He spoke with an accent Billy guessed might be Canadian. “Are you a good thrower?” Billy asked.
“Played for my high school baseball team.”
“Right. When I give the word, see if you can hit that machine-gun emplacement with a Mills bomb.”
Billy told Spotty Llewellyn and Alun Pritchard to throw their grenades while the rest of the section gave covering fire. Once again, they waited until the machine gun stopped. “Now!” Billy yelled, and he stood up.
There was a small flurry of rifle fire from the German trench. Spotty and Alun, spooked by the bullets, threw wildly. Neither bomb reached the trench, which was fifty yards away; they fell short and exploded harmlessly. Billy cursed: they had simply left the machine gun undamaged and, sure enough, it opened up again and, a moment later, Spotty convulsed horribly as a hail of bullets tore into his body.
Billy felt strangely calm. He took a second to focus on his target and draw his arm all the way back. He calculated the distance as if he were throwing a rugby ball. He was dimly aware that the Canadian, standing next to him, was equally cool. The machine gun rattled and spat and swung toward them.
They threw at the same time.
Both bombs went into the trench close to the emplacement. There was a double whump. Billy saw the barrel of the machine gun fly through the air, and he yelled in triumph. He pulled the pin from his second grenade and dashed up the slope, screaming: “Charge!”
Exhilaration ran in his veins like a drug. He hardly knew he was in danger. He had no idea how many Germans might be in that trench pointing their rifles at him. The others followed him. He threw his second grenade, and they copied him. Some flew wild, others landed in the trench and exploded.
Billy reached the trench. At that point he realized that his rifle was slung over his shoulder. By the time he could move it to the firing position, a German could shoot him dead.
But there were no Germans left alive.
The grenades had done terrible damage. The floor of the trench was littered with dead bodies and-worse to look at-parts of bodies. If any Germans had survived the onslaught, they had retreated. Billy jumped down into the trench and at last got his rifle in both hands in the ready stance. But he did not need it. There was no one left to shoot at.
Tommy leaped down beside him. “We done it!” he shouted ecstatically. “We took a German trench!”
Billy felt a savage glee. They had tried to kill him, but instead he had killed them. It was a feeling of profound satisfaction, like nothing he had known before. “You’re right,” he said to Tommy. “We done it.”
Billy was struck by the quality of the German fortifications. He had a miner’s eye for a secure structure. The walls were braced with planks, the traverses were square, and the dugouts were surprisingly deep, twenty and sometimes thirty feet down, with neatly framed doorways and wooden steps. That explained how so many Germans had survived seven days of relentless shelling.
The Germans presumably dug their trenches in networks, with communications trenches linking the front to storage and service areas in the rear. Billy needed to make sure there were no enemy troops waiting in ambush. He led the others on an exploratory patrol, rifles at the ready, but they found no one.
The network ended at the top of the hill. From there Billy looked around. Left of their position, beyond an area of heavy shell damage, other British troops had taken the next sector; to their right, the trench ended and the ground fell away into a little valley with a stream.
He looked east into enemy territory. He knew that a mile or two away was another trench system, the Germans’ second line of defense. He was ready to lead his little group forward, but he hesitated. He could not see any other British troops advancing, and he guessed that his men had used up most of their ammunition. At any moment, he presumed, supply trucks would come bumping across the shell holes with more ammunition and orders for the next phase.
He looked up at the sky. It was midday. The men had not eaten since last night. “Let’s see if the Germans left any food behind,” he said. He stationed Suet Hewitt at the top of the hill as a lookout in case the Germans counterattacked.
There was not much to forage. It seemed the Germans were not very well-fed. They found stale black bread and hard salami-style sausage. There was not even any beer. The Germans were supposed to be famous for their beer.
The brigadier had promised that field kitchens would follow the advancing troops, but when Billy looked impatiently back over no-man’s-land he saw no sign of supplies.
They settled down to eat their rations of hard biscuits and bully beef.
He should send someone back to report. But before he could do so, the German artillery changed its aim. They had begun by shelling the British rear. Now they focused on no-man’s-land. Volcanoes of earth were erupting between the British and German lines. The bombardment was so intense that no one could have got back alive.
Luckily, the gunners were avoiding their own front line. Presumably they did not know which sectors had been taken by the British and which remained in German hands.
Billy’s group was stuck. They could not advance without ammunition, and they could not retreat because of the bombardment. But Billy seemed to be the only one worried by their position. The others started looking for souvenirs. They picked up pointed helmets, cap badges, and pocketknives. George Barrow examined all the dead Germans and took their watches and rings. Tommy took an officer’s nine-millimeter Luger and a box of ammunition.
They began to feel lethargic. It was not surprising: they had been up all night. Billy posted two lookouts and let the rest of them doze. He felt disappointed. On his first day of battle he had won a little victory, and he wanted to tell someone about it.
In the evening the barrage let up. Billy considered whether to retreat. There seemed no point in doing anything else, but he was afraid of being accused of desertion in the face of the enemy. There was no telling what superior officers might be capable of.
However, the decision was made for him by the Germans. Suet Hewitt, the lookout on the ridge, saw them advancing from the east. Billy saw a large force-fifty or a hundred men-running across the valley toward him. His men could not defend the ground they had taken without fresh ammunition.
On the other hand, if they retreated they might be blamed.
He summoned his handful of men. “Right, boys,” he said. “Fire at will, then retreat when you run out of ammo.” He emptied his rifle at the advancing troops, who were still half a mile out of range, then turned and ran. The others did the same.
They scrambled across the German trenches and back over no-man’s-land toward the setting sun, jumping over the dead and dodging the stretcher parties who were picking up the wounded. But no one shot at them.
When Billy reached the British side he jumped into a trench that was crowded with dead bodies, wounded men, and exhausted survivors like himself. He saw Major Fitzherbert lying on a stretcher, his face bloody but his eyes open, alive and breathing. There’s one I wouldn’t have minded losing, he thought. Many men were just sitting or lying in the mud, staring into space, dazed by shock and paralyzed by weariness. The officers were trying to organize the return of men and bodies to the rear sections. There was no sense of triumph, no one was moving forward, the officers were not even looking at the battlefield. The great attack had been a failure.
The remaining men of Billy’s section followed him into the trench.
“What a cock-up,” Billy said. “What a godalmighty cock-up.”
A week later Owen Bevin was court-martialed for cowardice and desertion.
He was given the option of being defended, at the trial, by an officer appointed to act as the “prisoner’s friend,” but he declined. Because the offense carried the death penalty, a plea of Not Guilty was automatically entered. However, Bevin said nothing in his defense. The trial took less than an hour. Bevin was convicted.
He was sentenced to death.
The papers were passed to general headquarters for review. The commander in chief approved the death sentence. Two weeks later, in a muddy French cow pasture at dawn, Bevin stood blindfolded before a firing squad.
Some of the men must have aimed to miss, because after they fired Bevin was still alive, though bleeding. The
