by John Masters
‘One Rubadubdub, two Diamonds and the Jam Tart … and, me lucky lads, it’s the 18th, and the wind is shifting to the south, the balmy south, it’s four o’clock and getting dark, and I’ll lay a Bradbury to a tanner that inside ’arf an ’our, we’ll be served ’ot burgoo with strawberry jam, and a rum ration … Or p’raps it’ll be bully and beef hearts.’
‘Christ, not the beans,’ Jessop said. ‘The Germans’d hear us a mile off, farting our way across No Man’s Land …’
Corporal Leavey, a Jew or Buckle-my-Shoe, reappeared. ‘Roll it up, Lucas. Mr Cate’s coming. We’re going over at two-twenty ack emma, when the moon’s down.’
‘Told you so,’ Lucas said nonchalantly, rolling up the oilcloth and stuffing the dice box into his pack. He put out his hand, ‘I saw you take that ’arf crown off the Mudhook, when the corporal came round the traverse, Jones … but I’d rolled, and you ’adn’t won. So ’and over …’
Laurence Cate stood on the firestep of the front-line trench, Captain Kellaway beside him and Sergeant Fagioletti immediately behind and below. The trench was jammed, for at the moment it contained its normal garrison of A Company men, plus the B Company raiders who would climb the ladders and start through the British wire in … Laurence peered at the luminous dial of his watch – two minutes.
Kellaway was muttering, ‘Sure you remember the signals? Red over green for withdrawal, and one minute after the green goes up the gunners are going to plaster the Boche front line, so …’
‘I remember, sir,’ Laurence said. He thought, Captain Kellaway is more nervous than I am. Kellaway could imagine what it would be like, what would happen or might, what could go wrong, and the consequences. But he himself knew that if it got too bad he would withdraw into another, private world. It would not be by any act of volition – it would just happen, however much Uncle Quentin harangued him, and he’d be floating weightless over green fields and dense oak woods, hearing the songs of birds. It was a little like that now, in the real concrete world – the air almost still, not even a distant rifle shot or crump of artillery to mar the perfect silence, the sky clear, the air cold and frosty, a faint radiance where the half moon had just sunk below the horizon, the barbed wire dimly sensed against the crepuscular light, the ground iron hard underfoot … no owls or bats on the wing here, though, only the heavy breathing of the men along the trench.
British guns broke the silence with a concerted bellow. ‘Time!’ Kellaway breathed, ‘Good luck.’ Laurence went fast up the short ladder and began to walk through the six-foot gap in the wire, marked on each side by small white squares of cloth impaled on the barbs of the wire. Sergeant Fagioletti was on his heels with the twenty men of Raiding Group A, and Sergeant Parker was leading twenty men of Raiding Group B through another gap in the wire thirty yards to the right. As they passed through on to No Man’s Land proper, then hurried out to right and left to form an irregular line, the British artillery continued the prearranged concentrations of fire on the section of German front-line trench which was the target of the raid. Two Field Brigades of 18-pounder guns and 4.5-inch howitzers were firing the programme, some sixty guns in all.
The slight breeze was from the south-south-west, at about four miles an hour. The German trench was 160 yards away. Laurence increased his pace. The violent crashes of the high explosive and the softer phuts of the gas shells bursting in the German trench seemed quite isolated in the general vaster silence of the front. It would not last, but for now …
Laurence felt a sudden passing as of giant wings over his head, and cried ‘Down!’ The men flung themselves down, Sergeant Parker’s a second later than those closer to him … On the instant star shells burst high overhead, fired by the German artillery far to their rear, now casting a deathly whitish-green radiance over the frozen No Man’s Land. A machine-gun clattered … but to the left: on fixed night lines, Laurence thought. They can’t see us … they still don’t know we’re here. The machine-gun stuttered, stopped, began again, stopped, puzzled. The star shells sank towards the earth, their light spreading over smaller and smaller areas … darkness.
The wind was changing, not much but enough. ‘Gas!’ Laurence called quietly, quickly pulled his own mask over his face, and jammed on the steel helmet over it. Now they could not hear him even if he were to shout. The bombardment would end in … fifty seconds … they were still firing gas and HE … twenty seconds … He leaped to his feet and ran forward, his revolver drawn. The two men carrying the Brock’s carpet flung it over the first rows of German wire and Laurence ran over, stumbling, half-falling, ripping a deep gash in his left wrist. Fagioletti was beside him, and, there below, in the trench – dog faces, baboons with long curled snouts and huge plastic eyes. God, they were men, waving rifles, a pistol! Fagioletti’s rifle cracked and two of the snout faces fell. Then they were down in the trench, man after man tumbling, crashing down. He heard the continuous rumble and crash of grenades as the men with the satchels of Mills bombs hurried left and right along the trench … snouted animals were crawling out of holes in the ground, from behind hung blankets, waterproof covers … who were they?
The British bombardment had stopped … no, it had moved on to the German reserve trenches, back, further away. He was in the German front-line trench and he had to see that they brought back a new model German respirator, prisoners, trench maps. He turned to Fagioletti and began to say something, but the sergeant was diving behind one of the gas blankets into the dugout below. He came out a moment later and put his mask close to Laurence’s ear. Laurence heard the voice, muffled and distorted, as though from inside a distant cave. ‘Lucky the first time, sir. ’Ere.’ He held out one hand, showing a bundle of folded maps. ‘All ’and drawn, sir.’
‘Prisoners?’ Laurence shouted.
‘They’re all dead in there, sir … our grenades, just now.’
Two soldiers came along the trench, one with a first field dressing on his forehead, the other with a dangling wrist, a German Mauser automatic pistol in his other hand; and, between them, a bespectacled German officer.
‘He speaks English, sir,’ the man with the Mauser said. ‘Lieutenant Podalski, 112th Saxons, he says.’
‘And very glad to be taken prisoner,’ the German said. ‘I’m a Pole, sir, and Germany means no good to my country …’
‘Take him back,’ Laurence said, stuffing the trench maps into his tunic pocket. Trench maps – done. Prisoners – done. Respirator …?
Fagioletti said, ‘The German officer’s wearing one of their latest pattern gas masks, sir.’
Laurence said, ‘Good.’ What else then? There was something else, that Uncle Quentin had shouted at him. Ah … kill Germans. Was he supposed to kill the wounded? There were half a dozen dead Germans in the trench or lying against the back wall, and Fagioletti had said the dugouts were full of more of them …
The silence, the sense of isolation, were wiped away, blasted into another continuum as a hundred German guns opened up with shrapnel, gas, and HE on the occupied section of their front-line trench. Laurence’s head began to swim … there were machine-guns mixed in there, too, the beastly foul machine-guns. The noise was indescribable, a vast tearing of canvas as the machine-gun bullets swept low over the trench … the continuous shaking thunder of the artillery fire … It became quiet, green, everything moving very slowly, gracefully … calm – no death, no rage, no haste …
‘Christ A’mighty, he’s gone again,’ Sergeant Fagioletti thought, seeing the young officer’s eyes glaze behind the eyepieces. It was no use shouting at him when this happened. It was like he had been taken away by someone … God perhaps. He’d saved their lives when he got them down just before the star shells went up … just before! How did he know they were coming? He’d got their masks on a few seconds before the wind changed … before! He’d led into the trench, like a ruddy maniac … but never fired his pistol, though that big Jerry feldwebel had his Mauser rifle aimed from no more than ten feet away. And now …
‘You sit th
ere, sir,’ he said, pushing Laurence down on to a German ammunition box. ‘Don’t move, sir.’
The Jerries were firing everything they’d got … machine-guns on fixed night lines, of course, to cover the front of their own trenches; the guns the same, but actually on to the trenches. There must be eight machine-guns going at it up there. If you stuck your hand up it’d look like a colander in half a second. But the Germans didn’t waste ammunition. If they were giving the trench such a pasting, they were going to counterattack. And when they did, the machine-guns would have to stop. The guns would lift, or stop, too …
He hurried along the trench, and found Sergeant Parker standing by a traverse, a Mills bomb in his hand, several of his men covering the traverse with rifles aimed. A Lewis gun was mounted on the parapet but the gunner was down, keeping his head below the sandbags.
‘What’s up?’ Fagioletti shouted.
‘Jerries behind that traverse … don’t know how many …’
‘Listen … soon’s this hate stops, we’ll withdraw … warn your blokes … just up and run for it … we’ve got the prisoner, trench maps, respirator, everything.’
‘All right … Four of my blokes have caught packets … Two napoo, two wounded bad.’
‘Leave ’em all here … Soon as you see Very lights go up, run like ’ell. Got it?’
‘Bob’s your uncle, Dago.’
Fagioletti hurried back. Mr Cate was in the same place, absolutely withdrawn. Fagioletti felt in his haversack and drew out the Very pistol and the two cartridges, checking by the light of the bursting shells that he had a red and a green.
Privates Brace and Jessop were beside him. He muttered through his respirator into Brace’s ear – ‘You go with Mr Cate, see that he gets back. If he cops it, take the German maps out of his right tunic pocket. Got it?’
He struggled on along the short stretch of captured trench, warning the men to be ready to run for it. The Germans would come any moment now, probably from three sides at once – from each end of the trench, and from the reserve trenches, over the top or up the communication trenches … The shelling and machine-gunning stopped, he raised the Very pistol, already loaded with the red cartridge and fired, reloading at once with the green, firing straight up. The red star burst, floated down, followed by the green. He scrambled up the front wall of the trench and out. The Germans had not fired star shell yet … because their own men were up in the open, attacking from the reserve trench. The British guns started firing, the shells bursting close. Mr Cate was there, Brace at his side. He broke into an ungainly run. They were on their way home! Oh God, dear Jesus, let us get back before they find out we’ve gone and open up with star shell and machine-guns …
Laurence Cate suddenly tore off his mask and yelled at the top of his voice ‘Down!’ The men hesitated, and Fagioletti shouted, ‘Sir …’ But then they all hurled themselves into shell holes, or flattened their bodies against the hard ground among the scattered debris of war. Star shells soared and burst overhead, and again machine-guns opened up … but now a dozen, not the solitary one that had fired during their advance. The bullets clacked and rattled against the flaring sky, but still on the fixed lines, for the gunners had seen no target. Two by two the guns stopped. The star shells fell to earth, fizzling. Again it was dark. Fagioletti began to push himself upright when Laurence Cate’s sharp voice barked, ‘Wait!’
The raiders heard him and waited, frozen to the ground, halfway across No Man’s Land. Forty seconds later five star shells soared up. No Man’s Land was brilliant as under a full moon, more so, as though lit by searchlights … dead, empty, nothing but twisted tendrils of barbed wire, humps, broken boxes, wheels, all frozen, dead.
Slowly the stars fell, the darkness returned and Laurence Cate cried, ‘Now … run!’
The soldiers scrambled up and ran helter-skelter for the gaps in the British wire, marked by the white cloth patches, now moved to the outer side of the aprons. Fagioletti ran just in front of Cate. How in hell did he know? It gave you a creepy feeling. Where had he been, back there in the Jerry trenches? Where was he now?
‘Go on, sir,’ he said. But Cate waited, crouched by a gap in the wire, counting the men as they hurried through and dropped into the British trench. Sergeant Parker appeared and Cate said, ‘All present, sergeant?’
‘’Cept four I lost, yes, sir.’
‘Sergeant Fagioletti?’
‘Yes, sir … We lost two. Come on, sir … Jerry’s going to start on us any moment.’
He jumped down into the trench, stumbling against the back wall, then recovering himself, ready to give the officer a hand; but Laurence Cate was coming slowly down the trench ladder, which no one else had used in their hurry to get below ground level. In the trench he saluted, his hand to his steel helmet, facing the anxious Captain Kellaway. ‘Raiding party returned, sir. Four killed, two seriously wounded left in the German trenches. Prisoner …’
‘I’ve seen him. He’s talking like a gramophone … can’t tell us enough. You’ve done brilliantly, Laurence, brilliantly! The CO will be very pleased. He told me to send you back to him as soon as you came in. He wants to hear your report in person. But see to your men first. The CO will wait for you.’
His uncle was sitting on the edge of his makeshift bed, fully dressed except for his tie and puttees, the knee fastenings of the breeches undone, heavy grey wool socks on his feet, which were stuffed into rubber trench boots, a greatcoat thrown round his shoulders. A mug of cocoa stood on the shellcase in front of him, beside a lighted candle in a bottle.
As Laurence entered he said, ‘Sit down, boy … You seem to have done well. Here, have some cocoa … Wait a minute.’ He felt on the board stuck into the sandbagged wall behind him, found a silver flask and poured three fingers of whisky into the mug – ‘That’ll make it taste better.’
Laurence drank greedily. He had not felt thirsty until this moment but now his mouth was parched. His uncle said, ‘Tell me about it.’
‘It was the men, sir,’ Laurence said. ‘Sergeant Fagioletti pulled me through … and Sergeant Parker was very good, too.’
‘What do you mean, Fagioletti pulled you through?’ his uncle growled. ‘You were in command, weren’t you? If it had all gone wrong it wouldn’t have done to tell me Fagioletti failed. You would have failed. Still, I like to hear an officer giving credit to his men.’
Laurence hesitated. He must somehow make Uncle Quentin understand how useless he was when the terrible noise began, the earsplitting murderous violations of silence. But his uncle wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t accept if he did. Instead he said, ‘I would like to put Sergeant Fagioletti in for the DCM, sir.’
Quentin Rowland said, ‘Was he wounded? Did he force on to his objective when others were hanging back? What did he do, that it was not his duty, as a sergeant of the Weald Light Infantry, to do?’
Laurence wanted to say, he helped me, he took command when I was no longer there; but Uncle Quentin would say, ‘You were there, man!’ So he answered the CO’s question in a low voice – ‘Nothing, sir.’
‘Right,’ Quentin said. ‘And the same goes for you, Laurence. In a lot of battalions you’d be put in for an MC for tonight’s work, but I’m not going to. You did your duty, well. No one in the Weald Light Infantry’s going to get a decoration for that as long as I’m in command … But you have shown that you are fit for your second pip. You can put it up right away. Congratulations.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Laurence finished the cocoa and rose to go. Quentin stood, too, saying, ‘Your prisoner’s a real prize. Telling us all he knows … He swears the Huns are going to mount a major offensive next month.’
‘What front, sir?’
‘Ours,’ Quentin said. ‘He says they’re stockpiling artillery ammunition behind the front now, so that all they have to do is move the actual guns – and the extra infantry – from other fronts when they’re ready, and that won’t take long, with the rail network there is in northern France … Well, g
ood night, Laurence.’
Laurence saluted, ‘Good night, sir.’ He stepped up and out into the clean, cold air. The stars glittered frostily, the air was still … all just as it had been so few hours ago, before the raid.
Daily Telegraph, Tuesday, February 26, 1918
FIRST DAY OF RATIONED LONDON
THE VANISHED QUEUE
For the first time in its long history London was partially rationed as a war-time measure yesterday. The limit of supplies to the individual was placed on meat, butter, and margarine. The outstanding features of the actions of the authorities were:
Disappearance of food queues.
Little demand for meat at meals away from home.
Cheerful acceptance of the new state of affairs by the public, caterers, and tradesmen.
Satisfaction of the Ministry of Food that early reports proved the scheme to be sound, and successful.
From the public point of view, so far as the opinion of eight to ten million people can be estimated from general discussion in restaurants, clubs, and public conveyances, the scheme met with almost universal support and approval.
AT THE RESTAURANTS
FEW MEAT MEALS SERVED
Restaurant proprietors regarded yesterday more or less as an experiment, but so few meat meals were served that many of the establishments that continued meat courses will probably abandon them after this week. The lunching public, in business areas, particularly in the City, had decided by a large majority not to dispose of even a half-coupon on a Monday … ‘About I percent of my customers’ said a manager ‘have asked for meat meals … I could have sold five times the quantity of fish I prepared originally, and when I saw how the public was steering I secured some more fish. If this continues I shall join the ranks of the meatless caterers next week.’
Cate read on, interested in the mechanics of the business. How would they prevent people selling their meat coupons? How would they detect forgery? A thought struck him – how would Stella get any meat if she was hiding somewhere in the jungle of the city, a non-person as far as the rationing authorities were concerned?
