“Here, Corporal.”
“Sir. Corporal Miller, sir.”
“Are you used to a Lewis, Miller?”
“Yes, sir. One of the regular gunners, sir, being as I am bigger than most. Can tuck it into me shoulder easy like, sir.”
Miller was massive, a full head taller than Richard and broad with it.
“Good. Use your own discretion for opening fire, Miller.”
The big man nodded, seemed not at all upset at the prospect of having to make his own decisions.
Richard discovered that Draper had simply added the four men to the party, bringing them up to twenty, far too many for a stealthy raid.
“Nominate eight riflemen to hold back, to provide covering fire as we pull out, Draper. Have you a lance-corporal for them?”
He had, was able to name the eight quickly.
“Right, are we ready?”
At fifteen minutes past midnight they crawled over the lip of the trench and through the narrow gaps in their own wire, zigzagging along the marked passages between the twenty or so yards of razor-sharp barbs. They tied white rags to the exits to find them again on the way back.
Thirty yards across the narrow no-man’s-land of their salient brought them to the German wire. They dropped to their bellies and followed two men with cutters, slowly clipping the bottom wires and hooking them up to give a passage eighteen inches high and a little more than two feet wide. It took half an hour to work their way underneath the wire, unseen and unheard, knowing that three other parties were doing the same and that if one was spotted there would be flares up and machine guns raking the wire hopefully, randomly searching for more.
Draper was at Richard’s shoulder, panting increasingly heavily.
“Hush!”
The noise reduced, slowly grew again.
They came to their knees on the German side of the wire, readying themselves, waiting on the clock. The wire cutters remained, enlarging the holes and to act as guides to the retreating raiders.
Twelve fifty precisely.
“Go!”
They lobbed grenades left and right into the trench, waited for them to explode and jumped in, stabbing and battering at dark figures as they ran out of dugouts. Paisley worked his way along the trench, tossing grenades into each opening he passed.
Richard watched the action, jumping forward with his club once as a lost German tried to run past him.
The Lewis Gun rattled off half a pan, spraying down the trench at movement coming towards them.
They had been in for five minutes. He heard more explosions distant a couple of hundred yards where the other raids were active.
“Fall back. Badges!”
They had thought it unlikely they would be able to drag prisoners back under the wire; every man should have been ordered to collect identifying badges and shoulder flashes instead.
They dived under the wire, a half-seen officer numbering them off as they passed.
“Orpington?”
“Sir. Quickly. Explain later.”
Richard crawled, tight on the heels of the man ahead, a matter of seconds to traverse the made tunnel. Once through the wire, they came half upright, scrabbling as fast as they could, waiting for the guns to fire, running at full pelt through their own passages and over the parapet, falling into the arms of the men waiting for them, laughing and cheering now they were back. Sergeant Major O’Grady commenced a roll call; it should have been Draper or his lieutenant.
“Here, ‘Major.”
Paisley’s voice and Orpington’s, eight more in succession, none of the raiders missing.
“Where’s the back-up, ‘Major?”
“Here already, sir. Under Captain Draper’s command, sir.”
Draper stepped forward.
“Thought I’d better secure the rear, sir. Make sure you came to no harm in the withdrawal. Dropped back to command them so they would not get in the way, sir. Held them this side of the German wire.”
“Did you get into the trench?”
“No, sir. Couldn’t as I was with the riflemen, sir. Behind the wire was the best place for them, I thought.”
“Your lieutenant?”
“Second, actually, sir. Only a boy. Kept him with me, in case I needed to send a runner to you. No need for a great mass of officers in the trench, sir.”
It was a thin argument. In front of a court martial it would probably raise a sufficiency of doubt to prevent a conviction, would leave Draper with a stained reputation but not dismissed from the battalion or actually punished. His Company would be treated as pariahs by the rest of the battalion; their whole efficiency would be downgraded.
“Very well, Mr Draper. Your men did well. Stand down now.”
His words were heard and would be repeated exactly as he had said them.
Richard made his way back to the second line and to his own dugout, turned to the field telephone, knowing that Braithwaite would not have turned in.
“Highly successful, sir, at first sight. Waiting for reports from the other three parties. No casualties to mine and I have a collection of badges and one of those light machine guns, brought back by the Sergeant Major and young Orpington between them. A Madsen Gun, so Orpington tells me – I don’t know myself. Much the size of a Lewis.”
The Brigadier knew nothing of the gun, was sure it was a feather in their cap to have captured one for inspection.
“Got a problem, sir, and one I don’t know how to solve.”
He gave Braithwaite a detailed account of Draper’s actions.
“Bastard! Chicken as they come, Baker, and not sufficiently flagrant that you can put him before a court. What you can do is limited… Put him at the front of any action we take to straighten the line – that is being considered, by the way, prior to a big push on the Artois battlefield for the third time this year. That penalises his whole company and doesn’t guarantee that he will be among the casualties. A good chance that he will dive for cover early and be one of those who comes back, in fact.”
“He has asked to return to the Hampshires, to a battalion going out to India. I would be happy to get rid of him. Do I want to send him off to a place of safety? Is that fair?”
“Is it buggery, Baker! Transfer him, by all means, but not to India. Give me a couple of days. Let me talk to Fotherby and Atkinson – they won’t want him to stay and possibly end up making a scandal. Good chance they’ll be able to find some way of stuffing him! I’ll get onto them first thing in the morning. Fotherby will be awake and active by ten o’clock, I’m sure!”
The other three captains arrived with their first reports and with their captures – badges from a regiment of Saxons and a detachment of artillery.
“A small mortar, sir, on wheels, too big to bring across. Stuffed a grenade into the training mechanism in the base, should have left it well broken.”
“Well done, Harris. We could use mortars of our own. Word is that there is one in development – when we’ll see it, who knows? No casualties?”
“Two wounded, cuts and bruises, no more. We killed the sentries and the rest were asleep in their dugouts. They were wearing new uniforms – muddy, obviously, but not faded and old yet. At a guess, they had been in the line less than a week, maybe the same time as us, replaced the previous men at the same time we did, after their battle.”
“Suggests they took high casualties, same as ours did. Worth knowing. Well observed, Harris!”
Harris was one of those affected by hero-worship, blushed scarlet at the compliment from his magnificent colonel.
Captain Thomas reported losing one man dead.
“Unlucky, sir. Jumped into the trench and landed square on the sentry’s bayonet. Stuck himself from front to back and six inches showing out behind him. Young Purkiss, who was willing and never got anything right first time. No second chance, this time round. Bright lad, had a lot of potential, I thought. We brought him back, didn’t want to leave him for the Germans to bury. Besides that, badges of a Saxon regiment – all of them the same in the one section of trench. Put a grenade into a dugout full of ammunition as we left. Lucky we didn’t hit it going in. Killed at least a dozen Huns, might be more.”