Heart of War (64 page)

Archie Campbell, sitting a few feet away, watched his commanding officer in awe. Damned old fool … narrow minded butcher … why not just sit tight, wait for the Huns to come, and when you had killed all you could, put up your hands? What more could anyone do, outnumbered and outmanoeuvred as they had been here? Instead it looked as though the two of them, and many other good men and true would enter eternity somewhere out there on the shell-torn earth between Feuchy and the frowning, sunken fortresses of the Hindenburg Line … which the Germans called the Siegfried Line, he had noted in the Intelligence reports. He lit a cigarette and tried to tell himself it tasted as good to his dry lips and tongue as the C.O.'s pipe tobacco was certainly tasting to him.

The sun had sunk half an hour ago, still the long twilight of the young northern summer persisted. The men in the front line trench waited, heads down, breathing deep. They were not as densely packed as in a normal attack, there were not enough of them for that. The air was still and calm but for the
steady whistle of German shells passing overhead to burst in the box pattern that surrounded the Weald Light Infantry's position. Private Fagioletti tried to control his breathing and the slight shivering of his right hand where it held the forestock of his rifle. Beyond him Leavey and Bob Jevons murmured to each other in low tones, but Fagioletti could not hear what they were saying. Beyond again, the old soldier Snaky Lucas waited, his steel-helmeted head leaning against the chalky front wall of the trench. Then came Sergeant Bygrave, the boy Cyril Jessop, Fletcher Whitman, Brace – no one had learned his Christian name in all these months – then a traverse. What lay beyond, Fagioletti had no idea. More of the battalion's men – Captain Kellaway, the colonel perhaps: Fagioletti had seen him an hour or so back, coming down this trench with the captain, peering over the top, saying something to the captain, going on, later returning.

They were going to attack. The sergeant had pointed out their objectives, the places they were supposed to capture – a few humps two hundred yards out across the broken ground. Looked nasty. Not as bad as Fricourt and Mametz, though. A lark towered into the twilight bursting with song, and fell, in silence. The guns continued their monotonous rhythmic emphasis. It was dark.

‘Ready, lads!' Sergeant Bygrave called quietly.

Private Lucas leaned back, took a stub of cold cigarette from his lips and put it behind his ear. Fagioletti swallowed twice. He wanted to shit … not again … he bloody well wouldn't do it!

No whistle blew, but the sergeant said, ‘Now!' On top, Fagioletti could just make out the irregular line of men to his right, edging through the twisted, tortured arms of the wire … no one on his left. He was the left hand man of the whole attack. His bayonet shone clear against the dark of the lower sky by some apparent phosphorescence in the blade. The helmets to his right were dully gleaming bowls. Not a sound from Jerry … Fifty yards gone … still nothing. He stumbled over something, saw it was a body, two amalgamated in death – Germans … On again … nearly half-way there. The shadows were moving away from him and he muttered in Venetian, ‘Non stà lassarme!' and broke into a stumbling run until he had caught up with the line again. More wire … he searched frantically for a place where it was broken and found
a lane – twelve feet wide … the Jerries must have come through here in their attack … Then the noise began. Bullets clattered by, bombs burst. He heard his platoon officer, Mr Stratton, bellowing ‘Get in!' Then a German helmeted shape was rising from the ground before him and his rifle jerking in his hand as he pulled the trigger … again … and again, as more shapes staggered out. He was jumping down into a trench, landing hard, stumbling … about to fire again, when he recognized the outline of a British steel helmet, and Lucas's voice, curt – ‘Down, Dago!' Beyond, shapes and shadows were scrambling up out of the back of the trench and Whitman was firing steadily at them. The German machine gun that had opened up just as they came through the German wire had been silenced. There it was, on the parapet now, one gunner hunched dead over it, the other fallen backward into the trench bottom. British soldiers were pulling the dead man off the gun, swinging it round to face the rear, sitting down in firing position behind it.

Lieutenant Stratton called, ‘Sergeant Bygrave!'

‘Here, sir!'

‘Clear the trench – that way – about a hundred yards. No farther. I'll be along in a minute.'

‘Very good, sir … Fagioletti, Lucas … Whitman, Brace, Jessop … Bombs ready! Dago, you start as point. Ready? Move, man!' They scurried round the first traverse … Fagioletti in the lead, his blood curdling with fear, his legs like lead. The sergeant was on his heels, Lucas close with a bomb in each hand, his rifle slung. Star shells rose from the German artillery, climbed, burst, and cast brilliant light over the whole earth but Fagioletti did not lift his eyes from the narrow trench ahead of him. Next traverse. He paused, held his rifle out, a round in the breech, finger on the trigger … Lucas lobbed two grenades over the traverse. As soon as they burst, Fagioletti jumped round … no one there … run to the end of the bay … Same again: two grenades, the heavy clangour of their explosions, jump round the traverse … no one … on … twice more … the bays were forty feet long, some less … on, two grenades, round the traverse … two bullets smacked into the sandbags by his head. As he saw the Germans and pulled the trigger his fear suddenly became fury. He charged forward, screaming in Venetian. The swine were trying to kill him! One of the Germans who had fired
was leaning against the back wall of the trench, his chest ripped open by grenade splinters; the other was running. Fagioletti first shot the running man in the back, then bayoneted the other, the dying man, pinning him through the throat to the trench wall. Savagely he jerked his bayonet free. Potato masher bombs whirled in, landed with dead thumps and exploded. He heard screams, gasps, groans, looked round in the light of new star shells … the sergeant wounded in the head and down, Bob Jevons down, dead.

‘Come on!' he yelled.
‘Avanti!
You got some more bombs, Snaky?'

Lucas said, ‘Wait'll I get the sergeant's. You take Jevons' … Ready.'

Whitman said, ‘Jessop and Brace and I have got a dozen.'

Fagioletti led to the next traverse: Lucas threw two grenades over into the next bay: they stormed round. The German artillery kept the trenches bright with star shells, trying to find out what was happening … charge! Whoever had thrown the potato mashers had gone.

Fagioletti scrambled on, panting, teeth bared. Lucas said, ‘I 'eard Mr Stratton say a hundred yards. We've done that.'

Fagioletti snarled, ‘We can clear the whole trench. Come on!'

Lucas said, ‘Old 'ard! Are you trying to win a fucking V.C.?'

Fagioletti subsided, out of breath, against the trench wall. He found he was soaked with sweat, his hands shaking like a palsied man's. He said in wonder, ‘Look, Snaky, my hand's shaking, see … but I'm not frightened!'

Lucas said, ‘Then you're a bloody fool.' He swung round, bayonet out, finger on the trigger, and Fagioletti, hearing sounds from the bay behind them, said, ‘Ready with the grenades, Whitman! Who goes there?'

‘Mr Stratton,' came the answer, shouted over the traverse. A moment later he appeared, with four men. ‘Good work,' he said briefly. ‘Sergeant Bygrave's bad.'

Lucas said, ‘Fagioletti here led us, sir.'

Stratton said, ‘Good man … You're an acting corporal, Fagioletti, from now. I'll ask the C.O. to confirm you as soon as we get back to our own trenches … Hold this position, corporal, till just before dawn. Then we will retreat the way we came. You'll get orders at about three. Dawn's at four.
These men are under your orders. My headquarters is back down the trench, where you started from.'

‘Very good, sir,' Fagioletti said.

His head was swimming. Fred Stratton, his brother-in-law, who had hardly spoken a word to him, except to tick him off, since he came to this platoon, had made him a corporal. A two-striper, in the 1st Battalion of the Weald Light Infantry! He'd get more pay … but what could you spend it on? All the same, two stripes on his arm!

‘Better post double sentries, Dago,' Lucas said.

Fagioletti steeled himself – ‘You call me “corporal” now, Snaky. Old Rowley'd be down on us both like a ton of bricks if he heard you.'

‘Right you are, corporal,' Lucas said equably.

‘Why did you tell the officer I led the charge? The sergeant detailed me for it. We were all in it. You're the one who ought to be corporal … twenty-one years you got in!'

Lucas spat accurately over the parapet onto an abandoned German helmet with a jagged hole in it, and said, ‘Me, take a stripe? Don't be bloody daft, man!'

The Germans counter-attacked to regain the lost positions at eleven o' clock that night. The artillery preparation was brief, and only a part of it was aimed at the trenches actually held by the British. The attack itself was curiously haphazard and tentative for a German assault, Quentin thought. The hundred men he had taken forward in his attack beat it off with ease and small loss to themselves, using mainly the Germans' own captured machine guns, and the light of a few white Very lights. They received no help at all from the main British position behind, neither artillery nor machine guns. The hundred men and half a dozen officers were in a world of their own.

Quentin lit his last fill of tobacco. The German field telephone was quiet again. It had linked the German troops in these trenches and the Wealds had simply taken it over, cutting the wire that had led to the German rear, and now into the new No Man's Land. In a deep dugout, acrid with the smell of German ersatz acorn coffee, Archie Campbell lit a cigarette. He was tired, almost too tired to feel fear. The Germans would come again – they always did. Ammunition was running low. What hope did they have, isolated out here?

Father Caffin got up from the box he was sitting on and murmured, ‘I'll be going round the trenches, Archie. 'Tis a hard time for the bhoys, waiting like this.'

He went out. Good man, Archie thought: nothing on earth would induce
him
to go out there unless he had to – ordered out by the C.O. He looked across at Quentin and wished he had his sketch pad with him. He'd sketched the colonel several times, and knew – eerie feeling – that the drawings were being sent back to Fiona. He'd caught him in some typical attitudes, the character showing very clearly … this was perhaps the best of all, the plump cheeks lit by the candle, the eyes closed, in repose; not very intelligent, but calm, sure of duty done … Immortal, in a way. But of course he wasn't immortal: any moment a shell might destroy him … all of them.

Here it came! A whoosh and a roar like an express train, the 5.9 digging into the earth twenty yards away, bursting, the candle flame shaking. The C.O. opened his eyes as another shell landed twenty yards off in the opposite direction. The tempo of the shelling did not increase as they waited, listening.

The C.O. said, ‘Not preparation fire … too slow. Harassing … My pipe's gone out.' He relit it, carefully blowing out the match and dropping it into the empty German coffee tin on the table.

The shelling continued, steady, slow. Archie felt it was searching for them … one here … pause … one there … where are you? … crash! No? Well, let's try here … crash! … crash! … Sooner or later, I'll get you …

They were going to die. He wished to God he had a bottle of whisky.

A man couldn't die with
this
on his conscience. He drew a deep breath, forced his hands to lie still on the shaking board that was the table top, and said, ‘Sir, I was your wife's lover.'

Quentin's protuberant blue eyes turned slowly on him, peering through the blue tobacco smoke. A frown creased the domelike forehead. He said, ‘Don't be ridiculous, Campbell. Have you been hit on the head, and didn't tell me?'

‘No, sir. I can't lie to you any more … live the lie … I was Fiona's lover for nine, ten years. She wanted me to marry her.'

After a while Quentin said, ‘Are you the fellow she said she
was going to live with some time ago? November, 1915, it was.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Another long pause – then: ‘Why didn't she? I never understood.'

Campbell spoke eagerly, anxious to get the load off his mind, the cloud off his conscience – ‘I didn't want to marry her … or anyone. She only
thought
she loved me because she thought you
didn't
… that you didn't understand her.'

Quentin drew on his pipe, looked away, looked back – ‘Not a very decent way to treat a lady, Campbell … take advantage of her and then refuse to marry her.'

‘Sir, she was married to you! She'd never have been happy with me. I didn't know what to do, when she told me she was going to leave you … I joined up.'

Quentin picked up the field telephone, wound the handle, and said, ‘Kellaway? Everything all right? … Good … If the shelling stops, stand to at once.' He replaced the instrument, wound again, and said, ‘Stratton? C.O. here … Are you all right? … Good … Keep a close lookout all round. If the shelling stops, stand to at once.'

He returned to Campbell, ‘Why did you apply to come to this regiment? Or was it pure chance?'

‘No, I applied. I had to meet you, man to man. We had met before actually – three times, at art shows Fiona dragged you to – but you didn't remember, why should you? … I had to face the same dangers you were facing. If I did, and survived, I thought I might be able to marry Fiona after all … but not otherwise.'

Quentin said, ‘She doesn't love me … never has …'

‘I'm sure that if she can only be made to appreciate how much you … '