A War for King and Empire Read online

  ‘No hurry,’ I replied, quickly eyeing him up as an Anglo pur sang – rather like me. But thanks to my old French teacher Monsieur Denault, who’d persevered against his better judgement and mine, I’d eventually learned a word or two. They were proving handy.

  ‘Relax. The French have arranged first-class transportation for us,’ I said to him, a bounce in my voice.

  ‘Really? Is that what it says? Well, in that case, no worries, buddy.’ He turned to his mates and enthused loudly, ‘The Frenchies have sent the Orient-Express for us, fellows.’ As their cheers died down I slipped quietly forward to join the soldiers waiting one boxcar further.

  I might have saved myself the trouble.

  ‘Ah, Private MacPhail,’ muttered Sergeant-Major Atkins.

  He had been standing to one side with his hands clasped behind his back, supervising the men lining up to entrain. His eyes trawled down my body, inspecting me from the tip of my cap to the sole of my new boots, then began a second slow pass. The sleeveless sheepskin vest they’d just handed out for warmth was riding uncomfortably on my shoulders.

  With a curt nod I replied, ‘Sergeant-Major.’

  ‘What happened to your moustache, MacPhail? You know the regulations. Every man has a moustache.’

  Of course he would have noticed that. It was too much to expect otherwise. I’d briefly entertained the notion I might get away with it for a day or two, by which time it wouldn’t be so obvious.

  ‘I had to shave it off, Sergeant-Major. Medical reasons. I had a nasty cut on the upper lip and I was told it was unhygienic.’ Seeing Atkins’ eyes narrow and the lines in his face tighten into furrows, I quickly added, ‘Don’t worry, it’ll grow back soon enough.’

  ‘This serious wound of yours, MacPhail. Did it come before or after shaving?’

  With a clatter the doors to the boxcar sprang fortuitously open. The waiting line of soldiers surged forward taking me with them, sparing me the need to respond. But it was only after the doors were thrown shut with a thud, followed shortly thereafter by a loud clang as a metal bar dropped into place that I breathed a sigh of relief.

  As we got underway one of the soldiers turned to me with a grin. ‘So, Mac, hay thrasher catch your upper lip did it?’

  It was Jones. A few others looked on in obvious bemusement.

  I laughed. ‘Christ almighty, Pat. I don’t think Kaiser Wilhelm is going to be quivering with fear because we’ve all grown a hedge on our faces. You’d think the army would have better things to worry about than whether I’ve got a moustache or not.’

  ‘Aye, but it was such a dainty outgrowth,’ said Jones, in his best parody of our Scottish drill instructor.

  I rolled my eyes.

  ‘So you did mean to shave it?’

  ‘Of course I meant to shave it. I haven’t had a moustache my entire life and I’m damned if I’m going up against the Hun with a beaver pelt itching under my nose.’

  ‘It’s your funeral,’ he said. ‘Don’t think Atkins’s going to forget this, though.’

  ‘No. But hopefully he’ll soon be taking it to the Hun, rather than me,’ I said airily. Then I crinkled my nose in disgust. Tepidly I sniffed the air. The man to my right, Fred Fox, smelled like rotting meat.

  He must have seen my expression for he hastened to explain. Fred was nothing if not the perfect gentleman – he’d been a jeweller downtown – and this stench he wore must have pained him. ‘It’s the vest,’ he said. ‘I swear the thing’s rotting, Mac.’ He plucked at it in case I had any doubts which vest he was referring to. Keeping out the winter chill was no idle concern in a wooden boxcar in February. Although I was beginning to wonder if the remedy was worse than the ailment.

  ‘Oh, and here me thinking you were just showing off your new cologne, Fred,’ I said.

  Fred looked away but couldn’t help joining in the laughter.

  Spotting Dundas, with his legs extended full out in the corner of the boxcar, I went to him. I took a few unsteady steps, nearly fell as the train shuddered round a bend and quickly sprawled down on the floor before the train’s convulsions did it for me.

  He smiled warmly. ‘So, Mac, here we are at long last,’ he said.

  ‘Yes indeed. I’ve always wanted to visit the continent in a boxcar,’ I replied. I leaned back against the rough planks. Then I crinkled my nose again, before realizing that it came from me. ‘Christ, this thing really does stink. The Hun are going to smell us coming. It’s from Australia, isn’t it?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Huh. And here I thought the Aussies were on our side.’

  Plucking at the straw that clung to my woollen trousers I gazed round. The forty men – I didn’t count them though it seemed a likely number – were sitting along all four sides of the boxcar. A few huddled in small groups in the middle where it was less crowded, but where the hay had a colour to it I didn’t trust. A handful of others stood, holding on where they could. There was a loud buzz of excited conversation. Men off to war for the very first time.

  ‘You nervous?’ Dundas asked.

  I thought about this. ‘Not exactly. A little apprehensive, of course. I guess I wonder how I’m going to do, that’s all.’

  There was more truth to this than I let on; since we’d departed England I’d been thinking of little else. As a boy I’d been the kind who always tried to talk his way out of trouble with a well-timed word or a wisecrack to lighten the tension. In most cases it wasn’t a grand success. I had a strong suspicion the Hun was going to be less of a pushover than those schoolyard bullies, to whom he bore a certain resemblance if the newspapers were to be believed. In the training camps I’d blustered along with the best of them, but the time for bluster was nearing an end. I hoped I’d make a good show of it.

  Dundas nodded vigorously. ‘Yeah, me too. But we’ll be fine, you’ll see. We’ve a good group of guys in the battalion, Mac, and it won’t be long now.’

  ‘Will you look at this!’ cried a voice. ‘The bloody thing’s still alive.’ Wyndham had his vest off and turned inside out. He was stabbing at it indignantly with his finger.

  We crowded round to look. Sure enough. Not only was the fur inside matted in patches of dried blood, it was seething with small insects. Hurriedly we stripped ourselves of the vests and left them stacked by the door, uneasily scratching and rubbing at the thought.

  Several hours later the train shuddered to a halt. Into a dying light of a winter evening the doors were swung open to reveal a small siding, surrounded by a stand of poplars and willows where we might stretch our legs. Gratefully we did. When the whistle blew and the boxcar doors slammed shut there wasn’t a sheepskin vest to be seen – despite the cold.

  Two days passed before we reached a prosperous-looking town in French Flanders with the curious name of Hazebrouck. The trip itself had passed interminably slowly. I was stiff, hungry and chilled to the bone, ready to throttle the man that so much as suggested another game of cards. After two days and five hundred miles in the cramped but draughty confines of a boxcar unfit for horses and still reeking of them, I swore I’d give up train travel for ever. And that was before I spotted the white signpost outside the station.

  ‘Will you look at that?’ I groaned. ‘Christ Almighty...’

  Around me heads turned.

  I pointed at the sign near the crossroads. ‘Look! Look at that. Can you believe it?’ I asked.

  Ten faces stared blankly. Finally one of them spoke up. It was a fair-haired farm boy from third platoon, a cheery good-natured fellow with a freckled nose and dimples. Harold, I think his name was. ‘Boulogne 75,’ he read slowly.

  ‘Right. 75 kilometres. That’s less than 50 miles.’ The ten faces went on staring blankly. ‘You all know Boulogne’s a port? Actually it’s a port straight across the Channel from England. We could have saved ourselves five days at sea and two in a train if we’d simply debarked at Boulogne. Instead we sailed around most of France and then trained all the way back across it.’


  Now others began to groan. ‘I’ve never been as sick as I was on that damn transport,’ said Dundas. He was chewing on a piece of hard-tack and presently showing few signs of ill health. ‘To think we could have taken the direct route.’

  ‘That’s the army for you,’ said someone. ‘Rushing round to get nowhere.’

  The sad truth of it generated a few chuckles, but by then most were collapsing to the ground and stretching limbs still stiff from the voyage.

  One of the men in the platoon spoke up. ‘Say, fellows, this doesn’t look like a bad place for billets.’ Looking around I had to agree and for several minutes we cheerily debated food and beds; it had been a long time since we’d had much of either.

  ‘FALL IN!’ came a shout. ‘Fall in!’

  The men grabbed at their packs and began to assemble. Wistfully I eyed the many signs on the town buildings emblazoned “restaurant”, “hotel”, or both, and rose to my feet. Into our midst strode Lieutenant Sanders.

  ‘Look lively, men, we’re moving out.’

  Sanders was several years younger than I was, so it was a little rich him playing the grown-up. But his father had been an important somebody in the militia, so that naturally made Sanders junior prime officer material. Looking at him I had trouble pinpointing precisely what the selection board had seen. Still, he was likeable enough, and had often been found in the wet canteen at Salisbury playing a friendly game of cards with the men.

  ‘Say, Hal, don’t you think we could have a bite first?’ someone asked.

  Sanders looked furtively from side to side. ‘Please fellows,’ he said in a soft voice. ‘Could you call me sir? At least when the other officers are around?’

  ‘Sure thing, Hal,’ came the inevitable response. Sanders smiled awkwardly and moved on.

  ‘Hal’s getting very high and mighty these days,’ said the man. Then a thought came to him. ‘You were a lawyer, Mac. Why aren’t you an officer?’

  ‘Well they told me I was eligible. But they followed that up by saying that all the positions were taken. If I wanted to join the 10th Battalion it was start at the bottom, or not at all.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he replied. ‘Isn’t that something? You must have been mighty anxious to join, Mac.’

  I said nothing. There were certain things I had no mind to divulge, and definitely not with half the platoon listening in – I wasn’t very proud of my recent past. Then more critical matters resurfaced.

  ‘I sure hope they plan on giving us some breakfast,’ someone groaned.

  Breakfast did come, a short, standing and spartan affair, and within the hour we were on the move again, the war bearing down fast. Far in the distance guns rumbled. Breakfast suddenly began to weigh very heavy on my stomach.

  23rd of February, 1915

  East of Romarin, Belgium

  ‘A fine morning to you all and welcome to Plugstreet, lads.’

  The sergeant from the Royal Irish Fusiliers stood watching the pride of C Company behind a smile of bad teeth and an air of weary experience, his hands parked assuredly on his hips.

  My first glimpse of war was not so much a street as a warren of trenches. Line upon line of them slashed through the winter landscape of Flanders in a pattern whose logic escaped me – later I learned of the method in their crooked madness. We stood now in one such trench, little more than a ditch, really. To the rear was Ploegsteert Wood, a sizeable forest of tall oaks stripped nearly bare of branches where small huts and sturdy sandbagged breastworks had been erected, criss-crossed by wooden boardwalks, corduroy paths of the kind you saw at home in every bush camp in the country.

  The air was cold and humid and it cut through my woolen tunic. I longed for some honest-to-goodness snow and ice and a lungful of clear crisp air. The air here was anything but. The first trench we entered was not terribly deep and the ground underfoot a cold, muddy porridge; a challenge for both my boots and my senses. A ghastly smell of things rotting emanated from it. I kept my eyes ahead and was glad when we eventually stepped onto a duckboard. The smell only worsened.

  ‘Where’s the Hun, Sergeant?’ inquired one of the men.

  ‘The Hun?’ The sergeant grunted, his features giving way to a crooked smile. ‘We don’t call them that here, son. It’s Jerry or Fritz mainly. But to answer your question, they’re there.’ He pointed down the trench in what I guessed must be an easterly direction.

  I would have liked to have asked more. Romarin, where we were billeted, was three miles back. And Romarin was in Belgium, virtually on the border with France. That much I had figured out. Beyond that it was all rumour and conjecture and seeing as how most of the company didn’t appear to have read a map in their lives – in fairness there weren’t many maps; the last one I’d seen was on the wall of the canteen in England – we could have been in East Prussia for all they knew. However, we were most assuredly not in East Prussia. We were somewhere near the Ypres Salient.

  To anybody who knew anything the Ypres Salient was the most dangerous place on Earth in early 1915. Having signed up for war, and half fearing I’d missed out, it shouldn’t have been such a let-down to finally arrive. But Plugstreet was not what any of us had been expecting. It bore little resemblance to the neat, ordered, practice trenches of Salisbury Plain.

  ‘You’ll have time enough for sightseeing,’ said the Irish sergeant with a growl. ‘Move along. But God help you if you don’t keep your heads down.’ We did, not so much out of fear of God as the fire-breathing Irish sergeant. The trench twisted and turned and he led us ever further eastwards, towards the enemy.

  At the sound of shellfire I flinched, glancing nervously from side to side. The entire company paused. But the sergeant plodded on as if this was the most normal thing in the world and we had to quicken our pace to catch up.

  ‘Look at them,’ whispered Dundas, wonderment lacing his voice. We were passing a pair of Fusiliers who were conversing amongst themselves, small, stout men nestling a mug of tea in their hands, with dark faces and bags under their eyes that suggested they hadn’t slept in a week. ‘My, they’re a hard-looking bunch.’

  I whistled softly in agreement.

  Eventually we came to what was likely the front-line fire-trench. I say this because the trench was deeper and more substantial; I barely had to duck my head to keep it beneath the level of the sand-bagged parapet. There were many more men here.

  At a signal from the Irish sergeant, Sergeant-Major Atkins sprang to life as we turned a corner and reached the first fire-bay. A handful of mud-encrusted types stood peering out at No-Man’s-Land atop a long wooden step. They turned to stare at us as we approached, with looks of weary amusement and perhaps even pity. For the most part we were tall and hardy; not the types to laugh at and certainly not to feel sorry for. So I imagine it was the fast fading spit-and-polish of our uniforms and a certain bewildered look on our faces which gave us away. Maybe they simply recognized themselves in us from a time long ago. ‘Ashford… Couture… McGregor,’ intoned Atkins, whereupon the chosen three peeled off to make acquaintance with their Irish tutors. The platoon trudged on with barely a pause and I caught a last glimpse of the three as we disappeared round a sandbagged traverse.

  Reaching a particularly foul stretch of trench, where the mud reached the level of my puttees, I had a premonition and Atkins didn’t disappoint. As if he were on the parade ground the sergeant began to reel off names: ‘MacPhail… Dundas… Riley...’

  Quickly the platoon moved on.

  Dundas groaned as he surveyed the scene. ‘Thanks, Mac. This must be the worst section in the entire line.’

  ‘Don’t blame me, Roy. It’s not my fault Atkins’s taken a shine to you.’

  ‘A shit hole it is, lads,’ said one of the Irish soldiers, stepping down from the fire-step to see what the tide had washed up.

  ‘But welcome,’ coughed another. Their uniforms looked as if they hadn’t had a wash since early 1914, but they were a cheerful bunch and full of talk. They’d never met Canadians and I think
that explained their interest.

  Once the introductions were complete the Irish set about to instruct us on the crucial points of trench duty. These seemed to boil down to, a) keeping your head low, and b) your feet dry. As I was standing up to my ankles in a brown soup, I was clearly off to a wobbly start. Then Daniel Doyle of Armagh County spoke up – I hadn’t a clue where it was but Doyle seemed to think it worth mentioning. He was the talkative one of the three, a friendly, red-faced fellow with almost equally red hair and blood-shot eyes. ‘A tall feller like you needs to duck,’ he advised. ‘One glimpse of that head of yours and a sniper will have you.’ Quickly I crouched down low.

  ‘What about taking it to the Hun, then?’ asked Dundas, full of sudden fire. I don’t think he’d counted on war being quite so ignominious.

  Doyle looked over at his mates with an expression stuck halfway between disbelief and mild amusement. ‘Well you see, it’s like this, lads. At dusk and at dawn the enemy is known to attack. And even if he doesn’t attack we stand-to, just in case, right here on this fire-step. And then he strafes us. Later, when he’s had his fill and it’s dark, the working parties begin: digging trenches, replacing wire, carrying up supplies, that sort of thing. If we’re lucky we can sleep a few hours. Then at the crack of dawn the Jerries strafe us again. By the time they’re finished we’re craving a hot cuppa tea and just want to crawl into that hoochie over there, before we do it again.’ He motioned at a coffin-sized space carved into the earth on the opposite side of the trench, a weathered tarpaulin covering it. ‘So you see,’ he concluded, ‘we don’t have a lot of time to be “taking it to the Hun”.’

  ‘Nor inclination,’ muttered one of the others.

  I could see Riley staring with bulging eyes. The disappointment I saw, too. The glorious adventure was evaporating as fast as a drop of water in a frying pan – in marked contrast to the bog at my feet; that was seeping through my boots at an alarming speed.

  A far-off crack sounded, followed by a curious whirring noise. Spellbound, I stood as it came ever closer until I thought it must be dead overhead. Then it ended abruptly. A long moment of silence followed, or so it seemed. There was a flash. Then a violent CRASH. The blast echoed in my eardrums and at the trembling violence of it I stumbled forward as if someone had shoved me. We were being shelled! I dropped to the trench floor and saw Riley and Dundas diving for cover.