Wavering Warrior, page 6
part #2 of Trench Raiders Series
Nothing came, it was bone dry. Instead, I had to settle for the warming feeling that it spread over my palms as I continued to rotate it round and round, until I became so fed up with it that I nearly launched it to the other side of the room.
“Nothing left?”
I hadn’t noticed Earnshaw entering the room, as I had been staring at my hands, bewildered at the constant quivering that had seemed to have taken hold, like an earthquake that was only affecting my fingers.
“I can get you something to stick in there, if you like. And I’m not on about water.”
I looked at him for a moment, perplexed.
“That bloke. The unofficial business? I know more than one person that would want to fill that up for you. I can have it done for you by tonight, if that’s what you’re hoping for. On the house…this time,” he charmingly quipped, with a wink. “I know someone who owes me a favour.”
Instinctively, I tossed the flask to him, blindly trusting the man that was clearly in with the wrong crowd.
“Tastes awful, mind. Like that old lamp oil that some people still have lying around, you know? Paraffin. The frogs seem to like it though, never too happy to give it away, but they can’t resist me sometimes.”
Another wink.
He rolled the flask over in his palm, in much the same manner that I tended to do, before his eyebrows furrowed slightly when he looked at the initials. It wasn’t a look of curiosity as to why I was carrying a flask bearing someone else’s initials, but it was one of recognition. He had seen it before.
He pulled his gaze away from the initials, “Paraffin, mate. You sure?”
If it tasted like paraffin, then it was bound to be good enough for me. I didn’t exactly have a refined palette when it came to this sort of thing.
“Either of you seen McKay?” the Captain said, before he’d even finished entering the room.
“Fritz? No, I haven’t seen him since we left the briefing.”
“Get him to find me if you see him. I need to talk to him urgently before we head out tonight, it’ll be best for all of us.”
9
I found it difficult to fill my face and smoke as rapidly as the other men were. There was an uncertainty in the pit of my stomach, one that was prewarning me that any liquid or solid that I shovelled down my throat would quite quickly be brought back up again in a bile that would burn my nostrils.
Even Bob was finding it easy to pile mouthful after mouthful down his throat.
“C’mon Andrew, eat up. Could be your last meal.”
That was the exact reason why I was finding it so hard to eat. I knew that there was a very good chance that I wouldn’t be coming back to this café again, my brightest prospects being that I ended up in a hospital bed riddled with bullet holes and shrapnel. I wasn’t convinced that everything that was planned was going to be able to come together with the same certainty of the Captain.
Bob shoved another bit of bully beef into his mouth, his chewing so loud as he spoke that it was almost enough to bring up the bile without pushing any kind of food down my throat.
“Here, Harry, what’s with McKay? I know I don’t really know him, but he seems…off?”
“That’s just the way he is, I’m afraid. Plus, he’s had a few problems as of late. But we don’t really talk about them.”
“What problems?” I blurted, wanting to make sure I knew everyone’s weaknesses before we left, on the off chance that knowing them might actually keep me alive.
“The boss doesn’t want us to talk about it…but it’s probably fair for you to know. He’s been struggling to fight recently. He was always good, but the last two times that we’ve been out, he’s messed up, like he’s been preoccupied with something else.”
“Then why doesn’t Arnold just kick him out?”
“He’s not like that. He’s fiercely loyal to each of us. Including you. He knows that if he tries to kick McKay out of this team, he’ll need a damn fine excuse to make him avoid a firing squad. He just freezes see, any other man would call it cowardice, but not the Captain, he genuinely cares for McKay. He’s trying to help him.”
“Isn’t that just likely to get us all killed?”
“No. The boss is good. He’ll make McKay alright again. Don’t you worry.”
I was beginning to think that the rest of this section’s blind faith in the Captain was completely unfounded. If he could fix McKay, then surely he would have been able to do it without dragging the rest of us out into No Man’s Land? Plus, it was a fact that was still yet to be acknowledged that two men had been killed on their last outing and I was beginning to get the impression that it was all down to McKay.
“The two other blokes, the ones that bought it, was that because of McKay?”
“No,” he said forcefully, as he slammed his cutlery on the table and stopped what he was doing. “We are not individuals out there. Dornan and Peterson died because of all of us. We look out for each other, not ourselves. You got that?”
He pointed an accusing finger at the both of us, which was hastily withdrawn as the Captain strolled into the room.
“McKay’s gone walkies again it seems. Anyone seen him?”
“Last I saw of him Sir he was upstairs, writing a letter to someone,” called the Sergeant, from the far side of the room.
“I didn’t know he could write.”
“Don’t think he can, Sir. He was very guarded when I tried to peek over his shoulder,” Sergeant Hughes spoke carefully, as he dragged the razor gently over his skin, keeping his smooth face as barren as possible. It was all he seemed to do when he had a spare moment.
“Are all you Yorkshiremen as nosy as you, Sergeant?”
“How do you think we learned how to make those puddings, Sir?”
His chuckling resounded all the way up the stairs, while I finally resolved that, if I was to die, it would be on a full stomach. Picking up a tin of bully beef, I began to tentatively slide some of it down my throat, making myself feel even worse as I waited for the gag reflex to kick in.
“What did you do before the army?” Bob questioned Earnshaw as we sat and ate.
“Not a lot. I’m the most boring here, you’ll soon find that out.” I found it odd how unwilling the boy was to speak about himself, as he was more than forthcoming on pretty much every other topic of conversation that was available. There was something behind his cocky exterior that was altogether different, mysterious almost.
“The Captain for example. Now, he is a special type of Englishman. Both his parents are nobility, and apparently his mother is related to the monarchy by some distant relation that goes back to the seventeen hundreds. Monarchs that conveniently are well past my kind of education. But the Captain’s actually the earl of some place. I forget where.
“He’s also very intelligent. Likes to think. One of those people, you know? I don’t get the appeal myself. But I reckon he’s for parliament one day. What do you think?”
“He’s got the voice,” I blurted, a bit of bully beef spinning from my mouth.
“Na, he hasn’t got the aggression, in my opinion,” Bob fumbled, doing everything he could to make sure he didn’t repeat my bad manners.
“Oh, you wait. Just you wait. He’s got the aggression alright.”
At that moment, the Captain appeared, as if he had a sixth sense that he was being spoken about, the look on his face one to say that he didn’t like it one bit. McKay tumbled down the stairs behind him.
“Come on then gents, I think it is about time that we got a move on. What do you say? A little outing to the Boche frontline sound up your street? Finish your food and let’s go and tool up.”
We finished our last few mouthfuls and instinctively went for our rifles, which drew a laugh from everyone else in the room. We’d clearly been set up, they had all been waiting for it.
“Leave them here, son,” Sergeant Hughes stepped forwards so that he didn’t have to raise his timid little voice too much. “They are far too clunky to be taking over there with us. We’ve got some others for you to try out.”
“Why’d you let us spend all afternoon cleaning them then? We thought we were going to need them!” Bob exploded, which only added to the other’s enjoyment of the situation, the Captain especially.
“Don’t know. Thought you just got some sort of a kick out of doing it.”
“I’ll kick you in a minute.”
“Come on, soppy,” roared the Sergeant, as he began to cough and retch so much from the apparent hilarity, that I thought we would see a lung at any moment.
“You see,” Hughes began to explain as we all walked out into the streets, “those kind of weapons aren’t good enough for what we do. We tried to take them, the first few times. But they’re simply too heavy, too long and too loud for what we do. Some people still take them, to help us out if we get in trouble, but you learn that, if we do get in a sticky patch, our best weapon is to simply run as fast as possible.”
We stepped out of the café and into a cobbled square, with wide sweeping roads branching off in every gap between buildings that it could find, like some sort of leaking liquid. Apart from the sea of khaki that swarmed around and the faint thud of artillery, you could hardly tell that there was a war on.
A few locals trotted by, trying their hardest to sell their wares to the soldiers that had festooned their village in recent months. I thought it was odd that there wasn’t a single French soldier around, this village seemed to be entirely British for some reason.
I stared at the statue that was just off centre in a small raised plinth surrounded by benches, transfixed by the figure that stood atop the concrete pillar, his sword drawn from his sheath and raised high above his head.
“Saint Michael the Archangel,” quipped Hughes as he turned and caught me staring at the figure.
“The patron saint of warriors,” added Earnshaw, getting in there before Hughes could.
“I don’t really go in for all that stuff,” I rebuffed quickly, not wanting a sermon from the clergy-in-training. “I just like the statue.”
“Neither do I,” Earnshaw timidly said in his childlike tones, as he threw another wave to a soldier he presumably did business with. I wondered if he was the man that had filled my hip flask for me. “But it doesn’t hurt, just in case.”
“He’s also a saint of the sick and wounded, you know. Apparently, he appeared in several visions to stop various epidemics many centuries ago now, hence the sword. You never know, it might come in handy, especially if tonight goes wrong.”
We walked the rest of the way in silence, each one of us deep in our own thoughts and content to be so. If tonight did go wrong, and we ended up dead, it would be nice to know that we had had a few minutes to ourselves, like before the war, where we didn’t have to live every minute of every day with a group of other blokes. I tried to think back to the last time that I had been on my own, and couldn’t come up with anything conclusive, but supposed it must have been back in my basic infantryman training, where the latrines had been more substantial than a little trench for five men to squat over at any one time.
It took us another five or so minutes for the others to lead us to our destination and, the closer we got, the more infrequent Earnshaw’s embarrassed waves and ‘hellos’ became. As we took a right up another side street, I realised that, for the first time in a while, we appeared to be the only ones in khaki on this street, the only other occupants were the French civilians themselves, chatting away on doorsteps to one another, which soon came to an abrupt halt as they saw us round the corner.
As we marched up the street, I noticed the giant beads of sweat that were now streaming down the back of McKay’s neck, rolling their way down and onwards to the base of his spine. His right hand was drumming on the side of his leg, as if he was pace marking his own steps. His left was lifted to his mouth, presumably so he could nibble on the remnants of his nails as he mulled over the next few hours in his head.
I became increasingly concerned about his demeanour. McKay was an experienced raider and yet, here he was, the epitome of an anxious man, not able to speak or look at anyone out of fear. I only hoped that he was able to step up when the time came. The others seemed to have some confidence in his abilities, which afforded me little assurance as I looked at him.
What worried me the most was the fact that I identified with him fully. He was a quiet, introverted individual, only speaking up if he was directly spoken to or he knew he wasn’t going to be ridiculed for what he said. He got nervous often and frequently took himself away from the rest of us to be alone, so much so that the Captain always seemed to be on the lookout for him.
The thing that concerned me the most however, was that I was exactly like him. Apart from the vast geographical difference between Scotland and Southampton, we could have been brothers, twins even.
He was a good soldier, the others had assured me of that, but there was something niggling away at him. A fear? A mistake he had made? I didn’t know which, but it concerned me that someone who was held in such a high regard by his companions could be so nervous, which set me on edge no end.
“Right, welcome to the raider’s paradise, lads.”
“Ellis, Sargent,” Captain Arnold marched his way over to us as the others began to bound around like vultures descending on their prey. “We take no webbing, nothing that chinks or chimes. Nothing that might make any obvious sounds, empty everything from your pockets that can make such a noise. You can pick them up from here when we return. You can trust the QMS here.”
The Quartermaster Sergeant was an ancient looking man, who quite clearly had had enough of this war before it had even begun, he had seen far too much in his quarter of a century in the army than he cared to recall. But he seemed like a decent enough bloke, enough at least for the others to empty their pockets of cigarettes, matches and even money.
I felt uneasy with dumping the contents of my pockets with this man, not least because of the hip flask that I had just topped up. I intended to keep it on my person at all times, it was the last bit of Sergeant Needs that I had that would keep me company.
“When we’re over there, we need weapons that are light, small and highly effective. Quite a lot of what you will see will mean you will need to get up in the enemy’s face. It’s barbaric, but such is war. It’s all quite simple really.”
It had been a number of hours since I had last heard his catchphrase, but the annoyance that I usually felt when he uttered the words was completely dispelled by a fear and desperation that I felt when I saw the others begin to pick up their weapons.
All of them grabbed at revolvers, clicking the barrels forward, checking everything was clear before loading them with rounds with the nimblest of fingers.
The Captain himself picked up an old and battered wooden baton and twirled it in his hands for a few moments, before looking over at our astounded faces.
“Gifted to me by a friend in the police force. Never knew it would come in so useful.”
Hughes picked up what appeared to be a similar baton, but instead of the smooth, varnished surface of the Captain’s, it had great nails hammered into place, with the heads sawn clean off and sharpened to the point where it looked like it could cut through concrete.
Earnshaw selected what appeared to be a standard entrenching tool, the end of which had been sharpened to a point that could do some serious damage if it was to be jabbed into someone, but equally if the wide spade-like head was simply cracked over the back of someone’s skull.
It was McKay who had surprised me the most however, as he began to excitedly look upon what was quite clearly his very own weapon. He caressed the handle as if it had been his first love and gazed upon it in much the same way. As he picked it up, my suspicions were confirmed. McKay’s chosen weapon was a hatchet. Nothing more than an axe used to fell woodland trees.
I looked across at Bob, whose look of utter horror matched my own. I couldn’t imagine the kind of bloodshed that would ensue if just one of these awful weapons was called into service. I much preferred a rifle, at least that way you could stay more than an arm’s length away from your victim.
“Come on, chaps. Pick what you want. Take a revolver too, but only for use in emergencies. If you can, secure some jam tins in your pockets. We’ll need to make a bang.”
I picked up a revolver, clinking the rounds into the chamber and shoved a jam tin into a satchel that I placed on my back. The last thing that I picked up was a trusty rifle bayonet. I knew how to use one, albeit when it was fixed onto a wooden extension of my own arm, but I felt more comfortable with a swift glance to the chest than a spiky cosh over the head. Bob picked the same.
“Right then, everyone. Seems like we’re ready. Let’s move to the frontline.”
10
It hadn’t taken us all that long to move back to the trenches, as they never seemed to be all that far away wherever you were in France. As we trudged through the ever-deepening trenches, slowly becoming more complex and heavily fortified the closer we got to the fire bays, I drew more than I perhaps should have done from the stainless-steel hip flask that felt like it was now part of my own skin.
“Looking forward to being back in the fray?” Earnshaw was far too happy for an occasion such as this, and I pictured how infuriating he must have been at the news of a family bereavement or some such declaration.
“I could have done with a bit more rest, to be honest. Two weeks on the frontline with only one good night’s sleep, probably not going to help anyone.”
“You are a cheerful bark this evening, aren’t you? Come on! Get this one right and we’ll be one step closer to victory!”
“Head down Berkeley Street and then onto Fife Road, Sergeant. We’ll stop there for a while.”
Fife road. I recognised the name.
I shot a quick look over at Bob. He had the same expression on his face, faint recognition tinged with confusion. Then, I realised why I had recognised the name.
