by Alan David
But Eddie did not get his good night’s sleep. Brigade H.Q. was buzzing. Maps were being scrutinised, and battalion commanders received their briefing. The Big Push was on. Long before dawn the shadowy figures of the reserve battalions had crept through the Blankfolks’ forward line and advanced upon the enemy. Big guns opened fire as planned. Night vanished as the barrages grew. Warlike sounds were fearsome and ceaseless.
A haze covered the land when dawn broke. The gun flashes lost their brilliance. The First Blankfolks moved forward to support the assaulting troops.
Tanks were lumbering across the fields. The infantry hugged together in sections, hurrying forward. German mortars came into action. Exploding shells shook the ground and threw up columns of dirty smoke. Tanks were hit and groups of infantry vanished in the hell of erupting explosive. Smoke thickened the haze into a wall that engulfed companies, and made men feel lonely and afraid. Tracers flashed from nowhere and vanished into the blank beyond. There was a rising crackle of small-arms fire.
The Blankfolks passed through the thin lines of the men who had started the attack. They had left stricken comrades lying every foot of the way. The leading platoons were moving upon a village now. British explosives were raining down upon it, demolishing the village house by house, and German troops crouched among the ruins in their dugouts, gripping their weapons, waiting for the slackening of the hell about them to foretell the coming of more khaki clad victims.
German outposts, dug in among bushes and trees, under hedges and in cunningly concealed weapon pits, were raking the advancing British with heavy automatic fire, straining their eyes to pierce the murk of the battlefield to pick out their targets. Mines and booby traps exploding under black ammo boots marked the progress of the forward platoons.
Smith was angry and bitter; the memory of his late sparring partner still fresh in his mind. The village was only partially visible at times through the smoke. I’ll catch some of the beggars there, he thought, and flinched as a stream of tracer crackled past him only feet away. He heard someone screaming hoarsely. Sweat broke out coldly on his forehead, and he held his bren at his hip in a deathlike grip. Someone was cursing at the top of his voice; dimly he recognised the voice for his own.
Smoke drifted and eddied, and parted suddenly to give Smith a glimpse of a flickering point of light issuing from a dark spot in a hedge before him. He paused and fired a burst from his efficient weapon, and knew he had scored hits. Running forward he crashed through the hedge, dipping his muzzle to riddle a feebly writhing figure in a weapon pit.
Eddie Rawlings, on Smith’s left, sprawled over barbed wire, regained his feet and crashed through the hedge. He saw five wispy figures running back to the village from their overrun position, fired his sten and cut down three of them. A fourth fell and got up, then fell again. The advance continued.
A spandau chattered from the nearest house in the village. A whole section fell, wiped out in a second. Someone threw a grenade, but the gun still fired after the explosion.
Corporal Rawlings jumped into a still-smoking shell crater, crawled to the lip and fired at the spandau’s position. The riflemen of his section crawled forward, firing rapidly. Bullets sang and snarled from shrapnel-scarred walls, sputtering through space, each to its own particular billet.
Crouching and alert, running forward from heap of rubble to shattered wall, to smoking crater, the sections moved in to the attack, pushing serge-clad flesh into the streams of bullets, men falling in agony and death and others coming forward with no thought for their fallen, and dying in turn, as the bullets caught them.
Big, sullen Dover, licking his slack lips, pulled the pin from a grenade, jumped up, and blew the spandau to pieces. He leaned against a wall then, laughing foolishly as the section ran past him.
‘I got the barsteds,’ he cried to Smith.
‘What do you want then, mate, a bloody medal?’ retorted the bren gunner. ‘Come on, mate, there are plenty more Jerries. One grenade doesn’t win a battle.’
Lloyd led Newman and Dover in a rush to clear a house from which sniper’s bullets had hummed at them. A rifle cracked from one of the upper windows and Dover fell screaming. A bullet had struck and pierced his steel helmet, deflected downwards, and smashed through his jaw to emerge through the front of his chin. It left his mouth a shambles of broken teeth and pulped tongue.
Lloyd and Newman rushed into the house. Another bullet passed between them, making a neat round hole in the door post. Lloyd fired twice, then pounded up the stairs. Newman, close on his heels, heard shouting, and more firing. There was a silence for several seconds, and Newman stopped on the stairs and listened. Then boots thudded in the shattered bedroom over his head. Lloyd reappeared. They cleared the ground floor.
Eddie and his bren group engaged a spandau which was situated in one of a row of ruined cottages. It was inviting death to move or show any part of the body. Rix threw a grenade which exploded somewhere in front of the enemy gun. Smith moved his position, covered by the blasting bomb, squinting his eyes to peer through the dust. The spandau fired a long terrifying burst that dislodged bricks behind and above Eddie. Smith fired a short burst which drew a much longer one in return from the enemy.
Albert Rix raised his head to seek out the spandau. A rifle cracked and Rix slid slowly down the heap of rubble, a thin trickle of blood appearing from the hole between his eyes which testified to the accuracy of the sniper covering the spandau. Smith stared at the inert figure of his Number Two. Wild impulses were leaping inside him like greyhounds at the start of a race. He changed magazines, his eyes searching for a glimpse of the sniper. He fired half a magazine through an upper window. The spandau returned fire and a stray bullet spanged off Smith’s helmet. He ducked, and turned an angry face to Eddie.
‘I’ll get him,’ said Eddie. He slung his sten around his neck and wormed his way through the rubble. The spandau was loosing off long bursts, and the sniper put bullets dangerously close to him. Corporal Rawlings crawled beside him.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Chuck a grenade at him.’
‘Okay, I’ll cover you.’
‘There’s a sniper covering the spandau. He got Rix.’
Corporal Rawlings nodded. He peered at the smoking cottages then raised his rifle carefully. He fired a short burst at an upper window. ‘There was a sniper,’ he said grimly.
Eddie crawled under the blackened roof timbers that scattered the ruins. He moved to the back of the house and circled the spandau. He came under fire from another sniper whose first shot sprayed chips of stone into his face. This time he was really pinned down. He lay on his back in the rubble and dared not move.
A noise attracted him. He twisted onto his side and saw a German climbing down a broken wall. Levelling his sten he shot the enemy through the body, and watched the man lay squirming. The sniper covering him fired again, and the hum of closely-passing lead was unnerving. He started crawling back the way he had come. The spandau was still pinning down the section.
Sergeant Rawlings was coming towards him, his face blackened and his uniform dirty. The sergeant was pushing his sten in front of him and crawling very fast. His face brightened when he saw Eddie, and he stopped.
‘I’m glad to see you. Are you okay? Arthur said you’d come this way. Can’t you get the gun?’
‘No, there’s a sniper covering his rear. He almost got me.’
‘Okay. You move up there and watch for the sniper to show himself, and get him when he does. If you don’t he’ll get me.’
‘Right.’ Eddie crouched near the top of a heap of rubble, peering between two fallen beams. The spandau was chattering sporadically. Dust filtered through the ruins. Shafts of sunlight sparkled down upon the blackened desolate buildings.
Sergeant Rawlings stood up and made a ten-yard dash, hurling himself down before he had taken half-a-dozen strides. Eddie saw a slight movement from the dark interior of a bedroom, and he fired half a magazine through the gap
ing window. A body suddenly pitched forward and hung over the window sill. The sergeant turned enquiring eyes to his brother, who gave the thumbs-up sign.
The sergeant moved on then, and Eddie stayed still to cover him. His eyes roved over the heaps and shadowy corners and windows, and he listened to the heavy reverberation of the spandau. The sudden quick blast of a grenade silenced the spandau. Seconds later the section came stumbling over the debris.
Enemy automatics covered the small square in the village. Number Two section tried to rush across the open space to get in close enough to use grenades. Three times they tried, and their casualties sprawled among the rubble. The survivors crouched in doorways and battered rooms. Number One section tried an assault from the right, and was repulsed. They left four men out there in the merciless open space. They huddled under cover. They were beyond fear — exhausted.
A Sherman lumbered into the square, and bullets enveloped it harmlessly as it trundled forward, big gun poking forward as if it were trying to smell out targets. Tracers from the spandau ricocheted in all directions from the steel hull of the tank in a wonderful firework display that was unappreciated by the crouching troops.
The tank sighted its first target and fired. Dust and smoke accompanied the terrific crash, and across the square the front of a house vanished. The tank fired again. Another house erupted into flying bricks. Number Two platoon, its sections well spread out, raced across the open ground. This time there was no enemy fire. Two more tanks entered the square. They nosed forward with the advancing troops.
By noon the village had been cleared. German shells began falling as the companies moved forward into the fields. Aircraft were roaring overhead, battering the slowly retreating enemy, bombing sometimes just in front of their own troops.
Dead cattle were littering the fields. The troops stormed forward, crouching and cowering whenever the German observers brought concentrations of shells down upon them, and they lay exhausted while the world rocked about them.
‘Keep on to the next hedge this time,’ commanded Sergeant Rawlings, bringing the remnants of his platoon together under his personal command. ‘Advance.’
They scrambled up and doubled forward over the flat grass-land, and were some fifty yards from the hedge when it poured at them a violent storm of lead. Men fell helplessly.
‘Charge!’ yelled the sergeant. ‘Don’t get down. Keep going while you can. They’ll cut us to pieces out here in the open.’
He led his wavering men at a run over the last lethal yards. The dark hedge was ragged and shaking. The section commanders were ordering volleys as they ran, and they rushed in yelling and screamingwith all restraint gone.
Smith fired short bursts at the enemy whom he could plainly see crouching behind the hedge. He was yelling incoherently. The bren was a thudding, straining killer in his hands. Blood pumped furiously through his veins. The reckless thrill of killing held him. His chest constricted. Impulses flashed through him. Hatred was a red searing pang inside him. He lusted to kill.
A bullet struck Eddie with the force of an express train. He staggered under the impact and nearly halted under the shock. But the questing bullet had hit his ammunition pouch, in which he was carrying two filled, spare magazines for the section bren. The bullet had been harmlessly deflected.
Smith was first at the hedge. He thrust himself into it, regardless of the thorns. ‘You swine!’ he was screaming. He fired through the hedges at Germans who lay there shooting at him. He saw them dropping under the hail from his bren as he leaped through. He fell waist deep into water, twisting to his right to fire along the ditch at the many Germans holding it. The bren rapped swiftly, triumphantly.
Eddie charged through a gap, and fired a short burst at Jerries who were in the act of leaping out of the ditch to meet their attackers. Bayonets flashed wickedly.
Lloyd jumped at the nearest German, his bayonet angling for the enemy stomach. The German bayonet missed him, and Lloyd laughed nervously. This time I’ve beaten you, he thought, and braced himself as his point stabbed into enemy flesh.
Newman lunged at a German officer. His foot caught in a fallen body and he fell helplessly before his foe. The German levelled a pistol, and Smith smashed him with a short burst through the face. Newman threw his comrade a thankful glance and scrambled up. He met a German who was on his hands and knees halfway out of the ditch, his head thrust forward and both hands pressing on the grassy bank to lever his body out of the water. Uttering a fearful shriek Newman lunged with his bayonet. The point entered the German’s gaping mouth and protruded from the back of his neck. Newman kicked out viciously, jerking back his rifle, and the dead German slid backwards into the water.
Billy Rogers fell into the ditch and landed atop a yelling German. Both lost their weapons and slipped under water in a flurry of threshing arms and legs. Rogers got a grip on the German’s throat and dug in his fingers with frantic strength. A knee hit him in the stomach and his senses swam. Water lapped over his face, and his lungs were near bursting with the effort of holding his breath. The German broke the stranglehold and got to his feet. Rogers clasped him about the knees and tried to pull him off balance. A terrific blow crashed against his skull. His teeth rattled. He crawled up the German in panic. His surging strength was relayed to his knee, which smashed into the German’s belly, and sobbing with relief he watched his enemy go sliding into the water.
Rogers looked about him then. Men were fighting in the ditch, and struggling in the meadow beyond. Rogers straightened. He saw an enemy rifle centred upon him. The German face behind the gun was defiant and triumphant. Rogers didn’t hear the shot. A great white light flamed into his eyes. He was aware of pain only in a split second before blackness swooped to blank out his eyes forever.
Terrible shrieks mingled with the shouting and cursing as the intensity of the fighting increased. Men became inhuman, blood-lusting maniacs. This was the timeless, brutal, close fighting where men reverted to the barbarian. The struggling, brawling mass of civilised men was locked in bestial combat, where a moment’s lapse in alertness meant death from a bullet or from a bayonet gouging mortally in the vitals.
A German lay with nerveless fingers pressed tightly over the gaping bayonet wound in his belly. He writhed in whimpering agony, and when his bloody fingers slipped, his split intestines began bulging like a gory balloon. He screamed hoarsely at the burning pain as he tried to hold his belly together.
A British soldier leaned as if asleep on the sloping bank of the ditch, but the dark strings of blood on his tunic from his bayonet-torn throat dispelled the illusion of naturalness in his attitude. A German was attempting to crawl away from the bitter fray. He was on his hands and knees, whimpering like a child lost in the darkness. His left eye was a red pit, and blood covered his face like a bright mask, dripping down and splotching his hands.
Smith was a raving, khaki-clad killer. He ran along the top of the ditch shooting rapidly until the magazine emptied. A lunging German was stopped with the empty weapon in his face and fell. Smith picked up the man’s rifle and bayonet and straightened in time to parry another bayonet. He swung his butt into the German’s face and stabbed with his own bayonet as the man fell. He lost his hold on the weapon and turned to face another German.
‘Come on, you brutes!’ he was yelling. He side-stepped a charge and grabbed the enemy’s shoulders, spinning the man until he was able to look over the man’s back. He pulled backwards and pressed the German to the ground. He punched furiously as he rolled and struggled with the German, over the wounded and dying, unaware of anything except the other man.
Sergeant Rawlings lost his balance as he leaped the ditch, and a bayonet thrust barely missed his stomach. He rolled over and fired a burst into his enemy’s face as the man whirled to pin the sergeant with the bayonet. The weapon missed by inches as it plunged into the ground, and the lifeless body sprawled across his killer.
For minutes there was an uncontrollable mix-up in the shadow of the
hedge. Khaki and grey uniforms were hopelessly entangled. It was individual against individual, and there was no quarter; none asked, none given.
Then there were no more Germans standing. For a moment the British looked wildly about for the next foe. Then men wilted when they realised that it was over. Fury and madness left them, and they relaxed like pricked balloons. They stared about at the carnage in disbelief, horrified. A man near Eddie suddenly dropped to his knees and vomited blindly, spewing upon the dead, bloody face of a fallen comrade. Then a spandau opened fire at them from four hundred yards, and the frozen tableau was broken.
‘At the double,’ shouted Sergeant Rawlings. ‘We’ll make the next hedge this time.’
The sections sorted themselves out, only half conscious of the blank spaces in their ranks. They doubled forward listlessly, gripped by the shock of those brutal moments. Now they were deathly tired, moving in a horror of nightmare and noise. On they went, bloody and dirty and exhausted, pushing through the hedges and falling in the face of the machine-gun fire. The survivors, as they struggled up and continued through the long afternoon, left behind them the broken defences of the enemy. This was the first day of the Big Push. Nine hours had passed since they climbed out of their trenches, and they had advanced only four bloody, body-strewn miles. . .
‘Dig in along this hedge,’ ordered Corporal Rawlings. ‘Make it quick in case the mortars start. Let’s get below ground, boys.’
They began to dig, silent and laboriously, staggering over their tools. It began to rain. The soft patter turned to a steady drumming. They did not care. They could not think. They dug down into the soft, heavy ground, then huddled in their shelters, quiet and alone. They had won this day at bitter cost, but felt none of the joy of the victor.
The splashing rain turned the earth into mud and each man into a dirty, sodden scarecrow. Darkness descended, but the Big Push continued. Fresh troops from the reserves passed by the silent, shallow pits of the First Blankfolks to press home the attack. Those who had fought all day rested and tried to forget…
