Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel) (39 page)

More worryingly, Edward felt that he himself was now being drawn down into this darkness. He had tried many times to find a way to help Liam but the efforts only exposed Edward’s own fragile methods of coping. Like most of the men, he now tried not to think about his family and his home except when receiving or sending letters. Then he wallowed for a while in the love that he felt and in the pain and misery of separation. But Liam’s determination to confront what he perceived as the collapse in those ethical values that he felt his wife cherished in him, had left Edward with increasingly disturbing doubts about himself.

When they were involved in any action with the enemy, Liam’s mood now changed to the point that, at times, he seemed almost crazed. The fear that had slowly developed in Edward’s mind, that his friend was inviting injury, had grown into the numbing realisation that Liam was suicidal. An injury itself would not resolve his mental turmoil. It would have to be terminal.

***

The breakfast was fit for a king. They had French eggs, Irish bacon and Bury black puddings with some army baked fried bread. They were in Loupart Wood near Grevillers, to the north east of Miraumont, and the breakfast had been conjured up for them by the inventive catering corps as a late evening treat. It was a reward for the success of the previous night.

The operation had gone well and, in just less than half an hour, they had regained control of Beauregard Dovecote. Casualties had been high on both sides but the Lancashire soldiers fought with the spirited ferocity of a boxer who knows that he has gained the upper hand and burns to finish off his opponent. They had taken fifty German prisoners and captured eight machine guns and a Field Dressing Station.

In the end, the Germans had seemed almost grateful to have been captured and, with a man on each corner of a blanket, they cheerfully carried their wounded down to the British lines for treatment. They happily submitted to the irony of having their wounds treated by British medics using captured German equipment and they were awed by the food that they received for their meals. They explained that the German soldiers were almost starving because of the failure of their supply lines.

Early in the day, the Allied soldiers had mounted a successful attack on Miraumont. Edward’s Battalion had moved through on the left flank of the pincer movement which had advanced following the bombardment of the town by the British artillery. Stories were now coming through of how many of the Germans had been almost anxious to give themselves up.

Spirits were high amongst the Allied soldiers but the drawn faces and the black, sunken eyes betrayed the lack of sleep.

Edward noticed the number of his comrades that were, like him, almost constantly coughing. They had been caught a few times by the gas when they had thought an area was clear. Small clouds of it would lie in ditches and copses, or it would drift in on a breeze during the night. Now they all had gas masks, although they didn’t always manage to get them on in time. He remembered when they had first arrived in Northern France and they had all been fascinated by the green cloud that had been rolling slowly towards them.

‘Its chlorine,’ a sapper had shouted out. ‘Pee on your hankies and fasten them over your faces. That will protect you.’

‘I’ve only just been,’ Edward had protested. ‘Am I going to die because I can’t pee?’

‘Pass me your hankie and I’ll do yours as well,’ Big Charlie had offered with immediate generosity.

Edward had hesitated for a moment as he considered the implications of this offer. ‘Errh, no. It’s OK Charlie, thanks. I think that I might be able to squeeze another one out, after all.’

Assisted by the stimulating sight of the gradually approaching green cloud of chlorine gas, Edward had managed a modest flow. It had inhibited, but not totally stopped, the gas intake.

Edward glanced up and saw Liam sitting about thirty feet away, both hands clasped round his enamel cup, shoulders hunched forward and a cigarette dangling from his lips. His whole being seemed to be gripped by some deep gloom.

Frank Williams wandered up to the group. ‘It’s not been a bad day. We’re in Miraumont, thanks to you lads. You did a good job taking the Dovecote. There is a downside though.’

‘What’s that?’ enquired Big Charlie. ‘Have we got to clear them out of Bapaume by tomorrow morning?’

‘Not quite,’ laughed Williams. ‘There’s hundreds of prisoners and they’re eating us out of house and home. Poor sods haven’t eaten properly for weeks’

‘I’ll have to write to the missus then,’ Edward said. ‘See if she can organise the women at Central Mission to come up with some cakes.’

‘Well, they’ve done a pretty good job in the past,’ replied the Lieutenant. ‘But there’s some more interesting news.’

He paused with a theatrical silence. ‘Come on Frank, out with it,’ urged Edward. ‘You’ll be giving us a few lines from Hamlet next.’

Williams smiled. ‘It’s about your favourite Major.’

Liam’s head came up and Big Charlie put down his cleaning cloths. ‘What’s happened, then?’ Liam snorted. ‘He’s not been given a Victoria Cross for outstanding gallantry in opening whisky bottles?’

‘Well, no, not quite,’ Williams replied. ‘He’s dead.’

Edward was on his feet. ‘Dead?’ he shouted. ‘Fforbes-Fosdyke dead? How’s he managed that, then?’

‘Well he didn’t really manage it. He got killed in Miraumont.’

‘In Miraumont?’ Edward was astonished. ‘What was he doing in Miraumont? Are you saying that he was there when the fighting was going on?’

‘No way,’ Big Charlie scoffed. ‘He wouldn’t be seen dead involved in the fighting,’ he said, smiling as he, at least, appreciated his attempt at ironic humour.

‘Well, in the end, he was,’ chortled Williams. ‘He was there because he had been sent. The Battalion has lost so many officers that we are finding it a bit of a struggle. The CO told him that he had to go. He said that it was going to be an easy show. Just walk in to the town and take over. He said that it was going to be his last opportunity to get a citation to impress his old man with. That did it for him. He knew that he would have to take something back to prove that he’d been there. If the word had got out that he’d spent all the war backsliding then he’d have been finished.’

‘Aye. Knew which side his bread was buttered on’ Edward said quietly.

‘Funny thing is, he was shot in the back.’ The Lieutenant waited, indulging himself with a theatrical pause whilst the full impact of the words sank in. ‘Well away from the action.’

Edward put their thoughts into words. ‘What do you mean? He was running away from the Germans?’ He would not have been at all surprised to hear that this was the case. The man who had showed such barbaric cruelty to his own men was known for his rank cowardice in the face of the enemy.

‘Well, no. He never got near the Germans. He was doing what you would expect – directing operations from the rear and staying as far away as he could from any fighting. He had sent the lads in, giving them orders that they fortunately ignored because they could see that they would be wiped out. He stayed hidden behind a corner on the outskirts of the town, shouting and bawling at them to think of England and to take no prisoners. All of a sudden he shut up. They found him later with a bullet hole in his back.’

‘Is there going to be an inquiry?’ Big Charlie asked. ‘You know, with his old man having a bit of influence, like.’

‘No, I don’t think so. He’s been marked down as a killed-in-action. That’s a better outcome for his Dad anyway. He wouldn’t have been too happy with too many stones being turned over.’

‘Who found him?’ Edward enquired.

‘The 7th. They were in support.’

Edward’s jaw dropped open. ‘The 7th. That’s Chopper Hennessy’s outfit. I don’t suppose that he was too upset.’

The news had transformed Liam. He was on his feet now, smiling as he joined the rest of them. He clenched his fist and held it in the air. ‘Great news, Chopper,’ he said victoriously. ‘That settles the score for your kid.’

***

29 Myrtle Street

Cross Lane

Salford 5

Great Britain

15th July  1918

Dear Dad,

Has Billy Murphy’s Dad been killed because Mrs Murphy says that she never gets any letters from him but she hasn’t had a letter from the Army so she doesn’t know what’s happened to him? Billy is worried that she might die because she has gone very thin and doesn’t eat anything properly. When I went round there she asked me did we still get letters and when I said that we did she got upset again. Billy said that his Dad might have been shooting the Germans and they might have shot him back and nobody can find him or perhaps a bomb has blown his hand off like the man down the street. His Mam got even more upset and she said a Jesus, Mary and Joseph and said that what his Dad was doing was a hard job but it had to be done and he was doing it to protect her and the kids and if any of those Germans so much as harmed a hair on his Dad’s head then she would go over there and rip the limbs off their evil bodies.

Me and Billy were a bit frightened of her so I told Billy that I would ask you because you might know. She used to be alright when she got letters but now she keeps doing Hail Marys and things like that and Billy says that she doesn’t do the washing sometimes, but he’s not bothered because he doesn’t have to put clean things on every Saturday.

We’re on summer holidays now and we have been told that we have got to catch as many white butterflies as we can because they eat all the cabbage on the allotments. That’s cruel because they are only delicate and they can eat as much cabbage as they want for all I care. It’s horrid. Uncle Jim has built a shed on his allotment and I take our Ben and our Sadie in there to play hospitals.

Our Edward still won’t let me play cricket with them in Ordsall Park even though he makes me bowl to him all morning in the backyard but then he won’t be out when he’s supposed to be. He says that I can’t play just because I am eleven because, anyway, I am a girl. Mam said she used to play football with the boys when she was my age but then he says that he couldn’t take me because I’m his sister and I am supposed to be learning knitting and sewing. Mam made me stay in all day because I thumped him and told him that even a spotty butcher’s boy pinched his girl friend. Me and Mam made some cakes to send to you but I would rather have played cricket.

The coalman up the street has been asking all the women to save scraps for his horse because he can’t get enough hay. He said it is supposed to be rationed because so much goes over to France but he said the corporation horses don’t look as though they’re starving. Mam told him to take it up to Peel Park and put it on the grass and it will feed the grass at the same time with the manure. The coalman said that they are supposed to be having another meeting with the Mayor about it. Mam told him that you’d get more sense out of Soft Mick.

Will you be able to bring some horses back with you when you come home?

Love

Laura

Chapter 17

Ruyaulcourt September 1918

The area was one of gently undulating hills. The wooded tops, relieved sparsely by the copper hues of early autumn, wore a barbed, golden crown where the setting sun touched the tops of the trees. Much of the low lying land had been devastated by the years of destructive warfare. Stricken stumps of trees surrounded the gaping mouths of the shell holes, the shredded, splintered fingers of the branches pointing aimlessly from mutilated arms.

The whole landscape was surmounted by the strangling metal collar of the deep fortifications in front of the Hindenburg Line. Edward could see the massive barbed wire structure reaching to a depth of around a hundred yards which represented only the first line of this formidable defence. Hidden behind that, he knew, was row upon row of sturdily built, interconnected trenches, each with its own protective lines of barbed wire. Strategically placed around these massive defence systems were concrete machine gun emplacements and the whole of this was supported in the rear by the thousands of the German Army’s heavy artillery guns.

The Hindenburg Line, stretching for over one hundred miles and, at this point, two miles deep, had been substantially fortified since Edward had been here at Havrincourt Wood in June of 1917. This was an area that the Allies had held for most of the last three years but, in the offensive that they had begun in March, the Germans had pushed the Allied lines back, in some places, a distance of thirty miles to the West. They had believed, then, that victory was theirs for the taking and the Kaiser and his subjects had been celebrating the approaching end of the war.

Their jubilation, however, was premature. By pushing sections of their front forward they had stretched their line beyond the ability of their forces to defend the exposed flanks and beyond the support that could be given by the supply line. In Germany, most of the population already had to survive on a diet of potatoes and occasional other vegetables and now the front line troops were going hungry. In their push forward, the German soldiers had come across stores that the Allied troops had left behind and were shocked to find that their enemy’s rations, although basic, were more plentiful and much superior to their own.

The losses that they had incurred in gaining this ground had been massive and, by July, the German Army on the Western Front was starving and demoralised. They knew that the Americans were bringing in greater numbers of troops to support the Allied effort, but they feared most the British and Anzac soldiers. After four years, these battle hardened men had proved their mettle and had adapted their tactics and honed their skills to meet the demands of modern warfare.

In August, the early morning peace on the German line had collapsed into a deafening chaos of smoke, fire, poison gas and the thunderous roar of the artillery bombardment. The Allies had begun their response and the mighty German Army began to slowly disintegrate.