One Good Turn Read online

  'As I'll ever be,' the prisoner said. He went to make sure his team of horses were ready, and that the ammunition wagon was tightly packed so the shells couldn't slip around.

  He was riding his lead horse through bullets and shells and pieces of flying metal and pushing it as fast as he dared. The enemy guns knew exactly where they were, had their range and were waiting for them. As soon as they got onto the narrow road, the bombardment shattered the sky. Lumps of metal hissed past his head. High explosives churned up the marshy earth on either side of the road. The mud that showered them was mixed with fragments of corpses that lay there.

  There was a scream from behind! He stopped. One of the horses in the team behind had lost half a leg. The beast was plunging and rearing, screaming with pain, and would soon drag the rest of the team and the ammunition wagon off the road and into the mud.

  'Ride on,' Sergeant Mitchell shouted. 'Get out of here! Get this ammo forward and maybe our guns firing can keep them quiet for a while. It's our only chance!'

  The boy got his team going again. Once they were moving, the horses were easier to control, if you could stop them bolting. He kept his eyes ahead, trying not to take in the scene beside the road: dead horses, dead men, bits of men. Ahead of him and to the sides, he could see the low hills where the Germans waited. The battery he was trying to reach was a quarter of a mile further on, where there was a drier patch of ground.

  When he reached the field guns, they were silent. Two had been knocked out, and one was surrounded by shattered bodies. The only one with a fit crew had sunk so deep into the mud that its barrel was pointing at the sky.

  He saw what he had to do.

  He called one of the gunners over. 'Help me unhitch the ammo cart and we can pull your gun out of the mud with the horses!'

  The gunners unhitched the wagon, and he led the frightened beasts across the mud to the gun. Men from the other guns saw what was going on and came to help, as enemy shells howled overhead and exploded in mid-air, showering them with shrapnel. He coaxed the horses forwards and managed to turn them so the traces could be hitched to the back of the gun.

  'Come on, you beauty,' he whispered in the leading horse's ears. 'Get us out of here. Come on. COME ON!'

  He swung himself onto the horse's back, and leaned over its head to urge it on. He saw the great sinews in its shoulder shiver, felt its feet slip, hold, slip, hold.

  'COME ON!'

  The hooves gripped. The wheel of the gun moved an inch, then two. The men put their shoulders against the spokes and pushed with new strength and forced the wheel from the grip of the mud.

  The gun was free! The horses had done it.

  One of the gunners came up to him. His face was grim but determined. 'We'll be able to work the gun now. Thanks. What's your name, mate?'

  'Ransom,' he said. 'Private Chris Ransom.'

  'Well, you deserve a bloody medal. Now get the hell out of here.' A drop of rain fell on his face. 'Great. Rain. That's all we bloody need.'

  Back in his cellar, the prisoner breathed a sigh of relief. He had a name. Surely everything would be all right now.

  Chapter Four

  John Stubbs stood on the firing step of the trench, his gun snugly tucked into his shoulder. Above the trench, a rampart had been built out of sandbags — mudbags to be more accurate — and he was gazing through a tiny gap over no-man's-land. Look through anything bigger and a sniper would put a bullet through your eye. Sometimes the men put an old steel helmet on a stick, held it above the rampart and took bets on how long it would be before it was shot. The shortest time Stubbs had seen was three seconds.

  He saw a movement and fired. The rifle kicked back into his shoulder and immediately his hand moved to the bolt and fed another round into the breech. He fired again. The rat, horribly fat, was knocked backwards from its perch on the back of some poor, sod who had died out there. Stubbs began to look for another one. It was better than doing nothing.

  Rain ran off the brim of his tin helmet in a near solid waterfall. It fell on his front, his shoulders and down his back.

  He was wet through, chilled to the bone and could not get any colder. In fact, he had been wet and cold for almost two months now, and had forgotten what it was like to be dry and warm. The big guns far behind their lines had started up before dawn. Shells moaned or whistled overhead, depending on their size. The ground shook.

  The private next to him seemed to be shouting something. Even though he was only ten feet away, Stubbs couldn't hear a thing through the din. He pointed to his ear and shook his head.

  The private glanced down the line, checking to make sure no one could see him leave his post, which was a court-martial offence, and shouted in Stubbs's ear: 'Attack's coming.'

  Stubbs nodded.

  'We're in the first wave.'

  'Can't be,' Stubbs shouted back. 'We've been up here for eighteen hours. They always bring fresh troops up for an attack.'

  'They've run out,' the private bawled back. 'Didn't you hear? The Aussies got cut up something rotten in some wood or other. It's up to us to win the war, mate.' He spat and moved back to his post.

  Stubbs had been in attacks before but never in the first wave and he had always managed to fall into a handy shell hole and act wounded. But a new, fire-eating captain had arrived who would not allow any of his men to shirk.

  Stubbs hunched down and tried to think of a way out of this mess.

  The Big Push had taken place at the end of July and, like every other big push, had failed. The plan was to advance out of the bulge at Ypres and take the German hills that surrounded it. The Germans would then have to move a few divisions down to the battle. This would take the pressure off the French and even encourage them to mount an attack. There had been rumours that the entire French army was on the point of mutiny.

  In preparation, special miners had dug tunnels under Messines Ridge, filled them with explosives and blown the hill up in the biggest man-made explosion the world had ever seen. Twenty thousand Germans died in that single explosion. Over the following weeks, three thousand guns had fired four and a half million shells to cut the German wire and knock out their machine-gun posts.

  Then the rains had started. And a good summer had turned into the wettest one on record. But the British Army never let details like that stop an advance. The only trouble was, when they tried to attack, they got stuck.

  The ground, which was wet already, turned into something no one had ever seen before: a new substance somewhere between mud and water. If you fell off one of the duckboard roads, you drowned, even though there might be men marching alongside you, just a few feet away. If horses or mules fell into the mud, they had to be shot because they were too heavy to pull out, and there was no way they could ever struggle free.

  To attack across such ground was impossible, but wave after wave of men were sent into battle, only to sink up to their waists in mud and get shot by the enemy. Others tried to take shelter in craters, where they drowned. (Just as a reminder that no one ever learns the lessons of war, a cemetery where Belgian and French soldiers had been buried during the first weeks of the war, was blown up. The bodies were blown high into the air. When they landed, the men marvelled at their uniforms: the elaborate braid on their shoulders, the beautiful, useless helmets, the fine leather of their belts and boots.)

  And on and on it went. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week.

  Stubbs had more or less reached his breaking point. He could stand in a trench up to his thighs in water for hours on end, but could not do anything else. He was certain that, if he was ordered to go over the top, he would refuse. And if someone threatened to shoot him there and then, he would simply stand still and take the bullet.

  His moment of truth had happened the day before, when his brigade had been moved forward after a couple of days behind the lines. They were marching along the duckboards when Stubbs realised that the ground beneath his feet was too soft. He looked down. Where he was marching, th
e duckboards had been blown up and, in their place, someone had lain a row of dead German soldiers, like closely packed railway sleepers. When you walked on them, stuff bubbled up from their mouths — or out of their necks, if they had no head.

  None of the horrors he had seen before had particularly bothered him, but for some reason this did.

  Deep down, he supposed, he must have some respect for his fellow man. Deep down, he must have hoped that when he died, his body would be treated with some respect. Now he saw that he would be treated ... well, as badly as he had treated his fellow man when he was alive.

  The attack could be only minutes away. Already the troops would be gathering in the trenches. Men would be touching lucky mascots, smoking a last cigarette, checking that the standard issue Bible was stuck firmly in a pocket over their hearts.

  The bombardment was getting more intense. Stubbs felt a tap on his shoulder. A sergeant he dimly recognised was standing behind him, leading a group of men with trench ladders. The sergeant gestured for Stubbs to stand to one side, and he spread the fingers of his hand twice. Ten minutes to the attack? Stubbs felt sick. Odd how his mouth could go dry in all that wet.

  He jerked his thumb at the dug-out behind him and mimed smoking a cigarette. The sergeant nodded.

  The dug-out had been abandoned a couple of weeks before, when a German mortar shell had killed all the men in it. It had been the third time that had happened and the men now thought it unlucky. Now, all that was left of it was a sheet of corrugated iron balanced on top of some broken wooden props and a pile of old ammo boxes to sit on. Stubbs sat down next to a roll of telephone wire and a pot of paint for making the signposts that were the only way to get around the maze of trenches.

  He tried to think.

  In response to the British guns, the German guns started to fire. Shells exploded either side of the trench, showering it with mud. Shrapnel whistled past. Fragments rattled on the thin iron roof. This would go on until the British 'creeping barrage' started. This was a line of exploding shells that moved slowly forward and cleared the ground in front of it. The idea was that, with the shells landing all around them, the German artillery and machine-gunners would have to keep their heads down, and the British troops could advance in some safety. Of course, it never worked like that.

  Stubbs felt panic rising.

  An enormous explosion shook the ground, blowing the roof of the shelter high into the air. But as it crashed down inches from Stubbs, a desperate idea came to him. He slipped his rifle off his back, and before he could think things through, dug the sharp edge of the bayonet into his forehead and opened up a jagged wound. At first he could just feel a cold dull pain. Then it quickly turned hot as the blood ran from the wound over his forehead and down into his eyes.

  He staggered into the trench, one hand clamped to his forehead, the other waving ahead of him.

  'Help me, help me. Oh my God, I can't see! I'm blind!'

  His hand was torn away from his forehead and he heard a voice calling for first aid. Stubbs felt hands dab at his forehead and clear the blood from his eyes.

  'We haven't got time for this, doc. Just slap a bandage on him and he can sit tight. What's the matter, doc?'

  Stubbs looked at the soldier the captain was calling doc, and his heart sank. It was the doctor from the Bullring. The game was up.

  'I think you'll find he's fit, sir,' the doctor said.

  'Really? What makes you think that?'

  'Flesh wound, sir, and self-inflicted. Look at his bayonet tip.'

  'What?'

  If Stubbs had kept his head he might have got away with it, but he cracked.

  'You bastard!' he shouted. 'You evil bastard!'

  'I know this man,' the doctor said. 'He was ... he's a crook and a coward. He waited for a big shell burst, then nicked his forehead with his bayonet to make it look like a shrapnel wound. I'm sure of it, sir.'

  The captain's whole manner changed. Now he spoke in a cold, clipped voice. 'Normally, I'd send you back to HQ. in irons or shoot you on the spot. But I've got a better idea. I know how to punish you properly. Doc — tie up that man's head. Sergeant, see that white paint? I don't want to lose this worthless piece of scum in the smoke. Take the brush and paint a white C, big as you like, on the back of his tunic. I'm going to be right behind him with a gun. Right, men, into positions. Wait for it. Wait for it. Remember, men — the barrage moves at a steady marching pace. No slacking! Keep up the pace! No one wants to get caught in the open!'

  He took out a pocket watch.

  The barrage from the British guns started up with a new fury. Faintly, from the left and right, came the sound of whistles. The sergeant blew his, and Stubbs found himself being pushed up the ladder and over the top of the trench. He felt the captain's gun in his back, heard him shouting and then simply concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

  Ahead of him he could see the flashes of the shells exploding through the wall of smoke. For about five yards, the going was awful. Then it got worse. It was a huge effort just to lift his feet up out of the sucking mud.

  Another five yards, and the mud was over his knees. Stubbs found that just lifting his leg high enough to take a step sent burning waves of agony along his thighs. One step, then another, then another.

  'On, on!' The captain's voice was high and frantic.

  No wonder. The men were making almost no progress and the barrage was moving further and further ahead. By now they should have gone a hundred yards. In fact, they had not moved a hundred feet and the line of men was broken as they all struggled to move forward in any way they could.

  He heard the captain shout 'Hold the line! Hold the line!' but it was hopeless. Stubbs decided to make progress as slow as possible, slipping and falling, and then taking an age to get up. Now it was getting really important to find shelter. If the barrage passed over the first few German guns without knocking them out, the British soldiers would be caught in the open. They would be sitting ducks.

  The going got even harder. They were creeping up a slight rise. In front of them the ground was dotted with broken trees. Trunks were blasted off about two feet from the ground. Roots twisted their way through the mud as if they were desperate to escape. The roots tripped them; the trunks forced them to find ways round them. There were bodies everywhere. Bodies and bits of bodies. Stubbs rested his weight on a tree trunk to try and get his breath back. His lungs felt as if they were on fire and he had lost a boot in the mud somewhere.

  Then he felt his senses sharpen and he peered ahead. The smoke from the barrage was beginning to thin, and he thought he had seen something grey and solid out there.

  'Keep moving, man! Hurry!' The captain jabbed at him.

  He took a step. Then another. Directly ahead lay a crater so big that it could only have been made by one of the huge mortar shells. There was a pool of water at the bottom. But because they were on a slight rise, the water table was that much lower and the sides of the crater would give some protection.

  'Don't stop or I'll...'

  Two things happened at the same time. Twenty yards ahead of them a machine gun started up, flashes flickering through the smoke. At the same time, a shell exploded in the air ten yards behind them. Stubbs and the officer were blown forward by the blast into the crater.

  Stubbs felt himself slip down the muddy sides of the hole. He let go of his rifle and dug into the mud with his fingernails.

  His feet splashed into the water. It rose higher and higher. Now it was round his knees, now his thighs, now his chest. He'd seen men hide themselves in craters only to drown. He forced his fingers into the mud and, just as he felt the chill wet of the water tickle his chin, he managed to hold on.

  The water was helping him to float. By plunging his hands deep into the mud, he managed to work his way round the edge of the pool to where the sides were not so steep. Above him, he could see the officer crawling towards the crater's rim.

  He followed.

  The German
machine gun just in front of them was firing non-stop now, and sounded very close. Stubbs lifted his head very slowly above the crater's edge. The gun was in a concrete pillbox, its muzzle poking out from the dark slit. It was so close that he could see the detail of its barrel. It was familiar to him, of course: the gun the Germans used to mow down the Allies was almost the same gun that the Allies used to mow down the Germans.

  The captain climbed sideways until he was close to Stubbs. 'Right, Private,' the captain said, 'no one's going anywhere fast as long as that gun is pinning us down. What say we take it out?'

  Stubbs glanced at the officer. This was the same man who had driven him into battle at gunpoint?

  'What do you suggest, sir?' he asked.

  'Right, what I'm asking you to do isn't going to be easy. In fact, you are going to need a cool head and every scrap of grit you've got. I want you to go about ten feet in that direction over there and take a few shots at the pillbox to draw his fire. That should give me enough time to stick my head up and post a couple of Mills bombs down the letter box. Do this and ... well, I'll forget the little incident earlier, eh?'

  'Got a decent arm on you, have you, sir?' Stubbs asked. 'First eleven were you, sir?'

  'As a matter of fact...' Something in the blank tone of Stubbs's voice must have got through to him. 'I say, are you taking this seriously? Because I can assure you, you're in enough trouble as it is.'

  'In trouble?' Stubbs said. 'With you?' His voice dripped with contempt. 'We're drowning in mud. There's a machine gun wants to kill us. Bombs are dropping everywhere and you want me to be polite?'