In September, the French, Belgian, and British Empire forces gained in France, pushing the Germans back past the Marne River and the Aisne. The Germans could no longer move west, so they raced north. Behind the French and British armies were the supply ports along the North Sea. If the supplies were gone, the British and French armies would soon be too. That seemed to be the German thought on the matter.
The British and French forces, for their part, thought they were pushing the final remnant of the German army back to the fatherland the Hun thought so highly of. In this they were mistaken, and their miscalculation gave way to terrible bloodshed.
The kaiser had thrust six German armies into the western battlefront, pressing on the Belgians in the north, the British in Belgium’s center, and the French and British forces to the south. The Germans had superior munitions, better supply lines, and tens of thousands of fresh troops.
The British commander in chief had been in France at the time. He hurried north to Belgium with his main corps, pulling his tired armies north toward Ypres, fighting bitterly at La Bassée, Neuve Chapelle, and Armentières. He’d had no idea how hopelessly outnumbered his troops were. Their intelligence had been poor, and they had few artillery shells to use.
But they didn’t know the odds, and that made much of the difference as the battle line seesawed back and forth. They should have despaired, but, ignorant of their condition, they did not let their hearts fail.
In the north, a few ragged divisions of the Belgian army bitterly engaged twelve fresh German divisions—more than two hundred thousand men. No matter their courage, they could not hold against such a force. The Belgians began to falter, and, sensing a breakthrough, the Germans pushed harder. Within two days the kaiser’s armies had advanced over the choppy terrain of dikes and canals to capture outposts near the Yser River, almost to the British supply port of Dunkirk.
Dispatches Riley had read back at Weymouth showed that the Belgian king’s army was nearly surrounded. The king’s men threw themselves again and again at the Germans, but despite inflicting frightening casualties on their enemy—more than one hundred thousand—the kaiser’s men came back in overwhelming numbers. The Belgian army was about to be lost, along with the ports of Dunkirk, Calais, and Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Then, in late October, Albert, king of the Belgians, turned the North Sea’s salt water against his own country. He ordered the Yser River’s floodgates opened and bombed dikes to flood the fields and canals, forming an impassable lake in front of the German army. His country was now Carthage—its fields sown with salt water, rendering them unusable. But he’d saved sixty thousand lives and every man, woman, and child in England heard of the feat. Riley heard the story read to him from the front page of the London Times twice the same day while at training camp, once at breakfast, and another time at supper. It was a message of cheer to buck up heavy hearts.
The Germans, thwarted, had sent their remaining seventy-five thousand men south to fight the British along the center and southern battlefronts. Their casualties had been horrific, but their fury not spent.
And the news for Riley had been exceedingly grim. Nearly one thousand Wiltshires had been slaughtered in heavy fighting northeast of Ypres, triggering the Second Wiltshire’s call into duty with the Seventh Division.
Fighting reemerged in mid-October on the Passchendaele Ridge, where the British weathered a fierce German artillery barrage. The British were more experienced than their German counterparts, and despite being outnumbered, held their ground for nearly a week. Finally Germany burst through the British lines at Gheluvelt, a village southeast of Ypres.
Riley’s captain, Aubrey Tomkins, was one of the five hundred British soldiers who stormed back through the woods and across an open plain, all while under constant fire. Two hundred fifty made it to a château where twelve hundred Germans had stopped to rest. They opened fire on the twelve hundred. The Germans panicked and fled, and the British, once again, closed the road to Ypres.
Tomkins was promoted to captain and given command of two hundred fifty soldiers of the Second Wiltshire Battalion, the Twenty-First Brigade, Seventh Division. His command included four platoons of fifty each and four subalterns, one being Lieutenant Riley Spencer. Now their orders were to reconnect with the old Seventh, then commence south to La Boutillerie, a few miles south of Ypres, in France. By mid-November, the Seventh had once again become stalemated in Flanders.
The Seventh had lost nine thousand five hundred men—more than two entire brigades. Both sides dug in at points along the emerging Western Front, knowing they would once again have to face each other.
The kaiser had killed the best leaders of the British army. Their muddy boots were filled by lawyers and bankers, students and bus drivers. Riley had been hustled from his training camp into duty within a mere four weeks. Unfortunately, so had most of the soldiers who wore the simple emblem of the Seventh on their sleeve: a white dot on a black field.
And the jewel that had been Ypres—a medieval city where garments were once woven in gold and silver—was now a gutted shell. Cloth Hall lay in ruins, he heard, its slippery floor now used as a makeshift hospital. Priceless stained glass fragments dangled outside of their window cases, hanging from ligaments of tattered lead caning. The moans of the dying wafted through the broken windows, floating upward and dissolving in the noxious night air.
It was now almost winter solstice. Riley was thankful the days were not long—less time to see the damage done to the men and the terrain.
The snow was not beautiful to him, no matter what the poets said. Beauty to Riley these days was a pile of sandbags already in place to shore up muddy walls. It was food that didn’t require you to take a bottle of bismuth soda pills with it. Water that didn’t smell like sewage. A drink of spirits to still the pain in his shoulders and back.
He gave a slight smile as a loud convoy truck filled with artillery shells rumbled by. Beauty had once been a girl’s bosom rising under a lace blouse. The smell of her hair. But that was a world far away.
Riley saw a mud-spattered orderly jog up to Captain Tomkins with a message. The captain’s face gave nothing away as he read the order and snapped it back into his pouch.
“Spencer, Norton, Cotting!” Tomkins called. Riley shifted his rifle over his shoulder and beat a path to the captain. Sydney Norton, a beefy, ginger-haired lieutenant huffed over from his platoon, his breath visible in the cold. Private Cotting, the smallest of the three, fell in beside him.
Tomkins’s posture was parade-ground perfect, his feet shoulder width apart. They saluted him.
“Lieutenants Norton and Spencer, it’s time to earn your lieutenant’s badge. We’ve spotted a party of Boche setting up a signal trench. Only four men right now, but if we let it linger, there will be a hundred come tomorrow. I need it dismantled posthaste and I want their transmitter. You’ll capture it and meet up with the rest of the battalion three miles due east of this road for the night’s billets. There’s a barn up this road tended by a Belgian farmer.”
Riley brightened. Not an open field covered by machine guns. This was progress.
“Spencer, what day were you commissioned?”
“October seventeenth, sir.”
“Norton?”
“October nineteenth, sir.”
“Then Spencer, you’re the ranking officer.”
“Yes, sir!” said Riley, brightening.
“But, sir!” protested Norton. “He’s part German.”
Riley looked sharply at Norton. He’d not liked him in training camp and he didn’t like him any more now.
“So is the king,” said Tomkins. “Cotting, I’ll ask—”
“Spencer nearly shot a man at rifle practice, sir,” interrupted Norton. Riley saw young Cotting blanch. Tompkins glared at Norton, then turned to him.
“Spencer, is this true? Have you shot one of your own men?”
“Do you plan to shoot any more of the king’s subjects?”
“Just Norton, sir.”
Tomkins frowned. “I’d urge you not to. I’m told he’s the best shot in the company.” The captain turned to Norton. “Spencer will command this mission. He is both an officer and a son of a member of Parliament and I do not doubt his patriotism. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir!” said Norton, his face reddening to the color of his hair. Riley glanced sideways at him, thinking what a joy it would be to order Norton to step lively through the mud.
“Private Cotting, your age,” demanded the captain.
“Eighteen, sir,” said the slight boy, his voice nearly cracking to soprano. His face was white and thin; his rifle might weigh as much as he.
“I’m your captain, not the recruiting office. Your age.”
The boy puffed his chest and held his head high. “Fourteen, sir.” The captain’s lips tightened. He leaned down, his hands on his knees. As Riley stared ahead, he heard the captain’s voice soften.
“Paul, this is not a test of your courage. I know you have the heart of an Englishman and not one of my men would say different. But this is a test of your head and I expect you to keep yours. I’m counting on it because I’ve good use for a smart lad like you.”
Cotting brightened. “Yes, sir!” Tomkins stepped back.
“I’d send out a party of seven if I had the men, but we don’t. So it’s to be the three of you.” He turned to face the south and pointed to the horizon. “The orderly who brought us this information has run the mud between here and there. It’s molasses. You’ll slip, you’ll get dirtied. But as hard as it is, you mustn’t dawdle. If their snipers are out you’ll be sitting ducks until you reach the wood. I want you to hand your packs, shovels, canteens, coats, everything except your ammunition, grenades, and rifles to the quartermaster. You need to be light on your feet and running should keep you warm.”
Tomkins waved his hand and the quartermaster, all grizzled in khaki, with his gut bulging over his belt, huffed over to take the packs. As Riley took off his coat a fresh blast of wind took his breath away. He quickly unbuckled his heavy tool belt and handed it over. From his pocket he pulled out a flask.
“Permission for a bracing drink, sir?” he asked.
“Dear Lord, yes,” said Tomkins. Riley took a pull of scotch and offered the flask to Norton.
“I drink beer,” said Norton. Cotting, looking up at Norton, also refused. Riley shrugged, replaced the cap, and handed it to the quartermaster half-full. He brushed some falling snowflakes from his eyelashes, feeling inexplicably chastened. Beer, nothing. He probably preferred grog.
“One more thing, men,” said Tomkins. “There was a fight in that wood a couple months ago and you won’t like what you find there. But the dead can only hurt you if you decide to let them into your mind.” He looked back at Spencer. “March directly into the trees and when you get to a stream follow it east to a clearing. There you will find your Germans. If you hurry you should come out all right.”
“Sir?” asked Riley.
“Speak.”
“Do we take prisoners?”
“Prisoners or casualties, either one,” said Tompkins matter-of-factly. “We don’t want them back in the German army. If you can, get the signal corps member alive. He might know German intelligence codes. But don’t stop for burial. If you do, you could join them. Others will come looking for them. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir,” the three said.
“And when you fight, Cotting, you will fight hammer and tongs.”
“Yes, sir,” said the boy.
“Lieutenants, your men are watching you. They want to have confidence in their lieutenants, and this is your chance to show them why they should. I am counting on you to come back and inspire them with tales of bravery, but not of heroics. Am I clear?”
“Yes, sir,” they said. Riley wished he could get moving. He was cold.
“Then to king and country.”
“King and country!” replied the men.
“Dismissed.” Tomkins jogged back up the wet ditch to the front of the line. Riley turned to Norton and nodded as the north wind began to pick up again. Norton pretended not to notice.
“Due south,” Norton pointed, and then began to march.
“South,” echoed Riley, who had to pick up a bright pace to catch up with his subordinates as they headed toward the blackened wood.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Menin Road
Near Ypres, Belgium
Monday, December 14, 1914
Seven Hours Earlier
Lieutenant Wils Brandl sat in the dank shambles of his crowded billet in a corner of Belgium he cared never to see again. He used a makeshift stool, wrote by candlelight, and shivered in his soaked boots, mud-spattered trousers, and wet wool overcoat. Water pooled at his feet and dripped through the slats above him. The wind gusted through the cracks of the old barn’s plastered walls. He needed rest after three straight days of signal duty in the trenches but refused to sleep until he’d written to Helen.
His breath came in steady puffs, visible in the candlelight. His cracked, sore hands were still caked in clay, although he’d washed them twice. They stuck to the thin pages as he wrote, forcing him to rewrite constantly. But he hurried along with his letter: he was exhausted and a dawn raid was always a risk. A Victoria Cross by breakfast, the khaki soldiers were fond of saying. The only thing that seemed to stop them was the fact that British shell manufacturers were a fat and poor lot, something for which the German army often gave fervent thanks. Their list of blessings typically stopped there.
Second Army, VII Corps
13th Division, 25th Brigade
16th Uhlans
Dearest Helen,
I have just left three days of duty and am writing before I fall asleep. Writing you is the only joy out here, and I’ll not delay it further.
There isn’t much more to tell about the war. We’ve no cover from the cold or wet. Water fills the ruts we’ve dug, and we’re forced to crouch along the edges of the trenches on sandbags or in the cold mud. If you stand up straight, you’re likely to get your head blown off or cause someone else to get theirs hit. We fix our wires, listen, and wait until we’re allowed to leave.
I call to you in whispers from the fields. I reach out again and again, grasping for anything that will bring me close to you. I listen in the lunatic winds and in the aftermath of shells. I must believe that you listen for me too.
There is little else to listen for. The music of symphonies, cathedrals, drawing rooms, your voice, is all fading. I now listen for the difference between a shell (sounds like a freight train and if you hear one you had better run in a different direction) and a rifle bullet (if you hear it, it’s already hit someone, so no need to move). My skills at shooting are seldom used, but when I do shoot, I hit. I hate that it’s so, but if I didn’t, I’d not be writing you now.
The news this week is that the regiment has been assigned a Roman Catholic priest—the one who swam in the mud! Our Lutheran pastor died in the melee that killed Lieutenant Heinsel, although heaven knows it wasn’t because they were at the front of the line. The British had just lobbed a random shell behind our lines.
I like the new fellow, although he is the pope’s man. I have written to assure my mother that I won’t take to worshipping the pope unless the pope calls off the war. In fact, I’ve decided I will worship just about anyone or anything who can accomplish this.
This priest seems to be able to shoot better than any of us (if pressed), crawls along the trench lines to minister to those who fall, and gives mercifully short sermons. He is quick to grant absolution both in town and in the trench, except in cases of severe drunkenness, where the
chastisement tends to be more about sharing than abstention. Father Rupert is his name, and I hope he will be around for a while, though there has been some grumbling from the Lutherans—
Wils was interrupted by a splash outside. Three men in the crowded room looked up at the open doorway. He glanced quickly through the cracks in the wall’s plaster out into the half-light. Nothing else.
It is lighting, and I must go. Dawn is a dangerous time out here, even for those who are off-duty.
All my love,
Wils
He picked the letter up and kissed it, saying a silent prayer that it would reach her. Last week’s mail orderly had been shelled along with his mail pouch, destroying their letters. Wils put it in his pocket to drop in the mail basket after he woke.
His hands shook with fatigue as he reached for the candle to blow it out. He would sleep first, clean up, and then he’d write his mother. He needed a new set of boots. The soles had started to rot off this pair after only two days of trench duty, and he’d be damned if he’d be invalided for failure to take care of his feet.
Straw was scattered along the floor of the barn, soaking up the mud. Several soldiers had left for duty and a space beckoned, so he put down a blanket, anxious to close his eyes, which were scratchy and burning with fatigue.
“Brandl!” He heard the bark of Captain Grimber. “New posting for you today.”
Wils turned with a blank expression. His head was in a fog. The gaunt captain, his face unshaven, towered in the doorway. “Sir, I just returned.”
“We’ve no more men who can help at present. A truck is ready to take you to a wood due northwest by five miles. There you will establish radio contact in a new position. If we wait, there’s a risk that the British will find it.”
“Sir, I’ve just come back from three days’ duty.”
“We’ve no other men available. The truck leaves in five minutes,” said Grimber.
The End of Innocence Page 20
