Last Train to Waverley Read online

  “Clear the road, lads!” The sergeant ushered the men to the mud in the verges. They moved reluctantly and the younger faces watched as the field ambulance hurried past, the red cross bright against the spattered background of mud.

  “Blighty!” one of the veterans yelled. “Blighty!” He turned to the man next to him. “There’s another lucky bastard got a Blighty.”

  His companion grunted. “Lucky bastard,” he echoed, and shifted his grip on his rifle. Neither mentioned the slow drip of blood that fell from the tail of the ambulance.

  “Right, lads,” the sergeant stepped back on the pave. The corporal guide was watching, his eyes unreadable as he lit one cigarette from the glowing tip of the last. He led the way, shoulders hunched and feet sliding rather than marching.

  The column trudged on, slower now as more vehicles approached. An ammunition limber growled past, then a water carrier. They marched through a village where every second house bore signs of shell damage. Many were uninhabited, but others contained civilians who watched the marching soldiers with no interest at all. A mother cradled her infant son as the men passed; a young girl skipped alongside for a few yards and laughed when one of the privates tossed a biscuit to her; she stuffed it in her mouth and ran away. The village slid away as they marched on, the drum beat of their feet monotonous on the cracked pave.

  “How far is the front?” Kerr asked.

  “Not far now; it’s just a few miles.” Ramsay recognised Kerr’s excitement. “You will know when you get there.”

  The sudden roar made the recruits jump and Ramsay was not the only veteran who flinched as the battery of six inch guns fired.

  “Give them hell, boys!” somebody shouted, the words lost in the concussion of the blast.

  “That’s bon,” a smooth-faced veteran said, and looked to the horizon where the shells were travelling.

  “I didn’t even see them there!” Kerr shouted. He held a hand to his ear. “What an infernal noise!”

  The gunners threw aside the empty brass shell case and slammed in another. Stripped to the waist and perspiring, they did not look around as the infantry marched past. Ramsay watched them fire again and then looked away; the first shot had taken him by surprise, the second was a familiar entity in this world. He knew that each successive round would be less important until the shellfire became just part of the psychological landscape, accepted and ignored.

  Ramsay glanced up as a shell ripped overhead. The sky above stretched to infinity, a void of nothingness marred only by the vapour trail of a single patrolling aircraft, thousands of feet up. The aircraft looked so innocent up there, harmless, almost angelic, that Ramsay had to force himself to remember what horrors such a flying machine could unleash. The devil had sent his winged emissaries to soil the purity of heaven.

  At noon they stopped for a break. The men lit pipes or slender Woodbines, chatted in undertones or looked around in dismay at the increasing devastation. Ramsay bit the end off a cheroot, lit carefully and inhaled slowly. He looked forward, hoping the fear did not show in his face. With every step his excitement lessened.

  Oh God, here we go again. Please, God, let this nightmare end soon.

  They moved off again, trudging now as weariness settled on them. There were more gun batteries, more ambulances, and the occasional dispatch rider on a snarling motor bike. There were perspiring store men and a red-tabbed staff officer in a motor car, heading away from the front. They passed a cemetery where new planted crosses seemed to blossom like some obscene crop. One young soldier tried to count them but gave up after a few moments.

  “Don’t look, son. Leave the dead in peace.” The sergeant sounded almost gentle. “You concentrate on staying alive.” He was only a year or two older than the recruit, but his eyes were timeless with fatigue and responsibility. The corporal guide watched and said nothing. He murmured something to the sergeant, glanced at Ramsay and altered their direction; they headed east, away from the dying sun.

  The column moved on, relentless, the sound of their boots on the pave like the rhythmic clatter of some subterranean caterpillar, hollow and sharp, mocking the men who were so blithely marching to meet death. Ramsay counted his steps, each one was a millisecond of this life easing away, each one brought him closer to that other existence. Each one took him further from Gillian.

  There was another battery of guns, eighteen pounders this time, firing slowly at the unseen enemy, the gunners moving like machines and the pile of empty brass shell cases head high at their side. Only the recruits turned their heads to watch; the veterans had returned to their front line selves, they had seen artillery before. There was a sound like an express train overhead and a sudden eruption in the flat fields, a hundred yards away to their right. The recruits ducked, some held on to their steel helmets, others stared open-mouthed at this ugly growth that subsided in a roar of falling mud and stones.

  “What was that?” Kerr’s nose wrinkled at the reek of lyddite. He peered through the brown haze of dirt.

  “That was the bloody receipt, sir,” one of the veterans explained, to be quickly hushed into silence by the sergeant.

  “That’s Fritz replying,” Ramsay explained. He raised his voice. “Split the men up, Sergeant. Spread out the column.”

  The sergeant nodded, wordless, and gave quick orders. The column spread out, men looking uneasy as they were deprived of the comfort of close companions who had been strangers only a few hours previously. The sky was darkening overhead, with the flare of shellfire bright on the southern horizon.

  “Why did you split the men up?” Kerr asked. “They don’t like it at all.”

  “Minimise casualties,” Ramsay said shortly. “If a shell lands in mud it will plunge underground before it explodes. The mud dissipates most of the force. If it lands on this pave,” he tapped his boot on the road, “it will explode on contact and spread shrapnel and shell casings and bits of stone for scores of yards. One Jack Johnson could wipe out the entire column.”

  Kerr nodded. He looked around at the Royal Scots who now marched in a long, extended line.

  “You take the rearguard, Kerr,” Ramsay ordered. “Try and bring them in safe.”

  There were more ruins now, the shattered shells of houses, some sheltering small groups of soldiers on mysterious errands of their own. Behind one wall lay the bloated corpse of a horse, its flesh furred with flies. Behind another wall lay three soldiers sleeping in a heap, their uniforms so muddy and torn it was impossible to identify to which unit they belonged. An occasional gust of wind carried a smell of human waste, putrefying flesh and lyddite; the stink of the Front.

  Ramsay halted the column in a muddy field. “The boys are marching by their chin straps now, Sergeant.” He raised his voice. “Bed down for the night, men,” he said, and watched the veterans show the recruits how to use straw and grass as a makeshift mattress. He lit another cheroot and looked up at the uncaring gaze of a million stars, already accepting the constant grumble of the guns as part of life. He leaned against a tumbledown wall at the edge of the field and drew on his cheroot until the tip glowed red.

  Kerr joined him, shivering at the bite of the March night. “How far is the front?” Kerr asked again.

  “Not far,” Ramsay said. “This is the support area. We will be in the front line tomorrow.” The words had the ring of doom about them. “But before you think of what tomorrow will bring, do your rounds – check your men. As an officer, the men are your first priority.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kerr threw a smart salute.

  “And please don’t salute when we are near the front.” Ramsay knew his nerves were showing. “It lets the Hun snipers know who the officers are.”

  With the eastern horizon intermittently scarred by the brilliant flashes of gunfire, and an occasional distant star shell illuminating the sky, Ramsay found no sleep that night. He lay hard against the rough stone wall and fought the fear that mounted within him. I cannot go back again, he thought. I cannot go back again.
But he knew he must. There was no choice. The alternative was disgrace, ruin and the loss of Gillian. He reached into his inside pocket, pulled out the silver hip flask and unscrewed the cap. The aroma of whisky was sharp in his nose. He tipped the flask into his mouth and swallowed. If I drink enough it will all go away for a while. Each time though, it got worse.

  He listened to the sweet call of the larks and envied them their freedom.

  Ramsay felt the flask tremble as he held it. The mouthpiece rattled against his teeth as he tipped it further back. Please God, if I am to be killed make it quick.

  They marched on next morning, with Ramsay’s head throbbing in time with the pounding of iron-studded boots on the cracked pave. Sleep had refreshed the men and they marched faster now, the veterans keeping their heads down and the recruits looking around them, exclaiming at the shambles and flinching at even the most distant shell burst.

  “Is this the front?” Kerr asked.

  Ramsay grunted. “Not yet.” He kept silent for a few more minutes before he relented. “This is the area the Germans vacated when they retreated to the Hindenburg Line.” He waved his hand around. “Behold the civilisation of the Hun.” He stepped aside and looked around.

  There was mile after mile of devastation. All the houses had been pulled down, all the wells filled in or polluted; even the trees were stripped – the branches were bare, naked fingers entreating pity from an uncaring sky.

  “They make a desert and call it peace,” Ramsay flicked ash onto the ground, “to misquote Tacitus.”

  “It’s frightful,” Kerr said. He ducked as a 5.9 inch exploded a hundred yards away. “We must win this war.”

  Two of the passing veterans threw him looks that combined disgust with pity. Ramsay noticed but did not comment. He could appreciate their point of view.

  “Oh, yes. You keep that thought in your head, Kerr, when the whizz bangs are falling.”

  He looked upwards, to where two aircraft were pirouetting together, their vapour trails creating white patterns on the grey sky. It could have been pretty except for the distant chatter of machine guns. Somewhere the lark was still calling, the sound melancholic against the unheeded grumble of the guns. There are always bloody larks. I hate those birds.

  Ramsay pulled hard on his cheroot. It was the smell that he objected to most. It seemed to seep into every pore of him; it stuck to his clothes and refused to leave. It was not a single smell, but a compilation of a hundred; from the sickening stench of decaying meat created by the dead and buried bodies that lay in No Man’s Land, to the stink from the latrines, socks: weeks unwashed and men’s lice-infested bodies, and the vicious stink of lyddite and phosgene gas. The stench remained with him long after the sights and sounds had vanished.

  They reached the first trenches at seven in the morning, passing a battery of artillery whose gunners glistened with sweat as they fired a continuous stream of shells toward the German lines.

  “The morning hate,” Ramsay explained as Kerr flinched. “You’ll get used to it.”

  There was another small cemetery here; the crosses plain, with the name, number and regiment of each soldier the only sign that the grave beneath held a man who had lived, breathed and loved, who had planned for his future, who had a mother and perhaps a sweetheart or a wife. Now they were empty carcasses mouldering in France with the vitality and personality that had made them unique gone and already fading from memory.

  Not all the dead were buried yet. There was one body lying outside the wall, covered in a single blanket. As they passed a twist of the wind flicked open the cover and the corpse glared out. He had not died easy; shrapnel had sliced him open, his intestines had escaped and he had tried to replace them with clawed hands. Fear and agony furrowed his face.

  Ramsay watched as Kerr gagged, recovered and moved bravely on, muttering, “Frightful.”

  “You’ll get used to that as well,” Ramsay said quietly.

  “Here’s the Communication Trench, sir,” the guide said, and slipped into an entrance of muddy sandbags. “We call it Leith Walk.” He thrust a Woodbine between his lips and slouched on, his feet straddling the sludge of mud in the centre of the trench.

  “Just keep behind me, sir,” the guide sounded bored, “and duck when I do.” He led them along the trench and through a maze of shoulder-high ditches, some with deeper trenches that led to the front. On either side the slimy mud was riveted by planking, with a wall of sandbags on top. Occasionally there were pools of water to negotiate, some crossed by duckboards, others without. There were dugouts from time to time, some containing groups of weary men, others piled with equipment or stores, with a bored sentry to prevent pilfering. The gunfire seemed muted down here.

  “Watch yourself here, sir.” The guide ducked his head. “A shell knocked the sandbags to glory.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the German lines. “It’s not bon because Fritz occasionally sprays the gap with a machine gun.”

  Ramsay nodded and passed the information back. He remained at the gap in the sandbags, waving his men through one by one until the sergeant at the rear nodded to him. “That’s them all, sir.”

  “Make sure there are no stragglers,” Ramsay ordered, and pushed through to the head of his men.

  A shell burst overhead, scattering shrapnel over a wide area. The veterans ducked into what cover there was, pulling the recruits behind them. “Come on, you!”

  Nobody was injured, but the recruits grasped their shrapnel helmets closer and looked around, fear and anger replacing excitement. Somebody whimpered. Someone else shook a fist in the direction of the German lines and shouted a challenge. Something metallic thudded into the sandbag, a foot from Ramsay’s head. He looked at it without interest. He did not care about near misses, they did not matter.

  Kerr had crouched down in the bottom of the trench. “Will our guns fire back?”

  “That was one of ours, sir,” the guide said. His voice was flat.

  “Keep going, boys,” Ramsay ordered. “But keep your wits about you.”

  Twice the guide stopped them to warn of areas where snipers were active. The replacements ran past at irregular intervals, ducking low beneath the sandbag parapet. The gash in the back wall of the trench with the dribble of sand onto the ground beneath told its own story.

  “No casualties?” The guide glanced over the replacements. “Bon. Now keep your heids down, eh?”

  As they neared the front line the guide moved more slowly, checking every traverse of the trench until he arrived at the entrance to a dugout. The gas curtain was pulled back, revealing a long flight of steps descending into the dark.

  “Here we go, sir. Major Campbell will look after you now. You too, Mr Kerr.”

  Without bothering to salute, the guide ducked away leaving Ramsay and Kerr to negotiate the steps. Ramsay sniffed the familiar aroma of candle smoke, sweat and whisky, tinged with the cheerful scent of fried bacon. He pushed through a second gas curtain and stepped into the interior of the dugout. There was a single deal table, much stained, with three hard-backed chairs arranged around it and a larger, occupied armchair in the corner. A single candle burned low from its perch in the neck of an empty wine bottle.

  “Ah! Douglas Ramsay I presume!” The major was short, stout and red-faced. He lifted himself from his lopsided armchair and advanced with his hand outstretched. “Welcome to the 20th Royals!”

  “Thank you, sir,” Ramsay saluted, and accepted the proffered hand.

  Campbell looked at his two pips, then at the wound stripes on his sleeve. His eyes narrowed slightly, but he said nothing. He glanced at Kerr; “And you must be Simon Kerr?”

  “Yes, sir.” Kerr stiffened to as near attention as the low ceiling of the dugout permitted. He threw a salute that would have made any guardsman proud.

  “There is no need for you to stay, Kerr,” Campbell said. “The sooner you get used to things the better, so just jog along after the guide, eh? There’s a good chap.”

  Kerr flushed
a little, but recognised the dismissal and withdrew toward the door.

  “Oh, and Kerr,” Campbell called him back. “Lose the Sam Browne would you? There’s no sense in advertising to the Huns that you’re an officer.”

  Kerr blinked, glanced at Campbell’s shoulder, bereft of any Sam Browne. “Yes, sir.”

  Campbell waited until he was gone. “There is no need to scare the lad yet, but your timing is excellent, Ramsay. We’re expecting Fritz to try a push soon and we need all the experienced men we can get.”

  Campbell’s eyes were weary, half-hidden beneath a spider’s web of wrinkles.

  “Yes, sir,” Ramsay said. “I heard the rumours before I came.”

  Campbell’s smile dropped. “This war is full of rumours, Ramsay, but this one may be true.” He shrugged. “I wish the defence line was completed, but if wishes were horses we’d all win the Derby, eh?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ramsay took the chair that Campbell offered.

  “Since we took over this section from the French we have done a lot of work to it, but it is far from completed yet.” Campbell shrugged again. “We will just have to manage as best we can.”

  Ramsay realised he was supposed to comment. “Yes, sir. I am sure we will.”

  “Have you brought your servant with you?” Campbell looked at the dugout entrance as though expecting a private to emerge from the dark. “Obviously not. We can get that arranged tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir.” Only if Fritz allows us the time.

  Campbell grunted, leaned across to the table and opened a drawer. He produced a half-empty bottle of Glenlivet and two glasses. “This is just to take the trench taste away.” He sloshed whisky into both and slid a glass over to Ramsay.

  “Your health,” he said quietly. “Try and avoid bullets this time, Ramsay, and may God be with us both.”

  The whisky burned its way down Ramsay’s throat and exploded in his stomach. He gasped and took a second swallow.

  Campbell finished his glass in a single gulp, poured himself another and drank that too, before replacing the bottle in the drawer. “Now that you’ve been christened, Ramsay, have you any questions?”