The First Casualty (37 page)

FOURTY-NINE

Once more unto the breach

As night fell all along the British line, the usual feverish nocturnal activity began anew. Kingsley knew that the Royal Artillery would be anxious to discover the layout of the new British positions in order to prepare for the next series of cannonades. The infantry had advanced the previous day under a creeping barrage, in which the artillery had laid down fire which moved slowly forward, theoretically just in front of the troops, clearing a way for them. Of course, as the battle had progressed and the assault was slowly broken up by the German resistance, the most forward positions had become lost in the mud and the smoke. Now was the time to discover what was left of the most advanced battalions and where they all were. Observation officers were preparing to go forward along with stretcher teams and water-bearers. Kingsley determined to accompany them.

‘Is anybody looking for the
5th?
’ he enquired of the various darkened figures moving about amongst the guns, and was fortunate to find an artillery spotter who was preparing to do just that.

Together he and his guide crept out beyond the artillery line. Immediately they began to pass men both living and dead. The skin of the dead, Kingsley noted, had turned slimy and black, making them difficult to see (and hence avoid). Their rate of decomposition suggested that they had been buried by previous shelling and that last night’s shells had merely exhumed them. The living men were all wounded, or else they were carrying wounded, men who had lain all day waiting for an opportunity to attempt to stumble back without being shot. All, of course, were desperate for water.

‘It’s tempting to offer a swig,’ Kingsley’s companion observed as they pushed their way past men in obvious need, ‘but believe me, pretty soon we’ll be in their position ourselves and we both have work to do.’

Water, Kingsley had heard, was perhaps the greatest of all the problems that bedevilled the soldiers in their swampy holes. They lived in it and drowned in it, it rotted their feet to the point where amputation was sometimes required and yet they yearned for it day and night, because once battle had been joined there was
never
enough of it to drink. Often there was none at all. Sometimes it was possible to drink the foul, filthy soup in shell holes, but frequently it was poisoned by rotting corpses and gas or else it was too thick with clay to drink.

Every man Kingsley passed pleaded for fresh water. In this rain-sodden landscape, the agony of thirst was a torment. The only good thing that could be said about it was that at some point it became so all-absorbing that it diverted men’s minds from the other appalling discomforts they suffered. The constant imminence of death, the misery of sleeplessness, the rats, even the lice were forgotten once a raging thirst had set in.

Kingsley had also noted that, despite the numerous brilliant feats of organization that the army had achieved during the past three years, it had never managed to provide suitable water containers. For the soldiers of the Western Front, water came to be universally associated with the foul taste of petrol, for it was always delivered to the forward positions in fuel cans.

The artillery officer led Kingsley first along the communications trenches up to what had been, before the battle began, the British advance trench. Now these same poor slits from which the British and Australian armies had launched themselves a few weeks earlier were transformed into forward dressing stations. Within them, the stream of wounded were first jammed in order to be assessed. Here, just as Kingsley and his guide were passing, in the mass of blood and confusion some dog-tired sentry, half asleep, saw several men approach wearing German coal-scuttle helmets which they had taken as souvenirs.

‘Counter-attack,’ the sentry shouted. ‘They’re upon us!’

Instantly, and before the obvious mistake could be rectified, the dressing station exploded in a mass panic, with shocked and hollow-eyed men scurrying in all directions. Officers and NCOs shouted themselves hoarse in an effort to re-establish order, while wounded men were trampled underfoot, precious water was upset and a great deal of time and equipment lost.

Kingsley and his guide skirted the bloody confusion of the dressing station and moved on into what had once been no-man’s-land but was now Allied territory. As they went, they asked constantly for the 5th Battalion and, more particularly, its colonel. In due course and by good fortune they came upon a runner who had been sent back by Colonel Hilton himself in order to re-establish contact with Staff and plead that water be got up swiftly to his decimated forces.

‘They got as far as the third German line, sir,’ the runner explained, ‘and have dug in, in Fritz’s trench. They’s comfortable enough but awful exposed. The colonel don’t think the 3rd to his right got so far, nor possibly our own boys on his left, and so he believes he has at least one open flank and possibly two. Go easy, sir, because there could very likely be Boche now ‘tween us and them.’

Onward Kingsley and the artilleryman went, struggling over the most appallingly broken country. Ruined equipment and corpses lay everywhere, and everywhere scurrying men crept through the darkness. To what end? Kingsley wondered. But no doubt his own intentions appeared as pointless to the men whom he encountered as theirs did to him.

They had been heading down a shallow slope and at the bottom of it they came upon some walls. Of what had once been a farmhouse, only the cellar remained, open to the elements, and in it Kingsley could make out one or two shadowy figures.

‘Battalion HQ,’ said the artillery officer. ‘By rights that’s where Hilton should be, but it doesn’t surprise me that he’s up at the front. Damn stupid, of course. No point being a colonel if you act like a subaltern, but you have to admire his pluck.’

They moved on past the ruined cellar, cursing under their breath as they descended into one shell hole after another. At one hole they thought they had had a stroke of luck when they encountered a radio operator with all his equipment set out and his earphones on his head.

‘If this fellow can give me an accurate fix, old son,’ the artillery-man whispered, ‘my job’s done and you’re on your own.

The officer crept up to the lip of the shell hole.

‘You there,’ he demanded, having to raise his voice, for a fusillade had begun once more overhead. ‘Have you established a frequency?’

The operator turned his head slowly and mouthed a pitiable plea for help. Blood had drenched the lower part of his tunic and he could not speak or move his lower body. The officer stepped down into the hole and plucked the earphones from the wounded man’s head, placing them on his own.

‘Nothing. Totally dead. Battery gone, I suppose,’ he said bitterly, casting aside the headset. The operator just stared: it seemed that he was beyond pain, and Kingsley thought he had probably taken a morphine tablet.

‘Sorry, Corporal,’ the artillery officer said, ‘but I have to move on. If I encounter a stretcher party I shall let them know you’re here.’

Then the operator managed a single word.

‘Water,’ he croaked.

‘That’s an abominable, soldier,’ the officer replied, indicating the man’s bloody tunic. ‘Nil by mouth, I’m afraid. One swig would kill you in a minute.’

Both he and Kingsley knew that, water or no water, the operator would be dead long before any stretcher party could be found.

The artillery officer clambered back out of the shell hole and together they went on their way. Such was the rapidity and apparent calm of their progress (with the exception of the shelling overhead) that Kingsley’s mind began to fix upon the details of his case once more. Suddenly his reverie was shattered when there loomed out of the darkness those same coal-scuttle helmets that had so frightened the sleepy sentry at the dressing station. The men who wore them this time were not souvenir-hunting Tommies but German infantry. They were only yards away and had seen Kingsley and his companion at exactly the same moment that Kingsley and the artillery officer had seen them.

There were three of them, all in field grey. The rain and darkness made visibility difficult but the distant flashing of the fire curtain that was being laid down by both sides’ artillery provided just enough light to illuminate the scene. The front German held a bayoneted rifle in his hands and had stick grenades bristling at his belt. The two men behind him were struggling with a heavy machine gun, for which they appeared to be searching for a suitable emplacement. The little team were further burdened by the ropes of ammunition draped across their shoulders. Kingsley and the artillery officer had been carrying their sidearms at the ready and for a moment the five men stood still, each party staring at the other shadowy grouping. Then, as if by common consent, both sides melted away. The Germans disappeared backwards into the night and the British did likewise, without a word.

‘More important that I get an accurate range for our guns,’ the artillery officer whispered, ‘than that I attempt personally to take on the Prussian Guard.’

The presence of Germans suggested to both men that they must be close to the limits of the British advance. Sure enough, shortly thereafter and without further incident, the two men came upon what they were seeking: the most forward position of the remnants of the 5th Battalion of the East Lancs.

A fierce voice called out a challenge.

‘Who goes there? Friend or foe?’

The two men froze and called out their replies in hoarse semi-whispers.

‘Friend. Pilby. Subaltern. Field Artillery.’

‘Friend. Captain Marlowe. Military Police.’

‘Advance, friend, and be recognized.’

They crept towards the sentry’s voice and, as they did so, a burst of machine-gun fire raked the ground around them. Kingsley heard a shout and Lieutenant Pilby, whose name he had only just learned, fell to the ground beside him. As he did so, fire began to pour from the area towards which they had been heading. It was directed at the attacking machine gun, which meant that the British were putting up covering fire.

Kingsley grabbed his fallen companion and dragged him towards the British entrenchment. Fortunately they were only yards away, for dragging a grown man over deep mud in the dark under fire was no easy task.

Moments later, Kingsley and Pilby tumbled together down the sides of a deep shell hole, Pilby crying in pain. The clatter of machine-gun fire subsided and relative peace returned, with the exception of the intermittent shellfire overhead.

‘We’d flushed out that nest hours ago,’ said a voice that Kingsley recognized as Colonel Hilton’s. ‘They must have managed to get a new team into it. Good bit of soldiering, damn them. Who’s this now?’

Peering through the darkness with an electric torch, the colonel was most surprised to see Kingsley, but first he had to deal with the wounded artillery subaltern. A corporal was already inspecting Pilby’s wounds and applying field dressings.

‘Both legs, sir, two bullets in each,’ he reported.

Colonel Hilton had noted the Royal Artillery insignia on the subaltern’s shoulders and knew exactly why he had come visiting.

‘Well, you won’t be reporting our position to your rangefinders in a hurry, will you, lad?’

Kingsley, surprised to hear Hilton refer to Pilby as ‘lad’, took a proper look at the man and realized that his guide of the previous hour was probably no more than twenty years old. He had seemed so experienced that Kingsley had followed him without question.

‘No, sir,’ Pilby replied, grimacing in pain and trying not to look down at his shattered legs, ‘but you’re awfully far forward and well in amongst the Hun. We had you placed a good hundred yards back.’

It did not take a military strategist to divine the young subaltern’s meaning. The 5th were in direct contact with the enemy and dug in considerably beyond their designated objectives. Without information to the contrary, there was every possibility that Staff would assume this territory was occupied exclusively by Germans and begin to shell it.

Colonel Hilton was reloading his pistol.

‘Well, it’s time I was getting back anyway,’ he observed. ‘Got what I came for. Scouted about pretty comprehensively after we knocked out that damned nest over there. Sergeant Walker!’

‘Sir,’ said a burly man emerging from the gloom.

‘I think we have about a third of our original strength dotted about in various holes but we’re properly mixed up with Fritz and no mistake. We need either to be reinforced or to withdraw. Can’t withdraw because we’re pinned down, can’t be reinforced because nobody knows we’re here. And if this young fellow’s mob start shelling us it’ll all be academic anyway because we shall be singing ‘Tipperary’ with the heavenly choir.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the sergeant replied. ‘Bit of a pickle.’

‘A bit of a pickle, as you so rightly observe, Sergeant. Now

Subalterns Longley and Smith are still with us and also Captain Greyshot, all in various holes, but apart from that, I am afraid to say, all our officers are down, along with the majority of the NCOs. I intend to make my way back now. You are in charge of this section, Sergeant, and your job is to sit tight and, if attacked, to give a good account of yourselves.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Hilton made ready to leave the shell hole, then almost as an afterthought he turned to Kingsley.