The Thing Itself

TWO

We’d heard that we weren’t going to attack the Hun army until our commander, Sir John French, was sure of its size and disposition. But the sighting of the cavalry must have startled him because suddenly we were out of the buses and marching double-time to the Mons canal in torrential rain. When the rain stopped, the sun came out and hit like a hammer. The dust kicked up. Then more rain, more sunshine.

We started out, as Robert Service had it, battle-bound and heart-high, singing It’s A Long Way To Tipperary. But by the time we’d covered forty kilometres my uniform was so soaked in sweat and rainwater I could have wrung it out. Some of my companions didn’t make the forty kilometres. They had new boots they hadn’t yet broken in. A lot of old stagers were sitting at the roadside nursing blistered feet.

The first night, we camped in a field with no fires or lights. We were not much more than a stone’s throw away from Malplaquet. The field was open but we were in the Black Country. There were slag heaps and coal mines, chemical plants, glass works and factories, and sooty washing on the lines in the back gardens of grubby villages.

Ted closed his eyes and breathed in.

‘Smell that slag heap. You could imagine you’re in Accrington.’ He laughed. ‘I’m not saying that’s a good thing, mind.’

Next day we hobbled into Mons during a big market. We sat on the cobblestones in the sunshine, bedraggled, steaming like horses. We got our rations: a big loaf of bread between us four and tins without labels, some rusted, probably dating back to the Boer War. It was pot luck what was in them. Mine had stewed apple, Jimmy had pilchards — we put them together. The locals gave us cheese and sausage, apples and pears. I stuffed my knapsack full for later.

We went for a walk. Got hauled into cafes for beer. Hauled into a hairdresser for a haircut. Given cigars and cigarettes. A photographer pulled us into his shop and out into his muddy back yard for a photograph against a bit of tarpaulin. Jack scribbled on a piece of card ‘Somewhere in France’ and propped it against a barrel next to us. We each got a print of the snap.

When we got back to the square, our regiment was lining up. We marched on to Nimy to take up position on the bank of the canal.

‘Bloody hell, this is a bit bigger than the Leeds and Liverpool,’ Jim said, looking across the wide expanse of water. ‘I wonder if we can have a dip?’

‘If you don’t mind having your bare white arse shot off,’ Ted said.

It was cold and wet on the canal bank, especially after a thunderstorm at ten. We couldn’t use our bivvies so we’d done our best to make trenches in the scrubland behind the canal. It was misty. There was some heat gusting from the blazing barges on the canal — we’d set them alight so they couldn’t be used for makeshift bridges across the canal.

We were told we were going to engage the enemy the next day. That night our morale was good. Nevertheless, everybody wrote their notes to their loved ones back home. Gave them to friends, stuck them on the end of their bayonets with their wedding rings.

Ted spent some time beside me writing a note in pencil. When he’d done, he folded it round a small photo. He held out the package to me.

‘Just in case.’

‘What if I get a packet?’ I said.

‘I’ll carry yours for you.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I’ve no one to write to.’

Ted proffered the package again. I shook my head.

‘I mean who’ll deliver your message if I get a packet? Best you keep it with you. I promise that if I come through and you don’t I’ll get it from you.’

Ted tucked it into one of his breast pockets.

‘Fair enough. You sure there’s no one you want to write to?’

‘Nobody. I told you. I’ve been orphaned for five years and there’s no sweetheart with her nose pressed to the windowpane pining for my return.’

At six a.m. on Sunday, 22nd August, the bells of Nimy church rang for mass. Smoke was coming from the chimney of a cottage about a hundred yards away and it was so quiet I could hear someone riddling the fire and adding more coal.

At nine a.m. the Germans started shelling. It lasted an hour but they couldn’t get the range. All the shells fell short, into the canal. Made our ears ring, though. We were waiting for our guns to reply but they didn’t.

The German infantry started forward soon after, a solid mass of grey. It gave me a jolt to see them coming, roaring and bellowing. My arms were shaking as I raised my rifle but then I realized we couldn’t miss. They came over a bank directly in front of us and as soon as they topped it we let them have it. The range was seventy yards, so we were firing our fifteen rounds a minute at them point-blank.

They outnumbered us three to one but it was exhilarating to see what kind of devastation concentrated firepower can wreak. Horrible too, by Jove. Legs, arms and heads were flying all over the place. One minute the Hun was there, the next they were all dead. We absolutely smashed them.

I glanced at Ted, Jim and Jack beside me. Their eyes were burning as bright as mine.

I heard later the Hun was convinced we’d mowed them down with machine-gun fire but it was our musketry training coming through.

Then they got their machine guns into action and at that distance we were now the sitting ducks. We had to get out of it pretty sharp. That’s when Jack and Ted copped it. I didn’t see Jack die but Ted was right next to me.

One minute we were clambering up the canal side together, the next he’d fallen across me, his brains blown out through the back of his helmet. I scrabbled in his pocket, taking out the few things I thought he’d want his wife to have in addition to the package and his wedding ring. I found another piece of paper with his home address on it.

I looked at what was left of his face. From human being to lifeless thing in an instant.

Jim went ten minutes later. I dug in his pocket for Jack’s stuff and his own.

I had a warm time of it the rest of that day. There were exploding shells, shrapnel in the air, machine-gun bullets. Eventually, German buglers sounded the ceasefire. Then, drifting down the lines, we could hear German voices singing ‘Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles’. Made my blood boil.

There was no respite that night. The guns pounded away. Villages and farms were on fire in front of us, and behind us factories and towns blazed with light.

The next five days seemed to last five years as we retreated under the unrelenting racket of big guns and machine-gun fire. It rained still more, and withdrawing through villages I slipped and slid as the coal dust on the cobbles turned to slime.

On the last day, 26th August, at a place called Le Cateau, I had my first taste of hand-to-hand combat. Well, bayonet-to-bayonet, really. I was the lucky one in that encounter. Lucky in the battle altogether. We suffered 8,000 casualties on that last day alone. Everyone I’d known in the Royal Sussex had died. I hadn’t got a scratch.