Again, they nodded.
“How many are marksmen? What of other skills?”
They promised to find out.
They parted to dress for dinner, entered the mess anteroom together.
All of the depot officers were present, had clearly been instructed to turn up a few minutes earlier than normal. The adjutant of 2nd Battalion called them to attention and led them in the salute.
Richard was taken by surprise, as was the intention, responded awkwardly. There was a general laugh and the colonel commanding the depot presented him with a double Scotch.
“Welcome, Captain Baker!”
Richard smiled and raised his glass to the throng, which was, luckily, the appropriate response.
There was no further reference to the decoration - the Regiment had made its respect clear.
Richard followed his orders in the morning, driven down by staff car and arriving at the Palace a little before the stated time and being taken to the waiting room and joining the fifty or so there for the investiture. To his horror, he was the sole VC of the day and was therefore put firmly at the front of the assembled party, awards being granted in their own precedence, not in order of the recipients’ rank. There were three generals to receive the DSO, all in line behind him and making a show of pleasure at his prominence.
“As it should be, boy! Well-earned from all I hear. You honour the whole Army.”
It was a ridiculous burden they had placed upon him. All he had wanted was to force his father to keep him in idle comfort for all his days and now he had to live up to the medal they had given him. Richard went to meet his King with a scowl on his face – interpreted by all present as a plain man’s discomfiture at being forced into the limelight.
He stood with his family for seconds afterwards before a sleek staff officer ‘borrowed him for a few minutes’ and placed him before a bevy of photographers and then allowed reporters to ask him questions, all of them obvious and easily answered. It was over inside half an hour and he was returned to the bosom of his kin.
His normally bumptious father was almost overawed by the occasion.
“They made us stand in a group together and took a picture of us, boy! ‘The proud family’, that’s what it will be in tomorrow’s papers! I’ll put an order into the newsagent when we get back to Kettering! All of them, and the Sundays, too. Are you still for France on Friday?”
“Those are the orders, sir. I won’t be able to get back to Kettering before then, so I must make my farewells here and now, sir.”
“So you must. You’ve done better nor I ever hoped of you, Richard. Showed me I were wrong in writing you off. Don’t go killing yourself trying to do more! Had some sort of general stop and say a few words while you was stood in front of the cameras. Sensible old bloke, he was, said you must not let them stick your head on the chopping block, doing the impossible because you’ve got the ribbon up. He’s right. Do your best but come back home again.”
His sisters kissed him goodbye, tearfully; his mother was too busy fumbling with a hatpin to do anything more and was rather surprised when she was ushered into a cab to return to St Pancras station.
“Oh! Has he gone? Is it all over? You must tell me all about it, girls!”
Richard was put back into the staff car and returned to Bedford, ‘for his own good, he should not be let out in London on his own for a day or two’. His face was in all the newspapers and he would be made enthusiastically welcome wherever he went. Wiser not to be visible.
The draft set out on Friday, covering the distance to the station at the formal march pace and ignoring the cheers from the shoppers they passed in the streets. Their train was on time, mostly because it originated in Bedford and had had no opportunity to be delayed. There were two buses waiting for them and they crossed London quickly and were pushed aboard the first available troop train and decanted at Dover Harbour and pointed up the brow of one of several ferries and troopers waiting there.
It was all very quick and efficient.
“What does this say to you, Willoughby?”
“Jolly good organisation, sir?”
Richard grinned and shook his head, playing the part of the older, wiser man.
“To an extent. More likely they are in a panic to get more men up to the sharp end. The chances are that we shall be marching to the fighting before nightfall.”
Calais bore out Richard’s prediction. No sooner were the three officers from first class reunited with the draft than a redcap came running up, saluting as he took in Richard’s chest.
“Sir! What unit, sir?”
“D Company 3rd Beds, draft from the depot.”
The redcap glanced at his movement sheet on the clipboard he carried.
“Very good, sir. Transport is waiting, sir. The battalion marched day before yesterday and you are to catch up with them. This way, sir.”
Four hours later they were pushed out of their steam lorries at a chaotic camp southwest of Ypres.
“3rd Beds? Follow the guide, sir. About five miles.”
They marched down muddy lanes, breaking up under the passage of heavy guns and ration wagons, conscious of a growing noise to the north and east, a rumble of gunfire over the unceasing rattle of small arms. At intervals the draft was forced onto the crumbling verge by horse-drawn ambulances crawling in the opposite direction. Once they stopped for a party of walking wounded, covered in mud, the only clean part of them the fresh, brightly stained bandages.
Two hours and they came to a stretch of woodland and the headquarters company, a party of a bare two dozen and four officers, including Colonel Braithwaite.
“Welcome back, Baker! You have made good time. The remainder of the company is holding the trenches we have scraped out along the hill. You should join them as soon as possible. Push your front out a hundred yards to your left. E Company has an over-sized stretch to cover at the moment. You are to hold, come what may. Off you go.”
From the edge of the copse it was possible to get a feeling for the ground they were occupying. There was a low hill to the front, little more than an easy slope of a hundred feet, less perhaps, and running more or less north-south. He could see a shallow trench following the crest, men just visible, brown against the mud. To the immediate front was a field battery, small guns, howitzers of some sort, Richard did not know what they were; they were firing rapidly, throwing shells over the hill as fast as they could load them.
“Up the hill, gentlemen! Sergeant Painter, to the left and find E Company and then take the trench from their right. Go.”
The trench, so-called, was at most four feet deep, the earth still fresh and raw; it had been dug in a hurry overnight, was no more than a long hole in the ground.
“Presteigne, make contact with E Company on the left, tell them we have eighty men and work out how much of the trench is ours and then set men out in two platoons under their corporals. I shall organise them further when we have time. Willoughby, go right, find who our neighbours are and establish where our line ends. I shall find Sergeant Grace, who is our senior. At some point you will find Corporals Ekins and Abbott taking men for their platoons and extending their section of the trench. And keep your heads down!”
The pair scuttled off and Richard ran forward and proceeded to disobey his own order by jumping into the trench and then looking out over the crest.
There was a valley about a furlong wide with a shallow stream down its centre and a slightly higher hill on the other side. The bottomland was full of German infantry, trying to push forward. A guess said a full brigade attempting to march through the mud and across the watercourse. They seemed to be concentrating towards Richard’s position, where there had been fewer riflemen opposing them.