Tinsley was shovelling coal again, but as he swung the little shovel towards the firehole, the engine jolted and he did a missed shot.
‘Oh heck,’ he said, and he was down on his knees picking up the lumps and chucking them in by hand.
‘Keen,’ observed Muir, who’d stepped over to my side to get out of Tinsley’s way.
I nodded. ‘He lives to write himself down “passed fireman”.’
‘And what will he do then?’ enquired Muir, who obviously didn’t know much about footplate life.
‘Then he’ll fire engines,’ I said, ‘for a little while…’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Well, twenty years. After that, he’ll drive them.’
Tinsley had just regained his feet when the engine gave another lurch that nearly over-toppled us all, not to mention the engine itself. The twins had walked the track the day before, looking for faults, but both engine and wagons were shaking about like buggery. I moved the reverser back a notch to quieten things down a bit.
‘That good old whirring,’ Tinsley said, nodding to himself, ‘that beat.’
We emerged from the remains of Aveluy Wood and began to climb. The shell noise was fairly continuous now, but nothing had so far come near. The rain had found the right angle for soaking us, and the track was slimy into the bargain. I put down more sand as we came by the crater-pond where Captain Leo Tate had died. The water remained uncollected, looking black and evil; in fact the quantity was growing. The different rumble came as we went over the Ancre on the girder bridge, and Captain Muir leant out, doing his best to see the bridge and the water below. He made another note.
We passed what Tate had called the Old Station; next came Holgate Villa. Men were moving about beyond it. What lot were they?
A new feature came up now: a passing loop. I could just make it out in the dark. In time there’d be a control point there. The twins had been part of the gang that had put that in – made a decent job of it, too, since we didn’t jar on the points. We came into the next lot of trees, and were descending now, so the bloody things seemed to be coming up too fast. I turned and indicated to Oliver Butler that he might screw down his brake a little. Dawson saw my hand signal too, and he would do the same. We were now surrounded by the sound of German shells and our own gun batteries blazing away. There was a point with the noise of battle where you stopped trying to pretend there’d ever been any such thing as silence, and this was it. I wanted a cigarette but didn’t have any left. The second bridge came up, and the gate in the ditch: Naburn Lock. I turned again at this, and eyed Butler. He returned my stare for a short space of time, then swivelled away.
We rocked on, going over new track now. Presently, Tinsley indicated the manned control point coming up. I went over to his side, and saw a white lamp, and the outline of a man holding it. As we approached, the man became a nervous corporal of the Royal Engineers. I went back over to my side, and saw where the branch curved away into a region of shell holes, spike-like trees, ditches and, by the looks of it, exploding shells. But what did the white light mean? It ought to have been green or red. I knocked off the regulator, and we cruised up to the corporal with the lamp. Tinsley gave me a quick nod, since pre-judgement of a stopping point was one of the great skills of engine driving, and I’d hit the spot exactly.
I leant out, and the corporal came up to me, lamp in hand. I bent down, and he craned up; our heads were separated by not more than a yard’s distance, but still I had to roar, ‘What’s that mean?’ while pointing down at the lamp.
‘Oh,’ he said, looking down himself. ‘Filter’s fallen out.’
For an RE man, he was a gormless bugger.
‘What filter?’ I bawled, ‘Green or red?’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘green.’
‘Safe along there, is it?’
He sort of shrugged, saying, ‘Gunners are still at it,’ and that was just the trouble: the Germans evidently had a fix on the gun positions along the branch, but as long as our guns were being fired, shells were needed. By shouting directly into Tinsley’s ear, I got over that he was to jump down and check the setting of the points for the branch, since I did not trust this clot holding the light.
Three minutes later we were rolling along the branch at five miles an hour, with a barrage coming down around us. Three had come down within thirty yards, and I had started to shake. I tried to hide this by moving about, touching the controls of the engine, even if they did not need to be worked. Muir was stock still, gripping the engine brake and not taking notes. Tinsley was talking to himself, and he seemed to be repeating over and over the virtues of his hero, Tom Shaw, although I could only make out snatches, as he moved between the coal bunker and the firehole door: ‘An incandescent fire of medium thickness,’ I heard him say. ‘Dampers shut, firehole door open otherwise blow off.’ Ahead of us, frightened-looking men of the Royal Artillery were coming out of the trees, and some of those trees were on fire. At the sight of the blokes, I pulled up. The gormless corporal had obviously had enough about him to alert them, by field telephone, to our arrival. Oliver Butler was down, and talking to them. It was his job to liaise as regards unloading the shells. Dawson walked up to the foot-plate, and stood on the step.
‘What’s this place?’ he said.
‘It’s a position,’ I said. ‘The first of two.’
‘Are you planning on stopping here for long?’
Another shell came, drowning him out.
The conclusion of Butler’s conference with the gunners was that we would all have to help cart the shells to the gun position off in the trees. That suited me. The faster we could get unloaded the faster we could clear out. We formed a chain with the artillery blokes – about twenty in it, all told, including Muir. I took up my own position some way into the trees, and could see one of the Howitzers we were feeding, and the gang of blokes around it. The gun was like a dangerous animal – a giant dinosaur-bird that couldn’t take wing, but kept trying. Every time it spat out another shell the blokes span away from it with blocked ears, and the wheels of the bloody thing leapt a foot in the air.
The first gun position accounted for nearly half our load of shells. An artillery bloke handed Oliver Butler a chit that I knew to be a proof of receipt. At that moment I heard the whistle of a 5.9. We all crouched low and it came down on the other side of our train, nearer the front than the back. Another came down half a minute later in the same position; then a third. It seemed to me the Germans had us under observation; or anyhow that they’d got a fix on the gun position we’d just delivered to, but were persistently aiming a little long. Then again, if they hit shells on the three wagons that remained loaded we’d all go up, train crew and gun position both.