by Follett, Ken
“Then we must make sure he is disappointed.”
Maud smiled. “Exactly,” she said. “I think that’s our next campaign.”
{ VII }
“I joined up to get out of Borstal,” said George Barrow, leaning on the rail of the troopship as it steamed out of Southampton. A Borstal was a jail for underage offenders. “I was done for housebreaking when I was sixteen, and got three years. After a year I got tired of sucking the warden’s cock, so I said I wanted to volunteer. He marched me to the recruiting station and that was it.”
Billy looked at him. He had a bent nose, a mutilated ear, and a scar on his forehead. He looked like a retired boxer. “How old are you now?” said Billy.
“Seventeen.”
Boys were not allowed to join the army under eighteen, and had to be nineteen before they were sent overseas, officially. Both laws were constantly broken by the army. Recruiting sergeants and medical officers were each paid half a crown for every man passed, and they rarely questioned boys who claimed to be older than they seemed. There was a boy in the battalion called Owen Bevin who looked about fifteen.
“Was that an island we just passed?” said George.
“Aye,” said Billy. “That’s the Isle of Wight.”
“Oh,” said George. “I thought it was France.”
“No, that’s a lot farther.”
The voyage took them until early the following morning, when they disembarked at Le Havre. Billy stepped off the gangplank and set foot on foreign soil for the first time in his life. In fact it was not soil but cobblestones, which proved difficult to march over in hobnailed boots. They passed through the town, watched listlessly by the French population. Billy had heard stories of pretty French girls gratefully embracing the arriving Brits, but he saw only apathetic middle-aged women in head scarves.
They marched to a camp, where they spent the night. Next morning they boarded a train. Being abroad was less exciting than Billy had hoped. Everything was different, but only slightly. Like Britain, France was mostly fields and villages, roads and railways. The fields had fences rather than hedges, and the cottages seemed larger and better-built, but that was all. It was an anticlimax. At the end of the day they reached their billets in a huge new encampment of hastily built barracks.
Billy had been made a corporal, so he was in charge of his section, eight men including Tommy, young Owen Bevin, and George Barrow the Borstal boy. They were joined by the mysterious Robin Mortimer, who was a private despite looking thirty years old. As they sat down to tea with bread and jam in a long hall containing about a thousand men, Billy said: “So, Robin, we’re all new here, but you seem more experienced. What’s your story?”
Mortimer replied in the faintly accented speech of an educated Welshman, but he used the language of the pit. “None of your fucking business, Taffy,” he said, and he went off to sit somewhere else.
Billy shrugged. “Taffy” was not much of an insult, especially coming from another Welshman.
Four sections made a platoon, and their platoon sergeant was Elijah Jones, age twenty, the son of John Jones the Shop. He was considered a hardened veteran because he had been at the front for a year. Jones belonged to the Bethesda Chapel and Billy had known him since they were both at school, where he had been dubbed Prophet Jones because of his Old Testament name.
Prophet overheard the exchange with Mortimer. “I’ll have a word with him, Billy,” he said. “He’s a stuck-up old beggar, but he can’t speak to a corporal like that.”
“What’s he so grumpy about?”
“He used to be a major. I dunno what he done, but he was court-martialed and cashiered, which means he lost his rank as an officer. Then, being eligible for war service, he was immediately conscripted as a private soldier. It’s what they do to officers who misbehave.”
After tea they met their platoon leader, Second Lieutenant James Carlton-Smith, a boy the same age as Billy. He was stiff and embarrassed, and seemed too young to be in charge of anyone. “Men,” he said in a strangled upper-class accent, “I am honored to be your leader, and I know you will be brave as lions in the coming battle.”
“Bloody wart,” muttered Mortimer.
Billy knew that second lieutenants were called warts, but only by other officers.
Carlton-Smith then introduced the commander of B Company, Major the Earl Fitzherbert.
“Bloody hell,” said Billy. He stared openmouthed as the man he hated most in the world stood on a chair to address the company. Fitz wore a well-tailored khaki uniform and carried the ash wood walking stick some officers affected. He spoke with the same accent as Carlton-Smith, and uttered the same kind of platitude. Billy could hardly believe his rotten luck. What was Fitz doing here—impregnating French maidservants? That this hopeless wastrel should be his commanding officer was hard to bear.
When the officers had gone, Prophet spoke quietly to Billy and Mortimer. “Lieutenant Carlton-Smith was at Eton until a year ago,” he said. Eton was a posh school: Fitz had gone there too.
Billy said: “So why is he an officer?”
“He was a popper at Eton. It means a prefect.”
“Oh, good,” said Billy sarcastically. “We’ll be all right, then.”
“He doesn’t know much about warfare, but he’s got the sense not to throw his weight around, so he’ll be fine so long as we keep an eye on him. If you see him about to do something really stupid, speak to me.” He fixed his eye on Mortimer. “You know what it’s like, don’t you?”
Mortimer gave a surly nod.
“I’m counting on you, now.”
A few minutes later it was lights-out. There were no cots, just straw palliasses in rows on the floor. Lying awake, Billy thought admiringly of what Prophet had done with Mortimer. He was dealing with a difficult subordinate by making an ally of him. That was the way Da would handle a troublemaker.
Prophet had given Billy and Mortimer the same message. Had Prophet also identified Billy as a rebel? He recalled that Prophet had been in the congregation the Sunday that Billy had read out the story of the woman taken in adultery. Fair enough, he thought; I am a troublemaker.
Billy did not feel drowsy, and it was still light outside, but he fell asleep immediately. He was awakened by a terrific noise like a thunderstorm overhead. He sat upright. A dull dawn light came in through the rain-streaked windows, but there was no storm.
The other men were equally startled. Tommy said: “Jesus H. Christ, what was that?”
Mortimer was lighting a cigarette. “Artillery fire,” he said. “Our own guns. Welcome to France, Taffy.”
Billy was not listening. He was looking at Owen Bevin, in the bed opposite. Owen was sitting up with a corner of the sheet in his mouth, crying.
{ VIII }
Maud dreamed that Lloyd George put his hand up her skirt, whereupon she told him she was married to a German, and he informed the police, who had come to arrest her and were banging on her bedroom window.
She sat up in bed, confused. After a moment she realized how unlikely it was that the police would bang on a second-floor bedroom window even if they did want to arrest her. The dream faded away, but the noise continued. There was also a deep bass rumble as of a distant railway train.
She turned on the bedside lamp. The art nouveau silver clock on her mantelpiece said it was four in the morning. Had there been an earthquake? An explosion in a munitions factory? A train crash? She threw back the embroidered coverlet and stood up.
She drew back heavy green-and-navy striped curtains and looked out of the window down to the Mayfair street. In the dawn light she saw a young woman in a red dress, probably a prostitute on her way home, speaking anxiously to the driver of a horse-drawn milk cart. There was no one else in sight. Maud’s window continued to rattle for no apparent reason. It was not even windy.
She pulled a watered silk robe over her nightgown and glanced into her cheval glass. Her hair was untidy but otherwise she looked respectable enough. She stepped into
the corridor.
Aunt Herm stood there in a nightcap, beside Sanderson, Maud’s maid, whose round face was pale with fear. Then Grout appeared on the stairs. “Good morning, Lady Maud; good morning, Lady Hermia,” he said with imperturbable formality. “No need for alarm. It’s the guns.”
“What guns?” said Maud.
“In France, my lady,” said the butler.
{ IX }
The British artillery barrage went on for a week.
It was supposed to last five days, but only one of those days enjoyed fine weather, to Fitz’s consternation. Even though it was summer, for the rest of the time there was low cloud and rain. This made it difficult for the gunners to fire accurately. It also meant the spotter planes could not survey the results and help the gunners adjust their aim. This made matters especially difficult for those dedicated to counter-battery—destroying the German artillery—because the Germans wisely kept moving their guns, so that the British shells would fall harmlessly on vacated positions.
Fitz sat in the damp dugout that was battalion headquarters, gloomily smoking cigars and trying not to listen to the unending boom. In the absence of aerial photographs, he and other company commanders organized trench raids. These at least allowed eyeball observation of the enemy. However, it was a hazardous business, and raiding parties that stayed too long never returned. So the men had to hastily observe a short section of the line and scurry home.
To Fitz’s great annoyance, they brought back conflicting reports. Some German trenches were destroyed, others remained intact. Some barbed wire had been cut, but by no means all of it. Most worrying was that some patrols were driven back by enemy fire. If the Germans were still able to shoot, clearly the artillery had not succeeded in its task of wiping out their positions.
Fitz knew that exactly twelve German prisoners had been taken by the Fourth Army during the barrage. All had been interrogated but, infuriatingly, they gave conflicting evidence. Some said their dugouts had been destroyed, others that the Germans were sitting safe and sound beneath the earth while the British wasted their ammunition overhead.
So unsure were the British of the effects of their shells that Haig postponed the attack, which had been scheduled for June 29. But the weather continued poor.
“It will have to be canceled,” said Captain Evans at breakfast on the morning of June 30.
“Unlikely,” Fitz commented.
“We don’t attack until we have confirmation that the enemy defenses have been destroyed,” Evans said. “That’s an axiom of siege warfare.”
Fitz knew that this principle had been agreed upon early in the planning, but later dropped. “Be realistic,” he said to Evans. “We’ve been preparing this offensive for six months. This is our major action for 1916. All our effort has been put into it. How could it be canceled? Haig would have to resign. It might even bring down Asquith’s government.”
Evans seemed angered by that remark. His cheeks flushed and his voice went up in pitch. “Better for the government to fall than for us to send our men up against entrenched machine guns.”
Fitz shook his head. “Look at the millions of tons of supplies that have been shipped, the roads and railways we’ve built to bring them here, the hundreds of thousands of men trained and armed and brought here from all over Britain. What will we do—send them all home?”
There was a long silence, then Evans said: “You’re right, of course, Major.” His words were conciliatory but his tone was of barely suppressed rage. “We won’t send them home,” he said through clenched teeth. “We will bury them here.”
At midday the rain stopped and the sun came out. A little later, confirmation came down the line: we attack tomorrow.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
July 1, 1916
Walter Ulrich was in hell.
The British bombardment had been going on for seven days and nights. Every man in the German trenches looked ten years older than he had a week ago. They huddled in their dugouts—man-made caves deep in the ground behind the trenches—but the noise was still deafening, and the earth beneath their feet shook continually. Worst of all, they knew that a direct hit from the largest-caliber shell might destroy even the strongest of dugouts.
Whenever it stopped they climbed out into the trenches, ready to repel the big attack that everyone expected. As soon as they were satisfied that the British were not yet advancing, they would look at the damage. They would find a trench caved in, a dugout entrance buried under a pile of earth, and—on one sorry afternoon—a smashed canteen full of broken crockery, dripping jam tins, and liquid soap. Wearily they would shovel away the soil, patch the revetment with new planks, and order more stores.
The ordered stores did not come. Very little came to the front line. The bombardment made all approaches dangerous. The men were hungry and thirsty. Walter had gratefully drunk rainwater from a shell hole more than once.
The men could not stay in the dugouts between bombardments. They had to be in the trenches, ready for the British. Sentries kept constant watch. The rest sat in or near the dugout entrances, ready either to run down the steps and shelter underground when the big guns opened up, or to rush to the parapet to defend their position if the attack came. Machine guns had to be carried underground every time, then brought back up and returned to their emplacements.
In between barrages the British attacked with trench mortars. Although these small bombs made little noise when fired, they were powerful enough to splinter the timber of the revetment. However, they came across no-man’s-land in a slow arc, and it was possible to see them coming and take cover. Walter had dodged one, getting far enough away to escape injury, although it had sprayed earth all over his dinner, forcing him to throw away a good bowlful of hearty pork stew. That had been the last hot meal he got, and if he had it now he would eat it, he thought, dirt too.
Shells were not all. This sector had suffered a gas attack. The men had gas masks, but the bottom of the trench was littered with the bodies of rats, mice, and other small creatures killed by the chlorine. Rifle barrels had turned greenish-black.
Soon after midnight on the seventh night of the bombardment, the shelling eased up, and Walter decided to go out on a patrol.
He put on a wool cap and rubbed earth on his face to darken it. He drew his pistol, the standard nine-millimeter Luger issued to German officers. He ejected the magazine from the butt and checked the ammunition. It was fully loaded.
He climbed a ladder and went over the parapet, a death-defying act by daylight but relatively safe in the dark. He ran, bent double, down the gentle slope as far as the German barbed-wire entanglement. There was a gap in the wire, placed—by design—directly in front of a German machine-gun emplacement. He crawled through the gap on his knees.
It reminded him of the adventure stories he used to read as a schoolboy. Usually they featured square-jawed young Germans menaced by Red Indians, pygmies with blowpipes, or sly English spies. He recalled a lot of crawling through undergrowth, jungle, and prairie grass.
There was not much undergrowth here. Eighteen months of war had left only a few patches of grass and bushes and the occasional small tree dotted around a wasteland of mud and shell holes.
Which made it worse, because there was no cover. Tonight was moonless, but the landscape was occasionally lit by the flash of an explosion or the fierce bright light of a flare. All Walter could do then was fall flat and freeze. If he happened to be in a crater he might be hard to see. Otherwise he just had to hope no one was looking his way.
There were a lot of unexploded British shells on the ground. Walter calculated that something like a third of their ammunition was dud. He knew that Lloyd George had been put in charge of munitions, and guessed that the crowd-pleasing demagogue had prioritized volume over quality. Germans would never make such a mistake, he thought.
He reached the British wire, crawled laterally until he found a gap, and passed through.
As the British line began to appear,
like the smear of a black paintbrush against a wash of dark gray sky, he dropped to his belly and tried to move silently. He had to get close: that was the point. He wanted to hear what the men in the trenches were saying.
Both sides sent out patrols every night. Walter usually dispatched a couple of bright-looking soldiers who were bored enough to relish an adventure, albeit a dangerous one. But sometimes he went himself, partly to show that he was willing to risk his own life, partly because his own observations were generally more detailed.
He listened, straining to hear a cough, a few muttered words, perhaps a fart followed by a sigh of satisfaction. He seemed to be in front of a quiet section. He turned left, crawled fifty yards, and stopped. Now he could hear an unfamiliar sound a bit like the hum of distant machinery.
He crawled on, trying hard to keep his bearings. It was easy to lose all sense of direction in the dark. One night, after a long crawl, he had come up against the barbed wire he had passed half an hour earlier, and realized he had gone around in a circle.
He heard a voice say quietly: “Over by here.” He froze. A masked flashlight bobbed into his field of view, like a firefly. In its faint reflected light he made out three soldiers in British-style steel helmets thirty yards away. He was tempted to roll away from them, but decided the movement was more likely to give him away. He drew his pistol: if he was going to die he would take some of the enemy with him. The safety catch was on the left side just above the grip. He thumbed it up and forward. It made a click that sounded to him like a thunderclap, but the British soldiers did not appear to hear it.
Two of them were carrying a roll of barbed wire. Walter guessed they were going to renew a section that had been flattened by German artillery during the day. Maybe I should shoot them quickly, he thought, one-two-three. They will try to kill me tomorrow. But he had more important work to do, and he refrained from pulling the trigger as he watched them go by and recede into darkness.
