Last Train to Waverley

by Malcolm Archibald

  “We’ll march at night and rest during the day, lads. I am sure our lines will stiffen soon and Fritz’s advance will slow up.”

  I am not sure of any such thing. It looks as if Fritz has broken through and smashed us all to atoms. Now they are just mopping up what remains.

  “How will we get through their lines, sir?” A sensible question from Aitken, unlike his normally near frantic self.

  “We will cross that bridge when we fall over it,” Ramsay said. He emphasised his grin so it could be seen in the dark. “In other words, I don’t know yet, but something will turn up.”

  As he had hoped, the frank admission brought a quiet laugh from the men, they appreciated honesty.

  “Right lads, keep together and keep quiet. We will stick on the tail of the Hun. If anybody finds ammunition, let us all know. We are the Royals, Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard!”

  They moved on again, slowly and quietly, stopping frequently whenever they heard German voices. Three times they came across small groups of dead men, each time a compact body of British soldiers surrounded by a scattering of Germans. On each occasion Ramsay ordered his men to rob the dead of their ammunition and bombs, and they moved on, leaving the crumpled corpses behind them.

  “God rest, lads,” McKim said each time, and some of the Royals murmured their own words. They marched on, grimly, into the gloom and always toward the distant grumble and flash of the guns.

  An hour before dawn they were still deep in the battered maze of trenches and abandoned dugouts that had been the British support lines. They had passed scores of bodies, both British and German, and as many horses, some still kicking in their agony.

  “It’s not right to leave them to suffer,” Aitken said, but Ramsay hardened his heart.

  “Ignore them,” he ordered. “We are more important than animals.” He noticed Aitken hesitating. “Come on Aitken! Move!”

  They pressed on, wending their way through the nightmare tangle of water-filled trenches and ripped sandbags. To the east the sky was stygian, as though the sun had no desire to open its eyes on another day of desperate pain.

  “Ahead there,” McKim spoke in a soft whisper. “Fritz.”

  Ramsay halted the men. They stopped, shoulders hunched, feet scuffing in the ankle deep mud, but they unshouldered their rifles and looked forward. They were bone-weary and afraid, but still they were soldiers, still they were Royal Scots. Ramsay could not voice his pride. These men deserved more than he could give.

  He could hear the mutter of men directly across their path. “How many?”

  “Not sure,” McKim said. “A foraging party, I think. Do you want me to have a look?”

  Ramsay considered. As the officer his place was with the bulk of the men, but he desperately wanted to prove himself now. I am not good enough for these soldiers. I lead them to death every time.

  “I’ll come as well,” he decided. “Flockhart, you look after the rest of the lads.” For a long moment Ramsay wondered if he should take Flockhart with him and settle matters, but reason prevailed. An experienced sergeant was priceless in the situation they were in.

  You’ll keep, you bastard. When the time is right I’ll settle matters with you.

  McKim’s teeth gleamed in a grin. “Right, sir. Let’s see how many Huns there are.”

  Ramsay nodded. He handed back the rifle he had been carrying and loosened his revolver in its holder. In situations like this, the long rifle would only be an encumbrance. He noted that McKim also discarded his rifle, but carried his bayonet and a short, viciously studded club.

  “You have done this before,” Ramsay accused.

  Of course you have, you’re a natural soldier. I wonder how many men you have killed in your time? You love this, don’t you?

  “Yes, sir.” McKim’s face was expressionless. “This way, sir.” He did not duck as a distant shell exploded. “We’d best go by trench.”

  The trenches were shallow here, little more than muddy depressions in a grim landscape of shell holes, broken duckboards and the skeleton of an occasional tree. This had been the old Somme battlefield, ground hard-won at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and months of hell, given back to the Germans in a few hours. Ramsay knew he should take the lead but sense told him that McKim was the more experienced man.

  As if he had read his thoughts, McKim glanced over his shoulder. “Follow me, sir, and keep your head down. There’s nothing a Fritzy sniper likes better than an officer’s head silhouetted against the gun flashes.” He shrugged. “Not that there is much gunfire near us, sir.”

  The ground was saturated, chill with night and littered with the detritus of war. There was a skull, teeth grinning obscenely to the uncaring sky, a broken rifle, a litter of paper, a shell hole reeking with phosgene gas, an unexploded 5.9 inch shell half-buried in the mud, a decomposing corpse within a uniform so rotted it was impossible to tell the occupant’s nationality and a dozen fresh bodies and parts of bodies, British and German, intertwined in a macabre embrace of death.

  When McKim dropped to all fours Ramsay followed. There was a slight ridge ahead, rising raggedly to what had once been a stronghold until German shellfire had blasted it to a shambles. Ramsay saw a head bobbing up, another joined it, the round helmets distinctive even in the filthy dark.

  “Fritz is using this as an observation post,” he whispered. “He’s placed a standing patrol here to watch his back.” There was no need to explain so much to a ranker, but this was not a conventional situation.

  “Yes, sir,”` McKim said. His eyes were predatory in the night and his hand strayed to his wicked bludgeon. “Orders, sir?”

  He wants to kill them. His bloodlust is strong in this environment and he wants to kill every German he sees. What the hell do I do now? Destroy this post and risk alerting their companions, or slide past and risk them hearing us?

  Decide. You are supposed to be an officer, remember? Come to a decision. Indecision is the worst possible fault in an officer.

  “Orders, sir?” McKim repeated. His eyes glittered in the dark.

  Ramsay thought rapidly. He had two distinct choices: try and go round the Germans, which meant making a long detour though this shell-battered landscape and risk being even further behind German lines, or destroy them.

  “We’ll get closer,” he decided. “We will see how many there are.”

  There are bound to be more than just two. I need time and information before I decide what to do.

  “Maybe best if I go myself sir?” McKim suggested. He lowered his voice slightly so Ramsay had to strain to hear him. “I was posted to the Lovat Scouts in the South African War. I know how to remain unseen.”

  “We’ll both go,” Ramsay told him.

  Lovat Scouts? That meant that McKim was something of an expert in scouting and spying out the land, he would be an excellent shot as well. I must bear that in mind.

  Ramsay remembered how difficult it was to man a listening post. The German soldier’s nerves would be on edge, they would jump at every sound and every supposed movement in the shattered landscape around them. They would be taut, gripping their rifles ready to fire; their eyes would strain into the dark, hoping for a quiet night.

  We might disappoint their hopes.

  “I’ll lead,” he said. He was the officer, his was the position of most danger, God help him.

  Ramsay dropped to his stomach, ignoring the foul water that spread its chill right through him. He moved slowly, wriggling in the deepest shadows, stopping whenever there was a noise or a breath of wind that may carry their scent toward the listening men. He had known a man, a veteran of the North West Frontier, who had been able to smell the Germans by the food they had eaten and he had no doubt that some among the Germans would be equally skilled. Three years of warfare had given him nothing but respect for the enemy. They were not monsters, just scared and very able fighting men who had every bit as much experience as the British at this type of warfare. The propagandists and newspaper co
lumnists might sit in their comfortable offices dreaming up lies to create hatred against the enemy, but out here where it counted nobody paid much heed to that; they fought to survive, and for the regiment, the company and for the man who stood at their side. They fought because they had to, and because they hoped to get home alive far more than they hoped for a glorious victory.

  Concentrate, for God’s sake, or Fritz will slaughter us.

  They crawled slowly from shadow to shadow, always watching the sandbagged emplacement on the ridge ahead, alert for movement or noise. When the occasional puffs of wind died, there was nothing to disguise their scent save the normal pungent stench of the battlefield, and nothing to take away any sound they made save the distant rumble of the guns. Ramsay halted twice, listening, but McKim was as silent as a shadow. He could hear a slight mumble from the front and pictured the Germans huddled in their trench, peering over the parapet through periscopes with bombs ready to hand and an assortment of lethal weapons all carefully designed to maim and kill stray British soldiers.

  The sudden voice came as a challenge, the words loud but unrecognisable. Ramsay froze, hugging the ground as closely as he could. He saw McKim’s eyes gleam like a predatory cat and heard the soft slither of a bayonet sliding from its scabbard. A head appeared behind the sandbagged parapet with the coalscuttle shape of a German helmet obvious, even in the dark. A flare shot up, blue and harsh, its glare remorseless on the savaged ground.

  Ramsay wondered why the German sentry could not hear the thunder of his heart as he lay under the pitiless light. He saw the shadows drift and slowly lengthen as the flare dipped downward.

  There was a shout, and the crack of a rifle, followed by another and another. Ramsay tried to drag himself under the ground; something touched his arm and he started in fear, thinking he had been hit again.

  “It’s not us,” McKim breathed across to him. “They’re not shooting at us. Look!”

  Ramsay realised that McKim was correct. There were five Germans in the listening post and all were firing frantically in the opposite direction. A voice floated towards them, gloating, “Got you Tommy, you ugly pig! Now you die!”

  “Right, sir,” McKim’s voice was hard. “Now we’ve got them!” Without waiting for permission he rose from the ground and ran forward.

  “McKim!” Ramsay’s harsh whisper was lost in the night. Cursing, he jumped up and followed, holding his revolver before him and hoping the Germans were too busy firing to hear the two Royals coming from a different direction. His feet splashed in deep puddles; mud dragged at his ankles, slowing him down but he pushed on, reckless with fear and determination as he saw the small figure of McKim dance ahead of him.

  McKim moved quickly but silently, keeping in a half crouch as he dodged from shadow to shadow in the wicked maze of shell holes and saps and half obliterated trenches. He did not glance back and when he was ten yards away he halted in the shelter of what had been a firing bay in a previous trench line, lifted a grenade, wrenched out the pin, poised and threw.

  “McKim!” Ramsay joined him in the bay. “I gave no orders …”

  McKim did not reply. “Two … three … four.”

  “What the devil …” Ramsay stopped as he realised McKim was timing the fuse of his grenade.

  “Now!” McKim was on his feet and running a fraction of a second after the grenade exploded. Again Ramsay followed. He saw the flash of the explosion and heard screams as McKim bounded up the sandbag parapet. For one instant McKim was highlighted against the flare of the bomb; a small man with his helmet pushed forward over his face, a bayonet in his left hand and the club in his right, and then he jumped down into the observation post and was lost to sight.

  With no more need for silence, Ramsay roared out “Up the Royals!” and followed the corporal. He felt an amazing freedom, as if his life no longer mattered. He had put aside his caution and was in the hands of the Gods of War; let them decide his fate. Life and death were two sides of the same ugly coin and he was part of the landscape of death.

  “Up the Royals!”

  The screams continued, accompanied by McKim swearing fluently. There was another yell and Ramsay vaulted the parapet. There were two Germans on the ground, one dead and the other writhing in agony from the wounds inflicted by the grenade. Another was leaning against the sandbag wall, feebly trying to remove McKim’s bayonet from his abdomen. McKim was wrestling with a fourth. Before Ramsay could react he saw McKim’s head come back and smash forward; the rim of his steel helmet smashed the bridge of the German’s nose, breaking it in a gush of blood. The German howled and fell back, but McKim followed, using his boots fiercely and the German crumpled into a foetal ball, pleading, “Kamerad; kamerad!”

  “I’ll kamerad you, you dirty German bastard!” McKim lifted his club and rained a succession of blows, grunting with effort as they landed on the face and head of the cowering, screaming German soldier. Ramsay distinctly heard the sound of breaking bone.

  The fifth German looked over his shoulder, mouth wide and eyes staring behind thick glasses. He was young; he could be no more than eighteen and was obviously terrified. As Ramsay stared at him, the German’s nerves broke and he tried to run for the sap. Ramsay levelled his revolver and shot him, dispassionately. He saw the boy turn and shot him again, aiming for his chest. He had nothing against the German but there was no time to take prisoners with half the German army between them and safety and this man could not be allowed to go free and alert his comrades.

  What a stupid excuse for a legal murder. The Germans will hear the shots and send a fighting patrol to investigate.

  McKim had finished his men and was cleaning the blood from his bayonet with a piece of sacking from a sandbag. He nodded to Ramsay. “That’s the way clear now, sir,” he said. He slid the bayonet back into its scabbard and removed his helmet. He examined the rim critically and wiped the greasy blood from it. “A fellae from the Hairy-legged taught me that move, sir – the H. L. I. – Highland Light Infantry. They all sharpen the rim of their helmets when they go on trench raids. Fritzy doesn’t like that much.”

  “You did not wait for orders,” Ramsay began, but stopped. McKim’s timing had been perfect. If he had hesitated the Germans might have stopped firing and heard them approaching. “Well done, McKim; I will recommend a medal for you when we get back to the lines.”

  “I was just doing my job, sir,” McKim said. All the same, Ramsay thought, he looked pleased at the words.

  The distinct sound of boots splashing through mud came out of the darkness. Ramsay turned and levelled his revolver while McKim lifted a German rifle and worked the bolt.

  “Royal!” The challenge sounded clear in the night and McKim sighed and lowered the rifle.

  “Scots!” he called back.

  Flockhart led the men in. “We thought you had run into trouble,” he said. He looked around the shambles that had recently been a German listening post. “Obviously we were wrong.”

  “We might do yet,” Ramsay pointed to the dead Germans. “Their pals will be sending out a patrol to see what all the fuss was about. We’d best be on our way.”

  They froze as a flare hissed into the sky and exploded. The blinding white light cast stark shadows on the ground. They remained static, for to move was to invite massive retaliation from the unseen but undoubtedly watchful and vengeful, Germans. The flare remained; inviolate, immune, a star of wonder with an opposite reality to the Christian star of hope, until it slowly faded and slid to the ground.

  “Right, lads, off we go and quickly, before Fritz arrives in force.”

  Ramsay led them at a stumbling trot, now more concerned with putting distance between his men and the destroyed listening post rather than keeping quiet or unobserved. He sensed that the small victory had restored confidence in his men; they were soldiers again, Royal Scots, rather than refugees from a defeated army. He heard McKim recount the action to Cruickshank, who grunted, “Serve the bastards right after bombing Edinburgh. They
murdered my wife.”

  Ramsay said nothing. He knew about the zeppelin raid on Edinburgh and knew there had been a number of casualties, but he had since heard scores of men state that one or other of their relatives had been killed in that raid and claim that as some justification for their own actions.

  “Royal Sco-o-ots!” somebody shouted, heedless of the need for concealment, and before Ramsay could call for silence, somebody else joined in, elongating the vowel in “Scots” so it sounded like the blast of a horn: a challenge to the mighty German army that although they may be victorious today, not all the British were defeated and here was a force of very defiant fighting men. Shouting may have been foolish when they were surrounded by the enemy, but it was splendid for morale. The call came again and this time he joined in, blaring out his challenge to anybody who happened to be listening.

  “Royal Sco-o-o-o-ots!”

  “Royal Sco-o-o-o-ots!”

  It was good to yell defiance to the world, to show they were undefeated and unbroken, not just by the German army but also by fate and the horror and pain and anguish and guilt that the politicians and kings and leaders had unleashed upon them, without thought or concern of the results on the millions of ordinary men and women who bore the brunt and paid the price.

  “Royal Sco-o-o-o-ots!”

  It was not a regimental call, not so much pride in that particular formation of the British Army to which fate had consigned their fortunes, but more a declaration of their own individuality combined with confirmation that they were united in comradeship with the human race.

  The slogan ended in a wild cheer by the men, followed by near hysterical laughter, and then Ramsay ordered them to silence and increased their speed.

  From somewhere in the dark came a reply. A single voice shouted, indistinct, and then others took up the call until the noise was a deep-throated chorus rolling across the confusion of mud and trenches and shattered dugouts.