A War for King and Empire, page 12
Riley grimaced but said nothing. Even Dundas was quiet. The boys beside them pretended they hadn’t heard a thing and stared off into the darkness. It wasn’t that they disagreed; no one wanted to risk my ire. What they didn’t know was that I was scared stiff at the prospect of another attack and that surely accounted for the foulness of my temper.
Luckily General Currie at brigade headquarters agreed with my sentiments. Awakening very early the next morning from a fitful sleep, I learned that the brigadier had arranged for the attack to be postponed. It was to take place at dusk instead. ‘To round up more artillery and to reconnoitre,’ explained Major Ashton, when he happened along.
The Germans didn’t need to round up any more artillery; unlike us they never wanted for artillery or shells. To rub it in they put down another bombardment later that morning. Nor did they seem short-changed in the art of intelligence gathering. It was this I found the most disconcerting.
A heavily-accented voice drifted across No-Man’s-Land: ‘Had enough, you Canadians?’
‘Not by a long shot, Fritz,’ came the riposte, followed by an eruption of frenetic shooting in the general direction of their lines, until the bark of a sergeant intervened.
A shout. ‘Oh, that’s not what we heard. We heard the “Fighting Tenth” was finished.’ The German barely completed his sentence before the whole line opened up for a futile minute.
Silence returned almost as sharply. Then a single deep laugh intruded. ‘What are you waiting for?’ cackled the voice. ‘You’re welcome any time.’ And again that infuriating laugh.
By the time our guns started to bang at five o’clock that evening, the catcalls had ceased and I’d discovered a thing or two. To begin with Stützpunkt meant strongpoint in English. Also, I had the dubious honour of guiding Major Guthrie down the very communication trench that we took the night before. Much as I might have enjoyed basking in the thought he’d picked me on the basis of my acumen, I knew otherwise; the senior ranks from last night’s attack were all dead or dying. It wasn’t dissimilar to the boy waiting to be picked in a game of softball, conscious he was the only one left. Guthrie was sporting about it.
Peering through a crack in the parapet, and with the loan of the major’s field glasses, I had discovered something else – precisely what Germans meant by strongpoint. Impregnable was a word that came to mind. K.5 was a formidable-looking redoubt of grey concrete crowned by sandbags and ringed by wire, jutting out of a small rise to the southeast. The French also had a word for such a thing: fortin, which when spoken with the correct enunciation sounded appropriately ominous, although not quite as ominous as the German variant. The men had taken to calling it Bexhill.
The redoubt’s positioning was anything but haphazard. From its profusion of slit holes, machine guns could fire in a wide arc across our entire front. For a thousand yards, to both left and right, there was nothing that could approach the German line without coming under fire, if for even a moment. According to the major it was manned by the 56th and 57th Reserve Infantry Regiments; ‘crack units’ he confided. I took him at his word. Last night they’d whipped us pretty badly.
Unfortunately the major was a major, as well as being the battalion’s commanding officer, which meant that I couldn’t ask him the questions I desperately wanted to. Such as: did he have a plan? Or: what the devil were we doing attacking a position like this in the first place? Much to the consternation of the starched shirts and neatly trimmed moustaches which populated the Imperial officer ranks, a certain casual familiarity reigned in the division. However, there were limits. And majors fielding impertinent questions from corporals was one of them.
Nevertheless, after Guthrie made his reconnaissance and scurried off to brigade headquarters for the third time in as many hours, it dawned on me that while I was filled with doubt, so was he. And that gave me an answer to one of my questions, albeit not the one I was hoping for. This attack was going to be anything but a piece of cake.
I made my way back along the fire-trench. To their credit the sappers had done a lot of work on the parapet. The gap from last night had been hermetically filled, but I moved deliberately nonetheless, keeping my head low. A sandbag was often no match for the round from a sniper’s Mauser. Halfway back to the platoon I came upon two men seated on a fire-step, conversing. I didn’t know either, but I did recognize one. I was almost certain he was in the first contingent, too.
‘Splendid show, eh?’ I heard the first man say to the other as I approached, referring to the bombardment.
The fellow to whom he was speaking – the same one I recognized – must have equivocated for he spoke again, more loudly the second time as if to lend weight to his words. ‘But our guns are really going at it, Harv. You can’t possibly think there’ll be much left of the Germans?’
“Harv” was audibly not in whole-hearted agreement with this assessment.
‘Pop-guns,’ I heard him growl. ‘There’s not a heavy amongst them.’
They glanced up as I tromped by. I nodded and they threw me one in return. As I rounded the traverse, Harvey, the veteran, began to explain the wonders of modern artillery, one of which is that field guns shooting shrapnel have about as much effect on a position like K.5 as lobbing stones do.
Out of earshot I checked my wrist, looking for Pat Jones’s watch to see how long before the attack, but then realized I’d sent the watch along with the brief missive to his parents. It had not been an easy letter to write, despite having spent the better part of an hour composing it and nearly that long trying to coax my hand into writing something legible. But I’d promised and I did the best I could. I could scarcely imagine how his folks must feel, and the consolation that their son would miss Festubert was the very thing I couldn’t have written, not least because of the censors. “Harv” had been right; we badly needed some heavy guns. High explosive shells were the only thing that might dent the German parapet, and we didn’t appear to have any.
I was still thinking about the infuriating lack of artillery support when Lieutenant Drinkwater cornered me. Drinkwater was the adjutant in C Company, which is to say the company commander’s right-hand man, and having been in the militia for most of this century not only had he grown a moustache of Imperial proportions – to underline his own feeling of self-importance – he’d accrued an invaluable experience in parade-ground drilling and button polishing. Someone, somewhere, must have felt he was needed at the front for since the last draft we were stuck with him. All forty-plus years and his bad breath to boot.
‘Where the blazes have you been, Corporal?’ Something about his tone prickled. The lieutenant was of a sort who, while not of English aristocracy, oh-so dearly wished he was and thought with the right mix of condescension and a cut-glass accent he might pull one over on the rest of us.
‘Oh, I was out and about, guiding the OC around,’ I said casually. ‘He said to say “hi”, Lieutenant.’
It was the sort of facetiousness I thought the army had long beaten out of me. Lieutenant Drinkwater looked as if I’d kicked him in the groin.
‘Blast it all, MacPhail. You had better learn to watch your tongue or I’ll have you keel-hauled. If the battle wasn’t about to begin I’d consider putting you up for insubordination.’
Rather than pointing out that keel-hauling was more properly a trade-mark of our sister service – the one which rowed across water rather than wading through it – I cowardly muttered, ‘Yes, sir,’ and made a conscious effort of looking contrite.
But the lieutenant wasn’t finished. Not by a long shot. Actually, he was only getting started. ‘I’ve been looking for you since yesterday,’ he said accusingly.
‘I was in the attack last night, sir. B Company needed some NCOs and Lieutenant Todhunter borrowed my services.’
‘Unfortunately we can’t very well confirm that, can we, Corporal?’
As statements go the lieutenant’s was accurate enough; Todhunter had fallen during the attack. What I resented, however, was the implication that I was hiding out from Drinkwater in a damp funk hole all night instead of having half the German army shoot at me – while he drank tea.
‘True enough, sir,’ I replied. ‘But if you’d been there you could have confirmed it for yourself.’
From the storm clouds that rushed in it was obvious Drinkwater didn’t much like what I was implying, but couldn’t think of a suitable reply – Drinkwater was not much of a thinker. He screwed his mouth up and stared at me. Lunch and worse was on his breath. Unflinching, I faced him down without as much as a urine-soaked handkerchief to hand.
Eventually he grumbled, ‘But that’s not all you were doing, was it, MacPhail?’ At this he frowned, his eyes narrowed, and the twin peaks of his moustache twitched menacingly like a bull’s horns do when it ponders whether to skewer you alive.
‘Sir?’
‘I understand you led your entire section out to raid the enemy line yesterday afternoon.’
‘Well, it wasn’t exactly a raid…’ I began.
But Drinkwater would have none of it. ‘Entirely without permission, I might add. You could have got everyone killed. Worse you might have disturbed one of our own plans. Imagine if the enemy had attacked at the very moment you were out cavorting around with the line undefended. It would have been a disaster. Did you think of that, Corporal?’
‘There was a sniper, sir. He was shooting off our wounded. We had to do something, and I thought we were supposed to take the initiative?’
‘That’s what officers are for, MacPhail, to do the heavy thinking. So you other ranks don’t have to.’
Drinkwater was radiating a glow of deep inner contentment at having put me in my place. Lovingly, he began stroking his moustache. I felt like grabbing both ends and yanking – like with a Christmas cracker. ‘When this is all over,’ he continued, ‘I feel I’m duty-bound to bring the matter to the attention of our superiors, MacPhail. You’re a corporal, you really ought to have known better. It makes me think you have two stripes too many.’
With that he turned on his heel, sparing me the meaningless motions of saluting. It was fortunate in another way, too; it spared me the consequences of throttling him with both hands.
One positive aspect of the whole encounter was that I was so worked up about it I completely forgot about the attack. Even when I was lining up in file with B Company two hours later, I was still reliving Drinkwater’s words in my head. I would take it out on the Germans I decided.
At 8.30 p.m. the guns quieted and we began to move. Where the engineers had rebuilt the gaping hole in the communication trench, further on they’d done the reverse and blown two openings, one on either side, not far apart. Or more accurately, a group of bombers from the 1st Brigade had done it for them, using a handful of Jam Tins skilfully applied. We’d polished off the last Tickler’s plum and apple jam only this morning, with biscuits, as it happened. By dinnertime the grenadiers had fashioned grenades of the containers.
There was a shout of ‘OVER!’ and “A” Company debouched out of the breach to the left. Once they were through we would follow, but turn right. I was relieved it was right. “A” Company had the chore of tackling K.5 virtually head on, 200 yards away.
Now 200 yards is not particularly far. And it’s certainly not far if you’re a Fritz crouched behind a concrete wall with a well-oiled Maxim, a decent view, and an endless belt of ammunition. A round from an MG-08 covers that distance in the time it takes to twitch an eye. Less. But for a man on foot, stumbling his way in the dark across broken ground, dykes and waterlogged ditches, 200 yards was a marathon. An eternity. Not to mention the wire at the end of it.
I heard the machine guns straightaway. One had barely begun to chatter before it was joined by another, and soon I could hear little else. It was no fault of the bombers, of course. Blasting open a parapet would have awakened even me, and the bombardment had tipped off the Germans we were coming.
Fortunately it was almost dark. After the experience the day before I was glad a flare had gone up in some commander’s head; rousting the enemy was a task best not attempted in daylight. As we walked forward the distant enemy parapet literally glowed from the fire of rifles and machine guns. I shouted at the men of my section to keep their heads down. Some of the new draft seemed to view this as a fireworks display, not understanding that the bullets – assuming they hadn’t felled one of “A” Company in the interim – were inevitably destined to pass our way. It should have been a beautiful, warm, clear spring evening. Instead, the air reeked of smoke and cordite, and death beckoned.
Running the first breach I took a hurried glance at the scene to the left. It was enough to convince me that three-and-a-half hours of bombardment hadn’t begun to dent Bexhill. It was alight with flashes. Not that I really expected much from a single heavy – Harvey had not been entirely correct, there was one. However, I had no time to think about that. We were filing out to the right.
‘Run it,’ I shouted at the others around me, as we exited into the open ground. ‘And keep low!’
This was not the advice some lieutenants were selling – they seemed to think we should neatly line up like on a parade ground before even contemplating an advance – but my squad needed no encouragement; common-sense prevailing when given the chance.
We took off through the long grass like Teddy Tetzlaff in a Blitzen Benz heading southeast, in pursuit of the bombers who’d raced off ahead. After fifty yards we came upon a narrow communication trench pointed in the right direction: east. We jumped in and followed it. I led.
There was something terrifying but also exhilarating about rushing down a dark, narrow passageway in the ground, not knowing what would come next, but feeling oddly confident in the hard icicle of steel protruding from the rifle, too excited to think of much beyond the couple of feet immediately ahead.
I slowed when I spotted the intersection.
‘That must be Fritz’s line we’re coming to,’ I said over my shoulder, breathing heavily.
‘Jesus, those bombers, they really tore through here,’ came the winded response. I wasn’t the only one out of breath.
I went to turn, to ask him what he meant, when the explanation presented itself: two bodies were sprawled on the ground. They lay at the intersection in a heap. One was still wearing a Pickelhaube, strapped firmly on his head. The rest of him had come loose. A Hair-Brush I reckoned. With its long wooden handle and thick square head it resembled more what I used to scrub my back than its namesake – let alone a grenade. There was no mistaking its explosive effectiveness, however.
‘We’re going right,’ I puffed. ‘Pass the word behind. We’ll wait till everyone is here. But watch out, there may be stragglers, so keep a close eye.’
‘Yes, Corporal.’
After the small group behind came to a halt, I gave them thirty seconds to catch their breath and hear what we were to do before we set off again. It appeared that we had become the spearhead of the company. Hopefully the rest would catch up.
Turning into the main trench it was obvious we were in the enemy lines. Two weeks earlier this had been only a support line for our foe, but support line or not, the trench displayed a remarkable neatness in the characteristic woven-branch revetting on the walls, and duckboards on the ground. It was the sort of disciplined order that I was coming to learn was a German trademark. That and not yielding an inch.
It was as well I’d warned the others about stragglers, if only to remind myself. Immediately south of the spot where we entered the trench, and which I assumed to be K.3, I spotted him. He appeared to have spotted me first.
The bombers had no doubt thundered past leaving him crouched in a hole out of sight. But now he was in plain sight. Worse, I was in plain sight, and his rifle was resting atop a wooden post, taking aim.
I did the only thing I could. I ran faster. But at a distance of fifteen feet I didn’t stand a chance.
Desperately I pulled at the trigger. The bullet went whining off into the dark. My rifle was pointed in a whole different map quadrant than the German, but I hoped I might spoil his aim. Although really all he had to do was shoot. He was barely five strides away.
He didn’t shoot. What he did do surprised me a great deal more. He released the rifle as if he was holding a hot iron, stood straight up and threw his hands in the air. Then I was on him.
He wore a simple field cap, the one with what looks like two eyes in the centre, one pip above the other. Not just his pips but also his eyes were on me. Curiously, he didn’t look nearly as frightened as I might have done with a tall man brandishing a bayonet in my nose. But he knew that I owed him my life. I could see it in his expression.
Only then did I notice two more rifles poking past and understood the reason for his change of heart. At the critical moment – it couldn’t have been a second later – the soldier had seen the boys run into view behind me and made the only sensible decision he could.
Like most German soldiers of my recent acquaintance, this one sported a bushy chevron-style moustache, dark, and two sizes too big. I suppose it was all the rage back in Dortmund or wherever he hailed from. I nodded at him and he nodded back. It wasn’t at all unfriendly.
‘Ain’t that something? Looks as if we’ve corralled ourselves a prisoner,’ said one of the lads.
‘Yes, indeed,’ I said. ‘Which makes you the perfect cowboy to keep him lassoed while we move on.’ This brought a nervous chuckle from the others.
By the time we eventually caught up with the grenadiers, we had travelled south more than 400 yards down the enemy line. We still hadn’t run into the 47th (London) Division who were supposed to be in the vicinity nor, thanks to the bombers, had we encountered any more enemy. The bombers were undecided as to what to do: stay put or keep going. There was something to be said for both.
However, as there was no sign of the rest of B Company, to me the answer seemed plain. ‘Let’s throw up a sandbag barricade, sir,’ I suggested to their lieutenant. ‘No sense running off too far ahead. Our Lords and Masters will be pleased we made it so far.’ He nodded. I felt quite pleased myself. We had taken the objective and with only a handful of casualties. At that moment it seemed like quite a victory.
