The Trenches (5 page)

Alf wasn't convinced. He had to go to the entrance of our cave and look up and down the trench to make sure there was no one outside listening, before he came back and started to tell us what he knew.

“Just before I left home to go training I met up with my Uncle Harry. He was a coalminer back home and one night he was telling us about a job he and loads of his miner mates had been sent on, but because it was all Top Secret he wasn't supposed to tell anyone.”

“So why did he tell you?” I asked, puzzled.

Alf gave a rueful sigh. “Because Uncle Harry can't keep a secret,” he said. “He talks all the time. Drives my Aunt Ethel mad.”

“Forget about your Aunt Ethel, get back to what he told you,” said Charlie impatiently.

“
Right,” said Alf. “Well, according to Uncle Harry the army were digging tunnels under this place in Belgium called Messines Ridge. They needed coalminers instead of just ordinary soldiers. From Wales, Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire. And not just coalminers. They also brought over all these cockneys from London, the ones who'd built the London underground, because they were also used to digging tunnels in clay.”

I looked around at the dripping wet walls of our cave and shivered at the thought of digging deep underground in this muck.

“I wouldn't fancy doing that job,” I said.

“You might when you hear what Uncle Harry told us they were being paid. Six shillings a day.”

“Six shillings!” said Charlie, outraged, so loudly that we had to tell him to shut up. I must admit I felt a bit annoyed when I heard that as well. After all, we were only paid one shilling a day.

“And how many of these tunnels are there?” I asked.

“Twenty, so Uncle Harry said. And each one packed with high explosives.”

“That's a lot of explosives,” I commented.

“A million tons, Uncle Harry reckoned.”

We exchanged horrified looks. One million tons of explosives packed into twenty tunnels under the German lines.

“
No,” said Charlie, shaking his head. “I don't believe it. They couldn't do that much tunnelling without the Germans finding out. They'd hear the work going on. The drilling machines, for one thing.”

“No,” Alf shook his head. “Uncle Harry said they couldn't use drilling machines in case the Germans heard the sound of the machinery, so they tunnelled using just picks and shovels. The only machines they had were pumps to pump the water out, otherwise they would have drowned.”

“If what your Uncle Harry says is true, I'm not sure I want to be in a trench when it all goes up,” said Danny. “I think I'd rather be on the top. At least the walls won't be able to fall in on me.”

At 0300 hours me, Charlie, Ginger, Wally, Danny and Alf lined up in the trench with the rest of our unit and waited, all looking south towards Messines Ridge. Not that we could see anything because the top of the trench was another foot above our heads, and none of us fancied poking our heads over the top to see what was happening. Knowing what I knew made me feel a knot tighten in my stomach.

The minutes ticked by. 0301. 0302. 0303. And nothing happened. 0304. 0305. Still nothing.

“I bet they've forgotten to connect the detonators,” muttered Charlie, and we all laughed.

0309, and still nothing.

And then, at exactly 0310, the whole world heaved upwards, lifting us with it. In a split second it settled down
again,
but continued to shake. I felt as if I was on a boat that had just hit a big wave. Danny had actually fallen over from the shock of the blast and was picking himself up out of the mud. The shock was so huge I bet they even felt it as far away as London.

Even though it was the middle of the night we could see as clearly as if it was broad daylight. The whole sky just lit up, a huge mass of flames reaching upwards. For a minute we all just stood there, looking at one another. My body was still shaking.

“Good old Uncle Harry,” muttered Charlie.

And then, seconds later, our big guns opened up. The barrage was deafening even from this many miles away. About five minutes after the big guns had stopped, there came the sounds of distant whistles. In the trenches at the Front, our Infantry were going over the top.

The attack that followed carried on for three days, driving for about a mile through the lines of shattered Germans, until our boys came up against stronger Hun defences, which stopped them, making them dig in.

We found out afterwards that in the attack over 5,000 Germans were taken prisoner. Most of them had been so stunned by the explosion they didn't know what day it was, or where they were. It was like killing fish by dropping dynamite into a pool.

But
the Huns started to fight back. Bombardment after bombardment came over at us from the German lines. Shells rained down on our trenches. Our workload increased as they scored hits on our communication cables.

After one raid, Charlie and I were sent out to repair yet another broken telegraph cable in yet another water-filled trench, this one even closer to the German lines. One look at the cable told us it was smashed beyond repair. It would have to be replaced.

We rolled the huge reel of replacement cable along the trench as best we could in the mud, then we set about hauling out a length. The only way to stop it from sinking in the mud and disappearing before we'd made the connections was to push the blades of our spades into the clay walls of the trench sides, and then drape the cable over them.

I was pulling at the cable when, suddenly, out of nowhere, something hit the wall of the trench just above us, landing with a sort of plop.

There was another plop, and this time I saw something falling into the mud just near us. For a second I thought it was a grenade and I threw myself backwards, expecting it to go off. Then Charlie started coughing and retching, and I saw him scramble to pull his respirator over his face. In that second I realized what it was and I felt sick to my stomach.

Mustard gas!

A
feeling of panic hit me and I scrambled to get my respirator over my face before the killer gas got into my mouth and nose and burnt my lungs. It burned everything it touched. Eyes. Skin. And it always found a way in. Like now, I could feel where it had crept up inside the sleeves of my uniform and the skin on my arms felt like it was on fire. I threw myself into a muddy hole, pushing my arms under water, but I knew it was already too late.

My neck was burning too. My collar must have come undone while I was hauling the cables. It only needed one little opening for the gas to get in, and now I could feel it spreading down the skin on to my chest. Frantically, I pushed myself right up to my goggles in the muddy water, anything to stop the burning, but the water blocked the ventilator outlet for my respirator. My goggles started to mist up and I could feel myself choking.

I stumbled to my feet, saturated, with the weight of wet mud clinging to me. I couldn't move. I couldn't see. I couldn't feel anything except my skin burning. I screamed for help but was stunned by a searing pain in my head. It was as if someone had taken an axe to it and cut it in two.

I woke up to the sound of screaming. There was a smell of blood and rotting flesh mixed with the strong smell of disinfectant.

As the screaming died down I became aware of the
sounds
of tin plates being clattered together, and the whispering of voices.

I struggled to open my eyes. My eyelids felt heavy. At first everything looked a bit hazy, but after I blinked a few times my vision started to clear.

I was in a Casualty Station. All around me were men laid out on beds.

I tried to sit up, but the pain in my head made me lay down again. I let out a groan as I fell back on my pillow, which brought a medical orderly over to the side of my bed.

“Awake, are you?” he said cheerfully. “You were lucky.”

“What happened?” I asked. My voice felt hoarse, my throat dry.

“A piece of shrapnel caught you,” said the orderly. “If you hadn't had your helmet on it might've taken the top of your head clean off. I've seen it happen. Sliced open like a melon.”

I looked down at my body and was surprised to see that both my arms were bandaged from fingertip to just above the elbow.

“My arms?” I asked, my voice still a rasp.

“Hang on, I'll give you some water,” said the orderly.

He helped me to sit up in the bed and put a tin mug to my lips.

“Here you are,” he said. “Get a sip of this.”

I sipped at the water. It felt strange. My tongue and lips
and
the inside of my mouth seemed to have swollen to twice their normal size.

“There,” he said, taking the mug away.

“My arms,” I said again. “What happened to my arms?”

“Burns from the mustard gas,” replied the orderly. “Like I say, you were very lucky on so many counts. Lucky you were wearing your helmet. Lucky you were wearing your respirator. Lucky you didn't go right under in the mud. Lucky the stretcher party found you. All in all, you are a very lucky young man.”

I looked around the Casualty Station at the patients in the beds near me. Many of the men were heavily wrapped up like Egyptian mummies, their bandages soaked in blood.

“Johnson!” barked a man standing by one of the other beds, bandaging a soldier. “I need you here!”

“Coming, sir!” said the orderly, and he trotted off.

It was in my third day in bed in the Casualty Station when a familiar figure walked in, a smile on his face.

“Hello, Billy! Having a nice rest?” It was Charlie.

“Thank heavens you're OK,” I said. “I asked the orderly what had happened to you, but no one seemed to know.”

“I fell in a hole,” said Charlie. “Lucky for me it seemed to keep most of the gas off me. Looks like you caught most of it. And the shrapnel. How's the head?”

“Hurts now and then,” I said. “But lucky for me I've
still
got a head. Where have you been? Another Casualty Station?”

“No. Still in the trenches at the Front,” said Charlie. “I thought, after you copped it, they might let me take a bit of time off, but no. ‘The cables won't lay themselves,' they told me. That's why I haven't been able to get in to see you before.”

Charlie settled himself down on the rickety chair beside my bed and proceeded to fill me in on what had happened to our unit during the German attack. Apparently I'd come off the worst. Of the other blokes from our unit who'd been working near us, Ginger had been half-drowned in a mud-slide, but nothing too bad. Wally and Danny had got away with just a few scratches and burns from hot shrapnel. They'd all managed to escape from serious gassing.

“Though the Infantry further along the trench weren't so lucky,” said Charlie. “That's where most of the gas bombs fell and a lot of them hadn't got their gas mask packed so they could get at it easily. Seems they preferred to keep their rifles and grenades nearer to hand. Some of them got tangled up in all the stuff they were carrying as the gas came down and they couldn't see to find their gas masks. Hundreds of them got caught in it.”

“Many dead?” I asked.

Charlie nodded. “Most of 'em. Those that aren't are blind. We were lucky.”

“
Any news of my mate Rob?” I asked.

Charlie shook his head. “No,” he said. “Just that he wasn't one of the casualties. I checked the list they posted just before I came to see you. I thought you'd be worried about him.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Charlie stayed a bit longer, chatting and telling stories about the other men in our unit, until an orderly came over and told him it was time to go.

“Your talking is disturbing the other patients,” the orderly snapped. “This is a Casualty Station, not a café.”

Charlie shrugged, gave me a wink, and said: “OK, Billy, looks like I've got my marching orders. I'll see you in a couple of days back in the mud, when they kick you out of here.”

I gave him a smile, and after he'd gone I thought about what Charlie had said. A couple more days here in the hospital and I'd be going back to the Front. Back to the mud and the bullets and the barbed wire and the gas, and I knew I didn't want to go back. I wanted to be back at home, back in Carlisle. Back to safety and my job at the railway station and my mum's cooking. But I knew I couldn't. None of us could. We were going to be here until this war was over. Or until we were killed.

As it turned out, Charlie was wrong about me going straight back to the Front. The doctor who examined me the next day told me: “Right, Stevens, we're discharging you. We need your bed. There are injured men waiting to be treated.”

“
Right, sir,” I said.

I indicated the bandages that covered my arms. “Can I have your permission to get something from the stores that will keep these bandages covered in the trenches, though, sir? Otherwise they'll just fall off on the first day, with all the wet and the mud and everything.”

“You're not going straight back to the trenches, not with those burns,” said the doctor.

I looked at him, puzzled. If I wasn't being sent back to the trenches, then where was I going? Not back home, surely? Men with worse injuries than mine were still fighting out here.

The doctor saw the look on my face, so he explained: “I've arranged for you to go to Base HQ. You can carry on your work as a telegraph operator there. You'll be out of the mud for a while, at least until your skin heals. But don't worry. A week or two and you'll be all right to go back and join your pals.”

July
1917

Base HQ was in an old town hall in St Omer. It reminded me of some of the town halls back in England, or the big old libraries. It was an enormous building, made of blocks of stone, and inside it was absolutely spick-and-span clean. You could have eaten your dinner off the floor of the entrance lobby. It was such an amazing contrast after the dirt and mess of life in the trenches, or even back at camp in Poperinghe.