A Summer for War Read online

  ‘Read on,’ said the major. ‘It’s all explained.’ He turned away and began talking to one of the staff.

  I sank into an empty chair and started reading. It didn’t take me long, although I read carefully.

  It was less than three weeks since the Vimy show and the big offensive along the Scarpe began, but it was not to end with those efforts. As was so often the case, GHQ had grander ambitions. It was easy to be ambitious sitting in a château far removed from the objects of your ambition.

  Very early tomorrow morning the 1st and 2nd Divisions were to seize the hamlet of Arleux and the trenches surrounding it. It was all part of something much bigger, and I raised an eyebrow when I read that our divisional artillery and machine guns were to play a role in support. Evidently that didn’t constitute an operation in General Lipsett’s mind.

  When the general spoke about the need for his officers to be prepared for the unexpected, he hadn’t meant it theoretically. He’d so neatly dropped me in the deep end, I suspect that was his intent all along. It had become a question of “sink or swim” as my childhood swimming coach so quaintly phrased it. Of course, hanging around the 5th Brigade’s dug-out and sending an infrequent message was hardly asking the impossible – Boche bombardments notwithstanding.

  ‘Malcolm!’ called a voice. I looked up and saw that it was Lieutenant O’Neill. By chance I’d met him only last week. He looked barely twenty, with his rosy cheeks and gleaming eyes. He was fresh from officers’ school and an extended stint in England, and was presumably the 7th Brigade’s liaison officer. He’d slipped in while I was reading.

  We talked for a bit.

  ‘Hey,’ he said as we were finishing, ‘Captain Walker and I are moving forward to the battalion headquarters at the Mont Forêt Quarries. Are you coming?’ O’Neill stared at me expectantly. Over his shoulder the captain in question was watching me.

  With an effort I suppressed the groan, if not the sceptical look.

  ‘They have a telephone there,’ O’Neill quickly added, ‘if that’s what’s bothering you. You’ll be able to send messages without a problem. I figured it’d be easier and quicker to inform our superiors if we’re not two steps removed from the action. The captain agreed to take us.’

  O’Neill, for all his misplaced zeal, was not entirely incorrect. Although he was obviously unaware of the tendency for German shells to sever telephone lines at inconvenient moments, not to mention the effect they had on eager and unsuspecting liaison officers.

  ‘Do you suppose they’ll have pigeons on hand?’ I asked, mischievously. ‘In case the lines go down.’

  He frowned, his eyes blinking as he reflected on this. ‘Oh, I expect they will,’ he said firmly.

  I took a deep breath and sighed. O’Neill was altogether too eager, and too inexperienced; a dangerous combination at the front.

  ‘Sure, I’ll go with you,’ I said.

  Someone had to keep an eye out for him.

  CHAPTER 2

  Before dawn, 28th of April, 1917

  Front line near Arleux-en-Gohelle, France

  Cutting through the stilted quiet of the early morning, the cheerful warbling of a single nightingale in a nearby copse sounded down the line. No one paid it any heed. Minds were elsewhere, on matters that had nothing to do with good cheer or song. Somehow the men managed a nervous smile or two. A smile was more than I could muster, especially as some genius at battalion headquarters had suggested we depart the comparative safety of the dug-out to ‘observe’ the attack going in. I sighed when I heard, for we’d only just arrived. Predictably O’Neill found it a splendid idea.

  ‘Won’t be long now,’ murmured a lieutenant from the battalion staff, glancing up from his watch. We stood in a small group in the front-line trench peering eastwards towards what was known as the Arleux Loop. The “Loop” was no more than a slight westward bulge in the German line around the modest village of Arleux. GHQ had decided it should be eliminated. It was an old and well-favoured stratagem of the generals, a line of thinking vaguely reminiscent of the training camp non-commissioned officers; except where the NCOs obsessed about straight bed sheets, the generals preoccupied themselves with more important matters like straightening the line. I’d never much understood the need for either.

  Two companies, half the battalion, were to lead the attack. They were crouched in wait a couple of hundred yards forward in the middle of No-Man’s-Land, packed into a treacherously shallow jumping-off trench that was completed in great haste several hours earlier. It wasn’t far from where we were, but yet too far to see. With the creeping approach of dawn the sky was softening to a flint grey, the visibility still no more than 100 yards at best.

  The 2nd Division battalion that I was visiting, the 25th out of Nova Scotia, was assigned the left flank of the attack. Three other battalions of the 1st Division, including my old 10th Battalion, were to their right and squared up against the village itself. The enemy was well dug in and in possession of an “unusually large number of machines guns” according to the latest intelligence. While that constituted pretty much the extent of my knowledge and apparently that of the intelligence staff, the brigade captain, Walker, had let something slip. It made me suspect he knew more. As I’ve never been one content to shuffle along in blissful ignorance, marching to death or worse in some endeavour of which I knew nothing and understood even less, I approached him.

  At the sound of me clearing my throat he turned to look. ‘You mentioned something earlier about today’s offensive, sir,’ I began. ‘I just wondered what the plan was.’

  ‘Well, 1st Division is to take the village, of course.’ I nodded. That I knew. ‘And between them and Oppy there’s a battalion of Oxford & Bucks from the 2nd Imperial Division on the flank,’ he added. Oppy was 1000 yards south of Arleux. There the bulge in the German trenches straightened, and the front line ran southwards until it reached the banks of the River Scarpe.

  Expectantly I stared, waiting for him to continue. That the Ox & Bucks were holding our right was not exactly the big picture summary I’d been looking for.

  Abruptly the captain looked away – as if there was something to see across the darkened and dishevelled fields. Which there wasn’t, so that meant it was a feint. A moment of stilted silence followed. He watched the fields and I watched him. When he spoke again it was with a tone of finality that suggested he was intent on terminating the discussion. ‘A half-dozen Imperial divisions will attack all the way south to the Scarpe, Lieutenant,’ he muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

  Softly I whistled. Only five days earlier Field-Marshal Haig had resumed the offensive east of Arras for the second time this month. Today it appeared he was having another go at it; one clearly didn’t become field-marshal without a certain “damn the torpedoes” mindset – cavalry man or not. ‘That must be at least six miles of front,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘So it’s another big show, sir?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a big show alright, Lieutenant,’ Walker replied, but didn’t elaborate. Even if I’d wanted to press him, he’d now clamped his field glasses to his eyes. And while they may not have helped in seeing anything, they did help in not seeing me, and I suspect he was looking forward to the barrage when he couldn’t hear me either. I think Walker was embarrassed he didn’t know more, though instead of simply admitting to his ignorance he resorted to subterfuge. He ought to have realized I didn’t expect he was attending the field-marshal’s briefings. But some officers were touchy that way. Or perhaps it was the tension.

  The soft murmur of conversation died away as the minutes ticked down to 4.25 a.m. and ZERO Hour. We all knew what was coming, but it was unnerving waiting for it to begin, even for those of us present as mere observers. Then, while Lieutenant O’Neill occupied himself with an intense study of his watch’s second hand, the guns erupted. A storm of light and thunder followed.

  The roar of the barrage was sudden and tumultuous, and it overwhelmed every other sound, including those of the men charging forward
and the song of the poor, shell-shocked bird cowering in its tree. It was a sight and a sound some of us soldiers were acclimatized to by this spring of 1917; it was to be hoped the nightingale was as well.

  Six hundred yards away, a wall of flashing fire and whirling steel had descended in front of the German trenches. Clouds of dirt and smoke billowed upwards. Towards that the men would be steadily walking, in tune with the barrage, rifles at the high port. Acclimatized or not, I stood gaping like the rest of our little party. Soon sparking flashes, like fireflies, could be seen as the barrage lifted and moved on, and the small-arms fire began. Slightly to the south of our position, where the roofs of Arleux-en-Gohelle and the steeple of a church were lit by shellfire, red and green flares soared into the dark sky above the havoc.

  ‘Fritz hardly needs the S.O.Ss,’ I shouted at Captain Walker.

  He shook his head. If their comrades in the artillery had slept through the first minutes of the barrage, they weren’t likely to spot a red Christmas bulb or two above their heads.

  I turned to O’Neill. His helmet was tilted low, the palms of his hands covering his ears, and his eyes fixed on the scene, seemingly enraptured by the sight of what was likely his first-ever barrage. I had trouble even remembering mine. But then I’d been at the front for what seemed half a lifetime, or at least since the beginning of 1915. He positively jumped when I roared his name in his ear.

  ‘I don’t want to spoil the show, but if Fritz lobs a Woolly Bear this way…’ I shouted.

  It was a hint even O’Neill could understand. Captain Walker on the other side of me was already rounding up the others. I feared we’d left our withdrawal a little late.

  We only barely exited the trench when a curtain of enemy fire came crashing down in the middle of No-Man’s-Land.

  ‘That was close,’ said O’Neill, glancing back over his shoulder.

  ‘Not really,’ I grunted. At this I saw him frown. ‘They must have spotted our jumping-off trenches,’ I explained. ‘Otherwise that bombardment of theirs would have been falling right about here. Then you and I would have had real worries, O’Neill.’

  ‘But what about the attack? They’ll be completely cut up.’

  ‘Don’t worry. The boys will be long out of those trenches.’

  What I didn’t say was that while the first waves had surely escaped the bombardment, and were racing towards the enemy lines, the Germans might keep at it. In which case if men and supplies were needed, they’d first have to dodge a hail of shrapnel and high explosive. Cutting off the attackers from reinforcements then counter-attacking in force was standard procedure for our foe. Even the operation orders had warned about such a scenario. But there was no sense worrying about that now. Time would tell. We hastened towards the Mont Forêt Quarries where the 25th Battalion HQ had set up shop.

  However, we didn’t remain for long.

  That wasn’t solely because it was on the crowded side, nor even because a forward ammunition dump was established in close proximity, although I did helpfully point out to O’Neill and Captain Walker the potential implications of a stray German shell. Even bearing in mind the presence of a whole squadron of cooing pigeons to carry messages – O’Neill proved correct about that – there just wasn’t much to communicate, let alone liaise about. We decided to return to the brigade, for a better overview.

  The captain, O’Neill and me reached the railway dug-out some thirty minutes later. Whereupon O’Neill was informed that the 26th Battalion on the divisional left was in contact with the PPCLI. As the PPCLI was a battalion from the 7th Brigade, his brigade, he rushed over to the telephone to report. Captain Walker meanwhile simply rushed off. He seemed relieved at the opportunity.

  Having nowhere in particular to rush to, I slumped into an unoccupied chair at the map table and tried not to feel like a leper. Strangely, the brigadier still hadn’t shown up. I decided it was best not to ask – besides, everyone except me seemed extremely busy – and applied myself instead to a study of the map. If I was going to enlighten General Lipsett and Colonel Hayter on the progress of the attack, it was probably best I understood something of it.

  Sometime past 6 a.m. a few signals trickled in. In the first short despatch the 26th Battalion on the left reported “all correct”. Which was hardly surprising as all they had to do was saunter a few hundred yards into No-Man’s-Land and dig in. Nevertheless, as a good liaison officer, O’Neill tore off to relay this development. I stayed put, reasoning General Lipsett would have bigger things on his mind. Roughly half an hour later another signal arrived. This time, from the way that Major Clark-Kenney and Captain Walker were studying it, I knew it must be important.

  ‘It appears all three 1st Division battalions have made good their objectives,’ I heard Clark-Kennedy say to Walker. Walker grinned. The attack had succeeded, and surprisingly quickly, too. The 10th Battalion, with the 8th to one side and the 5th to the other, were through the trenches that made up the Arleux Loop and had captured the village.

  ‘Anything from the 25th?’ asked Walker. Understandably he was anxious to know where their own men where.

  ‘Yes, it’s about time we heard something from them,’ muttered Clark-Kennedy, and moved over to stand beside me at the map table.

  The words were barely out of his mouth when a runner came tumbling down the stairs, missing a step in the gloom, and nearly plunging headlong into the two of us. Quickly I reached out an arm to arrest his progress.

  ‘Careful,’ I said. ‘It’d be a shame if you knocked out the major before he had the opportunity to read your message.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ he replied. Straightening himself he turned to the major, fumbled in his satchel for a moment, and handed him a folded sheet of note paper.

  Clark-Kennedy glanced at it briefly. Then he pursed his lips somewhat sourly.

  ‘Sir?’

  Silently he thrust the note at me. It came from the 25th Battalion, a couple of sentences scrawled in haste.

  ‘They still haven’t heard from either their right or their left company?’ I said incredulously. Seeing as the battalion was attacking on a two-company front, no news was most definitely not good news.

  ‘Not quite,’ said the major. ‘We received a message earlier that they were held up by machine-gun fire on their left.’

  ‘But what about their right, sir?’ I asked anxiously. ‘Did you hear anything about their right?’ The right was where the 1st and 2nd Divisions bumped shoulders. If the Nova Scotia Rifles hadn’t yet made contact with the 5th Battalion as planned, there was a very good chance the 1st Division in Arleux was dangerously exposed. Despite having fought their way into the heavily defended town, the divisional flank would be wide open, a gilt-edged invitation to Fritz that he hardly required – even without prompting he was predisposed to the counter-attack.

  Curtly Clark-Kennedy shook his head. He knew what was at stake as well as I did.

  ‘Where’s the liaison officer from the 5th Battalion?’ I asked, ‘Perhaps he knows more.’

  ‘He’s at headquarters.’

  At this I frowned, thinking, the gears upstairs stuck in neutral. Most days, it must be said, I find the mist seldom clears until well past nine.

  ‘The rear headquarters,’ supplied Clark-Kennedy, finally.

  ‘Ah, ha,’ I replied.

  The major said nothing more.

  ‘The food’s probably better in the rear,’ I mumbled, but he was already headed to his officers.

  An uneasy couple of hours passed. Messages fired back and forth between the brigade major at the railway dug-out, the brigadier in the rear, and Lieutenant-Colonel Bauld, the commander of the 25th, at the quarries. I drank weak coffee and endeavoured to overhear the gist of the story.

  Eventually, to sighs of relief from the brigade staff, the 25th reported they had reached the sunken road that was their objective. They were in contact with the 5th Battalion. All was well. It was now a question of mopping up and preparing for the inevitable counter-attac
ks.

  O’Neill called headquarters to report. Feeling I should probably report as well, wary that otherwise the staff rumour mill would conjure up some fanciful tale of me sitting around dry and safe, twiddling my thumbs and drinking coffee all day, I telephoned in what I knew. Most of it they’d probably already heard. None of it was of any crucial significance. But I expect my superiors would want to hear, regardless.

  Lunch was frugal. The coffee ran out shortly after. I settled down to what I anticipated would be a long afternoon entrenched at the map table. Nor was I the only one thinking that. O’Neill let rip with a windy yawn that rivalled the blast from a medium howitzer.

  ‘Tedious or not, O’Neill, this beats being up to your knees in mud with Fritz dumping shells on your head,’ I said. ‘Be thankful you’re not in Arleux awaiting the counter-attack.’ O’Neill looked unconvinced. ‘Here, study the map if you’re bored.’

  With little to do but take my own advice, I settled down to read through copies of all the operations orders. It was standard army practice that each unit shared its orders with the others involved. There was a whole stack of them; a fairly elaborate one from each division as well as their respective brigades; and shorter, more pointed versions from the various battalions involved. Since General Lipsett had asked me to join his staff, I’d spent many an hour writing the damn things, so I suppose I’d developed a certain professional interest in them.

  ‘Interesting?’ said O’Neill, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, after he saw what I was reading.

  ‘Look, I was a lawyer. I don’t get bored quickly.’

  Boredom, ironically, proved to be the least of my concerns. After a dozen pages I suddenly sat up erect, completely abandoning my customary slouch, a sense of unease descending over me. As I read on that unease grew progressively. Hurriedly I flipped through the remaining pages. I paused to carefully study the sections entitled “objectives”, only skimming the rest. When I was done I did it again to make certain. My mouth was so dry it felt like I was the one preparing to go over the top.