By day, Burton Dump slept, as did the blokes stationed there. Such men as were at large in Burton during the daytime were under orders to look out for Boche balloons or aeroplanes, and Jerry had put some 5.9s down in the vicinity, one of which, a dud, was propped outside the canteen as a souvenir and a warning. The men also kept an eye out for rats – of which there’d been plenty from the word go – and shot them when they could.
A red dusk was falling over the tracks and buildings of the Dump just then – a blackness floating within it. From our forward lines, four miles to the east, came the sound of the usual screaming match, but I had learnt to ignore it by now.
I heard bootsteps, and Tate came around the side of the engine.
‘Where are the others, Stringer?’
‘Should be here directly,’ I said. ‘They knew the time for the off.’
As I spoke, I saw Tinsley stepping out of the engine men’s mess, and fixing on his tin hat. He began walking towards us, grinning fit to bust, yet trying to look serious as he repeatedly saluted Tate, who was crouching down at the engine’s wheels and muttering to himself something like, ‘Trouble with these brutes is… always having to nip the bearings up.’ Standing up and turning about, he at last saw one of Tinsley’s salutes, which he ignored.
‘You two ever pair up back in York?’ he enquired, looking from Tinsley to me.
He seemed to have forgotten for the moment that I was a railway policeman, and Tinsley only an engine cleaner, but no matter. He had seen us driving and firing on Spurn, and that was enough for him. He seemed to have taken a fancy to our little lot, in spite of whatever might have happened to young Harvey on Spurn. I supposed it was the York connection that made him stick with us; and that he’d put the boy’s death down to suicide. Anyhow, he was, generally speaking, not much interested in anything that was not mechanical.
The three of us climbed up onto the footplate. It was a tight squeeze, not least because Tinsley and I were being required to operate the engine while wearing tin hats and respirators with rifles to be kept within arm’s length at all times. Tinsley opened the fire door.
‘Needs a bit on,’ he said with satisfaction. Practically shoving me out of the way, he turned to the coal bunker, where he picked up the little shovel, which was just two feet long, and used it to put three lumps of coal – one at a time so as to savour the job – into the whirling flames. He might as well have pitched them in with his hand, but that wouldn’t have been fireman-like. Everything about the controls was the same as for a normal engine, only about half size, so I felt like a giant up there as I performed my checks.
‘Sorry to hear about old Squint,’ said Tate, who was studying the catch on the footplate locker. I had examined the engine myself but not yet looked in there.
‘Squint, sir?’ I said.
‘Captain Quinn,’ he said.
In the small hours of July 2nd, when we’d been about six feet away from our home trench, shrapnel had broken Quinn’s left arm. It had been a bad break, but he would be rejoining the battalion – presently quartered at a spot called Bouzincourt – before long, and then coming on to Burton Dump as liaison officer between the Royal Engineers and the other units that would be required to work the small-gauge railway. We discussed these matters for a while; then I respectfully asked Tate why he called Quinn ‘Squint’, since he didn’t appear to have any trouble with his eyes.
‘He doesn’t have a squint,’ said Tate, who was now reaching inside the locker. ‘Of course he doesn’t, but one of his middle names is Stephen, so it’s S. Quinn… Squint, you see.’
It struck me that we were not the beneficiaries of the York connection so much as the St Peter’s School connection – the old school tie. I thought back to my own school at Baytown. Not one of the people I’d been there with had come up again in my life. Tate had shut the locker door and was turning around. He held a crumpled canvas bag, and he took out of it a grenade – a Mills bomb. As he held it up, Tinsley, at the fire door, took a single step back. I managed to hold my ground, but only just.
‘Before we set off,’ Tate said, ‘a little word about the procedure should the Hun try to capture the engine. You put this,’ he said, indicating the hand grenade, ‘into there.’ And he indicated the firebox. ‘Then get right out of it.’
Well, the Germans did have their own lines of the same gauge, so they would have a use for our loco. But Tinsley, I could see, was appalled at this waste of a good engine.
‘Now where’s our guard?’ said Tate.
I indicated Oliver Butler, who’d crept up from nowhere, and was standing on the ground by the engine, a martyr to the fading light and falling rain. He saluted Tate, not over-enthusiastically. But it would take more than a scowl from Butler to stop the smiles of Tate. Just as though we were all playing a party game, he asked Butler, ‘And where’s our train then, guard?’
With a sigh, Butler pointed to the one loaded wagon in the Yard.
‘Let’s go and get it, Stringer,’ said Tate, at which Butler began walking over to the wagon.
Since he was a man for correct form, albeit in a joking sort of way, I asked Tate, ‘Permission to perform a shunting manoeuvre, sir.’
Tate waved his left hand. With his right, he was oiling the reversing lever. Tinsley was peering at the fire again.
‘Think we need a couple more rocks on there?’ he asked.
I didn’t like to disappoint, so I gave him the nod.
‘Brake please,’ I said, and Tinsley turned from the fire and unscrewed the handbrake. Instinctively, I put my hand up to the whistle, and froze in mid-motion, grinning at Tate.
‘It’s no easy matter to drive a steam locomotive discreetly, Stringer,’ he said, ‘but this we must try.’
I put the gear into reverse, and eased the regulator open – it was a queer, lateral job. As I pulled on it, I couldn’t resist saying, ‘I’ll just give her a breath of steam’ and we eased away very satisfactorily. All our lives would shortly be endangered – already were, in point of fact – but I had no thought in my mind just then apart from avoiding wheelslip at the ‘right away’. We buffered up to the loaded wagon as Bernie Dawson came strolling across the siding.
‘Ah,’ said Tate. ‘Our loader. I was wondering where he’d got to.’
Porters were ‘loaders’ at the Burton Dump; they ought really to have been ‘unloaders’, since their work would be carrying the shells to the gun placements in the forward areas. Dawson made for the cab, and saluted Tate, who appeared suddenly fascinated by Dawson’s face, which was half in shadow under the tin hat.
‘Fusilier,’ said Tate, ‘I can never make out whether you have a moustache or just haven’t washed properly.’
‘Bit of both, sir,’ said Dawson. ‘If I could lay my hands on a cake of soap, sir, I’d – ’
‘Have a shave?’ Tate cut in. ‘Is that a promise?’
But while he was ‘army’ enough to have mentioned Dawson’s appearance he was not that way strongly enough to keep on about it. He now asked Butler to couple up the wagon, and I could see that our guard didn’t like that one bit. He did take care of his appearance, and coupling up would put dirt on his hands. As Butler laboured to hook us up, Tate gave me a little lecture on the coupling pin, which he was very proud of, and which he’d improvised himself from an ammo box pin, having found the original design unsatisfactory. Butler and Dawson now lifted up the drop-down side of the wagon and locked it into place. It was important that the shells did not roll off. Yes, the fuses had been stowed in separate boxes (the shells had wooden plugs in their tops instead), but any shell suffering an impact might still explode.