Heart of War (84 page)

Lieutenant Archie Campbell leaned against the wall of the trench in the darkness, the sky lit by flares and the orange bursts of shells. He was so tired he could not keep his eyelids open. His body ached and sagged. It was one o'clock in the morning. The Germans had counter-attacked once more, at dusk, trying to retake the positions they had evacuated. Their shelling had been continuous until the actual moment when their infantry assaulted; and then it had lifted only from the captured trench system itself; the curtain of shells and bombs
had never ceased to fall on all flanks of the Wealds, isolating them from contact with any world or beings except themselves, and their attackers. Madness, hell, demoniac lunacy, Archie thought through the dark fog of fatigue. What he had seen during the hours of daylight was burned into his brain, through his eyes. Surely his eyeballs would be scarred for the rest of their existence in his body?

The attack was beaten off, but night brought no rest, or peace. Still there was the underlying sense of fury: the war was not impersonal or inanimate – it had a being and a purpose of its own … The three companies of Wealds, and the Germans, surrounding them on three sides, were in the same pit, separated from homes, headquarters, supplies, superiors, supports, plans, maps, intentions, just struggling in the mud, and in it, sinking.

The C.O. said, ‘I'd better go round again, Campbell … They may try a night attack.'

His pipe was glowing faintly in the dark. There were no moon or stars, no sense of sky, only the brooding shifting darkness, and the rain.

The C.O. continued – ‘Must go and see B … Can't have men pretending to be shell shocked. They need bucking up, that's all.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Wish we had a rum ration. That would cheer them up … me, too, to tell the truth.'

‘Yes, sir.' Archie didn't want to stay here, under this never-ending shelling, alone, with the R.S.M. and the remaining runners. He said, ‘Shall I come with you, sir?'

The voice from the darkness said, ‘No. Someone has to be at headquarters at all times. How often have I told you that?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘I'll come with you, colonel. 'Tis like the bottom of a grave here.'

Quentin seemed to be about to say something, but didn't. Campbell watched his bulky figure disappear, followed by the slender Father Caffin and the C.O.'s batman, slow-moving humps in the night, going away along the trench.

Hells … shells … hells … When they got out he must get a few days' leave to paint this, before it faded … It must fade, or he'd go mad. No one could live with these memories as brilliant as they were now … if he did get out … if any of
them got out … It was a queer feeling to know Fiona might understand what they were going through, for she'd seen his paintings, of course. The C.O. would ask for one or two and send them home … He should ask him whether there had ever been any real marriage between them, in terms of personal affection and understanding. But they did not discuss her; only, the C.O. said, when he got a letter from home, usually from his father or one of his brothers – ‘Fiona is well.' The gruff words, thrown away, were somehow very moving, coming from him … an acknowledgment that he had been her lover, and had understood her better than himself, her husband, had. But that was not a discussion … and there had been nothing more. After the war, they
must
spend a long time together, as man and man. If he could get the C.O. drunk, he might be able to make him see what kind of a woman Fiona was … how to treat her … what to say to her, when … He might get his head bitten off, but it would be worth it. He must try. He dozed off.

He awoke to find someone shaking him. It was Sergeant Hawkins, of A Company, with a private he did not know.

‘Runner from Brigade, sir. He fell into our trenches an hour ago. He has a message for the C.O. Captain Weeks told me to bring him up here.'

‘Why have you been so long?' Archie asked.

‘Mud, sir … We fell into a shell hole in No Man's Land, what was. Took us half an hour to get out … near drowned, we did.'

By the unsteady light Archie could see that both men were slimy with mud from neck to knee – below that they were standing in the mud, as was he himself. He took out his torch, switched it on and, crouching, read the message:

‘To 1 WLI … Withdraw to old position front line trench AAA artillery will fire box barrage round your present positions from 3.00 am AAA commence withdrawal at 3.30 am.'

‘What's this? What's this?' It was the C.O., stooping over him, Father Caffin behind.

‘Message from Brigade, sir.' He handed it up, keeping the light on it. Colonel Rowland read, then muttered, ‘We can hold out here. They ought to reinforce us instead of … Damn
it, it's just like Feuchy, and what an opportunity they threw away then.' He stopped short, realizing that he was criticizing his superiors in front of his juniors.

He turned to Sergeant Hawkins – ‘A Company in good order?'

‘Yes, sir. They're back in the front line – the old one, still.'

‘The shelling wasn't too bad when you were crossing No Man's Land?'

‘It wasn't like a walk in the Park, sir, if you know what I mean.'

Quentin stood thinking, the light switched off. He said, ‘It's half past one now. Half an hour's box barrage will warn the Germans exactly what we are going to do … and give them half an hour to lay on a barrage that will wipe us out, when we move. It'll take fifteen minutes to get back to our old trenches … Could you take a message back, runner?'

‘Yes, sir … Brigade Headquarters is still at Jack Johnson Farm, sir.'

‘That's another two miles, nearly,' Quentin muttered. ‘There isn't time to ask the general to change our orders … Switch that light on again, Campbell. Give me a message pad.'

He wrote on his knee, and then again; and gave the two messages to the Brigade runner. ‘Take this one to our A Company … And this one to the Brigadier General. You go with him all the way, sergeant. Off you go!'

When the men had climbed up and out of the trench and vanished in the noisy darkness, Quentin said, ‘We'll start our withdrawal at two-thirty. I've warned A Company to look out for us from then on.'

‘No artillery cover, sir?'

‘No. Nothing. Just all three companies here get up and go back, at the same time … leave the trenches at two-thirty ack emma, exactly. Synchronize watches. It's … one fifty-four … now! Send the R.S.M. to C, you go to D, I'll warn B.'

‘Very good, sir.'

Two days later:

As the shadow fell across the opening of the dugout Quentin looked up from the scraps of paper in his hands. They were message forms, spotted with mud and rain, some torn, all
covered with names scrawled in pencil – the names of the killed and wounded in each company, submitted by company commanders this second day after the return from the German trenches. He could not see clearly, for his eyes were blurred, but could distinguish the red and black armband and the red gorget patches of a staff officer.

‘A staff officer from Corps,' he snapped. ‘We don't see much of your sort down here.'

His adjutant, standing beside the visitor in the dugout entrance, said, ‘Colonel Venable, sir.'

Quentin stood up, saluting. Now he saw that it was indeed a full colonel. He hadn't seen anyone that exalted since the offensive began on July 31 … except, twice, his brigadier general and, once, the divisional commander; no one at all from Corps … Before the battle they used to be condescended upon by the occasional young lieutenant or captain, puffed up with self-importance by the gorget patches and red banded hat: since July 31 – nothing.

The colonel was tall and suave, and pretended not to have heard Quentin's ill-natured greeting. He put out his hand, ‘I'm G.S.O. 1(I) at Corps. We'd like to talk to you about German morale and methods. We get reports, of course, but it's better to be able to ask questions, follow up leads. I have the division and brigade commanders' permission to take you back to Corps HQ now, to talk to us all afternoon, and spend the night with us – we can find you a comfortable bed – and send you back tomorrow about this time.'

Quentin hesitated. He wanted to spend the day visiting his companies, seeing that the men had a good meal, go to Brigade Headquarters and once more press the general to get some rum or whisky, somewhere, somehow. The men deserved it … and damn it, they needed it.

Venable said gently, ‘I know you have many things to do, but we really do need your help … and it is an order, from the corps commander.' He laughed, to soften the hint of steel behind the velvet glove.

‘Very well, sir,' Quentin said. ‘If I can have a few minutes to arrange things here.' He turned to Campbell and began giving orders, while the colonel walked out of the dugout and up the steps and waited for him in the light September drizzle.

Fifteen minutes later Quentin joined him, and they started
toward the rear, following the usual sequence that had obtained since the end of 1914 and the death of the mobile war – down communication trenches to the support line – back another half mile under ground level, then out, among battered houses and many shell holes. The Germans knew well where the trench system ended and regularly plastered all the exit points with long-range artillery, usually in the middle of the night, when ration parties and replacements would be coming up and wounded moving back. There was no shelling now, and a quarter of a mile beyond the end of the trench system they found Venable's staff car and chauffeur, climbed in, and started off down the wrecked pave. After twenty minutes they came to a cluster of big khaki marquees in a muddy field beside the muddy road. A Red Cross flag flew over the biggest tent and Red Crosses were also painted on the canvas roofs. A convoy of a dozen motor ambulances were arriving from the west – the rear – as they walked up.

‘Is that the Casualty Clearing Station?' Quentin asked.

Venable said, ‘One of them. This is 46 C.C.S.'

‘I'd like to go in for a while, sir … We had a lot of men wounded in the last push.'

Venable hesitated, then said, ‘Of course. I'll come with you.'

Quentin waited a moment, bracing himself. He had been a patient in a C.C.S. himself, and visited them as often as he could, when the battalion was not in the front line. But every visit was an ordeal, far worse than the slaughter of the trenches. That he could endure – the men shot, wounded, dying, torn to pieces, spattered over him; but he was there, and there were the Germans, and all his being was braced to endure. Perhaps it was this that had lost him Fiona, he thought – that he could see such suffering and not weep, or lose his reason. But when it was over, when he had to read the lists of their names … worst of all, when he saw them lying in the narrow beds, or sometimes, after a heavy engagement, on the bare ground. Farther back there were nurses, some softness, the melody of women's voices, the touch of their hands … not here, only the Royal Army Medical Corps doctors and soldier attendants. The R.A.M.C. – Rob All My Comrades, the men called them; for a soldier who went in with a silver cigarette case or a gold coin, even five francs in his pocket, or a signet ring on his finger, was unlikely to have
them when he left – either back toward the front, or on to the rear, to the Base hospitals, the Hospital barges, ships, and trains, and Home … or to the cemetery always created next to any C.C.S. at the same time as the tents were set up.

He walked into the nearest of the big marquees and slowly down the middle between the rows of beds. The ground underfoot was wet earth, partly covered with duckboards. The air reeked of ether. ‘Any Wealds here?' he asked, as he went. His voice was lost in the low moaning of the tent, the flapping of the canvas walls and ceiling, and everywhere the fast shallow breathing, the rattling in men's throats, the moans as they moved, the sound of weeping, stifled sobs, groans … a sudden cry, cut off as the soldier in the bed beside him clenched his teeth.

‘Any Wealds…? Wealds…'

‘Here, sir.' He stopped, beside a bed where a man lay under bed clothes, all his head except his mouth hidden by bandages, and there the lips swollen and the teeth gone.

‘Private Shaddle, sir. D Company … it's the C.O., isn't it?'

‘Yes, Shaddle. How do you feel?'

‘Oh, could be worse, sir.'

‘Well done. You'll be back in Blighty in no time … Wealds? … You're Smith, 96, C Company, aren't you?'

‘Yes, sir.' The man had a greenish tinge, his voice was weak, bandages crossed his chest, and froth bubbled on his lips. Lung wound, Quentin thought. He said, ‘Well done … You'll be back in Blighty in no time … Wickilam, where were you hit?'

‘Foot, sir. Can't walk … 'ave to transfer to the Navy … or get a job selling tickets at one of them cinemas.'

‘Not too bad, sir … Never thought I'd like Hoggin's Plum & Apple, but the first rations we had when we got here was that … best meal I ever had.'

Heavy breathing … a face staring up at the high canvas … ‘Aren't you Corporal Tompkins? Can you hear me?'

‘He don't speak to anyone, sir. Just stares at the ceiling, shaking like … screams in the middle of the night…'

On, slowly, Venable silent at his heels … on, down the corridor of anguish, the valley of suffering. Men without arms, without legs, with life visibly draining from them, grotesque shapes in bandages, small faces haloed by death, a
head with no face, two doctors and attendant bending over it, it struggling, mouthing words unhearable, unbearable. Quentin's eyes were smarting and bulging. He forced himself to walk on, slowly, calling, ‘Wealds? Any Wealds? …' through tent after tent, speaking, saying the same banal lies over and over again. He knew they were lies … still, it was right that they should be said, it was right that the men should see their commanding officer, and that he should offer them life, as he had sent them to death, and this.