Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel) (41 page)

Big Charlie got to his feet saying that it was worth giving it a go and Edward urged him to be careful. Big Charlie nodded and grunted then, keeping his head low, he ran to the next shell hole. Seconds later he was standing on its rim with a grenade in his hand, his body absolutely still as he stared fixedly at the bunker.

‘Jesus, Charlie. Get on with it,’ Liam muttered with a shudder as seemingly interminable seconds ticked by. Then, with mechanical precision, Big Charlie withdrew the pin, reached his arm far behind him and, with a mighty throw, he released the grenade. It soared the huge distance to the bunker and exploded the moment that it landed. The machine gun fire faded in intensity. Taking out another grenade, he repeated the process whilst his friends watched the heart-stopping performance making urgent supplications to their often maligned God to bring the big man back quickly and safely.

The machine gun fire from that bunker had stopped but Big Charlie threw a third just to be sure. He returned to the shell hole grinning. ‘That’s sorted them buggers out, anyway,’ he said, settling himself back down. They all congratulated him and climbed over the rim.

Machine gun fire was still coming from the right but from a higher position on the ridge and was inflicting less damage. It was clear now that there were also a number of emplacements around the bunker towards which they were heading. When he looked over to his left he could see that the companies on that side were also being cut down by enfilading machine gun fire from the ridge above them.

Edward could see the platoon led by Frank Williams in front and headed in that direction. He was disturbed to see the number of casualties lying about; some obviously dead, others screaming in pain whilst others were grimly trying to fix their field dressings in place over spurting wounds. They were only fifteen minutes into the operation and already they had lost up to half of the attacking troops.

They worked their way slowly forward and eventually re-established contact with the forward platoon. Lieutenant Williams had lost three of his men and was setting up the Lewis Gun, pointing out a copse of trees where he thought some machine gun emplacements were established. He directed Edward’s platoon towards a low ridge which would give them a vantage point.

They set up their Lewis Gun and opened fire on the copse from a slightly different angle to that taken by Williams’ group. All the infantrymen joined in with their rifles but it was almost half an hour before the machine gun fire had decreased sufficiently to move forward. The two platoons approached the copse of trees in a pincer movement, eventually getting within one hundred yards of the German position.

Edward soon realised that they faced a formidable task. There were at least two machine guns still in action and they were positioned underneath a natural escarpment. There was no possibility of getting to a high position behind them as the ground in front was open and they were in a hollow under the rock with a massive sandbag palisade around them.

Whilst the machine gunners obviously knew that the British soldiers were in the area, a less well defended emplacement having already been taken out, they didn’t seem overly concerned and were concentrating their fire on the British troops down the hill. Edward could see that many of his colleagues were falling and there was an urgent need to resolve this.

‘Special breed, these machine gunners,’ observed Liam. ‘They never come out with their hands up. They’re never finished until they’re in a bag.’

A grenade attack didn’t seem feasible as they were so far away and, as soon as they broke cover from the trees, the Germans would turn their machine guns on them. Edward turned to Big Charlie. ‘What do you reckon, mate? Is there any chance?’

‘It might be possible from over on that ridge,’ Big Charlie nodded. ‘It’s worth a try.’

‘Not much by way of throwing-off points though.’

‘I’ll find somewhere,’ Big Charlie grunted. He shrugged his bags into place and set off before Edward could say anything else. He skirted through the trees to the right and for a while they lost sight of him. Moments later he emerged from the trees and stood in the open ground with a grenade in his hand. He stood immobile for a few long seconds, fixing the image of the German machine gunners in his mind. For the time being he remained unnoticed by the enemy.

Finally he looked down at the grenade, pulled out the pin, drew his arm back and flung the deadly device, accompanied by an intimidating grunt. The grenade flew across the gap and landed in one side of the emplacement flinging rocks, body parts and ammunition into the air as it exploded. Big Charlie took out another grenade but one of the guns had not been taken out and now they knew where he was. As he pulled his hand back to make his throw, the machine gun started up again. Before he could release the grenade, the bullets found their mark and blood spurted from his stomach. He hesitated for a moment, then summoned up the last reserves of his strength and threw the grenade. It landed on its target but Big Charlie was on his knees, clutching at the wound in his stomach.

Edward, followed quickly by Liam, dashed over to help his friend. By the time that they got to Big Charlie he had rolled over on to his back, his face had turned a deathly white and blood poured out of his mouth. Liam lifted Big Charlie’s head onto his knee whilst Edward cut the shirt away to reveal the wound. There was a huge, gaping hole from which the intestines were gradually emerging. He knew that the situation was hopeless but he had to try; he couldn’t let the life of his mighty friend ebb away without trying. He told two men to go and find some stretcher bearers whilst he tore open his field dressings and stuffed them into the wound.

A large, red muddy pool was forming underneath Big Charlie and Edward struggled desperately to stem the flow. Big Charlie lifted his head and said weakly ‘That’s sorted them buggers out as well.’

‘Aye. You did a fantastic job, Charlie,’ Edward said, searching for words that wouldn’t betray his increasing despair. ‘Now what we want is to get you back on your feet so that you can sort a few more of them out.’

His ears thudded and sweat dripped off his face into Big Charlie’s wound as he fought feverishly to stop the draining blood. ‘There’s nowt you can do, Eddie,’ Big Charlie coughed as he slowly lifted is hand to grasp Edward’s. ‘Don’t worry about me. Get the lads off the hill.’

‘The lads are ok. Just keep going, mate. Keep going. I can’t let you go out here.’

The blood gurgled in Big Charlie’s throat as he struggled to speak. In a rapidly weakening voice he said ‘Tell our Dot … I’d have been … right suited about … giving her … those babies. Tell her … as how … she’s the most … important thing … that’s … ever …’

The big man’s voice trailed away and his eyes closed.

Liam stared rigidly with disbelieving eyes at his dead friend’s face, unable to accept the awful truth. He grasped Big Charlie’s jaw and shook his head despairingly. As Edward turned away to find his own space to hide the welling grief, Liam bent his face down and kissed Big Charlie’s forehead.

Edward sank to the ground and gripped his bursting head between his hands. Some part of his own life had been ripped from his body and he fought against an overpowering nausea. Big Charlie had been essential to their lives since they were small children. They had looked together, with the wonderment of young boys, at the grass growing under broken glass between the sets in their street. As older boys they had played football on the same cobbled streets and stony grounds. The three of them had started school together, played rugby for the same team, joined the Territorials at the same time and enlisted as regulars on the same day. Simple, honest lives. Not bloodied. And dead. At which second, as the blood had dripped into the dusty stones of this French hillside, had Big Charlie’s life force left him? Edward felt guilt in his unwitting involvement in the death of his friend and incapable of resolving in his mind the void created by his absence.

His shame became a haunting cry that echoed in his mind then plundered his memories. He shuddered as he thought of this big man, gently shy and modest in life, lying shamelessly ruptured and exposed in death. Big Charlie would become carrion, claimed callously by the French earth whose freedom he had sought. Would he scoop out this alien soil and take home the Salford blood?

The wailing cry became that of the ravaging birds that would fall from the high stone slabs. It rose in harsh sounding words and yearning notes and lifted his consciousness.  He heard a voice that he knew to be Liam’s but which had taken on a haunting, nasal quality as he sang. The notes held in the air and floated around the valley, mournful, tragic and inextricably part of the bleak cliffs and the torn stumps of the trees. A bird that soared and probed as it searched amongst the black crevices for its dead mate.

Edward turned and watched Liam as he knelt at the side of the body of their lifelong friend, his head tilted back slightly and his wet eyes tightly closed.

Liam’s voice rose in earnest supplication then fell in pitiful remorse. The strange words held no meaning but the sounds probed hidden depths of emotions, assaulted senses that had been boxed securely away from the numbing devastation of warfare. They scraped starkly across the stretched nerves of the constantly bereaved. Liam’s voice was an instrument of anguish and despair that reached through the dark curtain of death. It rose in the air and shared its grief with the spirits that waited to guard the soul of the dead man on its long journey.

Edward felt disturbed and troubled yet stimulated, provoked and ravaged yet uplifted, as the song pillaged emotions from his locked up mind. He bent his head and prayed for the sacrificed life of Big Charlie.

They used their trenching spades to silently dig the grave then retched as they stuffed back the intestines and reluctantly threw soil on the still clothed but lifeless body of their friend. Two bleached and torn branches formed a rough cross on which they hung his identity tag before performing a simple ceremony. ‘Thanks for everything, mate’ Liam said quietly as he held his hand on the cross. ‘We’ll miss you more than you’ll ever know.’

Edward reached for the identity tag and pressed it to his lips. ‘Bye Charlie. We’ll have to see if we can win this one without you. God Bless.’

A small stone dislodged itself from the pile on the grave and formed a curving track down the side of the mound.

‘That song that you sang just before, it was a bit unusual,’ Edward ventured hesitantly.

‘It was an ullalulla that my old Irish Granny used to sing at a wake,’ Liam responded. ‘It goes better with a glass of whisky.’

Minutes later, they had rejoined the platoon and surveyed the devastation that Big Charlie had caused in the machine gun emplacement. The silenced guns and the scorched and dismembered bodies of the dead German soldiers lay scattered around the area.

‘How many more does there have to be?’ Liam whispered, addressing the question to an unseen listener. He turned to Edward and placed his arm across his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry to do this to you, mate, but I’ll be going with him,’ he said quietly but firmly before joining the others.

They collected a few trophies from the corpses before burying them and shouldered the three machine guns and ammunition. Moving off again in the direction of the first objective, the Black Line, they could see the young Captain some distance ahead, standing on a small rise as he urged the men forward and directed the field of operations. He died instantly as the bullets tore into his body and he collapsed in a heap at the side of the dishevelled corpse of yet another once proud Salford soldier.

The ferocious artillery bombardment from behind them was lifted forward and was now peppering the trench system that was their first objective. Another of his platoon fell with a bullet through the heart followed by a second with a gaping wound in his shoulder. Edward detailed a man to get him into a safe hollow and apply a field dressing.

Soldiers from the support companies passed through their platoon and then progressed up towards the north east. The Salford men moved forward, rifles in front of them, firing as they went.

The shelling was taking its toll on the enemy soldiers and the machine gun fire was lessening. They worked their way slowly towards the German lines, incurring five more casualties between the two platoons. Finally, three hours after they had commenced the attack, they were in the German trenches. There was some strong resistance initially but this soon collapsed in the face of the fierce bayonet assault by the British troops.

Grey faced, grey uniformed soldiers began to emerge from tunnels dug into the sides of the trenches with their hands held above their heads. Grateful for the chance to give themselves up. Their war was ended and they were still alive. There were so many of them that they presented a problem. Lieutenant Williams detailed a man who was already injured and needed medical attention to accompany them and they set off back towards the Allied jump off lines. On the way back, the German soldiers willingly collected their injured British counterparts and assisted them back to the Allied medical posts.

The Lieutenant showed them on the detailed map prepared by the air ordnance where they were in the trenches and outlined the plan for the next stage. It was now four hours since they had mounted the attack and they munched on some dried biscuits and sipped their water. Edward’s group was to progress up the communications trench then cross over some open ground to meet up with the Lieutenant’s platoon which was going to clear up the adjacent trench.

Because the achieving of the Black Line had been more difficult and more slowly gained than the planned time, the curtain of artillery fire had now moved some distance ahead. The communications trench, however, was fairly clear and minutes later they were up on the open ground. There was a small barn about two hundred yards ahead but little else. The ground was flat and offered little by way of cover. They would have to check out the barn; perhaps they would find some abandoned stores.

The men approached carefully using whatever limited cover was available and found themselves on a rough track that led up to the ramshackle building. Trees along either side of the track offered some protection and Edward split the group to utilise the cover on both sides. As they neared it they could see broken pieces of old machinery, a smashed water butt and a couple of ancient and long disused farm implements.