The Black Mountains (41 page)

“Ah'll save me judgement, lad,” Wally replied morosely, but Ted knew that the mournful expression was only a cover-up, and Wally was in reality as eager as he was to try out their new-found skill with a gun, a bayonet or a hand grenade.

The first stage of their journey was by train, and Ted watched from the window as mile after mile of bleak and ravaged countryside unfolded before him. Then the men were set down and formed into a column for the route-march that would take them to the lines, and the anticipation of action stirred in him again. As they swung along the ribbons of dirt track or tar macadam roads, he managed to ignore the blisters that his overlarge boots had raised on his heels by leading the others in a bawdy song or two, undeterred by the rumble of the guns and the scream of shells that grew louder and more resonant as they neared the lines.

After several days' marching, they reached the valley where their unit was camped. It was nightfall when they arrived, and most of the men who had been ‘over the top' that day and emerged more or less unscathed had already marched back and wearily dressed ranks outside the orderly room tent, but a few stragglers were still drifting in—men who had been separated from the rest of their company in the fighting.

While he tucked into a supper of stewed beef topped with hunks of French bread, Ted watched them with fascinated curiosity. It was hard to believe that these weary, staggering, mud-stained figures could ever have been part of a smartly turned-out and well-drilled squad. They looked shattered now, hardly able to hold their heads up under the weight of their tin hats. Their rifles slanted wearily against the uniforms that were spattered with blood and dirt.

For a moment or two their dejection sobered him, but when they had disappeared like grey shadows into their tents, his enthusiasm began to return.

“Our turn tomorrow,” he said softly to Redvers, and then, while he finished his stew, he pictured what he would do—hurl a hand grenade into a Hun trench, perhaps, and then bayonet the bastards one by one as they tried to run away.

Take that—and that! he thought, stabbing at his bread with his spoon, and wishing he could have the chance of doing the same to Alfred Church.

Because they were not yet official, there were no tents for Ted and the other new men, and after they had tried, without much success, to erect a tent from ground-sheets, they were reluctantly allowed to share with the ‘old sweats.'

“Not very friendly, though, are they?” Ted commented to Redvers as they got themselves undressed.

“Not that I want them too close.” Redvers hissed back. “ They're bloody lousy—look!”

Ted turned, startled to see that most of the men were probing the hairy parts of their bodies. “What are they doing?” he muttered softly.

“Looking for bugs. Bugs, you know—fleas!” Redvers told him, and Ted was unable to suppress a shudder. Guns he had expected. Bombs he had been prepared for. But to have bugs crawling all over you was something else again.

That night, Ted's sleep was interrupted by the mutterings and mumblings of the seasoned soldiers. Even asleep they still seemed to be fighting, their arms and legs jerking spasmodically. Ted awoke as dawn began to break, and after lying awake for a while, he decided to get up and go to the latrine.

The camp lay quiet in the cold grey dawn, but there was a great disturbance coming from the tents where the cookers were situated, and Ted, curiosity getting the better, of him, went across to them and asked what was going on. At first, realizing he was one of the new draft, they were unwilling to tell him, then one of them gave him a nasty grin. “You're in luck, chum,” he sneered. “They've had too many losses in this unit, and we're being pulled out until they can get it up to strength again.”

“You mean, we're going out of the line again?” Ted asked, almost disbelieving.

The cook laughed. “ That's about the size of it. Looks as if you're one of them that comes up smelling of violets, doesn't it? There's not many as gets here and then has a rest before he's done anything.”

“Some of the blokes'll take it out on you for that, an' all,” said a plump man who looked as if he finished up every bit of uneaten food himself.

“Take it out on me? What for?” Ted asked.

“For not being through it with them. They even takes it out on us sometimes. But you can't blame the poor buggers. Just thank your lucky stars you're sound in wind and limb yourself.”

From somewhere over the ridge of hills came the sound of shells exploding, and the cook pointed with his thumb.

“It's started,” he said unnecessarily. “ Just you think o' that, lad, when they start calling you a conchie, and remember when you're well off.”

“A conchie?” Ted repeated, puzzled, and the other sniffed loudly.

“That's what you are, ain't it? One of them conscientious objectors the Derby Bill's pulling in?”

Ted was surprised the man didn't know it was much too early for the first conscripts to be in France, and that conscientious objectors were among those exempted anyway. Suddenly he felt annoyed to be classed with them when he had volunteered.

“A conchie? No, I'm not!” he retorted vehemently. “I was quite looking forward to a bit of action.”

The cooks looked at one another as if they thought he was weak in the head, and he went on, “ What time are we moving out of here, anyway?”

The cooks exchanged another look, and he laughed. “It's all right, I'm not a Gerry spy, either, if that's what you're thinking. I just wanted to know, that's all.”

There was a stirring of movement in the officers' tents, away to their left, and the cooks busied themselves once more.

“Two o'clock, conchie. Now bugger off,” the fat one hissed at him.

Feeling strangely flat, he walked back to his own tent, and by way of compensation, he allowed himself the luxury of thinking of Rebecca.

What was she doing at this moment? he wondered. Still in bed, perhaps, her face rosy and innocent above the sheets. Or scurrying about the big house, getting Miss Rachel's clothes ready for her and running her bath.

To his dismay, he found he was unable to conjure up a clear picture of her features, and he stopped outside his tent, sliding his wallet out of his pocket and opening it so that he could look at the photograph she had given him.

“Come on, lad, that's enough o' flaming that!” From behind him came the heavy tones of the sergeant-major. “There's work to be done. This is a bleeding war, you know, not a Sunday school outing.”

Ted snapped his wallet shut, smarting under the sting of authority. It was what being in the army was all about, he supposed, but he didn't care for it too much.

As the wintry sun got up, the distant shelling became more intense, and again Ted found himself prickling with frustration. With no first-hand experience of fighting, he felt no fear, only impatience to join in the scrap that was going on on the other side of the hills, and earn the badge of comradeship that would make him one of the lads.

When the company assembled for roll-call, he was shocked, however, by the number of gaps in the line, and by the matter-of-fact explanations of absence that were barked out by former comrades.

“He were blown to bits. I saw it with me own eyes,” a sandy-haired man explained when one name was called.

Ted listened with a sense of growing outrage. This calm acceptance of death, spiked sometimes by anger but never by grief, was something as far outside his experience as the shells that soared and whistled on the other side of the hill. How could a man talk so casually of a mate whose life had been so cruelly and wastefully wiped out?

Later, however, marching with the others of the new draft to set up a new camp a mile or two further back from the line, he began to understand.

Out here, death was so commonplace that, if you didn't treat it matter-of-factly, you would never be able to face another day. It was talked about as much as any other everyday occurrence—for that was what it was.

But the indifference was only a defence. Beneath it, blood ran icy cold, and stomachs churned. A soldier could still feel sick through and through, but he mustn't show it.

For the first time, Ted wondered if warfare in the trenches might be less of an adventure than he had imagined. But as the days passed and the noise of the guns became more distant, his impatience began to return.

The war had eased a little on the British front, it was said, although there was still fierce fighting on the French lines at Verdun. But it seemed to Ted his company was continually on the move, no sooner getting themselves established in one camp than they were moved on again.

The days were spent marching along slushy roads, heavily weighted down by kit and taking turns in pulling the gun-carts, a painful job if it ran too close to your heels, but a chance, at least, to dump heavy kit on the cart and march free for a time.

At night they slept sometimes in barns where the straw was infested with hen-fleas, or sometimes in billets in evacuated villages that reminded Ted of the ‘ghost towns' he had seen portrayed in countless Western film shows at the Palace Picture House. As he looked at the gaping windows and abandoned treasures, he had the feeling of moving across time to a different world, especially when one night they billeted in a ruined chateau where the walls on three sides stood tall and elegant and on the fourth the moon illuminated their sleeping faces over a pile of snow-covered rubble.

New recruits joined them, fresh-faced lads who made Ted feel old although he had never yet seen a shot fired, and when they began to march again, a rumour rustled through the ranks that they were heading for a railhead to be entrained for the Front. But the hiatus continued, with only drill parades and practice attacks to remind Ted he was a soldier.

Wherever he went, Ted made friends. Although he had not been able to speak a word of French when he first stepped off the boat, he soon found ways of communicating, and he, Redvers and Wally often found themselves invited into a French farmer's parlour for a glass of ‘vin rouge' or—if they were lucky—a tot of brandy.

“I think he had his eye on you to make an honest woman of his daughter,” Redvers joked after one farmer had plied Ted with drinks.

“And she weren't too bad, neither,” Wally added. “If you was to creep out of your billet tonight and round to her bedroom window, I reckon you'd be all right there, lad.”

Ted laughed, but he knew, and so did they, that a bit of fun was as far as it would go. Some of the men were going overboard for every woman in sight, even leering after dowdy matrons they would never give so much as a second glance to at home, and the VAD nurses from sheltered homes were being almost eaten alive. But for him, no other woman existed but Rebecca; and he much preferred to spend his recreation time in an
estaminet
, smoking one of his precious cigarettes, drinking the local concoction of apples and potatoes that was known as ‘ champagne' and playing pontoon, or crown and anchor.

By the end of January, they were within reach of the lines again, billeted in a half-deserted mining village, and for the first time he felt homesick. Although the dusty buildings were brick-built, and the familiar black batches were referred to as ‘slag heaps' by the other men, it gave him a strange feeling to think of the coal seams beneath his feet. He had a sudden longing to see the great wheels turning, and feel the rush of air against his face that came when a cage dropped beneath the level of the earth.

He said as much to Wally as the two of them stood in line waiting their turn for a change of shirt and underpants. “We none of us knew when we was well off, lad,” he said mournfully. “But we shan't have time to think about it much from now on, if it's right what I hear. They're starting carrying parties up the line tonight, so I reckon we'll soon be seeing a bit of action.”

“Carrying parties? Carrying what?” Ted asked.

“Gas cylinders. But you know what that'll mean, don't you? We'll have to wear gas-helmets, and you can't breathe in the bleeders. I hate 'em.”

Ted did not answer, merely moved up in line, unbuttoning his dirty shirt and stripping it off. He didn't care for gas-helmets, either, but he was excited by the prospect of some action at last, and he hoped he would soon be detailed for one of the working parties.

That night, when darkness had fallen, he and Wally were amongst those who were sent from the billet on the three-mile march to the British trenches.

It was a bitterly cold night. As they waited to set off, they stamped their feet and sang a chorus or two of ‘Mademoiselle from Armetiers,' but when they had been loaded with the poles, one between two, on which were slung the gas cylinders, they had no breath left for singing. The cylinders dragged them down so that their boots felt like lead weights in the mud, and the carrying poles cut into their shoulders.

“This is a bleedin' mug's game, in't it?” Wally grumbled, but Ted was determined not to be depressed. Hard work and discomfort had never bothered him, and he strode out as boldly as his mud-caked boots would let him, savouring every moment of the new experience.

As they approached the trenches, it was fairly quiet. Most of the men had pulled out to their dug-outs, leaving only observers and a cover of gunners, and although the occasional shell lit the sky, Ted had no real premonition of disaster. He and Wally followed the pair in front of them to the fire-trench where they were to dump their load. It startled them both to realize they were so close to the German lines that they could actually hear Gerry in his trenches.

The pair of men in front of them dumped their load and turned aside; now it was their turn. Easing the pole on his shoulder with palms that were sweaty in spite of the cold of the night, Ted followed suit.

It was as he turned away from the trench that he saw it—an elongated shell that seemed to appear from nowhere and curve with incredible grace across the sky.