Fall of Giants

by Follett, Ken

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” said Fitz irritably. “That’s why I’m the officer.”

  Billy’s blood began to boil. Fitzherbert and Carlton-Smith stood there in their tailored uniforms, glaring at Billy in his itchy khaki, thinking that they could do anything. “The law is the law,” Billy said.

  Prophet spoke quietly. “I see you’ve forgotten your stick this morning, Major Fitzherbert. Shall I send Bevin back to headquarters to get it for you?”

  It was a face-saving compromise, Billy thought. Well done, Prophet.

  But Fitzherbert was not buying it. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.

  Suddenly Bevin darted away. He slipped into the crowd of men behind and disappeared from sight in a moment. It was so surprising that some of the men laughed.

  “He won’t get far,” said Fitzherbert. “And when they catch him, it won’t be very funny.”

  “He’s a child!”

  Fitzherbert fixed him with a look. “What’s your name?” he said.

  “Williams, sir.”

  Fitzherbert looked startled, but recovered fast. “There are hundreds of Williamses,” he said. “What’s your first name?”

  “William, sir. They call me Billy Twice.”

  Fitzherbert gave him a hard stare.

  He knows, Billy thought. He knows Ethel has a brother called Billy Williams. He stared straight back.

  Fitzherbert said: “One more word out of you, Private William Williams, and you’ll be on a charge.”

  There was a whistling sound above. Billy ducked. From behind him came a deafening bang. A hurricane blew all around him: clods of earth and fragments of planking flew past. He heard screams. Abruptly he found himself flat on the ground, not sure whether he had been knocked over or had thrown himself down. Something heavy hit his head, and he cursed. Then a boot thumped to the ground beside his face. There was a leg attached to the boot, but nothing else. “Oh, Christ,” he said.

  He got to his feet. He was uninjured. He looked around at the members of his section: Tommy, George Barrow, Mortimer . . . they were all standing up. Everyone pushed forward, suddenly seeing the front line as an escape route.

  Major Fitzherbert shouted: “Hold your positions, men!”

  Prophet Jones said: “As you were, as you were.”

  The surge forward was halted. Billy tried to brush mud off his uniform. Then another shell landed behind them. If anything, this one was farther back, but that made little difference. There was a bang, a hurricane, and a rain of debris and body parts. The men started scrambling out of the assembly trench at the front and to either side. Billy and his section joined in. Fitzherbert, Carlton-Smith, and Roland Morgan were screaming at the men to stay where they were, but no one was listening.

  They ran forward, trying to get a safe distance from where the shells were landing. As they approached the British barbed wire, they slowed down, and stopped at the near edge of no-man’s-land, realizing that ahead was a danger as great as the one from which they were fleeing.

  Making the best of it, the officers joined them. “Form a line!” shouted Fitzherbert.

  Billy looked at Prophet. The sergeant hesitated, then went along with it. “Line up, line up!” he called.

  “Look at that,” Tommy said to Billy.

  “What?”

  “Beyond the wire.”

  Billy looked.

  “The bodies,” Tommy said.

  Billy saw what he meant. The ground was littered with corpses in khaki, some of them horribly mangled, some lying peacefully as if asleep, some intertwined like lovers.

  There were thousands of them.

  “Jesus help us,” Billy whispered.

  He felt sickened. What kind of world was this? What could be God’s purpose in letting this happen?

  A Company lined up, and Billy and the rest of B Company shuffled into place behind them.

  Billy’s horror turned to anger. Earl Fitzherbert and his like had planned this. They were in charge, and they were to blame for this slaughter. They should be shot, he thought furiously, every bloody one of them.

  Lieutenant Morgan blew a whistle, and A Company ran on like rugby forwards. Carlton-Smith blew his whistle, and Billy set off at a jog.

  Then the German machine guns opened up.

  The men of A Company started to fall, and Morgan was the first. They had not fired their weapons. This was not battle, it was massacre. Billy looked at the men around him. He felt defiant. The officers had failed. The men had to make their own decisions. To hell with orders. “Sod this,” he shouted. “Take cover!” And he threw himself into a shell hole.

  The sides were muddy and there was stinking water at the bottom, but he pressed himself gratefully to the clammy earth as the bullets flew over his head. A moment later Tommy landed by his side, then the rest of the section. Men from other sections copied Billy’s.

  Fitzherbert ran past their hole. “Keep moving, you men!” he shouted.

  Billy said: “If he insists, I’m going to shoot the bastard.”

  Then Fitzherbert was hit by machine-gun fire. Blood spurted from his cheek, and one leg crumpled beneath him. He fell to the ground.

  Officers were in as much danger as men. Billy was no longer angry. Instead he felt ashamed of the British army. How could it be so completely useless? After all the effort that had been put in, the money they had spent, the months of planning—the big assault was a fiasco. It was humiliating.

  Billy looked around. Fitz lay still, unconscious. Neither Lieutenant Carlton-Smith nor Sergeant Jones was in sight. The other men in the section were looking at Billy. He was only a corporal, but they expected him to tell them what to do.

  He turned to Mortimer, who had once been an officer. “What do you think—”

  “Don’t look at me, Taffy,” said Mortimer sourly. “You’re the fucking corporal.”

  Billy had to come up with a plan.

  He was not going to lead them back. He hardly considered that option. It would be a waste of the lives of the men who had already died. We must gain something from all this, he thought; we must give some kind of account of ourselves.

  On the other hand, he was not going to run into machine-gun fire.

  The first thing he needed to do was survey the scene.

  He took off his steel helmet, held it at arm’s length, and raised it over the lip of the crater as a decoy, just in case a German had his sights on this hole. But nothing happened.

  He raised his head over the edge, expecting at any moment to be shot through the skull. He survived that, too.

  He looked across the divide and up the hill, over the German barbed wire to their front line, dug into the hillside. He could see rifle barrels poking through gaps in the parapet. “Where’s that fucking machine gun?” he said to Tommy.

  “Not sure.”

  C Company ran past. Some took cover, but others held the line. The machine gun opened up again, raking the line, and the men fell like skittles. Billy was no longer shocked. He was searching for the source of the bullets.

  “Got it,” said Tommy.

  “Where?”

  “Take a straight line from here to that clump of bushes at the top of the hill.”

  “Right.”

  “See where that line crosses the German trench?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then go a bit to your right.”

  “How far . . . never mind, I see the bastards.” Ahead and a little to Billy’s right, something that might have been a protective iron shield stuck up above the parapet, and the distinctive barrel of a machine gun protruded over it. Billy thought he could make out three German helmets around it, but it was hard to be sure.

  They must be concentrating on the gap in the British wire, Billy thought. They repeatedly fired on men as they surged forward from that point. The way to attack them might be from a different angle. If his section could work its way diagonally across no-man’s-land, they could come at the gun from the Germans’ left, while the Germans
were looking right.

  He plotted a route using three large craters, the third just beyond a flattened section of German wire.

  He had no idea whether this was correct military strategy. But correct strategy had got thousands of men killed this morning, so to hell with that.

  He ducked down again and looked at the men around him. George Barrow was a steady shot with the rifle despite his youth. “Next time that machine gun opens up, get ready to fire. As soon as it stops, you start. With a bit of luck, they’ll take cover. I’ll be running to that shell hole over by there. Shoot steady and empty your magazine. You’ve got ten shots—make them last half a minute. By the time the Germans raise their heads I should be in the next hole.” He looked at the others. “Wait for another pause, then all of you run while Tommy covers you. Third time, I’ll cover and Tommy can run.”

  D Company ran into no-man’s-land. The machine gun opened up. Rifles and trench mortars fired at the same time. But the carnage was less because more men were taking cover in shell holes instead of running into the hail of bullets.

  Any minute now, Billy thought. He had told the men what he was going to do, and it would be too shameful to back out. He gritted his teeth. Better to die than be a coward, he told himself again.

  The machine-gun fire ceased.

  In an instant Billy leaped to his feet. Now he was a clear target. He bent over and ran.

  Behind him he heard Barrow shooting. His life was in the hands of a seventeen-year-old Borstal boy. George fired steadily: bang, two, three, bang, two, three, just as ordered.

  Billy charged across the field as fast as he could, loaded down as he was with kit. His boots stuck in the mud, his breath came in ragged gasps, his chest hurt, but his mind was empty of all thought except the desire to go faster. He was as close to death as he had ever been.

  When he was a couple of yards from the shell hole he threw his gun into it and dived as if tackling a rugby opponent. He landed on the rim of the crater and tumbled forward into the mud. He could hardly believe he was still alive.

  He heard a ragged cheer. His section was applauding his run. He was amazed they could be so upbeat amid such carnage. How strange men were.

  When he had caught his breath, he cautiously looked over the rim. He had run about a hundred yards. It was going to take some time to cross no-man’s-land this way. But the alternative was suicide.

  The machine gun opened up again. When it stopped, Tommy started shooting. He followed George’s example and paused between shots. How fast we learn when our lives are in danger, Billy thought. As the tenth and last bullet in Tommy’s magazine was fired, the rest of the section fell into the pit beside Billy.

  “Come this side,” he shouted, beckoning them forward. The German position was uphill from here, and Billy feared the enemy might be able to see into the back half of the crater.

  He rested his rifle on the rim and sighted at the machine gun. After a while the Germans opened up again. When they stopped, Billy fired. He willed Tommy to run fast. He cared more about Tommy than the rest of the section put together. He held his rifle steady and fired at intervals of about five seconds. It did not matter whether he hit anyone, as long as he forced the Germans to keep their heads down while Tommy ran.

  His rifle clicked on empty, and Tommy landed beside him.

  “Bloody hell,” said Tommy. “How many times have we got to do that?”

  “Two more, I reckon,” Billy said, reloading. “Then we’ll either be close enough to throw a Mills bomb . . . or we’ll all be fucking dead.”

  “Don’t swear, now, Billy, please,” said Tommy straight-faced. “You know I finds it distasteful.”

  Billy chuckled. Then he wondered how he could. I’m in a shell hole with the German army shooting at me and I’m laughing, he thought. God help me.

  They moved in the same way to the next shell hole, but it was farther off, and this time they lost a man. Joey Ponti was hit in the head while running. George Barrow picked him up and carried him, but he was dead, a bloody hole in his skull. Billy wondered where his kid brother Johnny was: he had not seen him since leaving the assembly trench. I’ll have to be the one to tell him the news, Billy thought. Johnny worshipped his big brother.

  There were other dead men in this hole. Three khaki-clad bodies floated in the scummy water. They must have been among the first to go over the top. Billy wondered how they had got this far. Perhaps it was just the odds. The guns were bound to miss a few in the first sweep, and mop them up on the return.

  Other groups were coming closer to the German line now by following similar tactics. Either they were copying Billy’s group or, more likely, they had gone through the same thought process, abandoning the foolish line charge ordered by the officers and devising their own more sensible tactics. The upshot was that the Germans no longer had things all their own way. Under fire themselves, they were not able to keep up the same relentless storm of gunfire. Perhaps for that reason, Billy’s group made it to the last shell hole without further losses.

  In fact they gained a man. A total stranger lay down next to Billy. “Where the fuck did you come from?” Billy said.

  “I lost my group,” the man said. “You seem to know what you’re doing, so I followed you. I sure hope you don’t mind.”

  He spoke with an accent Billy guessed might be Canadian. “Are you a good thrower?” Billy asked.

  “Played for my high school baseball team.”

  “Right. When I give the word, see if you can hit that machine-gun emplacement with a Mills bomb.”

  Billy told Spotty Llewellyn and Alun Pritchard to throw their grenades while the rest of the section gave covering fire. Once again, they waited until the machine gun stopped. “Now!” Billy yelled, and he stood up.

  There was a small flurry of rifle fire from the German trench. Spotty and Alun, spooked by the bullets, threw wildly. Neither bomb reached the trench, which was fifty yards away; they fell short and exploded harmlessly. Billy cursed: they had simply left the machine gun undamaged and, sure enough, it opened up again and, a moment later, Spotty convulsed horribly as a hail of bullets tore into his body.

  Billy felt strangely calm. He took a second to focus on his target and draw his arm all the way back. He calculated the distance as if he were throwing a rugby ball. He was dimly aware that the Canadian, standing next to him, was equally cool. The machine gun rattled and spat and swung toward them.

  They threw at the same time.

  Both bombs went into the trench close to the emplacement. There was a double whump. Billy saw the barrel of the machine gun fly through the air, and he yelled in triumph. He pulled the pin from his second grenade and dashed up the slope, screaming: “Charge!”

  Exhilaration ran in his veins like a drug. He hardly knew he was in danger. He had no idea how many Germans might be in that trench pointing their rifles at him. The others followed him. He threw his second grenade, and they copied him. Some flew wild, others landed in the trench and exploded.

  Billy reached the trench. At that point he realized that his rifle was slung over his shoulder. By the time he could move it to the firing position, a German could shoot him dead.

  But there were no Germans left alive.

  The grenades had done terrible damage. The floor of the trench was littered with dead bodies and—worse to look at—parts of bodies. If any Germans had survived the onslaught, they had retreated. Billy jumped down into the trench and at last got his rifle in both hands in the ready stance. But he did not need it. There was no one left to shoot at.

  Tommy leaped down beside him. “We done it!” he shouted ecstatically. “We took a German trench!”

  Billy felt a savage glee. They had tried to kill him, but instead he had killed them. It was a feeling of profound satisfaction, like nothing he had known before. “You’re right,” he said to Tommy. “We done it.”

  Billy was struck by the quality of the German fortifications. He had a miner’s eye for a secure structure. The
walls were braced with planks, the traverses were square, and the dugouts were surprisingly deep, twenty and sometimes thirty feet down, with neatly framed doorways and wooden steps. That explained how so many Germans had survived seven days of relentless shelling.

  The Germans presumably dug their trenches in networks, with communications trenches linking the front to storage and service areas in the rear. Billy needed to make sure there were no enemy troops waiting in ambush. He led the others on an exploratory patrol, rifles at the ready, but they found no one.

  The network ended at the top of the hill. From there Billy looked around. Left of their position, beyond an area of heavy shell damage, other British troops had taken the next sector; to their right, the trench ended and the ground fell away into a little valley with a stream.

  He looked east into enemy territory. He knew that a mile or two away was another trench system, the Germans’ second line of defense. He was ready to lead his little group forward, but he hesitated. He could not see any other British troops advancing, and he guessed that his men had used up most of their ammunition. At any moment, he presumed, supply trucks would come bumping across the shell holes with more ammunition and orders for the next phase.

  He looked up at the sky. It was midday. The men had not eaten since last night. “Let’s see if the Germans left any food behind,” he said. He stationed Suet Hewitt at the top of the hill as a lookout in case the Germans counterattacked.

  There was not much to forage. It seemed the Germans were not very well-fed. They found stale black bread and hard salami-style sausage. There was not even any beer. The Germans were supposed to be famous for their beer.

  The brigadier had promised that field kitchens would follow the advancing troops, but when Billy looked impatiently back over no-man’s-land he saw no sign of supplies.

  They settled down to eat their rations of hard biscuits and bully beef.

  He should send someone back to report. But before he could do so, the German artillery changed its aim. They had begun by shelling the British rear. Now they focused on no-man’s-land. Volcanoes of earth were erupting between the British and German lines. The bombardment was so intense that no one could have got back alive.