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The Chinese Attack: Ypres 1917
Di John Bishop
Azioni libro
Inizia a leggereLunghezza: 441 pagine6 ore
- Editore:
- Troubador Publishing Ltd
- Pubblicato:
- Sep 2, 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781784627775
- Formato:
- Libro
Descrizione
What did the world’s most populous country contribute to World War One? Not much, apart from the 140,000 labourers who signed up to work on the Western Front and found themselves under a casually-racist military jurisdiction.
The Chinese Attack dramatises their situation through the eyes of 2nd Lieutenant Jack Reynolds, sent to find evidence of unfolding mutiny among them after he himself has been charged with inciting protest at the War’s direction – this a consequence of the loss of his men in a futile decoy attack at the Battle of Passchendaele.
Jack’s growing realisation that he is being used to further injustice leads him to rebel and fight to stop his Chinese charges’ being sacrificed to mindless prejudice. Against a backdrop of the chaos unleashed by the Allied collapse in the Spring of 1918, Jack’s mission to save his servant Tien becomes a pell-mell dash for freedom to escape from the firing squad. In the course of which he struggles to regain his own will to live.
While the central plot is fiction, the routine experiences of the Chinese are based on fact and bring to life a neglected aspect of the War, which both contributed to post-war Chinese political and economic developments and fed the anti-imperialist propaganda of more recent Chinese governments.
The Chinese Attack dramatises their situation through the eyes of 2nd Lieutenant Jack Reynolds, sent to find evidence of unfolding mutiny among them after he himself has been charged with inciting protest at the War’s direction – this a consequence of the loss of his men in a futile decoy attack at the Battle of Passchendaele.
Jack’s growing realisation that he is being used to further injustice leads him to rebel and fight to stop his Chinese charges’ being sacrificed to mindless prejudice. Against a backdrop of the chaos unleashed by the Allied collapse in the Spring of 1918, Jack’s mission to save his servant Tien becomes a pell-mell dash for freedom to escape from the firing squad. In the course of which he struggles to regain his own will to live.
While the central plot is fiction, the routine experiences of the Chinese are based on fact and bring to life a neglected aspect of the War, which both contributed to post-war Chinese political and economic developments and fed the anti-imperialist propaganda of more recent Chinese governments.
Informazioni sul libro
The Chinese Attack: Ypres 1917
Di John Bishop
Lunghezza: 441 pagine6 ore
Descrizione
What did the world’s most populous country contribute to World War One? Not much, apart from the 140,000 labourers who signed up to work on the Western Front and found themselves under a casually-racist military jurisdiction.
The Chinese Attack dramatises their situation through the eyes of 2nd Lieutenant Jack Reynolds, sent to find evidence of unfolding mutiny among them after he himself has been charged with inciting protest at the War’s direction – this a consequence of the loss of his men in a futile decoy attack at the Battle of Passchendaele.
Jack’s growing realisation that he is being used to further injustice leads him to rebel and fight to stop his Chinese charges’ being sacrificed to mindless prejudice. Against a backdrop of the chaos unleashed by the Allied collapse in the Spring of 1918, Jack’s mission to save his servant Tien becomes a pell-mell dash for freedom to escape from the firing squad. In the course of which he struggles to regain his own will to live.
While the central plot is fiction, the routine experiences of the Chinese are based on fact and bring to life a neglected aspect of the War, which both contributed to post-war Chinese political and economic developments and fed the anti-imperialist propaganda of more recent Chinese governments.
The Chinese Attack dramatises their situation through the eyes of 2nd Lieutenant Jack Reynolds, sent to find evidence of unfolding mutiny among them after he himself has been charged with inciting protest at the War’s direction – this a consequence of the loss of his men in a futile decoy attack at the Battle of Passchendaele.
Jack’s growing realisation that he is being used to further injustice leads him to rebel and fight to stop his Chinese charges’ being sacrificed to mindless prejudice. Against a backdrop of the chaos unleashed by the Allied collapse in the Spring of 1918, Jack’s mission to save his servant Tien becomes a pell-mell dash for freedom to escape from the firing squad. In the course of which he struggles to regain his own will to live.
While the central plot is fiction, the routine experiences of the Chinese are based on fact and bring to life a neglected aspect of the War, which both contributed to post-war Chinese political and economic developments and fed the anti-imperialist propaganda of more recent Chinese governments.
- Editore:
- Troubador Publishing Ltd
- Pubblicato:
- Sep 2, 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781784627775
- Formato:
- Libro
Informazioni sull'autore
John Bishop is the Senior Pastor and cofounder of Living Hope Church, one of the fastest growing churches in America with campuses in the northwestern United States, Hawaii, and New Zealand. He earned a Masters of Arts in Evangelism and Transformational Leadership from Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon. He and his wife, Michelle, live in Vancouver, Washington with their children David, Katie, and Hannah.
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Anteprima del libro
The Chinese Attack - John Bishop
www.johnbishopauthor.wordpress.com
CHAPTER ONE
Mid-December 1917: Consequences.
Second Lieutenant Jack Reynolds felt himself blowing hard as the dirt road reached the top of a slight rise through the copse. Remembering Eve’s words in the ward a month earlier – ‘You’re not going anywhere fast, Jack, you’re lucky they managed to save your legs’ – didn’t ease his mood. He stopped, slung his pack down and glared at his destination, the Haringe Chinese Labour Corps camp, spread out in the meadows below.
Its newness surprised him. He’d passed plenty of the usual squalid tented encampments on the way across from Poperinghe and expected Chinese labourers to have been given the dregs. But the two double rows of bell tents gleamed in the pale winter sun, as did the three larger marquees beyond them. That even seemed to be grass still between the rows and in front of the bigger tents. Obviously the ‘coolies’ – he shuddered at his recollection of the patronising term used for them – were being driven too hard to leave time for square-bashing.
And these were the men he’d been sent to betray…
The smug little chairman of his ‘Special Investigation Panel’ had said fifty thousand Chinese labourers were already here. And many more on the way. Jack shut off the recollection of that disciplinary farce. Memories of the deprivation and hunger he’d seen in Shandong Province before the War forced themselves on him instead. He knew that was what had driven the Chinese to sign up to work as labourers on the Western Front. Images of Tsingtao – those of Mai Li, above all – pushed themselves in. Where, he knew, they’d linger to haunt him even more as an officer in the camp down there. A daily reminder of her, of his failure, of his enduring guilt. Especially in the light of his present mission…He shook his head. It didn’t bear thinking about.
Jack glanced at the bare woods to his right and left, but they offered no way out. He stared at a razed clearing in the copse, caused by a stray bomb or long range-shell. The cluster of thin trees and saplings cut off at knee height made him see the Tsingtao cemetery once more. He screwed up his eyes but that only replaced it with images of the shattered wasteland of the Salient beyond Ypres. Another reminder…
His gaze jerked back to the camp and took in the one wooden building, at the front, close to the road. The Officers’ Mess? He winced at the thought. Promoted from the ranks only after Vimy, the bonhomie of the officer class out of the Line still grated on him. And the idea of having to conceal his real purpose made the prospect of socialising with fellow-British officers even more grim. You poor sod, a voice inside him sneered, what you’re here for deserves all the discomfort you get.
But he didn’t regret the sense of obligation to his men – in reality, all to do with his own pride, Jardine had scoffed – that had spurred his futile revolt. And landed him in this fix. Yet if he’d not written the letters, he’d be back in a fighting unit by now, with a chance of dying like all the rest. And at thirty, with nothing to lose or look forward to, wasn’t he ideal material for the ‘sausage machine’?
He heaved his pack onto his shoulder. Eve’s contemptuous term for the war no longer set his teeth on edge. He’d known even when she’d taunted him with it that she was right. But how ironic that he, of all people, who’d always done his ‘duty’, done what was expected of him, had then been accused of treachery. And so, as a consequence of trying to protest on behalf of his needlessly-sacrificed men, had been manoeuvred into this deception. Something that involved a far more shameful form of betrayal.
The recollection of why he’d been forced to the CLC only sharpened his guilt. That he’d had little choice brought no consolation. Wasn’t it an excuse he’d used so many times in the past? In agreeing to leave home? In turning away from the Boer woman pleading with him from behind the wire of the concentration camp? In leaving Mai Li? Little choice? Or just a failure of nerve?
Jack adjusted the straps of his pack. ‘Concentrate on the job in hand’ he heard himself say and the expression swung him back six weeks. To the Support Line and the blockhouse below Passchendaele. To his empty words of reassurance to Tom after the briefing, after…
***
The sky darkened. Jack struggled up and began to trudge through the muddy slime of the ‘trench’. He edged past the dozing men – the half his strength who’d survived – slumped in the zig-zag of joined-up, flooded shell holes that constituted the Support Line. Where they’d been since they’d struggled up here, what – five days ago? He couldn’t remember, only that the attack had been on the 30th. And still they weren’t relieved. Now, he suspected, there was worse to come.
The timing of the briefing was ominous and he knew what that implied. He tried to push the depression off his shoulders but it wouldn’t shift. Telling himself he was an officer now and should set an example was no help.
The white phosphorescence of a flare threw livid light on the liquid moonscape around them. He crouched against the bank and felt ashamed to see the young lads who were awake huddle deeper into the mud, the lucky ones with water only knee-deep and a tarpaulin for shelter. Any attempt to raise a parapet merely saw the foul slush slide back down and congeal on the slime. He’d not been much use to them so far. And if he couldn’t convince Brigade to relieve them tonight…
He paused by a young private shivering under a torn piece of sheeting and gripped the boy’s shoulder.
‘Not long now, Downs. Keep it going.’
Downs nodded but Jack saw that his words hadn’t sunk in. Why should they? He straightened up and clenched his fists to force himself to hold together. He owed it to them. The words didn’t convince him, either. It was all just refuge in platitudes.
Which were what he expected to hear at the briefing. He knew the advance would go on. Just like all the rest had, back to – when was it? – July. His mind gave up trying to count how many months that was. Somewhere to their right were fresh troops, they’d been told. Canadians. So, there’d have to be one more ‘big push’.
Another, paler flare showed him the low hump of the ridge. With a grimace he watched it fade. Three months, he remembered now, that was how long. And the village of Passchendaele, the objective for Day One, still lay somewhere out there beyond the swamp of mud. Madness. Utter madness. Stop thinking like that, he told himself. It’ll undo you.
He splashed on. To catch tuneless singing ahead. He cursed Webb under his breath. Like the lice, Webb also never stopped. Jack had thought his comparison witty once. Now the song’s words grated on his taut nerves.
‘I wanna go ‘ome…
I wanna go ‘ome…
Oh, my, I don’t wanna die,
I wanna go ‘ome.’
Webb didn’t need to sing to set Jack’s teeth on edge. He’d done that at first sight – or sound. The twenty year-old who knew it all. Now Webb squatted out of the water on a pile of abandoned packs. He saw Webb stab at one and remove a wallet.
Webb flicked through the sodden contents and went to toss the wallet away. But he must have sensed Jack’s approach. He shoved the wallet out of sight.
‘What we doing ‘ere, sir?’ Webb said. ‘Still stuck in this shit’ole, if you’ll pardon my French.’
Jack looked him up and down, to be met only with unblinking insolence. Even sarcasm went over Webb’s head.
‘You’re fighting for King and Country, Webb,’ Jack said. ‘Unfortunately for them. So, if you’ve got to sing, sing something cheerful. And in tune.’
Webb shook his head.
‘It ain’t fair.’
‘No, Webb, it ain’t,’ Jack said, glad to laugh. ‘Fair, it isn’t, but some of us have to listen to it.’
‘I shoulda chose Borstal.’
For a moment the absurdity of this stumped Jack.
‘We all make wrong choices, Webb,’ he said. Some of us more than others, he reflected, and waded on.
He could imagine the V-sign being made to his back. He heard Webb begin to sing again in the sullen monotone:
‘When this bloody war is over
Oh, ‘ow ‘appy I will be…
No more stinkin’ slimy trenches,
No more petrol-smellin’ tea…’
Jack waded on and through Tom’s sector. Tom’s men were in a worse state than his own, he noticed. He nodded to the one or two who glanced up at him.
Ahead in the dark he glimpsed the shapeless hump of the German blockhouse that now housed Battalion Forward HQ and Aid Post. The memory of its stench caught in his throat. Foreboding tightened in his chest.
He pushed aside the matted canvas flap over the door. The fetid air slapped at him and made his empty stomach lurch. Shadows flickering on the walls threw him off-balance. He focussed on the lamp on the upturned box in the centre and slithered down the steps, trying not to look at the clumps of wounded below. He bumped into a Signals Corporal, who cursed and fumbled to dry a bedraggled carrier pigeon. The Corporal muttered an apology.
At the foot of the steps Jack stepped over a bandaged private whose voice cut into him.
‘I’m cold, cold,’ the man whined, ‘I’m cold. I’m cold…cold. Cold…I’m cold…I’m cold…’
Jack had a sudden urge to kick him. Stop it, he told himself, your nerves are going. He took in who’d come to the briefing: no one new. His fears were confirmed. For a moment he scanned the three.
In the centre, Peters, the balaclava-clad Adjutant, crouched over the upturned box. He peered at a crumpled map, smoothing it with one mittened hand and tugging at the end of a thin moustache with the other. Two young-looking officers followed his movements with vacant eyes: Tom and Williams. Williams looked a ghastly white.
Jack saw Peters glance round at him and frown, answering his question before it was asked.
‘Sorry, Jack, no relief tonight…’
He went to swear but it fell away to a shrug. So much for his intention to demand relief. The sense of failing his men increased his depression. He saw Peters hesitate. So there was worse to come?
‘That’s the good news,’ Peters said.
‘I had a horrible feeling it might be.’
Jack approached the map. As Williams’ haggard white face blinked at him, he saw that the colour wasn’t just dried clay. Even the officers left were under twenty, now. Tom tried a smile at him but it froze. Jack’s glare made Peters look down and jab his finger at the map.
‘The Canadians are going on through Passchendaele tomorrow morning. They hope. To secure the Ridge. We’re covering their left. Again. Sorry, Jack…’
He felt the hollowness in his stomach and wondered what was happening to him. Fear was OK, was normal, but this was different. A draining away of the will.
‘Hope they don’t need much cover.’
Williams suddenly began to cry. Jack stared at him and saw Tom look away in embarrassment. He heard the Signals Corporal curse and glanced to see the pigeon flop onto the mud. The Corporal leaned his head against the door-frame and closed his eyes. We’re all too far gone, Jack thought. When he turned back Tom was reaching out to Williams but the boy shrugged him off.
‘Why do we do it?’ he blurted at them. ‘Why do we let it go on? It’s pointless. It’s murder.’
‘Orders,’ Jack said. ‘Who are we to ask why? Just do your job.’
Williams shrank from him but then his eyes flared.
‘Job? Murder, you mean. Well, I’m not doing it. Orders? It’s a crime to lead men into this kind of slaughter. Don’t you ever think to ask yourself that?’
Jack made to put a hand on the crying lad’s shoulder but Williams pulled away and drew his revolver. Jack stepped back. Peters stood up muttering obscenities.
The sudden high-pitched whine of an incoming shell screamed in Jack’s ears. He stuck his fingers in them and bent his shoulders. It burst close. The blockhouse shook. The canvas flap blew in. The lamp blew out. Flecks of powdered concrete dust drove up Jack’s nose. Someone gave a long howl in the dark. Close by, loud, he heard a shot.
Then there was only the choking and moaning. Jack saw the match flare as Peters re-lit the lamp. And that the blast had tumbled some of the wounded into a heap. The Signals Corporal was bent over at the foot of the steps. His pigeon lay still. The cold private made no sound. And Williams sprawled on his back with half his head gone.
For what to Jack seemed an age the three of them stood and stared at the corpse. His face looked very young again. What was it he had he asked? ‘Think’? You couldn’t think. If you tried to think, this is what happened.
Peters pulled his balaclava down over his eyes.
‘Shit, shit, shit…Another bloody heroic-end-shit letter to write home. Shit, shit…’
Jack fought to keep his mind blank. He watched Tom frown at Peters then turn to him with a mute query. He shook his head. Still craving the blankness he dragged up a piece of sodden sackcloth and covered Williams’ head and chest. But he could see the white face. He turned back and looked at Peters. The Adjutant sat with his head in his hands. He continued to mutter ‘shit’ to himself.
Then he went silent, pushed up the balaclava and fixed his gaze on the map.
‘Zero hour’s 06.05,’ he said. ‘The barrage will advance a hundred yards every eight minutes…’
Jack snorted. Peters shot him a hurt glance.
‘Don’t blame me. Division set the rate.’
‘Sent someone up to measure it, did they? Is the objective still Berlin? By Tuesday.’
‘You’re supporting, Jack, that’s all,’ the Adjutant shrugged. ‘Do what you can.’
Jack nodded at the patch of sacking.
‘Didn’t amount to more than that, last time, did it?’
‘Don’t you go windy on me, Jack.’ Peters struggled to his feet. ‘I’ve already got one replacement to find.’
‘Our hearts bleed for you,’ Jack said. He glanced at Tom’s silent face. It had taken on some of Williams’ pallor. The dead man’s question ‘Don’t you think to ask…?’ kept repeating itself in Jack’s head. He spoke to break the spell.
‘When do we move up? Or will they send a bus?’
‘Three o’clock, but with the going as it is….’
Jack snorted again.
‘Who’re we relieving?’
Jack saw the Adjutant’s hesitation.
‘You’re not. You’re infilling the 28th. What’s left of them…’
‘So this time they get the chance to be finished off completely? Along with the rest of us.’
Seeing Peters turn away Jack sighed at Tom.
‘Typical bloody staff officer.’
Peters glanced back and growled.
‘What do you want, Jack, a Chinese attack? Won’t get us anywhere, will it? The Boche are wise to them.’
Jack went cold. His eyes blurred. He wondered if Peters was trying to be funny. But the man couldn’t know. Then he heard Tom’s puzzled voice.
‘I don’t understand, sir.’
‘Fake attack. Plywood cut-outs worked best.’
Jack listened to Peters’ matter-of-fact tone. The penny dropped but he felt anger with himself rather than relief. His nerves were going.
‘You come across them, Jack?’
He realised Peters was staring at him and shook his head. The Adjutant turned to Tom.
‘Maxse’s lot used ‘em in September. Thousands of ‘em. Outside Poelcappelle. Painted cut-outs of Tommies. Rigged up in No Man’s Land on wires. We pull ‘em up, the Boche thinks it’s an attack coming and pile out. Start firing. Barrage comes down on them. Bob’s your uncle and the way’s clear for the infantry.’
‘I’ll have the men start whittling when I get back,’ Jack retorted. ‘Otherwise we’ll be the target practice ourselves. As usual.’
‘Sorry, Jack. No offence meant. You know…’
Peters held out his hand.
‘If you can’t keep up with the barrage…get as far as you can. Good luck.’
He dropped back down and frowned at the map. At the door Jack felt Tom’s touch on his arm.
‘Why did he do that, Jack?’
Jack thought he was referring to Peters but the sight of Tom’s face put him straight.
‘Don’t think about it,’ he said. ‘Concentrate on the job in hand. That’s all you need to do. It’s all we can do. Forget everything else.’
They splashed back to their men in silence. When he left Tom, Jack tried to follow his own advice but Tom’s query nagged at him. Nor would the dead boy’s face and own questions go away. Jack cursed Williams for unsettling him but he knew there was more to it than that. Things he couldn’t face. Things that risked his losing his grip if he let his mind play on them. And as for Chinese attacks…
Then Webb’s singing was also under his skin. He gritted his teeth and glared towards the sound. On his muddy perch Webb’s delving knife had exposed a waxen arm in the slimy slope of the trench. Still wearing a wristwatch. Now Webb worked it free and slipped it on his own wrist. Then he pushed the arm back into the mud. His singing took on a jaunty note:
‘No more lyin’ in these trenches,
No more arskin’ for a parss…
I will tell the Sergeant Major
To stick ‘is parses up his…’
A shout of ‘Webb!’ from Sergeant Ames cut him off. Jack waded on past without a word and back up to the men. Just keep your mind on the detail, he told himself. Just do your job.
‘Called off, is it, sir?’ Webb shouted after him. ‘Pitch waterlogged? We goin’ ‘ome, then?’
‘We move up in five minutes.’ Jack’s voice was flat. ‘Into the Line. Supporting the Canadians.’
A couple nodded. Most were too far gone to care but Jack heard Webb mutter.
‘Shite. Supporting the Canadians. What they ever fuckin’ done for us?’
Jack felt his fists tighten. Questions, questions, questions. Always asking questions, to no purpose. If you didn’t think about it all you were all right. But once you let the questions in…You’re cracking up, Jack told himself. The prospect had a kind of attraction. He made himself shake the feeling away.
Sergeant Ames, a burly Regular in his forties, was barking the men into reluctant shape.
‘Keep your mouths shut and your eyes on the man in front. If you lose the duckboards, you’re a gonner.’
Jack watched Ames work. He recognised his own routine before his commission. A clear, ordered routine. Had it all been simpler then? A year last September at Guillemont? Even six months ago at Vimy?
Jack heard the splash as Webb jumped off his refuge into the water. He caught Webb’s muttered complaint.
‘This is fuckin’…suicide.’
The word swept back the dead face of Williams. Nothing was simple any more. Jack glanced round at his men. He hadn’t even made a show of demanding their relief…
He stumbled ahead of them up towards the Front Line, tracking the guide, still trying to shut out thought. Above the duckboards only ghostly aerial flares cut the blackness. Overhead the churning drone and screech of shells periodically shut out the sounds of the single file of men behind him: the clump of boots on the sodden boards, the wheezing and panting for breath and the muttered curses.
Progress was slow. The guide’s red torch bobbed and flickered a few yards ahead of Jack. If he let his eye dwell on it, he could feel himself going over. He had to look down. In places white lime marked the path. Nowhere was stable, the boards slippery, broken and treacherous. At least the concentration dulled his mind.
But the red light kept on bobbing back like an eye accusing him. Peters’ ‘Get as far as you can,’ kept repeating itself. He was definitely losing his grip.
Christ, I’ll be like Daley soon, he thought.
He could still see the sobbing wreck that had been Daley cringing in the dugout behind Guillemont. And Daley had been a good officer. Sound. There hadn’t even been that much mud. Only the bloated corpses from the July attacks and the big, green flies. They could have done with a Chinese attack before Guillemont.
A whine of shells broke his reverie. Coming their way. He stopped and crouched. Two bracketed the narrow duckboard track twenty yards behind him. The mire sucked down their force but men ducked and some lost their balance. One man was in, screaming. Jack peered into the blackness. A distant flare lightened it to gloom. He could see figures bending, arms and rifles reaching to the victim. Then the man had pulled another in. Both up to their chests.
Jack couldn’t move. He watched as Ames struggled up from the rear past the line of men to get them moving.
‘Leave him, you bloody fools! Keep moving,’ Ames shouted but they ignored him, slipping and fumbling to help.
Jack edged his way back. They had the rescuer out but the other’s flailing arms merely forced him lower. Rifles couldn’t reach him now. His screams became pleas.
‘Shoot me! Go on, shoot me! Shoot me!’
A brighter flare lit up the scene. Jack saw with a start that it was Downs. The slime lapped his shoulders. His arms thrashed on it. His mates watched paralysed. Downs’ pleading face loomed at Jack and Jack’s hand went to his holster. But then there were only outstretched hands, bubbles. No one moved. Till Ames jolted them on.
‘Come on, move. Move on! You can’t do nothing here.’
Shouts from Tom’s unit held up behind joined in. Jack pushed his way up to the silent guide, teeth gritted on the bile in his mouth. From the dark he heard gasping sobs. Then, above, a fluttering and whooshing as the type of shell changed. A background drumming roar and somewhere in the distance the patter of a machine gun. Jerry telling them to forget it. He remembered his words of encouragement to Downs and shivered at them. Then he caught Webb’s complaining tone:
‘I ‘ope ‘e wasn’t carryin’ the fuckin’ rum.’
Again he felt the urge to hit Webb.
***
Jack shone the torch on his watch. Zero minus one. And that familiar impatience. He put his hand on his whistle and glanced back. In the distance the British batteries showed as spots of fire then the spots joined up. Their bombardment whirled to a crescendo. He wasn’t reassured. Nothing like advertising you were coming, was there? Don’t think, he repeated to himself. Don’t think.
His gaze swept over the men. Faces blue or clay-white from the mud. Teeth chattering. Frantic eyes. And those too tired to care. Jack put the whistle to his chapped lips and blew. Along the line he heard others blow.
In the dim light the men roused themselves and struggled after him up the stubby ladders out of the trench. Into the clinging, thick, clayey mud of No Man’s Land. Knee-deep at the first step. And with the first step Jack knew it was going to be worse even than he’d thought. ‘Step’ wasn’t the word. You couldn’t step, you couldn’t wade. You dragged each leg up out of the sucking treacly mess, forced it forward and then pulled the other after it. Every movement drained your strength. In what seemed like an exaggerated slow motion, Jack, his men and hundreds of others struggled through the sludge. All too slowly.
He peered ahead. The swirling cloud of the creeping barrage, their protective shield, moved on at its steady, pre-set, staff-planned pace. A hundred yards every eight minutes, had Peters said? It moved inexorably forward, leaving them behind. Jack cursed the nameless staff officer who’d damned them with his paper projections.
Machine gun fire began to beat with a steady metallic patter. A sure sign the barrage had failed. Roberts, to Jack’s left, seemed to pause. As Jack turned to him, he bowed his head, sank to his knees and rolled over into the mud in one continuous movement. Davis flopped onto his face and lay thrashing until he, too, was still. Hardly moving and without cover, men began to go down all around. Jack ploughed on, eyes straining for some shield. There was only the dark. And everywhere the devouring mud.
Then the German batteries found the range. Jack waved to the men around him not to bunch. They took no notice. The shrill whine of a shell made him duck right down into the slime. Foul liquid spattered his face. The blast deafened him and drove his face under.
When he shoved himself upright, coughing and wiping the cold filth from his eyes, all he saw to his right was a heaving mound of bodies on the mud, steam rising slowly from it. He was too cold and tired to feel the rage his brain urged. Some Chinese attack, this one. Huh.
Still he and the rest clawed their way on. Beyond thought, beyond reason. Jack looked back. Behind them, on the parapet of the trench they’d left, a bloated rat paused to stare at their disappearing shapes.
***
Sunlight roused him. He didn’t know how they’d got here. Or how many had. Fewer than a dozen? He lacked the will to count. They occupied an abandoned German trench. Water-logged and empty but for old, stiffened bodies, splintered wood and smashed weapons. Its disintegration gave the barest shelter. ‘Get as far as you can?’ Jack reflected. Already this was far too far. From where he sat he could look down a communication trench, also smashed now and water-filled, that led towards what once had been the German rear. He hoped that the Canadians were grateful. But he guessed they wouldn’t even know.
Jack loosened his sodden puttees. He gazed down the communication trench, waiting for Ames to return from his reconnaissance. Immediately in front of him, just before the junction with the main trench, he could see the two funk holes – shallow shelters wide enough for three men – cut into the sides of the communication trench and shored up with wooden beams. In one of these, three of Jack’s survivors sat, upright and asleep. The sounds of battle echoed at a distance. It all seemed a long way off.
Jack felt – nothing. His eyes registered what they saw and passed only the literal facts to his brain. The dead, the mud, a rusted rifle, were all one. If something happened, maybe he’d react. Training and experience might ensure that. The dull consciousness that he’d lost most of his men formed in the back of his mind but he could make no sense of what it meant.
A louder scream from Appleyard made Jack squint along the main trench. Ames had propped the badly-wounded man against some German dead.
‘I been killed. I’m killed. I been killed,’ he moaned. ‘I been killed. I been killed. I’m killed…’
Webb squatted on the bodies beside him and gave Appleyard an irritated frown.
‘Well, don’t make such a fuckin’ row about it,’ Jack heard him mutter. His eyes took in that Webb was cleaning his rifle. He should have been surprised but his mind merely noted the effortless care with which Webb proceeded. It wasn’t military professionalism. It was what a poacher who’d worked in marshes would have done.
A splashing from the communication trench dragged his attention away from Webb. Ames waded along towards him. Jack struggled to stand. Ames panted to catch his breath.
‘Empty. Same old trick, sir. Leave their lines clear then shell us when we take them. We better scarper.’
Jack swore under his breath. He should have known that. He was losing it. Now experience did cut in.
‘Down the communication trench,’ he ordered. ‘So the barrage falls behind us. We’ll pull back when it’s over.’
He waved them into the communication trench. Ames bawled the men awake.
‘Down this one here. Now! We’re going forward. Quick. They’ll be fixin’ on this place.’
The men hauled themselves up. But Webb sat where he was and continued cleaning the rifle.
‘An’ I’m fixin’ on stayin’ put,’ he said.
Webb’s whine grated through Jack’s exhaustion. He gritted his teeth. Ames was steering the men towards the communication trench.
‘Do as you’re told, Webb,’ Jack shouted. ‘You’re in danger. And bring Appleyard.’
At that Webb jumped up, slinging his rifle over his shoulder, and came forward. He made no move to help Appleyard.
‘In danger?’ he said. ‘In that case, I’m goin’ ‘ome.’
Before reaching Jack he jumped onto an assault ladder facing their own lines.
‘You’ll obey orders, Webb,’ Jack called.
But Webb clambered up the ladder and stood on the top. Jack watched him scan the British lines.
‘Sod yer fuckin’ orders.’
Jack’s sense of impotence tore at his tattered nerves.
‘Stop, Webb. Or I’ll have you shot.’
Webb didn’t stop. He came along the parapet, passed in front of Jack as if to dare him and sneered down:
‘Go on, then, fuckin’ ‘ero. Kill me. Kill us all. That’s all you’re any fuckin’ use for, ain’t it? Orders. When you ever gonna learn? Shoot your fucking self.’
Something snapped. Jack’s hand went to his holster but he saw Webb was too quick for him. Saw Webb’s rifle swinging up. He heard no sound but felt a thump on his left ear. He staggered backwards. Something hard stopped his fall and he was held upright but he couldn’t tell why. His left hand clutched the side of his head. It felt hot. He had no pain. As his sight began to blur he saw Ames step in front of him and bring up his rifle at Webb.
But then Ames came crashing back into Jack, driving him down. Jack heard Webb’s laugh. Heard it cut off by a sudden, high-pitched whine. He fought for breath. Then the dead weight on Jack was pushing him under the water and a heavier, pressing force drove him back and up into the funk hole. Everything went black.
CHAPTER TWO
Limbo
When he came round, Jack was lying on his right side on a low ledge, trapped by the legs. A wooden beam sagged above his head. He smelt foul gas and damp earth, could feel the chill of the water lapping him, but no pain. He watched a torn piece of paper floating on the slimy surface of the communication trench. Then his eyes took in the three men sitting in the funk hole opposite. They seemed still asleep. Apart from sporadic gunfire in the distance, all sound had dulled.
He could flex his legs but not release them. Something rough but softer than wood or metal was stuck across his thighs. He made out a pack. The smashed wooden upright of the funk hole lay jammed across that.
He couldn’t work out how he got there. He recalled Ames moving in front of him but he saw no sign of Ames now. Was that his pack? Jack gave up and tried to raise himself but his left shoulder hit the wooden beam above. His mind tried to reason how the two beams had split as they did but it got nowhere.
Although he could move his left arm he couldn’t work it free. His head and chest were clear of the water, his legs almost so. The only limb he could move freely was his right arm. If he struggled he did awaken pain.
Fragments of the attack started to come back to him. The whistles. The muddy glue. Roberts – why did he recall Roberts? And Webb…Then Williams forced his way in and Jack shook that face away. Thoughts were pushing back.
He made himself concentrate on practicalities. Where was he now? No Man’s Land? Worse than that. In the old German line. If there was another attack, wasn’t this where the British preliminary barrage would fall first?
It didn’t matter. The prospect of death felt appealing. To forget everything. To just close his eyes and wait for the end. But when he did so, a throbbing in his left temple made him open them at once. He stared at the wet dark roof of the hole. The throbbing didn’t stop. Pain was definitely coming back. And he couldn’t prevent his mind from starting to unwind. The comforting numbness was in retreat. He didn’t want this. He sensed things he didn’t want to see. Don’t get involved, he tried to tell himself. Don’t get involved. But his mind wasn’t
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