Chapter 37
The next hour passes in a blur of gruelling labour.
The German trench needs to be turned around and made into our new front line.
Already exhausted, my platoon work hard, cutting fire steps into what had been the rear wall so that we can face the occupied village of Montauban.
That desolate and flattened community, where hardly a rooftop remains intact, and into which our commanding officer is currently battling a path.
As I work, I wonder if I shall ever see the courageous Captain Jackson again.
Our work complete for now, I set the men to cleaning their rifles and making an inventory of their remaining ammunition.
There’s some mild grumbling which I let pass.
They’re tired, I know, but we need to remain vigilant and routine will help to settle their nerves.
It might also distract them from the cries that continue to sail in from No Man’s Land.
I’ve already hopped up onto the trench’s old fire step and seen a scattering of stretcher-bearers carrying men back to our line.
Not nearly enough, but there are no wounded within safe reach of us here and it is vital that we hold our position.
Still those cries tear at my conscience.
‘Bloody hell,’ Robert grunts. He’s sitting with the other men, his back to the trench wall, rifle between his legs. Upending his canteen, a drop or two of water dribbles out. He throws his cleaning rag across the ditch in frustration. ‘I’m bloody parched.’
I glance up at the sky. After days of rain, the resurgent sun hangs there, blazing hot. The others also mutter, shaking their own drained canteens. Robert then casts a narrow look at the prisoners, trussed up a little way down the trench.
‘Here,’ he says to the man next to him. ‘They’ve still got their canteens. We ought to take ’em.’
‘You’ll leave the prisoners be,’ I tell him.
He blinks up at me. ‘But one of them could’ve been the bastard that killed poor Percy. Are we supposed to sit here and die of thirst while they—’
‘You will leave the prisoners be,’ I repeat. ‘These men are our enemy but we aren’t monsters, and some rules are worth holding onto.’
Still, he has a point. Another oversight in the planning of this madness was that a frightened man will uncork his canteen more often than usual. In those breathless moments between darting from crater to crater, it gave him something to do, while fear itself has a way of parching the throat.
‘Private McCormick and I will take a look further down the trench,’ I say. ‘We’ll search among the dead and collect all the canteens we find. In the meantime, I want you all up and on alert. Is that understood?’
Robert jumps to his feet, looking both grateful and shamefaced. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good man. I leave you in charge, Private Billings. The prisoners’ welfare is now your responsibility.’
He salutes just as a shell flies overhead and buries itself close by in No Man’s Land.
The Germans must have decided that, whichever of their men has survived, must by now have returned to them.
In which case, it is time to begin their fightback.
From their reserve positions around Montauban, they now unleash a fury of ordnance.
‘Eyes peeled now, lads,’ I shout over the din. ‘We’ll be back as soon as we can.’
With that Danny and I set off along the trench.
We soon encounter other platoons that have taken positions down the line.
Here we witness British soldiers ferreting in prisoners’ pockets for souvenirs and sliding rings off dead fingers.
I don’t comment. These aren’t my men and I’m too exhausted to start shouting orders.
We collect whatever water canteens we can find and continue on our way.
A little further brings us to a heavily-shelled avenue that is unguarded.
I wonder if the Tommies we’ve just passed have shunned this place.
If so, I can’t blame them. It has the stink of an abattoir.
The walls and duckboards are greased with blood while on a fire step sits a dead German, half-buried in earth and already swarming with flies.
Some way beyond, we come to a dugout with a heavy torch hanging on a hook above the door.
Danny takes it and flips the switch while I train my revolver on the entrance.
‘Come out with your hands up!’ I shout.
We wait, ears straining in the pauses between shellfire. After a minute or two I give Danny a nod and he wrenches back the gas curtain while I thrust my revolver into the gloom. The torchlight sweeps across a room some twenty feet below the ground.
Danny whistles. ‘Bloody hell, they were well dug in.’
‘Even better than we imagined,’ I agree.
Descending a ladder, we discover the comfortable living quarters of a German officer.
A proper oak table surrounded by dining room chairs, real beds neatly made, even piped-in water and electric lights.
Danny and I exchange stunned looks. And then our gaze falls upon the stores left behind – loaves of bread, sticks of rich butter, cigars, cigarettes, chocolate, honey, whisky and seltzer water.
We grin at each other and, discovering an old sack in the corner, fill it to the brim.
Treasures in hand, I’m turning back to the ladder when Danny catches at my sleeve.
He pulls me to him and presses his lips to mine, his fingers caressing the side of my face.
‘I was scared I might lose you,’ he whispers.
‘Me too,’ I tell him, and brush back a curl from his forehead. ‘Are you all right? That sniper...’
‘I don’t know,’ he says simply. ‘Honestly, Stephen, I don’t.’
His words break my heart. I want to stay here, talk to him, reassure him, but we have to get moving again. Men are relying on us and, at this moment, I can’t even imagine what I might say to comfort him.
Back in our occupied section of trench, we move between the men like Father Christmas, handing out presents from the old sack.
Taking his portion, Robert shoots a glance at the prisoners who have been under his care.
I nod as he goes over to them, tearing off pieces of bread and morsels of chocolate.
‘There you go, Fritz,’ he mutters to the dark-haired soldier who, not two hours ago, had attempted to kill me. ‘Get that down your gullet. I might even give you a share of my whisky too, so long as you don’t go trying to throttle our lieutenant again.’
The German nods. ‘Danke. Thank you.’
‘Not a bad lad,’ Robert says, turning to me. ‘He showed us a picture of his girl while you and Danny were gone. Absolutely bloody knock-out. I told him, if we both get through this mess alive, I’ll visit him in Hamburg and he can introduce me to her sister.’
Time marches on, the German barrage unrelenting.
By early afternoon, we hear that a battalion HQ has been established in the village of Montauban, though the fighting there continues, street to street.
I’m about to head out again with Danny in search of a telephone to communicate with this new headquarters, hoping we might even hear word of Captain Jackson, when a signaller comes dashing through our trench.
He pauses gratefully at the offer of a bite to eat, though the news he brings is devastating.
‘Soon as we lay the wires, the Hun shells tear them apart again,’ he grunts. ‘If you want to send a message, you’ll have to find a runner.’
‘What else have you heard?’ I ask.
Signallers often catch snippets of conversation as they test a line, some of it from quite senior sources.
The man chews ruminatively for a moment.
‘Nothing good. Seems like whatever success we’ve had has been limited to our sectors down here in the south.
Up north it’s been a bloodbath. At Beaumont Hamel, the First Lancashires were shredded the second they popped out of their trench.
Whole companies pretty much wiped out and all for nothing. ’
‘What do you mean?’ Robert asks.
The man shrugs. ‘Thousands dead and hardly a foot of ground taken. By the reckoning I heard, sixty per cent of the men and even more officers have been killed.’
Listening, we are all ashen-faced. Even the German prisoners seem appalled.
‘All for nothing,’ Robert echoes. ‘Poor bloody Percy.’
At around nine p.m., the heavy guns at last fall silent.
Still, we hear from whispers passed down the line that the Germans are launching small counter attacks.
No soldier can sleep with such a threat and so I spend the entire night walking up and down, talking to the men to keep them awake.
They stand doggedly at their firing posts, any spare ammo laid out on the parapet.
But I can see the exhaustion of the day clawing at them.
It’s a strange kind of fatigue, jittery and cold, scratching at your eyes and throbbing into your bones.
At last, the sun rises and the dregs of water canteens are passed around. I start to ask Danny if he wants to portion out some of the remaining food from the German dugout, when a familiar scream reaches us.
‘Seems like they’re starting up their barrage agai—’
I don’t reach the end of the sentence. Falling short of its target, a shell buries itself into the earth directly in front of our position.
In the same instant, the trench wall explodes outwards, a blast of dirt and debris throwing men in all directions.
I feel myself launched high against the back wall and then dashed sideways, landing in a sprawled heap across splintered duckboards.
The aftershock rings in my ears. I blink, splutter, cough up a throatful of phlegm.
Memories of the tunnel collapse swarm in on me and I panic, thrusting my hands against a tonne of suffocating earth that isn’t there.
It takes a few moments for me to realise that I haven’t been buried alive and that I can still see the sun.