Behind her her father sat at the table, the London newspaper spread out to catch the light.
‘Another big attack, Alex.’ She said nothing, and he began to read excerpts to her. ‘After a series of daring and undisclosed tactics, the Second and Fifth Armies, fighting in appalling conditions, have continued to put pressure on the enemy’s front. The advance began after a bombardment by our artillery, described as the greatest man-made explosion ever seen. Troops of the Commonwealth forces are fighting side by side with persistent gallantry . . .’ He paused and looked at her shoulders, and her fingers gripping the door handle. He had not questioned her about her relationship with Jonathan Blackwood, or what had happened between them in London. If he had been able, he would have prevented it. But she was not a child; and he was only grateful that she had told him some of it.
They must be expecting heavy casualties despite the newspapers’ optimism, he thought. More huts had been constructed at Hawks Hill, and he had heard that all hospitals from here to the coast had been warned to prepare to receive unspecified numbers of wounded. Even at Hawks Hill they had been told that shell-shock cases and blind patients would have to take second place.
He looked at the paper again and cleared his throat.
‘The G.O.C. has spoken of his pride in these men from overseas, and has welcomed the additional support of the Royal Marines under his command.’
She gripped the handle so hard she felt it breaking her skin. She had known, as Jonathan had, even when they had been so free of care in London during those six precious days, that such peace and such happiness could not last.
She had lain awake in the quiet nights here, touching her breasts as he had done. Imagined him gazing down at her: the smile, the hunger, so dear to her. It was the lover she remembered, not the man tortured by experiences she had seen mirrored on the faces of patients at Hawks Hill.
He had written recently with such disturbing longing and passion, untouched by the censor although it angered her to think of some stranger sifting through his words, reading his most secret thoughts and hopes.
And now he was there, with all those others of whom he had spoken so often. And it was raining. He had feared that too.
New casualty lists were appearing daily, and she had forced herself to read every one. She had never forgotten the horror of that moment which had so suddenly changed to joy when the post girl had delivered his telegram. Now, every day, she heard voices around her like ghosts, as other villagers read the lists.
‘That’s the butcher’s son!’ or ‘That’s three of them gone in one family!’
She had been there today, standing in the rain, surrounded by the voices. She had broken away from them and whispered fiercely, ‘Not you, darling Jonathan,
not you
!’
Her father was saying vaguely, ‘You must try not to worry, dear.’
She swung round, her eyes desperate.
‘I love him, Daddy! Don’t you understand?
I love him!
’
She heard her own despairing cry. Like a small voice in some vast, terrible wilderness.
Overnight the rain had stopped but, Jonathan guessed, only temporarily. At dawn the battalion stood-to below the firestep, wretched in their sodden uniforms and having had no hot food, only bully-beef and lukewarm tea, the latter well-laced with rum.
He watched a marine cleaning the mist from a trench periscope before refitting it against the sandbags. It was better than nothing. A more effective gadget had been left behind by the relieved infantry: a large shovel with two holes punched in it for a man’s eyes. Caked in mud, it would blend well with the parapet, and make a fair shield to deflect a bullet.
Jonathan climbed onto the firestep and peered through a gap in the sandbags. He could sense the mood of his men, their disgust at the front line, strewn with decomposing bodies and with many more who had dropped to the enemy’s fire even as they had responded to the urgent whistles. The stench and the constant
reminders of violent death made some of the marines vomit, or stand closer to their companions as if for protection.
The churned-up waste of no man’s land grew sharper in his binoculars as he moved them very slowly. There was no sunlight, only clouds, but any observant marksman might see even the smallest movement.
There was their own barbed wire. A few ragged shapes fallen across or into it, in one of the counter-attacks, he supposed. There was hardly an open space where men had not been killed or abandoned as beyond aid.
A strange grey light was playing on the shell holes, and the charred stumps of roots that stood out from the mud like horns. They were trees that had been flung here by the first bombardments.
There were several gaps in the wire. He recalled what the departing major had said about it and the doubt in his voice. He had been right.
The Germans directly opposite them had probably been in the line a long time, and were tough and experienced infantrymen. It would take only a handful of such troops to wriggle through the gaps and fling grenades into this trench. It would have to wait; there was enough to shore up and reconstruct without bothering about the wire for now. Several of the trench walls had completely collapsed, the sandbags just so much sodden debris, and here and there he had seen half-buried bodies, or a pair of boots protruding to mark where a man had been shot or blown up.
He saw some tin cans swaying very slightly in a damp breeze, each containing a few pebbles or pellets. Anyone
trying to cut through the barbed wire in the dark would disturb them, and the sound of rattling cans would be enough to alert any sentry.
He shifted the glasses again. Mist or smoke clung to those craters which had earlier erupted like volcanoes, hurling many tons of earth into the air, but he could faintly make out the slight rise in the ground and the black stumps of more trees. That was the enemy’s wire. Beyond it was a machine-gun position. Someone had described it as well sited. The mud-covered corpses were evidence of that. Immune to rifle fire, and too close to the British front line to call down artillery support, it could best be taken in a night attack. But first, through their own wire.
Major Vaughan climbed up beside him, cat-like for so big a man.
‘Pig of a place, sir.’
‘Where no birds sing.’
‘Sir?’ Vaughan glanced at him curiously.
Jonathan gripped his glasses tightly. He saw something move, only for a second: the pale shape of a face, alive amidst all this carnage, under one of their heavy-looking helmets. Studying his enemy. The start of another day.
‘Fritz is up and about, Ralph.’
Vaughan said uneasily, ‘Well, the wind’s still in our favour. No gas.’ He wiped his mouth with a dirty handkerchief. ‘It might carry some of the stench away. I couldn’t even do justice to a steak-and-kidney pie with all this filth about!’
An anonymous voice called, ‘I could, sir! Just try me!’
Jonathan moved away from the observation hole.
Holding together. Trying not to show fear. More testing than fear itself.
Somewhere behind the lines the artillery commenced its morning bombardment. He hoped that communications and powers of observation were better than at Gallipoli, where ships had shelled their own troops. What was the target? Surely not Passchendaele? Any news that came from there told only of stalemate, bloody advances and even bloodier counter-attacks for just a few yards. The Germans retained the Gheluvelt Plateau, and despite constant attempts to dislodge them had held their line.
Jonathan considered the state of the immediate front: a place so full of craters and mud that even if they reached the enemy’s front line troops would be further hampered by the havoc caused originally by their own artillery.
He climbed down into the trench. ‘We’ll need a wiring party tonight, Ralph.’ He saw Wyke watching them and thought suddenly of Livesay as Vaughan asked, ‘Volunteers, sir?’
Perhaps Vaughan and Livesay had learned their trade together.
He shook his head. ‘One section should be enough. The companies in the line will need to rest. Better select men from our H.Q. platoon. Maxted will be the best guide.’ He touched the major’s wet sleeve. ‘They’ll only get jittery if they think it’s so important that it needs the second-in-command to organise it.’ He realised suddenly that Vaughan had been thinking just that, and that he might be asked to go out there with them.
At least it should be a lot safer than at Gallipoli. There, the ground had been so hard on their front that it had been impossible to move without making a noise.
All the same, most of these men were untested by close combat, and it was no joke to stand out in no man’s land and be prepared to remain stock-still if an enemy flare or starshell burst overhead.
Vaughan was saying, ‘There’ll have to be an officer, sir.’
‘Ask Maxted. They’re his people.’
Machine-guns chattered into action from below the ridge. The combination of mist and smoke concealed even the flashes. But the bullets were here right enough, cracking into stones and spurting mud into the trench. As the invisible guns traversed on their fixed arcs, the bullets hummed so closely overhead that it seemed the gunners could see their target. The marines on the firestep pressed themselves into the earth, fingers gripping their rifles, their soaking, muddy figures becoming a part of the slime and filth of battle.
Soon afterwards German heavy artillery opened up, hurling shells in high trajectory to fall with enormous vibrations, which were more a sensation than sound.
Maxted appeared. ‘From Brigade, sir!’ He stared at the collapsed trench, the protruding boot. ‘The enemy’s bombarding the support lines. The reserve troops are getting the worst of it, and a supply column too!’
So the brigadier had already guessed. A mostly untested battalion in the line, the supply and reserve infantry bogged down in a heavy bombardment. It meant only one thing: the enemy would attack.
Jonathan said, ‘Warn all positions. Machine-guns under cover until the last moment. Ralph, have more ammunition brought up.’ He saw each word striking home like a fist.
‘Now, sir?’
Jonathan had already turned away. ‘We’ll need grenades.’ He could feel his words going along the line of men nearest to him. He did not need to see their faces.
Old Blackie says the bastards are coming! We’ll kick their arses for them!
The new men fiddled with their clips of bullets; the older hands felt for their vicious trench knives or handmade cudgels. A few had even ground their entrenching tools so that they were razor-sharp and lethal.
Jonathan saw Harry Payne frowning as he checked his rifle and opened one of his pouches, remembering how Payne had broken all the rules and gone out into no man’s land at the Dardanelles, just for his sake. He could feel the pressure of the long Turkish knife right now in his boot. Very deliberately he took out his pipe and gripped it in his teeth. It was too damp to fill and light even if he had wanted to. It was only an act. For all of them.
‘How’ll they come, Sarge?’ Nervous, unsure.
Then Sergeant Timbrell’s harsh Cockney voice. ‘Well, they’re bleedin’ Germans, ain’t they? They’re bound to ’ave a bloody brass band leadin’ them across!’
Jonathan climbed onto the firestep again. The enemy guns were firing higher now. Another bluff, to convince them it was too dangerous to show their faces over the parapet. He swallowed hard to moisten his mouth. ‘Pass the word, Sergeant-Major.
Fix bayonets!
’
He wiped his binoculars with an already damp piece of cotton four-by-two. They kept misting up in this wet, lifeless air.
Payne murmured, ‘You watch yourself, Colonel.’
Jonathan looked down at him and smiled. ‘You too.’
Then he was pressed against the same observation hole, cursing the mist and trying to recover his bearings.
He saw the sloping ground and dead trees, but there was a difference. Not mist this time. Men. Hundreds of them, coming out of the wire, hunched and moving in long crouching lines.
He shouted to Vaughan, ‘
Stand-to!
’ He blew sharply on his whistle and heard it repeated along the twisting trench. ‘
Here
they
come!
’
He found that he had drawn his revolver. There was not much point, if they got near enough to lob their grenades; it was only an automatic reaction. A machine-gun was firing from the left front, bullets scything over the parapet like maddened hornets.
The enemy soldiers were loping forward, bayonets quite grey in this strange light. He even found time to notice that they were not burdened by unnecessary kit, so confident were they that they would overwhelm this trench or live long enough to retire to their own lines.
He watched them weaving about, some falling headlong as if hit by soundless bullets. But it was the other enemy, mud, which had dragged them down. It might warn his own men what to expect. He saw the light machine-guns with their wheel-shaped magazines wavering slightly while the marines tested the range and waited for the order. The bigger machine-guns he could
not see from this command position, but he guessed that Bert Langmaid and his mates were also waiting with cold anticipation.
The German infantry were shouting to one another, and he saw a great mass of them swerve towards the gap in the English wire. Men caught mid-way through the wire were easy targets as the dangling, scarecrow figures there had already demonstrated.
Jonathan moistened his whistle with his lips but they were like dust. On either side he saw the bayoneted rifles waver and guessed what some of his young marines were thinking. A few shots banged out; some of the Germans were firing from the hip even as they stumbled over the pitted ground, but nobody moved.
Seventy-five yards, fifty yards.
Dear God
,
let it work!
The whistle’s blast brought instant response as rifles and light machine-guns ripped into the oncoming infantry, so that those half-way through the gap in the wire slowed down and peered round for alternatives. From either flank the heavy machine-guns opened fire with deadly effect. The gaps were filled with falling men, and heaving piles of bodies as others trampled them down in an effort to escape the well-sited guns. One running soldier paused and raised his arm, and prepared to hurl a grenade at the marines’ nearest length of trench. Then he seemed to pivot round before dropping to his knees in the mud, his mouth making a black, terrified hole in his face just seconds before his grenade exploded beside him. It cut down a handful of men, and their cries were lost in the insane clamour of weapons.