Death of a Hero (42 page)

Winterbourne got up and walked out to the muddy road. The stars were faint and dim and lovely in the soft, misty night sky; there seemed to be a first quiver of Spring in the scentless pure air. O Andromeda, O Paphian!

At dawn the birds twittered and sang, a little hesitantly in the cold morning mist. The sun rose in a golden haze, behind rows of poplars, over the flat dark earth.

They went into the line again, three miles to the right of their former positions. Their billets were about a mile and a quarter behind the town of M—, right in the crook of the salient. They lived in cellars in a small mining village, badly smashed, and entirely evacuated of civilians. A long, treeless road led straight up to M— and Hill 91, one of the most fought-over places in the line, seamed with trenches, pitted with shell-holes, honeycombed with galleries, eviscerated with huge mine-craters, blasted bare of all vegetation. At Hill 91 the German line turned sharply left and linked up with a long slag-hill, about five hundred yards from the Pioneers' billets. Consequently, although they were a long way from Hill 91, their billets were under observation and
within machine-gun range, while the road to M— was constantly shelled, and enfiladed by machine-guns. It was a rotten position, and would have been evacuated but for the “prestige” of keeping M—. A costly bit of prestige. It was estimated that venereal disease held continually a division of troops immobilized at Base Hospitals, to keep up the prestige of British purity: and another division must have been obliterated to retain that barren prestige of holding M—.

They arrived about eleven, and almost immediately Evans's servant came and told Winterbourne to report at the Officers' Mess cellar, in fighting order. Evans was waiting for him.

Hitherto the Company had been under strength, and officered by Major Thorpe and the two subalterns, Evans and Pemberton, who took duty alternately. While on rest, they had been made up to full strength, and were joined by three other subalterns, Franklin, Hume, and Thompson. They thus went up the line one hundred and twenty strong, with six officers, one of whom was supernumerary. Evans had been made a sort of unofficial second-in-command, while continuing to act as platoon officer. Since he was the most experienced of the subalterns, he was to overlook the new officers until they knew their jobs. He explained all this to Winterbourne as they went along.

“You must give me your word not to mention it to the other men, but there is almost certainly a show coming off on this front. Probably in about four weeks. You mustn't let the men know.”

“Of course not, sir.”

“We shall have twelve-hour shifts up here, I'm afraid. I've got to take three platoons up to Hill 91, over there, at five tonight; and I want to reconnoitre. Wewe got to repair and revet the front communication trenches, clear away some of our wire, and fill the gaps with knife-rests. We've also got to repair Southampton Row, the main communication trench to your left. Every time we go up we've got to take Mills bombs or trench-mortars or S.A.A. I think we're going to have a lively time. I rode out about ten miles yesterday and saw fifteen batteries of heavies and a lot of tanks camouflaged by the road. The officers said they were booked for this sector or a little south.”

They were walking up the narrow, straight road to M –. About every minute a heavy shell – or a salvo of heavy shells – plonked into M—. There was a sudden spout of black smoke and debris, a heavy, sullen reverberating CLAANG as the loud detonation shook the twisted steel mining machinery and re-echoed from the chalky slopes of Hill
91. To their right was a long slag-hill, mangled with shell-holes. Evans pointed to it.

“The Boche front line runs just in front of that, about four hundred yards away. At some points our own front line is only twenty yards from theirs. It's a rummy and awkward position. Most of the transport for M— has to come up this road, and the poor devils are shelled and machine-gunned wickedly every night. All troops on foot have to use Southampton Row, the communication trench to your left. You see it's got fire-steps and a parapet – it's also a Reserve line which we have to man in case of necessity.”

They got into the ruined streets of M— and were promptly lost. The town was blasted to about three feet of indistinguishable ruins. A wooden notice-board over a mass of broken stones, said: “CHURCH”. Another further on said: “POST OFFICE”. Evans got his map, and they stood together trying to make out the direct way to the section of the trench they wanted. ZwiiNG, CRASH, CLAAANG! – four heavy shells screamed towards them and detonated with awful force within a hundred yards. The nearest swished over their heads and exploded twenty yards away. Four great columns of black smoke leaped up like miniature volcanoes; broken bricks and fragments of shell-case clattered in the empty street. The reverberating echoes seemed like a groan from the agonizing town. The explosions seemed to bit Winterbourne in the chest.

“Heavies,” said Evans very calmly; “eight-inch, probably.”

ZwiilNG, crash!, CRASH! CLAAANG! Four more.

“Seems a bit unhealthy here. We'd better push on.”

Winterbourne was silent. For the first time he began to realize the terrific inhuman strength of heavy artillery. Whizz-bangs and even five-nines were one thing, but these eight-or ten-inch high-explosive monsters were a very different matter.

ZWIIING, CRASH! CLAAANG!

Minute after minute, hour after hour, day and night, week after week, those merciless heavies pounded the groaning town.

ZWIIING, CRASH! CRASH! CLAAANG!

It was too violent a thing to get accustomed to. The mere physical shock, the slap in the chest, of the great shells exploding close at hand, forbade that. They became a torment, an obsession, an exasperation, a nervous nightmare. Unintentionally, as a man walked through M –, he found himself tense and strained, waiting for that warning “zwiing” of
the approaching shell, trying to determine by the sound whether it was coming straight at him or not. Winterbourne's duties during the next two and a half months necessitated his walking through M—, often alone, twice or four times every twenty-four hours.

The real nightmare was only just beginning. There had been the torment of frost and cold; now came the torments of mud, of gas, of incessant artillery, of fatigue and lack of sleep.

Under the swift thaw the whole battered countryside seemed to turn from ice to mud. It was deep on the
pavé
roads, deeper round the billets, deeper still on the unpaved tracks, and deepest of all in the trenches. In Winterbourtle's hallucinated memories, where images and episodes met and collided like superimposed films, that Spring was mud. He seemed to spend his time plodging through interminable muddy trenches, up to the ankles, up to the calves, up to the knees; shovelling mud frantically out of trenches on to the berm, and then by night from the berm over the parapets, while the shells crashed and the machine-gun bullets struck gold sparks from the road stones. When he was not doing that, he was scraping mud with a knife from his boots and clothes, trying to dry socks and puttees and to rub some warmth into his livid, aching feet. He had not known that wet cold could keep one's legs so achingly dead for so long. He had not known how wearisome it could be to drag tired legs and carry burdens through deep, sticky chalk mud, where each step was an effort, where each leg stuck deep as the other was laboriously pulled from the sucking mud. He had not known that one could hate an inert thing so much. Overhead it might be sunny, with innumerable little fleecy puffs of exploded shrapnel pursuing a darting white aeroplane high in the misty blue March sky. Underfoot it was mud. They had no time to look at the sky as they dragged along, toiling their bent way along those muddy ditches.

He remembered a week of blessed respite which he spent in an underground gallery, squatting twelve hours a day by a winch and interminably winding sandbags of chalk to men in the trench. These galleries – which were never used – were being dug to conceal two or three divisions before a surprise attack. They seemed to extend for miles. The cutting and picking at the advancing end was done by R.E.s, skilled miners who cut with astonishing rapidity and accuracy. The Pioneers filled the chalk into sacks and dragged them along the galleries, where Winterbourne incessantly wound them to the top.

The Engineers had better rations than the infantry and the Pioneers, whose lunch was bread-and-cheese. They had huge cold beefsteaks and bottles of strong tea-and-rum for their lunch. Winterbourne, during his half-hour's midday rest, one day wandered up to their end of the gallery, just as they were eating. He could not help giancing rather wolfishly at their meal. One of them noticed it, and, pointing to his steak, said with his mouth full:

“Ah reckon tha doesn't get groob the likes o' this in thy lot, lad.”

“No, but the stew's very good – only, you get a bit tired of it every day.”

“Ay, that tha does. But we're skilled men, we are, traade union. They're got to feed oos well, they ave.”

Half-kindly, half-contemptuously, the miner cut off a hunk of his steak and held it out to Winterbourne in his large dirty hand.

“Here tha art, lad, tak a bite at that.”

“Oh no, thanks, it's very kind of you, but..

“Nay, lad, tha's welcome; tak it, tak it. Tha looks fair fammelled and wore out. Tha's na workin' chap, ah knows.”

Torn between his feeling of humiliation, his desire not to reject the man's kindly-meant offer, and his hungry belly, Winterbourne hesitated. He finally took it, with a rather ghastly feeling of animal humiliation. The cold, tender meat tasted delicious. It was the first unsodden meat he had eaten for weeks. He gave them his last cigarettes, and returned to his winch.

Winterbourne detested “berming”. Hour after hour standing in wet, chilly mud, shovelling the stuff away to prevent its sliding back into the trench from which it had been laboriously thrown, and widening the space between the top of the trench and the parapet. The machine-guns from the slag-hill constantly rattled away at them. One night Winterbourne and the man next him dug up the bones, tunic, equipment, and rifle of a French soldier, who had been hastily buried in the parapet many months before. His cartridges fell from the mouldering pouches and still looked bright in the dim star-dusk. Winterbourne dug up the skull; it was large and dome-shaped, a typical Frenchman's head. They tried to find his identity disc, but failed. Pemberton, who was on duty that night, made them rebury what was left in a shell-hole. They stuck a cross over it next day, marked “UNKNOWN FRENCH SOLDIER”.

The best nights were those when Evans was on duty, but often the urgency was so great that the officers' runners and the officers themselves worked and carried burdens. The most awkward burdens were the long sheets of corrugated iron used for revetting. They had to carry these along the road, since they were too large to get round the traverses. It was impossible to keep the metal sheets from clanking against rifles or the sheet of the man in front in the darkness. The machine-guns from the slag-hill opened out, and they could see the spurts of gold sparks on the road come towards them. Winterbourne felt his piece of corrugated iron violently hit and half-wrenched from his hand; the man in front went down with a clatter. Somebody yelled “Stretcher-bearer!” The men dumped their burdens and cowered on the ground. It was an awful confusion. Only Evans and Winterbourne were left standing on the road. Evans cursed the N.C.O.s, and made the men form up again behind Winterbourne. It took a long time to find all the sheets of metal in the darkness, and the machine-guns went on rattling pitilessly. They were hours late in getting back to billets.

As March dragged on, more and more heavy guns arrived, clattering up behind their tractors in the darkness. A tank and its crew were hidden not far from the Pioneers' billets, and there were others further from the line. A new infantry division was pushed into the line on their right. Other divisions were said to be in readiness close behind. The sector became more and more lively, but no big attack was made. Winterbourne questioned Evans, who said it had been postponed to give the mud a chance to dry. What hopes!

The Germans had excellent observation posts on Hill 91, and their aircraft were constantly over the British lines and back areas. They were perfectly aware that an attack was being prepared. Every night they shelled M—, shelled the cross-roads leading to M—, shelled any artillery positions they had spotted, shelled the wrecked village where the Pioneers were billeted. The cellars were good enough protection against shell splinters, but far too flimsy to resist a direct hit. Every day or night huge crumps were flung at them, exploding with concussions which shook the ground and made sleep impossible. In the daytime Winterbourne sometimes crouched at his cellar-entrance and watched the explosions within his view. If one of these big shells hit a half-ruined
house, almost every vestige disappeared in a cloud of black smoke and rosy brick-dust.

And there was gas, a good deal of gas. It was the beginning of the intensive use of gas projectiles, which later became so greatly perfected. Their experience of it began one March night on Hill 91. A smart local attack had driven the Germans out of their advance positions and carried the British line forward – at a cost – about two hundred and fifty yards on a front of eight hundred. Evans explained to Winterbourne that these local attacks were being made all along the line to deceive the Germans as to the exact position of the coming offensive. Since the Germans would have needed to be blind or lunatic not to see where the guns and troops were being massed, Winterbourne thought this an over-subtle and over-costly bit of policy. However, his not to reason why.

The Pioneers – three platoons of them – under Evans, Pemberton, and Hume, were to dig a new communication trench from the former British Front line to their present Outpost line of hastily-interlinked shell-holes. Evans told Winterbourne not to carry any tools: