The Somme Stations

threaten the track, but I didn’t fancy its chances in the event of any storm, such as that predicted by Scholes.

It was, in fact, a beautiful early-afternoon, the sea shining, two sailing ships off Spurn, both definitely not German destroyers. The day suited the cheery features of a certain Captain Leo Tate, who stood on the new-laid track, and addressed us as we sat on a sand dune. Our whole group was present save William, who’d been detailed to bicycle between the cottages and the farms around Kilnsea and Easington, giving out a schedule of the times when the Spurn gun would be tested again. He would then return to Cobble Farm in the evening.

Captain Leo Tate was a little older than me – somewhere in the middle thirties. He told us he’d been delighted to hear we’d been given this detail because he was from York himself. Well, he certainly didn’t sound it. He was also a good friend of our own Captain Quinn’s, both of them having been at St Peter’s School, the Eton of the North. As he addressed us, Tate seemed fascinated by the sight of the twins, and kept sneaking sly looks at them.

‘Did you know Spurn is eroding at the rate of a yard every year?’ he began.

‘Yes,’ I heard someone say. (Probably Oliver Butler.)

Tate told us something of what he and his fellows had been about, adding that we would shortly see for ourselves. After talking for five minutes, he asked if we had any questions.

‘What class of engines do you run on the railway, sir?’

It was Alfred Tinsley, of course.

‘Well, you see our modest engine shed,’ Quinn said, pointing to what looked like a glorified beach hut at the end of a siding a hundred yards distant. Steam was leaking from it, and more from the walls than the chimney. ‘At present, it houses just the one locomotive,’ Tate was saying. ‘A Hudswell-Clarke standard, and I don’t need to tell you men the specifications.’

Dawson leant into me, and said, ‘He does need to tell me.’

‘Outside cylinder 0-4-0 saddle tank,’ I said, and Quinn heard and pointed at me, ‘Quite right, there. Are you an engine man, fusilier?’

‘I’m a railway policeman sir,’ I said. ‘Detective division.’

But Captain Leo Tate didn’t seem to have heard me. He was looking along the line, with a big grin spreading over his features; then there came a gasp from Alfred Tinsley. Something was skimming towards us at a hell of a lick. It was two men sitting in something between a railway wagon and a yacht – for it was propelled by sails.

‘What is it?’ breathed Tinsley, and he was looking the question directly at Tate, even though a private soldier is not supposed to address an officer, but must wait until spoken to.

‘Pump trolley converted by the addition of a lug sail,’ said Tate, beaming, ‘and these chaps are on a broad reach.’

Even he seemed amazed by the speed of it. When the thing came close it looked jerry-built, ridiculous, but you couldn’t help liking the looks of the two blokes who stepped off it – two junior officers in the Tate mould: a pair of overgrown boy scouts. They put their funny little bug in a siding, and at that instant, the barking of steam was heard from the little engine shed, and the Hudswell-Clarke rolled out. ‘Anyone fancy a footplate ride?’ enquired Tate. Alfred Tinsley’s hand was up directly. Mine would’ve been too, had I not been on my dignity. There were no other takers, but Tate pointed to me, asking, ‘How about our railway policeman?’

The engine – which could have done with a clean – was a Standard 14, to be exact, that maid of all work, often to be seen at pit head and factory. It was still in North Eastern Railway colours, and had kept its name: Lord Mayor. We watched it collect an open wagon and take a drink from a water siding. Then we climbed up. It was a tight squeeze on the footplate, since Tate evidently proposed riding there too. The rest of the party climbed onto the open wagon, and all our packs and rifles were slung up there as well. We set off, with our smoke and steam darting crazily in the blustery wind that was getting up. But the sky remained a beautiful pale blue, with just two or three white clouds turning over and over.

‘You can see half the world from here,’ said our driver, a sergeant from his uniform, and evidently a poetic one. Captain Tate, not so poetic, said, ‘Strictly speaking, Spurn is what’s called a Sand Spit…’ and started on another geography lesson. When he’d finished, I asked the sergeant whether the regulator gave gyp, since he did seem to have to wrestle with it. Tate, who’d learnt my name by now, said, ‘You take a close interest for a railway policeman, Stringer.’ I explained that I’d been trained up as a fireman, at which our own fireman stepped aside without a word, and handed me the shovel. I put a bit on, and it did go more or less where I’d aimed it. As Spurn Point was approached, I’d graduated to the regulator, and Alfred Tinsley was trying his hand with the shovel. Well, Lord Mayor was a pretty good steamer, and we were both practically wriggling with happiness just then (although I was trying to hide the fact).

We passed a small boy signalling a semaphore message with two flags much bigger than he was; very soon after, we passed the small girl he was signalling to. Tate informed us that the Spurn schoolkids practised semaphore every day. On our right hand side, the estuary side, was a new sea wall about two hundred yards long, and six feet wide on top. Iron bollards, mushroom-shaped for the tying-up of boats, were placed along its length, and I recall noticing that a length of rope ran from one of these into the water.

‘That’s where the sea does its worst!’ Leo Tate called over the beating of the engine. ‘In the school they call it a promenade. Of course, technically it’s a revetment!’

The end of our ride was the railway pier, and we took our engine onto it after collecting two more open wagons. The steamer was there waiting, just in from Grimsby, and bucking about on its moorings. Around the pier stood three gun batteries, with only one gun as yet in place – the one we’d already heard from. The other emplacements were signified by concrete dishes. There were the makings of what would be a signalling station; also shelters, magazines, workshops, and a largish wooden hut – about the dimensions of a village hall – with the words Hope and Anchor painted in giant white letters on one of its roof slopes. This was the RE boys’ wet canteen. The name was another of their little jokes, the pub in Kilnsea being called the Crown and Anchor. At about twenty yards’ distance from this stood the jakes, which took the form of one single outside lavatory, and another with washroom attached. Both were of a primitive appearance but were brick-built, and so more solid than the hutted village around them, having once belonged to a row of lifeboatmen’s cottages that had stood on the site.

‘You might think it looks like a shack,’ said Tate, indicating the Hope and Anchor, ‘but we have at present… I believe five barrels of John Smith’s bitter in there. Since you’re all here for the night,’ he continued (which was the first we’d heard of it), ‘you’ll perhaps sample a glass or two yourselves.’

I eyed Bernie Dawson as Tate spoke. He looked his usual good-natured self, leaning with folded arms against the boiler frame of Lord Mayor, but I was thinking: we could be in for a bit of bother here.

As we commenced the unloading, the weather gods were putting on a good show. The clouds were mainly black, but there was a kind of light resembling golden smoke whirling underneath them.

That ship held a regular hotchpotch of goods, all too small to be lifted by crane – including shells that we carried one at a time, and very carefully even though the detonators weren’t in. We didn’t know much about shells as yet; I imagined we’d be getting better acquainted in France. As we worked, the wind rose, the pier stakes set up a fearful groaning, and the ship clattered against the side, making the gangplank a dangerous place to walk. Some of the stuff was to be loaded onto the train – which made two trips back up the peninsula as we worked – and some passed hand to hand along the length of the pier to the stores round about. We worked under the direction of another RE sergeant who apparently knew field telephones inside out, and so found a friend in Oliver Butler who would quiz him in between carrying jobs.

We worked right through to evening without a break, for the ship had to get back to Grimsby before the storm came. About five o’clock, by which time all the gold had gone from the sky, we saw the headlamps of a War Department van coming up to the Hope. It had driven the length of Spurn – which would’ve been fun for the driver, since there were no roads to speak of – and held the food for our suppers. (The same van, we were told, would be returning in the morning with our breakfasts.)

Come six o’clock, a fast rain was falling, but the storm hadn’t quite got started. Lord Mayor was pulling away from the pier and moving fast, anxious to get away. All the RE blokes returned to their redoubt at the top end of the Narrows, and they’d taken Captain Quinn with them. He was to be wined and dined on the officers’ table at some function in Kilnsea for every RE man on the peninsula, officers and other ranks. The entry point to the peninsula was being guarded by our opposite numbers, the B Shift. The arrangement of men on Spurn would be a matter of importance come morning.