No Man's Land Read online

  It was an hour before reinforcements sufficient to quell the riot appeared. By this time Viney, clutching a full brandy bottle, was half a mile up the track which led to his unit’s encampment. There was a keen frost now and as he stood drinking, his breath rose above him like white smoke from a barrage and he could feel the night air tracking the runnels of sweat down his slab-muscled body.

  After a while there was a movement in the darkness and shortly afterwards Delaney, also armed with a bottle, joined him.

  ‘You seen Blackie?’ asked Viney after a while.

  ‘Yeah. Silly cunt tried to lug one of the girls from Holy Mary’s back with him. Last thing I saw, he was on the deck with ten redcaps kicking shit out of him.’

  ‘He’ll survive,’ said Viney with the certainty of one to whom all merely military troubles were survivable. ‘Let’s get back then.’

  They walked a little way in silence.

  ‘It’ll be ninety degrees up a penguin’s arsehole in Melbourne,’ said Delaney suddenly.

  ‘Shoot your foot off, they’ll ship you home,’ said Viney.

  ‘Mebbe I’ll do that,’ said Delaney. ‘I’m ready for a change.’

  It was a question, despite its form. Viney did not reply straight away, and the normally taciturn Delaney persisted with a more direct approach.

  ‘You never think of home, Viney?’

  ‘What’s home?’ said the huge Australian savagely.

  He took a long pull at his bottle, then hurled it into the night.

  ‘Let’s get Christmas over and a bit of a thaw, then we’ll see,’ he said more evenly.

  ‘You’re the boss, Viney,’ said Delaney.

  Far ahead in the east a star shell arced skywards and hung still for a moment of incandescent beauty. In companionable silence the two men headed towards the distant light.

  4

  At first Wilf Routledge’s arrest seemed to mean very little. He remained with the regiment and did all his duties. Once the idea of being under arrest had become familiar to him, he even began to complain with savage humour that by rights he shouldn’t be in the line at all but down at base somewhere, in a nice comfy cell, with three hot meals a day and no shelling.

  His comrades laughed and Josh, desperate for reassurance, joined in. But Renton didn’t laugh.

  Not even the return of Lieutenant Maiden to the regiment seemed to change things. He looked a little paler, a little thinner. Rumour had it that the colonel received him very coldly, but as the regiment’s junior officers had changed almost entirely since July, the replacements accorded him the respect due to a survivor and there was no general boycott.

  Josh avoided him. Wilf openly sneered every time he saw him. Renton kept the two apart as much as he could. And after a couple of weeks, everyone began to assume that the whole business had somehow been kicked under the carpet.

  As usual in the Army, when things happened, they happened quickly. Josh returned from a raid, bone-weary and with his nerves in tatters, to discover that Wilf, Renton and Maiden had gone. He rushed to see the colonel and managed in his desperation to get as far as the RSM who said not unsympathetically, ‘Listen, lad, the only way you could be with them was as a witness, and the colonel wouldn’t wear that. So think yourself lucky.’

  Five days later Maiden and Renton returned alone.

  ‘They found him guilty, son,’ said the sergeant, who came straight to Josh. ‘They had to. No choice. You know the Army. Fucking rule-book all the time!’

  ‘What’ll they do to him, Sarge?’ asked Josh fearfully.

  ‘No sentence yet,’ said the sergeant. ‘They usually take a bit longer to decide the sentence after the verdict. That’s good; make sure they get it right, that’s the idea. Chin up, lad. It’ll be all right, likely.’

  Renton could not be drawn on a forecast, but other prognostications ranged from a jail sentence (suspended till after the war) to a couple of weeks of Field Punishment No. 1, followed by six months of all the nastiest jobs in the battalion.

  Frequent repetition of assurances that whatever happened Wilf would be back with them by Christmas finally restored Josh to something like his old self. The worst seemed over, and this seemed confirmed a few days later when the battalion was ordered out of the line into rest.

  It was always a strange journey to make, like moving from one world to another. After what seemed hours in a tangle of communication trenches which seemed to lead nowhere, at last they filed out on to a real road which ran straight as an arrow through the support lines. At first as they marched they still adopted the stooping, almost crouching stance which became second nature in the trenches. But slowly as they passed by supply dumps, MT depots, horse lines, all full of bustle and chatter, the men began to straighten up and eventually they began to talk, often with an exaggerated even slightly hysterical loudness as if to demonstrate to themselves that the front line need for wary whispering was over. And when at last the support area was left behind and they entered a landscape where houses were not ruins but stood intact with light in the windows and smoke curling from the chimneys, and trees were not stumps but rose tall and erect, leafless only because of the season and edged with snow like Christmas card illustrations, several of the men collapsed by the roadside as their minds acknowledged safety for the first time.

  The first morning of the rest period, Josh awoke feeling better than he had done for months. Suddenly survival for himself, and for Wilf, seemed a real possibility. Wherever his brother was at this moment, he was at least safe from German shells and bullets. Christmas was close. His heart swooned to think of what Christmas had meant in Outerdale. He let his thoughts drift into a fantasy of being given Blighty leave for Christmas. He wouldn’t tell anybody, but just appear at the farmhouse door. He could hear the screams of delight from his sisters, see brother Bert’s broken-toothed grin, feel baby Agnes’s hands gripped tight in his hair as he ducked round the room bearing her high on his shoulders. His father coming in from the fields would show little emotion, but would press his hand in a grip of steel. And his mother would put her arms around him and press her cheek to his. And then ask, where was Wilf?

  The fantasy faded.

  There was no way he could pretend they were going to let Wilf go home this Christmas. But oh, for himself, in almost his first purely selfish thought since July, he would give anything for himself to be sent home for Christmas!

  But vain longings must not be allowed to spoil present pleasure.

  He rose to see that it was the best kind of winter’s day, bright and crisp. There would be a decent hot breakfast to eat, then a pay parade. This was no seaside holiday, there would still be military duties to do, but if a man kept his head down, they needn’t be too troublesome. Later perhaps there’d be a football match. But what he was really looking forward to was getting right away from everybody to take a look at this countryside. There’d be livestock to examine, and he might with a bit of luck meet up with a dog and make friends with it. He thought of Sailor, his personal favourite among the half-dozen Border collies who lived and worked on Beck Farm. Did Sailor miss him? he wondered, but turned quickly away from the thought as he saw the road it was leading him back to.

  He went out into the crisp cold morning and surprised several of the men of his section with the energetic good humour of his greeting.

  But to his own surprise as he stood in the queue for breakfast, Sergeant Renton stopped as he walked by, looked close into his face, and said, ‘Here, Routledge, you look a bit peaky. You’d better go sick.’

  ‘But I feel fine, Sarge, never better,’ protested Josh.

  ‘Well, you don’t look it, son. Better safe than sorry. You get yourself on sick parade and that’s an order.’

  It was an order which filled Josh with irritation and some concern. If the sergeant’s eye, so expert at spotting attempts at malingering, had in his case diagnosed illness, there must be something to it. His irritation subsided a little as the news went round that the word had ju
st gone up on company orders that the whole battalion was to parade in half an hour. For an inspection, went one rumour, They’re asking for volunteers to go behind Jerry’s lines dressed as peasants, went another. But accompanying all the rumours was a resentment at this bit of bullshit being allowed to muck up the rest period so soon.

  Renton’s order would at least spare him that, thought Josh.

  But when he reported to the MO he found no one in attendance except an orderly who told him brusquely that everyone who could walk had been commanded to the parade and he’d better get along there sharpish if he didn’t want trouble.

  He found the battalion already forming up in a hollow square on a huge ploughed field whose furrows had been set solid by the hard frost. The irregularity of the ground and the slipperiness of the surface made proper marching impossible and Josh was able to slip easily among the slow shuffling men till he found his platoon. Sergeant Renton spotted him and glared angrily at him, but was unable to speak as at that moment the sergeant-major’s scream called them to attention.

  At the open end of the square, a trestle table had been erected. Three chairs were placed behind it and in the centre one of these sat the colonel, flanked by his second-in-command and adjutant. The other officers of the battalion stood behind and to the sides.

  For a moment everything was perfectly still and silent, the only movement being the drift of mist as the men’s breath rose visible in the cold air. Distantly they heard the strained whine of an engine in low gear and eventually a Crossley General Service truck with ambulance markings came bumping over the set furrows towards the table.

  ‘They got a dozen Fannys in there. They’re going to raffle ’em off,’ whispered a wag, bringing a scream of ‘Quiet in the ranks!’ from at least three NCOs.

  The truck stopped. The man sitting next to the driver got out. He was wearing the red cap of a military policeman. He saluted the assembled officers and went round to the back of the truck. The tailboard was lowered. Another redcap got out and then the two of them assisted a third man to the ground. He needed assistance because his hands were manacled.

  He turned his head slowly from side to side as if bewildered by the location and dazzled by the light, and his profile confirmed to Josh’s eyes what his heart had told him the moment he saw the bright red of the escort’s hat.

  It was Wilf.

  The sergeant-major now took over, screaming orders addressed to prisoner ’n’ escort, bringing them to attention, sending them in a wheeling march to the front of the table; but his hectoring tone lacked something of its usual conviction and when Wilf stumbled on a frozen clod and nearly fell, his arm shot out to steady him and in the clear air it was possible for everyone to hear his quietly spoken, ‘Easy, lad.’

  Finally they came to a halt before the table, each man standing rigid at attention, Wilf hatless, his golden hair thick and tousled above his shaven neck, the two redcaps glowing spots of colour in that wintry-hued scene; the sergeant-major slightly to one side, staring fixedly at some point about forty degrees over the horizon.

  The adjutant stood up. He probably intended his voice to sound firm and strong, but his first attempt came out as a high-pitched yap and he had to try again. This time it came out as a rapid but still audible gabble.

  ‘Private Routledge having been found guilty by field general court martial of the charge of refusing to obey a legitimate order given by a superior officer in the face of the enemy, the sentence of the court was that the accused should suffer death by being shot, which sentence has been confirmed by the Commander in Chief and will be carried out at dawn tomorrow.’

  The sergeant-major started screaming his orders again almost before the adjutant had stopped speaking, the little procession marched and wheeled. Wilf disappeared into the back of the truck which immediately bumped its way out of sight and then out of earshot across the field. The proceedings had taken less than five minutes.

  The cold air then was filled with the bellow and scream of commands as warrant officers and NCOs went about the task of unpiecing the human square. But Sergeant Renton’s voice was silent as he pushed through the ranks of his platoon to catch Josh as he fell.

  5

  Jack Denial lay in his narrow bed and stared at the ceiling. He had been lying thus so long that his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness and he could pick out the wooden crossbeam quite clearly.

  Or perhaps it was nearly dawn.

  He pushed the idea out of his mind.

  ‘Jack. You awake?’

  He had been lying stiff and straight so that his sleeplessness would not disturb the girl next to him, but now he relaxed his body against hers and that was answer enough.

  He still could not fully comprehend his good fortune. That first night he had felt so wretchedly awkward. He had made no plans. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do; at least, nothing that would not involve putting Sally Thornton under the prurient gaze of his brother officers. So he had brought her back to this room and offered her a drink and told her in the blunt controlled terms of a man who expects nothing, and so has nothing to fear, that he loved her.

  The outrageous absurdity of the declaration still made him sweat at its memory.

  But she hadn’t struck him, or laughed at him, or called for help. Instead she had kissed him gently. And he had kissed her not so gently. And after that nothing was clear, till at last they had moved far enough apart on this same narrow bed for him to get a proper view of her and he had seen once more the pretty young girl of their first encounter, her pale, pinched features flushed and softened in the aftermath of pleasure.

  Since then she had come to him every night their duties left them both free. Where it might lead, he could not guess, dared not speculate. Instead he treasured every meeting as if it were the last.

  Yet tonight he wished she had not come. His body had not responded to her caresses. Her warm nakedness at his side seemed only to accentuate the chill and darkness around.

  ‘Jack, it’s not your fault. It’s your job,’ she whispered in an attempt at comfort.

  ‘What is my job?’ he replied harshly. ‘Back in the Force, I thought I knew. Protecting a society that on the whole deserved protection. Here, what do I protect? An inhuman system engaged in a monstrous war!’

  ‘If that’s how you feel, Jack, you have to tell someone.’

  ‘I’ve tried,’ he said grimly. ‘Not quite so directly, maybe. I added a few comments of my own to the report on that riot we had. All it got me was a rocket!’

  What he had suggested was that such incidents, though not common, were no longer rare. The Somme had changed the common soldier’s attitude to the war. There was a new cynicism about the generals, a new despair about the future. He had gone as far as suggesting that a large-scale mutiny could not be discounted.

  The report had come straight back from his immediate superior with the laconic comment, ‘The British Army does not have mutinies. It does have junior officers who are invalided out with shell-shock. Please emend.’

  He had emended the report, but not his opinion. Whatever the traditions of the British Army might be, there were other armies in the field alongside them. The French were vociferous in their outrage at the conduct of the war, and as for the Australians who were appearing in increasingly large numbers…! He thought of the one they had in confinement at the moment, charged with sticking a bayonet into Corporal Parker during the riot. There were plenty more like him, not as criminal as he judged this one to be, but with the same basic indifference to authority that was marked only by rank or red caps. By all accounts, the Australians fought as bravely as any men in the line, but they were never afraid to ask the reason why. Such independent notions were contagious.

  These ideas and arguments marched through his head, but if Sally’s warm body could not bring oblivion, there was no hope that military debate could take his mind off what lay ahead.

  He couldn’t deceive himself any longer. The dark winter night was turning t
o grey.

  He shifted slightly and immediately her arm tightened _ round him.

  ‘It’s not time yet, surely?’ she murmured.

  ‘Soon,’ he said. ‘Morning. First light. I’d better start getting ready.’

  He slipped from her grasp and out of the bed. His head was throbbing.

  She said urgently, ‘Jack, darling, it’s not your fault. It’s a duty, nothing more.’

  ‘Nothing more,’ he agreed. ‘Except that…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Duty should be more. More than … mere necessity, that is.’

  He laughed harshly.

  ‘Mere necessity is what that poor bastard is feeling. Duty should be more than that, wouldn’t you say?’

  She ignored the question.

  ‘What will he have been doing? Will they wake him early? Or … just before?’

  ‘I doubt he’ll need much waking,’ said Denial. ‘Or if he does, it’ll be from drunken insensibility. They’ll have given him a whole bottle of whisky to himself. Such generosity from the officers’ mess! Such luxury for a poor Tommy!’

  ‘Jack, it’s not your fault!’ she repeated. ‘It shouldn’t happen, but it isn’t your fault.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It shouldn’t happen.’

  He went and stooped over her. She pushed the blankets down and pulled him close against the soft curves of her tiny breasts, kissing him passionately.

  ‘I love you, Jack,’ she said desperately. ‘I love you.’

  He held her in a strong grip for a long moment, then broke away.

  At the door he said, ‘You’ll be gone when I get back?’ ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t want to return to you from … that.’

  She heard the door open.

  Out of the darkness his voice drifted.