by John Masters
‘Lucas, sir.’
‘Service?’
‘Twenty years, four months.’
‘Good man! That’s what the New Armies need – a leavening of real soldiers.’
The general was about to speak to Private Brace when he noticed the groundsheet-covered body on the trench floor a pace or two ahead. He slowly stiffened, his right hand rising to the peak of his cap in salute – ‘I, Lieutenant General Sir Bailward Shannon-Watson, salute the gallant dead!’ he intoned. He held the pose a long ten seconds, then snapped down, and moved on.
The groundsheet covering the ‘corpse’ rose and fell away. The drunken soldier boomed blurrily, ‘What did the old fucker call me?’ A shell rumbled close. The R.S.M. appeared to slip, falling on top of the drunk, effectively hiding and stifling him. The general and his party stiffened and crouched. The shell burst behind the next bay. The corps commander and party moved on. The cry came back down the trench, ‘Stretcher bearers! Stretcher bearers!’
Jevons said, ‘Jesus … only five hours to go in the line, and some poor bugger …’
Lieutenant Campbell passed back down the trench, hurrying. Lucas said, ‘Was it bad, sir?’
Campbell shook his head. ‘Just two. Mr Jonson and Lance Corporal Corbett, killed. No one wounded.’ He hurried on.
The soldiers sat down. ‘Want to start the game again?’ Lucas said. They shook their heads. Only five hours …
Jevons started chuckling, and, imitating the general’s potato-in-mouth accent, boomed, ‘I salute the gallant dead …’
Lucas said, ‘He looked a fool, all right, but you’ll remember this day, Jevons, because of him. That’s the first lieutenant general I or any of us ever seen in the front line.’
They came out of the fading twilight, snaking down the communication trenches toward the west, until near Authuille the trench system ended and the men rose painfully like demons from the earth, to trudge on top of it through the slanting rain toward the battalion rendezvous, two miles farther on.
The C.O. waited, tapping his field boots with his swagger stick, his thick head a little thrust forward, legs apart. Behind him stood Campbell, his adjuant, watching, wishing he could make a quick sketch now, something to catch the sense of the heavy sky pushing down on those gleaming inverted steel bowls, the shoulders bowed under the weight of their packs, their weapons, the sky, their days in the line. There was a humming and murmuring in the ranks, that sounded quite different from the sounds the battalion made when going up the line. Then it was intermittent between long, tense silences – muttered exclamations, a command, a rifle dropped, a steel helmet clashing on a bayonet. Now it was continuous, like bees.
The companies fell in on their markers, in close column of platoons. German ‘coal scuttles’ rumbled far overhead to land in muted thunder on British heavy artillery positions farther to the rear.
Campbell watched the platoons coagulating into the dense mass of a battalion formed up in close column and after a while summoned up his courage to speak – ‘Sir … do you think we had better open up, in case some German gunner puts a shell into us?’
Quentin Rowland said, ‘The Germans can’t see us here, Campbell. It’s too dark.’
Campbell thought, it’s still light enough for a spotting aeroplane to see; perhaps even a Boche captive balloon, using night glasses. Quentin stepped forward and the second-in-command shouted, ‘Weald Light Infantry … shun!’ He turned and marched up to Quentin – ‘Battalion present and correct, sir.’
Quentin raised his voice – ‘We’re going north, to the Ypres sector, into general reserve, for ten days at least. You’ve done well here. The brigade commander has congratulated me on your performance while in the line … We must continue to uphold the standards of the regiment.’ His voice rose ten decibels – ‘Men will shave every day! Men will keep their arms, clothing, and equipment clean! Discipline will be maintained! … Yesterday I heard a private soldier calling a lance-corporal by his Christian name. Needless to say, the lance-corporal no longer has his stripe, for permitting such familiarity … Until we return to the line, saluting will …’
A rumbling filled the dusky air, and a German heavy exploded over the hedge twenty yards from the right rear flank of the parade. Campbell, ready to duck as he heard the rumble, realized that not a man had moved – until after the shell burst, when three men in the platoon nearest to the burst staggered out, one falling, his hands to his chest, the others crawling on their knees.
‘Look after those men, Major Green!’ Quentin shouted. He paused then continued – ‘Saluting will be insisted on … Move to the right in column of fours – form fours – right!’
Eight hundred men sprang to attention, formed fours, turned right, and once more snapped their rifles out at ease. Boy Rowland, the leading company commander, shouted, ‘By the left, quick – march!’ and his leading platoon strode off at the light infantry step, 140 paces a minute, rifles held parallel to the ground at the point of balance, sliding along level with the ground.
‘Right wheel!’
The column swung onto the pavé of a road. Campbell, marching a yard behind the C.O., felt a lump in his throat. What divine lunacy! Like the Somme itself, the whole experience … the sheer madness, the terror, the heaped mountains of corpses … the universal, endless shelling … perhaps there was after all no way to survive it, except to ignore it, pretend it wasn’t there, keep to the Waterloo standards.
‘March at ease!’ Quentin passed over his shoulder.
The battalion was in billets at Eecke, a Flemish hamlet just inside France, fifteen miles behind the front line near Ypres. A pond covered with duckweed and hidden by thick hedges lay beside the lane out to the north of the village. A wintry sun shone on wet pasture, heavy cows grazing, muddy plough furrows in the field beyond. Private Lucas sat on a stump beside the pond, a cut willow twig in his hand, a piece of khaki thread from his housewife tied to the end of the twig, a bent pin baited with a worm on the end of the thread. He had his pipe in his mouth, and his soft fore-and-aft cap set at a sharp angle on the side of his head.
High in the sky above four aeroplanes swooped and circled in long, gracious curves, flashing silver or red, brief trails of exhaust smoke following the curves of their passage, now and then a murmured tattoo, like kettledrums, mingling with the nearer sounds of the pond. Private Jessop, lying on his back, sucking a blade of grass, said dreamily, ‘That’s the place to be … the Flying Corps … clean fresh air, dry clothes, nice farmhouse to live in miles back – can’t even ’ear the ruddy artillery … saucy mademoiselle to bring you morning tea in bed … her tits boiling over out of her dress, too …’
Lucas said, ‘’Fore you join the R.F.C. go and have a look at what ’appens to ’em, when they ain’t lucky. There’s a Jerry crashed yesterday, just off the road ’alf a mile t’other side of Eecke. Pilot’s still in it … they ’aven’t ’ad time to scrape ’im out of ’is seat yet.’
Jessop said, ‘But them blokes, the R.F.C., act like lords and ladies used to when everyone wore armour. Why, you know what Mr Rowland, Old Rowley’s son, did last week? The gup is that some German ace’s wife had a baby and our blokes in the R.F.C. got to ’ear of it, so young Rowland went up in the dark, dropped a packet of baby clothes, all pink, ’cos it was a girl, then went ’ome …’ He rolled over, ‘You’ll never catch anything here, Snaky. There ain’t nothing in this pond to catch.’
Lucas said, ‘When you’ve fished as many village tanks in the Shiny, as I have, and come back with a fish, you can open your trap. Besides, I like fishing. It lets you think of nothing … plain fuck nothing, and that’s what a soldier needs most.’
‘Couldn’t sleep last night,’ Jevons said, ‘woke up half a dozen times, in a muck sweat, dreaming I was lying out there in front of High Wood and no one could hear me shouting for help. I was hit in the belly, too, in my dream.’
‘That’s why I fish,’ Lucas said. ‘It’s as good as sleeping, only you don’t dream.’
Jessop said, ‘When are you going to get me a woman, like you promised?’
‘We will,’ Lucas said, ‘but we’ve got to get your strength up first. Fucking a woman’s very tiring, me lad … especially your first. A lot of blokes get ’eart attacks and never recover.’
Jessop turned pale but after a time said, ‘I don’t care if I do drop dead. I’m going to ’ave a woman first.’
‘All right. Day after tomorrow … soon’s we can find just the right one.’
‘Why not tomorrow?’ Jessop asked aggrievedly. ‘My balls are ready to burst.’
‘Tomorrow there’s a concert.’
‘The Divisional Concert party? I seen them four times already. ’Oo wants to look at A.S.C. corporals with ’airy legs pretending to be beautiful women?’
‘No, this is a concert party from Blighty – Florinda’s in it.’
‘The Marchioness of bloody Jarrow,’ Stan Quick said reverently. ‘And to think that when I was fifteen she let me kiss her in the bushes be’ind ’er granddad’s cottage.’
‘And then you felt ’er titties and …? ‘ Jessop began eagerly.
‘I tried,’ Quick said, ‘but she just laughed and ran away. But she’d made me feel good, so I didn’t mind.’
Quentin Rowland was reading letters, sitting in the comfortable little upstairs bedroom in the village cure’s house. The first letter had been from his daughter, still scrubbing floors in Aldershot; she had been to the cinema with Violet, Ivy, and Maggie, jolly nice girls, jolly interesting work, felt she was doing something for the war … enclose a snap: she was still fat, but her expression was more contented, arms linked with three other girls outside what looked like a Nissen hut … The next letter was from Christopher Cate: Laurence had been commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the Weald Light Infantry on his 18th birthday. He was dead keen to get to France, but would probably stay in Hedlington for some time, as there had been questions asked in Parliament about sending eighteen-year-olds.
Quentin looked up, frowning. Bump … bump … bump …rhythmic heaving against the wall with its flowered red wallpaper. The crucifix hanging on it swung out and back in rhythm – tap … tap … tap … Vow of celibacy, indeed!
… John was selling off some of his cows so that he could follow the government’s instructions to convert to arable and grow wheat; he was losing money on it, of course. If taxes went any higher, they’d all be in trouble … Had he seen in the papers that the Parliamentary Inquiry into the Food situation had made its report? And wished to thank its expert advisers Sir Jacob Isaacs, Lord Rownbush, and Mr William Hoggin for the unstinted gifts of their valuable time and invaluable experience and knowledge … Old Mr Kirby had had a minor heart attack in the hunting field, and had been forbidden to ride to hounds any more. Either way, it would probably finish him off …
There was a knock at the door and he called, ‘Come in.’ His adjutant, Lieutenant Campbell, came in, saluting. ‘You told me to come for you twenty minutes before the service, sir.’
Quentin heaved up out of the chair – ‘Oh yes. Thanks.’ He jerked his head at the wall – ‘Listen to that!’ They listened to the sounds of concupiscence, together with stifled grunts – ‘Ten o’clock in the morning, in bed with that woman … the blighter never shaves except on Sunday before Mass … he lives like a king, when most of the villagers are starving, or near it … He’s ignorant, superstitious, selfish … How do the R.C.s do it? How is it that the only padres that are any good – the only ones the men like, whether they’re Protestants, Presbyterians, Methodists, or Jews, it doesn’t matter … are Roman priests?’
Archie said, ‘I don’t know, sir. Perhaps the Pope has given them a dispensation – if they go with the troops into the line, all their other sins and peccadilloes are forgiven.’
‘This curé doesn’t intend to go anywhere near the line … Has Father Caffin taken our R.C.s off to Hazebrouck?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘We’d better go. I asked the general to tell the Bishop that our men needed a real telling off, from the pulpit. I’m not going to have Frog villagers complaining about stolen chickens and us not able to find the culprits. Why, they’ll be thinking they can get away with rape and murder next.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Archie said. The soldiers were going to catch it from the Bishop, were they? He had a feeling that the 1st Battalion of the Wealds could take it.
The battalion was paraded in a hollow square, without hats or helmets, the men’s heads bare to the gently falling sleet. A big table, covered with elaborately embroidered altar cloths, was set up as the focus of the square. The Suffragan Bishop of Headcorn, making an ecclesiastical tour of the Front to elevate the troops’ spiritual substance, began to intone the service of Commination:
Brethren, in the Primitive Church there was a godly discipline, that, at the beginning of Lent, such persons as stood convicted of notorious sin were put to open penance …
Snaky Lucas thought, there was a fish in that pond, and I got him. Showed them youngsters … have to think about a woman for young Jessop. He had his eye on one: that plump woman who ran the baker’s shop at the end of the village. An old sweat in D had told him she’d take a man upstairs for two francs … she was about forty, a bit old for Jessop, but that was better than some jumpy little slut who’d scream bloody murder, her never having had anything bigger than her own finger up her slit.
The Bishop’s surplice glistened in the sleet, his bared white hair was pearled with it, and it mantled the shoulder of his gold silk stole. His voice was deep and strong:
Cursed is he that curseth his father or mother
Amen the soldiers mumbled. Amen, Quentin Rowland cried in a loud clear voice.
Cursed is he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark
Good God, Archie Campbell thought, the Church of England is incredible. Did the men really deserve this, just because someone had stolen a few chickens? And were they really likely to be removing their neighbour’s landmark at this time and place in history? But the C.O. had asked for them to have the curses laid on them: they knew why, and probably approved.
Cursed is he that perverts the judgment of the stranger,
the fatherless and the widow
Amen.
Cursed is he that smiteth his neighbour secretly
Amen.
But what about smiting him openly without guile, with high explosives, incendiary bullets, poisonous gas? Archie thought.
Cursed is he that lieth with his neighbour’s wife
Amen.
Archie glanced covertly at the profile of his C.O., Fiona’s husband. The delights of Fiona’s body, the passions of her female parts enfolding him were well remembered but he could no more make love to her, ever again, than he could fly. The ridiculous words of the old-fashioned, out-of-date commination service had suddenly stuck a knife under his ribs.
Cursed is he that taketh reward to slay the innocent
Amen.
Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man, and taketh
man for his defence, and in his heart goeth from the Lord
Amen.
Lucas cocked an ear. He’d been half listening. The old bugger had a good voice, good enough to be a sergeant major. Hadn’t got him with any of those curses yet … Pa and Ma dead; never thought to slay a kid; bazaar whores weren’t no one’s neighbour’s wives …
Cursed are the unmerciful, fornicators, and adulterers, covetous persons, idolators, slanderers, drunkards, and extortioners.
Amen, Lucas said, with feeling. That was a good last salvo … got nearly everyone there, one way or another.
He muttered to Private Jessop, next to him, ‘See what you’re letting yourself in for, young ’un? Still want us to find you a woman?’
Jessop grated his teeth, and, head bent in prayer, muttered, ‘’Course I fucking do.’
They were working on two railway sidings outside Hazebrouck, unloading ammunition from a train that had brought it from Le Havre.
They were loading it into lorries of the Army Service Corps, which were backed up along the sidings. It was dark and cold, without stars or moon, only gas lights at wide intervals dimmed against air raids, hissing on tall poles at the limit of the railway’s property.
Lucas and Jessop stood in the doorway of a Chemin de Fer du Nord goods wagon, marked like all the others of its type with the legend Hommes 40 Chevaux 8, picking up boxes of British small arms ammunition. The two men picked up a box between them, by the rope carrying loops at each end, swung it to the door and out and down, where Fagioletti and Leavey, reaching up, caught it, and swung it into the lorry parked a couple of yards away. At the next wagon Jevons and Brace, Quick and another soldier were working at the same task. Corporals and lance-corporals were in the work gangs, sergeants supervised. Lieutenant Colonel Quentin Rowland stood near the middle of the siding with the Regimental Sergeant Major and a captain of the Army Service Corps. Quentin said, ‘What make are these lorries? Never seen anything like them before …’
The A.S.C. captain said, ‘They’re J.M.C., sir – Jupiter Motor Company – American engines, the rest made in England and all assembled at Hedlington.’
Oh, Quentin thought, so that’s what Richard and the Yanks had designed. The machines looked high and stark and ugly to his eyes; he said so. The A.S.C. officer said, ‘They’ll never win a Concours d’Elégance, sir – but we like them … everything get-at-able, all parts interchangeable…’
Quentin grunted. Then, ‘Are you sure you don’t have any men for this loading and unloading?’ He glared suspiciously at the captain.
‘Not one, sir,’ the young officer said defensively. ‘Anyone who’s not driving is on maintenance or sleeping.’
‘My men have to sleep, too,’ Quentin growled. He hated to see his men working on this kind of fatigue during what was supposed to be a rest period. ‘These men are trained soldiers,’ he continued, glowering at the dim shape of the Service Corps captain, ‘not coolies.’
