Blunted Lance (39 page)

It was almost dark now and Dabney could barely see the men thundering along behind him. By the grace of God, there was no wire and as he reached the Turkish trench, he could see no alternative but to put spurs to his mount and leap the obstacle like a steeple-chaser. The men behind him were as used to horses and riding as he was and they followed suit enthusiastically in a wave of leaping animals, then, without waiting for orders, sprang from the saddle and lunged into the trench with sword and bayonet. The increasing darkness was filled with shouts and screams, while the Indian regiments rode up and down on the flanks, spearing any Turk who managed to scramble to safety. Within five minutes the position was in their hands, and the Australian officers were rallying their men.

‘Into the town,’ Dabney ordered. ‘Take as many prisoners as possible!’

With Goff’s Bleeding Own leading the way through the darkness, they swept through the streets. Scattered bunches of Turks tried to stop them, but the horsemen rode them down, driving them like partridges and keeping them on the run. As they rallied and began to reform, they were half-blinded as great gouts of flame leapt skyward.

‘They’re blowing up the dumps,’ Dabney yelled. ‘Keep going! Keep going! Get the wells!’

As the Australians swept on, he gave orders for the Indians to chase the Turks from the town and, leaving the Baratpores and Jawarlis trotting up and down looking for victims, he galloped after his leading elements.

The railway station was on fire, the flames lighting up the darkness and silhouetting the running figures of Turks as they fled into the houses and narrow streets. They had achieved their object. Ain ’Aalab was securely in their hands; and it had been achieved solely by cavalry action, even if not by traditional cavalry methods. There seemed to be dead men, dead horses and shell holes everywhere. Already, great hordes of prisoners were being rounded up and it was clear they had captured a vast quantity of guns, stores and animals. Riding forward to rally the Australians, Dabney found them already grouping together, but the Turks, knowing the importance of the wells, had established themselves behind a wall and, as he galloped up, a machine gun began to fire. A horse went down with a crash and two men rolled from their saddles. Immediately the Australians began to scatter.

Turning, Dabney saw the machine gun and the dark faces of the Turks behind it and, without thinking, he clapped his spurs into his jaded horse’s flanks. As he moved forward, the startled Australians recovered from their surprise and began to swing round to form a line. Their faces, in the dancing red of the fires, were elated, lean, leathery, and hungry for victory.

As he watched the flickering flame of the machine gun, Dabney felt something crash against his left leg that almost tore him from the saddle. An over-excited trooper, bursting away from the swirling mass, urged his horse into a gallop. As it reached the wall it hesitated then, trying to leap, faltered, straddled the wall, flinging its rider from the saddle, and crashed down on top of the machine gun.

Scrambling from beneath the kicking hooves, the Turks snatched at rifles as the Australians arrived.

‘Come on, the Bleeders!’ someone yelled.

As they sorted themselves out into a surging wave of tossing heads, flowing manes and fierce Australian faces under wide-brimmed hats, Dabney, dizzy with the pain in his leg, spurred in front to give them the line.

Struggling, with his frantic horse, he raised his sword and shouted – ‘Troops into line! Charge!’ – and the flood of horse-men crashed on to scatter the Turks who turned tail and began to bolt into the darkness.

The war was clearly almost over. They all knew it. It became clearer every day and, in France, the Germans – faced now with a fresh new army from America – were in full retreat.

The attacks were coming now in sharp succession, one after the other in different parts of the front, so there was no chance for them to move reserves. The huge salient at Verdun had been pinched out and the line had now reached the Ardennes so that Paris was no longer in danger. The old obstacle, the mud, continued to hold up the advance, but, suddenly, the front in Salonika blazed into life and the Bulgarians were suing for peace because the Germans were too heavily involved to plug the hole that had been made and there were rumours of a budding revolution in Germany.

It was suddenly beginning to look as if the end of the war was going to take them all by surprise. Rachel, who was intending to go back to Virginia with Micah Love and was already trying to cultivate a Southern drawl, had set her wedding for the middle of November but, with the Ottoman Empire collapsing and taking down with it the Austro-Hungarian edifice, it looked very much as though the end of the war was going to interrupt. People in Prague and Zagreb had gone to bed as subjects of the Habsburgs and awakened to find themselves independent, while the Czechs, the South Slavs, the Poles and the Rumanians became allies instead of enemies. Hungary broke away and, with the Austrians seeking an armistice, the Germans had found their rear wide open and the Allied armies preparing to advance into Southern Germany. At the end of October, the German fleet mutinied and within a day or two the Kaiser had abdicated.

‘Thank God I managed to live to see the victory,’ the Field Marshal said.

He had not been well for some time. Spanish flu had appeared in Europe and was said to be in epidemic proportions in London where people were collapsing in the streets. Schools and offices had been closed, there were swelling obituary columns in
The Times
, and the hospitals were so full
ordinary patients couldn’t be admitted. In Germany, people were said to be dying like flies.

Two of the older and more frail of the Ackroyds and a Goff cousin had gone, but Braxby seemed not to have been hard hit until the news came that Walter Cosgro had been struck down. With his wealth and the care he could summon in the shape of the best nurses and doctors in the country, they hadn’t even thought he
could
die, but he had surprised them all by succumbing remarkably quickly, leaving Robert in complete charge of the vast business empire.

The armistice was signed two days before Rachel’s wedding and on the 11th the guns stopped firing. Suddenly Europe was silent. After a brief flare-up of noisy celebration, the desolated lanes of Northern France became even more desolate under the heavy hand of winter.

It was Josh who brought the news. His school closed because of the influenza epidemic, he was at home, and he tore up on his bicycle and clattered through the echoing corridors to find his grandfather.

‘Grandpa! Grandpa! It’s over. The war’s over!’

Immediately, the whole household flooded into the drawing room and champagne was opened and they all stood round in excited groups, uncertain what to say or think or do, because what it had been like to be at peace was almost forgotten after four years. The noise and the excitement tired the Field Marshal but he gave Josh a sovereign for being first with the news.

He watched the boy with a warm feeling of affection. Ever since 1914, he had been his constant companion, drawing on the old man’s fund of experience, building knowledge in his mind for the future, just as his father, Dabney, had done. Already he believed in the Regiment, not with the blind faith of a man who saw nothing but ceremonial, to whom the colour of a saddle blanket was more important than the health of the horse and the man riding it, but because his heart was with it. His belief would be the one thing that would support him in adversity. He was barely old enough to understand it yet, but already his mind ran on the same lines as his father’s. The Regiment was his religion after God, its sorrows and its triumphs his own. The successes they had scored at Vernhout and Mortigny in 1914 had brought him joy just as the disaster on the Somme had brought him sadness. He was set in the same mould as his father and his grandfather, and those forefathers who had fought at Waterloo, with Wolfe, and with Eyre Coote at Wandewash, and even beyond the Regiment’s foundation.

As the Field Marshal stood in front of the library fire, deep in thought, a wave of sadness swept over him as he remembered why Josh had come, what the celebration had been about, and he tried to decide what, after four years of bloodshed and suffering, had been achieved. He crossed to the table to study the map. He had been told the influenza had left his heart weak and had been warned to take things easy but he preferred to go on as before rather than live out his life as a cabbage.

It was sad, he thought, that Helen could not be with them, sadder still that Karl-August was dead like his father, who had gone in 1916. But Jane had done well for herself and had two splendid daughters. Micah Love was an excellent fellow, part of the family by habit now and certainly by tradition, while Hedley was clearly a son-in-law they were going to be proud of. His sons? Robert? The old man pushed Robert hurriedly to the back of his mind. Robert was best forgotten, though by the grace of God, his sons, Aubrey and Claude, thanks to Elfrida, seemed to be turning out well. Dabney? Ah, Dabney!

It always pleased a man to see himself in his son and in Dabney the Field Marshal saw his own image, his own moods, his own beliefs, his own faiths. Dabney was brave without being stupid, with a courage that was tempered by common sense and a feeling for his men who, as always, were going to win the medals their commanding officer wore. ‘It is the common soldier’s blood that makes the general a great man.’ It was something he’d heard from his father who had heard it before Waterloo, and it remained as true in 1918 as it had been then. A good officer was never a glory seeker. He was a man who did his duty with imagination but with care for his men’s lives. And this kind of sense Dabney had to a large degree.

He was a thinking soldier and would go far. The Field Marshal had decided so in South Africa. He had heard it from Morby-Smith, who had been killed at the Graafberg. He had heard it from Ellesmere, from Haig, from French, from Allenby. His tenets were simple. He believed in preparation and deception, not in casualties. The old man gave a secret smile. The future lay with Dabney and with his son, Josh.

Rachel’s wedding was like all weddings in Braxby, not a private affair but one which belonged to the whole village. Like Tyas Ackroyd’s funeral, it attracted everybody, and since Micah Love had no immediate family present, the Field Marshal and his wife sat with Fleur and her children on the right of the church with the Ackroyds, while the other side was packed with Suttons from North Yorkshire and the Dales. Begged by Rachel to appear in full uniform, the Field Marshal walked into the church, a green, red and gold toy soldier, his legs stiff and brittle, his face pale, his eyes bright, two pink feverish spots on his cheeks. His wife by his side, he moved slowly, putting his feet down with care so that no one should realise that these days he could barely see them without the glasses he had no intention of wearing on this day of all days. He was well aware that he was growing frail but he was still straight, his head held high, his shoulders back, a stiff doll-like figure from another age.

A story in the
Yorkshire Post
had ensured that the village would be full of people. Although the war was over, the weeping had not yet stopped and the ceremonial had been kept to a minimum. A canon from York conducted the service because he was a distant relative and a grandson of the bishop who had married the Field Marshal himself. Micah Love’s soft voice drawled the responses which were answered by Rachel in a whisper, then they all lined up, with the Field Marshal insisting on keeping well to the rear, for the procession out of church. Though the smiles were for the bride and groom, there was also a little subdued clapping when the Field Marshal appeared.

Legs aching, he endured the business of the reception, wondering all the time when he could get away from the uniforms and the morning coats and large hats. In her happiness, his wife’s eyes were sparkling and she reminded him of the girl he had first met in America during the Civil War. Fleur stopped in front of him and kissed him. She had a tranquil expression that spoke of subdued fears now dispersed.

‘It’s over, my dear,’ he said quietly. ‘Thank God, it’s all over,’ and she knew he wasn’t referring to the wedding.

Rachel hugged him and Jane kissed him but when he found himself close to Robert he studiously ignored him. Eventually, at John Sutton’s prompting, Josh brought him a chair but he shook his head, trying to ignore the trembling in his weary legs.

‘No, boy,’ he barked. ‘I’ll stand through this at least.’

By the time the toasts had been drunk, however, he was longing to sit down and after a while he managed to slip away. But he was not unseen and, as he moved quietly down the corridors towards John Sutton’s office, he heard a voice call.

Turning, he saw it was Josh, wearing his best suit, his hair plastered down across his head.

‘Going for a bit of a sit-down,’ the old man explained. ‘Keep it to yourself, my boy.’

‘Would you like a drink, Grandpa?’

The old man considered. ‘Might be a good idea,’ he said. ‘Not champagne. Blows you up. See if you can get your Uncle John to give you a quiet whisky and soda for me. I’ll be in his office.’

Three minutes later, the boy appeared with a glass, and the old man made himself comfortable.

On the wall was a calendar put out by a seed merchant and on the desk were spikes holding the bills for the farm. It was here that his son-in-law did his paper work and there was a deep leather armchair. Seating himself, he lit a cigar and leaned back to enjoy himself.

‘Shall I stay with you, Grandpa?’

‘No. You run off. Find your cousin, Aubrey. Not a bad chap for a Cosgro.’

‘I don’t mind staying.’

The old man eyed his grandson approvingly. ‘Yes. Know that. But I’ll probably fall asleep on you. Off you go.’

An hour later, after Micah Love and Rachel had disappeared for their honeymoon and everybody was looking for the Field Marshal, Josh was at the front door with Aubrey when one of the Ackroyd maids appeared on her bicycle from Braxby Manor. She carried a telegram.