Malcolm MacPhail's Great War Page 8

  Travis exhaled loudly. ‘There wasn’t a lot we could do, mostly they mowed us down. We took a few pill-boxes, but the wire won most of the time.’ Evidently, the preferred BEF tactic of sending in waves of soldiers was not likely to be an overwhelming success in such conditions; at least if you defined success as having anybody left at the end of the day. Not that I was extremely confident such a banal detail was even a consideration to all in the upper echelons.

  Slowly, but surely, I was getting a feel for the ground. The whole exercise was definitely not making me any more confident. I had a few obstacles to add to the maps, and the impressive 1:400 scale maquette of the terrain displayed at Corps headquarters, and a lot to think about. Like what to tell Lipsett. It was time to head back.

  We began the slow and arduous journey to the rear lines. The Kiwis had only got as far as constructing a duckboard track to Abraham Heights, a mind-numbing 900 yards behind us; so that consigned us to an exhausting trek through the sludge.

  My boots reached almost to my knees. That was small comfort, as it seemed as though at every third step I ended up to my thighs in the goo, requiring a vigorous struggle to free myself. After ten paces I had the balance of a one-year-old and I was panting like a stallion in heat. At least one thing was going our way, our Jack Johnson postman appeared to be enjoying a break. It came as quite a relief when I finally put a foot on solid ground. The relief quickly evaporated when the unmistakable gut-wrenching stench of the decomposing body I’d stepped on enveloped us. Ypres was no place for the weak of stomach; weak of mind, perhaps, but not weak of stomach.

  After my first nauseating re-acquaintance with the Salient I’d been determined to be better prepared. So now I smothered my mouth and my nose with a handkerchief. Inexplicably – it couldn’t have been foresight – I’d thrown it into my duffel bag in Villers-Châtel when I was packing, and had stuffed it in my coat pocket when I arrived at the Kiwis. I stepped off again into Lake Ypres.

  I was rather chuffed I’d finally found an appropriate use for the four white linen handkerchiefs my parents had sent me months earlier. They were from the Hudson’s Bay department store. You had only to look at them to know they were good quality. A lot better than I would have bought, but I can’t imagine having bought them at all. I pictured my father and mother standing in the fancy new sandstone store on 7th Avenue discussing the matter at length; she was pointing out how frightfully dirty it was “over there” – it was a good thing she didn’t know the half of it – and he was repeating the sermon I’d heard so often on the advantages of buying a quality product. At any other time, a conversation like that would have driven me stark-raving mad. But wading through this foul quicksand, just the recollection of them gave me a warm glow. I felt a touch guilty that I’d been so exasperated when I first opened the package. ‘What the hell I am supposed to do with these? Polish my rifle?’ I’d shouted at DuBois, as he and a few others looked on in amused curiosity at the contents of my parcel. I must write soon. It had been ages since the last time, and if the post ever caught up with me, I probably had a stack of letters as thick as my fist by now.

  It was about this time, right as we were passing Berlin Wood that the heavens released their load. But then it was always raining in Ypres.

  Normally my Aquascutum trench coat was as impervious to rain as I was to forsaking a drink. But now the water was pouring off my helmet like it was Niagara Falls and my coat’s well-padded shoulders were showing signs of saturation. I’d shelled out an exorbitant £3 12s for it at a little shop on Jermyn Street on my last leave in London. Even though that was the better part of a week’s wages, it was possibly the best purchase I’d ever made. Which made me think, perhaps my father’s little sermon hadn’t entirely gone in one ear, and out the other.

  All told, it took us not far off two hours of plodding exertion to make it to the first improvised infantry track. By that time, I was ready for the slag heap. I could only imagine how they must have felt going the other way, with only the prospect of a lead-filled attack ahead.

  Once on the firm planks of a duckboard, I found I could devote my attention to something other than not simply keeling over. I was astonished to see a torrent of activity all around. It helped that the rain had slowed to an even drizzle. I was even more astonished when a group of pioneers from my own division barrelled past, timbers in hand. It was hard to believe, it had only been three days since I heard old Guts n’ Gaiters give his preliminary orders and the area was already swarming with Canadians. Normally I’m not one to liken my countrymen to insects, but what I saw would have put any self-respecting anthill to shame.

  It seemed that everywhere I looked there were soldiers on the move: building track for the light railways, so indispensable in replenishing the guns; laying new bath-mat tracks for the infantry and plank roads for the many pack animals and carts. Soon the guns would follow. Later, DuBois told me that General Currie had gone so far as to commandeer a saw mill and a forest, (in France, I was guessing, the Belgian forests having less wood in them than my family’s Christmas tree), to provide the necessary timber. We shuffled along, taking it all in, unspeaking… each of us lost in our private thoughts. The coffee must have been gone, for Fritz was behind the breech of his guns once more, doggedly determined to make up for lost time as the shells began exploding again with tiresome regularity. None of us paid overly much attention.

  I’m not entirely sure why I reacted the way I did. Flanders fields were a constant cacophony of noise. If it wasn’t the rain, it was the artillery or the machine guns or the snipers, and mixed in with it all were the sounds of men and animals – too often these were the moans and shrieks from those who were wounded and who lay unattended, somewhere out there, alone, in the desolation. Perhaps it was the plaintiveness of his call that jolted me out my stupor, the sheer desperation of it that led me to look closer. Whatever it was, I motioned for Travis and Stewart to halt. Ignoring their obvious puzzlement, I stepped off the bathmat track and began wading purposefully in the direction of the cries, towards something that bore an unmistakable likeness to the corpse of a horse and an overturned wagon off to our left.

  From this lower vantage point I could vaguely make out a man, and he was still alive. He was shouting hoarsely, his arms flailing wildly above him, excited as he too had seen me. The mud had swallowed him to his midriff. As I approached I waved and looked closer. I squinted when he finally came into full view, and my brain whirred insanely, to process what my eyes were seeing. I could make out his elegant spectacles – I’d shamelessly teased him about them – flung off in his panic. They were hanging helplessly from one ear. It was Tibbett. I hated to admit it, but I was very glad to see him.

  I roared to the Kiwis to come help, and they did, with an alacrity that astonished me. We set to work freeing him from the morass in which he was slowly, but inexorably, sinking. It took the five of us, several planks from the cart, and more toil than my pay grade usually demanded, before we finally tugged his feet from the quicksand.

  ‘Tibbett,’ I exclaimed, when it was done. ‘Whatever are you doing here?’ Looking at him sandwiched between two of the New Zealanders, with an arm around each of their shoulders, and they around his waist, I felt oddly protective of him. Shorn of his haughty airs he had the look of a small bird who’d fallen abruptly out of its nest.

  ‘It was a shell,’ he said. ‘We didn’t hear it coming.’ It was a story I’d heard before, from everybody I’d ever met with the same experience and who had lived to tell about it. Not that there were more than a couple; the odds were decidedly not with you. ‘One minute we were here with the three of us setting up a microphone. I went back to the cart to get the wire, and next thing I knew, I woke up ten feet away with my legs almost completely submerged. It was rather fortunate I went in that way and not the other,’ he said. I bit my tongue.

  He rattled on. I’d never heard him talk so fast. ‘No matter what I did, however I moved, I kept sinking further away. In another hour or tw
o, I’m certain I would have been completely under. Thank goodness you came when you did.’ As the adrenaline began to subside, he asked, ‘I presume the other two are gone? I couldn’t see them. I shouted until my lungs ached.’

  I glanced around. Other than the horse and the remains of the cart, I could see absolutely nothing of the two soldiers he was with. There was only a large shell hole. The detonation had erased any visible evidence I could see from up here. I had no inclination of climbing in to investigate further. I shook my head.

  Once back on the duckboards I asked him the question that had first sprung to mind – his previous answer only increasing my curiosity. ‘I’m still puzzled why on earth you’re here? Microphones, you said?’

  ‘Oh yes, Colonel McNaughton is very taken with these new sound-ranging techniques. We’re becoming rather proficient in pinpointing the location of the enemy batteries. Really, it’s quite brilliant. Simply measure the sound of their guns firing at several different locations and then, based on a precise measurement of those locations and the time it takes each instrument to register the same sound, triangulate where the sound is originating from. With a few microphones and an oscillograph, we…’

  ‘An oscillo… what?’ I asked, interrupting him mid-stream before I got hopelessly out of my depth. I knew of Lieutenant-Colonel McNaughton. He was Tibbett’s boss at Corps headquarters. He was gaining a real name for himself for the counter-battery work they were doing, seeking out and destroying the enemy’s artillery. Naively, I always assumed that observation, aerial photographs and documents like those we captured at Méricourt were responsible. Science class, for the second time this week, was catching up with me.

  He smiled. ‘An oscillograph,’ he said, coming back to life. ‘Oh, in its most rudimentary form it’s nothing more than a device that can measure and record – interestingly enough using film in our case – the sound waves made by a shell being fired.’

  ‘Simple, keep it simple, Tibbett,’ I said. ‘Remember, I’ve been breathing this air for a week now.’

  He laughed. ‘Well, how’s this, then? We listen for a gun to fire with our microphones and then record exactly when each microphone heard the exact same shot. Take the coordinates of the microphones, mix it with a little math and voilà, within five minutes we can inform the artillery lads where they should be firing to destroy that gun.’

  It was my turn to laugh. ‘Thanks Tibbett, it takes a smart man to distill things into a format even I understand.’ Halfway out of my mouth I was suddenly aware I’d let down my guard with him, as I’d never done before. It felt like walking half-naked into the Grace Presbyterian Church on 15th Avenue. Quickly I kept talking. ‘So, you were here placing one of these microphones according to some plan the colonel drew up?’

  ‘Yes, exactly.’

  We talked some more and then walked beside each other for a long time in silence.

  After a while, he turned towards me. ‘My father will kill me if he hears of this,’ he said quietly. ‘You don’t know what he’s like, he pulled a considerable number of strings to get me my commission, what with my physics study at London University and my spectacles. My brother, he’s the athlete. Tennis, cricket, rowing, there’s little he doesn’t do well. Naturally he studied at Cambridge. Classics. Worst of all, he’s already a major.’ He paused and I thought he’d finished. Apparently, it was just to breathe. He began with renewed passion. ‘Other than recalling Tom’s exploits, I don’t hear much else when I’m home on leave. My father’s always preaching on about how wonderful he is. He simply couldn’t let it go when he heard that I’d been assigned to a Dominion division. Sorry, that wasn’t terribly tactful of me.’

  ‘Listen Paul,’ I began. I don’t think I’d ever called him by his first name before, but I’d never wrestled him out of the mud before, either. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, there are a lot of people here who would like nothing better than to kill you,’ I said, waving an arm in the general direction of the German lines. ‘Somehow I think they’re of more immediate concern than your father!’

  He smiled. ‘That’s what I like about you, Malcolm, always that quick humour.’

  I was momentarily stunned. I’d always thought he detested me, and my jokes even more.

  ‘Apparently, you haven’t done much to enlighten your father. You might point out sometime that we colonials keep getting stuck with the biggest messes to clean up. To which you might add, the reason being is that we actually get the job done,’ I said. ‘Unlike certain other divisions, including those your father seems to hold in higher regard,’ I muttered as an afterthought. ‘He should be very proud of your work.’ Uneasily, I smiled. I realized I’d been doing some preaching of my own. Tibbett nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘And where would we be without you, Paul? After all, most of us from the Dominions can’t even pronounce oscillograph, let alone spell it!’ He smiled a watery smile. My compliments had made him uneasy.

  ‘I wish I knew how I could repay you, Malcolm,’ he said effusively. I don’t know what it is about narrowly escaping death, but it was doing Tibbett a world of good.

  ‘Mac, call me Mac, Paul. That would a good start,’ I said. ‘We can discuss payment another time,’ I teased.

  It was dark by the time we arrived at the moss-covered concrete bunker at Canal Bank – the days were getting shorter. Canal Bank, so-named for its proximity to the Yser Canal was roughly a half-mile north of Ypres. For some curious reason, I couldn’t begin to fathom, it was where the Kiwis had planted their divisional headquarters. Thinking back on it, it made the Australians’ dungeon vaguely resemble Buckingham Palace, although I was far too tired to devote much energy to the comparison. I inhaled some rations when I had the chance, although I hardly bothered to taste them. That was always a wise policy with rations anyway. I was ready to call it a day.

  We arrived cold, exhausted, drenched to the core and filthy in a way I didn’t think possible after so much rain. Strangely, though, I felt good. Tibbett was sleeping in a temporary cot beside me, shocked, but otherwise unharmed from the day’s experiences. Sergeant Smith would arrive tomorrow. I was looking forward to that. He and I, and an unnamed officer from the Corps, were to open an intelligence headquarters here in the Kiwis’ cozy bunker. I hoped he would bring my trunk, I thought dreamily, as my eyes fluttered in out of consciousness – I could sure use some dry socks.

  CHAPTER 8

  23rd of October, 1917

  Ten Elms camp, Poperinghe, Belgium

  Ten Elms camp was not terribly impressive, a motley assortment of drab-coloured canvas tents fiercely regimented into a precise grid-work of long rows and columns, such that only an army could be responsible. In the centre of this tent metropolis were a handful of hastily constructed wooden structures. A couple of them were quite large, although I wouldn’t go so far as to call them proper buildings. A far corner of the camp was dedicated to the massive and astonishingly detailed outdoor model of Passchendaele Ridge. Even at this hour, a little before nine in the morning, it was already being studied by various officers and NCOs brought here to do just that. Apparently, his Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught, the former Governor-General, had dropped by only yesterday to have a gander himself; it was the kind of thing that appealed to men brought up on model train sets.

  The camp was located on the northwest outskirts of the little town of Poperinghe, or “Pops” as most called it, itself tucked away five miles behind Ypres. Poperinghe had been spared the worst of the shelling, and with the capture of Messines Ridge it was mercifully out of sight, if not out of range, of the heaviest German guns. With the departure of the 2nd ANZAC Corps HQ, it was here that the Canadian Corps had established its headquarters. I’d heard talk that Pops possessed a comfortable all-ranks club in the main square where, word was, you could enjoy a hot cup of tea. It all sounded terribly racy. Myself, I was of the opinion that the Salient required considerably stiffer refreshment than tea.

  Close to the camp entrance, I was surprised to
see two Lewis guns mounted on poles and surrounded by an obviously makeshift log barricade. There was a group of four soldiers loitering around it with a relaxed casualness so I strolled over to them. They’d naturally seen me long before I saw them, but pretended they hadn’t. As the realization sank in that an encounter with an officer was inevitable, they turned and gave me four of the sloppiest salutes I’d had in a long while. I slopped back. That was easy enough to do, saluting had never been my strong suit.

  ‘You lads are going to have to work on those salutes. I know a general or two who might take it quite personally if he’d seen that pathetic display.’

  ‘Sir,’ they said, straightening up and beginning to look nervous.

  Pointing at the machine guns I said, ‘You realize, it’s been a bad duck season this year?’

  They stared at me as if I was wearing a Pickelhaube and doing a tap dance. Finally, the shoe dropped and one, a corporal, began to smile: they were obviously from the city. ‘That’s alright, sir! We’re after bigger game. Gothas mainly.’

  ‘Gothas! I didn’t know they ventured out here? Bagged any yet?’

  They’d all noticeably brightened since their initial tense moments, recognising, I guess, that I wasn’t intent on imposing any cruel new misery upon them.

  ‘No, sir, not yet,’ said one of the others. ‘We’ve seen a few in the distance and they dropped some pineapples on Vlamertinghe, just down the road from here, two days ago.’

  ‘The weather helps,’ said another, gesturing to the dreary overcast skies that were intermittently spitting rain.

  The private was right, the overcast skies made it tough for the aeroplanes. Still, I had seen them off in the distance. On top of which, the intelligence summaries from the Australians regularly reported that low-flying planes were machine-gunning their troops, sometimes in groups of as many as fifteen. That was the problem with low hanging clouds; the pilots had nothing to do up above, and strafing enemy troops was a worthy alternate pastime.