The Angel of Mons - Chapter fifteen

Fifteen
One minute they had been sitting enjoying the morning sun and listening to the birds chattering in the distance and the next, George was pressing his body hard against the wall of the trench, his breathing quick and shallow, his head tucked down against his chest. He had heard the sound of a barrage many times, but nothing this sudden or this ferocious.
As the explosions roared and the sound of twisting hot metal ripped through the air, George struggled to come to terms with the shock of the attack. His body was shacking and he could feel rivers of cold sweat running down his spine. Reluctantly, he drew his body away from the wall of the trench and looked to his right and left in a desperate attempt to come to terms with what was happening. To his amazement there had been no blasts in his immediate vicinity. He could see smoke and dust and mushroom like plumes rising out of the earth, more to his right than his left, but still unquestionably to both sides. Suddenly George shook his head and something about him seemed to snap into place. The stricken shaken man seemed in an instant to change into an automaton. His eyes unblinking, his body no longer reacting to the pounding of the guns. George paced down the trench, tapping each man on the shoulder as he passed. And as he did, they too seemed to change, they quickly prepared themselves to face the danger, calmly as if they were simply doing a job of work, as if death were their way of life.
While the fire around them was intense it seemed as though the guns could not lock in on their position. Most of the shells were falling short and serving only to destroy the yards of carefully placed wire, which glinted like a huge spider’s web in front of the lines.
George was more concerned about the concentration of explosions to his right. These trenches were occupied by Portuguese. George and his sergeant had examined their lines just two days before and they were a shambles. Their weapons lay in the mud filthy and ill maintained their bayonets were rusty and left stuck in the walls of the trench, used as coat and helmet hooks. The men were untidy and badly disciplined with no enthusiasm for a war, which they felt, should not involve them.
On their way back from the Portuguese sector, George had commented that if he were the Bosh, he would attack there, expecting little or no real opposition. George was sorry now that his prediction seemed to have come true.
The closer he got to ‘Little Lisbon,’ the heavier the shelling, and the more severe the casualties. The trenches had received a number of direct hits, and George and the men tripped and stumbled over a combination of broken wood, tangled wire, gristle, body fluids and smashed limbs, many of those who were still alive were so terribly injured they seemed to defy nature. Their eyes were full of questions and fear as they hung onto the desperate last moments of their lives.
George stopped the men at a section where the trench was virtually completely destroyed. He called his sergeant forward and issued an instruction for four of the men to hold station by positioning themselves on the parapet and looking out for any enemy advance.
He lead a group of around twenty men, across the divide, dropping small groups of two or three into shell wholes as they went. All around was a sound like thunder as shells tour into the earth throwing plumes of mud smoke, men and water into the air and over George and his advancing comrades.
George was aware that some of his number had fallen but thought little of it as they made their way across the seemingly never ending gap in the line. When at last they reached the other side, the trenches were empty of any useful men. Those that remained were broken shadows. Those with no immediate physical affliction sat and stared hopelessly into space, like children with a fever, they were lost and trembling, in need of comfort and cure. The others were bleeding, crawling and screaming until they begun to tremble and eventually, much to everyone’s relief, to expire.
George stationed his men along the line and waited. He sat unblinking, unthinking, almost serene in his appearance.
He was not kept waiting very long. A few minutes later he noticed the barrage moved back. The shells were now falling thirty yards deeper behind the front line onto the support trenches.
He lifted himself to the top of the trench and looked across into the thick smoke and fog of war. At first he could see nothing, but as the smoke cleared he became aware of what looked like a huge dark grey curtain covering the landscape. It moved like a rushing tide enveloping all before it. George leant down, tapped his sergeant on the shoulder to beckon him up to join him as if to confirm that what he was looking at was real.
The sergeant winced and looked at George who tilted his head in rapid jerking movements away from the rushing wave of men. George bit his lip and looked to the reserve lines. They were under a huge bombardment, the sky was thick with dust and smoke and he could feel the earth trembling, cowering beneath his feet. The men were all looking toward him and George felt the weight of responsibility had fallen on his shoulders. He felt angry. Were they completely unable to think for themselves?
A crack of machine gun fire swept across their heads from the line behind and that helped George to decide that they would hold the line until the barrage had moved further back and then they would retreat with it.
He issued his instructions and was impressed with the speed and efficiency with which the men carried out his orders, and made ready to try halt the sea of troops now little more than five hundred yards away and approaching. They weren’t firing, they were just running, there was no resistance to speak of. The occasional line of machine gun bullets flared across the sky, but fell short of the target.
Suddenly, there was a break in the barrage, when it resumed, it had shifted and was now falling another one hundred yards further behind. George instructed the machine gun crews to clear the area by withdrawing to the reserve line.
They gathered their heavy burdens and staggered tripped and faltered across the broken terrain. Suddenly two of the men fell, shot across the chest. Without hesitation George stood on the edge of the trench waving back at the support line which in their panic were cutting down his retreating men. They raised their fire to support the retreat and slow the enemy advance.
George issued instructions for four of the five machine guns to withdraw. He then waited with the last remaining gun which was positioned in the gap in the line in a shallow crater of white and red chalk soil.
“You go back too Carter,” he called to the young man stationed alongside the gun whose job it was to feed the belt and thus ensure a constant supply of bullets to the greedy weapon. Carter looked at him and then across to Henderson, the gunner. He smiled, looked back at George and slowly shook his head.
Small arms fire cracked over their heads and the din of the battle seemed to grow ever louder. George kept looking over his shoulder to check the condition of the retreating men. He winced every time one of them fell and bit his lip in hope and expectation, as each one struggled to stand and continue on their way. Some did recover, and seemed almost unhurt, driven forward by adrenaline and the need to survive. Others faltered, standing their arms flailing their legs bending and snapping, their steps dizzy and uncontrollable like a foal standing for the first time. They seemed to move at a half pace, the image of their desperate pitiful struggle burning into the memory, and George struggled to come to terms with the fact that there was nothing he could do to help.
Ahead the grey tide became individuals, with faces, snarling breathless determined and like his own men possessed in such a way as to make them appear un human. They had eyes and mouths arms and legs, cut them and they too would bleed, but at that time they were not men. They were creatures, hunting and killing. Creatures fighting to survive, creatures capable of the most terrible things without a care, without a thought. Creatures capable of stabbing another man because he was dressed in a different uniform. Capable of turning the blade until they felt bone snapping from sinew, until they opened the victim so wide their intestines fell from their bodies. Creatures capable of feeling no anguish as their enemy’s face tightened and his eyes emptied as his life left him, finally.
George smiled and tapped Henderson on the shoulder. The weapon spat its fire and made its way across the line. Like a child sweeping a long stick through fresh nettles, the targets were cut low and fell almost with grace to the ground. There were a few seconds of easy fire before they realised they were under attack, and then those around the initial target area dived for cover.
George was impressed by Henderson's experience. As soon as the first batch had disappeared into shell wholes, he switched his attention further up the line, turning the weapon violently to his left, cutting them down and then back to the initial group, sweeping their position, keeping their heads down, making sure they knew he had not forgotten they were there.
George noticed a further change in the sound of the barrage. The shells were soaring higher than before; it had shifted back another fifty yards. He looked up and could see dark shapes whizzing across the morning sky.
Henderson worked his scythe with determined skill and Carter fed it with belts of bullets knowing full well that their lives depended on it.
To his left George noticed that the advance was continuing to move forward. Their tiny outpost was like a sandcastle on a stormy beach and was in danger of quickly becoming engulfed by the ever-advancing tide. George tapped his two colleagues on the shoulders, screamed at them to leave the gun and tipped his head toward the support trenches.
George could hear his own breath and feel the beat of his heart as if it were in his head, pounding; he could smell gunfire, the powder and the red hot metal. As he crossed the churned soil, he could smell the smashed bodies of men and animals the rich earthy sweet smell of blood.
He noticed lines of tracer bullets ripping through the sky to their right and left from the support trenches and knew that they had been spotted by their colleagues. Like the fingers of a delicate hand, the lines seemed to comfort him, to hold and protect him, to guide him in, holding back the enemy in pursuit, laying them low until safety was reached.
Every lift of his foot and every lunge forward seemed to be played out at half speed. His boots felt as heavy as led and his lungs seemed fit to burst. Every time George lifted a leg, stumbled or jumped he could feel the muscles tighten like a clenched fist.
Carter was in front, when George caught his leg for a second on broken wire and stumbled. He reached up only to see Carter’s helmet fly forward, his head smashed like an eggshell, its contents pouring out. His body crumpled sliding along slightly when it hit the white earth carried by the momentum created while it was still alive. Henderson frowned and looked at George as if he were expecting some sort of explanation, George grabbed him and dragged him tumbling into the support line. They both lay on the wooden boards, gasping for breath, sweat poring from their faces, and although explosions sounded all around and men fell from the parapet like leaves from a great tree, at that moment George felt as safe as he had ever felt in his short life.