Even so, he would write, he was already exhausted by the time they had got the field hospitals and their ancillary stations emptied out and torn down and stowed away in motor-wagons and horse-drawn carts. At that, the equipment he and his medical staff had to handle was a good deal easier than the heavy weaponry, ammunition and other gear that the regulars had to manage. ‘I never saw a bunch of men look less fit than a random selection of British privates,’ he told me. ‘But give them a task of any dimension and they get it done, grumbling as they go – smoking, swearing, complaining, every one a miniature Hercules.’
In fact, at the time, he found the demands of the physical work a relief. Better to be engaged in the outside world than in the contents of one’s own head.
There was a brief respite for lunch at midday, of cold meat and bread supplied by the field kitchens. And then, in early afternoon, the column formed up to make its way north-west, and through the devastated area of the Cordon. Frank imagined the scene as viewed from above, like Fairfield’s photograph mosaic – perhaps as seen from one of the Martian cylinders that was falling to the earth even at that moment – the great circular scar in the landscape, and all around men and their machines and horses, creeping towards the barrier of smashed earth from both sides, and crawling gingerly through it. Fairfield and other officers walked or rode alongside the marchers and the vehicles, and scouts zipped up and down the line on motorcycles, fairly bouncing over the broken ground.
As Frank understood it, they passed through the Cordon at a point where two of the Martians’ craters, side by side, abutted each other. Here was to be found a ridge of relatively undisturbed ground – relatively, but Frank soon learned it was littered with smashed buildings and tumbled trees, or simply churned up to expose the chalky bedrock of the country, rock the colour of bone. In the worst of it the sappers had laid tracks of canvas and planking, but that was meant more for the benefit of the vehicles than the walkers, and Frank and his team, each laden with a pack, had to plod carefully. Smoke drifted everywhere.
And, every so often, they came upon horror. At the centre of each of the Martians’ craters, any building, any human being – any living thing – had been smashed to atoms, leaving no residue. But at the periphery of the craters it was different, the damage partial. They came to houses like shells, with one wall left standing and the interior floors, unsupported, hanging limp; broken water pipes leaked slow floods into the heart of the ruins. And here the destruction of the bodies had not been total. Frank imagined he could smell putrefaction in the air, the stink of rot under the lingering smoke. In one place he saw a splash of blood, a slumped form, where a child had been hurled against a wall, perhaps by the air shock, and, it seemed, had simply burst open, like a balloon full of water.
‘Eyes forward,’ Fairfield said sternly, as they passed such scenes. ‘The scouts and the sappers have been through this place. Nobody left alive, or they’d have brought them out. Eyes forward now, concentrate on your own destiny, not theirs, for there’s nothing we can do here…’
They had bypassed Uxbridge, or the site of it, when, close to a sign for a place called Denham, they came to a flood. The Grand Union Canal, badly disrupted by the Martian assault, was drowning the countryside.
The sappers had put together a pontoon bridge over which the vehicles were driven or dragged. The foot-sloggers had to walk through thickening mud, though. Frank soon found it wasn’t the wetness that troubled him but the way the mud sank under every step and clung as he tried to lift out his feet, draining what little energy he had left. Around him, all the mudspattered individuals started to look alike, officers and men, volunteers and regular, women and men. Just lumps of clay and mud, struggling on.
Frank and his group of medics came to a group of soldiers, as mud-covered and unrecognisable as the rest. They were working on an overturned cart; a bored-looking horse stood idly by. One of them called for help, and Frank was surprised to recognise a German accent. ‘Can you help us?…’
As a nod from Fairfield, Frank went over with a couple of his junior doctors, and a handful of VADs. They all took a break for a smoke and a sip of water from their flasks, and, standing in the mud, inspected the damage. The cart was undamaged but it had tipped over in a hole hidden by the brown flood, and it had dumped its cargo, a large and impressive-looking machine gun, into the water.
‘Even when we get it out,’ said the German who had called, ‘it will take us an age to clean it – but we must get it done, for we have an appointment with the Martians.’ He stuck out his hand to Frank. ‘My name is Schwesig. Heiko Schwesig. My rank is Feldwebelleutnant; I am in charge of this weapon and this team – we are on detachment from the imperial army, as is this fine G8…’
Schwesig’s unit had been assigned to guard duty at the German consulate in London – in those times it was necessary for an embassy from that power to a friendly city like London to be heavily armed. When the Martian threat had been announced, as a gesture of friendship between two allies, this unit and others had volunteered to bring their weapon to the fight. ‘The Martians are not waging war on Britain after all,’ said Schwesig in his precisely accented English, ‘but on all mankind. Of course we must be here.’
Verity, with a dubious eye, was sizing up the challenge of the stranded gun. ‘Never mind cleaning it, it’s going to take an effort just to haul the thing out of the mud.’
Frank flexed muddy fingers and laughed. ‘A bit of exercise – just what we need today.’
‘Need a hand?’ This was a brisk female voice.
Frank turned to find himself facing a sturdy woman of perhaps fifty, evidently muscular, her face broad and weathered, her legs in what looked like fisherman’s waders, leather coat buttoned around her barrel of a body, greying black hair tied back in a scarf. Behind her, its engine turning over – unnoticed in the general din of the day – stood a hefty-looking tractor.
Schwesig grinned. ‘Madam, you are the least muddy person I have met all afternoon.’
‘I should hope so too, or my husband will never forgive my loan of his leggings. But he’s had no time for his precious fishing that since he was called up by the reserve, and left me to run the farm for him.’ She pointed with a thumb. ‘Said farm being a few miles back that way, near a place called Abbotsdale if you know it. And this sort of pickle is the precise reason I thought I should bring Bessie out to meet you fellows.’
‘And glad we are of it too,’ Schwesig said, and he shook the farmer’s hand. She introduced herself as Mildred Tritton.
With Mildred’s expert handling, it was the work of a moment for ‘Bessie’, the tractor, to free the gun from the mud, get it loaded in its horse-cart, and on the move again. Then Fairfield briskly commandeered the tractor and its willing driver for more pressing assignments.
Verity watched her go with a sigh. ‘And there was me hoping for a lift. Never mind. On we go, Captain Frank…’
It wasn’t far to their final position, as checked by Fairfield on the mud-spattered, hand-marked map he carried. The medics weren’t the first to arrive, in this farmer’s field; already troops were digging in, setting up trenches and latrine ditches, and building parapets of hastily-filled sand bags facing back the way they had come. They had come far enough behind the cordon for them to find themselves in what felt like unsullied British countryside, a place of green hills and hollows and hamlets. A heron skated low over open water nearby. Dairy cattle were being shooed from a field to make way for the soldiers; they lowed in apparent irritation. It was still early in the day, comparatively, only mid-afternoon – they had come only a few miles from their old position.