Heart of War (82 page)

He sat back, looking at Isabel with love and longing. The train hurried through Bushey, spray dashing past the windows as the Claughton picked up water from the troughs. Speed remained steady at 45 m.p.h. on the excellent London & North Western roadbed, climbing easily up the southern slopes of the Chilterns. Why should I be picked on, of all the men in the world, Cate thought, to love a woman and not be allowed to share my life publicly with her? Why do we have to meet in railway stations, and sleep in strange hotel rooms, instead of in my great bed in the Manor house of my village? Why can we not marry, at least, even if it is too late to raise more children from this woman's womb? The train hurried past King's Langley … Berkhamsted … still climbing,
labouring, rocking, pounding … the vale spread away to his left, the ribbon of the Grand Junction Canal close, white lock gates, long narrow barges with brightly painted metal flower pots, a canal-side pub … swans on the water, last spring's cygnets beginning to get their adult white plumage … Why was his son in France, killing people he'd never met or, usually, even seen? The train passed over Tring summit and at once the beat of the Claughton's exhaust quickened, the wheels clacked faster over the joints, and the wind rushed faster past Lord Derby's open window, riffling the newspaper he held steady in his massive, imperially pale hands.

The leave ship was crowded, the men on the decks below a seething mass, not much movement, just the gleam of the steel helmets strapped to their packs, the rifles slung on their shoulders, the smoke curling up from hundreds of cigarettes and pipes. The big overhead lights on the dockside were dark for fear of German air attack, the water below shining only from the starlight and the iridescence of oil on its surface. Naomi watched, leaning over the rail, her hat pulled firmly down on her head. She was in the uniform of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, on her way at last to join Number 12 Convoy, the new English Convoy, serving with the British Army east of Amiens, where she was to report to the Town Major for detailed orders and onward transport. At last she felt clean and free, the sea wind blowing stray strands of her hair, tugging at the hat with the big F.A.N.Y. badge. Rodney Venable had written to her half a dozen times from France – he didn't say how he had come to be sent out there, after so long in the War Office – but he did say it had been a privilege to know her and sincerely hoped they could renew their friendship soon. He had given her confidence, and taught her that there really was an attainable relationship between men and women, that did not depend on subservience or domination. But … it was over. France lay ahead, and war, and after that … who knew?

A soldier near her on the rail said, ‘Good evening, Miss Naomi.'

She peered and cried out, ‘Fletcher Gorse!'

His teeth shone momentarily, ‘Fletcher Whitman, miss. Private, 1st Battalion the Weald Light Infantry.'

‘Did you have a good time on leave?' she asked; and remembered that her mother had written in one of her letters that Betty Merritt was rumoured to have been seen in Hedlington with Fletcher when he was a recruit at the Depot. Well, good luck to them, if they could find anything to talk about together, when the kissing was over.

Fletcher said, ‘Sorry to hear about Mr John.'

‘Oh, he'd feel guilty if he wasn't in gaol, the way he feels about the war … and I've been praying every night that it won't be over before I get out there! But it must be dreadful for you, having to go back to – what you are going back to. I do admire you all so much.'

Fletcher said, ‘It's horrible, miss, but they couldn't stop me going back, however hard they tried. Not if Field Marshal Haig himself said, Fletcher, don't come back. I've got to be there, to see and feel it, so's I can write the poetry.'

‘Oh, yes,' she said. ‘You are a poet, aren't you?'

Fletcher said, ‘Yes, miss.
I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love
.'

The ship's siren boomed, her body shuddering to its tremendous throb, the water began to churn under the stern, and the dock, the shore, the land, England, home, receded, the gap of water widening, shining, gleaming dark and deep.

Benedict XV was a good man, Cate thought, and doing no more than his spiritual duty in trying to bring about an end to the war. But Wilson and Lansing were right, too: Germany could not be trusted. Better to say – the American Note had made the distinction clear – the present rulers of Germany could not be trusted. So, the war would go on; and the attacks round Ypres, in the rain and the mud. The guns were firing day and night over there, but they could barely be heard these days, because of the dense atmosphere, the low clouds, the rain. The air was as heavy, as thick, as impassable, as the mud which seemed to have become the dominating factor of the offensive. He looked at the open letter beside his plate –
Dear Father. Christopher
– he smiled; that was what Johnny had decided to call him, as he said he didn't like any of the other
possibilities. It may sound like a Roman Catholic priest, but that couldn't be helped … the salutation had a pleasant ring to it:

This is my last day with the 16th Infantry, and I am sorry to be leaving them, while keenly looking forward to becoming an officer of the Field Artillery. The colonel (of the 16th) was not pleased when I told him I would be applying for the FA, but he calmed down when he realized that I would be very unlikely to be posted back to this regiment, in any case, even if I stayed in the infantry. Also, that the FA is expanding even faster than the infantry, and desperately needs officers.

We have been back two weeks from our spell with the British, and have been able to pass on everything we learned, both as to what to do and what not to do. My Navajo friend Chee Shush Benally has applied to return Stateside with me as my striker (soldier servant). The major blew his top and said no, but Chee says he will come to my battery, wherever it is, when I get back to France, which should be before Christmas. And he will, believe me, whatever the U.S. Army thinks!

Unless I make a fool of myself at my interview with the FA colonel tomorrow it is certain that I shall be sent to Fort Sill, in Oklahoma, to be turned from a foots logging corporal to a red-legged shavetail; so my next letter to you will probably be from there. Stella writes that she is well, and the baby is not giving her any trouble. It must be very tiring for her, but I know you are all looking after her. Still, I wish I could be there when our baby is born.

Cate folded the letter and put it in his pocket. He saw Stella about twice a week, and wrote regularly to Johnny about her. Dr Kimball had examined her only two days ago, and said that the baby was in a good position and the birth should be normal in every way. Yet … yet … Stella was not her old self. The beauty was there, but not the old sense of life. He'd better ride over this morning, tell her what Johnny had said – she might have had a letter from him herself, of course – and generally cheer her up. Johnny wouldn't be back to France until the end of the year, he'd said. And there probably wouldn't be any major American action until the spring. That was six or seven months away … not much, in a lifetime of marriage; but a great deal, in this war.

The blizzard of shells howled overhead without cease. Shells exploded in continuous thunder along the German front line trenches and barbed wire, two hundred yards ahead and thirty feet higher up the slope from the
beke
. The men of the Weald Light Infantry waited in the British trenches, bowed, jammed against one another like sardines, the bayonet points stabbing the thick air above them. Rain splashed down steadily, trickling off the rims of the steel helmets, soaking and weighting the rough serge of the uniforms, glistening on the backs of the hands, on the few upturned faces. They stood in a foot of mud, a brown glue, two inches of water now running on top of it, flowing along the trench in a turgid slow stream, carrying with it empty Woodbine packets, message forms, lost letters from home, turds swept out of the latrine bays or overturned buckets, bandages – anything that would float. Deep in the mud, out of sight, but known as soon as a man moved, were rifles, bayonets, mess tins, clips of ammunition, shell splinters, ammunition boxes, unexploded grenades and shells, heads, drowned rats, hands, entrails – a universal foul smelling half-solid slime.

The first light of day had come half an hour ago, revealing the sodden waste of No Man's Land, the Nollehoek ridge, low scurrying clouds, haggard faces, dark rimmed eyes, blinking, holding tight to sanity, sometimes not succeeding. Quentin Rowland looked at his watch. Five minutes to zero hour. ‘We'll get the bottom of the ridge this time,' he said to his adjutant, standing beside him, ‘and Nollehoek next time.'

Archie Campbell said, ‘Yes, sir,' but Quentin frowned. Campbell had not sounded confident. How could the men be expected to attack with fire and fury if their officers didn't believe that what they were going to do had much chance of success?

Archie noticed his colonel's expression in the flat, dead light, and added, ‘We'll take our objectives, I'm sure, sir … but then they'll counter-attack. They always have.'

‘Yes,' Quentin said, ‘and that's why we're going in with only one company up, and three in reserve, just to have a bigger force in hand when the Boches do counter-attack.' He looked at his watch again, then glanced down the bay, where his nephew Captain Boy Rowland was looking at his. Boy's C Company would lead the attack. Boy drew his whistle from his breast pocket as his uncle watched, then, waiting ten seconds till the hands showed the precise hour, he blew the whistle. The men scrambled up the short ladders that had been placed there in the night for the purpose, and, slipping and sliding in the mud, snaked through the gaps in the British barbed wire, then, spreading out to right and left, began to advance, rifles at the high port.

Quentin followed to the top of a ladder, put up his binoculars and watched, exposed to the waist. Fountains of mud and earth began to rise all around him, obscuring and blurring his view, as the German artillery opened defensive fire on the British trench and No Man's Land. The clatter of machine guns became a continuous tearing roar. The men out there were barely thirty yards away, though they had been in the open for a minute or more. At each agonized step every man's leg sank into the mud almost to the knee, burying the puttee, plastering the trousers with mud. Painfully they dragged that leg out … put down the next. There must have been the sounds of sucking, of boots being torn off by the grip of the mud, but Quentin could hear nothing over the thunder of the artillery and the vast ripping-canvas crackle of the machine guns. On … men falling … he could clearly see Boy, in the centre of the sixty men who now comprised C Company, a few paces in front of them … four more minutes to go, at least … men down in the mud, heaving humps in the rain, then lying still. A cry burst through his gritted teeth, ‘Go on, Wealds … on … !' More men down, an officer turning in a slow, grotesque pirouette of death, falling at last sideways and lying twisted, without motion – ‘On … On!'

‘Are they there yet, sir?' Campbell shouted up.

‘Nearly,' he called back. ‘Where's Kellaway?'

‘Here, sir.'

‘Are you ready?'

‘Yes, sir.'

Quentin had never taken his eyes off the thin, painful progress of C Company. They had passed through the German wire where gaps had been torn in it by British artillery fire … they were disappearing into the earth now, in threes and fours … were they being shot down? He stared tensely, through the eyepieces. No, they were jumping down into the German trench!

‘They're in!' he shouted. ‘C's in … All right, Kellaway, go!' He hurried up the last rungs of the ladder onto the mud above. Whistles shrilled in the trench. Campbell struggled up to join him, then the R.S.M., two batmen, two runners … then Kellaway, his C.S.M., and the men of B, spreading out as C had; D Company was snaking up the communication trench to follow B. Quentin started walking forward, and at once fell on his face, his legs held by the mud. He struggled up, his tunic filthy and his face splashed with mud, and took another step … he was deep in the mud … another … the air chattered and moaned, and shouted and tugged at his flesh, at his soaked, mud-heavy uniform … one step at a time, teeth grated, he forced on.