Starshine (6 page)

The Irishman shook his head and his face was serious. ‘You know, Jimmy, it wasn’t a good thing to do, killin’ someone in cold blood like that. It’s different to when they come chargin’ at you. It’s fair enough then. But I’m not at all sure I approve of this war, after all. All this shellin’ an’ killin’. I don’t see how the good Lord can give it his blessing, so I don’t.’

Hickman gave him a playful push. ‘You’re talking nonsense, mate. Your priest didn’t disapprove when you joined up, now, did he? I seem to remember that he told you that you would be doing the work of the Lord, now didn’t he?’

‘So he did. So he did. But he ain’t here now, is he? If he was, seeing what we’ve seen in not much more than a week out here, I think he’d change his mind, honest I do.’

‘Well, we’re in it now. And you’re the finest marksman in the whole of the BEF so you’d better shut up and get on with it.’

‘Very good, Lance Corporal, sorr.’

Although the firing up beyond and to the right of the ridge continued throughout the day, the company was allowed to get on with its digging without too much interference from the enemy. Obviously, the battle was continuing elsewhere. And this was confirmed when, in the mid afternoon, Jim noticed that heads were turning along the line of the trench – now much more substantial – as news of mouth was being passed along.

Eventually, it reached him. ‘The village up top has been retaken by the bloody Worcesters,’ said the man to his right. ‘They’ve broken
through up on the top from the left. Looks as though we shall be movin’ on soon.’

And so it proved. Within the half-hour, orders were given to load their equipment and move out. In open order, with bayonets fixed, they left the comparative security of their trench and moved up the slope towards where the blackened remains of Geluveld were smoking and serrating the skyline. Hickman realised that defending a position was one thing and attacking, over open ground, was very much another. It was the first time that he and Bertie had advanced in daylight and, walking steadily up the slope, they both felt unprotected and virtually naked. Jim remembered how easy it had been to mow down the Germans when they left their positions and came out into the open. At least now he and his comrades were spread out in open order, but even so, they would offer inviting targets to machine guns set up behind the wall.

Yet their advance was unhindered and not a shot was fired as they breasted the ridge. A disconcerting sight met their eyes. Hardly a building, it seemed, had been left standing in the village, and streets forming the crossroads were marked now only by rubble and blackened timbers. Corpses of soldiers, British and German, lay unburied where they had fallen, some of them scorched by the flames.

The little major bustled over. ‘Take cover where you can and rest,’ he called to the men. ‘Captain Yates, take Lieutenant Baxter and a platoon and reconnoitre to the left and see if you can link up with the Worcesters. The colonel is establishing battalion headquarters in what’s left of that school over there. Report back there.’

Yates beckoned to a young subaltern, a sergeant, another corporal and to Jim, and a makeshift platoon of some twenty-five men began cautiously to patrol down what seemed to be left of the main street.

They had been walking for perhaps ten minutes when a sudden
rattle of machine-gun fire and then another broke out ahead of them and they all went to ground instinctively. A mortar banged and a fountain of earth and rubble sprang up to their right. Then another mortar shell exploded to their left, with the same result. A sharp crack of musketry sounded ahead and bullets began to strike the road and masonry around them, ricocheting away in a succession of pings and whines.

‘Into that ditch on the right,’ shouted Yates. They followed him and tumbled into a rubble-fringed irrigation ditch, but not before two of their number fell on the roadway and a third crumbled just as he reached the dubious safety of the ditch.

‘Where the hell are they?’ asked Yates of Baxter.

‘Can’t see ’em for the life of me.’

‘In the churchyard, to the right,’ called Hickman. ‘Look, the place is crawling with them.’ He pointed.

Grey-coated figures could now be seen flitting between the gravestones and the fallen masonry. As they watched, two men spreadeagled themselves on either side of a third man, who squatted and began assembling something.

‘Can you see ’em, Bertie?’ called Jim. ‘He’s setting up a machine gun just between those tombstones. It’s a long shot. Can you get him? You’ll have to be quick.’

Murphy nodded but did not reply. Instead, he adjusted his rear sight, licked his thumb and rubbed it on the end of his rifle, levelled it and fired. The German machine-gunner rolled over.

‘Good shot, Murphy,’ called out Yates. ‘Glad you’ve swallowed your principles.’

‘Ah, it’s different if I’m shit scared, sorr.’

‘We can’t stay here.’ Yates was addressing his lieutenant.

‘Withdraw, of course?’

‘Good God, no. We’ve got to hold them up long enough to give the colonel time to set up a decent defensive position. We’ve got to spread out on the right here where there’s cover and stop them coming down the road. Hickman.’

‘Sir.’

‘Get back to the colonel – he’s in that old school back where we crested the ridge. Tell him that, by the look of it, a battalion of the enemy is on its way towards him and that we will do our best to hold them up before retreating. Tell him that there’s no sign of the Worcesters. There must have been a massive counter-attack on the village. Go now and don’t get shot, man!’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ hissed Bertie.

‘Blimey, no. You can’t do that. That would be desertion in the face of the enemy. You stay here and shoot all the buggers and I’ll be back in a minute.’

‘Ah, good luck, Jimmy boy.’

Jim swallowed. This would be the first time they had been parted since joining up. ‘Keep your head down, Bertie.’ Then he slung his rifle behind his shoulder, scrambled out of the ditch and jumped into what remained of a cottage garden, as bullets spattered against the rubble around him. He ran, head down, sprinting from splintered tree to tree, between scattered piles of stone and brick. Once he twisted his ankle in a pothole and was stung as he lay by a sharp flint, cut out by a rifle shot. Cursing, he scrambled to his feet and ran on, zigzagging as he reached more open ground, until the firing died away behind him.

He had little breath left as he found the colonel, attempting to study a map of Gelveld spread over a child’s desk. He reported his news.

‘How long have we got, Corporal?’

‘No time at all, sir. The captain is very outnumbered by the look of it.’ His heart was in his mouth as he thought of Bertie.

‘Which way will they come?’

‘Straight down this road, I should think. But there are probably enough of them to try and take you from the east, here as well,’ he pointed, ‘to get behind you.’

The colonel gave him an appraising look. ‘Very well.’ He turned his head and shouted. ‘Major Chatwynd, here quickly. You, Corporal, get into the defences here.’

‘No thank you, sir. I’ve got to get back.’ With that, he turned and doubled away. Leaving the CO with his mouth hanging open.

Instead of following the route he had taken to the church, however, Hickman turned to his right and began trotting – he had insufficient breath left to run – through the ruins of the village. If he could approach the Germans from their flank, he reasoned, he could perhaps put up enough firing to make them think that they were being attacked from that direction, giving Yates and his men time to withdraw. Perhaps! If only he had that Lewis machine gun that he had practised with back on the Plain …

Gunfire to his left showed him that Yates’s platoon, or what was left of it, was still in action. Treading stealthily now, Jim advanced towards the firing, taking advantage of houses that had only been partially destroyed by the shelling and treading fastidiously between the fallen bodies that he began to encounter. If it really was a German battalion, then they would have fanned out to enfilade Yates and his small party, so he should see them soon.

And he did. Six Germans in their flat, soft caps were doubling across his front, looking to their right and not towards him. He licked his lips. He would have to fire quickly, as though he was not alone. He
knelt behind a partly destroyed outhouse wall, settled his rifle on the top, took careful aim and fired. And then again and again until he had released six shots. He hit four of the men, the other two falling to the ground and turning to face him. He doubled away, out of their sight, and re-emerged further to their left, when he released two more shots, wounding one of the outstretched Germans, who released a loud cry.

But there was no time for self-congratulation, for a succession of bullets now crashed into the wall from a party of grey-clad men, bayonets drawn, who emerged from the ruined houses. Damn! Which way to run? He must out-think them. Make them think they were being surrounded. He ran further to his right and then doubled back to bring him, he hoped, further behind the Germans’ left flank.

Now he could see a group of some twenty of the enemy cautiously edging their way through the ruins. He inserted another clip into his magazine – thank God he was not still armed with the old single-shot Lee-Metford! – took aim and let loose a succession of six shots quickly, working the bolt so that his thumb ached. He was not too particular about aiming carefully, for speed was preferable to accuracy, but even so, he brought down a further three men before he doubled back on himself.

This time, however, he was seen and a fusillade of shots followed him. Running like a hare, he turned and ran back into the heart of the village, back towards what he hoped would be the rear of Yates’s position, if he had been able to fall back in good order. He easily outdistanced whatever pursuit had been mounted, turned and was relieved to hear gunfire coming from ahead of him, this time. Then he caught a glimpse of a khaki-clad jacket and shouted: ‘It’s Hickman. I’m behind you.’

A familiar voice responded. ‘God bless you, Jimmy. Come on in with your head down, for they seem to be all around us, lad.’

Within a moment, having shaken Bertie’s hand, he was reporting to Yates, whose left arm was bleeding and the hand tucked into his open jacket.

‘Well done, Hickman, but I didn’t expect you to come back, for God’s sake. You say they are on the right of us now?’

‘Yes sir. I think you’d better make a run for it.’

‘No. Must retreat in good order, or they’ll mow us down as we go.’ The captain smiled ruefully. ‘We’ve lost about half of our men, including Lieutenant Baxter and Sergeant Wilkins and the other corporal. I don’t want to lose the rest. Now, you’re my second in command. You take seven men, including your sharpshooter friend, and fall back about a hundred and fifty yards. I will cover you with what is left. Then we will fall back through you as you fire over our heads to cover our retreat. Then you must retreat similarly as we cover you. Got it? An orderly retreat, eh?’

‘Of course, sir. But you’re wounded. Why don’t you go first?’

‘No, it’s only a scratch. Get your men and off you go. No time to waste.’

Jim nodded and scampered among the men touching every other one on the shoulder as they fired from a variety of types of cover. Then, as the captain and the rest set up covering fire, they all ran back, stumbling in the broken ground until Hickman judged they had gone far enough. He detailed Bertie to take up position on the extreme right of their position to warn of any outflanking movement and spread his men as widely as possible behind whatever cover they could find. Then he shouted back to Yates: ‘Ready, sir.’

So began their retreat under fire. They could not possibly have regained the British lines if the colonel had not sent a skirmishing party out into the village to meet them, for they were vastly outnumbered and also enfiladed from either flank. As it was, they lost three more
men but the covering fire of the rescue party was strong enough for them to limp back under its protection to where a rough-and-ready line had been erected in a curve projecting along the top of the ridge. There they found sanctuary.

‘Thank you, Hickman,’ said Yates. ‘You saved what was left of us. Now get down into the line. I think it’s going to be a rough evening.’

The Germans were upon them within ten minutes, firing from mortars, heavy machine guns and rifles as they spread out amongst the ruins. It became clear that the colonel’s command was heavily outnumbered and, indeed, outgunned, for it lacked mortars and machine guns. Yet the marksmanship of the British was exemplary, for virtually all of them were Regulars and even the clerks and the cooks, who made up the numbers, had been well trained. As a result, the Germans were held at bay, although the casualties along the top of the ridge were growing.

Jim and Bertie were firing from the reverse side of the wall that had harboured the sniper. His body was still lying near the hole in the brickwork and Bertie’s marksmanship was confirmed by the neat black hole that showed now in his forehead.

‘Ugh.’ Bertie wrinkled his nose. ‘I’ll move along a bit, if you don’t mind.’

Jim wiped his brow. ‘We can’t hold out here much longer, I would have thought.’ He looked behind him. From the ridge the slope fell away into a flat plain on which Ypres could be seen in the distance, with the spire of the cathedral and the distinctive tower of the old Cloth Hall still standing tall. The plain was still dotted with red-tiled farmhouses but the woods that marked it in clusters were becoming ravaged by shellfire and craters had formed in clusters across all the fields. Despite the barrage to which it had been subjected, what remained of the Menin Road could be seen, dipping down to the
plain and running as straight as a die to the west. The makeshift trench line that they had scraped out a couple of hundred yards below them stood out for its freshly turned soil rampart but, seen from the top of the ridge, it seemed to offer little cover.

‘It would be stupid to fall back down to there,’ muttered Hickman.

His faith in the judgement of senior officers was already becoming strained, for it seemed that both sides seemed to retain a blind faith in frontal attack against well-armed troops dug in. ‘I just hope someone’s forming a proper plan for retreat. We can’t hang on here and that’s not a proper line.’