Birdsong (50 page)

The artillery began to lay down the barrage in no-man’s-land. They could see the earth spitting and leaping over the height of the sandbagged parapet. Stephen checked his watch. Four minutes to go. He knelt on the firestep and prayed, a wordless yearning.

It had happened so fast. The long bombardment before the July attack had been almost intolerable, but it had at least given the men time to get ready. On this occasion it seemed that only a few hours earlier he had been having dinner with Jeanne and now he was preparing to die. It made little difference that this was, by comparison, a small attack: there were no degrees of death.

He rose from his knees and went back into the next firebay, where he could see Ellis looking down at his watch. He went up to him and put his arm around his shoulders. Ellis’s stricken face encouraged him; from somewhere he found a smile of reassurance to go with the squeeze he gave his shoulders. At the head of the communication trench stood Price, with a clipboard. He held out his hand to Stephen, who shook it. Price would not be going over, though he would count the cost.

Stephen looked up to the sky, where the first light was cracking the clouds. He let out a long sigh that shook him to his boots. “Oh God, oh God,” he breathed, shuddering down his spine. Where now was the loving unity of the world? With one minute to go the realization struck him as it struck all the men: that there was no way back. He threw a glance of longing down the clogged communication trench, then turned to face the Front. A whistle blew, and clumsily the men began to clamber up the ladders, weighed down by their heavy packs, into the metal air.

Stephen watched their foolish, crablike movements and felt
his heart seize up with pitying love for them. He pushed his way through to follow.

The men ran as fast as they could over the broken ground; there was no repetition of the slow march ordered for the previous year. Their own machine guns were putting a barrage over their heads where it met the defensive fire of the enemy. Stephen was aware of the density of sound as he lowered his head, trying to take what protection he could from his tin helmet. He had to swerve over fallen bodies and leap small craters in the mud. He could see that the advancing line in front had reached the enemy trench. His own company, which was in support, began to regroup in shellholes about fifty yards short.

Stephen slid down a ten-foot drop into the slime, where he saw Goddard and Allen, the latter holding a field dressing over his bicep. Coker was looking over the rim of the shellhole, supported on another man’s back, trying to see through field glasses what signals were coming from the troops in front.

He jumped down into the mud. “Can’t see a thing, sir,” he screamed at Stephen through the noise. “No signals, nothing. They seem to be through the wire. There’s Mills bombs going off in the trench.”

Stephen felt a throb of hope. It was possible that for the first time in his experience the artillery had actually cut the wire and his men would not be playthings for the enemy machine guns.

Petrossian stumbled into the shellhole. He was black with the slime of mud and whatever decomposing filth he had encountered in previous shelters, but he was not bleeding.

“Signal from B Company, sir,” he shouted. “They’re in.”

“All right. Let’s go.”

Stephen clambered up the edge of the shellhole and waved a flag. The ground began to move and disgorge men for a length of a hundred yards or more. The noise in front of them redoubled as German fire began from their support trench. Though the men in B Company tried to cover them, their rifle fire could not compete with the machine guns. The last fifty yards became a hopping, dodging exercise as men weaved through fire and leapt over fallen bodies.

Stephen followed two others through a hole in the German
wire and jumped down into a crowded firebay. No one knew what was going on. There were groups of German prisoners along the duckboards wearing nervous smiles, looking relieved to be taken, but anxious that something might go wrong for them at this late stage. They plied the men of B Company with souvenirs and cigarettes. Their trench was a source of wonder to the British men, with its huge, deep dugouts and crafted parapets. They stared in rapt curiosity at the long-imagined privacy that they had finally violated.

Stephen managed to get the prisoners into an undamaged dugout, where he left Petrossian in charge with three other men to guard them. He knew Petrossian would be relieved not to have to advance further and would take pleasure in killing them if necessary. He went along the trench and found Ellis, damp with sweat and blank-eyed, as though the battle was taking place in some other world.

There was still fighting in the trench to their left where it adjoined the canal, though after half an hour they saw more German prisoners being brought up, and the sounds of fire died down.

Ellis looked at Stephen expectantly. “What now?”

“We’ll get support at midday from that wood on the right, from what Gray calls our Black Country friends. We have to secure the canal end, then press on to the second trench.”

Ellis smiled uncertainly. Stephen grimaced. “We’ve started shelling their second line now,” he shouted as he heard the whine above him. “Keep your helmet on and your fingers crossed.”

There was frantic movement in the trench as men piled up sandbags so they could fire over the rear of the trench toward the German support line. Many were hit in the head and fell back as they tried to find space to fire. Lewis gunners were looking for a secure post from which they could concentrate their aim, but for the time being it was hard to know whether they could move on before the counterattack came back at them.

Gradually the artillery began to find its targets. There were shouted reports of shell blasts on the trench lip, with men and earth thrown upward together. From behind the lines the German artillery began a heavy reply. There was no communication with battalion headquarters, and in the noise and increasing carnage
of the battle the only way Stephen could think of to impose order was to follow the original plan. He climbed up onto the improvised firestep. From what he could see the enemy was preparing for a further retreat to its reserve trench. If only there was some way of communicating with the artillery they could catch them as they went.

Through a series of yelled and half-heard orders, a second attack began. It was less coordinated than the first, without the distinct waves, but the men who had survived were dizzy with exhilaration as they wove onward to the second line. With no room for rifles, they went into the trench with bayonets and fists. Some were crushed by their own artillery, who were late to be informed of the second advance, and some leapt straight into death below. Stephen crashed through the wire and landed on the body of a German corporal whose legs had been removed by a shell. He was alive and trying to haul himself to safety. They tried to gather in knots and push both ways along the trench so that their rear was always guarded, but new arrivals meant they could not throw grenades over the traverses for fear that they would be killing their own men. There was no alternative but for men to go blind round each corner. The fate of the first two or three was a good indicator to those who followed. Stephen watched the men go on madly, stepping over the bodies of their friends, clearing one firebay at a time, jostling one another to be first to the traverse. They had dead brothers and friends on their minds; they were galvanized beyond fear. They were killing with pleasure. They were not normal.

By late morning they had secured the support trench. Stephen sent a detachment down to the canal to dig in against counterattack. All they had to do now was hold the line until reinforcements arrived at noon to protect their other flank.

Stephen could not bear the sight of Germans and tried to get the prisoners back as quickly as possible. Despite the continuing shellfire there were enough volunteers to escort them. To have taken two lines in a morning was thought by most men to be the limit of their likely good fortune. After five hours of exertion they were desperate for rest. Stephen enviously watched their tired departing backs.

The intensity of fire diminished for a moment, then built up
again, mostly on the right flank, which was coming under attack from unseen machine-gun emplacements and from rifle grenades. Stephen had not had time to taste the moment of significant advance before their position was besieged. The dogtoothed construction of the trench made it impossible to know what was happening more than a few yards away, but to him the sound of the counterattack was ominous.

He became aware of a concertina movement coming down the trench from the right as the furthest firebays were either being evacuated or merely silenced. At noon he climbed a ladder on what had been the parapet and looked up to the wood for reinforcements. There was no one there. He jumped down into the trench and found a periscope. He looked back over no-man’s-land and could see nothing except a distant line of prisoners being taken back. He closed his eyes and sighed quietly in the storm of fire. He might have known. He could have guessed.

A platoon commander called Sibley shouted in his ear. He wanted to know when the reinforcements would arrive.

“There are none. They’re not coming,” bellowed Stephen.

“Why?” mouthed Sibley.

Stephen said nothing.

An hour later the Germans were back in the trench at the far end and there was hand-to-hand fighting. Shortly afterward, B Company were ordered by their commander to retreat to the enemy frontline trench that they had taken in the morning. As they went up over the parapet they came under fire from German machine guns that had reestablished themselves in the support trench.

The noise was making it impossible to think. Stephen was aware of Ellis screaming at him. “We’re going down, we’re going down!” his lips said silently.

Stephen shook his head.

Ellis put his lips to Stephen’s ear. “B Company’s gone.”

“I know. I know.” Stephen did not explain. His company’s job was to occupy; B Company had been detailed to assault and were entitled to take their own view of when to move. He could not have made Ellis hear, but he wanted to stick to the orders given him by Colonel Gray.

A sergeant with blood-spattered face pushed past them, and
was followed by another surge of men who were being squeezed back down the trench from their unprotected right flank. The counterattack was now also coming head-on in an advance from the reserve trench. Two Lewis guns were not able to keep them back. It only needed an attack from the canal end and they would be completely encircled. Stephen rapidly calculated the possibility of a retreat. There were now so many Germans in the trench that they would be able to resume their positions on the parapet and shoot his men in the back as they ran.

Ellis was weeping. “What do we do?” he wailed. “I want to save my men. What do we do?”

In his mind, Stephen saw only one outcome: his company’s bodies stacked like sandbags one on another. It was not what he had chosen, but it was all that was left to them.

“What do we
do
?” Ellis moaned againt the noise.

“We hold the line, we hold the fucking line.” Stephen’s tongue and teeth were visible in the silently screaming cave of his mouth.

In the desperation of trying to save their own lives, the men fought over each yard of trench. Stephen joined them, firing rapidly at the advancing lines of grey.

Just before three o’clock he was aware of a Yorkshire voice in his ear and an unfamiliar face. He looked with puzzlement into the man’s eyes. It was a lieutenant from the Duke of Wellington’s regiment. He shouted to Stephen that his men had regained control of the far end of the trench.

Within another hour they had cleared their way back to the canal. Further reinforcements came up with trench mortars and more machine guns. The German counterattack was temporarily over, and its stragglers withdrew to their reserve position.

Stephen climbed down on to the duckboards and went along to a dugout, where he found a major of the Duke of Wellington’s.

“You look all in,” the major said cheerfully. “Your orders are to withdraw. We were sent up to cover you. Something went wrong before. Another triumph of planning.”

Stephen looked at the man’s face. He looked so young, he thought, yet he had performed some kind of miracle.

“And what are you going to do?” he asked.

“Cover your retreat, then get the hell out of it.”

Stephen took the man’s hand, then went outside.

They got the dead and wounded out first and what was left of the company was back in its own trench by nightfall. Ellis had been killed by machine-gun fire. The small groups of survivors dragged themselves over the mud they had crossed in the morning. They did not ask about the fate of their friends; they were intent only on reaching somewhere they could lie down.

S
tephen’s new job seemed to consist of going over maps and trying to ascertain which battalion was where. He was billeted in a pleasant house in the village, though was occasionally required to spend the night in a dugout in the reserve line. Even this was a great improvement on what he had known.

There was some urgency about the work, since the attack on the Messines Ridge was imminent. Stephen took sardonic pleasure in confirming that Weir’s tunnelling company was due for a rest shortly beforehand. Their work would be done and someone else could blow the mines.

The brigade major, a man called Stanforth, reminded him in manner of Colonel Barclay. He had a tendency to shout for no good reason, and he spoke in abbreviated sentences that were supposed to communicate urgency. If anything unforeseen happened he at once showed how much he was in command by issuing forceful and complicated orders, even though the hitch would usually sort itself out unaided.

The day he arrived Stephen had the unpleasant duty of writing to Ellis’s mother, who had already been officially informed of her son’s death. He chewed the pen in his office for an hour or more before he could begin. It was a summer day, with blackbirds and thrushes at play in the garden of the house.