Heart of War (91 page)

Boy mumbled, ‘Sorry, sir … made a fool of myself.' He stood up. ‘There's no need to come with me, sir. The shelling's bad out there.'

‘I know,' Quentin said. ‘But I have to come. I have to see that B's all right, without Kellaway. I hope Stratton's all right, to take over … Mr Dalley!'

The R.S.M. called up, ‘Sir?' from the cellar.

‘Come with me, please. I'll want you to take over Mr Stratton's platoon in B Company, for the time being.'

Father Caffin rose from the German ration box on which
he had been sitting and made ready to accompany them.

Quentin went first to B Company, found that Lieutenant Fred Stratton had taken over command, and that Captain Kellaway had been carried to the Regimental Aid Post, set up near his own headquarters in another cellar. After leaving R.S.M. Dalley to take over Stratton's old platoon, he went to A and D Companies, at the near end of the village, to check over their defences; then up to C to steady Boy – here Father Caffin left him, to stay with Boy. All this done, Quentin returned to his headquarters. A little later the German shelling stopped suddenly, for the seventh time. For the seventh time the men struggled out, and to their posts. No German attack came. The German artillery opened fire again, all together, a 5.9-inch high explosive shell bursting at Boy Rowland's feet and tearing his body into three bloody pieces.

Father Caffin came painfully to the mouth of the cellar, where a damaged German machine gun mounted on its tripod marked battalion headquarters. He walked slowly down the steps, and faced Quentin. After a time he said, ‘Sir, Captain Rowland's been killed.'

Quentin took his pipe from his mouth and stared at the priest in the gloom. He felt cold, and for a moment thought he would cry, for his eyes ached and throbbed. He said, ‘Instantly?'

‘Yes, Colonel.'

‘Sure?'

‘I'm not lying, Colonel.'

‘Who's in command of the company now?'

‘Lieutenant Wildeblood, sir. Captain Dickens was badly wounded a few minutes earlier … he's like to die, Wildeblood said to tell you … And I'm sorry, Colonel. Boy was a darlin' young man.'

Quentin nodded absently – Dickens was a Weald – not a regular of course, but a Man of Kent, lived at Higham, by Rochester … but Wildeblood wasn't … a reinforcement sent up last month, really a Lancashire Fusilier … he wished it had been the other way round, with Dickens the one who survived. It was better to have Wealds' officers commanding Wealds,' troops, in a situation like this.

He said, ‘I'll go and see them.' He braced himself to face
the steps and the staccato thunder of the livid day outside.

Father Caffin had his hand out – ‘These were Boy's.'

Quentin glanced down: a gold wrist watch with a crocodile leather band: a wallet with a few francs in it: a cameo locket on a thin gold chain. He peered at the handsome oval face of a woman of about forty, fair hair piled on top of her head … It wasn't Boy's mother, Louise: too old to be any lady friend of his, surely. He turned the locket over and read ‘Werner von Rackow' and a rank, regiment, and serial number: very strange. One more thing – a letter, addressed to Lady Helen Durand-Beaulieu, High Staining, Walstone, Kent.

He put it all in his pocket. Must remember to give the letter to the post corporal as soon as he could; but not before he had had time to write a brief note to John and Louise, telling them of the death of their son. He started slowly up the steps. He heard footsteps following, turned sharply, banging his steel helmet against the side wall, and saw Archie Campbell – ‘What are you doing? Stay here to take messages.'

Campbell said, ‘Sir … I'm commanding D now. I think I must go round again and see that they're all right.'

Quentin hesitated. There ought to be an adjutant – someone to take messages … or the R.S.M. – but he had gone to B. There weren't enough officers … Enough to command the few men left. He'd be back soon. He said, ‘All right. Come back to here when you've been round. Make sure the machine guns in your sector are well protected … as well as they can be.'

Then once more he started up the stairs, this time faster, and walked out into the storm.

Fletcher Whitman, poet, lay a few yards beyond the eastern outskirts of what had been Nollehoek, covered in brick dust and half buried in rubble. He had chosen the place himself when he arrived, moving with B Company, but his own master, for he was a Battalion Sniper. He was well protected from all sides except the direction he chose to shoot, which was to the south, across the front of C Company and part of B. A solid brick wall, its remains a foot high and now – with the piled bricks – its base three feet thick, protected him from directly in front, as he lay facing sideways. Some strewn sandbags which he had adjusted during the night protected his rear, and another heap of rubble protected his
right, where the nearest sentry of B Company was twenty yards away. He had moved during the night – taken a shit, stretched, walked about a bit, talked with Mr Laurence and Dago, eaten some bully, taken a drink from his waterbottle, then – back, to lie motionless, watching, waiting. Two 5.9s had landed close, in quick succession, early in the morning, and a flying brick had hit him on the left shoulder blade. He thought the bone might be broken – it certainly hurt a fair sod; but he could shoot – and he had not moved … and the new bricks and flying mud piled on top of him had improved his camouflage so that now it would take a real expert, studying from close range with binoculars, to spot him … but, of course, the next 5.9 might be a direct hit. The body of the German officer who had tried to trick him into showing himself an hour ago lay hooked round an angle iron in the German reserve barbed wire, two hundred yards away, his binoculars blown into his eyes by Fletcher's shot.

He was glad his mother had got over her flu. She oughtn't to work so hard … she ought to take the jobs and the money Florinda kept trying to give her or get for her … but she wouldn't … He was glad his dad was a little simple, or he'd be out here, and this war was no place for him. That German officer would have got
him
, for sure. Dad trusted everyone. But Granddad would like it better than poaching, except for the orders and standing to attention, and the noise. Granddad didn't like noise.

He moved his head, bare – the steel helmet lay beside him, hidden: on his head its smooth round shape would betray him, even if he tried to camouflage it with leaves … for what leaves would be growing here naturally, in November? His eye moved up behind the telescopic sight … yes, he had seen right … something moving in the new No Man's Land … very close to the ground, crawling forward with great care … one, two, three, four figures … field grey … a German patrol. He knew the exact shape of the ground by heart, for he had been studying it for nearly twenty-four hours. The German patrol was entering a small depression now. They might come out of it in any direction. If they came straight ahead, they'd be in the open – not to C Company, but to him on the flank, for fifteen yards; if they then turned and came toward him and B, he wouldn't see them again until they appeared out of the ground barely twenty yards from him – near
enough for a potato masher … In that case, they'd be after
him
. They couldn't know exactly where he was, but they'd know he must be somewhere outside this angle of Nollehoek.

He waited, the seconds ticking off in his mind. No sign of them … give them another minute … sixty seconds … They hadn't appeared, so they were coming for him. He shifted his position minutely. If he could tell Mr Laurence, so they'd bring a Lewis gun up on his flank, they'd get them all with a short burst. But he couldn't move. Snipers ought to have some sort of telephone that they could use without winding handles and shouting into the thing … bury the wire, of course … maybe one day there'd be a little wireless, very small, he could wear on his chest, the mouthpiece already strapped to his mouth, earphones to his head.

He waited, safety catch forward, a round in the breech, the magazine full. If he fired at once, as soon as the first Jerry appeared, he'd get that man, but the others would throw their bombs before he could hit them all. Also the shot would tell them just about exactly where he was. Best wait till they were all out … He lay, impassive, sentences drumming and swelling in his head.

They came up, one by one, very slowly, the helmets covered in cloth, and that caked with mud, faces muddied. They stared straight at him, twenty yards away, seeking him. A German shell, falling short, burst close behind them and they sank to the ground, waiting for the rest of the salvo. But the charge had been faulty in only one gun, and as they rose again, all their heads and shoulders showing, Fletcher worked his bolt and trigger four times. The feldwebel, the fourth to die, had time to hurl his bomb in a leaping arc, to land a few feet directly in front of Fletcher. The blast hurled mud and brick shards at his head, and a steel splinter grazed his forehead. Blood began to trickle down his face first on one side of his nose, then on the other. The four Germans lay still, each shot through the heart. Fletcher did not move a muscle until at last, through the blood, he saw what he had been looking for … the German with a rifle and a huge telescopic sight, about x 20, four hundred yards off, watching, waiting, for him to get out and run … to move. His left hand, already on the forestock, slid slowly back, and moved the sights to 400. The German was clear in the circle of his own sight … wind, about ten miles an hour, from the south-west … He squeezed
the trigger slowly, and, as the rifle jerked back into his shoulder, closed his eyes. When he opened them, the German was still on his belly, but his head, which had been raised a few inches, peering through the big sight, had dropped to the ground.

Five minutes later a fury of shelling burst round the angle of the village where Fletcher was. Trying to get me with the big guns, are they, he thought. Well, there's a chance, always is … and they know now just where I am, so I won't get many more of them from here. Time to move.

He started wriggling backward, on his belly, between the sandbags and the rubble, trailing rifle and steel helmet with him. Once out of the German view behind the low wall he put on his helmet, and ran, crouched, to the nearest ragged trench, and slid in with a whoop.

He found Mr Cate there, with the Dago, and the C.O., besides half a dozen men of B, the C.O.'s runner and Mr Laurence's batman.

‘Who are you?' the C.O. asked, staring suspiciously at him.

‘Private Whitman, Battalion Sniper, sir,' he said.

‘Oh, I didn't recognize you with all that mud on your face. And blood. You're wounded.'

‘A little, sir.'

‘Here, sergeant, help him clean up and put on his first field dressing.'

Fletcher kept his face impassive as Sergeant Fagioletti washed his forehead with muddy water from the trench bottom, then dosed his wound with iodine, and applied the first field dressing. Now he'd have to wear his tin hat on the back of his head, if he was wearing it at all, Fletcher thought, for he surely couldn't get it down on his forehead over the dressing. While the bandaging was going on the C.O. said to him, ‘Any luck, Whitman?'

‘I've got nine since first light this morning, sir. Six yesterday … I got four just now … thought they was p'raps making a reconnaissance for an attack, but it was a patrol sent out to get me. I got them.'

‘Good man!' The C.O. turned to Laurence Cate. ‘Everything all right here, Laurence?'

‘Yes, sir. We're fine.'

Fletcher looked at the young officer curiously. He knew
him as well as he knew any of the gentry round Walstone, except perhaps his father, the squire; and he knew he wasn't fine, at all … but in just what way, it was hard to tell. The Dago had broken in, ‘We've just been to all the positions, sir, Mr Cate and me … both positions, sir, we only have eight men left in the platoon now … but we're all right.'

Fletcher munched on an Army biscuit. The Dago was trying to show the C.O. that he was here, and would look after Mr Laurence and see that what ought to be done was done. Though what in the name of God that would be, now, sitting here under the bombardment, waiting to be blown to bits, he didn't know. His forehead burned and ached. How could anyone who hadn't been here understand this? By poetry, that's how. But it would have to be really good. Everyone ought to understand – especially Betty Merritt.

The C.O. said, ‘All right then … Stick it out, Laurence. Keep visiting the men, talking to them … We'll be reinforced soon … I'm going back to battalion headquarters. Come along, Cottrell.'

‘I'll come with you, sir,' Fletcher said. ‘I'll have a look at D Company front now and find a new position there.'

Fagioletti watched the three of them scurry across an open patch, struggle round the edge of a mud-filled shell crater, and disappear among the ruins and the smoking shell bursts.

‘Have you ever seen any dead birds out here, sergeant?' his platoon commander asked him.

Fagioletti scanned the young officer's face anxiously; was this a joke? ‘No, sir,' he said, ‘can't say I have.'

Cate fished in the pocket of his tunic and drew out the corpse of a robin. He gently ruffled the red down on its breast and said, ‘I found this one out there –' he nodded toward the east – ‘just after dawn this morning.'

Fagioletti said cautiously, ‘It's dead, sir.'

‘Yes,' Cate said, ‘but – this village was full of birds, once – sparrows, starlings, robins … thrushes and blackbirds on the edges … Why did this one stay, when all the others left?'

‘I'm sure I couldn't say,' Fagioletti said. Poor Mr Cate wasn't here, that was a fact. He was somewhere else, where it wasn't raining shells and making a row fit to break your eardrums. He said, ‘We'd best go and see Corporal Leavey's lot, sir.' Cate put the little corpse back in his pocket and said, ‘Oh yes … they're that way, aren't they?'