He fell to the ground.
Officers were in as much danger as men. Billy was no longer angry. Instead he felt ashamed of the British army. How could it be so completely useless? After all the effort that had been put in, the money they had spent, the months of planning-the big assault was a fiasco. It was humiliating.
Billy looked around. Fitz lay still, unconscious. Neither Lieutenant Carlton-Smith nor Sergeant Jones was in sight. The other men in the section were looking at Billy. He was only a corporal, but they expected him to tell them what to do.
He turned to Mortimer, who had once been an officer. “What do you think-”
“Don’t look at me, Taffy,” said Mortimer sourly. “You’re the fucking corporal.”
Billy had to come up with a plan.
He was not going to lead them back. He hardly considered that option. It would be a waste of the lives of the men who had already died. We must gain something from all this, he thought; we must give some kind of account of ourselves.
On the other hand, he was not going to run into machine-gun fire.
The first thing he needed to do was survey the scene.
He took off his steel helmet, held it at arm’s length, and raised it over the lip of the crater as a decoy, just in case a German had his sights on this hole. But nothing happened.
He raised his head over the edge, expecting at any moment to be shot through the skull. He survived that, too.
He looked across the divide and up the hill, over the German barbed wire to their front line, dug into the hillside. He could see rifle barrels poking through gaps in the parapet. “Where’s that fucking machine gun?” he said to Tommy.
“Not sure.”
C Company ran past. Some took cover, but others held the line. The machine gun opened up again, raking the line, and the men fell like skittles. Billy was no longer shocked. He was searching for the source of the bullets.
“Got it,” said Tommy.
“Where?”
“Take a straight line from here to that clump of bushes at the top of the hill.”
“Right.”
“See where that line crosses the German trench?”
“Aye.”
“Then go a bit to your right.”
“How far… never mind, I see the bastards.” Ahead and a little to Billy’s right, something that might have been a protective iron shield stuck up above the parapet, and the distinctive barrel of a machine gun protruded over it. Billy thought he could make out three German helmets around it, but it was hard to be sure.
They must be concentrating on the gap in the British wire, Billy thought. They repeatedly fired on men as they surged forward from that point. The way to attack them might be from a different angle. If his section could work its way diagonally across no-man’s-land, they could come at the gun from the Germans’ left, while the Germans were looking right.
He plotted a route using three large craters, the third just beyond a flattened section of German wire.
He had no idea whether this was correct military strategy. But correct strategy had got thousands of men killed this morning, so to hell with that.
He ducked down again and looked at the men around him. George Barrow was a steady shot with the rifle despite his youth. “Next time that machine gun opens up, get ready to fire. As soon as it stops, you start. With a bit of luck, they’ll take cover. I’ll be running to that shell hole over by there. Shoot steady and empty your magazine. You’ve got ten shots-make them last half a minute. By the time the Germans raise their heads I should be in the next hole.” He looked at the others. “Wait for another pause, then all of you run while Tommy covers you. Third time, I’ll cover and Tommy can run.”
D Company ran into no-man’s-land. The machine gun opened up. Rifles and trench mortars fired at the same time. But the carnage was less because more men were taking cover in shell holes instead of running into the hail of bullets.
Any minute now, Billy thought. He had told the men what he was going to do, and it would be too shameful to back out. He gritted his teeth. Better to die than be a coward, he told himself again.
The machine-gun fire ceased.
In an instant Billy leaped to his feet. Now he was a clear target. He bent over and ran.
Behind him he heard Barrow shooting. His life was in the hands of a seventeen-year-old Borstal boy. George fired steadily: bang, two, three, bang, two, three, just as ordered.
Billy charged across the field as fast as he could, loaded down as he was with kit. His boots stuck in the mud, his breath came in ragged gasps, his chest hurt, but his mind was empty of all thought except the desire to go faster. He was as close to death as he had ever been.
When he was a couple of yards from the shell hole he threw his gun into it and dived as if tackling a rugby opponent. He landed on the rim of the crater and tumbled forward into the mud. He could hardly believe he was still alive.
He heard a ragged cheer. His section was applauding his run. He was amazed they could be so upbeat amid such carnage. How strange men were.
When he had caught his breath, he cautiously looked over the rim. He had run about a hundred yards. It was going to take some time to cross no-man’s-land this way. But the alternative was suicide.
The machine gun opened up again. When it stopped, Tommy started shooting. He followed George’s example and paused between shots. How fast we learn when our lives are in danger, Billy thought. As the tenth and last bullet in Tommy’s magazine was fired, the rest of the section fell into the pit beside Billy.
“Come this side,” he shouted, beckoning them forward. The German position was uphill from here, and Billy feared the enemy might be able to see into the back half of the crater.
He rested his rifle on the rim and sighted at the machine gun. After a while the Germans opened up again. When they stopped, Billy fired. He willed Tommy to run fast. He cared more about Tommy than the rest of the section put together. He held his rifle steady and fired at intervals of about five seconds. It did not matter whether he hit anyone, as long as he forced the Germans to keep their heads down while Tommy ran.
His rifle clicked on empty, and Tommy landed beside him.
“Bloody hell,” said Tommy. “How many times have we got to do that?”
“Two more, I reckon,” Billy said, reloading. “Then we’ll either be close enough to throw a Mills bomb… or we’ll all be fucking dead.”
“Don’t swear, now, Billy, please,” said Tommy straight-faced. “You know I finds it distasteful.”
Billy chuckled. Then he wondered how he could. I’m in a shell hole with the German army shooting at me and I’m laughing, he thought. God help me.
They moved in the same way to the next shell hole, but it was farther off, and this time they lost a man. Joey Ponti was hit in the head while running. George Barrow picked him up and carried him, but he was dead, a bloody hole in his skull. Billy wondered where his kid brother Johnny was: he had not seen him since leaving the assembly trench. I’ll have to be the one to tell him the news, Billy thought. Johnny worshipped his big brother.
There were other dead men in this hole. Three khaki-clad bodies floated in the scummy water. They must have been among the first to go over the top. Billy wondered how they had got this far. Perhaps it was just the odds. The guns were bound to miss a few in the first sweep, and mop them up on the return.
Other groups were coming closer to the German line now by following similar tactics. Either they were copying Billy’s group or, more likely, they had gone through the same thought process, abandoning the foolish line charge ordered by the officers and devising their own more sensible tactics. The upshot was that the Germans no longer had things all their own way. Under fire themselves, they were not able to keep up the same relentless storm of gunfire. Perhaps for that reason, Billy’s group made it to the last shell hole without further losses.
In fact they gained a man. A total stranger lay down next to Billy. “Where the fuck did you come from?” Billy said.
“I lost my group,” the man said. “You seem to know what you’re doing, so I followed you. I sure hope you don’t mind.”
