Starshine

by John Wilcox

  It was, however, the Germans who had one last great, heroic offensive left in them. Reinforced by troops sent to the Western Front after their defeat of Imperial Russia, they launched a fierce attack in the spring of 1918 along the whole of the front – and particularly against the denuded British atop the Salient ridges. Summoning up the last of its strength and fighting with an energy and bravery prompted by ‘the last chance’ calls of its high command, the Germans rolled back the British line down from Passchendaele, forcing them to give up within a few weeks the soggy muddy acres they had sacrificed so much to gain over the previous three and a half years.

  A ‘strategic withdrawal’ the British called it, but it was more a fierce rearguard action fought down the slope, each standpoint being overwhelmed by the vastly increased German forces, until the Salient was reduced to a tight little circle before Ypres, smaller than it had ever been – roughly, in fact, the perimeter Jim had proposed to Bertie so many lives ago. Here, the British stood fast.

  Jim Hickman fought stoically, step by step in the retreat, knowing now, it seemed to him, every shell crater, bloated corpse and protruding skeleton in that abominable battlefield. The impetuosity that had characterised his behaviour in combat immediately after Bertie’s death had now subsided into a determination to do his duty but to survive, using all the experience he had gathered in constant fighting on the Western Front over the last three and a half years.

  At one point on the retreat, near Frezenberg, he and his company fought with their bayonets to provide rearguard cover for the weary troops retreating behind them. Despite heavy losses, they held up the enemy for two hours or more and their leadership in that encounter earned Hickman’s young company commander an MC and Jim himself the Military Medal (crosses were only awarded to officers) to add to his Distinguished Conduct Medal.

  It was, then, a still young but now distinguished and experienced Jim Hickman who formed part of the defences at the bottom of the Salient, his battalion crammed together with others in the tight little ring around Ypres, as the spring began to give way to the summer of 1918.

  It was not, however, a completely defensive ring. Reinforcements, even at this late stage in the war, continued to arrive to repair the gaps in the British regiments and ‘offensive patrols’ were launched to test the enemy’s strength after all the desperate fighting of the last few weeks. Could the Germans have expended all of their reserves?

  It was on one of these that Hickman had his last brush with death.

  Shortly before dawn, he and his company commander led a force of two platoons out on a raid to newly established German positions in Chateau Wood, astride what remained of the Menin Road. They were providing left-flank support for an attack in company strength by troops on their right – Hickman had no idea of the regiment manning the line at that point.

  It was a repeat in miniature of many such attacks on a grander scale, except that there was no British artillery barrage to warn the enemy and it was thought that the Germans had had no time to erect wire defences in any depth at the wood. The idea was to hit the enemy positions a little before daylight, cause havoc, capture prisoners and then retire.

  But, as had happened so often in the past, it did not work out that way. Hickman with his platoons crept forward in the darkness with bayonets fixed, dimly aware of the other British troops on their right. They had crossed little more than a hundred yards of the two hundred that separated them from the enemy, however, when star shells went up and machine guns starting raking their lines from well-prepared positions in the wood.

  ‘Charge!’ shouted Hickman’s company commander before he was cut into two by a burst of machine-gun fire.

  ‘Keep going,’ yelled Jim, but once again it was the mud that was the Germans’ main ally. The harsh winter had done nothing to repair the heavy swamp that the Salient had become. It was impossible for men to break into a run when up to their knees in glutinous slime and they went down in dozens before the fire of the machine guns.

  Jim saw the men in front and either side of him fall and felt the kiss of the bullets as they plucked at the sleeve and bottom edge of his tunic. He slipped in the mud and half fell, half rolled into a shell crater, desperate for cover. In the semi-darkness, he was conscious that the hole had one other occupant, a shadowy figure in British uniform.

  He heard the click of a rifle bolt being slid into place and he frowned as the gun was presented to him.

  ‘Hey,’ he shouted. ‘I’m British.’

  ‘I know you are,’ hissed back Company Sergeant Major Jack Flanagan, ‘and I’m goin’ to kill you, you bastard.’ Hickman sensed rather than saw the grimy finger tighten on the trigger. The hammer clicked onto an empty chamber. Flanagan had exhausted all of his ammunition in the attack.

  ‘Fuck it,’ screamed the Irishman and he threw himself across the sloping sides of the crater, his bayonet poised for a fatal thrust.

  But the mud of the slope was no place to mount an attack of that sort and his feet floundered and slipped in the slime until he was below Hickman, as he scrabbled to gain a foothold and stop his descent. But down he went, the mud on his boots now built up to a wedge of some four or five inches under the soles as he struggled in vain to stop himself slipping into the faintly steaming, yellowish liquid that awaited him at the bottom. The more he struggled, however, the further he descended, until his feet slipped under the surface of the liquid slime.

  Flanagan held up his rifle in supplication. ‘For God’s sake help me,’ he cried. ‘I’m going under.’

  Hickman, his eyes wide in horror, inched down towards the bottom and held out his own bayonet-tipped rifle. ‘Throw away your rifle,’ he shouted, ‘hold onto the end of mine.’

  Flanagan did so and reached up until his fingertips clutched the end of the bayonet. Then he screamed as the remnants of the mustard gas lingering on the surface of the liquid below bit into his flesh. At the same time, his fingers slipped away from the tip of Hickman’s bayonet, leaving a trail of blood on the blade and he sank down, hip-deep, then chest-deep, until the dreadful mire at the bottom of the crater had reached to just under his chin. There he stayed for a while, thrashing his arms about in an attempt to keep afloat, but his heavy boots were now down at the bottom and whatever it was that was down there gathered him to it until, his mouth open in terror, he slowly disappeared below the surface.

  Jim watched in horror as a few bubbles reached the surface and then the pool regained its baleful tranquillity as though nothing had happened. He rested his cheek on his arm and found himself shaking. Then he carefully retrieved his rifle and bayonet and rested for a moment on the slope in an attempt to regain his equanimity before he began slowly – very slowly – to inch his way up to the lip of the crater. There he lay, his head just below the edge, gasping in great gulps of comparatively fresh air.

  The encounter with Flanagan had been so sudden, so unexpected, and it had all happened so quickly that it seemed almost like a fragment of a nightmare. He looked below him at the evil water below. Nothing stirred. He could not have imagined it, for there was the Irishman’s rifle lying just above the level of the liquid. He shuddered and closed his eyes.

  He did not know how long he lay there, but it had begun raining again and the clouds above had become lighter, much lighter, when he heard a voice say, ‘Are you wounded, Sarn’t Major?’

  He looked up into the eyes of Sergeant Martin Burgess, hardly recognisable, so covered in mud was his face.

  ‘Hello, schoolmaster,’ gasped Hickman. ‘I never did thank you for your letter. Congratulations on your promotion.’

  ‘Bugger that,’ said Burgess. ‘You’re shaking. Are you wounded?’

  ‘No, Sergeant. I’ve just had a shock, that’s all. Can we get back to the line, do you think?’

  ‘Yes, I believe so. It’s a case of crawling, though. It’s virtually light.’

  ‘Let’s crawl, then, as we did once before. Get crawling, I’ll follow.’

  They reached t
he lines, freezing when the machine guns opened up again, but making it in company with the few other survivors of the unsuccessful sortie. The men on Hickman’s right in the attack, of course, were from the 1st Warwicks. Jim had no idea how many men had been lost from his old company there, but the two platoons which he had helped to lead suffered badly, losing more than a hundred men, it was estimated.

  Thanking Burgess and saying goodbye, Hickman decided he had to report the loss of Flanagan. He did so curtly: ‘He fell into the crater,’ he said, ‘and slid down to the bottom. He may have been wounded. I did all I could to save him but he drowned down there.’

  Burgess nodded and tightened his grip on Jim’s hand. ‘I’ll tell the colonel,’ he said. ‘All I can say is good riddance.’

  ‘Have you still got Cox?’

  Burgess grinned, a flash of white brightening his dark face. ‘Good Lord, no. He was sacked three months ago. He broke down in the line.’

  ‘Good riddance a second time.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Good luck, Jim.’

  ‘Good luck to you, and thanks again, Martin.’

  Hickman couldn’t sleep that night. He felt no sense of triumph, relief or satisfaction in Flanagan’s death. Just disgust in the manner of it, the horror of it. So many men had gone that way; men much more deserving than Flanagan. Then, just before he slipped into blessed sleep, a smattering of relief began to sneak into his consciousness. He had been saved from the task of killing the man, of meeting his pledge. He knew that, if he had seen the Irishman first in the shell hole, his reaction would have been to shoot the bastard – and yet, would he have had the nerve to kill a man in cold blood, a fellow British soldier, however evil the man? Probably not. Then he turned over. It didn’t matter now.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Germans had, indeed, overreached themselves. Riots in the Fatherland, caused by the growing food shortage resulting from the British naval blockade, and the huge losses of life throughout the war and particularly in the last great offensive, caused a widespread collapse across the whole front. The end was as sudden as the spring attacking surge had been. An armistice was signed in November 1918 and the most devastating war the world had ever seen was over at last.

  Jim Hickman returned home at the end of November, granted leave before his final demobilisation. He and Polly, of course, had exchanged letters several times after Bertie’s death but there had been a certain formality, even stiffness, in their correspondence that had never been there before. As Jim stood in the crowded corridor of the train, therefore, as it trundled through the long tunnel before Birmingham’s New Street Station, he was apprehensive. Polly had promised to meet him, of course, but would she have bad news for him? That epistolary awkwardness must have been caused by eruption of other men in her life, surely, since they had last met eighteen months ago?

  As he stepped down onto the platform, kitbag on shoulder, he saw her suddenly materialise from the steam escaping from the locomotive, as she had done before. She wore a dark woollen coat but had retained her summer straw hat, held on top of her bunched hair by a silk scarf tied under her chin. As she saw him, she began to run and then stopped uncertainly.

  He threw down his kitbag and held out his arms. This time without hesitation she ran into them, throwing her arms around his neck and sobbing. He lifted her off her feet and gently swung her around before putting her down and, for a time, they stood there, her face buried in his shoulder as her own shoulders heaved.

  Eventually, he eased her away and, putting his finger under her chin kissed away her tears. ‘The war’s over, my love,’ he murmured.

  Sniffing, she nodded and then dabbed her face with her handkerchief and said, ‘I thought it would never end.’

  They stood looking, shyly, at each other. Jim saw again the high cheekbones, striking green eyes and firm lips that he had conjured up so many times in France and Belgium. There were lines now, however, faint but clear, at the corners of her eyes and perhaps her figure was a little fuller. ‘You haven’t changed a bit,’ he said. ‘Even more beautiful, perhaps, but not much.’

  She grinned. ‘You have, my love. You’re older.’ She traced the lines on his face. ‘And you’re thinner. But I think it makes you look more handsome.’

  ‘Blimey. It must be dark in here. Let’s go. The Wine Lodge?’

  She nodded and he shouldered his kitbag and they walked away arm in arm through the crowds to their old rendezvous. The place had been redecorated and the bunting that had been put up to celebrate the Armistice remained, but their corner table had gone. They found another one and Jim ordered a bottle of St Emilion 1912. His newfound assurance about wine was slightly punctured when told that they had no such wine in stock, so he settled for a St Estèphe 1913. They sat in silence for a moment, regarding each other over the rim of their glasses.

  Then Polly fumbled in her handbag and brought out a small object wrapped in tissue paper. She unwrapped it and produced the diamond. She looked down at it and said, without raising her eyes, ‘Jim, I love you ever so much and, if you still want me, I would like you to mount this into a ring for me.’ Then she started to sob again.

  He reached across and gave her his large white handkerchief. Then he took the diamond and held it up to the light. ‘Not bad for five bob,’ he said, grinning. ‘Consider it made, Mrs Hickman.’

  She looked across at him through her tears. ‘Oh, Jim,’ she said, ‘it’s been such a terrible time, what with Bertie and all. I didn’t know what to say to you really in my letters. I had a feeling that you had grown away from me – and that you’d found a pretty little French girl.’

  ‘Oh, I did. So you’ll find me much more experienced the next time.’ He paused. ‘I never stopped loving you, Polly Johnson, you and your green eyes, but I have to say I was worried a bit about Bertie …’

  ‘Yes.’ Polly dried her eyes and returned the handkerchief. ‘I was confused, Jim. Terribly confused.’

  ‘I know, because I loved the little bugger too. But you never did tell me: my fake letter to his dad about his death. Did it arrive before the official one?’

  ‘Sorry, I should have told you, but I was so upset about Bertie I didn’t even want to write about him. Yes, I had stopped the official bloody thing. So heartless! So hurtful! I burnt it. I just didn’t know what to say to old Poppa Murphy and I was working around to seeing if I could fake my own letter, when your wonderful piece of work arrived.’

  Jim tried to smile, but it was difficult. ‘How did the old chap take it?’

  ‘He was terribly upset, of course, ’cos Bertie was his only child, as you know. But he had the letter framed.’ She leant across. ‘Jim, as I wrote and told you, I was so pleased and proud with what you did with Bertie at the end. Perhaps we can go and see the grave one day?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And as regards Poppa Murphy, the poor old chap died just two weeks ago. We had his funeral a week ago. I’m sorry you missed it.’

  ‘Ah. I’m sorry.’

  ‘He had nothing more to live for. I think he just faded away.’

  ‘Good way to go.’

  An apprehensive look crept over Polly’s face and she took a deep draught of wine, as though for courage. ‘Jim, there’s something else.’

  Hickman frowned. ‘Yes?’

  She fumbled in her handbag again and took out something else wrapped in tissue paper. Another diamond emerged, also unmounted and slightly smaller than the first.

  Polly cleared her throat. ‘It’s from Bertie,’ she said. ‘He gave it to me that … er … weekend when we saw The Maid of the Mountains. I gave him the same answer I gave to you – that I wanted to wait.’

  A slow smile crept across Hickman’s face. ‘The cunning little bugger,’ he said. ‘I had a feeling he might be up to something like that.’ He frowned and gave Polly a stern gaze. ‘Blimey, Pol. An outsider might think that you were waiting to marry the last man standing.’

  The green eyes blazed for
a second. ‘Oh, Jim. That’s a terrible thing to say. You don’t mean it, do you?’

  He reached across and took her hand again. ‘You don’t listen. I said an outsider might think it. I never did. But I must say the dear lad did make it easy for us in the end.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. He wrote me a wonderful letter on the eve of his … you know. I will show it to you some day.’

  ‘Yes, do. Not now.’

  Polly put Bertie’s diamond in his hand and spoke hesitantly. ‘Jim, don’t misunderstand this. But do you think … would you consider … putting this with your own diamond when you make the ring? Would you be upset?’

  He held the diamond to the light, as he had done his own. ‘Bloody thing’s only worth half a crown,’ he said. And then, as her eyes widened in dismay, he grinned. ‘Only joking. I always suspected he would do this so I am long prepared for it. It would be wonderful to have the two together. I promise I’ll make you a ring that we’ll be proud of – all three of us. Oh God, Pol, don’t start crying again.’

  ‘I can’t help it. You’re such a lovely man.’

  They were silent for a while again as they eased into the relief and joy they had found again in each other. They let the glow of the wine seep into them – a new experience, because Polly only drank on ‘special occasions’ and then never as good a vintage as this, and Jim because he was only accustomed to the ‘the plonk’ of Poperinghe.