The Horizon (1993) (32 page)

‘According to the experts the wind will be behind the attack, so with any luck our people will be spared the risk of gas.’

The Australian said in a hoarse whisper, ‘You remember my colonel, the bloke you liked? Well, he was gassed out here a month or so back. Some new liquid stuff.’ He touched his eyes. ‘Completely blind, poor bastard.’

A voice called, ‘First light, sir!’

‘You are dismissed, gentlemen.’ The brigadier beckoned to the Royal Marines. ‘I thought you might like to see it for yourselves.’ Jonathan, with Wyke behind him, followed the brigadier to an observation position protected by bullet-riddled sandbags and slabs of concrete. It was only then that he realised that this part of the line cut through the remains of some demolished building.

He did not know quite what he had expected: something like that other front when he had been an observer for the Royal Marines. He watched in silence as
the light spread across the scene like a slowly developing film, revealing its picture of desolation and horror. To the left there had been a thickly wooded area, still shown on his map, and lying almost in line with the ridge. Now hundreds of shell holes, some as big as craters, filled the area, and of the wood nothing remained but scorched and blackened stumps like rotting teeth. He saw barbed wire against the paling sky, some blasted away by shellfire, but not enough to warn the enemy that another Big Push was imminent, and beyond that to the right there were masses of it, tangled and impassable unless great efforts were made to remove it. Like a forlorn monument, standing with its tail in the air, was an aeroplane, the British markings still clearly visible. Jonathan rested his binoculars on a hard sandbag and peered at it. It was nose-down in the middle of the huge mass of wire and he guessed that the pilot and observer were still inside. The fuselage was riddled with bullet holes, probably put there by bored sentries on both sides letting off steam.

He knew Wyke was beside him with his own glasses, and heard him gasp as he saw the scattered remains of corpses: in the wire, beyond it, everywhere. Some were so broken and torn or decaying that only their rusting helmets gave any clue to nationality.

Wyke was recalling what the Rifle Brigade lieutenant had told him when he had asked him about the stench.

He had replied casually, perhaps indifferently, ‘Corpses, old chap. We bury our dead as best we can without getting chopped in the process – then bang, at the next bombardment they come flying back into the trench. Bits of them, anyway.’

Jonathan had overheard the conversation. The lieutenant was not callous, not brutal; he was merely trying to retain his sanity.

He had observed the same black humour at work even in the comparative safety of the communication trench, which was so high and so narrow that it would bury men alive if it collapsed under shellfire. He had seen an arm protruding from the top of the trench, with a torn khaki sleeve and a clenched fist, devoid of flesh, raised against the sky like a last rebuke. Some sapper or signals unit had run a telephone wire through the ragged fingers as a sort of macabre defiance, but mainly to disquiet newly joined men who had to run their own fingers along this line every night to ensure there were no faults. As Payne had been heard to remark, ‘Right lot of little comedians round here, and no mistake!’

The enemy front line swung away to the right with the British trenches attempting to follow it. Once there had been grass here. Jonathan stared at the charred tree stumps and thought of the copse at Hawks Hill. How many had fallen in this one sector? How many would die tomorrow?

Somewhere, a machine-gun opened fire and the first sunlight glinted on something beyond the ridge. Like a tiny insect, flying in tight turns to avoid drifting balls of smoke, dirty stains against what would be a clear summer morning.

He heard the impartial tap-tap-tap of the plane’s machine-gun, although what it was shooting at was impossible to judge. They had seen two of them on the march here. The war’s new dimension: a private aerial
world for brave and reckless young men who had been schoolboys not so long ago. One had drifted away in flames and crashed in a field. The other had flown slowly away, like someone bored and cheated by the ease of the kill.

Ross said quietly, ‘In your view, Colonel, do you think it can be done?’

Jonathan let his binoculars drop across his respirator haversack and tried not to think of the Australian colonel, Ede, who had been blinded.

‘It can be done, sir, now that we know about the mines.’

The brigadier waited for some further comment, and then snapped, ‘
But?
’

‘I know this is a different sort of war, sir, but at Gallipoli the major fault was the failure to exploit any small gain or success we had. The enemy was always given too much time to prepare, or to hit back.’

‘That kind of folly is not unknown on the Western Front! But this time there is an impressive plan to make certain we maintain the impetus. If we fail before the weather changes . . .’ He did not need to elaborate. He said sharply, ‘What do people call you?’

‘Well, Jonathan, or Jono, sir.’ It was startling how this cold-eyed man could change tack.

‘Jono it is then. Unlike some, I need to know my officers. And it seems you’ll be just that, until your Major-General Loftus can bring his ponderous division into play.’ He sounded pleased about something. ‘Now I’m off to breakfast.’ The air cringed to the first artillery strike of the day. Further up the line the German guns
had reawakened too, and the sky was soon hazy with drifting smoke.

Ross began to descend the crude ladder. ‘Glad you met someone you knew.’ He turned and looked up at him. ‘I fear the Anzacs may get the worst of it tomorrow.’

Major Vaughan, who had also accompanied Jonathan to the dugout, said in a whisper, ‘Do you really think they can do it, Colonel?’

Jonathan waited for the next salvo to pass overhead, with a sound like a giant tearing up canvas. Then the fall of shot: columns of smoke far away, earth and debris erupting high into the air. There were men under that bombardment.

Eventually he answered, ‘I think they might, Ralph.’ He looked at Vaughan’s battered face. ‘But what then? You noticed the brigadier made no mention of the French.’

‘Well, yes. I thought it a bit odd.’

‘It means the French have told Haig that it’s all his show. We’re on our own.’

A shell burst directly over the line and shrapnel ripped into the command post and along the support trench. The Germans might be seeking the reserves. As the echo of the explosion died away Jonathan heard someone screaming inhumanly, like some tortured creature.

‘
Stretcher-bearer!
’ But the scream had stopped.

He saw concern in Vaughan’s eyes and smiled. ‘But it’s not the first time, is it?’

He liked Vaughan, as much as he allowed himself to like anyone amid the hazards of war, but it was pathetic
to see how he brightened up at a few cheap words of optimism.

He saw Harry Payne. ‘Can you rustle up some breakfast, d’you think?’

Payne almost winked. ‘Got some eggs, sir.’

Around them the land was in torment, exploding under towering columns of smoke. Eggs? But he knew better than to ask.

‘I think we’d better go back,’ he said. ‘Getting noisy around here.’

He walked into the communication trench and stared up at its high side, black against the sky. The horizon.

Tomorrow, then.

Captain Christopher Wyke groped his way to the forward command position and found Lieutenant-Colonel Blackwood alone in the observation post. The whole front seemed unusually quiet, unnerving. As if the enemy out there in the damp smelly darkness knew what was planned and was merely waiting to open fire. What if the mines which were supposed to herald the full attack failed to detonate; or some German sapper had rendered all or some of them safe? He said quietly, ‘Battalion at stand-to, sir. Ready to move forward if needed.’

Jonathan had his pipe in his teeth but it was not lit. As at Gallipoli, it was always a comfort when he got the chance to smoke it. God knew they were rare enough.

‘Thanks, Christopher. Tea?’

Wyke realised that Payne was also here, covering his cigarette with the palm of his hand. ‘No, thank you, sir.’

‘I think you should. It’s one of Payne’s specials.’

Wyke took the mug from the shadows and sipped it. Special was right. It must be one-third rum.

‘Won’t be long now.’ Jonathan was using his binoculars, but it was like staring into nothing. That would soon change. All along the six-mile front men were crouching low beneath the firesteps. If the mines worked as planned, there was a chance that any soldier could be injured by flying rocks and all the other debris which must litter no man’s land from end to end.

He had the gradient, the distances and the obstacles on this particular sector fixed in his mind like a map. Gallipoli had taught him that, and far more than he would have thought possible.

‘Are the lads all right?’

Wyke had to drag his mind back to reality. ‘Pretty good, sir. Bit restless, not much else.’ He thought of the machine-gunner Bert Langmaid; he had been the only one not wearing his steel helmet. Instead he wore his old Broderick cap on the back of his head, more like a Jack than a Royal Marine. But nobody had bothered to mention it, and that would probably irritate that great lump of a man more than a proper dressing-down. He recalled Maxted with his H.Q. platoon, slumped against the side of the trench smoking quickly in sharp, nervous drags. They had not spoken. It was not the time.

Sergeant-Major McCann had been smoking his pipe and talking very quietly with the new colour-sergeant, Bill Seagrove. Wyke had come to know the sound of so many voices, even in the dark like this. Dialects from all over the country, with many young faces which would
never have been seen in the Corps but for the war. Errand boys and waiters, farm hands and bus conductors whose jobs were now in the charge of women and girls.

Eventually, Wyke asked what was uppermost in his thoughts. ‘Do you think the mines will work?’

Payne groped over to him with his jug and answered for them all.

‘Put the kibosh on this little lot if they don’t!’

Jonathan tried to see his watch but it was a waste of effort. It would be ages yet before the artillery opened fire. At least it would seem that long. So many moving along those foul communication trenches: old sweats and boys, the hard cases like Langmaid and McCann shoulder to shoulder with the others who would crack if things went against them. An army made on the barracks square and fashioned into fighting men in the dirt and lice of Flanders.

Jonathan said, ‘If nothing happens . . .’ It was as if he were thinking aloud. ‘I still believe the attack will go on.’ After all, what else could they do? He recalled the Australian Major Duffy when they had first met, in another dugout at Anzac Cove.
I’m just a soldier, but I tell you now, it can’t be done
. Chilling words, but all too true.

Was this to be another heroic failure? He gripped his pipe so hard with his teeth that it was a marvel he did not snap it.

Wyke seemed to need to talk as the minutes ticked past. Somewhere far behind this position the gunners would be consulting their maps again, fuses to be checked, each shell to be treated as something holy as it was thrust home into every eager breech.

He asked, ‘Will you stay on in the Corps after the war, Colonel?’

Jonathan saw something in the darkness. A careless match, or somebody trying to look at his watch. But not in the front line. It was as if every man there was either asleep or dead. Soon he would see the crashed aeroplane again, the tangled wire. He considered Wyke’s question, surprised that he had never doubted it before. Even in the presence of death no such idea had occurred to him. Now it did, and Wyke had innocently laid it bare without knowing what he had done.

He tried to make light of it. ‘I don’t know. I shall be so used to power by then, maybe I won’t want to drop the rank and its privileges. I might try something else.’

Wyke sounded surprised. ‘Even if I drop to lieutenant, I wouldn’t want to quit the Corps. My father says . . .’

Jonathan smiled. Yes, the major-general wouldn’t want the boat rocked. Like his own father, and all the others before him. He pictured Hawks Hill as he had last seen it. Not the poor shambling officers, or the ambulances and the tired-looking nurses, but the other part of it. That sea of daffodils, the unchanged hedges and birdsong. A sense of continuity if you had the wit enough to see and use it.

He thought of her hand on his arm, her skin already tanned when they held one another so briefly at Salisbury. She was a local girl. She would not want the upset and separations of service life, or the pressure of engagements which were part of an officer’s progress.

He shook himself, angry at the futility and the utter hopelessness of it.

‘Bit lighter, I think, sir.’ Payne was patting his pockets, checking his weapons and equipment.

Jonathan levelled his glasses once more. Again, it was like a film developing: a creeping monochrome of various depths and shades. First the Messines Ridge, as if that was where the world ended. Then the darker brush-strokes: burned trees and the empty spaces where the shell craters would eventually reveal themselves. As if the film had been spoiled or badly exposed, or the image were too terrible to focus fully upon.

Flash . . . flash
. The guns began to fire, their wrath making his ears cringe as they tore over the trenches. Sharp, vivid explosions lit up the enemy lines and the upended aeroplane. Somewhere a machine-gun and then others began their harsh rattle, as they probed for raiding parties or a full-scale attack.

Jonathan said, ‘Test the line to Major Vaughan, Christopher. Just in case!’ There was a sharpness to his voice, and he could feel his senses heightening with the bursting shells and the raking fire of automatic weapons.

‘Answering, Colonel!’

Jonathan turned to speak to him and then saw the whole post laid bare with yellow fire as the first of the massive mines exploded. The roar of the next mine robbed him of any thought but the total destruction it would bring to the enemy’s front line. The artillery had opened the range to concentrate on the German support lines even as more mines ripped away the dawn, the flames revealing the tons of falling earth and rocks, burying hundreds in tombs that had once provided confidence and shelter against the British guns.