Starshine (10 page)

That night he and Bertie got gloriously drunk at the Café des Allies, drinking red wine this time. They found it much more satisfying. They still, however, eschewed the idea of ‘going next door’. As a safeguard against the redcaps, Jim pinned the medal on his tunic for the unsteady walk home and, although they were stopped twice, they were allowed to proceed with congratulations and a request to ‘keep it down, lads’. It seemed that even the military police had hearts. Sometimes.

The first Christmas of the war came and went quietly for them, billeted as they were behind the lines. They heard rumours of the fraternisation on Christmas Day, when Germans and British stood in no man’s land, exchanged souvenirs and even played football, but they saw little evidence of fraternal feeling when they returned to the shelling and constant sniping of the line a few days later.

After their brief conversation on the morning after the night raid, there had been no further confrontation between Hickman and Sergeant Flanagan, although Bertie still seemed to suffer more than his fair share of latrine duty. Short of complaining to their platoon officer, which was unthinkable, there was nothing that Jim could do about it and Bertie endured it stoically enough, excusing his many absences by saying that he was just ‘goin’ down to the Mountains of Mourne again, see.’

Hickman could still see no real reason for the sergeant’s persecution of Bertie. The Protestant-Catholic divide was the obvious explanation, but there were other Catholics in the company and they were not singled out for bullying. Perhaps it was Bertie’s perennial cheerfulness that irked. Yet, as the incident on the German wire had proved, it was more than bullying. Bertie’s entanglement would have been illuminated by the star shell and his body would have been riddled with bullets within seconds, if Jim had not cut him free just in time. It was, in fact, an evil and malevolent act. Thinking about it, a little shudder of fear ran through Jim. He had to admit that, despite his angry confrontation with the man in no man’s land, he was more than a little afraid of Black Jack Flanagan. Physically, there was not much to choose between them. Jim was marginally taller and as broad, but the sergeant was older, experienced and weathered by a dozen or more violent encounters on battlefield and in barrack room. Regular soldiers like him had served all over the Empire: India, South Africa, probably Burma. His skin was like leather and his attitude equally hard. He was, undoubtedly, a man to be feared and watched carefully.

Both Jim and Bertie were longing for their first period of home leave, but spells of relief behind the lines, days occupied with training, were all that came their way. Reinforcements were now beginning
to pour into the Salient, not only from the first trickle of Kitchener’s ‘first hundred thousand’ of volunteer recruits, but also from the Empire. Turbanned Indians arrived to take their turn in the line and show that, despite suffering from the cold more severely than British troops, they were their equal in courage and soldierly skills. Then came the South Africans and, in more strength, the Canadians. The children of the Empire, it seemed, had responded enthusiastically to the call of the Mother Country.

As winter progressed towards spring in rain, sleet and snow, it became clear that both sides were building up for a big spring offensive. It was incomprehensible that these vastly swollen armies should continue sitting in their trenches, facing each other across a few hundred yards of battered earth, without one or the other crouching back on its haunches, like a challenged stag, and then springing forward.

Hickman confessed his fears to Bertie one evening as they stood together on the fire step. ‘We’ve been lucky, old lad,’ he said, ‘that we have not yet really been asked to do what the Germans did when we first landed. That is, charge across this bloody mud in the face of rifle and machine-gun fire. I’d rather they did it again before we try. It would be bloody suicide.’

His wish was granted, but in a strange manner and with horrific results.

The regiment were stationed in the second line of trenches as support troops some fifty yards behind the front, in late April 1915, when the German attack came. Rumours were rife that, the day before, the Germans had used a new chemical weapon against the French on the north-east of the line and that the Algerian troops had fled and the day had only been saved by the late intervention of the Canadians. As a result, flannel body belts – usually used by
being wrapped around the midriff in tropical conditions to soak up excessive perspiration – were issued. Rum jars filled with water were placed at intervals along the trench and orders were given that, if gas was used, the belts were to be quickly soaked in water and tied around nose and mouth.

‘Wish they’d kept the rum in the jars,’ muttered Bertie.

Jim sniffed. ‘It seems barmy to try and use gas. The Germans would need a reasonably strong wind to blow it across to us, I would say, and nothing’s moving today. And what would they do if they let the stuff out and then the wind changed to blow it back to them? Bloody dangerous stuff for anybody to use, if you ask me.’

What did ensue, however, was a particularly heavy bombardment, concentrated, it seemed, on the reserve trenches rather than the front line. Usually, a barrage would be adjusted to creep up to the main line, but this one seemed to grow with intensity and remained crashing into the Territorials, shredding a wood behind them and causing the troops to cower in the trenches. It was unusually accurate and the trench walls, so carefully shored up with sandbags, were collapsing all around, burying men and equipment and sending up spouts of soil and timber cladding.

Jim and Bertie crouched down together, the latter telling his rosary under his breath and Jim swearing softly and consistently, both of them trembling. Then, suddenly, the shelling stopped as soon as it had begun and a shriek came up from the end of the communications trench that led to the front line: ‘GAS!’

‘Put on your belts,’ shouted Jim. He pushed Bertie towards the nearest rum jar and pulled the little man’s belt from his haversack, dipped it into the water and threw it at him. He did the same with his own, covering his mouth and nose and tying it behind his neck, urging his section to do the same. Then he saw the gas.

It looked like thin grey smoke and it was creeping slowly – quite slowly, for there was only the faintest of breezes to carry it – down the communication trench from the front line and over the top of the line towards the support trench. It advanced at the speed of a man sauntering, it hung closely to the ground, it rose to a height of about eight or nine feet and there was no way around it. It was unearthly and malevolent, something that no bullet or bayonet could repel.

Slightly in front of it men came rushing down the communications trench. Under the cloth belt, Hickman’s jaw dropped as he saw them. They were shrieking with strange, hoarse voices, tearing at their throats, their eyes wide and staring. Some fell and were immediately trampled on by those behind, uncaring in their haste to get away from the grey cloud and the searing pain that it brought. Reaching the support trench they carried on running and screaming through what was left of the trench, out into the shattered wood behind and the shell-torn open country beyond that.

The first touch of the gas caught Jim. Despite the cloth protection, he inhaled the first whiff. Immediately, he choked and coughed, attempting to spit as his lungs burned as if he had sucked in naked flame. Unprotected, the eyes felt as though needles were being inserted. He dropped to his knees and buried his face in the mud floor of the trench to escape the vapour but – as he came to realise later – this was the worst thing he could have done because the gas was heavier than air and at its thickest at its base.

Somehow, he grabbed Bertie with one hand, his rifle and bayonet with the other and rushed up the communication trench towards the front line, desperate to run through the cloud. He was vaguely aware that he was treading on living, squirming bodies and that others behind him were doing the same but, pulling the Irishman with him,
he ploughed his way through to where the gas had left behind only thin billows, nestling at the bottom of the trench.

He expected to find the trench occupied by Germans and was prepared to find a less excruciating death at the end of a bayonet. But the only occupants of the trench were its former defenders. They had all been sheltering from the bombardment, caught by the chlorine before they could fit the crude protection of the flannel belts. They lay everywhere, black in the face, tunics and shirt fronts torn open in their last desperate attempts to rid themselves of that vapour that still surrounded them at the bottom of the trench. Some were still alive and one soldier, who had had his right hand torn away by a shell blast, was mutely rubbing his throat with the stump, covering his face and tunic with blood. As a horrified Hickman watched, he shuddered, twitched for the last time and lay still. One or two others were writhing in agony, a black liquid bubbling up from their lungs until they literally drowned.

Jim tried to shout, ‘man the parapet,’ but no words could come from his burning throat. So he waved to the men who had followed him down the communication trench and stepped up to the firing step. He expected to see a mass of grey-coated Germans advancing but no one was moving in no man’s land. His eyes streaming and half blind, he fired his rifle to show the enemy that the trench was not deserted. Bertie did the same and the others followed suit, producing a pathetic half-volley. It was clear, however, that the Germans were lying low, allowing their new chemical weapon plenty of time to do its terrible work.

Jim felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to gaze into the streaming eyes of Lieutenant Smith-Forbes. The young subaltern tried to speak but could only cough. He nodded his approval and moved along the line, slipping and sliding on the bodies lining the ground
and slapping the bottoms of the men lining the parapet, in support of their initiative, before joining them on the step.

Then, at last, the one element that could save them crept towards them: a stronger, healing, cool wind. It immediately swept away the remnants of the gas and enabled troops from further back in support to join them in the front line.

The Germans eventually came marching across no man’s land, but it was as if they were either ashamed of themselves for introducing such a foul new weapon and breaking every code of warfare, or they feared that they too could be caught by their own gas, for they came slowly and hesitantly and their attack was easily broken up.

The crude protection of the flannel belt, soaked in water, had worked up to a point and it certainly saved the lives of the infantrymen in the reserve trench. The heavy vapour caught in the fibres of the sodden cloth, just long enough to stop most of it being swallowed and produce the consequent chemical reaction in the lungs that killed by drowning. As it was, Jim, Bertie and their comrades were sent down the line for treatment in the advanced dressing stations by hard-working – and disgusted – medics who were able to prevent further damage.

Even so, the effects of the gas lingered – bequeathing a cough and difficulties in swallowing – and, with other casualties, the two men were taken down the line, through Ypres to Poperinghe, for a brief period of recuperation. Both of them had been aware that earlier in the winter the Germans had begun to shell Ypres with their big guns, but the change in the town since they had last passed through it shocked them. With its tall spires, narrow streets and crowded buildings, some of them dating from medieval times, it had presented an easy target, of course, to the long-range artillery, and by the end of April very little of the town remained undamaged. All of the civilian population had
long since fled and, as they rumbled through the debris-strewn streets by night in their Red Cross wagon, there was no one to be seen except redcaps directing the traffic and squads of morose Tommies marching up to the front. The town was no longer a centre of a community, part of a civilised social pattern. It had been reduced to a ravaged staging post for troops moving to and from battle. It was a reminder, if they needed one, that total war had come to Belgium.

Later, lying in their tents, recovering outside ‘Pop’, a Bertie whose face was no longer rosy red confessed to his friend that the conflict was disgusting him.

‘What exactly are we doin’ it for, Jimmy, lad? Why are we here, involved in all this killin’, this mass extermination? I can’t see God or Jesus himself approving of sending that horrible stuff across to kill poor young chaps in such a terrible way.’

Jim shook his head. ‘I don’t know, son. I just don’t know. I can only say that we didn’t start this bloody thing. We didn’t invade anybody, if you recall. We just came over because that prick of a Kaiser decided that he would march through Belgium – which hadn’t done him any harm – to attack the French. Belgium was too small to stand up to him on its own, so we came to help. And I think that was right.’

Bertie blinked his watery eyes. ‘I’m getting’ a bit confused about what is right and what isn’t. I just think that we can’t go on like this. It’s makin’ animals of us all. Perhaps if we stopped tryin’ to kill them, then they’d stop trying to kill us.’

Jim shook his head. ‘No. Then they’d think they’d won and they could do anything they liked as a result.’ He leant across his mattress. ‘Do you really think that people who are bastards enough to launch that gas stuff across at us would just quietly fold up and go home if we pushed off? No, mate. They’d march on even faster. Think about it.’

Bertie lay with his eyes closed for a moment. Then, ‘It’s not right, though, Jimmy. It’s just not right.’

Two days later, Hickman received the news that he was getting a second stripe, making him a full corporal, and that he was being granted two weeks’ home leave. Home to see Polly! His heart lifted. Then it fell again. There was no leave for Bertie, who would have to wait his turn, which meant that he would lack protection against Black Jack Flanagan. Jim thought long about what he could do about this and then shrugged. After all, Bertie was a man – undoubtedly the finest shot in the battalion, as he had proved on many occasions – and he would have to stand on his own two feet sooner or later. Now was the time. And he was going home – home to see Polly …!