The Eternal War

carbines.

Divots of soil began to erupt along the top of the trench. Devereau found himself ducking down like his men as the British organized their covering fire.

His men were now firing independently as they replaced their clips, firing opportunistic shots, in singles and doubles over the sandbags.

Devereau chanced another long glance, his head foolishly above the line of sandbags for another half a minute. He speed-counted forty — maybe fifty — British casualties. Not bad for their opening salvo. But that was the best chance they were ever going to get to even the numbers. Now the British were dispersed across the shingle, making use of the new craters and the grooves and dents of old building foundations and exposed basements, of the small ruined humps of corner walls, little more than resilient piles of old masonry still managing to hold together after so many decades of punishment.

A shot whistled past his left ear. He cursed and ducked back down again. Devereau reloaded his revolver, struggling with shaking hands to slide each bullet successfully into its chamber.

Their best, their only tactic would be to hold the British there on the slope, keep them from organizing a cohesive advance on the trench. And try to whittle them down one lucky shot at a time.

Pick out the officers first. He knew the British soldiers would be doing exactly the same — targeting the sergeants, corporal, captains, lieutenants — in an attempt to leave their opponents leaderless.

He chanced his head above the sandbags again and quickly aimed his revolver, firing all six rounds at the bull-shouldered figure of a bearded sergeant gesturing frantically at his men. The ground spat six clouds of dust and the sergeant ducked lower in the dirt, most probably thanking his lucky stars for Devereau’s poor aim.

He stepped back down again into the trench and reloaded his revolver, this time with a steadier hand.

‘Sir!’

Freeman’s voice.

‘What is it, Sergeant?’

‘They’re groupin’ up for a push! Thirty yards left of the stack, sir!’

There was an oven smokestack midway along the landing area, the last remnant of a brick factory that had been here half a century ago, little more than a ring of bricks shoulder-high. Devereau peeked over the top. Freeman was quite right. He could see the tops of white pith helmets coalescing behind the stack, waiting for the command.

And the command would be answered by an eager roar from the men getting to their feet, and the percussive rattle of covering fire from further along the shingle.

With one hasty assessment he could see this first go at storming the borderline was probably going to be successful. Some of them were likely to make it into the trench, and then it was going to be down to hand-to-hand fighting.

‘Fix bayonets!’ he shouted. The Confederate soldier standing next to him nodded and passed the order on as he fumbled his bayonet out of its scabbard.

‘Aim your fire at the officers as they come up!’ he added. ‘Pass it on!’

He tucked his revolver back in its holster and pulled out his ceremonial sabre.

This is how this war was fought in the beginning, he told himself. Muskets and sabres and nerves of steel.

‘Ready for it, sir?’ asked the Confederate.

Devereau stroked his chin and nodded. ‘How about you?’

The man slotted the bayonet home beneath the muzzle-lock of his carbine. ‘Reckon I see ’em like you do, now we on the same side now, sir.’

He heard a chorus of voices from downhill: the British troops hyping up their adrenaline. The chanting of three huzzahs, each louder than the last, the third ending with a roar that peeled along the entire length of the landing area.

Here they come.

‘Fire at will!’ screamed Devereau.

Southern and Northern soldiers stepped up together as one, their carbines thudding down on the sandbags — a ragged line of several hundred wavering muzzles tipped with glinting bayonets. A wall of muzzle flash and smoke erupted as they lay down a withering barrage of fire at the British as they sprinted up the slope.

CHAPTER 79

2001, en route to New Chelmsford

‘What in the name of the Lord are you doing, sir?’ cried Lincoln.

‘I’m trying to flippin’ steer the bleedin’ thing!’

Liam had two control sticks to work with. After zigzagging back and forth across the narrow main street, spilling giant bales of feed from the trailer behind them, Liam had the gist of how the control sticks worked — nearly. The left stick controlled the large tractor wheel on the left, and the right stick, the right wheel. To turn right, for example, he realized he had to pull back on the right and forward on the left. To go straight forward — both sticks forward.

By the time he’d finally figured this out, the small town of East Farnham was behind them, littered with the chaos, damage and debris of Liam’s learning curve. The tractor rolled down the dirt road out of the town, flanked on either side by orchards of plum trees.

‘Jay-zus, we did it!’ gasped Liam.

Lincoln and Sal clung on uncomfortably to the bucket seat inside the driver’s cabin. Bob was standing outside on the now-empty flatbed. Liam thrashed the tractor as fast as it would go — little more than the speed of an asthmatic jogger — for a half a mile before finally pulling over to one side of the dirt track.

Five minutes later they were on the move again, a great deal faster now that they’d detached the trailer.

‘So, which way?’ Liam shouted above the din of the rattling engine.

Bob pointed off the dirt track they were running along, across a paddock full of what looked like eugenically modified shire horses. ‘That way.’

‘Hold on!’ said Liam, pulling the left stick back a little. The tractor’s gigantic fat wheels rolled effortlessly over a wooden picket fence and across the paddock, scattering horses that seemed to stand almost as tall at the shoulder as Indian elephants.

‘Information: fifteen miles, one hundred and seventy-six yards in this direction.’

‘Right,’ said Liam, gripping both control sticks with white-knuckled concentration. ‘OK … fifteen miles.’

The tractor was romping along now, bouncing alarmingly on the uneven ground, swerving every now and then to avoid the unpredictable panicked movements of the shire horses flocking alongside it.

‘Whoa!’ Sal pointed through the cabin’s mud-spattered windscreen. ‘Mind the — ’ The tractor rolled over a long wooden feeding trough, sending splinters of wood and cobs of maize into the air.

‘Never mind,’ said Sal.

Liam crashed out of the far side of the paddock and swerved right to avoid running into an open barn. A moment later they were rolling across a courtyard criss-crossed with laundry lines.

‘Watch out, look … kids!’

Several children playing amid fluttering bed sheets scattered in panic before them.

‘Oh Jay-zus! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ Liam bellowed through the open side window as they rumbled out of the far side, across someone’s vegetable garden and over a cheerfully coloured timber playhouse.

They were rolling across a vineyard a moment later, flattening row after row of budding grapevines. Sal pointed out a long line of greenhouses nestled between rows of vines. She noted the look of shock on an old man’s face as he stood in the doorway, watering can in one hand and pruning shears in the other. The tractor’s huge wheels churned a lane of soil mere inches away from him and the fragile framework of timber and glass.