The Somme Stations (21 page)

I put the gear into reverse, and eased the regulator open – it was a queer, lateral job. As I pulled on it, I couldn’t resist saying, ‘I’ll just give her a breath of steam’ and we eased away very satisfactorily. All our lives would shortly be endangered – already were, in point of fact – but I had no thought in my mind just then apart from avoiding wheelslip at the ‘right away’. We buffered up to the loaded wagon as Bernie Dawson came strolling across the siding.

‘Ah,’ said Tate. ‘Our loader. I was wondering where he’d got to.’

Porters were ‘loaders’ at the Burton Dump; they ought really to have been ‘unloaders’, since their work would be carrying the shells to the gun placements in the forward areas. Dawson made for the cab, and saluted Tate, who appeared suddenly fascinated by Dawson’s face, which was half in shadow under the tin hat.

‘Fusilier,’ said Tate, ‘I can never make out whether you have a moustache or just haven’t washed properly.’

‘Bit of both, sir,’ said Dawson. ‘If I could lay my hands on a cake of soap, sir, I’d – ’

‘Have a shave?’ Tate cut in. ‘Is that a promise?’

But while he was ‘army’ enough to have mentioned Dawson’s
appearance he was not that way strongly enough to keep on about it. He now asked Butler to couple up the wagon, and I could see that our guard didn’t like that one bit. He
did
take care of his appearance, and coupling up would put dirt on his hands. As Butler laboured to hook us up, Tate gave me a little lecture on the coupling pin, which he was very proud of, and which he’d improvised himself from an ammo box pin, having found the original design unsatisfactory. Butler and Dawson now lifted up the drop-down side of the wagon and locked it into place. It was important that the shells did not roll off. Yes, the fuses had been stowed in separate boxes (the shells had wooden plugs in their tops instead), but any shell suffering an impact might still explode.

In very short order, we were rolling away from the Burton Dump, heading in what was known to the men of the Dump as the ‘Up’ direction: towards the front, and the flashes and screams of the Evening Hate. The tracks put down so far led into the village of Ovillers, what was left of it, then into the more easterly village of Pozières. Ovillers had been captured a couple of weeks before, and while Pozières had lately come into our hands, the Germans hadn’t yet given up on it, and were shelling it nightly, so it was a pretty hot spot to be riding towards. On the other hand I was at last employed in the job I had aspired to since boyhood. (Of course, I should have known that it would come about, if at all, with complications.)

We were now running surrounded by skeleton trees with a look of winter even in late July. The tracks had been put down quickly and roughly, and we were shaking about a good deal. The narrowness of the line gave a heightened idea of speed, and we would seem to rush up to a smashed tree at a great rate before diverting away at the last moment. Tate was giving us a lecture about the engine. It was a Baldwin, built in America; a pretty good steamer, but the high boiler made it unstable and liable to tip over, which gave cause for concern if you might
happen to be pulling, say, three tons of high explosive shells, which might become a normal sort of load in time. I looked back over the shaking coal bunker. Dawson sat smoking on the wagon. Oliver Butler stood on the coupling unit at the rear, holding onto the wheel of the handbrake, and not seeming to enjoy the ride over-much. After a while, he returned my gaze, saying, ‘Keep your eye on the road, mate, will you?’

He was exposed to the rain, and he minded that, or perhaps he minded that I had the protection of a cab roof, even if it did extend only halfway across the footplate.

The man Butler …

According to Tinsley, he had been firing from the sap on the first day of the battle. Scholes would have been within his range, and it had seemed to me that he might have taken a bullet before the shell hit. Scholes had threatened to speak out about what he knew – whatever that might be – if Thackeray returned to give him another roasting, and it seemed that Thackeray did intend to return, and we all knew it. Oliver Butler had certainly overheard Scholes’s threat. He’d been standing behind him when he made it.

Might Oamer have heard it as well? He had stepped out of the billet only a moment later – and he too had evidently been firing from the sap.

Thackeray had not yet come to the Dump, but he had been seen about in Albert. Well, Tinsley – sent there on an errand – had seen him, on his horse outside the cathedral, apparently watching every private soldier that went past. Blokes fighting and dying for their country … You’d think he’d lay off …

We were rolling past a bloody great shell crater. The edge of it was about six feet from the tracks, and the rain was trying to fill it.

‘Crikey,’ said Tinsley.

Tate, following his eyes, said, ‘Jerry’s got some pretty big stuff pointed this way.’

‘How close would a Boche shell have to be to set off our load?’ Tinsley enquired.

‘About as close as that,’ said Tate, indicating the crater under discussion. I was glad when we’d left it behind – out of sight out of mind. Except that Tate didn’t drop the subject. ‘You see, our shells don’t have their fuses fitted, but what
is
a fuse? Heat and air pressure. An enemy shell could easily provide that.’

‘Watch your level,’ I said to Tinsley, because the water gauge was a little low; and he practically leapt on the injector. Tate was nodding in an absent sort of way. I didn’t doubt that he could have driven this engine half asleep, and it annoyed me to think so. Was he really superior, or just of a superior class? After a brief pause he took up his lecture again, all about the difficulty of getting stuff to the front by MT. This stood for Motor Transport: lorries. But Tate preferred to say MT. Horses weren’t
in
it, and he never gave them a mention. Horses were the past. He hoped to have a dozen trains a night running to the front before long. At this, I thought again of Oamer: he would be returning to the line over the next day or so, minus his finger, and would be joining our detachment at Burton Dump as supervisor of the running office, which would control the movements of the little trains. His experience in the York ticket office fitted him for that role; and his all-round braininess.

We were shaking in a different way now, climbing out of the wood. More coal was needed.

‘Steep hill,’ said Tinsley, swinging his shovel.

‘Now locomotives don’t really go up hills, do they?’ said Tate. ‘I would call that …’ And he thought for a good ten seconds. ‘I would call it a knoll.’

The engine danced in a yet different way, and harsh rumbling came from underneath.

‘Girder bridge,’ said Tate. ‘Would you believe our boys put that up in less than two days?’

I would’ve actually, since the thing moved as we went over it. I looked down and back as we came off it, and saw a demoralised-looking black river that had given up flowing anywhere.

‘The River Ancre,’ said Tate.

It certainly wasn’t up to much. The big river hereabouts was the Somme, but that was off somewhere to the south and I’d never seen it. We went past a wooden post with a sign on it.

‘That was the first of our stations,’ said Tate, facing backwards on the footplate, and looking back at the post with affection. I hadn’t been able to make out the name.

‘Old Station,’ said Tate. ‘We made it ten days ago. There were gun positions either side – behind that hummock, and in that ditch.’ He pointed to shadowy features I could barely see in the dark. ‘Abandoned now, they’ve done their work.’

The noise of the Hate was becoming louder as he pointed over to a wrecked house. The queer thing was that the roof remained, supported by only two and a half walls.

‘Holgate Villa,’ Tate said, grinning. ‘Part of Ovillers, technically.’

I was getting the idea now. There was a Burton at York, also an Old Station. And Holgate Villa was a grand old house that had been swallowed up by the York railway lands, and was used – last time I’d been in there – for storing masses of dusty restaurant car crockery.

I looked back at Holgate Villa. The Verey lights flashing on it – red, green, yellow, flickering red again – and I knew the situation was unstable. I didn’t believe it could be there for too much longer.

We rolled slowly past another post.

‘New Station,’ said Tate. ‘German second line, as was. Gun positions … there!’ And at that instant the gun position in question – out of sight behind a low hill – loosed off a shell. A whistle came from the German side; then another whistle, then the two crumps. In the field next to us, two trees made of
mud arose and collapsed. I heard again the steady beat of the engine. Tinsley eyed me, nodding.

‘Steaming nicely,’ he said, in a confidential sort of way.

One hundred and sixty pounds of pressure; faint ghost of smoke and steam over the chimney. Tinsley and me … We trusted the engine to take us through the scrap over Ovillers. But then came another Boche shell, and two more sent over from our side; we were approaching another of the Somme woods, another graveyard of trees. I pulled on the regulator. I would feel a bit safer in the trees, such as they were, but as we closed on them under the falling shells, the engine gave a lurch. Tate crashed into Tinsley, and called out, ‘We’re over!’ But we stabilised the next moment.

‘Track gang missed that spot,’ said Tate.

Our track gang was Andy and Roy Butler – they’d gone ahead in the afternoon to walk the track and make good. We were to collect them at the dropping off point for the goods.

‘They’ve done a decent job up to now,’ I said, for we’d had a smooth ride given the conditions. Tate began to speak but a shell came down, so he stopped and then started again: ‘Rather uncommunicative, that pair.’

The trees came around us, and formed up either side in their dead parade; a shell came into the woods causing a disturbance in the rear ranks of the trees and setting two fires. I was sweating. It was a hot night, though still raining somewhat. I looked back at our two passengers, and both Dawson and Butler gazed in the direction of the burning trees with a look of wonder. I was feeling a drag on the engine; I could see no incline, and I wondered whether Dawson had screwed down the brake a little, having been scared by our near-spill, or just in order to spite me. He was more of a brakesman than a guard, and his control of the brake was the only power at his command.

I saw a moving light ahead and what appeared to be the side rails of another girder bridge.

‘This is us,’ said Tate.

I knocked off the regulator, and we cruised up to the light, which gradually turned into a hurricane lamp held by Roy Butler – or was it Andy? Impossible to tell in the dark. The lamp gave a whitish glow. In their ganging days back in York, there would have been red and green filters. There would have been a ‘responsible person’ to stand in advance of them on the line, and they would have carried twice as many tools as they presently did. One held a shovel and fish bolt spanner, the other a mallet and a track gauge, for making sure two feet stayed two feet.

Oliver Butler braked his wagon, and climbed down to his brothers; Tate also jumped down, and he addressed the twins, I noticed, as though they were normal.

‘Well, we’ve had a fairly smooth run out … Anything in particular need of attention?’

The twins gave a shrug. They looked sidelong at their brother.

‘Come on now,’ said Tate, ‘what did you have to do?’

‘Tightening,’ said Andy, who held the spanner.

‘Flattening,’ said Roy, who held the mallet.

And then Andy, turning to Roy and laughing while squirming strangely, said, ‘…
Frightening
,’ drawing the word out.

Tate looked up – I remained on the footplate – and frowned.

Tate said, ‘You’ve been having a warm time of it, have you?’

From behind the twins came a great bang – like somebody deciding that enough is enough – and a shell went climbing, scrambling into the air at hundreds of miles an hour. It was one of ours, there was a battery hard by but out of sight in the trees.

‘Place is in uproar!’ said Roy, and for once he did offer a direct glance at Tate.

Another shell was loosed from a bit further beyond.

‘Oh mother!’ said Andy, and now he too was looking directly
at Tate, while grinning. Tate turned back to me, evidently knocked by the sight of Andy’s face. I heard the whistling in the black sky, over the broken trees. One was coming our way. I counted to five, and it came down a hundred yards off, and the only effect on us was a quantity of sticks blown towards the engine.

I heard the cracking of tree branches, and saw men coming towards us, rifles in hand. Four silent men, soaked in sweat and with tunics undone. They were from one or more of the gun placements. They contemplated the Baldwin with amusement, as it seemed to me. At the sight of the blokes, Tate called out, ‘Fusilier Dawson!’ and Bernie Dawson, who’d been sitting on the edge of his wagon, scrambled to his feet, saying, ‘Right, who wants some bombs?’

Tinsley was brushing some coal dust off the footplate, which was hardly necessary, and I contemplated with anxiety the thin twists of smoke and steam coming up from the chimney.

‘You know, I can’t believe she’d give us away,’ said Tinsley, seeing where I was looking. ‘Daft isn’t it?’

It was, but I knew what he meant. On the other hand, we were just another fire in the woods. There seemed to be several going on about us. The gunners, Dawson (with Woodbine on the go), and the twins had begun carting the shells to the guns. One man could lift one shell, just about. Oliver Butler was standing by his wagon. Lugging shells was beneath him, or so he thought, but Tate, who’d been scrutinising the wheels of the Baldwin, suddenly eyed Butler.

‘What are you doing, man?’

‘I’m superintending the train,’ came the reply. ‘It’s the first duty of the train guard.’

‘Well this is not the Scotch Express,’ said Tate. ‘Lend a hand with the shells.’

And so Butler picked up a shell, or tried to. He had a job to keep hold of it.

‘Want a hand?’ I said, my aim being not so much to help him as to save us being blown to buggery if he dropped it wrong end first. But he’d got a grip on it now, and fairly staggered off into the woods without replying. Tinsley, meanwhile, was peering at a particular tree, which I now saw had a short plank nailed to the upper trunk. He caught up the lamp that was hooked on the locker door. He jumped down from the footplate and held the lamp up before the tree. There were two words painted on the sign, and they came and went as the lamp swung.