The letters that Polly wrote to her boys the next evening arrived together, as they always did, to end a period of two weeks without hearing from her that was beginning to cause concern to Jim and Bertie. She explained to them that she had been ‘just a bit under the weather’, but was feeling fine again. She enclosed, as she invariably did now, packets of cigarettes for them both and a little parcel of the sweet biscuits that Bertie loved. However, she asked if they would mind if she only wrote once a week to them both, because work was becoming more demanding, with long shifts, and she was sure that her letters were becoming equally boring, because ‘nothing happens to me, except work’. She had been to the moving pictures, though. And did they know that the funny little fellow with the bowler hat, Charlie Chaplin, was British? She had read that in the Birmingham Mail, so it must be true.
The autumn crept into Christmas, their second in Flanders, and then a winter when the wind blew over the battered plain of the Salient and everyone in the front line wondered when and where the Big Push would be. For Jim and Bertie, as for all their comrades facing the Germans in that series of watery ditches that formed the line in Flanders, the deadly monotony of trench warfare in that tight, sodden pocket before Ypres was stressful in the extreme.
By March of 1916, few remained of the original draft of Territorials and Reservists who had fought with the pair in the First Battle of Ypres in 1914. The deprivations from the first two battles, the constant bombardment, the sniping and the losses resulting from the patrols and raiding across no man’s land had produced a steady reduction in the ranks manning the line. Although no major clashes had taken place since the summer of 1915 in the Salient, there was nothing tranquil about the line and no day passed without casualties, many of them fatal. Indeed, a wound so serious that it meant the recipient had to be sent down the line and on to England for treatment – a ‘Blighty One’ – was coveted. But those caused by the ever-present explosions of razor-sharp fragments of shrapnel were to be feared, for, apart from death, they could cause horrific injuries, including disfigurement.
All officers and senior NCOs were alerted to distinguish between genuine wounds and those that were self-inflicted. Single bullet wounds in the hand and forearm were viewed with extreme scepticism, for where the land between the two front lines was narrow – two hundred yards or less – the Germans had been known to obligingly respond to a cry of ‘Go on, Fritz, give us one’ by putting a bullet into the hand or arm so invitingly held aloft.
The pressure, however, sometimes drove men to further extremes. A cry of ‘Sergeant, come quick’ sent Jim hurrying down the trench one morning in the dark hours before stand-to. There, sprawled on the slimy duckboards, lay the figure of a young infantryman. His head was hideously disfigured, for a bullet had entered the roof of his mouth and exited through the top of his skull. Strangely, however, his right boot and sock had been removed and placed on the fire step near him. Jim stood stock-still in wonder, before he realised that the boy had put the muzzle of his rifle in his mouth, curled his big toe around the trigger and pressed it down. It was to become a not unusual occurrence as the war wore on during 1916.
Jim, in fact, was now beginning to worry about Bertie. This was not the concern that he always felt about the little man – that he would be found dozing on duty, that he would be arraigned for being incorrectly dressed or that he had fallen foul of Sergeant Major Flanagan again. Indeed, the stripes earned by the pair had proved to be a deterrent of a kind to Black Jack, who found it difficult, for instance, to put a lance corporal on permanent latrine duty. And, when he put his mind to it, Bertie was a competent soldier, still one of the best marksmen in the battalion.
No, the characteristic that was starting to cause Jim anxiety was a kind of fey depression that was emerging in the behaviour of this most buoyant of men. Bertie was beginning to exhibit a fatalism about the war – that it was becoming crueller by the day, impossible to be resolved by any conventional means and that death was the only outcome for them all. It must be said that this attitude seemed, superficially, to be not uncommon along the line. But the average Tommy used it as a form of defence, a faux fatalism that concealed a cheerful scepticism about the conflict and the way it was being conducted by the generals on both sides. ‘Bugger them all and bugger us, too,’ summed it up.
Yet Lance Corporal Bertram Murphy was serious and was beginning to read strange things into the daily happenings of life on the Salient. Jim, whose attitude towards religion was one of lazy scepticism and who had always regarded Bertie’s devotion to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church with respect and a touch of envy, had thought at first that his friend was beginning to lose his faith. The rosary, for instance, had not been produced during the shelling for some time, and Bertie’s calling on the Holy Mother to give them succour during particularly bad moments had virtually ceased. Then the little man surprised his friend.
‘You know, Jimmy boy,’ he said one early morning when they were both standing guard, ‘God is with us in this cruel, awful place.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Jim. ‘Where’s the old chap hiding then, Bertie?’
‘Ah, son, you can’t see him. Now I was thinkin’ a while back that he didn’t exist, you know, what with all this terrible killin’ stuff and us bein’ forced to live in holes in the ground with the rats. Then I got to thinkin’ it through.’
‘Oh good. Tell me, then.’
‘That’s just what I’m doing, is it not, if you’ll let me.’
‘For goodness’ sake get on with it, then.’
‘So I will. So I will. So I remembered, of course, that although everything in the long run is his will, it’s us, here on earth, that fucks it all up, see? He doesn’t control everything we do. He has to let us get on with it and that’s what we’re doing now, with this terrible war – buggering things up. And the good Lord can’t – or won’t – stop us; it’s up to us to stop it. But he is still with us, here, in the middle of all this misery, and he shows to us that he is.’
‘What! With all the shrapnel tearing off blokes’ balls, arms and legs? How does he show it?’
‘Just think, Jim. What happens when the Very lights, the star shells go up? Eh?’
‘Well, we all freeze. Nothing happens. We stop what we’re doing.’
‘Exactly.’ Bertie thumped the sandbags in delight. ‘He stops the bloody fighting, just for a minute, but it’s enough to show that he’s with us. To remind us that he exists and that we ought to stop this rubbishin’ war.’
Jim frowned. ‘But they’re star shells. We send ’em up, and so do the Germans, to illuminate people moving in no man’s land and to prevent surprise attacks.’
‘There you are.’ Bertie thumped the sandbag again. ‘That proves me point. You said it yourself – “to stop surprise attacks”. We may send ’em up but the good Lord prompts us to, to stop the killin’ just for a minute or two. He stops the war, son. You can call ’em Very lights or star shells. But I reckon they’re starshine. That’s what those lights are, starshine. His light, to remind us he’s there. And I feel much better as a result.’
Jim gave him a long, penetrating look. ‘Well, I think you’re daft, Bertie, but if it makes you feel better to think that, then I’m happy too. Mind you, if we could put one up Black Jack Flanagan’s arse, then I think we would both be delirious.’
‘Aw, Jim lad, I’m being serious.’
‘So am I and God would surely be happy too.’
‘Are you never serious?’
‘Sometimes. Like now. Stand down. It’s the end of your guard.’
Jim knew that things were building up on the Western Front. He read the newspapers that his father sent him out from home and he talked with those officers, usually during the quieter watches of the night, who were happy to discuss the pattern of the war with young, intelligent NCOs. He understood the basic strategic position. Four hundred and seventy-five miles of trench line now stretched from the Belgian coast, sweeping across the face of France to the very foothills of Switzerland. Until the autumn of 1915, the French were grimly holding on to four hundred miles of its length, while the British Expeditionary Force faced the enemy along a mere seventy-five miles. The Brits had proved that they could fight, at Ypres, Mons and Loos. But more was needed. The attrition of trench warfare over such a long front was imposing immense burdens on the French, who were beginning to bleed away a generation of young men at Verdun, and the British now had to assume a bigger share of that burden; to take over a larger portion of the line. So it was to the Somme, in the heartlands of Northern France, that Britain’s new army made its way.
Never before had Britain sent abroad so many men – a civilian army who had answered the call of Kitchener’s powerful poster, even after the great man had met his death in the icy waters of the North Sea. Kitchener’s New Army – no Reservists (except for officers, alas often elderly, brought out of retirement) or Territorials this time, but clerks from their desks, butchers from their blocks, barristers from high tables, miners from deep labyrinths, shepherds from the hills, artisans from their factories, weavers from their looms and teachers from their blackboards – took on the khaki and trained hard. Many formed into ‘Pals Battalions’, from the same district or even company, so that they all knew each other. They were inexperienced and, alas, only hurriedly, if enthusiastically, trained. But they were confident and proud, inspired by the deeds of the young men who had gone before, like Bertie Murphy and Jim Hickman, and they marched in masses into the Somme – often behind their own pipe bands that had never seen Scotland – and they took over the old French section of the line, where it had faced the Germans from Hébuterne to Thiepval, on the Ancre, from Thiepval to the banks of the River Somme itself. Reinforced by the veterans of the Gallipoli disaster who landed in the south of France and marched to the north to stiffen the new arrivals, these were the young soldiers who were to launch the ‘Big Push’ that was to be known as the Battle of the Somme.
It began on the morning of 24th June, 1916, with the longest and most extensive barrage of artillery fire that had been known in warfare up until that point. Some seventy miles to the north, across the Belgian border, Jim and Bertie, disgruntled that they had not been allowed home leave for more than a year and yearning to see Polly, were on rest and recuperation leave from the trenches at Poperinghe when the news filtered through that the Big Push had been unleashed – and, thanked God it had not sprung from the Salient.
In fairness, it had been clear for some time that the reinforcements that had been flooding across the Channel were not destined for the old mud and bloodbath before Ypres. The regiments that garrisoned the Salient rarely seemed to change; only their constituent parts were supplemented to stem the steady erosion caused by the dead and the wounded.
‘It’s because they trust us to know where the Jerries are, you see,’ said Bertie. ‘We’re good at it. I wish we weren’t.’
They were sitting together in a billet at the west of Pop. A sergeant’s mess had been established there but Jim preferred to spend off-duty time, as ever, with his old friend. The first day of the attack on the Somme, three days ago, according to the British army newspaper the Wipers Times had met with great success, with breaks through the German lines at several places.
Hickman threw down the paper with disgust. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘From what I can see, the Germans – who got there first, don’t forget – have had plenty of time to establish themselves on high ground, a bit like here, and set up really good defensive positions. We’ve seen here how good they are with concrete and stuff. With the heaviest bombardment in the world, I still don’t see us just breaking through ’em on the first day.’
‘Hmm.’ Bertie was distant, his eyes looking out of the dirty window, but unseeingly. He was clearly not interested in the Somme. ‘Jim,’ he said, ‘it’s amazin,’ ain’t it, that you an’ me have survived this long amidst all this killin’?’
‘What? Well, I suppose so. We’ve just been lucky, I suppose. Although we’ve been out here long enough now to know what to do. How to get by, so to speak.’
‘Yes, but think of all the good lads that have gone. Many of ’em were the old Regulars who knew more about anythin’ than we ever did. But they went down and here we still are.’
Jim sniffed. ‘Yes, well, best not to think about it. Just keep your head down and get on with it.’
They were both silent for a while. Then: ‘One of us is bound to get it soon,’ said Bertie. ‘I do hope it’s me rather than you. You’ll be better able to look after Polly, that’s for sure.’
‘Stop talking rot. Shall we go to the pub tonight? Have you got any money?’
Bertie fished in his pocket. ‘Sergeant, darlin’ boy, I’m rich. Look. About twenty francs. Mind you, I was richer yesterday. I sent twenty-five shillings from me pay back to me dad. He’ll spend it on Guinness. Wish I could.’
‘Ah, come on. The wine here is not bad. I’ve got ten francs left. Let’s get plastered and you can thank God that we’re not on the Somme. Shame they can’t distil your starshine here. I suppose it would be like getting pissed on communion wine.’
‘Don’t be blasphemous, Jimmy. Someone might be listening.’
Poperinghe had changed to some extent, since their visit in 1914, but overall it had remained unaltered. It was right at the extreme range of the German big guns on the ridges and so escaped the kind of bombardment that had devastated Ypres itself. But the enemy occasionally indulged itself from a distance in firing gas shells at the town. As always, the efficacy of a gas attack depended upon the direction of the wind, and a recent innovation at Pop was the establishment of a noticeboard outside the town hall, which gave daily indications of the state of the wind vis-à-vis a gas attack in terms of ‘Safe’ or ‘Dangerous’. Otherwise, the little town retained its gruesome charm as a kind of military tourist spot, near enough to the front line to make it convenient for short-term leave (and sudden recall when a large-scale attack seemed imminent) but also far enough away to give it relative safety. And its streets remained narrow, crowded and full of bars and brothels, offering British soldiers an opportunity to put behind the misery of the trenches for a short time and to spend their shilling-a-day pay. The noticeboard that day had signalled that the wind direction was safe, and so for Jim and Bertie that night the Café des Allies beckoned.
Halfway through the second bottle – their taste had changed; now they eschewed the ‘plonk’ and drank the vin rouge – it became clear that Bertie was restless. His mood was not helped by the news, passed through the crowded room by word of mouth from table to table, that, in fact, the first day on the Somme had proved to be disastrous.
‘Fousands went darn,’ said the cockney gunner on their left. ‘Fousands. Bleedin’ wire ’adn’t bin cut and they was ’ung out to dry. A massacre, it was. Bleedin’ massacre. Just ’eard from me bruvver. ’E was there.’
Bertie raised his eyes to heaven. ‘Ah, you were right, then, Jim lad. Oh, this stupid, stupid war.’ He ran his fingers through his tangled hair and his wide eyes ran round the room as though he was seeking some conclusion to it, some salvation. ‘Tell you what. Let’s pop into next door. See what it’s like. I’ve never … been with a lady like that. Have you?’
‘Aw, come on. We needn’t do anything. Just have a look, eh?’
‘All right, then. But I’m not leaving this bottle. Let’s finish it first.’
A little too hurriedly, they emptied the bottle, paid their bill and left the café, then, rather shamefacedly, they climbed the steps underneath the red lamp to the left and knocked on the door. It was opened by a woman with dyed red hair, a face that might once have been pretty and a gigantic frontage that offered no distinction between bosom and stomach. Her perfume hit them like a blanket, as did the hot air from within.
She took in Jim’s stripes and addressed him. ‘’Ello, General,’ she said. ‘Come een. You sit and wait. We very busy. But you don’t wait long. Take a drink, eh?’
She pointed to a red velvet settee, on the end of which perched a young infantryman, his hand unashamedly on his crotch. Nearby, two Signallers sat in plush, rather broken-down armchairs, sharing what looked like a bottle of yellowish absinthe. The room was large but only dimly lit. Faux candelabra, converted to hissing but inadequate gaslight, hung from the ceiling. Alcoves lined the walls and curtains had been drawn across their entrances. Around the edges, however, glimpses could be caught of beds and booted feet on them jerking uncertainly. The place smelt of stale cigarette smoke and something else indefinably but definitely unpleasant.
As they stood uncertainly, one of the curtains was twitched back and a woman of uncertain age slipped through. Nonchalantly, she thrust a sagging breast back inside her slip with one hand and completed the pulling up of her drawers with the other. She looked round the room. ‘Cigarette?’ she requested, holding out her hand to the waiting clientele.
Jim and Bertie exchanged glances. ‘Well, I don’t think—’ began Hickman. Then from one of the alcoves came a scream. Not one of delight, but of pain, and then the sound of a blow and another, followed by a crash as a woman was hurled against the wall. She pulled at the curtain, which came down, to reveal Sergeant Major Flanagan, his face puce with anger, kicking angrily at the naked body of a young girl as she coiled at his feet, half draped by the curtain.
‘If I say suck it, you whore,’ shouted Flanagan, ‘suck it, blast you, and don’t argue with me. I’ll kick your face in.’
The Madam shouted something in French and ran to intervene, only to be sent to the floor by a savage punch from the Ulsterman.
Bertie immediately started forward, but was held back by Jim. ‘Outside, quickly,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’
As they rushed to the door, they caught a glimpse of girls emerging from the other alcoves, some of them brandishing what appeared to be carving knives, before they had gained the street. ‘To the left,’ shouted Hickman to Bertie. ‘I saw a redcap when we came in.’
The sound of the altercation had obviously already alerted the military policeman, for he was striding quickly towards them. ‘Inside the brothel, next to the café,’ said Jim, pointing. ‘There’s a drunken Irish warrant officer beating up the women and causing havoc. He’s already nearly killed one of the girls. Watch yourself. The man’s a bastard.’
‘Right,’ said the policeman. He broke into a run and blew the whistle that dangled from his lanyard to summon assistance.
‘Let’s get out of here, son,’ said Jim. ‘I think we might have nicely dropped Flanagan in it. What a pleasure!’
The news came next morning, quickly passed round the billets with joy, for Sergeant Major Flanagan was not a popular man. He had been arrested by the MPs, kept in the guardhouse overnight and was due to appear before the colonel that morning. He had, it appeared, broken the jaw of the girl and had resisted arrest. Rumour had it that the French local authorities had tried to press charges but the British military authorities were insistent on handling the matter themselves.
‘Ah,’ nodded Bertie. ‘What d’you think he’ll get? Shot at dawn, or something more severe?’
Jim gave a reluctant grin. ‘He ought to spend time in jug. Trouble is,’ he said, ‘the man’s a bloody good soldier and the regiment won’t want to lose him. We’ve lost enough fighters already and they won’t want him taken out of the line. Demotion to sergeant, I should think.’
So it proved. On his return to the regiment a week later, there was a faded patch on his forearm where his warrant officer’s badge of rank had been and three stripes were back on his formidable biceps. He bore, however, a raw, red scar on his cheek.
‘A carving knife, I should say,’ murmured Bertie. ‘I’ll tell you what, though, Jimmy. I’m glad now that we didn’t – you know. Looked horrible, didn’t it?’
Hickman nodded. ‘And it wouldn’t have been right by Polly, now, would it?’
‘Ah, now, you’re surely right there, lad. You’re surely right.’
Flanagan’s bearing on his return was no different. He still carried himself with a swagger and he met everyone’s gaze with a belligerent stare, as though daring them to ask about his new, or rather his old, rank. He gave no indication that he knew that he had Hickman and Murphy to thank for his demotion and they were unsure about whether he had seen them leave the brothel. Certainly, Hickman had not been called to testify. It was clear that the evidence of the fracas that Flanagan had caused and his resistance to arrest was sufficient to condemn him. The cold antipathy with which he regarded the pair, however, remained unchanged, although was there just a hint of extra malevolence in his gaze when his eyes met theirs?
The battalion returned to the line and Jim and Bertie were relieved to find that Flanagan, who had been their company’s sergeant major, had been transferred to another company, although, of course, he remained within their regiment. This meant that his path did not cross daily with the two comrades. The new CSM, Sergeant Major Blackshaw, was another Regular, a veteran who had been nearing retirement age when war was declared and, accordingly, was more indulgent than his predecessor, a man who knew how to survive and who was all for finding a way of having a quiet life in the trenches, if the Germans – and his officers – allowed him to.
The hope of a quiet life for them all, however, eventually disappeared when the news came through that the battalion was being posted. Every heart sank when they heard of their destination: the Somme, where the dreadful battle still raged.