“I say, sir!”
Major Vokes was upset by such vulgarity, being used to the Victorian habits of the Indian Army.
“Captain Hawkeswill!”
The Adjutant came running.
“Organise tea for the men while we are waiting, please.”
Hawkeswill ran in the direction of a cookhouse he had spotted earlier, pleased with his forethought. The men were dipping their mugs into tea buckets inside twenty minutes, most of them pleased for something hot and only a few cavilling at the flavour. The officers were less pleased but mostly accepted the hardships of war. Richard heard Wincanton’s voice raised in protest, heard a sharp response from another young gentleman.
“Do shut up, Wincanton! You are a complete tit, you know!”
Richard was quite pleased to discover that his contemporaries shared his own opinion of Wincanton’s merits.
A little more than an hour and the battalion was queuing outside a vast mess tent, eating five companies at a time, their plates heaped with real meat and cabbage and boiled potatoes.
“General Gough insists, sir. He won’t tolerate lukewarm mutton stew, sir.”
A cookhouse sergeant saluted as he explained and called the officers to a smaller tent.
“Same food for officers, sir. It ain’t the best but it’s as good as we can do with a field kitchen, sir. Given the stuff to cook, we can turn out a meal, sir.”
“What’s like up in the trenches, Sergeant?”
“Same grub, sir, but two hours colder. Can’t do nothing about that, sir.”
They marched to the line in darkness, using a hard road, newly surfaced with crushed limestone and just visible. The Norfolks pulled out, company by company, attenuated parties of twenty or thirty being replaced by groups of eighty officers and men.
“Lost two thirds by the looks of it, sir.”
“Worn down over a few months and then big losses last night, Major. We came out of Neuve Chapelle in the same condition. Be sure that the men have their picks and shovels. There’s likely to be some digging tonight. Must have been some shell fire yesterday.”
A captain of the Norfolks sought out Richard.
“Cowplain, sir. Acting in command. Lost the colonel and the major last night. Colonel’s dugout is in the second line of trenches, sir. I can take you to it.”
There was a pair of hurricane lamps, sufficient to work over the documentation needed.
“The salient we occupy is just a half-circle, sir, sticking out a bit towards the German lines. There was an old road just here, sunken down a bit, made a natural line to hold when the movement came to an end. Useful in its way, sir, for keeping an eye out on what’s going on in Hunland. They don’t like it much. Third time they’ve tried to straighten us out. We have a battery of sixty pounders registered to our front and have a telephone line to them. As well as that, Corps keeps eighteen pounders on our call. We have put in for extra Vickers Guns, but haven’t got them.”
“Lewises?”
“Two per company, sir. Saving our neck, too.”
“Have you been raiding?”
“Not from the salient, sir. Too well watched at night.”
“We might change that. Thank you, Captain.”
The dugouts were deep and wet and the trench itself had a foot of mud to its bottom.
Richard surveyed the construction in the first light, deciding what must be improved.
It was a simple U, twelve feet deep and fifteen broad with a firing step some four feet below the forward edge with stairs leading up at intervals. The bottom was boarded, the timbers raised on three foot pilings to be out of the worst of the mud. There was a deeper hole, a sump, carved out at their mid-point with a small petrol pump and hoses; in theory, rainwater collected and was pumped away to reduce flooding in bad weather. The pump was small and the sump not especially large.
“Captain Hawkeswill! First job. Another pump, two or three if possible, hand or petrol, and when you’ve got it, or them, dig extra sumps. Try to dry this bloody mess. What do the dugouts look like?”
“Holes, sir.”
Richard shoved his head inside the nearest, saw duckboards to the floor and beams and boards to the ceiling but bare earth walls.
“We want more timbers to line those walls. Make them drier. Fewer bad chests, with luck. Beg, borrow or steal extra firewood and coal. We want tea buckets permanently on the go. Where are the latrines?”
“A quarter of a mile back, sir. Inconvenient if we get dysentery here.”
Richard shrugged. Any such cases must go back to Doctor Pearce at the Aid Post.
The machine guns were mounted and there was a sufficient apron of barbed wire – one shortage that had been remedied over the summer.
“Sergeant Major O’Grady!”
“Sir!”
O’Grady was well within hearing range of his colonel.
“I have heard tell of a Mills Bomb?”
“In issue these couple of months, sir. Not general issue yet. I shall see what might be possible.”
“Excellent! We could really use an extra Lewis or two, you know.”
“We happen to have some, sir. The Norfolks left some behind, having too many now that they were so short of men.”
Richard kept a straight face. He had brought two cartons of a dozen bottles of Scotch with him, had left them in O’Grady’s care against need. It seemed likely they had been put to use. The Norfolks could realistically write off the bulk of their equipment as lost in their little battle; there would probably be other items tucked away out of his sight, to remain unknown to him.
“How do we stand for shell damage to the trench, ‘Major?”
“Almost none, sir. No attempt was made to destroy the trench. Looks like the aim was to take it, to give the Hun a salient instead.”
“Logical. Convenient, too. Set some men to drawing a plan of the area to our front, ‘Major. Preparation for raiding, aiming to start the night after next.”
“That can be done, sir. We shall be needing the tools for raiding, sir…”
“Get them.”
That would probably take the remainder of his whisky.
The remainder of the day was spent in painstaking instruction of the officers. All of them knew the theory of trench warfare; the actuality was disconcerting.
“Heads down. Watch your fronts from behind cover, peering out sideways. Do not expose yourselves – there will be snipers. Have you identified your best shots? Set your people out under cover. Watch for activity and kill it!”
The same words, time after time, the junior officers finding their excitement waning in the face of reality. They took their first casualty that afternoon.
There was a yell of ‘stretcher-bearers’ and a scurry of activity along the duckboards. Richard was close to the scene, stood back, out of the way as four men came running carrying a fifth prone on the rough litter.
“Who?”
“Prendergast, sir. Who else would it be?”
Major Vokes gave the disgusted answer.
“How?”
“He saw the wire to his front was drooping flat to the ground, blown off its posts by a small shell, by the looks of it. He stood up to put it back in place, sir. Lasted ten seconds before he took a bullet.”
“Bloody idiot! What state is he in?”
“Smack in the belly, sir. Depends on what is ripped up. If it’s just a bit of intestine punctured, he might well be back here in three months. Should it be liver or kidneys or whatever, he probably won’t live. Question of luck when you get one in the guts, sir. In India we used to call them a passport Home.”
“Born stupid and never learned any better, that lad. Talking of which, where is Wincanton?”