No Man's Land Read online

  He said, ‘If you’re quite sure.’

  ‘Yes! I’m sure.’

  ‘Then I’ll take your statement,’ said Denial.

  Thirty miles to the south-east, another young man lay in a hospital bed, his face as pale as the vestments of the priest who knelt by him to help him die.

  ‘He’s getting a good send-off for a sergeant,’ whispered an orderly to a nurse.

  ‘His dad’s Minister of War or something,’ said the nurse.

  ‘Bastard. I wish we had him here for half a day.’

  In the bed the young man stirred and opened his mouth. A sound which was scarcely more than a breath came out.

  The priest leaned forward so their faces were only six inches apart.

  ‘Yes, my son,’ he said urgently.

  Now the young man’s eyes opened momentarily.

  ‘Fuck off,’ whispered Lothar von Seeberg.

  And fell asleep.

  2

  Josh Routledge screwed up his letter and threw it away. It fell into a puddle, perhaps of rainwater, perhaps of urine, where it floated, a patch of white against the filthy brown liquid.

  He started on another sheet.

  Dear mam and dad, he wrote. And paused.

  He had made the fatal error of allowing a note of truth into his first attempt. Jolly, generalized reassurance, that was the keynote. Nothing of the muddy gash in the earth in which he was living; nothing of the filth and stink, of the lice which colonized his body, of the rats he could hear in the trench wall behind him gnawing and scraping at God knows what relic of the Boche withdrawal.

  This was the furthermost point of the Cumbrians’ advance. Four miles, less than a mile a month, and how many men a mile no one dared guess. The ruined battalion had been reconstituted, gone into reserve, returned to the front, suffered heavily again and gone through the same process, though with fewer casualties, another three times in the eternity since that hot July day. None of this had gone into any of his letters, though the deaths of Ed Birkett and the Todhunter brothers could not be ignored. But even here, the brief reference had been couched in terms of high heroism far removed from the reality of those obscenely twisting bodies.

  He resumed writing.

  We are back at the Front now and doing well. The weather is turning a bit colder here as I expect it is with you. Wilf is fine and sends his love and says he will write next time.

  Another lie. Wilf showed no interest in letters home, either writing or receiving them. Since that first day in battle he was a changed man. There was a wariness in his eye, a restlessness in his manner, a readiness to take offence, a reluctance to do his share of any task however small and undemanding. All the old, lively good humour seemed to have been squeezed out of him and each day in the line exacerbated the change.

  There are a lot of new lads with us, some of them from Keswick and they know one or two Outerdale folk so we can have a good crack in the evenings.

  Lies, all lies. Josh had no time for new relationships, all his energies were concentrated on keeping some kind of restraining hold on Wilf, who was readier to strike a blow against, than an acquaintance with, a newcomer. Also, to tell the truth, Josh did not want the risk of new friendships. Such losses as he had borne in the sweet-smelling grass of no-man’s land were not to be countenanced again.

  A hand descended on his shoulder.

  He looked up. It was Sergeant Renton.

  ‘Your brother around, Routledge?’

  ‘He’s back there, Sarge. Asleep.’

  ‘Wake him up, will you? He’s wanted in the CO’s dugout, jildi.’

  ‘What for, Sarge? What’s it about?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I, son?’ said Renton. ‘CO doesn’t take me into his confidence.’

  He was lying. Even before he himself was summoned to the command dug-out an hour ago, he had known what it was about. All calls passing through the regimental exchange were monitored by the signals sergeant who made sure his fellow NCO’s were kept up to date with all relevant matter.

  ‘Sergeant Renton,’ said the CO. ‘This is Captain Denial, the Assistant Provost Marshal. He has some questions he wishes to ask you.’

  The CO’s voice was neutral, but Renton knew of his anger when he’d first heard of Maiden’s hospital statement over the phone.

  ‘There was a time before this blasted war when a man could choose subalterns who knew the form,’ he had barked out. Later he had checked Denial’s own background.

  ‘Man was a bloody bobby!’ he had been overheard to confide in disgust to the Adjutant.

  Now Renton stood in blank-faced silence before the ‘bloody bobby’ and waited for this slender, pale man, whose lack of expression matched his own, to start speaking.

  For five minutes he warded off questions with couldn’t say, sir! and don’t rightly know, sir! till Denial said, ‘The man’s brother was present, I believe.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Colonel Harrington does not seem to feel he ought to be questioned. What do you think, Sergeant?’

  ‘He’s a good lad, sir. But he’s just a lad. He may even have been under age when he signed on, I reckon.’

  ‘That would be a complication,’ frowned Denial.

  ‘And he worships his brother. It’d break him to be made to give evidence, sir.’

  ‘And that wouldn’t help either,’ said Denial.

  The colonel snorted in distaste.

  ‘But unless your memory improves, Sergeant, we shall have no alternative,’ said Denial with a mildness which did not disguise the threat.

  So Renton with great reluctance had reported what he had seen and heard.

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant. Can you wait outside for a moment?’

  ‘Sir. Just one thing more, sir.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This man, Routledge. Wilf Routledge, I mean. He was a good lad to start with. But since this lot began, he’s changed. He’s – not to put too fine a point upon it – a right bastard now, moody, uncooperative. What I’m trying to say, sir, is – he won’t help himself much.’

  ‘No, I take your point. Thank you, Sergeant.’

  Outside the dug-out, Renton had unashamedly eavesdropped.

  ‘What’s the verdict, Denial?’

  ‘No verdict, sir. But the next step is inevitable and has been ever since I got this statement from Mr Maiden. These details must be passed up for a decision to be made on further action. Meanwhile Private Routledge must be placed under arrest.’

  ‘Arrest? There’s a bloody war to be fought out there less than a quarter mile away, don’t you base-wallahs know that?’

  ‘The act may be formal rather than physical, sir, but the man must know that he is under arrest,’ said Denial coldly.

  ‘Very well. Sergeant Renton!’

  Five minutes later Wilf Routledge stood at attention before the two officers, resentment and suspicion in every angle and strain of his body.

  ‘Private Routledge,’ said Denial quietly. ‘You stand accused of conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline in that on July the first of this year you refused to obey the legitimate order of a superior officer. Until further action is decided upon, you will be held within your regimental lines under close arrest. Do you understand?’

  Wilf made a noise which might have been assent, indignation or a simple jeer.

  And outside the dug-out Josh, who had assumed Renton’s eavesdropping stance, ceased to hear the everpresent skitter of bullets and crump of shells and began to shiver like a man benighted on a wintry fell, far from home.

  3

  Autumn splashed the summer leaves with red and still the battle rumbled on. At last drenching rains brought hope that the seasons might do what the generals couldn’t and bring the fighting to a halt. Young men in bed in England with wounds taken in the heat of summer were already being urged by a grateful nation not to overstay their welcome. Among these was Lieutenant Neville Maiden whose face as he bumped towards the front in a Crossley suppl
y truck was almost as pale as when he had left it all those months before.

  He passed through Barnecourt without recognizing the tiny town. To him it had been little more than a discoloured hospital ceiling and some glimpses of sky.

  But Barnecourt had more to offer the weary British soldier than just medical care. In the main square were two establishments devoted entirely to his comfort and well-being.

  One was an estaminet known as the Doze-Off, a corruption of deux oeufs, the most popular because the only item on the menu there.

  The other was Holy Mary’s, where nothing was corrupted except innocence and, from time to time, genitalia.

  On this autumn night which had the first frost of winter in its breath Arthur Aloysius Viney of the Australian Army sat in the Doze-Off with an almost empty wine bottle at his elbow and chewed the end of a stub of pencil. He was a huge man, clad in shirtsleeve order despite the cold of the night. His shirt was bleached a light beige, evidence to the expert eye of long exposure to the sun of Gallipoli. The three stripes on his sleeve were strained almost to horizontal lines by the swell of his biceps muscles, and on his right arm the wings of the tattooed butterfly stretched like a bat’s under the strain of composition.

  Before him lay an envelope. It was postmarked Melbourne, December 1915, and addressed to his regiment in Lemnos. It had followed him by fits and starts and numerous misdirections all around the Mediterranean and finally caught up with him, nearly nine months after its despatch, on the Western Front.

  He had had it now for six weeks and still had not found a way to reply. Now once again he gave up the attempt. He crushed the letter in his hand, then smoothed it out and put it back into his tunic pocket. His own small beginnings he ripped viciously into a hundred pieces and forced the shreds down the long green neck of the almost empty wine bottle at his elbow.

  ‘Going to toss a message over the side, mate?’ enquired a tipsy English private staggering by. Viney looked up at him. He had dark green eyes which at moments of high emotion shone with terrifying intensity. Suddenly much soberer, the private moved hurriedly on.

  Viney rose and went out in the chilly night, stooping to get his six feet eight inches under the low lintel. Holy Mary’s was on the far side of the sloping square, a useful arrangement, making it as natural in geography as it was in physiology for men who had devoured their fill of fried eggs and plinkety-plonk to pass from one establishment to the other.

  There was a long queue tonight, despite the fact that the five ladies on duty had reduced the average running time from six to four-and-a-half minutes.

  Viney crossed over and made his way along the queue, not pausing till he was nearly at its head. Here two men with corporal’s stripes were passing a long bottle of cheap brandy between themselves to keep out the cold. One was almost Viney’s equal in size, but unlike the hard and muscular sergeant, much of his bulk was fat. This was ‘Blackie’ Coleport, a garrulous and superficially jolly man whose recitals of the ballads of ‘Banjo’ Paterson were a highlight of impromptu concerts, but whose mean, hard eyes belied his easygoing exterior. The other, ‘Patsy’ Delaney, was a spare, rangy man with a lantern jaw and an expression of cold violence which belied nothing.

  ‘Viney, you’ve changed your mind! All that thinking about us enjoying ourselves got you horny, did it?’ called Coleport.

  ‘No, I just got fed up waiting for you bastards,’ said Viney. ‘Thought mebbe you’d got inside and couldn’t raise it.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Coleport. ‘Just stick it out the window in this frost and it’ll soon get stiff enough. What say, Patsy?’

  Delaney showed big yellow teeth in a humourless smile.

  ‘Hot or cold, I’ll manage,’ he said.

  The door of the brothel opened, three men emerged and three more entered, taking the Australians almost to the head of the queue.

  ‘You jokers took your time,’ observed Coleport good-humouredly. ‘Forgotten what to do, had you?’

  ‘Mine was about ninety,’ replied one of the men in a Welsh lilt. ‘Takes a bit of working up to, that does.’

  But one of his companions, less inclined to good humour, answered, ‘It’ll be all right for this lot. They’re used to making do with bloody kangaroos, aren’t they?’

  Coleport laughed and said, ‘Fair do’s, cobber. Last time I had a Welshwoman, it was like excavating a coalmine, so an old kanger didn’t seem so bad after that.’

  The Welshman made a move towards him, but the first man to speak grasped his arm and muttered in his ear, nodding down the street. Three military policemen had appeared, one a sergeant-major, and were making their way slowly towards the brothel. The Welshmen set off rapidly in the opposite direction.

  When the MPs reached the queue, they stopped and regarded the men in it with cold disapproval. Viney, who had been about to return to wait for his friends in the warmth of the estaminet, now plucked the bottle from Coleport’s hands, took a long pull and said insolently, ‘You’ll have to wait your turn, cobbers.’

  The sergeant-major stepped towards him and said, ‘Who the hell you think you’re talking to, Sergeant?’

  ‘Couldn’t say, seeing as we ain’t been introduced,’ said Viney.

  The sergeant-major stuck his face close to Viney’s and wrinkled his nose.

  ‘What’s that you’re drinking, Sergeant?’

  ‘Cough mixture. Like some, mate?’

  The sergeant-major drew in a deep breath and his cheeks went almost as red as his hat. Before he could speak, there was a cry of upraised voices from inside the house, English and French confused in anger, then the sound of breaking glass and a woman’s shriek.

  The MPs rushed into the brothel.

  ‘I knew the bastards’d find a way to jump the queue,’ observed Delaney.

  A couple of minutes later the two MP privates emerged, dragging between them a soldier who was screaming loudly and trying to pull up his trousers which were round his knees. The queue broke into spontaneous applause.

  ‘Good on yer, bare arse!’ yelled Coleport.

  The sergeant-major appeared in the doorway and glared at the waiting men till the noise subsided.

  ‘That’s it, you men!’ he yelled. ‘I’m closing this place down as of now. Get back to your units. Go on, get a bloody move on!’

  Grumbling, the men began to disperse, but Viney stepped forward and said, ‘Hold hard, friend, you can’t do that.’

  ‘Can’t do what?’

  ‘Can’t just close this knocking-shop down. Why? What’s your reason?’

  Drawn against his judgement into a debate, the sergeant-major said, ‘It’s a disorderly house. There’s been fighting in there, so that’s why it’s closed down, and you’d better get yourself out of here before I lose my temper!’

  ‘Fighting!’ echoed Viney, mocking the sergeant-major’s intonation. ‘What the hell do you cherry nobs know about fighting? You should have been at Jolly Polly, cobber. Or back there’ – pointing his bottle dramatically eastwards – ‘that’s where the fighting is. Why don’t you close that little lot down too!’

  The dispersing men had paused and now a ripple of laughter passed among them.

  ‘Right!’ screamed the sergeant-major. ‘That’s it! I’ve had just about all I’m going to take from you fucking Aussies! Let’s have your name and number. You’re under arrest!’

  Viney’s reaction filled the non-Australians in the queue with horrified admiration.

  He threw back his head in a full-throated bellow of laughter and said, ‘You’ll need more than a fancy hat to arrest me, sport! Better stick to old tarts and little lads with their pants down.’

  ‘Atten-shun!’ screamed the sergeant-major. Then when this produced no effect whatsoever, he seized Viney’s right arm close to the dangerously swelling butterfly and cried, ‘You two! Over here quick!’

  The two men dragging away the de-breeched soldier looked round just in time to see Viney smashing the brandy bottle over the sergeant-major’s
head. For a second they were paralysed in disbelief, then, releasing their prisoner, who gathered up his trousers over his thighs and set off at a staggering run into the protective darkness, the MPs dashed back towards the brothel, truncheons at the ready. Another surprise awaited them. While the generality of the soldiers turned to flee, Coleport and Delaney came walking to meet them. One of the MPs was intimidated enough to slow down and take out his whistle to summon help. He managed one long blast while Coleport got his companion in a vicious half-nelson and Delaney drove his boot into the helpless man’s crutch. And he’d started on a second blast when Coleport’s fist crashed the whistle into his mouth, breaking several teeth and piercing his palate to the depth of half-an-inch.

  But help was close. Another five or six MPs appeared at the furthermost end of the street. The soldiers who’d made up the queue, awed spectators till now, began to scatter. But when Coleport called, ‘Come on, you Dinkums, if you can’t have a fuck, next best thing’s a fight!’ some of the Australians paused, and some of the British troops too. And when the MP reinforcements arrived, they suddenly found themselves confronted not by a trio of men resisting arrest, but by an incipient riot.

  For a moment things hung in the balance. Then as the new group of MPs led by a full corporal advanced purposefully across the square, Blackie Coleport declaimed,

  ‘Now this is the law of the Overland that all in the West obey,

  A man must cover with travelling sheep a six-mile stage a day!’

  Then advancing to meet the corporal, he added mockingly, ‘You know what that means, mate? We’ve got fucking sheep in Aussie can move a bloody sight faster than you red-caps!’

  The corporal said, ‘You’re under arrest, soldier,’ and swung his wooden truncheon at Coleport’s head.

  The Australian ducked, evading the blow easily, and came up with a gleaming bayonet in his hand.

  ‘You’re all wind, Corp,’ he said. ‘Let me ventilate you.’

  And he drove the blade in the MP’s stomach.

  After that the riot broke out in earnest. The MPs were driven out of the square by the fury of the mob of soldiers who then turned their attention to the Doze-Off and Holy Mary’s and when these had been wrecked, went on the rampage through the rest of the tiny town.