The Somme Stations

Railway Magazine in the stove?

When I was relieved, by Dawson, I went straight to sleep, but dreamt again – this time of the trenches. It appeared that the war invaded sleep as well as the waking hours. I was just dangling about in no man’s land waiting to be shot, looking out for an opportunity to die with no particular feelings about it either way. Corporal Newton came up to me and said, ‘You’re in the wrong place, mate. You ought to be over here.’ Then the red cap, Thackeray, was before me on his horse. A voice – it was Bernie Dawson’s – said, ‘You can tell he’s a bastard just by the expression on his face – on his horse’s face, I mean.’ The horse, and Thackeray, moved off, and I was awake. In the light of the candle stub that still burned by Tinsley’s couch, I inspected the tavern room. Two couches were empty: Oliver Butler’s, and Scholes’s. Oliver Butler would be standing sentry, but Scholes, I knew, did not have a sentry duty that night. He ought to have been sleeping. His kit bag was there, and his rifle ought to have been propped against it, but I couldn’t make it out. Then again, the room was half enclosed in darkness. I went over and picked up the candle, looking harder. I then put on my trousers and my boots; I took up my own rifle, and walked out. No sound came from the direction of the front. I heard a cough, and there was Scholes on the margin of the wood, sitting on a broken tree. He wore his uniform, with tunic unbuttoned. ‘Where’s your rifle?’ I said, walking fast up to him.

‘Under the couch. Why? Did you think I’d make away with myself?’

I leant against the tree.

‘Thackeray gave you a tough time of it.’

‘He tried his best,’ said Scholes. ‘Tried his best and succeeded.’

‘What about the bike?’

‘You’ve heard about that, have you? Evidently, I didn’t find it, but put it on the dune. Fact is…’ he said, finally looking up at me, ‘I did come upon it earlier. I’d seen it ten minutes before and I was just wondering what to do about it – if anything. I just knew that some copper would take that line if I spoke up about seeing the bike. That’s the thing about this war, isn’t it? The world’s gone out of balance: there’s no good luck any more.’

‘Did you explain that to him? About the bike, I mean?’

Scholes nodded. ‘I think I’m off the hook for now. I told him I’m a policeman myself, I don’t commit crimes. He said, “You were. You were a policeman. I’m the law now.” I haven’t seen the last of him, none of us has. He means to keep cases on all of us. He has a down on all our lot.’

‘Our unit?’ I said, ‘The Northumberlands? Railwaymen?’

But I knew the answer.

‘Volunteers,’ said Thackeray. ‘The New Army. He calls us the militia. He says we might have the grateful thanks of the public, but we don’t have his grateful thanks. He wanted to make that quite clear. He said, “Do you understand?” and he wouldn’t let me go until I said “Yes”. Quinn was decent about it. He took me aside afterwards and said this was all “rather irregular”, and he’d do his best to look out for me.’

I offered Scholes a Woodbine. Two rifle cracks came from the direction of the front. A low rumble followed.

‘No thanks,’ he said, and he looked too depressed to smoke.

‘He plays the cello,’ said Scholes, kicking at the hard mud.

‘Who does?’

‘Quinn. He told me.’

I said, ‘I can just see him doing that.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Frowning over it, you know.’

‘Oh.’

‘Thackeray…’ I said. ‘He has the twins in his sights as well, evidently.’

‘He said they’re a pair of loonies. He’d been told that by our regimental police… Well, they are aren’t they? How did they get past the recruiting sergeant?’

An owl hooted from somewhere among the broken, ash-coloured trees.

I said, ‘It must be fucking mad, that owl, to be hanging about here. Do you remember that one in York station?’

‘That’s just it,’ said Scholes. ‘You’ve got to say York station because it’s all gone now… I tell you what,’ he said, looking hard at me, and with a kind of desperation, ‘if Thackeray does come back for me, I’ll tell him what I really know.’

For the first time in his life, Scholes had surprised me.

‘You mean you didn’t?’

‘No.’

‘Will you tell me?’

‘I will not.’

I lit my Woodbine, and at the very moment of the match striking the box, I heard another sound. We both turned about, and there was a figure in the trees. He held a rifle, not in the firing position, but I had the idea that he wouldn’t have to adjust the position of it so very much to loose one off. It was Oliver Butler. I called after him, but he just turned and walked back towards the tavern, in the doorway of which stood Oamer, half dressed, and with folded arms, looking somehow like a mother about to reprimand her children for staying out late.

West of Aveluy Wood: The Last Day of June and the First Day of July 1916

As we – that is, the 17th Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers in its entirety – made towards our assembly point for the big push, marching in fours along a straight, dusty road, some of the blokes were looking at the flowers growing in the margins of the fields of hard mud. Mustard flowers were identified and certain kinds of poppy. But Alfred Tinsley, walking alongside me, was looking beyond the flowers and instead gazing into the field on our left, where he had some time ago detected a railway line, albeit a little one. As we pushed on, the railway line gradually coincided with our road. The rails were newly laid, and had been put down directly on the baked grey earth. They were only two feet apart.

‘There you are, Jim,’ said Tinsley, indicating the line. ‘That’s us.’

He meant that we would soon be working on it, or one similar – or he hoped we would. If we came through the push, we would certainly be applying.

That morning, when we’d set off from our latest billet, Oamer had read out a circular, beginning: ‘Particulars of NCOs and men required with experience of railway operating and railway workshops, and the following railway trades…’ It was signed, Oamer had told us, by Captain Leo Tate, that cheery Royal Engineer late of Spurn Head. It appeared that narrow-gauge railways were the coming thing on the Western Front: the latest way of taking men and materiel to forward positions. The line accompanied us, in a companionable sort of way, for perhaps half a mile of our tramp, then we diverted towards our assembly point while the track aimed itself at one of the broken woods on the horizon.

Also that morning, Oamer had told us that Sergeant Major fucking Thackeray of the Military Mounted Police had written to Captain Quinn saying he meant to question once again some or all of the section. It seemed he was based at Albert, where the military police detachment of the Fourth Army had its headquarters – so he was handily placed for making our lives a misery. We had been informed, in turn, that Quinn had written to the army legal service requesting representation for any men so questioned – and it was made quite clear to us once again that Quinn believed the death of Harvey to be an accident; and that he did not approve of Thackeray’s continuing with the matter.

Some lorries came past us, some London buses, and I thought: yes, the front line is the terminus. The buses got a cheer, although we didn’t know who was in them. It was just the thought of every last British thing being pitched in against the Boche. We were to take the pressure off the French at Verdun, or something of the sort. After the buses, the artillery blokes kept coming: six horses at a time, harnessed in pairs and kicking up dust, a man