City of Ghosts (19 page)

Before anyone had been able to raise a hand, the officer said, ‘Jolly good!' and scuttled away. It was left to an Indian
subedar
, a sergeant, to explain in full. Not that Bissen had needed any further explanation. His English was good enough to understand what the officer had told them. And he realized that, if the bombardment worked, the battle itself would be less dangerous than anything he had previously engaged in.

As he awaited the first round of shelling, Bissen sneaked another look across no-man's-land. The German trenches were different to theirs. They were not deep and were built up some four feet high from ground level, with a thick layer of sandbags. Any direct hit would send sandbags and earth in every direction, showering the men behind them. Bissen breathed a sigh of relief. The less gunfire they had to run into, the better. As he crouched back against the wall, Atar Khan joined him.

‘
Bhai
, I've heard a rumour that we will attack at seven-thirty a.m. – that is barely ten minutes away . . .'

Bissen Singh had learned early on that Atar Khan's rumours were usually as good as direct orders. He was one of those people who always seemed to know more than he should. Bissen steadied himself and gave his weapon a final once-over.

Atar nodded towards the enemy lines. ‘When we go, stick close by. That way we can help each other,' he suggested.

Bissen Singh nodded but cleared his mind of all thoughts by praying to himself. At precisely seven-thirty the shelling started.

It lasted for thirty-five minutes, the guns and howitzers pummelling the German defences. Shells shrieked and
whistled through the air; guns were being fired in rapid bursts. Wave after wave hit the enemy and the noise became cacophonous, jarring, discordant. It thundered and raged all around. Smoke began to merge with the damp mist and visibility waned. Bissen Singh tried to keep his mind focused but the noise was like nothing he had ever heard. And the ground on which he stood vibrated and shook, encompassing him. For a while he was back in Amritsar, washing himself in the pool that surrounded Harmandirsahib – the Golden Temple that he had loved since he was a child. Pilgrims flocked to the temple; multi-coloured doves sailed past in the sky, cooing and purring. The sound of tabla and harmonium combined to form sweet melodies in his ear. A strong, earthy woman, no more than twenty years of age, walked past and smiled at him, her eyes a shimmering, sparkling green. As he watched her go, he found himself lost in the hypnotic rhythm of her hips as they swayed to and fro, to and fro—

Something crashed, something thundered – deep, sonorous, booming. He snapped back to the present, readying his Enfield .303. Noticing that the other men were standing and walking about freely, he stood too. The barrage was providing cover from sniper fire. He looked out into the wasteland, unable to hear anything but the bombardment, unable to see through the smoke but knowing that the first line of the enemy's defence would be obliterated. If they were still able to fight, where were the sniper's bullets, the return fire and the counter attack? Confidently he lit a cigarette, coughed freely and savoured its taste. This was too simple, too easy . . .

The infantry attack went wrong. By the time Bissen Singh had reached the German trenches, expecting them to be smashed to pieces, it was too late. After the battle he learned that the rest of the bombardment had worked brilliantly. It was only the spot
his
company had charged that the bombs had missed. The Second Battalion of the Garwahl Rifles was the first to be affected by the blunder. Bissen's unit followed on behind. The smoke and the noise had created havoc. No instructions were being received, no messages were getting through. The soldiers simply charged the enemy line and killed everyone they could find. Or were themselves cut down with bullets and bayonets and bombs.

Bissen charged over the trench walls behind someone he recognized as Rifleman Gobar Singh Negi, who ran towards the enemy, bayonet at the ready. Before Bissen could blink, Gobar Singh had killed two attackers and rounded the first traverse. As he prepared to follow, other soldiers overtook him. Atar Khan was one of them. Remembering what Atar had said about sticking together, Bissen fell in behind his friend. He trampled over dead young men, some of them with scorched entry marks where bullets had splintered and smashed through bone. Others lay wailing and moaning, their lives ebbing away slowly as their insides spilled out onto the foreign soil in a tangled mess of guts and blood. Bissen saw movement as he rounded a traverse. Sensing the danger, he rushed in with his bayonet, spearing the German soldier through the left temple with a force so brutal that the blade emerged on the other side of his head. The dead
man, his rifle poised to shoot down Atar Khan, slumped into the mud, blood gushing in torrents from his wound, dousing the rats that scurried all around.

Next to him sat another young German, not much older than Jiwan Singh had been. The same wisps of teenage hair grew from his chin and cheeks. His face was smeared with grime and mud, and his pleading blue eyes showed mortal fear. Just a boy. Bissen saw that he was unhurt. He readied his bayonet as the German shouted above the thunderous cacophony that continued all around them:

‘
Halt! Bitte nicht schiessen! Ich ergebe mich! Ich ergebe mich . . .!
'

Bissen realized that he had to think quickly. He had to move. Death came swiftly to those who stood still in the heat of battle. Emotions raged inside his chest as he recalled the teachings of the Gurus.
Every man is your brother, every woman your sister
. Shouting, explosions, whistles and gunfire – all seemed like a dream. A nightmare, during which time stood still and Bissen's eyes closed momentarily.

It was the screaming that snapped him back to reality. Opening his eyes again, Bissen saw that he had speared his brother through the heart. Without thinking, without knowing. The boy's eyes remained open. They looked up in shock and amazement, locked in the instant of death. Bissen found himself wondering what the boy's mother looked like. What his name had been;his sweetheart's. He gazed at the Enfield in his hands, asking himself what he had become. Why hadn't he let the boy live? Shivering with guilt, he moved on. Round the next corner he found yet more broken and twisted bodies, lying in the stinking filth of an exploded latrine.
Germans, Englishmen and Indians, covered in shit, not glory, and all equal in death.

His left foot slid from beneath him and he fell against the earthen mound of the trench. He turned quickly and lifted his bayonet, knowing instinctively what was coming. The German soldier's bayonet pierced his right shoulder and a searing pain racked his body. Bissen screamed. Stabbed and hacked out with his rifle. The German screamed back, collapsing onto him. Bissen cried out and pushed him off, before slashing at him again and again. He felt his humanity ebb away as he cut his enemy's face into ribbons of ruby-coloured fat and gristle. Then an arm pulled him away. It was Bhan Singh.

‘Come on!' he shouted. ‘Bissen!'

Bissen let himself be led away, trampling bodies and limbs underfoot. He refused to succumb to the pain in his shoulder, concentrating instead on the next turn in the maze, the next enemy soldier. As they rounded the third traverse in a row without meeting resistance, they saw the reason: Gobar Singh Negi lay there dead, his eyes still open, his turban still in place. All around their comrade were dead Germans. Gobar Singh had obviously put up a courageous fight. Both Bissen and Bhan Singh said a swift prayer for their fallen friend, lifting him out of the mud and propping his body against the side of the trench before moving on.

Bissen stooped to pick up a pistol. It was a Webley Mark IV – standard issue to British officers. Bissen wondered how far the man had managed to get before being killed. The answer lay ten feet further on. Lieutenant-Colonel Ernest Wodehouse lay face down in the mud, his legs blown away
and half his head missing. Bissen stopped and turned what was left of the dead man over. He remembered a smiling, jovial Englishman, always ready with jokes and stories about buxom village girls with loose morals. Bissen pulled him to one side and pushed his body into a dugout, clear of the filthy, stinking mud. Then he went on, slowing down as he realized that the trenches had finally been taken. The few Germans who were unhurt had surrendered. As he rounded the next corner, a misdirected shell exploded above the dugout where he had placed Ernest Wodehouse's remains, removing all trace of the officer's body for ever.

THE CRUCIFIX STOOD
alone. It was simply made, of two thick poles, the wood weathered, darkened by time. The statue of Christ crucified was untouched by the chaos, dirt and blood of the battle. All around, buildings had been turned to rubble and ash, their timber-framed roofs blackened and charred. Some still smouldered – and in one or two places fires burned. Bissen Singh wandered through what had once been someone's courtyard, his rifle poised and ready, even though the enemy was long gone. After the previous day's fighting, the German front line had retreated from the village, to an area of flat ground called the Bois de Biez. Bissen had no idea what this meant. He had merely heard an officer calling it this. Not that it mattered. Not now.

The battle had been a disaster. Reports were reaching Bissen's
subedar
of successes along other parts of the front line, but Bissen had scoffed at these so-called victories. The indiscriminate slaughter that he had taken part in should have achieved three objectives. The enemy were to have
been driven back a great distance; the village was to have been retaken; and finally the high ground of Aubers Ridge should have fallen into Allied hands. The enemy
had
fallen back, but only by just over a mile. The village
had
been taken, but it remained a village no longer. The homes of its people had been shelled and fired on and flattened. Its orchards and trees and flowers had been destroyed. The town square resembled a quarry: great piles of rubble and stone lay where artists had once sat with easels, and where couples had walked arm in arm past pavement cafés. And Aubers Ridge remained in enemy hands.

Bissen edged through a small door that hung by one rusting hinge. He'd entered a small storeroom. It was pitch black inside and smelled of rotting onions, damp and mildew. A scratching noise came from his left. Then a hissing, snarling sound, followed by a click and more hissing. He stood there, breathing quietly, the throbbing in his shoulder a constant, nagging companion. Realizing that it was only a cat, he left the storeroom and made his way back across the courtyard. Three of its walls were gone. The fourth stood alone, a solitary hanging basket attached to it. No flowers.

The ringing in Bissen's ears had faded since the barrage of the previous morning. All night, as he sat hunched against a damp wall, listening to Atar Khan talking of the Punjab and attempting to sleep, his ears had buzzed. Nothing gave him respite from the insistent drone. Not closing his eyes or listening to Atar's words, or the morphine he had been given to ease the pain in his shoulder. The wound had been cleaned and treated by the field doctor; a short, slight, fair-haired man who wore wire-rimmed glasses and had the
breath of an alcoholic. Bissen had thanked him in his best English, a courtesy that seemed to shock the doctor.

‘Not many of your lot speak English,' he'd said to Bissen.

‘At school,' Bissen had tried to explain. ‘I learn from early. From a boy—'

‘Good on you,' the doctor had replied. ‘At least one of you has made an effort. I can't make head or tail of what them other ones are talking about. I just nod and say yes.'

‘You are from where?' asked Bissen.

‘I'm sorry,' replied the doctor. ‘James Cromwell. From a village called Church Langton in Leicestershire. Pleased to meet you.' He held out a hand, which Bissen shook.

‘Bissen Singh. From Amritsar, Punjab.'

‘Like I said,' Dr Cromwell went on. ‘Good to meet one of you who I can talk to. Did you lose many?'

‘More than half of unit,' replied Bissen sadly. ‘Two my best friends gone . . .'

Dr Cromwell shook his head and placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘I'm sorry. This war is brutal.'

Bissen nodded.

‘I'll give you a spare bandage and some morphine, Singh,' the doctor told him. ‘It's not much but it should help until this battle is won. Then we'll get you properly treated.'

‘Thank you,' Bissen said, their eyes meeting.

‘And good luck.'

Bissen got up off the wooden board propped between two chairs, which had been acting as a makeshift treatment table. ‘You too,' he told the doctor, before making his way back to what was left of his unit.

Now, as he stood in the courtyard of some Frenchman's home, he wondered why he was so far away from his own. What had made him leave his beautiful homeland for the horror and savagery of war? A war in which the main protagonists looked exactly the same. A war in which fat, overfed, red-faced commanders ordered young men to go and die for the sake of a mile of land; land that was charred and smoking and soaked in blood and guts. A war in which young men had to kill other young men or face being shot for desertion by cowards who hid well behind the front lines.

He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Trying to find the focus he needed. According to the officers in charge, the village had been cleared of German soldiers, but that didn't mean that it was actually clear. The German trenches his unit had attacked
should
have been obliterated by the barrage; blown to smithereens, as the briefing officer had put it. But that hadn't stopped Bissen and his comrades from running straight into a fortified defensive line, had it? It hadn't prevented the deaths of so many of his fellow Rifles either. The only answer, it seemed to Bissen Singh, was to follow his own instincts. There were too many hiding places in amongst the ruins of Neuve Chapelle, too many dark holes and cellars and storerooms. All it would take was one confused, angry, frightened German, and Bissen would find himself dying in a stranger's land, thousands of miles from home. And that was something he would not allow to happen.