A Test to Destruction (20 page)

“When did you leave school?”

“After the summer term of ’sixteen, sir.”

“Yes, I remember that battle. Craddock’s squadron tried to engage the
Gneisenau
and
Scharnhorst,
while the sun was in von Spee’s eyes. Von Spee held off until sunset, when Craddock’s ships were silhouetted against the western skyline, making clear black targets. My God, I wonder if this Oberst von Spee will try and emulate his famous relation’s idea, and attack over the crest as the sun is rising, and dazzling our chaps’ eyes? We couldn’t see a damn thing, hardly, when we went over on July the First, with the sun in our eyes! I wouldn’t mind betting that’s what’ll happen!”

Time dragged a little less; and when the company commanders came up, with the R.S.M., Phillip passed round his whiskey’d water-bottle, first offering it to Mr. Adams.

“No, thank you, sir, I never touch it.”

The company commanders refused, so Phillip did not drink.

“I’ll go briefly over what we have to do. I propose to extend from here to the south, and then move up to the ridge. The going may be a little rough. It isn’t essential to keep to extended order all the way, but try not to arrive there bunched. Half sections can trickle through, but don’t lose touch with your flanks. The road here is the left flank. When you get to the village with your companies, Tabor and Dawes, feel your way through the ruins
to the main road east of the village. There dig in. I shall be on the left flank here, going up the road. Hedges and Whitfield will you bring up your chaps behind the leading companies? Keep in touch with one another. Is that clear, boys? Any questions? None? Righty ho, carry on!”

He waited for ten minutes to allow Dawes and Tabor to deploy, then walked slowly up the road with R.S.M. Adams. When they got to the ruins of the Hospice, Major Kidd appeared having come, apparently, from the village beyond.

“I say, old boy,” he said, controlling quick breathing, “may I have a word with you in private?”

The R.S.M. went back a few yards, with the runners, and Kidd said, “I won’t mince matters, I’m not a Shakespearean what-not, old boy. I’ll come straight to the point. I may be blunt, that’s Bill Kidd, often broke but never bent. You ought to know that by this time.” He smelt of whiskey.

“What is your point? That you’re supposed to be with the cadre at Byron Farm?”

“Does it not occur to you, old boy, that it’s my job to know where the battalion is going to hang out? Furthermore, as your number two I may have to take over at any moment?”

“My
number two? You behave like Bill Kidd’s number one, number two, and all the other numbers.”

“There’s another thing, old boy. The Brigade-major’s orders to you were clear, I think. ‘Go up the road, a hundred yards between companies.’ Right? Right! But at the first whisper of a rikko you give orders to deploy, not in face of the enemy, old boy, but his arse! There are twenty Jocks holding Wytschaete, and you do a deployment that would have shamed the Dogpotter Volunteers of thirty years ago. You don’t know your job, old boy, and that’s a fact!”

“Well, I would say you don’t know yours! Why not go back to Byron Farm? I’ll send a runner to tell you where battalion headquarters are when we’ve established them. Meanwhile our job is to establish contact with the Lochiel patrol.”

“I know where they are!”

“You’ve found them? Then perhaps you’ll take me to them?”

“Why should I?”

“Do you refuse?”

“Now listen, old boy! Do you want to be taken to them, and then to say, ‘When I’ve found my little lot, I’ll bring them to
you’? What sort of a crowd d’you suppose they’d think the Mediators are? The Royal Staybacks?”

“You’re boring me, Kidd.”

“What the hell d’you think you’re doing to me? Let me tell you something, old boy. You’ve sent our fellows slapbang into the two Peckham mine craters, each a hundred yards across and filled with water fifty feet deep! That’s what you’ve done, and unless our blokes are prepared to swim, the only way round will be taped by the Boche with machine-guns.”

“Did you know that, before they left?”

“Of course I did, old boy.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“You didn’t ask me. You prefer to run the show yourself!”

“What do you suggest now?”

“That’s entirely up to you. You’re the C.O., not Bill Kidd.”

“I am asking for the opinion of my second-in-command!”

“Right, I’ll give it, old boy! It’s this. I’ll put a bullet into you if you muck up this crush!”

Phillip opened the flap of his Parabellum, and was pulling it out when Kidd said, “Now go easy, old boy! You don’t put the wind up Bill Kidd with that sort of act, you know. The Mad Son may lose his wool, but not Bill Kidd! Can’t you take a joke, old lad?”

“Yes, can you? I wasn’t serious.”

“Nor was I, old boy.”

“Let’s get this straight, Bill. I realise how you feel. You’re senior to me as a captain, I know. But after all, I
am
in charge of the battalion. We’re all in this together. I need your help. What do you think we should do?”

“Carry on, old boy, and to hell with the Boche!”

Phillip held out his hand; Kidd, with a hearty grip, almost crushed his fingers. “Count on me, my Mad Son! Only you must admit that it’s the funniest dam’ way of getting quickly to a position already held by blokes of another lot that I ever did hear tell of! Let’s get a move on, for Christ’s sake.”

It was 3.30 a.m. The headquarters party, led by the two senior officers, now arm in arm, reached the square of the village without incident. An anxious half hour followed, while they waited for the leading companies, tensely, for the dawn was not far off. While they waited, many streams of bullets hissed over in the passive diminuendo and crescendo of traversing
fire. Obviously they were fired from the reverse slopes of the ridge.

“The Boche is chancing his arm, old boy. He’s on his last legs. ‘Spectre’ was saying last night that had old Fatty Ludendorff had the sense to keep pushing down south, he’d have won the war by now. And the Old Man knows what he’s talking about, and don’t you forget it! ‘Spectre’s’ the finest bloody infantry soldier in this war, bar none, and by rights he ought to be C.G.S. to Duggie Haig! You know he protested to Rawlinson before July the First, that the Fourth Army plan was wrongly based, don’t you?”

“Yes. I was serving under him when he was stellenbosched.”

“It was a question of the depth of the German dug-outs. Apparently the Staff didn’t know they were thirty feet deep.”

“I know. He advised that the plan of slow advance be changed to a swift assault.”

“Exactly! And what made me bloody mad with you, old boy, was for not carrying out ‘Spectre’s’ orders! Hullo, there! Mediators? Stout lads!”

As figures approached, Bill Kidd began to play his mouth-organ, to the tune of
Colonel
Bogey.

“Well, thanks for your help, Wilhelm mein prächtige kerl! Perhaps you ought to get back to Byron Farm now?”

“Not on your life, my Mad Son of a Gun! I’m responsible for training, you know, and this is the place to train the lads to be Boche eaters.”

Kidd waited until the other companies arrived, and then, telling No. 4 (Hedges) to remain where they were, led the others through the brick-heaps of the southern environs of the village and so to the Ypres-Messines road running north-south along the crest. Hardly had they settled into shell-holes when the scouts Phillip had sent out returned breathlessly saying that they had heard many German voices in front of them. Within a couple of minutes, as light began to filter from the east, a file of figures was seen to be approaching the road.

“Will you let me deal with them, Phil?”

“Carry on, Bill.”

“Fix bayonets.” The word was passed down from Kidd. When the figures were within fifty yards he jumped up, waving his revolver and yelling “Come on, the Mediators!”, ran forward. He was followed by a ragged line shouting in release of fear. At once the dim figures turned and made off.

“Come on you crab-wallas, do an allez!”

A light machine-gun was found on the ground. Scouts, under Kidd, went down the Oostaverne road, stopping at an old pillbox at the junction with the Messines-Ypres road.

“We should hold this as an advanced strong point, old boy. We could then outflank any attack, north or south from where we are now. What d’you think?”

“All right. I’ll get in touch with the Hadrians on our left, and tell them we’ve filled the gap between them and the Moonrakers.”

The pill-box at the road junction had been made in the cellars of the Staenyzer Kabaret, a brick-built buvette where, before the war, peak-capped peasants in sabots had clopped in to drink calvados, rhum, and café-cognac, and smoke their own brown, rank tabac. It was a two-storey pill-box, the upper portion having been made originally for an artillery observation post. Some of the original brick walling still hid the massive concrete; and through splayed slits, cased in wood, pointing east, south, and north, machine-guns could be fired only a few inches higher than the surrounding ground level.

“It’s a gift,” said Kidd.

Here four Lewis guns, with the captured German gun, were set up to form ‘Kidd’s Post’, as it was called. The outpost line, in shell-holes, spread out on either side of the Kabaret, three hundred yards in front of the village.

Later in the grey morning mist as Phillip was going with Naylor along the line, he saw Kidd walking forward to look over the near-level wilderness of the old battlefield extending down to Oostaverne. While he was standing up about two hundred yards in front of the outposts a Fokker flew over low and fired at him. Instead of dodging, Kidd stood still. The biplane turned, and coming down low, opened up again. While bullets kicked up earth all around him, Kidd jerked an arm with two-finger insults at the pilot. As the Fokker flew away they heard him shouting, “Green Hun, you can’t shoot straight! Go back and tell Fatty Ludendorff to put you on a course!” Then lighting a fag he strolled back, to arrive coughing and doubled up, to say after a pause in his rusty voice, “You young Boche eaters can laugh! Wait until you cop a packet of rotten eggs!” More laughter, and cries of “Good old Kiddo!”

Greatly relieved at the unity Kidd had inspired, Phillip went back to send off the situation report: Contact made on both flanks; enemy patrol in strength from OOSTAVERNE WOOD repulsed; one light machine-gun captured; STAENYZER KABARET occupied; four (4) columns of enemy troops in vicinity of OOSTAVERNE, apparently assembling for attack; liaison established with LEMON R.F.A., MOONRAKERS, and HADRIANS; red rockets for artillery SOS barrage, green rockets to mark outpost line in position;
morale
good; Casualties to 8 a.m. 1 officer killed (2-Lt. Gotley), 3 o.r. wounded.

Towards noon the sun, a silver shilling in the early hours, became a golden sovereign. More Maltese-crossed aircraft came over. The young soldiers loosed off with their rifles, and shouted insults in imitation of ‘Kiddo’.

The Fokkers were followed by a bombardment which caused some casualties. Early exuberance gave way to seriousness, which showed itself in individual hollowing out of cubby holes, and in a few cases of dejection because pals had gone west, after moans and distraction. Phillip went specially to the shocked-bereft, more than once putting an arm round a boy’s shoulders, saying, “You’ll be all right. Don’t imagine too much, this won’t go on for ever. This is Jerry’s last hope. Don’t be afraid to talk to me, that’s what I’m here for, among other things. We’re all in this together.” He felt that he had learned ‘Spectre’s’ secret of letting fear pass out of him by thinking of others, at the same time feeling that he had deserted them when he went back to his headquarters in the comparative safety of Wytschaete.

These headquarters were in a pill-box taller than the usual
mebus,
as the Germans called them. Apparently it had been made by some Saxon regiment in the quiet days of early 1916, for in the lintel over the entrance was carved, in careful Gothic lettering, the word SASCHENFESTE. Arriving there, he found that it was already connected by land-wire with Brigade at Basseije Farm. And he had forgotten to tell the Signalling Officer to get this done! A moment’s reflection dissolved self-reproach, as he recalled ‘Spectre’s’ words,
You
will
be
supported
by
your
officers
,
you
needn’t
think
that
you
must
do
everything
yourself.
And,
Don’t
be
too
anxious.
Other lines, said the S.O., also Intelligence, were being taken out to both flanking battalions, and the three companies.

The fourth company was in battalion reserve. Sitting down to a cup of café-au-lait prepared by O’Gorman, he began to feel
in control of the battalion. Also, twenty-five bob a day, plus command pay of another five, wasn’t to be sneezed at. Then there was blood money, one hundred and eighty days’ pay for the first year of service, ninety days’ pay for each succeeding year or part-year. He was working out what he would be worth if the war should end by Christmas, and should his acting rank be confirmed, when a call came from the left-flanking battalion. The Moonrakers’ colonel said that ‘almost black masses were moving up from the Oostaverne position’.

“I’ll come along at once.”

He went with R.S.M. Adams, leaving Naylor at the telephone, who sent a runner after him, when he had gone less than a hundred yards, to say that reinforcements, consisting of tunnellers, were on their way up to be attached to the battalion ‘to putty up any holes’, in the Brigade-major’s words.

Phillip returned, and told the Moonrakers’ colonel that he must put off his proposed visit. The absence of enemy shelling was disturbing. He spoke to all company commanders, and to Kidd in the Kabaret pill-box.

“I’ve had a dekko, old boy. They won’t get past here.”

The tunnellers arrived. They had sallow faces, and said at once that they hadn’t fired a rifle in the war so far. They looked windy, very naturally, said Phillip aside to the R.S.M. “Treat them kindly, Mr. Adams.”