The Passing Bells (55 page)

“What's your bloody 'urry, mate?”

He didn't pause for conversation but hurried on, the leather message pouch flopping against his hip. The shriek of a 5.9 sent him headfirst to the trench bottom, and he hugged the crumbling sides as the shell exploded ten yards behind the trench. Four more shells followed the first, each explosion further away. The salvo was badly off range—creeping the wrong way. He got up and ran on to Clapham Junction and turned sharply to his right into Watling trench. There he rested and lit a cigarette. Watling was deep and the sandbagging in good repair. He could see men sleeping further down the trench, in niches cut into the sides. A sentry kneeling against the parados above him was so caked with mud he blended into the background. The runner didn't see him until the man turned his head and looked down at him.

“Can you spare a fag, chum?”

“Yes,” the runner said. He handed up his cigarette and lit another for himself. “This the Second Windsors?”

“You got it, chum. Which comp'ny you lookin' for?”

“Battalion commander.”

“First communication trench and back fifty yards. Can't bloody well miss it. Thanks for the smoke.”

“Think nothin' of it, mate,” the runner said as he scurried on his way.

He was not surprised to find a major commanding the battalion; he had seen captains handling the job, and there was a rumor that a lance corporal had led the Ninth Battalion of the West Yorks after the Delville Wood attack. It meant nothing to the runner. He handed over his message from brigade and waited.

Major Charles Greville slit the flimsy envelope with his thumb and read the contents, holding the paper under the hissing pressure lamp which dangled from the ceiling of the dugout.

“No reply,” he said crisply. “Tell the storeman to give you a double tot of rum.”

The adjutant stirred on his wire-mesh bunk. “What's up?”

Charles stared at the paper. “We're to attack Hanoverian redoubt at 0800 tomorrow with A, C, and D. No whimsy about taking the ruddy place. We're to draw fire, I suspect, while the New Zealanders go in on our left.”

The adjutant lay back with a groan. “Bloody waste.”

“See if you can ring through to brigade.”

“No point to it. The wires must be cut in a hundred places after yesterday's strafe. They wouldn't have sent that poor sod of a runner if they could have got us on the blower.”

Charles sat down at the table and sipped his tea. It was ice cold and tasted of kerosene. The stupidity of the order caused his hand to tremble with rage. The battalion had lost nine officers and two hundred sixty men in its last attack, half the casualties occurring as the men went through their own wire. One corporal had managed to get close enough to the German positions to hurl a Mills bomb, and he had died throwing it. Five officers and a hundred fifty men had come up from the reserves during the night, but the battalion was seriously under strength and now they wanted another attack on a totally impregnable position, carried out in broad daylight. He couldn't even inspire the men by telling them they were going to take Hanoverian and clean out that corner of the wood once and for all. No, they were simply to go over the top and give the Boche something to shoot at while the New Zealanders clawed their way up Guinness Ravine. No artillery support mentioned in the order. New theory at staff—artillery preps tip off attacks. It was as good a theory as any other, he thought bitterly. All the theories were bloody wrong.

The adjutant swung his legs off the bed and scratched his chest.

“Do you realize something, Charles? We've pushed the Germans four miles since the first of July. Young Baker figured it out last night. By his calculations, we'll have 'em over the Rhine by the summer of nineteen thirty-eight. What do you think of that?”

“I think Baker's an idiot,” Charles said savagely. “If he had told me, I'd have put him on charge.”

“He's a good lad. I knew his brother at Harrow. We used to rag about a bit.”

Charles stood up, took his helmet from a peg on one of the support beams, and went up the dugout steps into the trench. B Company was in reserve, the men squatting in their shallow funk holes, eating their dinner, rain capes draped over their heads. At least the food was hot; steam rose from the tinned stew in their mess plates. The three companies in the forward line weren't that lucky. It was bully beef and biscuits for them, with perhaps some hot tea going up after sundown if there was no night barrage.

“Stretcher comin' down!” someone shouted from further along the trench.

“Mind the wire there! Watch your bloody heads!”

He walked toward the commotion. The bearers were lugging a big groaning man along the communication trench. The bearers were small men, and it was taking four of them to carry the stretcher through the mud.

“Who is it?” Charles asked.

“Corporal Thomas sir,” one of the bearers grunted. “Rifle grenade 'it the parados, bounced back an' blew his 'and off.”

“Damn.” Corporal Thomas was one of the best NCO's in D Company. He was going to be damn hard to replace.

The stump of the corporal's right hand was heavily bound with bloody bandage. There was blood on his face as well, smeared by the rain.

“Is me face gone?” he whispered in terror, struggling to sit upright. “Is me face gone?”

The bearers set the stretcher down for a moment to rest. One of them knelt beside the corporal and patted his shoulder.

“No, Bert . . . just a few scratches. It's your right 'and. Sliced clean as a whistle. It's Blighty for you, Bert.”

“Thank God for that,” the corporal sobbed. “Thank God I'm out of it.”

“ 'Ave to diddle the old woman with your left 'and from now on, Bert. Make a nice change for 'er.”

“Thank God for it,” the corporal said, slumping back on the stretcher. “What's a . . . bleedin' . . . 'and?”

The bearer stood up and glanced at Charles with an apologetic smile. “It's the morphia, sir. Gave 'im two pellets and he's gone out of 'is 'ead. Don't pay no nevermind to 'im.”

“Get him down to the aid post,” Charles said stiffly. It wouldn't do to show sympathy for a man who felt blessed being wounded. He made a cursory inspection of the trench and went back into the dugout, pausing before he did so to glance down the slope behind him at the burned-out hull of an MK 1 tank, a Big Willie. The tank had come groaning and sputtering and backfiring up the road from Bazentin the week before, moving at about two miles per hour, lurching in and out of ditches and shell holes like some dying beast. Seeing it that day had made him think of Jaimie Ross, and how Ross would have shaken his head and muttered something about too little power—not enough bloody engine to crawl through mud. Brigade had rung through and told him to send two companies up the hill into High Wood behind the tank. The tank never came within five hundred yards of the wood. The Germans had shelled it with whizbangs and Big Willie had exploded. Not knowing what it was they had shelled and burned, the German gunners had gone into a frenzy and laid down a blanket barrage for two hours, killing sixty men and wounding one hundred and seventy.

The company commanders and seconds-in-command came to the dugout that evening for a briefing and a share of the whiskey bottle. They listened in silence as Charles explained the order of attack: “D Company at 0800. A to follow at 0810. C to give covering fire with the Lewis guns and then to go across at 0825.”

It was all meaningless and everyone in the dugout knew it. The Germans would see the first men pop up, and the barrage would start before they had found the taped paths through their own wire. D Company could be written off. If A Company were lucky, the Germans would spot the New Zealanders moving up Guinness and switch their battery fire to that spot. Then all they would have to contend with would be the machine guns firing from concrete revetments half buried in the earth, the intricate belts of wire, and half a dozen
minenwerfers
lobbing high explosive on their heads. C Company had picked the right card. He could justify calling off its attack if the first two assault waves suffered more than fifty percent casualties—which was almost a certainty. Seventy percent was more like it. If the two New Zealand battalions got up Guinness from Stout trench and took the Hanoverian redoubt in flank, forcing a withdrawal, then it would be worth any sacrifice—a lofty, patriotic observation which he passed on to the captains and lieutenants. The words were greeted by half-concealed sardonic smiles. They would accept the sacrifice because they had no choice in the matter. They did not expect anything to come of the attack.

Dawn came in misty rain. The New Zealanders would have left Stout trench before dawn, using the mist as a cover to crawl as far as possible up Guinness Ravine through a splintered wilderness of trees. They would make their rush for the crest of High Wood when they heard the Royal Windsors drawing fire. Charles put a whistle between his teeth and looked at his wristwatch: 0757 . . . 58 . . . 59 . . . he knew that if he survived the war he would never be able to wear a wristwatch again. . . . 0800. He blew a shrill blast on the whistle, the captain and platoon leaders blew theirs, and two hundred men scrambled up the ladders, bunching up as they hurried through the precut gaps in their own wire. Ten yards . . . twenty—they were scrambling in and out of old craters, bayonets gleaming through the mist. Thirty yards now . . . forty—almost to the German wire, which was fifty yards deep. Signal rockets hissed upward from the enemy lines, bursting yellow and green against the low clouds.

“Damn . . . oh, damn,” Charles whispered as he heard the drone of howitzer shells. The drones turned to shrieks, the shrieks to thunderbolts and vomiting geysers of earth and flame. The salvos walked the edge of the German wire. Clods of earth and truncated men hung motionless for a split second against the gray sky. What was left of D Company scattered away from the wire and dove for the steaming shell holes.

0810. Charles blew his whistle with a dry mouth. A Company was slow to leave the trench. Whistles were blowing furiously and the platoon leaders were cursing and shouting. A dozen men went up the ladders and through the wire, keeping low as the Lewis gun teams from C Company began firing over their heads. The heavy German machine guns started to hammer through slits in the thick concrete revetments; the fire interlocked, catching the men of A Company waist high and ripping along the top of the sandbagged parados. The platoon leaders kept shouting and more men went up the ladders, some only reaching the lip of the trench before tumbling back again. It was a clear washout, and Charles, calling for artillery, yelled at the signalers to send up Very lights. The trapped men of D Company might make it back under the covering fire of the counterbarrage. If they couldn't, then they'd hole up in the craters and wait for night.

“You rotten little coward!” Lieutenant Baker yelled, his voice high-pitched with hysteria. “I should damn well shoot you!”

Charles hurried out of the observation sap into the front trench. A dead man hung head down, one foot caught in the rung of a ladder. He ran past the corpse to where young Baker was standing flourishing a revolver.

“What's the matter?” Charles shouted.

The lieutenant pointed his weapon at a private who sat slumped against the fire step, his rifle beside him, bayonet jammed in the mud. The soldier's face was the color of putty and blood poured from under his right boot. “Shot himself in the foot! Ordered him up the ladder, and he just turned and looked at me . . . reversed his rifle and gave himself a Blighty.” He waved the revolver under the man's nose. “It's a firing squad for you now . . . sure as hell!”

“Get him back to the aid post,” Charles ordered.

“Under guard?”

He looked at the soldier leaning against the trench wall. His eyes were dull, uncaring, oblivious even to the pain of his wound. He was no more than eighteen.

“Yes,” Charles said dully. “Under guard, of course.”

They would tie him to a post more than likely, shoot him by firing squad, or the Military Police would pistol him in the head without ceremony. Damn, he thought, clenching and unclenching his fists, why hadn't the man been clever enough not to shoot himself in front of his lieutenant! But what was one more corpse? What did it matter? Brigade artillery was firing shrapnel against the German revetment now and the Boche machine-gun fire had ceased. The shrapnel fire was desultory and dwindled to a final burst, the smoke drifting in the wind through a grove of skeleton trees. A Boche machine gunner fired a few rounds, a staccato thumb to the nose. There had been heavy German shelling in the direction of Guinness Ravine, and that, too, ceased. The men of A Company stood white-faced and tense on the fire step of the trench.

“Stand down,” Charles ordered. Any further attack would be less than futile.

Out between the wire somewhere, in a shell hole or abandoned sap, a man was screaming—ragged shrieks and sobs. The sound went on and on, rising and falling, dwindling at times but never ending. 0830. When night came, he would send out the stretcher bearers. He prayed fervently that the shrieking man would be hours dead by then.

Colonel Robin Mackendric completed his first surgical shift of the day and went to the mess tent for a mug of tea and a late breakfast. He did not wear his colonel's crown and stars on his uniform because he was oblivious to rank. It was purely a by-the-book promotion, due to the army's obsession with having the proper rank in the proper job. Commanders of casualty clearing stations were supposed to be colonels, and so, finally, the War Office papers had caught up with him just as his team was shifted from Kemmel to the Somme. Being a colonel instead of a major had not affected his duties in any way, and so he hadn't bothered to remove the old badges and have new ones sewn onto his shoulder straps. Not so Captain Ronald David Vale, who had been upped to major. He wore the crown badges on his underwear—or so it was rumored.