The Horizon (1993) (42 page)

The brigade-major had held his hand over the telephone.

‘It’s Corps, sir.’

‘Tell them to wait!’

The major added unhappily, ‘It’s the General, sir.’

Ross had repeated testily, ‘I said
wait
!’

Without any sign of relief or emotion he had held out his hand. A firm grip, like Captain Soutter’s had been.

Jonathan had heard himself say, ‘I know it will eventually come through in orders, but as a favour please let it remain between us until then. It might be misinterpreted, and I never want any of my men to think there was any doubt about my staying with them.’

When he reached the reserve sector again he was still struggling with his conscience and the aftermath of what he had done.

He saw the usual groups of marines, either queueing for food or curling up somewhere to eat it. Huge vats of baked beans and sausages, fannies of steaming tea, hardtack biscuits covered in thick treacle. It was not a banquet, but it would fill their bellies and make them feel like men again. More ominous was the heady aroma of rum. Preparing them.

N.C.O.’s straightened up as he passed; the lump of Bert Langmaid, sheltering beneath a groundsheet while he spooned the hot beans down his throat, merely glanced at him. McCann and Timbrell, Geach and Seagrove the colour-sergeant who was still feeling his
way. A quick nervous smile from some of the younger ones, a cheeky grin from the old sweats.

In only a few days they would be up the line again, attacking a small, unimportant place of which none of them had ever heard. They might question the reasons and the sanity of it, but they would do it. Not for King and Country, not because ‘England Expects’. But for the Corps, and mostly for each other.

He paused, staring along the frieze of muddy figures.

How could I leave them now? Alex . . . try to forgive me.

When he ducked into the dugout the other officers, who were eating their first hot meal for days, looked up expectantly with a question on every face. Harry Payne put a plate in front of him and darted him a quick glance. He had some idea of what had happened, and he could guess the rest. He need not have worried after all. There was nothing to show the cost of that decision.

He was the colonel again.

Before dawn on the ninth of October the Fifty-First battalion was in position, crouched low in the collapsed and shattered trenches, finding what cover they could, as much from the heavy rain as from their own shell-splinters. The bombardment had gone on for two days, and it was impossible even to guess how many thousands of shells had been fired. Some of the guns must be getting worn through, and there was a real danger of shells falling short onto the waiting troops and marines.

Poelcappelle was on their left front and Passchendaele
somewhere to the right. There could be little left of either.

Jonathan leaned against an upended ration cart and peered at his watch. He saw the others doing the same and could sense their apprehension, dismay even, that they were being ordered to advance in these impossible conditions. He hoped he had managed not to reveal his own hopelessness, which had grown steadily since their return to the line. News of the unrivalled courage and determination of the British infantry had been matched only by their casualties. Days ago, when they had been resting, the infantry had forced an advance despite the awful weather and the enemy’s stiff opposition, and gained one mile along the whole front. At Corps H.Q. it must have seemed like the long-expected breakthrough, and a cavalry division had been brought up for the anticipated collapse of the German centre. Their assault failed, and most of the horses had been killed by machine-guns. Their surviving riders retreated on foot.

Jonathan stared into the rain. He could feel the water like ice around his ankles, and recalled a memo he had seen. Any man reporting sick with trench-feet would be dealt with as a malingerer, until proven otherwise. He moved his frozen toes and tried to smile. What would they say if
he
reported sick?

‘Runner, sir!’

A small soldier, his breath puffing loudly, lurched through the collapsed firestep where the H.Q. platoon had mounted its machine-guns.

Jonathan ducked under a canvas screen and switched on his torch. Vaughan and Wyke stood outside, cursing
luridly as more mud tumbled down while shells hurled up columns of smoke and earth in no man’s land. The West Riding Division, blooded on many occasions, would be waiting and watching. This bombardment was to lay waste the heavy barbed-wire entanglements along their sector.

Jonathan stepped out into the rain. He was shivering badly; the wind was colder than he had first thought. Or was it the wind?

He handed a folded message to the runner and said, ‘We go over the top at five-thirty.’

He knew from the silence that they must have dared to hope for some last-minute reprieve.

He said, ‘Brigade reports some machine-gun pill-boxes to the left front of us. The R.F.C. spotted them when the sun showed itself a couple of days ago. The infantry haven’t a hope in hell of getting through with those in position. They haven’t fired a round as yet – we’d have seen them – but they must know about the attack. They’ll just sit there and wait.’

More shells burst to the right, the flashes giving life to the funnelling smoke and reaching up to touch the clouds with fire.

He continued without expression, ‘I’d like to send a separate party over before the real attack begins. They’d stand a fair chance of reaching at least one of the pill-boxes.’ The enemy would be on their toes for the main attack, he thought, but they were doubtless in their deep bunkers now, making the most of their protection and comparative dryness.

It took a physical effort to control his sudden anger as
the realisation struck him. The Royal Marines were to be a useful diversion, just in case the main attack was delayed by circumstances or the weather. Had Ross been trying to prepare him for that, or had he known nothing about it?

Vaughan said, ‘I should like to lead with my company, sir.’

‘Yes. I intended that you should. You have a lot of seasoned men.’

It was a kind of madness, this matter-of-fact manner in which they were discussing mass murder. Perhaps it really needed officers like Beaky Waring. No fear, no hesitation: he hadn’t had the brains to see beyond his duty.

Maxted said dully, ‘I can take the raiding party, sir.’

Jonathan was about to deny the request, then recalled what Wyke had said. He wished it was light enough to see Maxted’s face.

He said, ‘Choose your men. I’ll want you an hour before we go over.’ He turned away, although they could not see him.
And why not?
By the end of the day they would all be killed, or left out in the rain to die like those Germans in the wire.

‘Major Hayward?’ He saw a shadow move. ‘Oh, there you are, Peter. Thought you’d caught a bus home.’

Somebody laughed. Actually laughed. It unnerved him. ‘You will take B Company next.’ He touched Wyke’s arm and felt him tense. ‘H.Q. will keep with C Company. We can set up a field telephone when we get into position.’ They looked up as more shells screeched over the trenches. He wondered what had happened to
Captain Alton’s howitzers. Sunk beneath the mud with all the other abandoned waggons and weaponry: a battlefield junk-yard.

Maxted was saying, ‘I shall need two good N.C.O.’s.’

Timbrell called, ‘Count me in, sir. More my line than swimmin’ across!’ A tall sergeant named Harriman said, ‘Me too, sir.’

‘Twelve good men.’ He seemed to be thinking aloud.

McCann guffawed. ‘No such animal in the Royals, sir!’

Jonathan had tried to prepare himself for just such a moment as this when he had read her last letter. It was never far away. And then it was
now
.

Someone was murmuring, ‘God help me, God help me,’ over and over again fervently, like a prayer.

Another voice rasped, ‘For Christ’s sake, Ted, stow that claptrap!’

Wyke was peering at his map with the aid of a torch while a marine held a sodden greatcoat over him to hide the light: the coat had been abandoned here, so it was assumed that its owner was no longer in need of it.

He felt someone beside him and knew it was Maxted.

‘All right, John?’ He hoped he sounded calmer than he felt. How could he ever describe it? A kind of light-headedness, with anger and despair surging around in his mind.

Maxted hesitated. ‘I just wanted to say . . .’ He stared down into the blackness as if to seek out the right words. ‘To say sorry, for the way I’ve been . . . you know.’

Wyke nodded, not understanding, but aware that it was terribly important to his friend.

‘We’ve all had about as much as we can take, John. I know I have . . . We don’t seem to be getting anywhere. It’s more men, more men all the time. I haven’t slept since I was on leave.’ He attempted to grin but it was not possible. ‘Not much then either, I have to confess.’

Maxted sounded surprised. ‘Really? I always thought you of all people—’

Timbrell came down beside them. ‘Ready, sir. Grenades are primed, seven-second fuses. Four each.’ He could have been instructing recruits.

‘Coming, Sergeant.’ Maxted gripped Wyke’s hand, and the grit and wet rasped against their skin like some kind of bond.

He said quite calmly, ‘I think we’ll not meet again, Chris.’ Then he was gone.

Wyke heard the colonel speaking with Maxted: a level tone, now so familiar, even dear to him. But he was unable to forget Maxted’s calm farewell, as if there were no way out. A man under sentence of death, and now quite able to accept it.

A few minutes more and Maxted’s party were up and over the broken parapet, sliding into mud and groping around shell holes with little more than the artillery to keep them on course.

The enemy did not return fire, nor even release a flare. The guns had succeeded in keeping their heads down if nothing else.

It was hard work: every yard was covered by shattered debris and huge spreads of soft mud. Maxted wanted to cry out as the exertion made the pain sear into his groin like a branding iron.

He tried to empty his mind, and wondered what his parents would say if they could see their precious son now.

He remembered when he had first mounted a guard at the barracks. The sunset bugles, the flag coming down very slowly, the salutes and the time-honoured ceremonial which affected even the old hands. He had been a part of it. It had been his dream. He gritted his teeth as the agony stabbed through him again.

He felt Sergeant Harriman beside him, keeping pace, arm over arm: a true light infantryman.

‘Did you see, sir?’ His whisper was almost lost in the downpour.

‘What?’

‘That last shell, sir. Saw it in the flash.’ Even he sounded shocked. ‘The bloody gunners ’ave missed it! The wire’s still there!’

Maxted took a deep breath and started forward. He retorted savagely, ‘Not our problem! Let’s get on with it!’

He was speaking to himself in quick painful gasps.
Must be time. Can’t see my watch. Must remember to pull the pin from the grenade
 . . . He collided with a huddled corpse and thought suddenly of Second Lieutenant Rooke. Probably still hanging on the wire. His whole frame shook with silent laughter until the pain stopped it.

A red flare burst lazily over his right shoulder and Maxted pressed his face to the ground, tasting the filth and the stench. The flare was a signal, and even as the artillery fell silent for the first time in days he vaguely heard the shrill of whistles right along the line.

‘Come on!’ He wiped his face with his sleeve. They’ll be up to the wire in a minute!’

In answer a machine-gun began to chatter urgently, and so loudly that he froze with disbelief. They were almost on top of it, the noise of the gun’s rapid fire only yards away. He fumbled with his grenade satchel, and almost dropped one of them into the mud in his haste.

‘Right, lads!
At the bastards!
’ He tugged the pin and heard the strike lever rattle away as he thrust the live grenade into the satchel. Then he was on his feet, swaying in the mud, his coat caught in some broken barbed-wire, while he swung the satchel round his head like David’s sling. He gave a great gasp as the satchel flew from his grip and he tore himself free of the wire. How long? Seven seconds, wasn’t it?

He heard bullets fanning past him, some smacking into the mud. Then he felt a great blow in the chest and knew he could taste blood as he began to slide down the side of a shell crater.

Sergeant Harriman threw himself down as the grenades blew up in one ferocious explosion. The machine-gun fell silent, and through his deafness Harriman could hear them screaming faintly.

He pulled himself to the water-logged shell crater and knew that it was hopeless. Maxted was still sliding deeper: he would die either way.

The icy water was up to Maxted’s waist now, and he felt the freezing relief drive away the agony which had brought him close to suicide.

Down, down. It was almost over. He was free.

Sergeant Harriman, with a couple of his men, heard him cry out. Not from fear or pain. Only two words.

‘
Thank you!
’

And then Lieutenant John Maxted, aged twenty-one, died of his wounds.

The whistles shrilled, and scrambling like old men the marines went over the top. Several fell before they had even reached their own wire, but then there was a vivid scarlet flash followed almost immediately by a loud explosion.

Wyke gasped, They’ve done it, sir!’ He felt like cheering despite the danger and the horror of it. ‘If they can knock out the other ones . . .’ He fell silent and Jonathan said, ‘Well?’

‘Just something he said. He knew he was going to die.’

The sergeant-major shouted above the roar of guns and the clatter of lighter weapons, ‘Brigade’s on the line, sir! The wire’s still there! West Riding Division is in trouble!’

Jonathan said, ‘Tell them we’ve knocked out one pill-box.’ Their faces lit up to another bang. ‘Belay that.
Two
pill-boxes.’

In the red glow McCann looked like one of Satan’s fiends. Hayward’s company had vanished into the smoky darkness. Surely it must get lighter soon.