The General’s collected volumes were faded and thumbed, unlike the pristine copy in the car, and Mitchell could see that the Somme one had been heavily annotated long ago in thin spidery handwriting, full of tail loops and curlicues, in violet ink.
‘You find the place. Captain. It’s in the battle of Hameau, about three-quarters of the way through. I think there’s a marker in it.’
A marker there was: the menu of the Christmas dinner of ‘C’ Company, the 29th Battalion of the Rifles, December 25th, 1915.
Mitchell examined the card, fascinated.
- SOUPE “ROLE RENVERSE” (It is usually we who are in it)
- TURKEY & SAUSAGES (“Made” in France)
- CHOUX DE BRUXELLES (Further refugees)
- POMMES DE TERRE “DUG-OUT” - PLUM PUDDING (An excellent opportunity of getting a little of your own back)
- CHINESE “QUICK-MARCH” - RATION BISCUITS - DESSERT (Nobody wants to. Much too risky in war time)
– CAFE (Not yet out of bounds)
- SPIRITS - LIQUEURS (Not for the youngsters).’
He turned the card over. There were five officers, including a 2nd Lieut. D. W. Leigh-Woodhouse, and well over a hundred NCOs and other ranks - nearer 150 including a dozen or more machine-gun instructors who had shared the feast. He ran his eye down the printed names. If Leigh-Woodhouse had eventually been George Davis’s company commander it didn’t follow that they’d been in the same company at the start of the battle. But it would be useful to know, nevertheless.
Acting Corpl. Davis G.
It was the Rifle Brigade, of course, and there was no such thing as a Lance Corporal in it - they were always called Acting Corporals. Obviously this battalion of civilians had taken over all the jealously-guarded Rifle Brigade customs and usages, lock, stock and barrel.
‘Have you found it?’ said the General rather querulously. ‘The 291st Brigade attack, you want.’
The 291st Brigade moved forward at 4.30 a.m. when the guns lifted their fire to form a barrage beyond…’
‘Yes, sir. Where do you want me to start?’
Mitchell could see that the violet ink marks didn’t start for a long paragraph after the lifting of the barrage.
‘With the Berkshires, boy - they were just ahead of us. Our “D” Company supported them, poor devils.’
‘ The 9/North Berks Fusiliers - ‘
‘That’s it. Go on from there.’
‘The 9/North Berkshire Fusiliers lost heavily by enfilade machine-gun fire, direct and indirect, from Bouilletcourt Farm and Bouillet Wood as it approached Hope Trench and came to a halt in shell-holes some distance short of their objective. By then Lieut. Colonel H. P. T. Challener had been mortally wounded and every officer except one hit.’
‘Go on a few paragraphs. Captain.’
‘Yes, sir … Folhwing them, the rest of the 20/Rifle Brigade also suffered from enfilade fire, but it was at this point that the crew of the second tank broken down in the sunken road behind Honey Trench succeeded in restarting their machine - ‘
Mitchell looked at the General.
‘You’ve written “Euclid” in the margin, here, sir?’
‘That’s right. Euclid was the name of the rank. It was commanded by a lieutenant with a classical education, we went back in the same ambulance together. He was a schoolmaster from Yorkshire, and he insisted on telling me why he was there. It seems they’d come round asking for volunteers who understood the working of the internal combustion engine. He assumed it was for the Army Service Corps, so he naturally volunteered - he maintained he was a tank commander under false pretences. I told him he should have known better than to have volunteered … He’d called his tank “Euclid” anyway. We were supposed to have two tanks that morning - it was only the second time I’d ever seen the wretched things.’
He acknowledged Mitchell’s badges with an apologetic chuckle.
‘I’m sorry, my boy, but they were wretched things in those days; they were frightfully slow and they were always breaking down. And the poor fellows inside were practically asphyxiated by the carbon monoxide from the engines, I believe - not at all what you’re used to.’
Mitchell smiled back uneasily. It was ironical that in reality the only tanks he knew anything about at all were the General’s ‘wretched things’, which he had studied at length. Indeed, the old man’s memories of them came as no surprise at all, they tallied with other first-hand accounts he had received from survivors of Flers and Bullecourt; only the armchair strategists of a later generation confused Haig’s tanks with Rommel’s panzers.
‘Anyway, both our tanks broke down. One broke its tail on the way up - those wheels at the back, you know.’
‘The hydraulic stabiliser.’
‘That’s it. And the other one, the schoolmaster’s tank, was stopped in a sunken road just behind our front line, so the poor old Berkshires attacked without it, for all the good it might have done them. But go on, Captain, go on.’
‘ - succeeded in restarting their machine. Veering to the right - ‘
‘That was the only direction it could veer,’ murmured the General. ‘There was something wrong with its steering - that was how it got into the sunken road in the first place, I think.’
Mitchell stole a side-glance at Audley and was surprised to find an expression of rapt attention. Either the big man was a fine actor or he was genuinely interested. But the General was looking at him, expectantly.
‘Veering to the right, this tank dealt with a machine-gun in Harrow Trench and successfully engaged the strongpoint on the edge of Bouillet Wood-‘
‘Huh!’ snorted the General, matching a violet exclamation mark in the margin. ‘Go on, go on!’
‘ - and enabling the surviving members of the flank company to enter the southern tip of the wood - ‘
‘Successfully engaged?’ The bald head shook vehemently. ‘ “Successfully engaged the attention” was more like it. It did that at least, so I suppose it’s fair enough, that last bit. But our chaps were the ones who dealt with that strongpoint, as I remember, because that was when it got ditched for good and all. Go on, then.’
‘- before breaking down again. Although tangled undergrowth made movement difficult, the Riflemen skirmished through the wood with skill and determination, being joined by the rest of the battalion and a party from the 9/North Berkshires (consisting of one sergeant and twenty-four men). As the light increased the Riflemen and Fusiliers fought their way through the southern part of the wood, suffering more casualties (including Lieut. Colonel Lord St Blaizey, killed by a sniper) but extinguishing all resistance by Germans belonging to the 450th Reserve Regiment - ‘
‘Bavarians. Good soldiers - died hard.’ The General regarded Mitchell benignly. ‘One of them saved my life.’
‘Saved your life?’
‘Oh, he didn’t mean to. He meant to do exactly the opposite - he shot me. Just here - ‘ The General tapped his shoulder ‘ - bullet went clean through, made a big hole in the back. What we used to call “a nice blighty one”; sent me back to England.’
‘And that saved your life?’ said Audley.
‘Undoubtedly, yes. I was the senior subaltern left by then, the company commander had been killed, so I was leading the company. The chap who took over from me - a friend of mine named Dickie Dyson, a very nice boy, very brave - much braver than me, I was a timid fellow - he came up to take over from me. I remember I was lying in a shell-hole between the roots of a tree, there were still quite a lot of trees standing in the wood at that time, unlike later on, and I could see first light through them, so I knew we were near the edge of the wood … we seemed to have been going through it for hours …’
The General fell silent, staring at a point in space just above him.
‘It’s really quite a small wood, Bouillet Wood,’ said Mitchell, gently jogging him forward.
‘Is it now? You know it then?’
Mitchell nodded.
‘I was there in 1971. It�
�s grown up again and there’s quite a large house in it.’
‘Is there indeed? And you say it’s small?’
The General nodded politely.
‘Well, you see - it does seem very large when you can’t get out of it… and I was absolutely convinced I was dying and that I was there for good. In fact, I said to him - quite stupidly - “They’ve done for me, Dickie.” And I told him to push on to the edge of the-wood and dig in there.’
He paused again, looking candidly at Mitchell.
‘You see, what I was afraid of was that the Germans would counter-attack from the Prussian Redoubt and I should be left alone in there. But then I remembered the man who’d just shot me, and I said “Watch out for the sniper, Dickie - it’s almost morning now” - by which I meant that he could see us properly. And he said “Well then. Woody, I expect I’ll be saying ‘Good morning, God’ in a moment or two” … and crack - the moment he put his head up over the edge of the hole the sniper got him too. Killed him straight off, just like that - crack!’
He spoke quite without rancour or sadness; it had all happened so long ago and in another country, and a million other Dickie Dysons and snipers had died since then, too many to allow even a particle of feeling to be expended on them.
‘And what happened then?’
‘Ah, well strictly speaking I can’t tell you, because I passed out as he tumbled back on top of me, poor chap. And the next thing I remember was lying in Battalion Aid Post, next to the schoolmaster from the tank. But they told me what happened … You see, there was one of my acting corporals with me, George Davis, who was my sergeant-major at Ypres the next year … and as Dickie fell back into the hole he dropped his shotgun.’
‘His shotgun?’ said Audley.
‘Yes, one or two of our chaps - the officers, that is - went into action with them. Harry Bellamy of “D” Company had a silver-chased one, a real beauty. He claimed it made the war more of a sporting occasion, though I believe the Germans regarded shotguns as un sporting. Actually, except for the need to keep reloading they were quite sensible weapons for close fighting … Anyway, when Dickie dropped his, Corporal Davis snatched it up quick as lighting and shot the German with it -he was only a few yards away, and Davis had seen the flash.’
And Davis, being an ex-gamekeeper, would have probably been more deadly with his own type of weapon than with a rifle, reflected Mitchell.
‘But that’s only what they told me, of course. I didn’t see it with my own eyes. In fact I missed the really remarkable part of the whole show.’
Audley cocked his head on one side.
‘Remarkable?’
The General looked to Mitchell for confirmation.
‘I don’t think that’s too strong a word for it. It always seemed like that to me when I heard about it afterwards, anyway.’
Audley also turned to Mitchell.
‘And is this your mystery, Paul?’
Mitchell had an uneasy feeling that after waiting so long for it, Audley would find the climax of the Poachers’ achievement something of an anti-climax. He bent his attention to the Official History again.
‘All the officers and senior NCOs of the feeding companies now being killed or wounded, parties of Riflemen nevertheless debouched from the eastern side of Bouillet Wood. Although for the most part leaderless, but still in good heart, they pressed down Scrub and Scarab Trenches towards the Prussian Redoubt, negotiating several makeshift bomb-stops which had been hastily constructed by men of the German 155th Reserve Grenadiers. Machine-gun fire from the Redoubt now began to slacken, the whole area having been under heavy shellfire (though whether from British or German artillery is by no means clear).
Entering the Redoubt, the surviving Riflemen found that the garrison had been almost wiped out by the bombardment and that every dugout had been blown in. Although the handful of German soldiers remaining resisted with great gallantry, fighting to the last man, the position was effectively in British hands by 7.30 a.m.’
He raised his eyes to meet Audley’s.
‘Well, that’s it.’
‘That’s … it?’ Audley looked puzzled.
‘As far as the Poachers are concerned. There were two or three NCOs left and about sixty-five riflemen. Out of about three hundred who went into the wood, plus a handful of Berkshires.’
‘Seventy-nine all told,’ said the General.
‘There were two Australian brigades who came up in support immediately after - ‘
Mitchell tailed off as he saw the disappointment in the big man’s expression.
‘Jesus Christ! They took the Prussian Redoubt, don’t you see?’
Audley nodded slowly.
‘Yes. A great feat of arms, you said. I see that.’
‘They weren’t meant to - ‘
‘Hah! And we weren’t even meant to think of trying,’ the General observed. ‘In the unlikely event of getting through the wood we were supposed to dig in at once on the edge.’
Audley stared from one to the other of them.
‘Yes, I understand that too. But where’s the - ah - the mystery?’
‘The mystery?’ The General sat back, contemplating the word. ‘Well, perhaps “mystery” is a trifle strong. But the Germans did behave in a most extraordinary manner, no doubt about that.’
‘The Germans?’ Audley repeated in surprise. ‘I thought we were talking about the Poachers.’
‘Good gracious me - no!’ The General laughed. ‘Our chaps behaved foolishly, even suicidally. But that was quite understandable, perfectly understandable.’
‘Understandable?’ Audley said in the controlled tone of one determined to hide his bewilderment.
‘Why, of course. You see, I don’t think they had the slightest idea where they were. We’re talking blithely about woods and villages and front lines and redoubts, but it wasn’t like that at all … My dear fellow, I remember arriving on the Somme - that’s one thing I shall never forget, never …’
Audley started to speak, then stopped as though some instinct had warned him off.
‘It was like nothing I’d ever expected,’ said the General. ‘You see I imagined, as most people did, that there’d be a sort of drill trench … trench, wire, no-man’s-land, enemy wire, enemy trench and so on, but it wasn’t like that at all. To me it looked all like no-man’s-land, you could hardly tell the line from what wasn’t the line. It was just a mass of shell-holes … And, you know, you talk of attacking a redoubt - the Prussian Redoubt was built into the ruins of an old chateau, I believe - but it wasn’t visible, it all looked alike. You didn’t know when you were in your line or theirs, except for the smell. The difference was the smell: dead Germans didn’t smell like dead British - I don’t know what they ate or drank …’
He focused on Audley, nodding his head as though suddenly aware that he was digressing.
‘I’m sorry - but you see there we were, in our first battle, and only a handful of us had seen the maps and none of us had ever seen the top of that ridge … That was what was so wonderful about them, our men - they just went on and on, even after three-quarters or more had been killed and wounded, and they hadn’t any idea where they were. -Maybe that’s a mystery, if you like, eh? Or maybe you think we were all soft in the head - that’s what my grandson maintains.’
Soft in the head. And that was what father had maintained, thought Mitchell.
Grandfather victoriously dead at twenty-seven in the hole he’d punched in the Hindenburg Line and father getting up at daybreak to milk the cows, with another world war going on around him. They couldn’t both be sane, that was the only certain thing, not both of them.
‘But it was the Germans who behaved - well, out of character, to put it mildly.’
‘How out of character?’
‘They made such a hash of it, and that wasn’t like them, you know.’
‘Well, no one’s perfect all the time,’ Audley chided him mildly, ‘not even the German Army.’
‘My dear fe
llow - ‘ The General leaned forward in his chair ‘ - they were the old German Army, the old German Field Army-‘
The old German Field Army. This might have been Charles Emerson talking now: if the British dead on the Somme had been the cream of the nation, irreplaceable as men, the German dead, equally numerous, had been the cream of the army, irreplaceable as soldiers.
‘ - and they were damn good. Dug like moles and fought like tigers … blow a mine under them, and they’d be back in the crater before we could get there; take a trench, and they’d come back at you before you could blow your nose - wouldn’t give an inch back in ‘16. But that morning it was different.’
The General raised a thin finger.
‘They should have counter-attacked us in the wood - but they didn’t. And they should have reinforced the redoubt as soon as we were in the wood - but they didn’t… What did they do? They shelled the redoubt before we got there, knocked the blazes out of it … Bad enough to be shelled by the enemy, but to be shelled by your own side as well - !’
Audley started to shrug, then stopped as though unwilling to show the extent of his disappointment any further.
‘Hardly the first time that’s happened. But presumably they were simply taken by surprise.’
‘Surprise?’ The General grunted comically. ‘Then we were surprised as much as they were. It was a godsend we had those Australian Brigades to hand, even though we’d done all the hard work. We’d have lost the lot if it hadn’t been for them, I tell you.’
‘I mean, surprised at the direction of the attack,’ said Audley patiently. He turned to Mitchell. ‘You said the main attack was on Hameau village - the Prussian Redoubt was an accident.’
He was sharp, thought Mitchell. That had been the generally accepted explanation for the whole extraordinary affair, which had been almost as embarrassing for the British as the Germans. For while the main thrust towards Hameau had been a disastrous failure, the Australians had gone on to take the two much-feared ravines, which had fallen into their hands like ripe plums once the redoubt had fallen. While the main part of the Corps was battering at the door, the Poachers and the Australians had lifted the whole thing off its hinges.
Other Paths to Glory Page 10
