Regret to Inform You... (39 page)

Surely, thought Willy, to advance in the daylight was madness. ‘Fix bayonets.' Men struggled to follow this order; young Grimes two down the line from Willy dropped his bayonet and came up spitting out filthy water. Willy was next to Arthur Passmore, but neither had any idea how many men
were
going over the top; their world was limited to the few in their part of the flooded trench. Yet once Willy had fixed his bayonet, any fear disappeared: the whistle sounded; up the slimy steps and over the muddy top. This was no sustained charge; this was fighting against deep mud, yet suddenly and unexpectedly Willy found his feet on a strand of firmer ground. He knew it was Arthur alongside him as he continued this crazy rush towards the enemy line. Ten yards short of the trench a machine gun from a nearby hillside opened up. He heard Arthur next to him let out a shriek; he was gone. Willy moved on to a near certain death, but was amazed to find himself looking down into the trench with a white-faced lad looking up at him. With a single thrust he drove his bayonet into the youth's chest and with another movement pulled it out. He was aware of others moving into the trench, the line of attacking men had been greater than Willy had realised. The enemy trench was in their hands; the British intelligence had for once been correct.

As dusk fell, Willy crawled back to where the body of his briefly-known friend Arthur lay, dead; his upper body shattered from the cruel chatter of a machine gun. Willy lifted his body, crouched low and made back to the shelter of the overrun trench. Later he scooped out a shallow hole and lay the young soldier down before the shallow grave disappeared in the foul mud. No other would miss this young soldier; no parent, no sibling, seemingly no friends. The next day the news came that the Germans were counter-attacking and a courier arrived ordering the British to retreat. Willy learnt later in the day that over 700 men had been lost in gaining no yards at all. To Willy, the pointless death of Arthur had encapsulated the whole nature of the war; he reflected, too, on the young German soldier he had bayoneted.

That had been in October, now it was February. In the spells away from observation, failed attacks and brief breaks for a hot drink, Willy found his mind returning to other
times.
Sometimes of imagined life in Rusfield; perhaps, such thoughts protected him from wondering about the unknown future.

Back in January, the temperature had suddenly dropped as the wind moved to the east and within a week the ground had become frozen, in and outside their trench. The sharpest knife could not cut through the smallest loaf, uncovered hands immediately became numb and frostbite common. The endless sound of guns continued, but now the German shells were more deadly in their effect as the solid frozen ground refused to blunt the explosion. Men's faces took on the look of frozen masks, bereft of expression.

He folded the letter, struggled to extract his old tobacco tin and carefully placed it next to other letters. The bitterly cold weather had brought one other change for Willy, one probably denied to the other men in the trench. From the trench there was one direction Willy could always look, upwards. Seeing the sky, his thoughts turned back to his schooldays when Meadowman had trooped them out into the school yard and got them all to look up. ‘Is that cumulus, stratus or alto-cumulus?' Peter Meadows would ask them; then back to the classroom to draw the correct formation. Now the endless grey stratus had given way to cirro-cumulus, the icy companion of cold weather. He thought Meadowman would be pleased he had remembered. The clouds were his sole enjoyment of the natural world; nothing grew and he had not seen a bird for weeks. He wondered how the buzzards around Rusfield were managing; wonderful that Ruby still watched their special tree on her way to work.

But then, in late February, something quite unexpected occurred: a voice he heard from along the trench. At first he recognised its familiarity, but could not put a name to its owner. Then he knew: Lionel de Maine. There, just along the trench, was this lieutenant, little older than himself. It was, as Ruby would have said, the tone of “posh people”. Under the
officer's
peaked cap he recognised the saturnine features of the man he most loathed; the creature who had so abused his sister. If it had been possible to move rapidly along the trench he might well have struck him; but lack of space and Willy's own good sense prevailed. To be severely sanctioned, even shot, for striking an officer would be the ultimate foolishness. He would bide his time.

In fact, Willy decided to leave any acknowledgement of recognition to come from Lieutenant Lionel de Maine. After all, thought Willy, well over two years had passed since they last set eyes on each other and even then they only occasionally crossed paths. If he was not recognised then he would wait for an opportune moment for confrontation. During the next three days Willy saw Lionel several times, although the lieutenant spent much of his time in the officers' dugout which provided a modicum of protection from the cold and, at night, room enough to stretch out. On the fourth day Willy thought the lieutenant's eye had roved in his direction, then stopped for a moment, but, perhaps, this was his imagination. Half an hour later he was sure, as the man sought him out and spoke: ‘Soldier, I may be wrong but I think we should know each other. It's Willy, isn't it?'

Willy saluted, although he wanted to spit, as he sprang to as accurate an impression of attention as his frozen body would allow. ‘Yes sir. I am and I think we know each other through the time I worked for your father.'

Willy was surprised when the young officer stepped forward and, placing his hand on Willy's left shoulder, said: ‘God, it's good to see a face from Rusfield in this awful hole. What a place to meet.' He moved his hand from Willy's shoulder, thrust it forward, urging a handshake. Willy had no alternative but to respond. ‘I've only been near the front line for a few weeks and this is a bit of a shock. It's pretty grim; how long have you been here?'

Willy was bemused at the apparent friendliness of Lionel;
was
he totally unaware of what Willy knew? ‘Four months, although it seems forever,' responded Willy. He found it hard to intersperse the conversation with “sir” but, he thought the newcomer to the trench did not seem to worry. They went on to talk about Rusfield although Lionel appeared to know few people from the village. The conversation ended with Lionel indicating that the present lull in activity would shortly end.

The next day saw the change. Sergeant Grant, who had arrived at the same time as Lionel, told Willy and the rest of the men in his stretch of the trench that they were all moving to the east where a breakthrough of the German line was planned. Led by Lieutenant de Maine, they were to join a large force. Under cover of darkness they left their unwelcome home of the past weeks and Willy judged they covered around ten miles before stopping under the cover of a dilapidated barn. He felt warmer, or at least less cold, than he had for many weeks; marching was welcome. As dawn broke, the same barren landscape could be seen, but passing through a small, totally destroyed village they were aware of much activity; preparation, thought Willy, although he could only guess at preparation for an attack. It was two hours later that the men reached their destination: a trench which to most looked much the same as the one they had recently left.

Willy had found that in any group of soldiers, someone always emerged in the role of joker; now it was Private Wally Walters. ‘Well, the food is certainly much better,' he freely admitted, finishing the bully beef and biscuits. ‘Much better than that bloody pea soup with bits of old horse, but I wonder what they are feeding us up for.' He went on to tell the story of the fat German officer which most had heard many times.

The next day the plan was revealed. The trench was a quarter of a mile from the enemy front line which had been constructed to keep at bay allied advances on a railway yard, a major centre for transporting supplies to the Germans. Now, the allied decision had been made that this railway centre must
be
put out of action, which would only be possible after the forward defence line of the Germans had been overcome. The enemy line was strongly held and so a major assault was necessary. The usual plan was in place: major bombardment to negate the huge barbed-wire defence and to bring havoc to the enemy in their trenches, then a full-scale attack by the British through the destroyed barbed-wire line. The bombardment by the heaviest British guns would start the next day.

Three days later, massive fire from over 300 guns was trained on the German defences, followed by smoke to cover the British advance. All was ready for the attack by almost 8,000 men along a mile front.

The attack was launched at 06.20 hours. It was not easy for Willy to hear orders as two days before, he like all the others, had been ordered to stuff cotton wool in his ears rather than be deafened by the allied guns behind them. The signal to attack was again a whistle. The officers, armed with revolvers, were the first over the top: Willy saw Lionel lead the way without a moment's hesitation; he and the rest of the nearby men followed. The enemy fire increased; despite all efforts to keep the attack unknown to the Germans, it had been anticipated by them and their guns were ready. After what seemed an endless dash, Willy could just make out through the smoke, a gap; for all the British shelling, most of the barbed-wire barricade remained. He sensed the line of men narrowing to get through the gap, but was also aware of men falling as the machine guns sprayed their deadly metal. Men were falling, screaming and there was no way they could go on. Willy felt a sudden pain in his shoulder; it was now hard to hold his gun which was, in any case, useless against the German firepower. Even through his plugged ears, Willy heard the cry of, ‘Retreat.' He turned. His hearing impaired and now the smoke reduced his vision, the pain in his shoulder increased. He staggered a further twenty yards before pitching into a shell-hole. Two other men were already there, one who had lost his nerve on the way forward
and
had gained fortuitous protection, the other screaming as he pitched forward. Through the increasing cloud of pain, Willy wondered whether to immediately attempt to get back to his own trench or to wait. At least the smoke gave minimum cover; to wait in this forlorn hole until darkness with his wound bleeding so profusely was a more dangerous option. Even as his beleaguered mind was attempting to assess the situation, the screaming man looked at him: it was Lieutenant Lionel de Maine, his right leg hanging by a bloody, exposed bone. Willy's mind immediately recalled the order which Lionel himself had given before the attack: ‘Don't stop for the wounded as you'll be a sitting target for enemy machine guns.' The thought of Ruby flashed through his mind, yet he could not abandon a fellow soldier.

Go now, he thought. Keeping low, just under the rim of the shell-hole, he gathered up Lionel in his arms, the pain in his shoulder almost unbearable. Nearly 100 yards to go; he staggered, but somehow kept going, unaware of other men trying to get back, of the bodies of those who would never make that trench. Thirty, twenty, ten yards in time that seemed suspended. Just a few yards and a cutting swathe of machine-gun fire hit them both; Lionel's head, exposed in Willy's hold, exploded and Willy felt the agony in his back. He fell, dropping the dead Lionel de Maine.

It was an hour later that a courageous Sergeant Grant who had miraculously got back to the trench unscathed, crawled to the two men. He could see that nothing could help the one, but the other he carried back. Two stretcher bearers took Willy to the emergency dressing station in a hurriedly erected tent.

On an early March morning with the slight promise of spring in the air, Peter Woods cycled past the pond; he could not help succumbing to tears. How many times, he wondered, had he carried telegrams and letters that he knew would shatter lives when opened? The most recent had been a telegram delivered
to
Major and Mrs de Maine; Peter knew it could only say one thing. Now he carried a letter and a telegram for the Johnsons. He had got to know the family so well, he had grown to love Ruby whom he saw as a wonderfully honest and caring young woman; now he carried this letter which would bring such pain. He knew it concerned Ruby's beloved older brother; if it had been about Frank, its Egyptian origin would have shown.

He turned into Meadow Way and knocked on the cottage door; it was opened by Judith Johnson with Ruby at her shoulder. The immediate smile of happiness on Ruby's face as she saw Peter, changed in an instant when she saw what he was holding.

Later, Ruby showed Peter the letter that had brought instant and terrible grief to her lovely household. It was from Annette Jackson, sister in charge of No 65 Casualty Clearing Station; part of it read:
Your brave son knew that he was dying and retained some consciousness until his last moments. He asked me to say: “Tell mother that all is well as I am passing away peacefully. Give Ruby a special kiss from me.”
The official letter which arrived the next day was stark, but carried the same dreadful news.

C
HAPTER FORTY-SIX

March – August 1917

Robert Berry mopped his brow, grimaced a little as he stood upright and rested with both hands on his hoe. ‘God, Sammy, it just gets worse. It beggars belief that dear old Mrs Rowe has lost her second son. Poor soul. I thought South Africa was bad enough, but this – it's awful.'

Sammy Hatfield looked up from where he was weeding between the rows of peas. ‘You're right. First Ernest, now Aubrey. I called in on Mrs Rowe yesterday; she was absolutely broken, bursting into tears as she spoke about both of her lovely daughters-in-law being widowed so young. She kept saying it was all wrong for parents to see their children die; there was just nothing I could say. My heart bled for her.'

‘Ay,' agreed his friend, ‘it's all right us doing what we can with vegetables, but that doesn't help those who are suffering so much. The deaths just go on. I look up at my flag there,' pointing to the Union Jack fluttering in the gentle breeze, ‘and I think of all those boys dying for their country. Last week I saw Eliza Carey chatting with Judith Johnson and Charlotte Groves outside Violet's shop and I realised all three had already lost a son in this bloody war. Well, the Americans have come in and I suppose that's good news. I just wish the news we get from France would give everyone something to cheer about.'