by John Wilcox
He had little breath left as he found the colonel, attempting to study a map of Gelveld spread over a child’s desk. He reported his news.
‘How long have we got, Corporal?’
‘No time at all, sir. The captain is very outnumbered by the look of it.’ His heart was in his mouth as he thought of Bertie.
‘Which way will they come?’
‘Straight down this road, I should think. But there are probably enough of them to try and take you from the east, here as well,’ he pointed, ‘to get behind you.’
The colonel gave him an appraising look. ‘Very well.’ He turned his head and shouted. ‘Major Chatwynd, here quickly. You, Corporal, get into the defences here.’
‘No thank you, sir. I’ve got to get back.’ With that, he turned and doubled away. Leaving the CO with his mouth hanging open.
Instead of following the route he had taken to the church, however, Hickman turned to his right and began trotting – he had insufficient breath left to run – through the ruins of the village. If he could approach the Germans from their flank, he reasoned, he could perhaps put up enough firing to make them think that they were being attacked from that direction, giving Yates and his men time to withdraw. Perhaps! If only he had that Lewis machine gun that he had practised with back on the Plain …
Gunfire to his left showed him that Yates’s platoon, or what was left of it, was still in action. Treading stealthily now, Jim advanced towards the firing, taking advantage of houses that had only been partially destroyed by the shelling and treading fastidiously between the fallen bodies that he began to encounter. If it really was a German battalion, then they would have fanned out to enfilade Yates and his small party, so he should see them soon.
And he did. Six Germans in their flat, soft caps were doubling across his front, looking to their right and not towards him. He licked his lips. He would have to fire quickly, as though he was not alone. He knelt behind a partly destroyed outhouse wall, settled his rifle on the top, took careful aim and fired. And then again and again until he had released six shots. He hit four of the men, the other two falling to the ground and turning to face him. He doubled away, out of their sight, and re-emerged further to their left, when he released two more shots, wounding one of the outstretched Germans, who released a loud cry.
But there was no time for self-congratulation, for a succession of bullets now crashed into the wall from a party of grey-clad men, bayonets drawn, who emerged from the ruined houses. Damn! Which way to run? He must out-think them. Make them think they were being surrounded. He ran further to his right and then doubled back to bring him, he hoped, further behind the Germans’ left flank.
Now he could see a group of some twenty of the enemy cautiously edging their way through the ruins. He inserted another clip into his magazine – thank God he was not still armed with the old single-shot Lee-Metford! – took aim and let loose a succession of six shots quickly, working the bolt so that his thumb ached. He was not too particular about aiming carefully, for speed was preferable to accuracy, but even so, he brought down a further three men before he doubled back on himself.
This time, however, he was seen and a fusillade of shots followed him. Running like a hare, he turned and ran back into the heart of the village, back towards what he hoped would be the rear of Yates’s position, if he had been able to fall back in good order. He easily outdistanced whatever pursuit had been mounted, turned and was relieved to hear gunfire coming from ahead of him, this time. Then he caught a glimpse of a khaki-clad jacket and shouted: ‘It’s Hickman. I’m behind you.’
A familiar voice responded. ‘God bless you, Jimmy. Come on in with your head down, for they seem to be all around us, lad.’
Within a moment, having shaken Bertie’s hand, he was reporting to Yates, whose left arm was bleeding and the hand tucked into his open jacket.
‘Well done, Hickman, but I didn’t expect you to come back, for God’s sake. You say they are on the right of us now?’
‘Yes sir. I think you’d better make a run for it.’
‘No. Must retreat in good order, or they’ll mow us down as we go.’ The captain smiled ruefully. ‘We’ve lost about half of our men, including Lieutenant Baxter and Sergeant Wilkins and the other corporal. I don’t want to lose the rest. Now, you’re my second in command. You take seven men, including your sharpshooter friend, and fall back about a hundred and fifty yards. I will cover you with what is left. Then we will fall back through you as you fire over our heads to cover our retreat. Then you must retreat similarly as we cover you. Got it? An orderly retreat, eh?’
‘Of course, sir. But you’re wounded. Why don’t you go first?’
‘No, it’s only a scratch. Get your men and off you go. No time to waste.’
Jim nodded and scampered among the men touching every other one on the shoulder as they fired from a variety of types of cover. Then, as the captain and the rest set up covering fire, they all ran back, stumbling in the broken ground until Hickman judged they had gone far enough. He detailed Bertie to take up position on the extreme right of their position to warn of any outflanking movement and spread his men as widely as possible behind whatever cover they could find. Then he shouted back to Yates: ‘Ready, sir.’
So began their retreat under fire. They could not possibly have regained the British lines if the colonel had not sent a skirmishing party out into the village to meet them, for they were vastly outnumbered and also enfiladed from either flank. As it was, they lost three more men but the covering fire of the rescue party was strong enough for them to limp back under its protection to where a rough-and-ready line had been erected in a curve projecting along the top of the ridge. There they found sanctuary.
‘Thank you, Hickman,’ said Yates. ‘You saved what was left of us. Now get down into the line. I think it’s going to be a rough evening.’
The Germans were upon them within ten minutes, firing from mortars, heavy machine guns and rifles as they spread out amongst the ruins. It became clear that the colonel’s command was heavily outnumbered and, indeed, outgunned, for it lacked mortars and machine guns. Yet the marksmanship of the British was exemplary, for virtually all of them were Regulars and even the clerks and the cooks, who made up the numbers, had been well trained. As a result, the Germans were held at bay, although the casualties along the top of the ridge were growing.
Jim and Bertie were firing from the reverse side of the wall that had harboured the sniper. His body was still lying near the hole in the brickwork and Bertie’s marksmanship was confirmed by the neat black hole that showed now in his forehead.
‘Ugh.’ Bertie wrinkled his nose. ‘I’ll move along a bit, if you don’t mind.’
Jim wiped his brow. ‘We can’t hold out here much longer, I would have thought.’ He looked behind him. From the ridge the slope fell away into a flat plain on which Ypres could be seen in the distance, with the spire of the cathedral and the distinctive tower of the old Cloth Hall still standing tall. The plain was still dotted with red-tiled farmhouses but the woods that marked it in clusters were becoming ravaged by shellfire and craters had formed in clusters across all the fields. Despite the barrage to which it had been subjected, what remained of the Menin Road could be seen, dipping down to the plain and running as straight as a die to the west. The makeshift trench line that they had scraped out a couple of hundred yards below them stood out for its freshly turned soil rampart but, seen from the top of the ridge, it seemed to offer little cover.
‘It would be stupid to fall back down to there,’ muttered Hickman.
His faith in the judgement of senior officers was already becoming strained, for it seemed that both sides seemed to retain a blind faith in frontal attack against well-armed troops dug in. ‘I just hope someone’s forming a proper plan for retreat. We can’t hang on here and that’s not a proper line.’
Bertie wrinkled his nose. ‘Why don’t you leave it to the generals to worry about that?’ he asked. ‘Personally, I’m
just going to concentrate very strongly on staying alive for a bit, without worryin’ about grand strategy an’ all.’
Over the next few hours, the position at the top of the ridge descended into a kind of stalemate, with both sides reluctant to make a frontal attack. But the superiority in numbers and firepower of the Germans began to tell and casualties began to mount among the British. Dusk, then, was welcomed by the defenders lining the ridge and as soon as darkness fell completely, whispered orders were passed down the line to retreat in sequence down the slope.
Jim Hickman gave up a silent prayer as they passed the rough trenches they had dug and continued to march down towards the plain, not wheeling to the right, to his relief, to resume their previously vulnerable positions at Nun’s Wood, but continuing until the ground was level beneath their feet. Eventually, they were halted at newly preserved defensive positions at what he guessed would be roughly halfway between the ridge and Ypres. Here the trenches were comparatively sophisticated, deep enough to offer some protection from shellfire and were shielded, to some extent, by two lines of wire.
‘Thank God for that,’ said Jim. ‘Someone’s been thinking for once.’
‘And have you heard the rumour?’ asked Bertie.
‘What’s that?’
‘The King of the Belgians, no less, has used his brain and has ordered that the slush gates, or whatever you call ’em …’
‘Sluice gates?’
‘That’s just what I said. Anyway, the things have been opened on the canals to the north of Wipers, lettin’ in all the North Sea, would you believe it. They say that the water is about half a mile wide and has stopped the German’s advancing and has made the town safe from that side. It’s too deep and wide to cross, so the Belgian troops facin’ them have been able to come across to help us out in the middle, so to speak.’
Hickman frowned. ‘Sounds good. But it will also free lots of the Boche to move over here against us.’
‘Ah, Jim lad. You’re right. I never thought of that. You just can’t win in this bloody war, now can you?’
Hot meals miraculously appeared via the shortened supply line and the refugees from the ridge were fed. Guards were posted and they were allowed to sleep until stand-to at dawn. No further attack was mounted by the Germans, however. It was as though the enemy were content to have forced back the British line and were themselves taking respite from the bitter fighting that had marked the last few days.
A veneer of civilisation in the form of regular meals, only intermittent shelling and the occasional bursts of machine-gun fire now returned to the two comrades as they settled into line duty in the trenches, standing to at dawn, taking their turns as lookouts on the fire step and, once, joining a young subaltern in an uneventful night patrol in no man’s land. They both undertook the duty of writing home.
‘Are you writing to Polly, then, Jim?’ asked Bertie.
‘Yes. Would you like me to send her your love?’
‘No, thank you very much. I’m doing that myself, because I’m writing to her too.’
A slightly uneasy silence fell on the two and they returned to their letters. It was broken, inevitably, by Bertie: ‘It’s a bit funny, this, when you think of it, isn’t it?’
‘Funny? What do you mean, funny?’
‘Well …’ The little Irishman wriggled his bottom on the firing step. ‘I mean, it’s funny. Both of us together like this and loving the same girl and not … well … not bein’ jealous and such. Not mindin’, I mean.’
Jim sucked his pencil. ‘I suppose it is, when you think of it.’
‘I mean … Would you be glad if I was killed, see? And cleared the way for you an’ Polly and so on.’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Neither would I – if you was killed, that is. Funny, though, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. I suppose it is.’
The two letters were given to the mail clerk at exactly the same time but neither knew the contents of the other’s. But Jim did ask Bertie a personal question that had been on his mind for some time.
‘You was only four when you left Ireland to come to Brum, weren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why then do you speak with as broad an Irish accent as I’ve ever heard? Growing up in Brum – you’d think you’d talk like me.’
Bertie scratched his head. ‘I suppose it’s me dad. Livin’ with him, I mean. And goin’ to the School of the Holy Mother. They’re all Catholics there, like me, of course, and though some of them are not Irish, most of them are. So it’s stuck with me.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘Personally, I think it’s what gives me me roguish charm. It’s why Polly loves me much more than she loves you …’
Jim gave him a playful punch in the chest.
‘Hickman.’ Captain Yates came down the trench, his arm in a sling. ‘You and Hawkeye here, get your stuff together. You’re going back down the line. You’ve been posted to a new Territorial battalion that has just arrived – part of the Warwicks. Sergeant Flanagan here has come to collect you and two others.’
The captain smiled at them both, a smile that seemed to take years off his age and make him look like the captain of the school cricket team, congratulating them for taking wickets. He held out his left hand. ‘I shall miss both of you,’ he said. ‘You are both fine soldiers, if …’ he grinned at Bertie ‘… a little eccentric. I have commended you for your action back up on the ridge, Hickman. Whether anything will come of it, I don’t know. But good luck to you both. Now, grab your things and off you go.’
They both shook hands with the young man and ducked away to find their meagre belongings. Then they joined the sergeant, who was waiting for them at the junction with the communications trench. He was a tall man, muscular and heavily jowled, wearing a Connaught Rangers cap badge and a forbidding scowl.
Bertie gave him a welcoming grin. ‘Sorry to have kept you waitin’, Sarge,’ he said.
For a moment, there was silence. Then Flanagan took two paces forward so that Bertie was forced to step back, so that he was pressed against the wall of the trench. The sergeant pushed his jaw forward and down so that his face was about an inch away from that of the little Irishman.
‘You say “sergeant” when you speak to me,’ he hissed. ‘“Sergeant”. D’yer hear, you little papist cunt?’ His accent, thick and guttural, was heavy with Northern Irish prejudice and his spittle hit Bertie in the eye, so that he blinked. ‘Now I’m a regular soldier, not a part-time little fucker like the pair of you. You’ve been here just a few days. I’ve been whetting me bayonet in the service of the King for the last fifteen years. God knows why I’ve been put in with a bunch of Territorials but I can only think it is to smarten you up. So you’d better learn quickly that I don’t approve of undue familiarity with officers, like you two have just displayed, and you will learn to address NCOs correctly and …’ he looked down with disgust at Bertie’s tangled puttees and mud-spattered tunic ‘… you will smarten up, cunt, or I’ll have you on fatigues day and night for weeks on end, so that you’ll wish that you’d never been born.’
‘Sergeant.’ Hickman took a step forward.
Flanagan whirled round. ‘Don’t you dare interrupt me, Corporal. I don’t know how you got that stripe in just a few days wankin’ about in the trenches here, but I’ll have it off your arm in two seconds if you try to stand up to me, lad. Now. Follow me and don’t hang about. If you lose me, I will have you put on a charge of desertion – and that means a bullet in the early morning.’
He turned on his heel and marched away, so quickly that Jim and Bertie had difficulty in keeping him in sight at first in the crowded communication trench. Not once did he look behind him to see if the two were close behind.
‘Blimey,’ whispered Bertie. ‘I think we could be in trouble with this bloke.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll handle him. You’ll see.’
Bertie shot an anxious glance at his friend. ‘I’m not so sure, Jimmy. I’m not so sure.’
&n
bsp; CHAPTER THREE
Mrs Victoria Johnson heard the letter box click and hurried over to pick up the two letters that fell on the doormat inside 64, Turners Lane. She smiled with relief when she saw the handwritten envelopes and called up the dark narrow stairway to her daughter: ‘Polly, two letters from Belgium. They’ve gotta be from the lads.’
‘Oh thanks, Mum.’ Polly took the stairs three at a time, sliding her hands down the rails on either wall, and swept up the letters. She turned and galloped back up the stairs, disregarding her mother’s cry, ‘You’ll be late if you start reading ’em now.’
She shut the door of her bedroom and sat on the edge of her bed, face flushed. To read them now, or save them for later …? Read them now, of course, then she could return to them at her leisure as the day wore on. So she tore open both envelopes, without withdrawing their contents, tossed them both over her shoulder so that they fell onto the bed behind her and then groped blindly to pick up whichever one came to hand first. That way, she would show no favour to one of her boys before the other.
It was from Bertie and she grinned at the typically unscholastic, pencilled scrawl. It began by saying, without punctuation, that he loved her more than anything else in the world and that he and Jimmy had already been in action and that Jim had gained a lance corporal stripe. ‘He is a good soldier Polly so he is better than me.’ He had not washed properly for over a week and had a large hole in his sock. Would she tell his father that he would write to him later and would she then read that letter to him because, as she knew, the old man couldn’t do the writing and reading stuff? And he loved her more than anything else in the world.
She put down the single sheet of paper and wiped away a tear.
Then, a smile replacing the tear, she opened Jim’s letter. It was written, also in pencil – did they not have any pen and ink in France? – in his equally typical, forward-slanting hand. It began by recording chronologically their crossing of the Channel (the first sight of the sea for both of them), the journey to the front in open rail trucks, the march in darkness to the front and then a brief sentence outlining what action had followed. But, although he covered both sides of two sheets of paper, compared to Bertie’s one, there were no details – and no mention of the award of his lance corporal’s stripe, although he included a reference to Bertie shining as a marksman. They were, he said, looking after each other and were hoping soon for a period of rest away from the front line. Polly sighed as she looked in vain for some sign of affection. The letter, however, concluded only with ‘your affectionate friend, J. Hickman.’
