As the Crow Flies (8 page)

“‘Eaven
knows,” said Charlie. “But you can be sure they’re out there somewhere,
probably askin’ each other where we are.”

At
six o’clock Charlie woke the rest of his section. They were up and ready for
inspection, with the tent down and folded back into a small square by
six-thirty.

Another
bugle signaled breakfast, and the men took their places in a queue that Charlie
reckoned would have gladdened the heart of any barrow boy in the Whitechapel
Road.

When
Charlie eventually reached the front of the queue, he held out his biltycan to
receive a ladle of lumpy porridge and a stale piece of bread. Tommy winked at
the boy in his long white jacket and blue check trousers. “And to think I’ve
waited all these years to sample French cookie’.”

“It
gets worse the nearer you get to the front line,” the cook promised him.

For
the next ten days they set up camp at Etaples, spending their mornings being
marched over dunes, their afternoons being instructed in gas warfare and their
evenings being told by Captain Trentham the different ways they could die.

On
the eleventh day they gathered up their belongings, packed up their tents and
were formed into companies so they could be addressed by the Commanding Officer
of the Regiment.

Over
a thousand men stood in a formed square on a muddy field somewhere in France,
wondering if twelve weeks of training and ten days of “acclimatization” could
possibly have made them ready to face the might of the German forces.

“P’raps
they’ve only ‘ad twelve weeks’ training as well,” said Tommy, hopefully.

At
exactly zero nine hundred hours Lieutenant Colonel Sir Danvers Hamilton, DSO,
trotted in on a jetblack mare and brought his charge to a halt in the middle of
the man-made square. He began to address the troops. Charlie’s abiding memory
of the speech was that for fifteen minutes the horse never moved.

“Welcome
to France,” Colonel Hamilton began, placing a monocle over his left eye. “I
only wish it were a day trip you were on.” A little laughter trickled out of
the ranks. “However, I’m afraid we’re not going to be given much time off until
we’ve sent the Huns back to Germany where they belong, with their tails between
their legs.” This time cheering broke out in the ranks. “And never forget, it’s
an away match, and we’re on a sticky wicket. Worse, the Germans don’t
understand the laws of cricket.” More laughter, although Charlie suspected the
colonel meant every word he said.

“Today,”
the colonel continued, “we march towards Ypres where we will set up camp before
beginning a new and I believe final assault on the German front. This time I’m
convinced we will break through the German lines, and the glorious Fusiliers
will surely carry the honors of the day. Fortune be with you all, and God save
the King.”

More
cheers were followed by a rendering of the National Anthem from the regimental
band. The troops joined in lustily with heart and voice.

It
took another five days of route marching before they heard the first sound of
artillery fire, could smell the trenches and therefore knew they must be
approaching the battlefront. Another day and they passed the large green tents
of the Red Cross. Just before eleven that morning Charlie saw his first dead
soldier, a lieutenant from the East Yorkshire Regiment.

“Well,
I’ll be damned,” said Tommy. “Bullets can’t tell the difference between
officers and enlisted men.”

Within
another mile they had both witnessed so many stretchers, so many bodies and so
many limbs no longer attached to bodies that no one had the stomach for jokes.
The battalion, it became clear, had arrived at what the newspapers called the “Western
Front.” No war correspondent, however, could have described the gloom that
pervaded the air, or the look of hopelessness ingrained on the faces of anyone
who had been there for more than a few days.

Charlie
stared out at the open fields that must once have been productive farmland. All
that remained was the odd burned-out farmhouse to mark the spot where
civilization had once existed. There was still no sign of the enemy. He tried
to take in the surrounding countryside that was to be his home during the
months that lay ahead if he lived that long. Every soldier knew that average
life expectancy at the front was seventeen days.

Charlie
left his men resting in their tents while he set out to do his own private
tour. First he came across the reserve trenches a few hundred yards in front of
the hospital tents, known as the “hotel area” as they were a quarter of a mile
behind the front line, where each soldier spent four days without a break
before being allowed four days of rest in the reserve trenches. Charlie
strolled on up to the front like some visiting tourist who was not involved in
a war. He listened to the few men who had survived for more than a few weeks
and talked of “Blighty” and prayed only for a “cushy wound” so they could be
moved to the nearest hospital tent and, if they were among the lucky ones,
eventually be sent home to England.

As
the stray bullets whistled across no man’s land, Charlie fell on his knees and
crawled back to the reserve trenches, to brief his platoon on what they might
expect once they were pushed forward another hundred yards.

The
trenches, he told his men, stretched from horizon to horizon and at any one
time could be occupied by ten thousand troops. In front of them, about twenty
yards away, he had seen a barbed-wire fence some three feet high which an old
corporal told him had already cost a thousand lives of those who had done
nothing more than erect it. Beyond that lay no man’s land, consisting of five
hundred acres once owned by an innocent family caught in the center of someone
else’s war. Beyond that lay the Germans’ barbed wire, and beyond that still the
Germans, waiting for them in their trenches.

Each
army, it seemed, lay in its own sodden, ratinfested dugouts for days, sometimes
months, waiting for the other side to make a move. Less than a mile separated
them. If a head popped up to study the terrain, a bullet followed from the
other side. If the order was to advance, a man’s chances of completing twenty
yards would not have been considered worth chalking up on a bookie’s
blackboard. If you reached the wire there were two ways of dying; if you
reached the German trenches, a dozen.

If
you stayed still, you could die of cholera, chlorine gas, gangrene, typhoid or
trench foot that soldiers stuck bayonets through to take away the pain. Almost
as many men died behind the lines as did from going over the top, an old
sergeant told Charlie, and it didn’t help to know that the Germans were
suffering the same problems a few hundred yards away.

Charlie
tried to settle his ten men into a routine. They carried out their daily
duties, bailed water out of their trenches, cleaned equipment even played
football to fill the hours of boredom and waiting. Charlie picked up rumors and
counter-rumors of what the future might hold for them. He suspected that only
the colonel seated in HQ, a mile behind the lines, really had much idea of what
was going on.

Whenever
it was Charlie’s turn to spend four days in the advance trenches, his section
seemed to occupy most of their time filling their billycans with pints of
water, as they struggled to bail out the gallons that dropped daily from the
heavens. Sometimes the water in the trenches would reach Charlie’s kneecaps.

“The
only reason I didn’t sign up for the navy was because I couldn’t swim,” Tommy
grumbled. “And no one warned me I could drown just as easily in the army.,

Even
soaked, frozen and hungry, they somehow remained cheerful. For seven weeks
Charlie and his section endured such conditions, waiting for fresh orders that
would allow them to advance. The only advance they learned of during that time
was von Ludendorff’s The German general had caused the Allies to retreat some
forty miles, losing four hundred thousand men while another eighty thousand
were captured. Captain Trentham was generally the bearer of such news, and what
annoyed Charlie even more was that he always looked so smart, clean and worse
warm and well fed.

Two
men from his own section had already died without even seeing the enemy. Most
soldiers would have been only too happy to go over the top, as they no longer
believed they would survive a war some were saying would last forever. The
boredom was broken only by bayoneting rats, bailing more water out of the
trench or having to Fisten to Tommy repeat the same old melodies on a now rusty
mouth organ.

It
wasn’t until the ninth week that orders finally came through and they were
called back to the manmade square. The colonel, monocle in place, once again
briefed them from his motionless horse. The Royal Fusiliers were to advance on
the German lines the following morning, having been given the responsibility
for breaking through their northern flank. The Irish Guards would give them
support from the right flank, while the Welsh would advance from the left.

“Tomorrow
will be a day of glory for the Fusiliers,” Colonel Hamilton assured them. “Now
you must rest as the battle will commence at first light.”

On
returning to the trenches, Charlie was surprised to find that the thought of at
last being involved in a real fight had put the men in better humor. Every rifle
was stripped, cleaned, greased, checked and then checked again, every bullet
placed carefully into its magazine, every Lewis gun tested, oiled and retested
and then the men finally shaved before they faced the enemy. Charlie’s first
experience of a razor was in near freezing water.

No
man finds it easy to sleep the night before a battle, Charlie had been told,
and many used the time to write long letters to their loved ones at home, some
even had the courage to make a will. Charlie wrote to Posh Porky he wasn’t sure
why asking her to take care of Sal, Grace and Kitty if he didn’t return. Tommy
wrote to no one, and not simply because he couldn’t write. At midnight Charlie
collected all the section’s efforts and handed them in a bundle to the orderly of
ficer.

Bayonets
were carefully sharpened, then fixed; hearts began to beat faster as the
minutes passed, and they waited in silence for the command to advance. Charlie’s
own feelings raced between terror and exhilaration, as he watched Captain
Trentham strolling from platoon to platoon to deliver his final briefing.
Charlie downed in one gulp the tot of rum that was handed out to all the men up
and down the trenches just before a battle.

A
Second Lieutenant Makepeace took his place behind Charlie’s trench, another
officer he had never met. He looked like a fresh-faced schoolboy and introduced
himself to Charlie as one might do to a casual acquaintance at a cocktail
parry. He asked Charlie to gather the section together a few yards behind the
line so he could address them. Ten cold, frightened men climbed out of their
trench and listened to the young officer in cynical silence. The day had been
specially chosen because the meteorologists had assured them that the sun would
rise at five fifty-three and there would be no rain. The meteorologists would
prove to be right about the sun, but as if to show their fallibility at
four-eleven a steady drizzle began. “A German drizzle,” Charlie suggested to
his comrades. “And whose side is God on, anyway?”

Lieutenant
Makepeace smiled thinly. They waited for a Verey pistol to be fired, like some
referee blowing a whistle before hostilities could officially commence.

“And
don’t forget, ‘bangers and mash’ is the password,” said Lieutenant Makepeace. “Send
it down the line.”

At
five fifty-three, as a blood-red sun peeped over the horizon, a Verey pistol
was fired and Charlie looked back to see the sky lit up behind him.

Lieutenant
Makepeace leaped out of the trench and cried, “Follow me, men. “

Charlie
climbed out after him and, screaming at the top of his voice more out of fear
than bravado charged towards the barbed wire.

The
lieutenant hadn’t gone fifteen yards before the first bullet hit him, but
somehow he still managed to carry on until he reached the wire. Charlie watched
in horror as Makepeace fell across the barbed barrier and another burst of
enemy bullets peppered his motionless body. Two brave men changed direction to
rush to his aid, but neither of them even reached the wire. Charlie was only a
yard behind them, and was about to charge through a gap in the barrier when
Tommy overtook him. Charlie turned, smiled, and that was the last dining he
remembered of the battle of the Lys.

Two
days later Charlie woke up in a hospital tent, some three hundred yards behind
the line, to find a young girl in a dark blue uniform with a royal crest above
her heart hovering over him. She was talking to him. He knew only because her
lips were moving: but he couldn’t hear a word she said. Thank God, Charlie thought,
I’m still alive, and surely now I’ll be sent back to England. Once a soldier
had been certified medically deaf he was always shipped home. King’s
Regulations.

But
Charlie’s hearing was fully restored within a week and a smile appeared on his
lips for the first time when he saw Grace standing by his side pouring him a
cup of tea. They had granted her permission to move tents once she’d heard that
an unconscious soldier named Trumper was lying down the line. She told her
brother that he had been one of the lucky ones, blown up by a land mine, and
only lost a toe not even a big one, she teased. He was disappointed by her
news, as the loss of the big one also meant you could go home.