Starshine (13 page)

Normally, Jim tried not to sound despondent in his letters but the thought of Bertie and Polly at the theatre – and then
in bed together
! – was too much. He made no reference at all to Bertie’s visit but simply painted her a picture of what life was like in the trenches: the shelling, the sniping, the mud, the lice, the rats, the chloride of lime in the water that made it taste of paraffin. He threw it all in onto the pages, posted the letter quickly and regretted it immediately.

Bertie returned, a mixture of elation and sadness, and Jim resisted any temptation to question him about his leave. Strangely, Bertie, who was usually so eager to talk, spoke little of it. Jim tortured himself as a result: was the little man cock-a-hoop at his sexual conquest of Polly
and didn’t wish to crow with his best friend, or had he failed and was he being morose as a result? Polly did not write to Jim until two weeks after Bertie’s return, although Bertie received a letter. Then, she was solicitous of their life in the trenches as described in his letter, but made no reference to Bertie, except to say ‘how nice’ it had been to see him. Didn’t the woman know the agony he was going through? Then Jim shook his head. This was getting ridiculous. He resolved to put Polly out of his mind as much as possible and concentrate on staying alive – and looking after Bertie.

Their life on this part of the front was being made particularly unpleasant by a nest of machine guns that the Germans had mounted at the edge of what had once been a wood and which was now protected against the British shelling by a sophisticated emplacement, apparently constructed of concrete. The guns had fixed sights along the duckboard tracks leading to the British trenches and the faintest sound at night produced a hail of bullets, even though the Germans could not see their targets. A flash of a helmet above the parapet during daylight hours similarly prompted a burst of accurate firing. British snipers had tried and failed at distance to put a bullet through the slits through which the guns were fired.

‘The colonel won’t stand for this,’ confided Jim to Bertie. ‘I feel a night raid coming on.’

And so it proved. Twenty men were detailed from their company to take part, including Jim and Bertie – Jim because he was now a respected, experienced NCO and Bertie because he had earned a reputation as a crack shot, although, as he was careful to point out to Jim, that wouldn’t be of much use in the dark on a raid where the main weapons to be used were hand grenades.

Once again the raiding party was to be led by Smith-Forbes, now a captain with an MC after his name, and a new sergeant, George
Fellowes, a man who had earned popularity with the men already for being firm but fair. Another corporal had been added to the party.

The party gathered together shortly before midnight on a moonless night, stripped down, as before, to sweaters, steel helmets and revolvers, but this time each man carried six grenades in special pouches.

‘Bloody hell,’ whispered Bertie, ‘I know I shall crawl all over mine and pull the pins out. I just know it. This is going to be the noisiest raid ever, son.’

‘Clip ’em round the back, like this.’ Jim showed him how.

The captain began his briefing. They were to crawl under the wire, cut the German wire and get into their trench. While six men bombed their way along the trench, the other fourteen would attack the machine-gun emplacement behind the line and put it out of action with their bombs. Because of the size of the party, a diversion would be created about two hundred and fifty yards to the left of them by the mounting of a dummy attack on the German trenches, presaged by a minor bombardment.

‘The German star shells will go up over that way,’ said Smith-Forbes, ‘not over us. The Hun will probably send troops along the line to what they think of as the point of attack and, with any luck, we should be able to slip in while all the fuss is going on to our left.’

‘And pigs will surely fly,’ murmured Bertie.

‘Once we are in the trench,’ continued the captain, ‘Sergeant Fellowes will take his party – he will nominate you – bombing up the trench to the left to clear it, Corporal Jenkins will do the same to the right with his men, and I, with Corporal Hickman and the rest, will go on and attack the machine-gun nest. The idea, chaps, will be to put the guns and the gunners out of action by throwing grenades through the slits. Then we will get away as fast as we can. Right. Any questions?’

‘Yessir.’ Hickman was amazed at the sanguinity of it all. ‘Are you saying that we charge directly into fire from three machine guns?’

‘It’s not as bad as it sounds, Corporal. As we near, you will see that the gun encasements are about twenty feet or so behind the trenches and – and this is the point – they are on the edge of the old wood and about fifteen foot or so
above
the trench. Because they are firing through slits in the concrete, they can’t depress the guns downwards to fire at us up close without moving ’em. And we shall be on them before they can do that. All right?’

‘Yes, thank you, sir.’ Jim exchanged glances with Bertie. It all sounded far too easy.

‘Ah well,’ whispered Bertie. ‘We’ve all got to die sometime.’ But his face was white under its dirt.

Suddenly the night was broken by the crash of guns behind their lines as the bombardment began. At the same time, machine guns from the British line opened up far to their left. The immediate response was a couple of German star shells that climbed lazily into the sky, again to their left.

The glow lit up the tight anxious faces of the raiding party for a moment. ‘I thought there was supposed to be no bloody light on this side,’ murmured Bertie.

The noise of the gunfire was deafening and Smith-Forbes had to shout now. ‘Right, lads. I will lead, Sergeant Fellowes and his section will follow, then Corporal Jenkins and his lot, then Corporal Hickman and his men at the rear. At the German wire, Fellowes and Jenkins will cut it and toss in grenades to kill the sentries. I will hold the wire up and they will lead their parties in and clear the trench and hold it. Then the rest of us will go in quickly and attack the guns. After that, it’s every man for himself. Above all, we must be quick. Speed is the essence of this raid. We must clear the trench and put the guns out
before the German support troops come up. It’s all got to be done in about five minutes. All right? Good. Ah, one last important point. The password for tonight when you approach our trench on return is “Newmarket”. Got it? Very well. Follow me and good luck.’

In sequence, the party climbed up the trench ladder and they all squirmed under the wire and began the crawl across no man’s land. The noise continued on their left and was now joined by the chattering of enemy machine guns in reply, who were obviously expecting a night attack in some force. The guns that were the raiders’ target, however, remained silent.

At the rear, Jim Hickman crawled after Bertie, close behind his friend’s muddy heels and his face a few inches above the mud. As ever, the smell of decayed, mulched bodies turned his stomach but he was more concerned, as he watched the little man’s grenades bounce up and down on his buttocks, that one would be dislodged and lose its pin. Ahead, he could dimly make out the captain’s helmet disappear and then appear again as he negotiated the shell craters, for it was no longer possible to crawl across no man’s land in a steady line. He realised that, as Bertie had pointed out, the enemy star shells that still climbed into the sky were near enough to cast some light over their section of the field and he prayed that the enemy sentries in the trench they were approaching were keeping their heads down.

As they neared the wire, he could see the machine-gun emplacements clearly enough. It was true that the barrels of the guns were not poking through their firing slits, but their muzzles were protruding
and they were slowly rotating from left to right
! He licked his dry lips. The gunners were, then, very much alert. Could they see the raiding party now and were they cleverly holding their fire until it would be impossible to miss? He shook his head and crawled on, noting that the British mini barrage was now fading away. Damn!

Now he could see the captain holding up the parted strands of wire and the shapes of Sergeant Fellowes and his men beginning to crawl through and, overtaking Bertie, he joined the others lying flat, waiting for the lead bombers to do their work. That would be the crucial point. If the machine-gunners could depress sufficiently to aim at the wire virtually under their noses, then those at the rear of the raiding party were as good as dead. Could he reach the emplacement with a thrown grenade from here? Might it deter the gunners? Unlikely. It was too far. He brushed the sweat away from his eyes, gritted his teeth and waited.

Expected as it was, the sudden explosions from the trench made him jump. He crawled to the wire and held up the cut edge, opposite the captain, to allow the other bombers to move through now, crawling as quickly as they could. He turned to his rear. ‘Crawl up, for God’s sake, Bertie,’ he called. ‘The guns could reach you there.’

Almost as he spoke, the chatter of the machine guns began, now frighteningly near, and he saw a row of holes appear in the mud as if by magic just behind Bertie’s boots. With his free hand, he unclipped a grenade, pulled out the detonating pin with his teeth, waited for three seconds, then hurled it overhand in the general direction of the gun emplacement. Without looking to observe the effect, he waved through the captain and followed him, scurrying desperately as the machine-gun bullets hissed over his head, praying that Bertie was under the arc of their fire.

He levered himself over the trench parapet and tumbled onto the body of a German sentry. Two more lay groaning against the trench wall. Acrid smoke was issuing from the entrance to a dugout and a Tommy waved him away as he threw another grenade down the steps. To the left and right, the raiders were hunched by the traverses as, on the other side, their grenades suddenly exploded. Then, more
grenades in hand, they scurried round the barriers to continue their attacks along the enemy trench.

‘The ladder, quick, help me.’ The cry came from Smith-Forbes, who was attempting to wrest the trench ladder away from the British side of the trench to prop it onto the other side. He rushed to help and found, to his relief, Bertie at his side. The three of them pushed the heavy steps to the opposite wall and followed the captain up the slippery rungs.

Six men in all emerged from the trench and looked up at the gun emplacement. It took the form of a wall of concrete that, as far as Hickman could see, had three sides, the front facing the British line immediately opposite and the other two, at angles of forty-five degrees, commanding the approaches obliquely. It was, in effect, a pillbox, for a concrete roof had been thrown across to give protection from artillery fire. Each wall contained a narrow slit through which projected the muzzle of a machine gun, spitting flame.

It was true, however, that their fire could not be depressed sufficiently to be directed at attackers up the slight slope that led to the fortress, for, although the guns blazed away, they were hitting only the already inert bodies of four of the attackers, sprawled on the far side of the German wire, too late to crawl through the gap before the guns got them.

‘Where are the—’ Smith-Forbes’s question was stillborn as a bullet took him in the chest and he whirled round and fell onto his back, his arms spread wide.

‘Rifles,’ shouted Hickman. ‘Through the slits. Spread out.’

He threw a grenade at the gun nearest him, as much to create a diversion as in hope of harming the gunners. It bounced off the concrete wall, fell to the earth and exploded with a satisfactory shower of mud and stones. Head down, Jim sprinted up the slope
and slid to a halt at the base of the wall. As he fumbled for a grenade, he saw three of his party stagger and fall as the rifles picked them off. Bertie, however, arrived breathlessly at his side. He could hear the gun crews shouting inside the pill box.

‘You take the slit on your left,’ he said. ‘I’ll do this one. Move NOW!’

He plucked out the ring pin, waited three seconds then stood and deposited the grenade through the slit, as though he was posting a letter. He heard it explode inside the pillbox before crouching and running to the right, where he heard Bertie’s grenade explode. With only three Mills bombs left he decided that he must save them for the escape, for surely no one could be alive within the emplacement. Bertie scurried back to him and they sat for a moment, their backs to the wall and their breasts heaving, looking down at the trench.

Rifle shots rang out from right and left within the trench but no further grenade explosions. ‘We didn’t bring rifles,’ gasped Jim. ‘Our lot must be wiped out. Where the hell, though, is the last man who came up with us?’

Bertie pointed. The last man lay to their left, only six feet or so from the redoubt, his head shattered by a bullet. ‘It looks like we’re the only two left, Jim. How the hell are we going to get out of here?’

‘There’s only one way. The way we came in. Come on, before the whole bloody German army comes back into the trench.’

They ran helter-skelter the short distance to the German trench, on the lip of which Hickman held up a hand and crouched. ‘A grenade to the left and one to the right, just in case,’ he gasped. ‘NOW!’

They pulled out the pins and lobbed the bombs into the trench, lying flat, their hands over their ears, then, when the debris had fallen, they peered over the parapet. The trench was a scene of devastation.
One wall had completely collapsed and bodies lay everywhere, British and German entwined in the final moments of death. It seemed that the remnants of the raiding party had been caught and mown down as they attempted to climb the trench wall on their return.

Jim pushed Bertie down. ‘Get out of here,’ he ordered, indicating where the trench wall had collapsed, near where the wire had been cut. ‘Climb up there. Get as far out as you can and then dive into the nearest shell hole when all hell breaks loose. I’ll try and give you cover.’

‘What are you going to do?’