CHAPTER FOUR

FRANCE

21-22 March 1918

“If the Prussian Guards are coming, then we had better get out of here,” Flockhart said. “There are hardly enough of us to stand against a group of school pupils let alone the Prussians.”

“Let the bastards come,” McKim muttered darkly. “They’re only bloody Huns. We’re the Royals. Let the bloody bastards come.” He banged the butt of his rifle against the duckboards on the bottom of the trench, stamped his feet and spat on the ground.

Ramsay grinned briefly. “Good man, McKim, but there are about twelve of us left, with enough ammunition to shoot a one-legged crow, and there must be a battalion of Prussians there, plus what remains of the unit we just chased halfway to Berlin. I think the odds are stacked against us, somewhat.”

“They ran very easily,” McKim said. “They knew they were facing the Royals.”

“Look,” Flockhart pointed to the nearest of the dead Germans. The man lay on his back with his face up. “How old would you say he was?”

Ramsay glanced down. The man’s face was too smooth to have ever experienced the bite of a razor; his eyes were wide, his dying terror evident. “He must be all of seventeen,” he said.

“So were his chums.” Flockhart indicated the heaped German dead. Young faces and immature bodies were slumped in the obscenity of death. “I doubt that any of them are twenty years old yet.” He nudged the nearest man with the toe of his boot. “It looks as if the Kaiser is throwing everything he has at us this time, from the best he has to the scrapings of the schools.”

Ramsay grunted. “It’s worked so far. Fritz has punched a huge hole in our lines. The gunfire is miles to the rear now.” He peered into the darkness of No Man’s Land. “We are doing no good here. Our line has collapsed and once the Prussians realise how few there are of us they will just roll over us. As soon as it’s full dark we will slip away and head for our lines.” He paused for a second. “Wherever they are.”

“That suits me, sir,” Flockhart said. “If they leave us alone for another half hour we can slip free all the easier when night falls.”

“Maybe so, Sergeant,” Ramsay was less cheerful, “but if the Germans are making progress, the longer we stay here, the further through enemy-held territory we may have to travel.”

He ducked as a shell burst overhead and shrapnel pattered down. Others exploded in a volley of explosions around the trench. A column of mud rose and fell leaving only the reek of lyddite and the song of a single lark. There were always larks. “They were ours,” Flockhart said, “so it looks as if we’ve given up on this section of the line for now.”

Ramsay glanced at his watch. “Half past seven,” he said, “what happened to the time? No matter. We’ll move in half an hour. Pass the word.”

“Aye, sir.” Flockhart glanced around. “Shall I try and find some scran, sir? The men have not eaten since breakfast.”

“Good idea.” Ramsay cursed silently at this subtle reproach of his leadership. As the officer his first priority should be the wellbeing of his soldiers. “Off you go, Flockhart.”

He watched as Flockhart slipped away, his stocky figure alert yet somehow relaxed as he merged with the semi-gloom of the trenches. Ramsay touched the pistol in its holster and wondered: Why are you not dead? Amongst all the shambles of this murderous war, why do you survive when I need you dead?

There was no reply. There were only the usual night time sounds of the front, augmented by the sound of singing. Ramsay struggled to make out the words; he knew the tune well. Out there in the gathering gloom, a thousand voices were singing an Easter hymn: in German. Somehow he knew it was the Prussian Guards and that the monacled, shaven-headed officer was leading the chorus. Tomorrow that man would lead his men forward and there was nothing that his battered handful of Royals could do to stop them.

There were always the guns, rumbling away at Ypres to the north as they had for the past three and a half years, but apart from that there was a strange hush in the lines. The muted chatter of a distant machine gun was irrelevant, the whine of the breeze through the tangled wire a familiar melody, and the quiet murmur of the men a soothing reminder of the continuance of humanity despite the slaughter of war. Ramsay checked his periscope for the tenth time that hour. What had so recently been No Man’s Land was quiet save for the writhing wounded. He saw a lone German crawling back through the wire, dragging a shattered leg with him. Somebody was sobbing, the sound so poignant with grief that Ramsay fancifully thought it was the Earth itself, crying for the folly of the Masters of Creation in thus committing collective suicide in such a long, drawn out manner. He shook himself away from such idiocy and concentrated on matters in hand. Somehow he had to get his men to safety, through an unknown number of Germans, across an unknown number of miles to reach the relative security of the British lines.

By some miracle, Flockhart had managed to locate food. Nothing grand, just cold sandwiches and hot tea, but at least the men had something inside them before the next stage of the ordeal. Only a veteran sergeant could do that, but why did it have to be Flockhart? Could he not just die quietly and relieve me of this burden I carry?

“Do you think Fritz has broken right through?” McKim sat in the lee of the newly rebuilt wall of sandbags, sucking on his empty pipe.

Ramsay shrugged. “I could not say, McKim, but I doubt it. We’ve hammered at his lines for years and he’s tried ours and the French. . .” He trailed off. He was about to say he thought the war would last forever, or until every man on both sides had been killed, but no officer should voice such sentiments to a man from the ranks.

“Oh, well, we’ll see soon enough.” McKim glanced at the sky. “Ten minutes until full dark, I’d say. Shall I have the lads stand to?”

“No,” Ramsay decided. “Let them get another few minutes rest. God alone knows what we will face out there.” He checked the periscope again. “There is no movement. Fritz has other things to worry about rather than a wee handful of Royal Scots.” The sound of the singing had diminished, but Ramsay knew the Prussians were still there, gathering their strength for the advance.

“Aye, sir,” McKim said. He removed his pipe for a second. “Maybe Fritzy will find out he’s made a mistake then.” He grinned. “Haul away, lads, we’re no deid yet. Up the Royals!”

“Up the Royals.” Ramsay smiled at McKim’s slant on the oft-repeated saying that was so common in the streets of Edinburgh. “How long have you been in the regiment, McKim?”

“All my life, sir.” McKim touched the faded medal ribbons on his breast. He took the pipe from his mouth and looked at it as if contemplating his entire past in the dark bowl. “I was always with the Royals. My father was a Colour Sergeant and I was born when the regiment was on campaign in China. . .” He tailed off and looked away as if he had released too much information.

Ramsay narrowed his eyes. As far as he knew, the Royals had last been in China in the war of 1860. If McKim had been born then, he would be 58 now; a very old soldier, yet a man who was fitter and hardier than any of the youngsters in the regiment.

McKim replaced the pipe between his tobacco-stained teeth. “My mother was a regimental wife, she just followed the drum. For all I know she was born into the strength as well. I never asked her. I think she married three sergeants in a row, maybe it was four. I called two of them father.” He shrugged. “I was a barrack room bairn and the regiment brought me up.”

Ramsay looked at him, noting the hard grey in the moustache and the white in his eyebrows. He had to ask. “How old did you say you are, McKim?”

“Thirty, sir,” McKim said at once. He held Ramsay’s eyes in an unblinking stare.

“I see.” Ramsay leaned closer. “You must have been young when you won that then,” he pointed to the faded medal ribbon on McKim’s breast. “The South African War? If you are thirty now you must have been about 12 at the time.”

McKim nodded. “Aye, sir. I lied about my age.” His face remained as inscrutable as an Oriental Buddha.

“That’s hard to believe.” Ramsay tried to keep his face expressionless. “An honest man like you.”

“Yes, sir, but I wanted to join the men you see; it was the life I grew up with.” McKim looked up as a flare rose in the darkening sky; it cast a greenish glow over the trench and over every man there. “Fritz is getting restless, sir. He might be thinking of sending a fighting patrol across to visit us.”

Ramsay nodded. He thought of these huge, professional Prussians pitted against his ragged handful. “It’s time to move then, McKim.” He passed the word softly to the men. “Take all the ammunition you can carry, walk soft and try not to talk too loudly.”

The German bombardment had destroyed the communication trench so McKim climbed on to the sandbags of the rear wall and quickly rolled into the disturbed ground beyond. He vanished as silently and efficiently as any Red Indian in the Fennimore Cooper novels that Ramsay had read as a boy. “Don’t let your silhouette be seen, lads. German snipers just love that.” His words came as a quiet hiss through the dark.

Ramsay was last to go, ushering the slowest of the men over. He frowned as Flockhart turned back. “Where do you think you are going, Sergeant?”

Flockhart glanced over his shoulder. “I’m going to leave old Fritz a present, sir.” He slipped a primed grenade under a dead German body. “Remind him that we’ll be back,” he said. He had a last word to the sole remaining, grievously wounded Royal; the other had died during the night.

“Good luck, Sergeant,” the man whispered. “Leave me a rifle and I’ll take one with me.”

“You lie quiet, lad, and let Fritzy look after you. You’ll be fine.” Flockhart patted the man on the arm and looked up, his eyes gleaming in the reflected light of a star shell.

Ramsay jerked a thumb in the direction of the British lines. “Right, Flockhart. Now come along, man.”

Only descending flares provided light as Ramsay slipped over the ravaged ground behind what had once been the British front line. He followed in the wake of his own men, allowing McKim to find the safest route through the tangle of trenches and shell craters. Once or twice men gave a curse or an exclamation of disgust as they encountered the mangled remains of soldiers or horses. Twice they halted as a star shell exploded above them and slowly drifted down, they were illuminated as stark figures in a nightmare world. They moved slowly, step by careful step, a succession of frightened, determined men moving across a landscape made unfamiliar by shelling.

“Watch the rear, Flockhart,” Ramsay ordered curtly, and pushed forward, past the dim figures with their shouldered rifles and steel helmets tipped forward over their eyes. They looked up as he passed, but nobody spoke. Although they were united in danger and regiment, rank divided them as surely as a bayonet parted flesh.

As it should be. I am an officer and a gentleman, they are rankers.

There were dead men here, some blasted to fragments, others huddled in tattered lumps, and a few peaceful, as if asleep. Many wore British uniforms, but there were also dead Germans here, scores of them, lying in windrows where machine guns had cut them down, in ragged groups around the rim of shell holes or singly, where they had died alone, victims of rifle or bayonet.

“Listen.” McKim held up his hand. German voices echoed through the night, harsh, guttural and confident. Somebody laughed and others joined in, the noise level rising and then fading away to a low murmur.

“Bastards,” a voice said in the unmistakable accent of Leith. “Dirty Hun bastards!”

“Keep the noise down, Cruickshank,” Ramsay growled. He eased to the front of his men, counting them as he did so. There were fourteen left, most wounded in some way. There were bloodied bandages around heads and arms, roughly cobbled uniforms, torn tunics and anxious eyes. Fourteen, he had lost more than half his men in one day and he had not even had the time to learn their names.

What sort of officer am I? All I can do is get wounded and lead my men to defeat and slaughter.

There was a short burst of gunfire ahead, the unmistakable staccato rattle of a Lewis machine gun and the irregular bark of rifles. Ramsay held up his hand. Should he lead his men to this obvious British presence? Or should he try and avoid trouble with his battered handful of men? It could be a determined stand by a sizeable force, or even the beginning of a counter attack. However it might only be a last hopeless stand by another group of men left behind by the hasty British retreat.

McKim had no such qualms. “That could be the Royals sir,” he hinted. “Are we going to help the lads?”

Ramsay looked over his men. They came close, tripping over the ragged ground as they gathered around him. They all looked at him, eyes wary in the night, hunched with weariness but their hands still gripping the rifles that were slung across their shoulders. Most carried packs, the rest had lost them in the bombardment.

“Right, men,” Ramsay spoke quietly, aware his voice would carry in the night. “We are heading toward that firing and let’s see if we can help.”

They nodded, accepting his decision without outward question. He was their officer. I wonder what they really think. I hope they follow me after this bloody shambles.

“Keep together, lads, don’t straggle,” Flockhart encouraged them. “Fritz just loves stragglers.”

They bunched up, stumbling over ground that shells had blasted beyond recognition, swearing in low undertones as they moved toward the guns. They were British soldiers; it was their job to fight; gunfire meant fighting. There was really nothing more to say. Now that the decision had been made for them, the men relaxed and began to talk amongst themselves.

“Jesus Christ, Fraser. Mind yourself, can’t you? You’re trampling on my heels.”

“Is that you, Aitken?”

“Has anybody got a light? My matches are damp.”

“Here’s another body. It’s Blair, poor bugger, blown to blazes.”

The communication trench was only a memory, blasted beyond recognition by accurate German shelling; the machine gun posts, located to provide support to the front line, were merely a succession of craters and the light artillery pieces were ripped to shreds. They stumbled over an alien landscape, cursing softly, moving cautiously, making slow progress toward the distant musketry.

“There’s Major Campbell’s dugout, sir.” Flockhart pointed to a deeper shadow in the dimness of the night.

“Wait here,” Ramsay ordered and slid down the shell-battered steps and into utter darkness. He took a box of matches from his pocket and scraped one alight, but immediately wished he had not bothered. German storm troopers must have caught the inhabitants by surprise. Major Campbell was still inside, but his lower body was shredded and another man was equally dead. Some unknown German had thrown a grenade down the steps and followed it up with a blast of bullets. The occupants had not stood a chance. The map had been ripped from the wall, the table was a memory, but the Germans had left an unopened bottle of Younger’s Ale on the table. The Glenlivet bottle was broken into a thousand shards of glass.

Ramsay spent only a second shuffling through the scatter of papers on the ground. He considered looking through them, then realised that since the German advance, all the information he required would be out of date. However, there could be some information about troop formations useful to the enemy. Ramsay cursed as the match burned down to his fingers, he dropped it, lit another and bent down to set light to the nearest sheet.

“Sorry, Major,” he muttered, “but I don’t know what Fritz could learn from these.” He gave a brief salute and waited until the flames took hold. “Rest easy, sir.”

“All right, sir?” Flockhart asked; he sniffed at the smoke that had followed Ramsay up the steps and indicated the orange glow of flames.

“Major Campbell’s funeral pyre,” Ramsay said. “Now let’s get away before Fritz sends a patrol to investigate.”

They marched in the direction of the musketry, keeping quiet, holding their rifles ready; wary, scared but defiant. The firing continued, at times dying away and then increasing in volume to a frenetic crescendo. There was the barking cheer of a German charge and the firing gradually decreased, ending in a few isolated cracks and then one final shot and silence. The Royal Scots stopped moving to listen. A solitary laugh drifted through the night.

“Christ,” Niven said softly. “That’s they boys gone by the sound of it.”

“The Huns are wiping us out,” an anonymous voice sounded from the gloom. “Hell and damnation to them all!”

“They’re getting us one by one,” somebody replied, “one by bloody one.”

“Maybe this is it,” Aitken said. “Maybe this is the German push that ends the war.”

“Keep your chins up, lads. Mind we’re Royal Scots,” McKim muttered quiet encouragement. “We’ll get the bastards back, don’t you fear.” He raised his voice slightly. “Up the Royals, lads. Come on, up the Royals.” But there were no takers until Flockhart repeated the words:

“Up the Royals, lads. Don’t let the Kaiser get you down!”

There were soft growls from the men, a rattle of equipment and a half-stifled cough as one man fought the gas that had seeped into his lungs.

“Roll call, boys,” Ramsay decided. They had been moving away from the burning dugout for an hour now and were beginning to straggle as the weaker and more badly wounded men lagged behind. “Gather round.”

There was a shuffling of tired feet, an occasional grumbled mutter, an urgent whisper and the men circled around. They were ghosts in the shattered gloom of the battlefield, hunched men with long coats and haggard faces, part illuminated by the occasional soaring star shell.

“Take the roll, Flockhart,” Ramsay did not want to admit he did not know all the men’s names yet. I should know them. They are my men. It is my duty to know the men I lead to death.

Like the good sergeant he was, Flockhart knew every one of his soldiers. In the tense darkness of that lunar landscape, he steadily intoned all thirty names that had been under Ramsay’s command, waiting after each for a response.

“Aitken . . .”

“Sir.”

The voices were soft in the night, but there were far too many silences after each hopeful name. Each silence meant a death; each silence signified a grieving family somewhere in Edinburgh or the Lothians; each silence was a broken-hearted mother or wife, orphaned children and a future hacked away by shellfire or bullet.

“Beaumont . . .”

Silence.

“Arbuthnott . . .”

Silence.

“Cruickshank . . .”

“Sir!”

Oh, thank God. Thank you God for preserving a young life. Thank you for one minor mercy in this cataclysmic horror.

“Dickson . . .”

Silence. Someone coughed. Then silence again: heavy, oppressive, prickling with apprehension.

“Mackay . . .”

“Sir!”

That was a very young voice indeed.

“MacNulty . . .”

Silence.

The silences were frightening. They hung over the loose band of men as if populated by the accusing ghosts of the dead; circling them, running sharp-taloned fingers up their spines, easing memories of laughing faces and frightened faces into their brains. The silences were too loud to be ignored – they screamed an abyss of nothingness into minds incapable of adding tragic loss to their packed burden of horror and fear and guilt.

“Nixon . . .”

Silence.

Oh God; how many more of my men?

When Flockhart finished the roll there were only twelve men left. Twelve terribly fatigued men who nursed wounds and whose eyes were shaded with memory. Ramsay stood in the centre and wondered how to lift their morale. Shoulders were drooping, but was it tiredness or despair? He looked around, unable to decide.

“We’ll march at night and rest during the day, lads. I am sure our lines will stiffen soon and Fritz’s advance will slow up.”

I am not sure of any such thing. It looks as if Fritz has broken through and smashed us all to atoms. Now they are just mopping up what remains.

“How will we get through their lines, sir?” A sensible question from Aitken, unlike his normally near frantic self.

“We will cross that bridge when we fall over it,” Ramsay said. He emphasised his grin so it could be seen in the dark. “In other words, I don’t know yet, but something will turn up.”

As he had hoped, the frank admission brought a quiet laugh from the men, they appreciated honesty.

“Right lads, keep together and keep quiet. We will stick on the tail of the Hun. If anybody finds ammunition, let us all know. We are the Royals, Pontius Pilate’s Bodyguard!”

They moved on again, slowly and quietly, stopping frequently whenever they heard German voices. Three times they came across small groups of dead men, each time a compact body of British soldiers surrounded by a scattering of Germans. On each occasion Ramsay ordered his men to rob the dead of their ammunition and bombs, and they moved on, leaving the crumpled corpses behind them.

“God rest, lads,” McKim said each time, and some of the Royals murmured their own words. They marched on, grimly, into the gloom and always toward the distant grumble and flash of the guns.

An hour before dawn they were still deep in the battered maze of trenches and abandoned dugouts that had been the British support lines. They had passed scores of bodies, both British and German, and as many horses, some still kicking in their agony.

“It’s not right to leave them to suffer,” Aitken said, but Ramsay hardened his heart.

“Ignore them,” he ordered. “We are more important than animals.” He noticed Aitken hesitating. “Come on Aitken! Move!”

They pressed on, wending their way through the nightmare tangle of water-filled trenches and ripped sandbags. To the east the sky was stygian, as though the sun had no desire to open its eyes on another day of desperate pain.

“Ahead there,” McKim spoke in a soft whisper. “Fritz.”

Ramsay halted the men. They stopped, shoulders hunched, feet scuffing in the ankle deep mud, but they unshouldered their rifles and looked forward. They were bone-weary and afraid, but still they were soldiers, still they were Royal Scots. Ramsay could not voice his pride. These men deserved more than he could give.

He could hear the mutter of men directly across their path. “How many?”

“Not sure,” McKim said. “A foraging party, I think. Do you want me to have a look?”

Ramsay considered. As the officer his place was with the bulk of the men, but he desperately wanted to prove himself now. I am not good enough for these soldiers. I lead them to death every time.

“I’ll come as well,” he decided. “Flockhart, you look after the rest of the lads.” For a long moment Ramsay wondered if he should take Flockhart with him and settle matters, but reason prevailed. An experienced sergeant was priceless in the situation they were in.

You’ll keep, you bastard. When the time is right I’ll settle matters with you.

McKim’s teeth gleamed in a grin. “Right, sir. Let’s see how many Huns there are.”

Ramsay nodded. He handed back the rifle he had been carrying and loosened his revolver in its holder. In situations like this, the long rifle would only be an encumbrance. He noted that McKim also discarded his rifle, but carried his bayonet and a short, viciously studded club.

“You have done this before,” Ramsay accused.

Of course you have, you’re a natural soldier. I wonder how many men you have killed in your time? You love this, don’t you?

“Yes, sir.” McKim’s face was expressionless. “This way, sir.” He did not duck as a distant shell exploded. “We’d best go by trench.”

The trenches were shallow here, little more than muddy depressions in a grim landscape of shell holes, broken duckboards and the skeleton of an occasional tree. This had been the old Somme battlefield, ground hard-won at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and months of hell, given back to the Germans in a few hours. Ramsay knew he should take the lead but sense told him that McKim was the more experienced man.

As if he had read his thoughts, McKim glanced over his shoulder. “Follow me, sir, and keep your head down. There’s nothing a Fritzy sniper likes better than an officer’s head silhouetted against the gun flashes.” He shrugged. “Not that there is much gunfire near us, sir.”

The ground was saturated, chill with night and littered with the detritus of war. There was a skull, teeth grinning obscenely to the uncaring sky, a broken rifle, a litter of paper, a shell hole reeking with phosgene gas, an unexploded 5.9 inch shell half-buried in the mud, a decomposing corpse within a uniform so rotted it was impossible to tell the occupant’s nationality and a dozen fresh bodies and parts of bodies, British and German, intertwined in a macabre embrace of death.

When McKim dropped to all fours Ramsay followed. There was a slight ridge ahead, rising raggedly to what had once been a stronghold until German shellfire had blasted it to a shambles. Ramsay saw a head bobbing up, another joined it, the round helmets distinctive even in the filthy dark.

“Fritz is using this as an observation post,” he whispered. “He’s placed a standing patrol here to watch his back.” There was no need to explain so much to a ranker, but this was not a conventional situation.

“Yes, sir,”` McKim said. His eyes were predatory in the night and his hand strayed to his wicked bludgeon. “Orders, sir?”

He wants to kill them. His bloodlust is strong in this environment and he wants to kill every German he sees. What the hell do I do now? Destroy this post and risk alerting their companions, or slide past and risk them hearing us?

Decide. You are supposed to be an officer, remember? Come to a decision. Indecision is the worst possible fault in an officer.

“Orders, sir?” McKim repeated. His eyes glittered in the dark.

Ramsay thought rapidly. He had two distinct choices: try and go round the Germans, which meant making a long detour though this shell-battered landscape and risk being even further behind German lines, or destroy them.

“We’ll get closer,” he decided. “We will see how many there are.”

There are bound to be more than just two. I need time and information before I decide what to do.

“Maybe best if I go myself sir?” McKim suggested. He lowered his voice slightly so Ramsay had to strain to hear him. “I was posted to the Lovat Scouts in the South African War. I know how to remain unseen.”

“We’ll both go,” Ramsay told him.

Lovat Scouts? That meant that McKim was something of an expert in scouting and spying out the land, he would be an excellent shot as well. I must bear that in mind.

Ramsay remembered how difficult it was to man a listening post. The German soldier’s nerves would be on edge, they would jump at every sound and every supposed movement in the shattered landscape around them. They would be taut, gripping their rifles ready to fire; their eyes would strain into the dark, hoping for a quiet night.

We might disappoint their hopes.

“I’ll lead,” he said. He was the officer, his was the position of most danger, God help him.

Ramsay dropped to his stomach, ignoring the foul water that spread its chill right through him. He moved slowly, wriggling in the deepest shadows, stopping whenever there was a noise or a breath of wind that may carry their scent toward the listening men. He had known a man, a veteran of the North West Frontier, who had been able to smell the Germans by the food they had eaten and he had no doubt that some among the Germans would be equally skilled. Three years of warfare had given him nothing but respect for the enemy. They were not monsters, just scared and very able fighting men who had every bit as much experience as the British at this type of warfare. The propagandists and newspaper columnists might sit in their comfortable offices dreaming up lies to create hatred against the enemy, but out here where it counted nobody paid much heed to that; they fought to survive, and for the regiment, the company and for the man who stood at their side. They fought because they had to, and because they hoped to get home alive far more than they hoped for a glorious victory.

Concentrate, for God’s sake, or Fritz will slaughter us.

They crawled slowly from shadow to shadow, always watching the sandbagged emplacement on the ridge ahead, alert for movement or noise. When the occasional puffs of wind died, there was nothing to disguise their scent save the normal pungent stench of the battlefield, and nothing to take away any sound they made save the distant rumble of the guns. Ramsay halted twice, listening, but McKim was as silent as a shadow. He could hear a slight mumble from the front and pictured the Germans huddled in their trench, peering over the parapet through periscopes with bombs ready to hand and an assortment of lethal weapons all carefully designed to maim and kill stray British soldiers.

The sudden voice came as a challenge, the words loud but unrecognisable. Ramsay froze, hugging the ground as closely as he could. He saw McKim’s eyes gleam like a predatory cat and heard the soft slither of a bayonet sliding from its scabbard. A head appeared behind the sandbagged parapet with the coal-scuttle shape of a German helmet obvious, even in the dark. A flare shot up, blue and harsh, its glare remorseless on the savaged ground.

Ramsay wondered why the German sentry could not hear the thunder of his heart as he lay under the pitiless light. He saw the shadows drift and slowly lengthen as the flare dipped downward.

There was a shout, and the crack of a rifle, followed by another and another. Ramsay tried to drag himself under the ground; something touched his arm and he started in fear, thinking he had been hit again.

“It’s not us,” McKim breathed across to him. “They’re not shooting at us. Look!”

Ramsay realised that McKim was correct. There were five Germans in the listening post and all were firing frantically in the opposite direction. A voice floated towards them, gloating, “Got you Tommy, you ugly pig! Now you die!”

“Right, sir,” McKim’s voice was hard. “Now we’ve got them!” Without waiting for permission he rose from the ground and ran forward.

“McKim!” Ramsay’s harsh whisper was lost in the night. Cursing, he jumped up and followed, holding his revolver before him and hoping the Germans were too busy firing to hear the two Royals coming from a different direction. His feet splashed in deep puddles; mud dragged at his ankles, slowing him down but he pushed on, reckless with fear and determination as he saw the small figure of McKim dance ahead of him.

McKim moved quickly but silently, keeping in a half crouch as he dodged from shadow to shadow in the wicked maze of shell holes and saps and half obliterated trenches. He did not glance back and when he was ten yards away he halted in the shelter of what had been a firing bay in a previous trench line, lifted a grenade, wrenched out the pin, poised and threw.

“McKim!” Ramsay joined him in the bay. “I gave no orders . . .”

McKim did not reply. “Two . . . three . . . four.”

“What the devil . . .” Ramsay stopped as he realised McKim was timing the fuse of his grenade.

“Now!” McKim was on his feet and running a fraction of a second after the grenade exploded. Again Ramsay followed. He saw the flash of the explosion and heard screams as McKim bounded up the sandbag parapet. For one instant McKim was highlighted against the flare of the bomb; a small man with his helmet pushed forward over his face, a bayonet in his left hand and the club in his right, and then he jumped down into the observation post and was lost to sight.

With no more need for silence, Ramsay roared out “Up the Royals!” and followed the corporal. He felt an amazing freedom, as if his life no longer mattered. He had put aside his caution and was in the hands of the Gods of War; let them decide his fate. Life and death were two sides of the same ugly coin and he was part of the landscape of death.

“Up the Royals!”

The screams continued, accompanied by McKim swearing fluently. There was another yell and Ramsay vaulted the parapet. There were two Germans on the ground, one dead and the other writhing in agony from the wounds inflicted by the grenade. Another was leaning against the sandbag wall, feebly trying to remove McKim’s bayonet from his abdomen. McKim was wrestling with a fourth. Before Ramsay could react he saw McKim’s head come back and smash forward; the rim of his steel helmet smashed the bridge of the German’s nose, breaking it in a gush of blood. The German howled and fell back, but McKim followed, using his boots fiercely and the German crumpled into a foetal ball, pleading, “Kamerad; kamerad!”

“I’ll kamerad you, you dirty German bastard!” McKim lifted his club and rained a succession of blows, grunting with effort as they landed on the face and head of the cowering, screaming German soldier. Ramsay distinctly heard the sound of breaking bone.

The fifth German looked over his shoulder, mouth wide and eyes staring behind thick glasses. He was young; he could be no more than eighteen and was obviously terrified. As Ramsay stared at him, the German’s nerves broke and he tried to run for the sap. Ramsay levelled his revolver and shot him, dispassionately. He saw the boy turn and shot him again, aiming for his chest. He had nothing against the German but there was no time to take prisoners with half the German army between them and safety and this man could not be allowed to go free and alert his comrades.

What a stupid excuse for a legal murder. The Germans will hear the shots and send a fighting patrol to investigate.

McKim had finished his men and was cleaning the blood from his bayonet with a piece of sacking from a sandbag. He nodded to Ramsay. “That’s the way clear now, sir,” he said. He slid the bayonet back into its scabbard and removed his helmet. He examined the rim critically and wiped the greasy blood from it. “A fellae from the Hairy-legged taught me that move, sir – the H. L. I. – Highland Light Infantry. They all sharpen the rim of their helmets when they go on trench raids. Fritzy doesn’t like that much.”

“You did not wait for orders,” Ramsay began, but stopped. McKim’s timing had been perfect. If he had hesitated the Germans might have stopped firing and heard them approaching. “Well done, McKim; I will recommend a medal for you when we get back to the lines.”

“I was just doing my job, sir,” McKim said. All the same, Ramsay thought, he looked pleased at the words.

The distinct sound of boots splashing through mud came out of the darkness. Ramsay turned and levelled his revolver while McKim lifted a German rifle and worked the bolt.

“Royal!” The challenge sounded clear in the night and McKim sighed and lowered the rifle.

“Scots!” he called back.

Flockhart led the men in. “We thought you had run into trouble,” he said. He looked around the shambles that had recently been a German listening post. “Obviously we were wrong.”

“We might do yet,” Ramsay pointed to the dead Germans. “Their pals will be sending out a patrol to see what all the fuss was about. We’d best be on our way.”

They froze as a flare hissed into the sky and exploded. The blinding white light cast stark shadows on the ground. They remained static, for to move was to invite massive retaliation from the unseen but undoubtedly watchful and vengeful, Germans. The flare remained; inviolate, immune, a star of wonder with an opposite reality to the Christian star of hope, until it slowly faded and slid to the ground.

“Right, lads, off we go and quickly, before Fritz arrives in force.”

Ramsay led them at a stumbling trot, now more concerned with putting distance between his men and the destroyed listening post rather than keeping quiet or unobserved. He sensed that the small victory had restored confidence in his men; they were soldiers again, Royal Scots, rather than refugees from a defeated army. He heard McKim recount the action to Cruickshank, who grunted, “Serve the bastards right after bombing Edinburgh. They murdered my wife.”

Ramsay said nothing. He knew about the zeppelin raid on Edinburgh and knew there had been a number of casualties, but he had since heard scores of men state that one or other of their relatives had been killed in that raid and claim that as some justification for their own actions.

“Royal Sco-o-ots!” somebody shouted, heedless of the need for concealment, and before Ramsay could call for silence, somebody else joined in, elongating the vowel in “Scots” so it sounded like the blast of a horn: a challenge to the mighty German army that although they may be victorious today, not all the British were defeated and here was a force of very defiant fighting men. Shouting may have been foolish when they were surrounded by the enemy, but it was splendid for morale. The call came again and this time he joined in, blaring out his challenge to anybody who happened to be listening.

“Royal Sco-o-o-o-ots!”

“Royal Sco-o-o-o-ots!”

It was good to yell defiance to the world, to show they were undefeated and unbroken, not just by the German army but also by fate and the horror and pain and anguish and guilt that the politicians and kings and leaders had unleashed upon them, without thought or concern of the results on the millions of ordinary men and women who bore the brunt and paid the price.

“Royal Sco-o-o-o-ots!”

It was not a regimental call, not so much pride in that particular formation of the British Army to which fate had consigned their fortunes, but more a declaration of their own individuality combined with confirmation that they were united in comradeship with the human race.

The slogan ended in a wild cheer by the men, followed by near hysterical laughter, and then Ramsay ordered them to silence and increased their speed.

From somewhere in the dark came a reply. A single voice shouted, indistinct, and then others took up the call until the noise was a deep-throated chorus rolling across the confusion of mud and trenches and shattered dugouts.

“Semper Talis!” The words were clear now. “Semper Talis.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Aitken asked. “Is that German?”

“It means ‘Always the same’,” Flockhart said quietly. “It’s the motto of the Prussian Guards.” He lowered his voice. “It’s not bon, Aitken; it’s not bon at all.”

“Listen,” McKim said softly, “they’re singing now.” He held up his hand as the words lifted until they seemed to fill the air around them. Ramsay listened too, his hands twitching at the butt of his revolver but powerless to alter the effect the singing was having on his men.

“Lieb vaterland magst ruhig sein

Lieb vaterland, magst ruhig sein

Fest steht und treu die Wacht, die Wacht am Rhein

Fest steht und true die Wacht, die Wacht am Rhein!”

The German words were powerful. Shoulders that had been squared only a few moments before were drooping now. The German words, sung in confident tones and with military precision, seemed to enter their minds and dominate.

“Does anybody speak German?” Ramsay wondered. He was strangely unsurprised when Flockhart murmured a reply.

“It’s a popular German song,” Flockhart said. “They sung it in the Franco-Prussian war as well. Very patriotic of them.” He gave a slow translation as the Royals gathered round.

“Dear Fatherland put your mind at rest

Dear Fatherland put your mind at rest

Firm stands, and true, the Watch at the Rhine

Firm stands, and true, the Watch at the Rhine.”

Flockhart stopped translating. “That must be the Prussian Guards,” he said.

“Oh, aye?” McKim was first to recover. “Well, fuck them. We’re the Royal Scots; come on lads, these bastards can’t outfight us and I won’t let them outsing us either.” He faced the direction the singing had come from and began.

“Après la guerre finie,

Soldat Ecosse parti.”

He stopped, “Come on lads, join in.”

One by one the men joined their voices into a small chorus, infinitesimal compared to the thousand voice choir of the Prussians, but more defiant, more rousing and every bit as heartfelt.

“Mademoiselle in the family way,

Après la guerre finie.”

Ramsay had heard those words sung a hundred times and knew that, if he survived, he would hear them a hundred times again, but he knew that each time he would remember this battered band of Royal Scots, standing an unknown distance behind the front line shouting their identity in tuneless contempt for the enemy. He felt a surge of pride that he had never known before as he looked over his men, and knew he would do all he could to get them back home safely.

The image came to him again. She was lying on her back in the sun-sweet field, with her hair a golden halo around her head and her breasts bare and soft and utterly alluring. He relived the scene, as he had so often before, the scent of the grass mingling with her faint perfume, the sough of the breeze in the nearby trees adding to her soft moans.

He remembered the quietness of that day, the kiss of the sun on his naked back, the sight of the grass from ground level – stalks stretching away like a miniature forest. He remembered the look in the girl’s eyes, her trust and pleasure in his company.

“Shall we do that again?” she had asked and he had nodded.

“A hundred times more,” he said.

“Make it a thousand times more,” she had told him and put her hands around the back of his head to pull him close for a kiss.

She had tasted good. Sweet and young then, and the entire world before them with no thought of war or trouble on their horizons. Life had been good.

I’ll do my best to get them all back safely. Except you, Flockhart, you vicious bastard. You must never get back.

The singing died away and the men looked at each other, grinning through their fatigue; they were soldiers immersed in one of the bloodiest wars that had ever been fought but they were still men. As Ramsay looked at them he was struck by their extreme youth. With the exception of McKim, who was an elderly man with eyes as old as time and the attitude of a teenager, Cruickshank and Blackley who were in their mid-twenties, and Flockhart, whose age was indeterminate, he doubted if any of them had reached the age of majority; most would still be in their teens. This was a war of juggernauts and mechanised murder waged by children. Gone were the days of professional long service men who could count their service in decades. These men may have been at the front for months or mere weeks, but they had probably seen more horror than most old-time soldiers had experienced in a lifetime.

“Right, lads,” Ramsay said, suddenly humbled by his own men. “Let’s get away from here before the Prussians send out a company to see how many of us there are.”

“Let the bastards come . . .” McKim began, but Flockhart shut him up with a glare. “Don’t be bloody stupid, McKim. Do as the officer says.”

They moved on again, silent now as the night eased away. Ramsay listened for the sounds of Germans following them, but heard only the usual sounds of the front; the distant rumble of the guns, the closer occasional rattle of a machine gun and the low moan of wind through the wire.

The sudden staccato bark of musketry stopped them in their tracks; some of the men ducked or dived for cover. Ramsay flinched, but remained upright, he was an officer and could not be seen bobbing.

“That could be the Royals,” McKim said hopefully. “Maybe we should march to the sound of the guns, sir.”

“It could be Fritz fighting himself, for all we know,” Ramsay said. He guessed there would be many small parties of British soldiers making their way back after being cut off by the speed of the German advance.

“McKim could be right, sir. That could be another group of our boys,” Flockhart said. “Maybe we could team up with them. There’s safety in numbers.”

“More men might slow us down,” Ramsay said. “Let them attract the Huns. We might be able to get through a gap in the lines.”

Here I am again, explaining myself to the men. I should just give an order and expect it to be obeyed. I am their officer, for God’s sake, not their colleague.

“Come on, keep moving.”

“Bloody officer doesn’t care about the lads.”

“He’s scared to get involved, yellow bastard.”

Ramsay turned a deaf ear to the sotto voice comments. He would not be able to identify the culprits in the dark and even if he did, what could he do about it? Shoot them for mutiny? Sentence them to field punishment number one? He grunted, checked his revolver and tried to ignore the complaints. If British soldiers ever stopped grumbling there would be something seriously amiss.

They slogged on, occasionally swearing as they encountered tangles of rusty barbed wire, floundering into shell craters and halting with hammering hearts when flares threw their lurid glare onto the ground.

“Dawn’s coming soon,” Flockhart warned in a low tone. “And the boys are about done in.”

Ramsay nodded. He had heard their breathing becoming more ragged with each passing quarter hour, and knew they were stumbling more often than they had at the beginning of the night. “We’ll have to find somewhere to hide up for the day.” He peered into the pre-dawn dark; the landscape was a nightmare vista of craters and abandoned strongpoints, ripped sandbags and the skeletal stumps of shattered trees.

“There are plenty shell holes,” McKim suggested.

Ramsay opened his mouth to rebuke the corporal for subordination in speaking unasked, but they were at war, not on the parade ground. Instead, he said, “The boys deserve something better than that.” He looked over his shoulder. “If you know of anywhere, Sergeant, let us know.”

Flockhart stepped closer. “There is a ruined farmhouse about quarter of a mile away,” he said. “We fought over it during the Somme offensive.” He gave a small smile. “If there is anything left of it now.”

Ramsay nodded. “Lead on, Sergeant MacDuff.”

“Did you hear that?” came Cruickshank’s voice from the darkness. “That bloody officer still doesnae ken Flockhart’s name. They bloody officers are nae bloody use to anybody.”

Ramsay hid his smile and said nothing. He allowed Flockhart to step ahead and followed him into the stinking dark of the night.