1. Prologue
2. Chapter One
3. Chapter Two
4. Chapter Three
5. Chapter Four
6. Chapter Five
7. Chapter Six
***
Epilogue
New Year's Eve, 1914
The
barrage stopped almost as quickly as it had started, and the Western Front
plunged into the eerie silence that followed hours and hours – too many hours,
Martin thought – of constant shelling. For the men who had borne the brunt of
the constant shelling, the world was far from silent. The constant ringing in
their ears seemed louder than anything that the enemy had been able to throw at
them.
It
would wear off soon, Martin knew. He shook his head a few times, a futile
effort to make that ringing stop quickly, and looked around at what destruction
the German guns had brought. Entire sections of the trench had been collapsed,
sandbags covering dead bodies and more dead men on top, showered in dirt and
sometimes buried in dirt, arms or legs reaching pitifully for help, though all
the men knew that they were parts of men who were far beyond any mortal help.
An
attack was coming. Everyone in the British trenches knew it. The Germans had
been shelling them all night and well into the morning, and they never went to
that much trouble unless the barrage was preceding a giant attack. In a strange
way, Martin was glad that the shelling was over, even though the prospect of an
front attack presented more danger than hiding in his relatively-sturdy dugout
through the very worst of the long barrages – if nothing else, men still had to
get up and relieve themselves from time to time – because he wanted to feel
something other than powerless. It wasn’t a fun feeling. Getting blown to
smithereens whilst waiting wasn’t how he wanted to die.
If he
was going to die here in the muddy hell of the Western Front, Martin wanted it
to be facing the enemy front-on, doing what the Army required of him. Perhaps
that would happen today, perhaps not, but he didn’t particularly care anymore,
having realised in the days after Christmas, rather belatedly, that it was useless
to think about after the war, when it
was almost guaranteed that he wouldn’t survive to see it’s end. Not with the
way men were killed here: often and randomly. The Western Front was a giant
grinder, it’s work never done. And still not done. On this last day of 1914, a
year that the world would likely never forget, there was to be another
bloodletting, more meat for the grinder that had already chewed up so much.
“Thank
God it’s over,” Henry said, walking up to Martin. Like everyone else, his face
was streaked with dirt and grime, courtesy of so much flying dust and dirt
during the barrage, and there being no place to escape it.
Martin
shook his head, not willing to agree with that statement. “It’s only just
beginning, Henry.”
Mere
seconds had passed since the lifting of the barrage and men were pouring out of
dugouts and shelters back into the trenches, a constant stream of grim-faced
men with all manner of weaponry: infantry fitting magazines into the breeches
of their Lee Enfield rifles, machine gunners feeding ammunition belts into the
many Vickers rapid fire weapons and officers loading their Webley revolvers. There
were men all around him now, two and sometimes three deep, more rifles than
Martin had seen in one place in all the time he’d been in the trenches.
Amongst
them was Sergeant Danson, who carried a rifle in one hand and wore a look of
grim excitement. “Now’s the time to teach them a fucking lesson,” he growled to
the men nearby, pushing into the line on the fire step between two of the
less-experienced men, loading a round into his rifle, the barrel resting on the
sandbags.
“He’s
never happier than when we’re about to greet the Jerries,” Henry observed of
Danson as he pushed bullets into his Webley, flashing his friend a decidedly grim
smile. “Between you and me, Martin, I’ll settle for making sure they don’t
shoot me, rather than teaching them any sort of lesson today! I’d like to see
nineteen-fifteen come around.”
“You
and me both,” Martin agreed.
There
were so many men waiting to repel the attack that Martin and Henry nearly
couldn’t find a spot to stand. As it was, they were shoulder to shoulder,
jammed in tight, like sardines in a tin amongst men who, if nothing else,
seemed glad that they would finally get a chance to exact some revenge on their
enemy. After hours of barrage – hours that, at times, had seemed like days or
months – there was rather deadly purpose about them.
For
the particularly eager, they didn’t have to wait long. In the strange silence
of the battlefield now after so much noise, the shrill whistle that brought the
Germans from their trenches could be heard with great clarity, and a few seconds
after that, firing at long range, the British machine guns opened up. They
fired through the maze of barbed wire, coil stacked upon coil, which had not
been ripped apart by the artillery barrage, and through which the enemy force
was only just visible, and Martin saw the first of the enemy fall in the face
of the fusillade, as though they had merely been tripped up. But it was more
than that, of course: more men’s lives snuffed out.
Somewhere
behind, British artillery began again, dropping shells into No Man’s Land, and
the first of the infantry opened fire, even before Sergeant Danson needed to
issue the order: the Lee Enfield rounds taking down enemy soldiers more slowly and
methodically than the supporting machine guns. Practiced soldiers, fed by the rage
and grief brought on by the loss of friends and comrades, worked the
bolt-action rifles with all the professionalism brought on by long familiarity.
The
Germans seemed to be attacking along a front of a few hundred meters, at least
as far as Martin could see. He knew they would reach the barrier of the barbed
wire soon, and be trapped by more men coming behind, realising, too late, that
the heavy guns that had fired for so long had done little more than to stir the
British into a murderous kind of rage. On the whole, British casualties had
been light, a small miracle in a piece of hell on earth.
Now
the Germans were trapped, and the machine guns continued, joined by the
infantry’s rifles and grenades, available by the crate load at the moment,
tossed in amongst the confused mass of enemy soldiers, wreaking more havoc,
separating men from limbs. Germans were dying by the dozens, screaming as they
did so, brave men killed in an instant or else horribly wounded, now crying for
their mothers as the cold Hand of Death reached out for them.
Martin
aimed his pistol and fired into the German formation, which had seemingly
broken down beyond retrieval. He saw two men shot, though he had no way of
telling whether they were his bullets or not. They were pitched forward, arms
windmilling momentarily before they fell forward, down and over the barbed
wire, almost perfectly side by side, as if it had been planned and synchronised
all along.
There
was a cry from beyond the wire, picked up by a particularly brave German officer,
using the men – Martin couldn’t be sure if they were yet dead – as a bridge to
get across the barbed wire. But the But the officer didn’t get far, shot
between the eyes by a British rifleman, his lifeless body tumbling backwards, also
down over the barbed wire. And so, the attacking Germans were presented with another
path across what the British had thought to be an impregnable setup.
Now,
the Germans began to realise that it wasn’t quite impenetrable. They had seen
the opportunity materialise, and now they gladly snatched it with both hands. Suddenly, against all odds, and even as their
numbers were thinned by a storm of lead from the British trenches, the Germans
were surging across the barbed wire, trampling the now-dead bodies of men who
had been comrades earlier. Through their deaths, those brave men had become the
key to perhaps giving this attack a chance at success where so many others had
failed. Other men came behind, with wire cutters, beginning the tedious task of
opening bigger holes in the wire, whilst being shot at continuously.
But
the fight wasn’t over yet. Henry watched a German run towards him, bayonet and
rifle extended, mouth open, the man’s curse or scream lost amongst the
deafening sounds of the big guns. A few yards out, Henry fired twice, shooting
the man square in the chest, watching him drop, then get up and crawl forward,
before another round put him down for good, dead. Henry looked around, but
couldn’t see who had fired that last shot. Not that it really mattered. He fired
again and again, and his pistol locked open, six rounds quickly expended.
Fumbling
for fresh rounds from the ammunition pouch on his belt, Henry slid them quickly
into the breach and looked up. Coming towards him – towards the British trench
– was a veritable flood of Pickelhaube helmets
and men in dark khaki screaming barbaric Germanic war cries, buoyed by their
unexpected success. Still, rifles cracked and machine guns chattered, skittling
the enemy at every opportunity, Germans falling in stacked heaps, nearly right
on the very lip of the forward British trenches. Hundreds had died already, and
more were coming, sensing a victory, propelled forward by the shouts of their
officers and sergeants, promised a victory that would, perhaps, be the key to opening
the front.
Gaping
holes in the wire, thanks to the brave work of the Germans with their wire
cutters, whose numbers were dwindling as they came in for special attention
from the best marksmen the British could produce, it was inevitable that the enemy
would spill across the sandbags and into the trench. Even with that knowledge,
Martin was surprised when the first German soldiers came upon then, jumping
into the trench without a thought, it seemed, for their own wellbeing, British
bayonets going to work, those first attackers dispatched quickly, but there
were more coming through, a seemingly endless supply of angry men with bayonets
that glinted in the sunlight.
The
concussion from a series of close-by explosions – grenades tossed haphazardly
into the tight confines of the trenches – flattened Martin against the sandbags.
It felt like he’d taken a particularly sharp punch to the stomach, such was the
extent of being winded. When he recovered his poise, ears still ringing, head
still throbbing, he saw the smoking, bloody ruin that the trenches had become,
the grenades having ripped friend and foe apart indiscriminately, blood and
body splattered across the sandbags.
Reinforcements
had come up, British infantry rushed to the front after someone had raised the alarm,
and the new arrivals, full of gusto, carried their bayonets towards the enemy,
as the machine gunners continued firing from the flanks of the attack, thinning
German ranks. Henry had taken up the cudgels at one gun, replacing a colleague
who had been shot through the left eye. Though he hadn't specifically been
trained, everyone had a rough idea of how the weapon operated in case they were
thrust into the action like this. When he pressed the trigger, there was the
satisfying feeling of the gun rumbling, releasing out round after round at a
horrific pace, burning quickly through the ammunition belt.
“I
need another belt,” Henry called, turning away from No Man’s Land for just a
second to bellow the order, though his loudest shout seemed whisper-like
compared to the deafening sounds of battle. “More ammunition – quickly!”
It was
quite a thing to be in charge of. The Germans were close enough that Henry
could see the whites of their eyes, and the horror that existed there, as they
fell, chests turning to a bloody red pulp, heads exploding like something from
a nightmare, men in the third and fourth ranks slowed and left at the mercy of
the Vickers crews by their dead comrades, who had virtually become roadblocks;
no man could negotiate the stacks of corpses easily. Picking their way through
gave Henry and others like him ample opportunity to add to the heaped bodies.
Yet,
the Germans were not to be deterred. If nothing else, they were brave almost to
the point of insanity. A little way down the line – though it might as well
have been twenty miles away, such was the ferocity of every singular struggle –
Martin had twice reloaded his pistol, firing as quickly as he could load the
rounds, watching as more enemy than he’d ever seen before pressed forward, so
many men wearing their distinctive Pickelhaube
helmets falling close to sandbags, cut down by the Vickers guns at the last
possible moment.
They
fell in their dozens, and still more came forward, but it was the lethal work
of the British machine gunners that ensured the British did not break. Not
every German was killed. Indeed, those who survived only did so to suffer a
fate far worse than a quick death: they were unceremoniously dragged over the
sandbags by British hands and even less ceremoniously bayonetted on the
trench’s muddy, blood-streaked floor. Slowly, the British were dragging
momentum back in their direction.
Sergeant
Danson, hoarse and missing his helmet, continued to rally his men: “That’s it,
boys That’s it! Get in there and fucking kill the bastards – don’t be afraid! Finish
them off!”
Turning
around, Martin saw a German soldier charging at him, and fired twice with his Webley,
the rounds slamming into the centre of other man’s chest, spinning him around,
sending him tumbling to the dirt, to be run over by a knot of British
infantrymen, their bayonets stabbing downward and coming back with a red sheen
attached. He’d killed more men in this attack than ever before – more than he
wanted to consider. But there was no alternative: if he didn’t kill, then he
would be killed.
Still,
the enemy came. Two more Germans came over the lip of the trench, were shot,
and then came a spinning potato-masher grenade, which someone saw quickly and, with
the reflexes of a slips player on the cricket field, scooped it up and tossed
back into No Man’s Land, where it exploded out of sight. Another German
appeared, and Martin, without thinking, his arm but an extension of his
revolver, shot that soldier, too, a round between the eyes, before moving on,
the Webley barking again with authority, killing a German who had been in the
process of bayonetting a British soldier.
All
around Martin, it was hell: men screamed as they died, others screamed as they
killed, he was deafened by the continuous chatter of machine guns and the
thump-thump of the Howitzers, whose gunners were lethally accurate. Though some
had fallen, the big rapid-fire guns had played a big role in ending the surge
of Germans across No Man’s Land, and now it was left to infantry in the
trenches to kill those who remained.
They
took to the task grimly, and the close-quarters fighting was the worst that
Martin ever seen. For a time, he followed Danson, letting the big man lead the
way, clearing a path through the trench. Martin got a lesson in fighting,
watching the bad-tempered sergeant kick and punch, stab and scratch, using his
bayonet, a knife he carried in his boot, a rifle that he’d picked up from a dead
soldier.
In one
fearful moment, Martin had witnessed the vicious sergeant club a German to
death with the sharpened edge of his entrenching tool, Danson drenched in that
man’s blood by the end of that brutal act, but uncaring. For his part, Martin
didn’t know whether to be horrified or impressed by the sergeant’s undeniable
talent and skill for battle. Wherever Danson went, the Germans cowered, and
more men followed his lead, surrendering
For a
time, the Germans looked as though they might break through and occupy at least
a section of British trench, but momentum had swung for the final time, partly because
of Danson’s ability, and it resided with the British for good now, their combined
infantry reinforcements and the machine guns proving the difference. And as the
enemy retreated, they were harassed all the way back across No Man’s Land by
the heavy artillery, leaving in their wake hundreds of bodies, the dead and
dying of another ultimately-failed attack.
It wasn’t
until the last of the Germans had retreated far enough out of range of the
British rifles and machine guns – they were still harried by the artillery –
that the survivors sent up a weary cheer and began to shake hands,
congratulating one another on surviving another attack. It was a muted
celebration, though, for there was work to be done to return the trench to it’s
former self. Many sandbags had fallen in, and no one could take more than one
or two steps without stepping over a body, friendly or otherwise.
“Christ,
that was bloody close,” Henry said when he found Martin.
“Too
close by half,” Martin agreed in a shaky voice, uniform dirty and bloody. “Are
you alright?”
Henry
nodded, surveying his own uniform, which bore the marks of a brutal battle.
“No holes in me, if that’s what you’re asking?” Exhausted, he wiped a dirty
hand across a sweaty brow. “I suppose I should be thankful that I survived
another one?”
“Yes,”
Martin said dully. “I suppose you should be.”
They had
all survived, defying the law of averages once more – but for how much longer,
he didn’t know.
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