A War for King and Empire Read online

  When at last I looked up the Irish were watching bemusedly.

  ‘A Coal Box,’ said Doyle, as calm as could be. ‘For the lads in the rear. The Jerries are off their aim tonight I reckon.’ I felt like a complete idiot.

  ‘Strange,’ said another. ‘They’re early. Not like them to get in a tizzy at supper time.’

  The last man turned to us, a slender long-faced chap whose dreary far-away eyes belied his youth. ‘No need to duck,’ he said kindly. ‘You’ll learn soon enough what’s coming your way. And chances are, you won’t hear it if it does.’

  Soaked, and a little embarrassed, we scrambled to our feet.

  Before long it was dusk. We took our turn on the fire-step, peering cautiously out into No-Man’s-Land watching for signs the enemy was coming and learning what those were. Other than a short but furious bombardment that left me quivering, nothing came of an attack. As soon as darkness fell the Irish set about to acquaint us with another pressing aspect of modern warfare.

  ‘I’m going to die if I have to fill another sandbag,’ I grumbled, as I leaned on the shovel and spat out a half-hour’s worth of grime.

  ‘Don’t let the sergeant hear you say that,’ said Doyle. ‘He expects the traverse to be finished tonight.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’d like to see how many bags the sergeant’s filled in the last three hours.’

  Doyle chuckled. ‘You lads are new, but you’ll catch on. Keep shovelling.’

  When it was my turn to sleep I snatched a few uneasy hours, huddling miserably in a dank hoochie and shivering at the cold and the many strange sounds. More than once my eyes fluttered open with a start, only to droop slowly shut. It was very dark when one of our Irish minders rudely shook me awake.

  ‘Stand-to,’ he barked.

  ‘Jesus,’ I began to say, but the retort died on my lips when I noticed an officer standing in the gloom behind. Apparently satisfied at the state of the defences the officer moved on.

  The Irishman smiled and thrust a steaming tin cup into my hands. ‘That’ll get the chill out of you.’

  I did my best to conceal it but the morning bombardment that followed left me quivering uncontrollably. I reassured myself that a few shakes weren’t so odd. The Irish needed no such reassurance for they were discussing what was “wrong” with Jerry. Apparently Dublin’s finest found the enemy’s offerings to be rather tepid. Though not all of us could rely on the luck of the Irish.

  Later that morning we arrived back at our little brick billets in Romarin, the night fast becoming a memory, a tall tale to be told to the others. We had made it out without a scratch. Despite the lack of sleep the mood in C and D Companies verged on ebullience. In our innocence and our inexperience I dare say we felt a little immortal. It was the last time I ever recall feeling that way.

  CHAPTER 3

  25th of February, 1915

  Plugstreet trenches, Ploegsteert Wood, Belgium

  A grey sky hung low, pregnant with rain yet to come. Dusk was already upon us. At a few minutes past four in the afternoon it was darkening fast.

  ‘Get down!’

  The shout came too late to be of any real use.

  From all around sounded a series of blasts, each more deafening than the last. Earth and pieces of things I could only guess at filled the air. Dirt rained down on my cap and tunic although I barely felt it for the steady concussion of the shells which drummed on the chest and pounded in the head. Another shell shrieked low overhead, a loud whistle in its wake. In the chaos men were running, diving into nooks and crannies where shelter might be had. I stood motionless, temporarily dumbstruck.

  Down the trench one of the enemy trench mortars must have landed a round. In the glimpse I caught as the explosion subsided, the walls appeared to have collapsed. Out of the swirling dark smoke I heard anguished cries and the shout for a stretcher-bearer. The smell of cordite and things burnt was overwhelming.

  Strangely fascinated I watched until a hand from behind suddenly seized my arm in a tight grip. Startled, I turned. Without a word a kilted soldier from the Seaforth Highlanders began tugging me in the direction of one of the narrow side trenches. He was probably half my size but strong. Numbed and only too willing to be led I stumbled after him.

  The narrow trench was one of several I’d noticed earlier. They were dug at right angles to the main fire line and headed away from it, back towards the support trenches. They lacked the wooden revetting that clothed the walls of the main trench. In fact they lacked pretty much everything, including the six plus feet I needed to stand upright; one or two housed a latrine, I knew. With an effort I squeezed in after the Highlander and squatted down low in the wet mud following his example. A few feet further on a couple of other soldiers were already sheltering, their rifles clasped before them, heads bowed as if in communal prayer.

  ‘You’ll be safe enough here, laddie,’ said the Highlander, removing his cap before wiping his brow with a forearm. Apparently the Irish had their fill of us for we’d been fobbed off on to the Scots for our next lesson in the trenches.

  I must have still looked as dazed as I felt, for he added, ‘I reckon you thought widening this ditch was tonight’s chore?’

  I nodded.

  ‘No, we’ll leave ‘er be. It’s cramped, but unless Jerry drops a Minnie on our heads we’ll be just fine here.’ In reassurance he laid a hand on my shoulder.

  I nodded, more vigorously this time.

  Another salvo of shells exploded close by. Aside from a shower of mud, and a renewal of the percussions in my head, we appeared to be as sheltered as the Highlander promised. More whistles and blasts followed from the direction of the rear. Then what must have been a very heavy gun fired, for the air itself seemed to buckle under the momentum as the projectile rumbled over, leaving the sensation of standing on a station platform as an express train roared by, one wheel not quite on the track. A huge blast followed seconds later.

  I took a deep breath.

  ‘The Ypres Express,’ murmured the Highlander, a clarification that required no further explanation. ‘The support line usually sees the worst of it,’ he said, and stuck a finger in that direction, obviously figuring me for someone who’d momentarily lost not only his senses but also his feeling for right or left. ‘What’s your name, laddie?’

  ‘MacPhail. Malcolm MacPhail.’

  ‘Now isn’t that something. Under the Maple Leaf is another bonny Scotsman!’

  I smiled. ‘Well, my grandfather sure was. He never failed to remind me of it. Nor of the clan motto: Memor Esto.’

  ‘Be mindful.’ A pensive grin came to the Highlander’s face. ‘Advice to live by, Malcolm. Welcome to the Plugstreet clan, laddie.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I mumbled. ‘And thanks for getting me out of there. For a moment…’ I paused, and shook my head, uncertain how to explain it.

  Comfortingly, he laid his hand again on my shoulder. ‘Aye, Malcolm. It takes some getting used to… your first days in the trenches. By next week you’ll be a veteran. But if you’re going to stay alive you’ve got to keep your wits about you.’ Then he grinned. ‘Memor Esto, as your Grandfather told you. There isn’t any room for mistakes here. As our colonel is very fond of saying, no one gets a second chance on Plugstreet.’

  Twenty minutes later the Highlander’s final words were still very much on my mind. The German gunners seemed content with the havoc they’d wrought and an uneasy quiet returned to Plugstreet. Only the sporadic crack of a rifle shot, or a shell going off somewhere in the distance, could be heard. Cold and dirty but otherwise no worse for wear we rose out of the mud and hurried back to our positions on the fire-step – one never knew if the enemy infantry might have plans. Fortunately they didn’t appear to. Through the tiny crack in the sandbag parapet the hundred yards of No-Man’s-Land appeared as wearily desolate as ever, and the last embers of light were fading. Quickly I ducked away. Many a sniper’s bullet had found its way through a sandbag just like this one, I’d been warned.

  So
on after I ran into another man from the platoon. It was Halligan. He’d been sent forward to replace one of the Highlanders who’d gone down.

  ‘Davis got it,’ he said, without preamble. ‘Shrapnel hit him.’

  ‘Davis?’ I replied, momentarily puzzled.

  ‘You know, older fellow, sandy hair, tattoos on his arm. Tough looking guy. Only transferred into the battalion a few weeks ago.’

  ‘Oh yeah, of course, Davis,’ I replied. ‘Wilson Davis. Poor fellow. You’re sure?’

  Halligan nodded his head as if to say there was really no doubt. ‘Sergeant Couchman and Bryan were wounded. I’m not sure how badly. The guys want to take up a collection for Davis’s family.’

  ‘And so the 10th Battalion is finally at war,’ I said softly.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Nothing. The enemy seems to have drawn first blood, that’s all.’

  Halligan reddened. He was a bland unassuming sort you might easily picture as a hotel doorman, and I vaguely knew him as such from the sparkling new Palliser Hotel on 9th Avenue where I’d taken clients for afternoon tea amidst the grandeur of the lobby’s candelabras and marbled columns. ‘We’ll make the Hun pay for this, Mac,’ he said, his voice hard.

  Jones said much the same thing when he appeared at my side on the fire-step. I liked Pat well enough, and he seemed to like me, though I was never entirely convinced by the outward bravado, even if the rest of the platoon was in apparent awe of his every word. He was the most popular man in the company, if not the battalion. Jones had a manner about him, a brash confidence which young men – particularly those off to war for the very first time – found alluring. Not like Roy Dundas.

  Dundas never said much of anything, brash or not, and I don’t expect more than twenty men knew his name. But what he did say, always in a soft and understated manner, you could depend on with your life in a way that you never could with the more popular set. I suppose that was one of the few things I’d picked up from my short tenure as a practicing lawyer – how to distinguish veneer from the real thing. Only Dundas’s words on this occasion differed little from the others. ‘We won’t let this rest, Mac,’ he said, with a fire in the belly that was worrisomely absent in my mine. I merely grunted in response.

  We spent a second long, cold, and mildly terrifying night in the trenches. I was bone weary. Dawn came, a few more shells fell, but the enemy remained in his trenches. We formed up on the tree-lined road near Hyde Park Corner, a shade west of Plugstreet Wood. The sky began to spit again.

  Unusually there was no whistling or singing as we marched back to billets. We’d lost one of our own and two others were wounded. For the first time the true harshness of war had reared its head and, naively in retrospect, I was sure this was a day none of us would forget. Not that the mood was depressed. Rather, there was an angry defiance in the ranks. When the sergeants disappeared from earshot, the quiet whispers in the ranks began.

  Dundas, however, had something else on his mind. ‘So why did you join up, Mac? You’re big and you shoot well enough, but you have to admit you’re not exactly the soldierly type.’

  The question caught me off guard – I’m rarely at my best at eight in the morning, a condition little improved by a night of next to no sleep – and searching for a response to Roy’s question, I stumbled. Instinctively, I made an awkward little skip, twisting my right foot like a croquet mallet and putting it against the left heel. It was something I’d picked up on the drill ground to keep in step. Only thus was I able to save the whole file falling into jumbled disarray. That would have brought Sergeant-Major Atkins down on our heads with a bigger bang than a Jack Johnson. ‘Not soldierly?’ I sputtered.

  ‘Come on… let’s face it. You’re hardly the martial sort, Mac. It’s hard enough for you to accept you’re not running the war, let alone having to follow orders from half-illiterate bullies like…’ His voice trailed off and he glanced nervously around. I presumed he was looking for Atkins.

  I gave a weak smile and glanced over my shoulder; the two soldiers behind us were deep in a furtive discussion of their own. ‘My wife died,’ I said softly. ‘That’s why I enlisted.’

  ‘Really? I didn’t even know you were married.’

  I sighed. ‘I guess it somehow didn’t seem worth mentioning. It certainly didn’t last long. Kathryn and I married in November and she died last July. There weren’t many reasons to hang around home after that. Or maybe there were simply a lot of reasons to leave it all behind. I’m not sure. I miss her though.’ Brusquely I stopped, conscious that my voice was quivering. I don’t think Dundas noticed.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Mac. I never realized.’ Even without looking I could see the anguished look on his face. Unlike me he was never much good at hiding his emotions.

  ‘Of course not,’ I replied. ‘You didn’t know.’

  ‘Tough luck,’ he mumbled.

  I shrugged. This was neither the time nor the place to explain that the German Army crossing into Belgium was not the only thing that had happened in August of 1914 – not in my little world. And no matter how much I mourned my dear sweet wife, and Dundas was the only one in whom I’d confided that, her death wasn’t the sole reason I’d rushed to the recruiting office that fateful day. My whole world had been crashing down. Not that those things mattered one iota, not any more. We were at war and, as the Highlander put it, I needed to keep my wits about me.

  After our first rotation in the trenches we were sent to the rear, where the Highlander’s words were promptly forgotten.

  4th of March, 1915

  Fleurbais, near Armentières, France

  ‘So, MacPhail, what do you say to becoming a runner?’

  Lieutenant Lowry had seen me furiously rounding second base in a friendly game of ball not an hour before, and something must have caught his eye.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve heard the rumours about a big offensive,’ he said. ‘We’ll be needing some men who are quick on their feet.’

  ‘Well, sir,’ I prevaricated, ‘I was rather hoping to be in the front lines with the boys.’

  ‘Ah, but you will be. Runners are the critical link with the trenches and I think you’d make an excellent one. It’s important work, you know.’

  Which was the moment when my wits left me. ‘Well, if you think so, sir,’ I replied.

  We went into the trenches two days later and I soon had several opportunities to rue my new trade. However a battle was brewing and there was a sort of collective angst that we would miss it. I was beginning to wonder if that might be for the best.

  The battle soon came, at a place called Neuve Chapelle. As it unfolded the division waited on the flanks in nervous anticipation, waiting to be thrown into the breakthrough that never came. Later I heard that the orders from on high arrived late or not at all – underlying the importance of a good runner Lieutenant Lowry added – and in their absence many commanders were unable or unwilling to think for themselves, with the result that the whole thing turned into a bit of a mess. For our part the men fired madly away. At nothing in particular it seemed, but it kept the enemy heads in the trench opposite down and distracted until the rifles jammed so solid even boots were of no use. After that I was hurried on my way to the rear carrying urgently worded requests for rifle oil. Amazingly the brigade staff were interested in these jottings. I probably should have told them that rifle oil wasn’t really the solution. But then I don’t expect they expected I was reading their messages.

  That was one of the few good things about being a runner. It was actually possible to learn what was going on – provided you had no particular scruples about opening somebody else’s mail. And I didn’t. If I was going to risk life and limb to deliver the bloody things the least they could do was let me read them. For obvious reasons it was a sentiment I didn’t share widely.

  Life as a runner held some surprises. What I hadn’t anticipated, but should have if I’d had my wits about me, was that you invariably ended up in the most hazardou
s points in the line; there being no need for messages in the quiet ones. Otherwise, there was a great deal of running involved.

  I suppose I might have seen that coming.

  CHAPTER 4

  22nd of April, 1915

  Eleverdinghe-Brielen road, northwest of Ypres, Belgium

  A half mile from the village of Brielen was the divisional headquarters, located in an impressive two-story edifice known as the Château des Trois Tours. It was my next port-of-call.

  This was my first experience with a château. Back home most houses could safely be described as either big or small, and to the casual listener the picture was clear. However, European tastes ran visibly grander. With its steep church-like attic, crenellated central façade above the entrance, numerous towers (three of them no less… thus accounting for the château’s name), and a row of large half-moon first-story windows looking out on the garden, my vocabulary came up short when set against the Château des Trois Tours. Because of the moat it appeared as if it were built on an island. I decided then and there this was the sort of place to spend a war in.

  My first acquaintance with a château lasted the better part of two minutes, which was approximately how long it took for the pressed and polished young corporal to take possession of the messages, note them in his log and wish me a good trip back.

  It was a beautiful spring afternoon in late April and I resolved to make the walk back at my leisure. I’d just reached the Elverdinghe-Brielen road and was proceeding down it when I heard the French 75s begin to fire furiously. I knew they were 75s because of the characteristic sound of a cord of wood being split by an axe. Out of curiosity I glanced over my shoulder. Then with alarm at what I saw, glanced again, and my heart seemed to skip a beat. I checked my stride and turned to watch.