep street toward the station.

  { II }

  The river Somme meandered from east to west across France on its way to the sea. The front line, running north to south, crossed the river not far from Amiens. South of there, the Allied line was held by French troops all the way to Switzerland. To its north most of the forces were British and Commonwealth.

  From this point a range of hills ran northwest for twenty miles. The German trenches in this sector had been dug into the slopes of the hills. From one such trench, Walter von Ulrich looked through powerful Zeiss Doppelfernrohr binoculars down to the British positions.

  It was a sunny day in early summer, and he could hear birdsong. In a nearby orchard that had so far escaped shelling, apple trees were blossoming bravely. Men were the only animals that slaughtered their own kind by the million, and turned the landscape into a waste of shell craters and barbed wire. Perhaps the human race would wipe itself out completely, and leave the world to the birds and trees, Walter thought apocalyptically. Perhaps that would be for the best.

  The high position had many advantages, he thought, coming back to practical matters. The British would have to attack uphill. Even more useful was the ability of the Germans to see everything the British were doing. And Walter felt sure that right now they were preparing a major assault.

  Such activity could hardly be concealed. For months, ominously, the British had been improving the roads and railways in this previously sleepy area of the French countryside. Now they were using those supply lines to bring forward hundreds of heavy guns, thousands of horses, and tens of thousands of men. Behind the front lines, trucks and trains in constant streams were unloading crates of ammunition, barrels of fresh water, and bales of hay. Walter focused his lenses on a communications detail, digging a narrow trench and unspooling a huge reel of what was undoubtedly telephone wire.

  They must have high hopes, he thought with cold apprehension. The expenditure of men, money, and effort was colossal. It could only be justified if the British thought this was the decisive attack of the war. Walter hoped it was—one way or the other.

  Whenever he looked into enemy territory he thought of Maud. The picture he carried in his wallet, cut out of the Tatler magazine, showed her in a dramatically simple ball gown at the Savoy Hotel, over the caption Lady Maud Fitzherbert is always dressed in the latest fashion. He guessed she was not doing much dancing now. Had she found some role in the war effort, as Walter’s sister Greta had in Berlin, bringing small luxuries to wounded men in army hospitals? Or had she retired to the country, like Walter’s mother, and planted her flower beds with potatoes because of the food shortage?

  He did not know whether the British were short of food. Germany’s navy was trapped in port by the British blockade, so there had been no imports by sea for almost two years. But the British continued to get supplies from America. German submarines attacked transatlantic ships intermittently, but the high command held back from an all-out effort—what was called USW, for “unrestricted submarine warfare”—for fear of bringing the Americans into the war. So, Walter guessed, Maud was not as hungry as he was. And he was better off than German civilians. There had been strikes and demonstrations against the food shortage in some cities.

  He had not written to her, nor she to him. There was no postal service between Germany and Britain. The only chance would come if one of them traveled to a neutral country, the United States or Sweden perhaps, and posted a letter from there; but that opportunity had not yet arisen for him nor, presumably, for her.

  It was torment not to know anything about her. He was tortured by the fear that she might be ill in hospital without his knowledge. He longed for the end of the war so that he could be with her. He desperately wanted Germany to win, of course, but there were times when he felt he would not care about losing as long as Maud was all right. His nightmare was that the end came, and he went to London to find her, only to be told that she was dead.

  He pushed the frightening thought to the back of his mind. He lowered his sights, focused his lenses nearer, and examined the barbed-wire defenses on the German side of no-man’s-land. There were two belts of it, each fifteen feet wide. The wire was firmly fixed to the ground with iron stakes so that it could not easily be moved. It made a reassuringly formidable barrier.

  He climbed down from the trench parapet and turned down a long flight of wooden steps to a deep dugout. The disadvantage of the hillside position was that the trenches were more visible to enemy artillery so, to compensate, the dugouts in this sector had been cut far into the chalky soil, deep enough to provide protection from anything but a direct hit from the largest type of shell. There was room to shelter every man in the trench garrison during a bombardment. Some dugouts were interconnected, providing an alternative way out if shelling blocked the entrance.

  Walter sat on a wooden bench and took out his notebook. For a few minutes he wrote abbreviated reminders of everything he had seen. His report would confirm other intelligence sources. Secret agents had been warning of what the British called a “big push.”

  He made his way through the maze of trenches to the rear. The Germans had constructed three lines of trenches two or three kilometers apart, so that if they were driven out of the front line they could fall back on another trench and, failing that, a third. Whatever happened, he thought with considerable satisfaction, there would be no quick victory for the British.

  Walter found his horse and rode back to Second Army headquarters, arriving at lunchtime. In the officers’ mess he was surprised to encounter his father. The old man was a senior officer on the general staff, and now dashed from one battlefield to another just as, in peacetime, he had gone from one European capital to the next.

  Otto looked older. He had lost weight—all Germans had lost weight. His monkish fringe was cut so short that he looked bald. But he seemed spry and cheerful. War suited him. He liked the excitement, the hurry, the quick decisions, and the sense of constant emergency.

  He never mentioned Maud.

  “What have you seen?” he asked.

  “There will be a major assault in this area within the next few weeks,” Walter said.

  His father shook his head skeptically. “The Somme sector is the best-defended part of our
line. We hold the upper ground and we have three lines of trenches. In war you attack at your enemy’s weakest point, not his strongest—even the British know that.”

  Walter related what he had just seen: the trucks, the trains, and the communications detail laying telephone lines.

  “I believe it’s a ruse,” said Otto. “If this were the real site of the attack, they would be doing more to conceal their efforts. There will be a feint here, followed by the real assault farther north, in Flanders.”

  Walter said: “What does von Falkenhayn believe?” Erich von Falkenhayn had been chief of staff for almost two years.

  His father smiled. “He believes what I tell him.”

  { III }

  As coffee was served at the end of lunch, Lady Maud asked Lady Hermia: “In an emergency, Aunt, would you know how to get in touch with Fitz’s lawyer?”

  Aunt Herm looked mildly shocked. “My dear, what should I have to do with lawyers?”

  “You never know.” Maud turned to the butler as he put the coffeepot down on a silver trivet. “Grout, be so kind as to bring me a sheet of paper and a pencil.” Grout went out and returned with writing materials. Maud wrote down the name and address of the family lawyer.

  “Why do I need this?” Aunt Herm said.

  “I may get arrested this afternoon,” Maud said cheerfully. “If so, do please ask him to come and get me out of jail.”

  “Oh!” said Aunt Herm. “You can’t mean it!”

  “No, I’m sure it won’t happen,” Maud said. “But, you know, just in case . . . ” She kissed her aunt and left the room.

  Aunt Herm’s attitude infuriated Maud, but most women were the same. It was unladylike even to know the name of your lawyer, let alone to understand your rights under the law. No wonder women were mercilessly exploited.

  Maud put on her hat and gloves and a light summer coat, then went out and caught a bus to Aldgate.

  She was alone. Chaperoning rules had relaxed since the outbreak of war. It was no longer scandalous for a single woman to go out unescorted in the daytime. Aunt Herm disapproved of the change, but she could not lock Maud up, and she could not appeal to Fitz, who was in France, so she had to accept the situation, albeit with a sour face.

  Maud was editor of The Soldier’s Wife, a small-circulation newspaper that campaigned for better treatment for the dependents of servicemen. A Conservative member of Parliament had described the journal as “a pestilential nuisance to the government,” a quotation that was emblazoned on the masthead of every edition thereafter. Maud’s campaigning rage was fueled by her indignation at the subjection of women combined with her horror at the pointless slaughter of war. Maud subsidized the newspaper out of her small inheritance. She hardly needed the money anyway: Fitz always paid for everything she needed.

  Ethel Williams was the paper’s manager. She had eagerly left the sweatshop for a better wage and a campaigning role. Ethel shared Maud’s rage, but had a different set of skills. Maud understood politics at the top—she met cabinet ministers socially and talked to them about the issues of the day. Ethel knew a different political world: the National Union of Garment Workers, the Independent Labour Party, strikes and lockouts and street marches.

  As appointed, Maud met Ethel across the road from the Aldgate office of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association.

  Before the war this well-meaning charity had enabled well-off ladies to graciously give help and advice to the hard-up wives of servicemen. Now it had a new role. The government paid one pound and one shilling to a soldier’s wife with two children separated from her husband by the war. This was not much—about half what a coal miner earned—but it was enough to raise millions of women and children out of grinding poverty. The Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association administered this separation allowance.

  But the allowance was payable only to women of “good behavior” and the charity ladies sometimes withheld the government money from wives who rejected their advice about child rearing, household management, and the perils of visiting music halls and drinking gin.

  Maud thought such women would be better off without the gin, but that did not give anyone the right to push them into penury. She was driven into a fury of outrage by comfortable middle-class people passing judgment on soldiers’ wives and depriving them of the means to feed their children. Parliament would not permit such abuse, she thought, if women had the vote.

  With Ethel were a dozen working-class women plus one man, Bernie Leckwith, secretary of the Aldgate Independent Labour Party. The party approved of Maud’s paper and supported its campaigns.

  When Maud joined the group on the pavement, Ethel was talking to a young man with a notebook. “The separation allowance is not a charitable gift,” she said. “Soldiers’ wives receive it as of right. Do you have to pass a good-conduct test before you get your wages as a reporter? Is Mr. Asquith questioned about how much Madeira he drinks before he can draw his salary as a member of Parliament? These women are entitled to the money just as if it was a wage.”

  Ethel had found her voice, Maud reflected. She expressed herself simply and vividly.

  The reporter looked admiringly at Ethel: he seemed half in love with her. Rather apologetically he said: “Your opponents say that a woman should not receive support if she is unfaithful to her soldier husband.”

  “Are you checking on the husbands?” Ethel said indignantly. “I believe there are houses of ill fame in France and Mesopotamia and other places where our men are serving. Does the army take the names of married men entering such houses, and withdraw their wages? Adultery is a sin, but it is not a reason to impoverish the sinner and let her children starve.”

  Ethel was carrying her child, Lloyd, on her hip. He was now sixteen months old and able to walk, or at least stagger. He had fine dark hair and green eyes, and was as pretty as his mother. Maud put out her hands to take him, and he came to her eagerly. She felt a pang of longing: she almost wished she had become pregnant during her one night with Walter, despite all the trouble it would have caused.

  She had heard nothing of Walter since the Christmas before last. She did not know whether he was alive or dead. She might already be a widow. She tried not to brood, but dreadful thoughts crept up on her unawares, sometimes, and then she had to keep from crying.

  Ethel finished charming the reporter, then introduced Maud to a young woman with two children clinging to her skirts. “This is Jayne McCulley, who I told you about.” Jayne had a pretty face and a determined look.

  Maud shook hands. “I hope we can get justice for you today, Mrs. McCulley,” she said.

  “Very kind of you, I’m sure, ma’am.” The habit of deference died hard even in egalitarian political movements.

  “If we’re all ready?” said Ethel.

  Maud handed Lloyd back to Ethel, and together the group crossed the road and went in at the front door of the charity office. There was a reception area where a middle-aged woman sat behind a desk. She looked frightened by the crowd.

  Maud said to her: “There’s nothing to worry about. Mrs. Williams and I are here to see Mrs. Hargreaves, your manager.”

  The receptionist stood up. “I’ll see if she’s in,” she said nervously.

  Ethel said: “I know she’s in—I saw her walk through the door half an hour ago.”

  The receptionist scurried out.

  The woman who returned with her was less easily intimidated. Mrs. Hargreaves was a stout woman in her forties, wearing a French coat and skirt and a fashionable hat decorated with a large pleated bow. The ensemble lost all its continental chic on her stocky figure, Maud thought cattily, but the woman had the confidence that came with money. She also had a large nose. “Yes?” she said rudely.

  In the struggle for female equality, Maud reflected, sometimes you had to fight women as well as men. “I have come to see you because I’m concerned about your treatment of Mrs. McCulley.”

  Mrs. Hargreaves looked startled, no doubt by Maud�
��s upper-class accent. She gave Maud an up-and-down scrutiny. She was probably noting that Maud’s clothes were as expensive as her own. When she spoke again, her tone was less arrogant. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss individual cases.”

  “But Mrs. McCulley has asked me to speak to you—and she’s here to prove it.”

  Jayne McCulley said: “Don’t you remember me, Mrs. Hargreaves?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. You were very discourteous to me.”

  Jayne turned to Maud. “I told her to go and poke her nose into someone else’s business.”

  The women giggled at the reference to the nose, and Mrs. Hargreaves blushed.

  Maud said: “But you cannot refuse an application for a separation allowance on the grounds that the applicant was rude to you.” Maud controlled her anger and tried to speak with icy disapproval. “Surely you know that?”

  Mrs. Hargreaves tilted her chin defensively. “Mrs. McCulley was seen in the Dog and Duck public house, and at the Stepney Music Hall, on both occasions with a young man. The separation allowance is for wives of good conduct. The government does not wish to finance unchaste behavior.”

  Maud wanted to strangle her. “You seem to misunderstand your role,” she said. “It is not for you to refuse payment on suspicion.”

  Mrs. Hargreaves looked a little less sure of herself.

  Ethel put in: “I suppose Mr. Hargreaves is safe at home, is it?”

  “No, he’s not,” the woman replied quickly. “He’s with the army in Egypt.”

  “Oh!” said Ethel. “So you receive a separation allowance too.”

  “That’s neither here nor there.”

  “Does someone come to your house, Mrs. Hargreaves, to check on your conduct? Do they look at the level of the sherry in the decanter on your sideboard? Are you questioned about your friendship with your grocer’s deliveryman?”