The First to Land (1984)

by Reeman, Douglas

  Dago Trent threw himself into a niche between the sandbags and levelled his rifle.

  Under his breath he murmured softly, ‘If they get it, so will you, you little bastard!’

  Boots scraped on sand and Blackwood, with Swan behind him, walked along the barricade.

  ‘Where’s Vicary?’ Blackwood stared at his cousin. ‘What the hell’s going on here?’

  Ralf said, ‘He’s with Sergeant Greenaway, sir. They’re looking at a corpse.’ He sounded less sure again. ‘Greenaway thought he saw it move.’

  ‘Fetch them back at once.’ Blackwood turned to Swan. ‘Bugler, fast!’

  Ralf jumped down from the barricade and hurried after the two marines. For a moment or two he lost his bearings and when he looked back he could not see the point where he had left cover.

  ‘Oh bloody hell!’ He drew his revolver carefully, the memory of that moment on the river-bank still painful in his mind.

  There they were. That lump Greenaway groping about like an old woman. He shouted, ‘Fall back, Sergeant!’

  Greenaway turned and stared. ‘You’ll wake the ’ole of bloody China!’ Greenaway swung round and saw Vicary struggling with his rifle as one of the corpses bounded to its feet, and another rolled over before running away at a tangent.

  Greenaway almost vomited as the great blade swung mercilessly across the young marine’s neck. Vicary’s head seemed to fall to his chest as the force of the blow almost cut it from his body.

  Greenaway threw up his rifle and fired. As he jammed home the bolt again he yelled, ‘Get the other one! Shoot, fer Chrissake!’

  Ralf raised his revolver and fired, the flash momentarily blinding him. ‘I can’t see him!’

  He felt the sergeant seize his arm, then as he turned to fire once more Greenaway said harshly, ‘Get back! Run while you still can!’

  Blackwood saw most of it and guessed the rest. Other pale shapes were emerging from the shadows. Flitting about like spectres on a battlefield.

  Swan reappeared on the barricade and threw himself down beside Trent.

  The latter was repeating over and over again. ‘He’s just a kid. A poor bloody kid!’

  Blackwood snapped, ‘Bugler, sound the Alarm!’

  As the bugle cut through the still air Blackwood heard the bark of orders as the marines ran from their stables where they were being mustered for stand-to.

  Blackwood gritted his teeth as more figures darted towards the main wall. ‘Send a runner to the colonel’s HQ.’

  Gravatt stood beside him breathing fast. ‘I reckon he’ll know, sir.’

  ‘Stand-to! Fix bayonets an’ face yer front!’

  Blackwood heard Ralf and Greenaway being hoisted over the barricade. Ralf should have known better. So should Greenaway.

  As silence settled once again around the crouching marines most of them heard the awful sounds of the long blades hacking at Vicary’s corpse.

  ‘Hold yer fire!’ That was Fox. ‘They wantyou ter get riled up!’

  The explosion when it came caught everybody unprepared. It must have been a mine of some kind. To his left Blackwood saw the high gates through which they had made their entry were blasted completely away. Blackwood’s ears rang to the explosion, and all around him men were coughing and spitting out dust and sand.

  There was another sound. A great baying noise as if a gigantic throat was making one terrifying chorus of hate.

  ‘Here they come!’

  ‘Take aim! Fifty yards!’

  Blackwood drew his sword and noticed that it was shining in the frail dawn light.

  It was true. The Boxers had kept their word.

  15

  Stand and Fight

  A quick glance to left and right told Blackwood that all of his men were in position at the wall and along the barricades. In the frail sunlight the scene could have been one from the paintings at Hawks Hill. Only the helmets with their glittering spikes were different. The scarlet tunics and the grim faces could be from any of a hundred battles in an expanding Empire.

  The noise was deafening and when he looked again he saw the charging mass of Boxers and Imperial soldiers spreading away on either side in a human tide.

  Their combined chanting of Sha! Sha! was deafening and made any sort of thought or plan impossible. Kill! Kill!

  Blackwood raised his sword. ‘Ready, lads!’ He saw the bayonets waver and then settle as each man selected a target. Not that it mattered, it was impossible to miss.

  ‘Fire!’

  The rifles stabbed flame along the barricade, but even as they jerked their bolts and reloaded the oncoming horde had already overrun the ones who had fallen.

  ‘Steady!’ Gravatt looked at him despairingly. ‘We can’t stop them!’

  Blackwood trained his revolver. ‘Rapid fire!’

  The rifles cracked out in response, so fast that when the Nordenfeldt gun joined in it sounded slow by comparison.

  The Chinese attack wavered as the steady fusillade of bullets tore through their packed ranks. The new bullets cut down two, sometimes three men at a time, and still they came on.

  The machine-gun stilled and as Blackwood stared up at the flat roof he saw the gun’s five muzzles being depressed towards the broken gates.

  The leading Boxers were pouring through them. Blackwood thought suddenly of the hotel somewhere behind him, what the roar of voices and rifle-fire would be doing to those who sheltered there. Her words seemed to murmur inside his reeling mind as the first Boxers to his right reached the barricade, their wild eyes and piercing screams enough to make the strongest heart falter.

  Some of the marines had jumped on the barricade to meet the challenge face to face. As swords and axes flashed, the bayonets lunged and withdrew like steel tongues, urged on by Fox and the other NCOs.

  A Boxer’s head-dress appeared directly opposite Blackwood, but his yell was checked short as the revolver’s heavy bullet cracked through his forehead.

  The machine-gun rattled into life again and caught the attackers in a tight wedge of struggling bodies inside and beyond the high gateway. Some tried to retreat, but were cut down as the mass behind them continued to press forward.

  The machine-gun moved remorselessly back and forth, Corporal O’Neil and his friend Willy Hudson taking their time and fighting their own anxiety while they concentrated on the gates.

  ‘They’re pulling back, sir!’ Gravatt was frantically reloading his revolver, his eyes almost blinded by the sweat of battle.

  The marines fired a last volley and brought down another file of retreating figures before Blackwood signalled to them to cease fire.

  Other sounds intruded in the brutal silence. Another bugle in a different part of the city was calling a retreat. Perhaps one of the barricades had collapsed and the defenders were falling back to another line.

  ‘Stretcher bearer!’ Blackwood checked his revolver and thrust it into his holster. How familiar was that cry on any battlefield. He heard a man gasping with pain and saw Corporal Lyde trying to staunch the bleeding in a marine’s neck.

  Along the serried line there were one or two with minor wounds. It was a miracle and nothing less that they had stemmed the first attack.

  The sun was already hotter. He wondered if the marines could stand it after their forced march along the gully under full packs. Many had been close to fainting then as the heat had followed them over the hot stones like a fireball.

  An army runner came panting along the barricade. He saluted and handed a message to Blackwood.

  Blackwood said, ‘The French troops have had to pull back from the railway station, Toby. The Boxers are burning some more of the European property, they’re killing and looting as they go.’ He looked at the young lieutenant. ‘We’re to hold this sector.’ He recalled his words to Friedrike. No matter what.

  Gravatt mopped his face and throat with a grubby handkerchief.

  ‘The Japanese infantry and some cavalry are on our left, sir. They’ll not give in easily.�
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  Blackwood scribbled on a pad and handed it to the army runner.

  Colonel Sir John Hay needed the marines now all right, he thought bitterly.

  He recalled what he had learned about the Boxers and how they hated the Japanese as a race. All foreign devils were inferior, but the land of Nippon was the lowest of all in their beliefs.

  ‘They’re gettin’ ready to rush us again.’

  Blackwood licked his lips. Why did he always get so thirsty? He turned to look at the defences, the corpses scattered untidily below the barricade. The Boxers who had feigned death must have been the ones who had prepared the mine to blow down the gates. Only Greenaway’s experience, and some argument which had held him there with the sentries had prevented a much worse disaster.

  ‘We must repair the gates, Toby. As soon as it’s dark we’ll send out a squad.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Gravatt pulled Blair’s binoculars from their case and watched the great pall of dust which swirled above the Chinese soldiers and Boxers. Here and there a Boxer standard waved amidst the shining blades and long bayoneted rifles. If we last that long, he thought.

  The defences which had been sited and planned by the American engineer named Herbert Hoover were shaped like a great oblong box. Their strength depended on the tenacity of the defenders in any one sector. With the Japanese on the left, the US Marine Corps somewhere to the south by the old mud wall, and the French to the east by the river, the whole force was extended to its limit. Perhaps beyond it.

  Blackwood watched the assembling Chinese. There were no obvious leaders. It was as if the combined army had a mind all of its own.

  He saw the marines nearest him pulling in their heads and tucking their Lee-Enfields against their cheeks as the leaderless mob began to sway towards them. He noticed too that the marine who had been wounded in the neck lay behind the barricade, his arms to his side as if on parade, but with his face covered with his helmet.

  Sergeant Davis of the First Platoon saw his glance and explained simply, ‘Private Frost, sir.’ His strong Welsh accent seemed out of place amidst the dust and the scent of death.

  Blackwood hardly knew the dead man. He was one of those quiet ones, a countryman like Private Roberts, but whose family connection with the Royals went back further than his own.

  Davis added as an afterthought, ‘His Da’s the Colour Sergeant in the old Trafalgar, sir. He’ll not take this kindly.’

  Blackwood drew his revolver again. The sun was so hot now that the pistol felt as if he had just fired it.

  He saw Sergeant Davis wet his thumb and put a clearer edge on his rifle’s foresight. He did not miss a trick.

  Blackwood said, ‘They’re coming more slowly this time. Saving their wind for the last few yards.’ He saw his words ripple along the tensed shoulders. ‘We’ll hold our fire to twenty-five yards. Pass the word to the MG.’

  It took nerves of steel to stand motionless as a screaming horde came charging towards you. It also required discipline which was every bit as strong as steel.

  Once again the rifles steadied along the sand and grain bags, the carts and the pieces of timber.

  Blackwood saw a Boxer standard bearer capering from side to side and keeping well ahead of the others. He was a massively built man, like the one who had beaten him unconscious aboard the Bajamar.

  ‘Swan, you see him?’

  Swan nodded slightly and moved his rifle an inch to his right.

  ‘No one else is to fire.’ He counted the seconds. ‘Now!’

  The rifle bucked into Swan’s shoulder and the yellow standard flew through the air like a dying bird.

  It seemed to spur the attack forward, with some hanging back as they had been ordered; others maddened by the insult to their standard broke ranks and ran like madmen towards the rifles.

  ‘Take aim! Rapid fire!’

  The Nordenfeldt gun sent a hail of bullets through the packed gateway and then swung across to the right where the nearest Boxers were almost at the barricade.

  Blackwood squeezed the trigger and felt the recoil jar up his arm. He could have hit several of the enemy, but nothing seemed to make any difference. He found he was pulling in his stomach muscles as if to anticipate a blow or a bullet, but tried to concentrate on his defences, faces and names committed to close-action on the right of the line. There was a lot of smoke and leaping flames in the next sector, and he wondered if the enemy had already burst through at that point. Once inside both the perimeter defences they would be hard to stop.

  The rifles cracked and flashed, and as men reloaded their magazines some of the slightly wounded were dragging up fresh boxes of ammunition.

  God, here they come!’ Blackwood hauled himself on to the barricade as a mass of Boxers charged into it like a battering ram. He felt it shake as yelling faces and corpses were jammed together below his feet, hacking and stabbing while the marines met them again blade to blade. Further to the left near the gates some Boxers had broken through and were splitting up as they ran towards the next line of obstacles. Rapid fire swept through their flanks and Blackwood realized the Japanese were hurling in a counter-attack with their usual frenzied disregard for casualties.

  ‘Second Platoon extend to the left!’ Blackwood parried a bayonet aside with his sword and blasted its owner down with a single bullet. Another marine fell headlong over the barricade. He was hacked to pieces before he hit the ground. The marine nearest him emptied his rifle into the swaying mob and then lunged at a Boxer as he trampled on corpses to cross the barricade. The Boxer slashed out with his blade, his arm scything back and forth even as the marine’s bayonet plunged through his bared teeth.

  The attack turned to the sound of a horn like the one at the arsenal. As one they surged clear of the barricade, some falling headlong over dead and wounded and pursued by a hail of bullets.

  ‘Cease firing!’

  Behind him Blackwood heard individual shots as the infiltrators were hunted down in the narrow side-streets. It would be an unenviable task, Blackwood thought. In some of the streets a man could reach out and touch both sides at once.

  He turned to see some white-helmeted troops in khaki uniforms hurrying down the rear of the barricade carrying cases of wine. One of them, an officer, paused and beamed up at him.

  ‘Good morning, Herr Kapitän!’ He handed Blackwood a bottle and some goblets. ‘We were told you were here.’ His grin broadened. ‘Royal Marines, ja?’

  Blackwood realized that these were German marines of their Seebataillon.

  Gravatt poured three full goblets, some of the wine slopping over his wrist like blood.

  Blackwood smiled, ‘Many thanks, Herr Leutnant.’ He raised his goblet. He found it strange, unnerving that he could share a joke with this unknown German marine, probably his opposite number in Tientsin, with the enemy only half a cable away and massing again for another attack.

  The German glanced at the sweating marines. ‘Hot vork, ja?’

  Blackwood thought of the discarded white uniforms. They were paying for it now.

  He waited for Gravatt to scribble something for his runner and asked quietly, ‘You know that the Countess von Heiser is in the hotel?’

  The German took the proffered goblet. ‘I do. I know all about her, Kapitän.’

  Blackwood waited for his goblet to be refilled and saw more wine being handed out to his men. Perhaps all marines were in the same family?

  The German asked politely, ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘Yes. Quite well.’

  ‘Quite well.’ The German repeated the words carefully. He was not fully aware of their use. He nodded. ‘I understand.’

  Sergeant Major Fox shouted, ‘They’re comin’ back, sir!’

  Blackwood wiped his mouth with his wrist. You don’t understand at all, my friend. He said, ‘If you see her –’

  He saw the immediate curiosity in the lieutenant’s eyes and added, ‘Nothing.’

  The German clicked his heels and yelled at his NCO to r
ecall his men.

  He smiled. ‘I shall tell her, Herr Kapitän.’

  The roar of voices intruded and Blackwood drew his revolver and watched as his men gripped their rifles and waited. The wine had been a good gesture. It would be the last drink for some of these same men, he thought.

  ‘Commence firing!’ The bugle blared and the machine-gun kicked and clattered from its rooftop. Was it never going to end? There appeared to be thousands of them, but they all had to get through the barricade or the gate if they were to extend their advance.

  At a guess there were barely sixty marines still able to fight.

  He thought of her in his arms, just hours ago.

  Then he fired his revolver at point-blank range at a Chinese soldier who had thrown himself bodily into a gap between some upended carts. We must hold on. We must hold on. The words were like a prayer or an epitaph.

  His arms were throbbing with exhaustion, and the revolver was empty. This time they were not falling back, and nothing seemed able to stem the attack.

  A hoarse voice boomed from the right. It was Kirby, rallying his men better than any fanfare.

  ‘Come on, you mothers’ boys!’ He sounded crazy and was obviously in tremendous pain. ‘Stand and fight the bastards!’

  The marines had been falling back but Kirby’s strength seemed to spread to them so that they charged at the Boxers in a solid scarlet line.

  The horn boomed again and reluctantly the Boxers started to withdraw. They must have lost hundreds, Blackwood thought, and yet they could still advance without hesitation, eyes dilated, teeth bared and with froth on their lips. No wonder the ordinary Chinese people were terrified of them.

  Blackwood felt the lanyard on his revolver jerk and knew Swan was checking it before reloading for him.

  His head was beating like iron on an anvil, and his whole body shook as if it would never stop.

  Several marines were stretched out on the dirt and having their wounds dressed; another lay as if asleep, his dead eyes watching his friends and comrades as they prepared to meet another assault.

  The bugle shattered the stillness. Blackwood heard Gravatt murmur, ‘Dear God, don’t fail me now!’