Heart of War (86 page)

But the brass hats buggered them all away!

Bugger, bugger all the brass hats
,

Bugger, bugger all the brass hats
,

Bugger, bugger all the brass hats
,

For the brass hats buggered them all away!

Archie Campbell and Quentin Rowland listened. Quentin frowned. Such foul language should not be permitted. He should … Campbell should … Ramsburgh would hear it and think … The men were Devons, not his. He did nothing.

The company commander had one hundred men
,

The company commander had one hundred men
,

The company commander had one hundred men
,

But the brass hats buggered them all away!

Bugger, bugger all the brass hats…

Cate looked up from the paper at his brother-in-law, Commander Tom Rowland, down at Walstone recovering from a severe bout of flu which had kept him in bed for three
days. ‘Have you seen this piece by Archibald Hurd, Tom?' he asked.

Tom said, ‘Not yet – but I know what's in it. Hurd asked me some questions when he was preparing it.'

‘Then Hurd's right – we do have the submarine problem beaten?'

Tom spread marmalade on a piece of toast. ‘Not beaten, but on the way to it. So far in this war we've sunk about seventy-five U-boats. The French, Russians, and Americans have sunk one each, too.'

Cate leaned back and pushed the paper away. ‘It's obviously the most important battle of the war, yet it's – well, invisible. How is it being fought, really? … Oh, I don't want to be told anything secret,' he added hastily.

Tom laughed. ‘There are some secret things about it, of course, but they're mostly technical – at what depth are we setting the depth charge pistols, for instance … but the general outlines are clear enough. For a time our best weapon was the Q ship – a merchant ship carrying a hidden gun, and trained gunners. That was when U-boats surfaced and used their guns to sink merchant ships, to save torpedoes, which are expensive, and very powerful, and they can only carry a few. But the Q ships can't do much when the U-boats don't surface, but simply fire torpedoes … We lay huge minefields, at varying depths, through which the U-boats must find their way to the trade routes…. but I'm afraid that until recently our mines were badly designed and made. We captured a German document which said flatly “British mines don't explode,” but it's better now … We put wire nets across specific places, and channels. We patrol the seas day and night, with the object of forcing the U-boats to stay submerged – they use up a lot of battery power when they're running submerged … And we build more ships. At this moment two lines are about to cross on our graphs – the one showing British merchant tonnage being sunk, a line which is steadily going down – and the line showing the amount of British tonnage being launched – which is steadily going up

‘And we can find the men to man them and officers to guide them?' Cate said. ‘That's the wonder of it, considering the risks they have to face.'

‘The merchant Navy's had a much harder war than we
have,' Tom said. ‘They have to dip their ensigns to us when we meet at sea, but believe me, we all take off our hats to them, too.'

‘That's just what Hurd says,' Cate said. He watched as Tom spread another piece of toast. After six months in the Admiralty some of the distinctive red-bronze wind and sun burn of the sea had faded from his face; but he seemed more at ease in himself, more relaxed. He had before always struck Cate as being not exactly aloof, but held in tight control.

Garrod came in, felt the coffee and tea pots and brought him some coffee. She went out, and Cate picked up the paper – ‘Been to the theatre recently, Tom?'

Tom almost jumped, and his mouth tightened. Cate continued, wondering – ‘I'm thinking of going up to Town some day soon … do some business … perhaps see a show. I wondered if you could recommend one …'

Tom relaxed – ‘Oh, of course. There's …'

Sipping his coffee, Harry Rowland felt a strange sensation of timelessness. Here he was in the Middle Drawing Room of No. 10 Downing Street, with the Prime Minister, the sun shining on Horse Guards' Parade … but much blood had flowed under the bridges since August, 1914. It was chiefly the physical presence of the Prime Minister that marked the passage of time – for this was not the suave Herbert Asquith, but the square dynamic figure of David Lloyd George, one hand clenched into a fist as he made his points, the mane of grey-brown hair always in motion as the heavy head turned this way and that.

‘It's a conspiracy!' he said fiercely. ‘If I gave Haig the sack, none of the Army commanders would agree to take his place. Robertson backs him up in the War Office.'

Harry glanced at the long-faced figure in uniform, his left breast aglow with medal ribbons, sprawled in an arm chair, the long legs in glassy field boots crossed at the knee, the long hands entwined. The figure, General Sir Henry Wilson, spoke – ‘It does not have to be one of the Army commanders, Prime Minister.'

Lloyd George said, ‘Ah, we all know you'd like the job, Henry.' He wagged an admonitory forefinger at him. ‘But once we've got rid of Haig, Robertson will resign – he must, he's totally committed himself to Haig and his policies … and that's where you will come in.'

‘Chief of the Imperial General Staff,' Wilson murmured dreamily.

The Prime Minister said, ‘The man to succeed Haig will have to come from the Western Front. Otherwise the soldiers out there will not have faith in him, won't believe he knows what he's doing. Any ideas, Craddock? Mackenzie? Rowland?'

The three back-bench M.P.s sat up a little straighter. Craddock said, ‘I don't know, Prime Minister … the men trust Haig. I hear that everywhere I go. They respect him, too.'

Lloyd George said with intense animation, ‘But don't you see, that's just why we must get rid of him? He's leading the Army to ruin … If only someone – Army commander, Corps commander, anyone … would revolt, say officially this is murder, we could act.'

Mackenzie said, ‘The men and officers I've spoken to, back home on leave, have spoken very highly of Plumer.'

‘I know they have,' Lloyd George snapped, ‘and Plumer took Messines with a fifth of the casualties expected. He looks like a caricature of a British general – short little legs, white moustache, paunch, rosy cheeks … but he won't take it. We've sounded him out, privately. He's loyal to Haig, instead of to his country.'

Harry said, ‘Churchill thinks highly of General Monash, Prime Minister.'

Lloyd George swung on him. ‘Yes. So do others. Notably Haig … which is enough to put me off him, in itself … Not really, but we couldn't put a colonial in command of all our Armies in France, a colonial who's still only a major general. And Monash is not only an Australian, he's a lawyer, an amateur soldier … and a Jew. The generals would refuse to serve under him.'

‘The man who impressed me most when I went out in 1915,' said Craddock, ‘was Trenchard.'

Lloyd George said, ‘Another major general, and an airman.'

I wonder if the soldiers would care what the commander-in-chief's rank or race was, Harry thought, as long as he achieved victory quickly and brought them home out of the bath of blood and mud in which they had been suffering for so long.

The Prime Minister glanced round at the clock on the mantelpiece behind him, and said, ‘I have a War Cabinet meeting in a few minutes … I asked you three here because I need the support of the House of Commons in what I must do … what I think is vital for the country that we do, that is – get rid of Haig. In the last resort I could dismiss him out of hand – but, as General Wilson and I have explained to you, it would
be very difficult to replace him in those circumstances. I want you three to go out to France – not as an official House committee, but as individual M.P.s – and spend a week sounding out everyone you can get hold of, about who can be persuaded to replace Haig. If we're to have any men left, I must act by the end of the year, at the latest … Look around you, look at the women particularly. Their eyes are haunted, even as they go abut their work in the houses, the factories. It's got to stop … Go next week. Henry here will see that you get accommodation, transport, guides, everything … I have to leave you now.'

He walked briskly out of the big room. Wilson uncoiled his legs and stood up to his considerable height – ‘I must go, too. Call me on the telephone as soon as you've decided when to leave. I can make out an itinerary for you … one that will enable you to talk to the most useful people.' He nodded and strode out.

Craddock, Mackenzie and Harry, all now on their feet, looked at each other. ‘Why us?' Craddock said. ‘Why not Carson, Churchill, Curzon, Bonar Law – cabinet members, front benchers?'

Mackenzie said in his soft Highland singsong,
‘Because
we're back benchers, Craddock. The important names are all more or less committed to Mr Lloyd George, so whatever they report would be construed as having come from the Prime Minister. But he wants it to come from the Commons – the ordinary people of the country.'

‘He wants us to find a traitor in Haig's camp, is what it comes to,' Craddock said, grumbling.

Harry said slowly, ‘In a way, but we do have a responsibility to the country … we all do, including the soldiers and generals out there, greater than any allegiance to Haig.'

Four of them occupied the small private dining room at Rule's, Harry Rowland facing the Minister of Munitions, Winston Churchill. The women in the other two chairs were Churchill's mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, and Daisy, Countess of Warwick.

Churchill, the host for the hastily arranged luncheon, said, ‘May I have your permission to smoke, ladies?'

His mother nodded and the countess said, ‘Of course, Winston … and
I
shall have a cigarette.'

Winston lit up, turned his brandy glass round to catch the light, and said, ‘When are you leaving for France?'

Harry said, ‘We haven't decided yet, but it'll be soon.'

Churchill drank, sighed with contentment, and said, ‘It's a question of finding a general with
imagination
. For the life of me I can not understand why Haig used the tanks last September, on the Somme. I was midwife to their birth, and after all the genius expended in inventing them, all our efforts to keep them shrouded in secrecy, so that they could burst upon the Huns in mass, a thousand, two thousand, flooding the field of battle, irresistible … for Haig to use a paltry score in the insignificant and limited engagement at Flers is … words fail me!'

‘I can't believe
that
,' Daisy murmured.

Churchill continued, ‘So, which of our generals has imagination? Oh, they want to win the war all right … but they won't think beyond the Western Front, and violently resist any attempts of ours to do so.'

Harry said, ‘France is the decisive theatre, surely?'

Churchill waved his cigar expansively. ‘Certainly. But we don't have to achieve victory there this year … or next. We can hold defensively until the Americans have had time to develop their full potential. We can build up our strength, and at the same time deprive the Germans of their peripheral allies … drive the Austrians back over the Dolomites and into the plain of the Danube … knock Turkey out of the war with decisive blows – and cheap ones – in Palestine and Mesopotamia …'

‘But we've lost the Russians,' Lady Randolph said.

Churchill said, ‘All the more reason to stand on the defensive in the West, Mother, to prepare ourselves for the assault that must certainly come when the Germans can remove nearly all their divisions from the East and bring them against us and the French. One can almost say, to a few days, when the great assault will be launched.'

‘How can that be?' Lady Warwick asked. Harry wondered, too. Churchill was a brilliant man, but surely this was…?

‘Late March,' Churchill said, leaning forward. ‘Why? Because winter has already set in, and nothing can be done now until the snow has melted and movement is again possible. But by late spring next year the Americans will be in
France in strength … say April. So – the Germans must attack as soon as winter is over, but before the Americans come …
ergo
, late March. So we must ensure that by then our Armies are at full strength, including artillery and ammunition of all kinds … If Haig cannot be restrained – or replaced – we will not achieve that. We will have instead an Army under strength through continuous heavy casualties, discouraged and demoralized by repeated failures.'