by John Masters
He set his jaw and turned his plane down the field, A Flight in echelon to right and left behind him. The Camel bounced and lurched ever faster over the grass … rose … he eased the stick back … up into the fog, dense droplets condensing on the rudimentary windshield and chasing each other across his goggles … the engine muffled though so close … out! The sun about to rise dead ahead; and Fokkers, waiting, low, in the eye of the sun. He raised his arm and pointed. Looking around, he saw that all four flights were in position: ten Fokkers, thirteen Camels. The fight would be very close to the ground, just above the fog ceiling. He couldn’t tell yet whether Werner was among them. Another quick glance away, this time down … the fog extended far in all directions. It seemed to fade away perhaps twenty miles to the west. But the great ground battle would be fought out under that white blanket, stippled with the glowing, fading red and yellow flowers of explosions. The Royal Flying Corps could do nothing yet – no strafing, bombing, nothing – except weaken the enemy air force so that later, when the sun had dispersed the fog, it could not play an effective part. So, for now – ‘Tally ho!’ he shouted into the shrieking wind of his upward passage.
The pattern of the bombardment changed and Quentin looked at his watch – 9.35 a.m. There was much less of the distinctive hiss of gas shells. There was plenty of gas still in the air but the Huns were not now adding to it. The heavies had come forward from counter batterywork and were plastering the front line, where he stood close to Ryding, next to two Vickers machine-guns of the Machine-Gun Corps. Another pair of guns thirty yards on, sited to fire in enfilade across the front, had been destroyed by a direct hit from a 5.9 half an hour ago. The fog was as dense as ever. He listened tensely; heavy and light mortars, which had not been in action for some time, were now firing again at full speed, raining their bombs on to the front line and just behind it … field guns were firing on the second line … beyond that he could not tell. It felt like Zero Hour, the moment of attack … 9.40 … nothing to be seen beyond the reeling posts of the wire, the wire itself, great gashes hacked in it by the heavy shells, lips of craters newly gouged out of the earth … The heavies were lifting … over the trench, further back. The infantry must be coming … no use firing lights of any kind. A Vickers to the left began a long chatter, and like rooks rousing from their roosts, the whole front line caught fire … Lewis guns stammering, rifles barking by the hundred … the men were all up on the firestep … and there at last, at last, were the Huns, coming crouched over the dry earth, running, making no other sound, one group here, under the fire of a Lewis gun, another there, dimly seen in the fog, one man falling, the rest coming on. He picked up the field telephone and said, ‘Mr Bolton, call for the SOS fire.’
The RSM’s voice was tinny – ‘Line cut, sir, but I think the guns are firing anyway.’
Quentin jumped down into the trench, grabbed a rifle from a fallen man, filled his pockets with ammunition, hung a cotton bandelier of it over one shoulder – ‘Come on, Campbell,’ he said. ‘Let’s see how Kellaway’s doing.’ He stumbled fast along the trench, shouting as he went to the men on the firestep above him, ‘Keep at it … Aim, Wealds, aim! … Kill!’
Laurence Cate stooped lower to peer into the hedge, between the interstices of the alder and hazel. Yes, there it was, the beginnings of a nest, probably a blackbird’s. Yes, it was a blackbird, for here was the mother bird to be, brown and pert, scolding him from twenty feet further along the edge of the wood. And on the other side, the male, glossy black, bright yellow beak. Better move on or he’d disturb them. He forced through the hedge and into the wood. The leaves were the bright pale green of spring, the ground damp and smelling of wet earth, bright with primroses … more nests high overhead, swaying as the boughs on which they were built stooped to the west wind, making small arcs against the sky … the fog had dispersed about noon, and the day become clear and fine and fresh. He walked on, keeping a sharp eye open for birds … but the copse belonged to the colony of rooks high above there, and the blackbirds in the hedge. It was only a small copse. He was soon out of it, walking across a field showing the earliest spears of winter wheat, over a gate, into a lane. There were men beyond the lane, spread out, moving to the west across the fields. They would disturb the birds. He’d see no more until they had gone. Here was a little barn … clamp, really, of the sort they kept turnips or wurzels in at home – low roof, dug half into the earth. This one’s door was broken, leaning open on one hinge. Inside, blankets, planks on the stone floor, equipment cast away, greatcoats, rifles, gas masks, everything. He sat down, leaning back against the cold wall, staring straight ahead. No birds would come in here. But what … where … why, here? Gradually his eyes closed and he slipped sideways until he was lying flat on one side, on top of the blankets and refuse left behind by the men who had fled from this place two miles in the rear, about an hour and a half earlier.
In the portion of the old front-line trench where Quentin Rowland stood, with his adjutant and half a dozen other men, it was quiet. To right and left the trench had been completely caved in by artillery fire, boxing in the thirty yards, including one bay and a traverse, where the little party stood, some on the remains of the firestep, facing east, some on the crumbling rear wall, facing west. A field telephone lay in the bottom of the trench, but all wires from it had been cut long ago, before dark. No one answered, however often or hard you cranked the bell. It was near midnight of March 21st.
Quentin said, ‘Haven’t heard or seen any Huns for a long time.’
‘No one has, sir,’ Archie said. He was bone weary, too tired to be afraid. There had been plenty of fear during the endless day, but fear of a different kind from any he had known before in the war. From arrival with the battalion in June 1916 he had endured waves of anguished fear that he would be killed, or maimed. The fear was of the clattering bullets that he had often seen cut off a man’s life, rip blood from his lungs and mouth, fill his steel helmet with his brains … fear of the shells that made the terrible noise, and shook the earth, and could tear young limbs to shreds in an instant, and spatter whole men, as red pulp, against a wall of chalk. Today it had been fear of the unknown. What in the name of Jesus Christ was happening? The Germans had come in the fog … many had died there under the wire, tendrils of fog caressing them, crawling over them, testing – is this alive or dead? – like snakes looking for a meal. Some had passed mysteriously on, jumping over trenches and disappearing into the west … the shelling kept stopping, starting. Gradually the battalion had become broken up into separate parts, each isolated. There was no link between them – no telephone, no signals by Very light or flag, no aircraft dropped messages, no runners came sliding under the wire. No one came – not even Germans. Archie knew attacks; he’d attacked, and been attacked. You reached the enemy’s wire, and you broke through, or not. You took the trench, or you did not. You had so many dead, but you knew where they were … the corporal and three privates killed by the machine-gun that had suddenly opened up from the Pope’s Nose … two more men missing, but you really knew they’d been blown away by the 5-9 just as you were going over the top … Today, where were they? Had the Germans succeeded, or failed? Where were they?
The CO said, ‘Those buggers are just sweeping on, through whatever holes they make. They’re not stopping to mop up pockets of resistance.’ He walked angrily three yards up the trench and Archie felt rather than saw him swing back in the dark – ‘Clever swine!’ He stopped opposite Archie and his face loomed white and close. ‘I’m not commanding my battalion sitting here with ten men …’
‘Eight, sir,’ Archie said, ‘including me.’
‘Well, I’m going to find some more of my men and get back at those swine. We can move about a bit in the dark, but we won’t be able to tomorrow … not without artillery support or smoke … I think A Company was overrun.’
‘I think so, too, sir. I couldn’t see clearly for the fog, but I’m almost positive I saw Germans pouring into their trenches.’
‘I think B fell back before they were surrounded.’
‘Some of them, sir …’
‘Fell back west … How far, we don’t know. They may be in the second line … the third … the support … God knows how far back they went. But somewhere, back there, there must be a firm line again … Do you realise this is the end of trench warfare, Campbell? It’ll be like 1914 again. Open warfare! We’ll be out of these bloody trenches for good! No more rats … Gather the men here … Listen, men – we’re going to get out and find some of the rest of the battalion. Keep together, in arrowhead, but close. Don’t lose touch with the men on your right and left whatever happens. All bayonets fixed. Follow me, then.’
He lifted his own rifle to the proper position for an assault, of the high port, scrambled up the back slope of the trench wall and out, waiting on the top until the eight other men had joined him. Then, moving slowly but steadily across the torn soil, he headed west.
John Merritt awoke from deep sleep with a start. What had awakened him? Music … a bugle … blowing the ‘Stand-to.’ Someone was running past his tent; ‘Stand-to! Stand-to! … Officers to the regimental post of command!’
Rudy Anspach was up, lighting the lantern, pulling on his field boots. Three minutes later the two young men were hurrying between the rows of officers’ tents, fully dressed for battle, with steel helmets, greatcoats, gas masks, and side arms.
In the big headquarters tent the colonel was standing at the end behind his office table. They waited. After five minutes he said, ‘Everybody here, Ewing?’
The regimental adjutant said, ‘Yes, sir. Except for an officer each from Batteries A and F, on overnight leave.’
The colonel nodded, then raised his voice – ‘All hell’s broken loose on the British front. The Germans have attacked on a front of about fifty miles on the Somme. Details are not clear and won’t be for some time, but it’s obvious there’s been a big breakthrough in front of Amiens. General Pershing has been asked to have troops ready to help, and he’s ordered our division to move north, at once to La Fère, which is twenty-five kilometres from here – a little over sixteen miles. The infantry move in an hour. We follow. Further details to battalion commanders at 2 a.m. here. Meantime, see that the men get some food into their bellies. That’s all, gentlemen. Dismissed!’
In the first faint light Quentin Rowland stopped and spread his men out a little further apart. They had been moving off and on for nearly six hours now. He had no real idea how much ground they had covered, but guessed it was close to two miles, perhaps three. After the first ten minutes they had been fired on from a shell crater. It took half an hour to establish that the inhabitants of the crater were an officer and nine men of the Northumberland Fusiliers. Quentin had ordered them to join him and again moved, on, now nineteen strong. An hour later, two lines of deserted trenches having been crossed, they were fired on again. This time lights went up, illuminating the field, and machine-guns fired from close range, the bullets clacking low, mostly overhead as the men lay pressed to the ground, but two of his men had been killed, and one too badly wounded to continue. It took an hour to work round to the flank of that post, which he knew to be German because they had shouted to him in German and broken English to surrender … They’d killed some of the swine, and then he was past … Christ, there must be a line somewhere, a Red Cap to say ‘All stragglers gather there, sir’.. But so far, they had not met any other formed body, only figures who ran away in the darkness … single bullets from nowhere, short, doubtful bursts, from distant light machine-guns.
And now at last, the light. He said, ‘Keep tight formation … but not too close there … Mr Wolfe, keep your men thirty yards behind me. If we are fired on, get out to a flank and give me covering fire.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘All right. Advance!’
He moved off. It was amazing how little the ground here, only two or three miles behind the front line, had been affected by the war. The front lines had been so stable for nearly four years now. The Somme offensive had moved them forward a little, but since then – nothing. The copse over to his right, with the rooks stirring against the early light, might have been on the hill behind High Staining … the fields were sprouting a pale green fuzz of winter wheat.
A soldier on the right of the arrowhead formation said, ‘Someone waving at us from the edge of the big wood over there, sir. He’s wearing a British helmet.’
‘The Huns have plenty of those,’ Quentin said; but he raised his arm and changed the direction of movement towards the wood, which stretched along the hillside and over the brow of the gentle slope to his right front. As he came nearer he saw two men standing, both officers. To right and left of them the edge of the wood was lined with British soldiers, lying prone, rifles and Lewis guns thrust forward.
One of the officers was a major and one a lieutenant. They saluted, seeing the crown and star on Quentin’s shoulder, and the major began to say, ‘I have …’, when a machine-gun opened fire from the south-west across the rolling fields, and cut leaves began to shower down from the trees overhead.
Quentin dropped to one knee and turned to his party, shouting, ‘Run! … Take position there with the others!’
The major and lieutenant knelt beside him. Field grey figures were spreading out in the fast strengthening light from a row of barns and farm buildings half a mile away. The British soldiers in the wood opened a steady, aimed fire.
‘That’ll bring on their guns,’ the major said. ‘We’ve dug a little during the night … not much, though.’
Quentin said, ‘What have you got?’
‘A hundred and fifteen men, sir … Mostly my regiment, Duke of Wellington’s, but some from everywhere – Gordons, Cameronians, Wiltshires, Worcesters, London Rifle Brigade … nine Lewis guns, one Vickers … they’ve been coming in ever since I got here about dusk last night.’
‘Any Wealds?’
‘I don’t think so, sir.’
The lieutenant said, ‘A Jock told me there was nearly a company of Wealds in another farm down there’ – he pointed north – ‘but …’
‘Might be Kellaway,’ Quentin muttered. ‘Take a couple of men and run and find out, Campbell. Whoever they are, unless they have a brigadier general with them, bring them up here. We’ll make this place a redoubt, and call it …’
‘I have already named it Duke’s Wood, sir,’ the major said respectfully but firmly.
‘All right,’ Quentin said. ‘Duke’s Wood Redoubt it is … Hurry up, Campbell. I want those men here in fifteen minutes.’
He realised, looking at his adjutant, that Campbell was nervous about breaking into the open, even though he would be leaving the wood on the side away from the Germans … well, there might be Germans that side, too. Friend and foe were inextricably mixed up by now. The real trouble was that Campbell had only known the trenches and trench warfare. He felt naked out in the open, not realising that in this war of movement the Germans could not be using massed, fixed, concentrated machine-guns – only what weapons and ammunition they could carry with them. Nor could they get instant, overwhelming artillery support, because they wouldn’t have good communications with the gun positions. No time to explain all this now, so he repeated, impatiently, ‘Hurry up, Campbell!’
Then Archie, with his two men, rose to their feet and hurried off northward through the wood, and at the far edge, with only the briefest pause, ran out into the open, and raced across the young wheat to the distant row of red brick barns and sheds.
Private Willum Gorse, on watch near the corner of one of the barns, shouted excitedly, ‘Hey, three men a-coming, sergeant … three men a-running …’
‘Ours?’ Sergeant Fagioletti asked sharply.
‘Oh yes, I can see ’em clear … Why, one’s an officer. It’s Mr Campbell.’
Captain Kellaway, his face drawn with worry and fatigue, his good eye bloodshot and blinking with strain, said, ‘Who? By God, it is …!’
&nb
sp; Fagioletti waited, rifle rested on the brickwork beside him. For a moment he had felt a great surge of relief, when Gorse had said that an officer was coming It would be Mr Cate, who had disappeared yesterday … just vanished, no trace of him, no blood, no bones, nothing. What had happened to him? He must have been killed, blown to pieces by one of those Hun shells the size of a house. But … but … could he have just wandered off? You’d think it would be impossible in the trenches, but that day, yesterday, anything was possible … the fog so thick you sometimes couldn’t see five yards, with your mask on, because it was full of gas, and something else that made your eyes smart and itch, and then on top of that the fumes of the ammonal and the reek of cordite from your own bullets firing. You felt like going mad, not knowing what was happening, what had happened, what would happen … fire at a Hun running across your front, tear off your mask and rub frantically at your eyes, choke, vomit, shit … He was thirsty, his mouth dry.
It was Mr Campbell all right, now speaking quickly to the captain – ‘The CO’s up there, Stork … that wood, they’ve called it Duke’s Wood Redoubt … and he has over a hundred and thirty men, with several Lewis guns. He wants you – whatever you’ve got here – to join him there right away, at once. Some Germans are attacking from the other side of the wood, but I don’t think they’re enough to get very close – yet. What do you have here?’
‘Forty men of my company and twenty from other battalions. Four officers, two of them gunners … but Laurence Cate has gone.’
‘Killed?’
‘We don’t know. He just vanished some time yesterday, his platoon sergeant tells me … All right. It’ll take me a couple of minutes to tell everyone and organise an advance. We can’t just move up like a football crowd.’ He hurried off, calling, ‘Officers, all officers to me!’ He came back towards Archie beckoning, as the officers began to hurry across the farmyard, and muttered, ‘Archie, bring up the rear with your men. Deal with anyone who tries to sneak off. We’ve got a pretty jumpy lot here.’
