“How the hell did you find us?” Everson bellowed above the growl of the engine.
“We didn’t,” yelled the cockney gunner. “When the explosions went off in the tower, Lieutenant Mathers ordered us forward, we hadn’t got twenty yards across the clearing when the bleedin’ ground collapsed beneath us. How were we to know it were riddled with tunnels and the Ivanhoe here a bleedin’ twenty eight ton behemoth? Wah-la, as the Frogs say. We found ourselves down here.”
“Well thank God you did,” shouted Everson. “They think the tank is the god of their underworld, but I don’t know how much time that will buy us.”
“Well that’s handy to know. You follow the others back to the surface. We’ll keep the buggers busy.” The door clanged shut again.
Everson waved 1 Section back as the tank’s forward machine gun spat another hail of bullets across the chamber, keeping the Chatts at bay. They scrambled back along the tank’s rubble-strewn path of destruction and into the bottom of a wide sinkhole. Ahead men were scrambling up the sides, hauling the injured up with them. Atkins and the others scrambled up the slope after them as the tank reversed back out of the nursery chamber towards them.
One of the gearsmen was looking out of a loophole at the rear of the tank, attempting to guide it. The landship lurched as it begin to climb up the side of the sinkhole; the engine labouring to propel its twenty-eight ton bulk up the steep sides, the tracks squealing in protest as they struggled to maintain purchase. At one point it looked as if wasn’t going to make it but then it reared over the lip and, with a heavy crash, it slammed down onto level ground.
They emerged from the ground not thirty yards from the great earthen edifice that now towered above them, black smoke roiling up from a break in the wall high above. Further down the edifice, a familiar sickly green gas vented lazily from holes and sank down along the walls. Atkins was astounded at how much damage they had caused. And they hadn’t stopped yet.
As Chatt soldiers poured out of the edifice, the air filled with the chatter of machine guns as interlocking fields of fire from the flanks mowed them down. The Ivanhoe fired shells at the entrances to the edifice, bringing rubble crashing down to block them, slowing any further pursuit. The hollow plomps of trench mortars sent shells arcing over the clearing to drop down among the remaining Chatts now trapped outside the edifice, while rifle fire and the odd grenade mopped up the rest. Plumes of smoke drifted slowly across the increasingly pock-marked clearing. It was all beginning to take on a familiar feel to the men of the Pennines. As Atkins took in the commotion, he caught a movement on the side of one of the midden piles buttressing the edifice. It was a soldier. Had they left someone behind? Atkins squinted and recognised him at once. Jeffries. The man stopped on the crest of the heap and turned to watch the carnage briefly.
“Atkins!” Do you want to get yourself killed?”
Atkins looked towards the cry. Hobson was ushering the last stragglers into the undergrowth where Hepton was cranking the handle on his kine camera, filming the battle of a lifetime. Atkins dashed for the cover of the encircling woodland and the rest of the support sections. When he looked back in Jeffries’ direction, he had gone.
INTERLUDE FIVE
22nd October 1916
My Dearest Tom,
I write, praying this finds you safe for I do not know what else to do. You are the only friend I have left in this world who will understand. I could not bear to lose you as well.
Although we vowed that we would never speak of the passion that overcame our prudence that night, I fear we must. I have got myself into such a mess. Oh Tom, I am with child and the child is yours. Of that, there can be no doubt.
At first I denied the possibility even to myself, but my condition has begun to show and can be hidden no longer. I cannot continue to work at the Munitions Factory for the shame of it. There was a frightful row and my father is in a terrible rage for they know the child cannot be William’s. He demands to know who the father is, but I have not told them. William was always a hero in their eyes but since he has been missing, he has become a saint and they will have nothing gainsay it. They told me that to do such a deed behind my fiancé’s back I must be a wicked girl and he was all for throwing me out on the street there and then, but my mother, God bless her soul, calmed him down. They are to send me to board with my Aunt Peggy in Ulverston. Tom, I am afraid they mean to take the baby from me once it is born and give it up to an orphanage. I do not know what is to become of me. Alive or dead, I fear William will never forgive us and that is anguish enough, but to lose my child, Tom, that would be more than I could bear.
Oh, Tom, I know you are a good man. You have to come home to me and make this right. I do not know what I would do if I lost you, too. I need you, Tom — we need you. I pray ardently for your safe return. Write by return of post if you are able. Each day I do not hear from you weighs heavily on me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ATKINS READ FLORA’S letter several times on the long journey back to the entrenchments. The tear-stained paper in his hands left him reeling with a vertiginous sense of guilt. He was so self-absorbed he barely noticed as Gazette fell in beside him.
“Want to talk about it, mate?”
“No. Not really.”
“Fair enough. Fag?” he said, offering a crushed Woodbine. Atkins shook his head.
“So, Dwyer the devil worshipper, eh?” said Gazette. “Bloody hell, that was a turn up for the books and no mistake. The most notorious man in England. Think of the reward money we’d get if we could turn him in, eh? Pity he scarpered. If there’s any justice in this world he’ll be a bag o’ bones by now.”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
Porgy trotted up and was about to speak when Gazette shook his head, so Porgy just matched his stride with theirs and they walked along in uneasy silence.
“Wait, something’s wrong,” said Pot Shot behind them, holding up a hand. “Half Pint’s stopped grousing.”
Eyes turned to look at the curmudgeonly private being carried along on a makeshift stretcher. Behind him, Napoo was being carried on another, Poilus now constantly at his clansman’s side. Around them walking wounded limped along in ones and twos or helping those blinded by Chatt acid, all of them constantly herded along by the nurses, like sheep.
“Half Pint, what’s the matter?” called Gutsy, over the ever-present rumble of the tank up ahead.
“Shhh!” warned Sister Fenton. “Poilus has given him crushed berries of some sort. It seems to have numbed his pain.”
“And his ability to complain, too, by the sound of it,” said Pot Shot.
“No it hasn’t,” said Half Pint drowsily, “I just don’t know where to bloody start.”
“Off on the wrong foot, knowing you, probably!”
“No thanks to you, you bugger,” said Half Pint, sticking up a pair of fingers in Gutsy’s direction. Gutsy puffed out his cheeks with relief.
EVERSON DROVE THE men on. They had made longer marches than this in France and in worse conditions and he knew they wouldn’t be safe until they reached their entrenchment. But would it still be there? That was the question that went through the mind of every man in the column, the thought that made every one of them sick at heart.