The Somme Stations

Aveluy Railhead and Points East: Early September 1916

‘I’ll just give her a breath of steam.’

Tinsley, shovelling coal, looked up at me and grinned. It had been the right thing to say.

Then – since I’d caught a bit of a chill – I pressed my right nostril and blew snot from my left down onto the footplate, at which his grin faded.

‘I’ve just swept that,’ he said.

‘It’s a bloody footplate,’ I said, ‘it’s not carpeted.’

The light was fading over the Dump as I eased back the regulator. We would be the first train to go out. We had six carriages on – and Oliver Butler as chief brakesman. He stood on the rear of the back wagon, controlling its brake, and it would be his job to tell Dawson when to apply the brake on his own wagon, which was the third. It was to be hoped that these two brakes and those on the engine would do the job. Two other trains were all ready in the sidings to come onto the main ‘Up’ – the line that led to the front, where the ‘hate’ was building up nicely. The sky over there glowed green and red, colours that periodically shook.

Tinsley and I had both had a tot of rum. We’d taken it in the running office, where the lines going forward were all mapped out on a blackboard. Oamer had drawn thick lines (with the side of the chalk) for the lines already put down, and thin lines (with the end of the chalk) for the extensions and branches that would be laid shortly by the Butler twins, amongst others of the tough, silent, platelaying breed. Control points on the line – both existing and planned – were also marked. These took, or would take (since only one was actually operative at that moment) the form of one or more blokes in a dug-out. They would be equipped with a telephone and a lamp for indicating to the engine crews whether they could proceed.

We were stuck with this Somme offensive, which was a very bloody and slow one. Some of the New Army Battalions had been half wiped out, and word was that the whole of the town of Accrington was draped in black, for the Accrington Pals had had a particularly hard time of it at the start of the show.

The business in hand for us was the endless bloody scrap over the village of Pozieres, or what was left of it. The narrow-gauge railway now went a little further towards that shattered village – about level with the latest line of reserve trenches, but there was also a new feature: a branch off to the right, which is to say to the east, for the supply of batteries targeting German strongholds at spots like Bazentin le Petit, Delville Wood, Ginchy, Combles. It was hoped to capture these places and make of them a new front.

We would be running along the new branch, and delivering our goods to two gun positions served by it. As we rolled away, I noticed that about half the blokes at the Dump, some holding lamps, had turned out to see us go off. They were watching the fruits of their labour, namely the start of the regular runs. Riding with us on the footplate was Captain Muir, the quiet sort who’d been dead wrong about us all coming back in one piece from the last run. He kept making notes in a little book that he pulled periodically from his pocket.

By shutting off steam, and opening the sand valves, I avoided wheelslip on the greasy rails as we climbed the incline to the first of the trees, and he made a note of that – or, more likely, of something altogether different, since I did not believe he was familiar with engine driving techniques.

I looked at Tinsley, who was shovelling coal.

‘Little and often with the coal and water,’ he said – this for the benefit of Muir, by way of explanation, because in moving to the firehole Tinsley would keep requiring the officer to step aside. ‘Little and often… That’s Tom Shaw’s motto,’ he said to me, as he closed the firehole door. I frowned at the kid, and he hesitated for only a fraction of time before cottoning on and opening the firehole door. That was one way to keep our production of smoke to the minimum – draw in cold air so as to discharge the products of combustion.

We were in good nick, keeping the pressure nicely: little simmer of steam from the safety valve. I leant out to see… Yes, grey ghost in attendance at the chimney top. We’d finally found a good place for our billy-can full of tea (wedged behind the lubricator pipes), and we had the grenade in our locker for blowing the whole fucking lot up at short notice.

On the debit side of the equation, it was pissing down; and if a shell landed on us or within ten feet then we were goners, not to mention – in view of the volatile load we carried – any other poor bugger within quarter of a mile. I put the odds against that happening at no higher than twenty-to-one, and I kept asking myself whether this meant that, after twenty trips, we’d definitely cop it? Captain Muir, the Oxford or Cambridge man, would know.

Moving further under the cover of our mean cab roof, and closer to the fire, I took out my Woodbines, offering them about. No takers, and in fact Muir made another note. What was he writing? ‘Driver smokes Woodbines.’ Not for long, I wouldn’t be doing. This was my last packet; I’d have to start on the Virginians Select that the Chief had given me. Had the Virginians Select been selected by Virginians? It was a nicety that had occupied me ever since I’d clapped eyes on the packets.

A shell landed – first of the night.

It did not leave my ears singing, so it couldn’t have been very near, but I could not see where it was, since we were enclosed by the broken trees, which would appear to repeatedly walk forwards so as to commit suicide – being in such a terrible state to begin with – on the track before us, but always stopped short or over-stepped the rails at the last moment. Blowing smoke, I looked over the coal bunker. Both Oliver Butler and Dawson were staring back my way. I could not quite make out the expression on Butler’s face (being on the last wagon, he was too far off), but I didn’t doubt it was a sour one. He at any rate had apparently not discovered that I’d once nicked Harvey’s natural father, for if he had known, he’d have brought it up. Dawson put up his hand to acknowledge me. He also had a Woodbine on the go of course. Didn’t see him on Virginians Select. Bernie Dawson and his sort were just made for Woodbines. Why, the cigarette practically smoked him. There was something easy-going about the Woodbine man, and that was Dawson’s nature all right, except when he was on the John Smith’s bitter. He’d said nothing further to me about our close shave in Albert with Sergeant Major Thackeray, and this was just as I’d expected. It wasn’t shame that made him clam up; in fact, if you tried to bring the matter up, he’d just give you a polite smile and a faint look of puzzlement as if you’d been the one behaving badly, and so were being rather ‘off’ in recollecting the matter. Or perhaps he just didn’t remember. He had clean forgotten about the cut to my knuckle sustained in the Hope and Anchor, or so I assumed.

Tinsley was shovelling coal again, but as he swung the little shovel towards the firehole, the engine jolted and he did a missed shot.

‘Oh heck,’ he said, and he was down on his knees picking up the lumps and chucking them in by hand.

‘Keen,’ observed Muir, who’d stepped over to my side to get out of Tinsley’s way.

I nodded. ‘He lives to write himself down “passed fireman”.’

‘And what will he do then?’ enquired Muir, who obviously didn’t know much about footplate life.

‘Then he’ll fire engines,’ I said, ‘for a little while…’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Well, twenty years. After that, he’ll drive them.’

Tinsley had just regained his feet when the engine gave another lurch that nearly over-toppled us all, not to mention the engine itself. The twins had walked the track the day before, looking for faults, but both engine and wagons were shaking about like buggery. I moved the reverser back a notch to quieten things down a bit.

‘That good old whirring,’ Tinsley said, nodding to himself, ‘that beat.’

We emerged from the remains of Aveluy Wood and began to climb. The shell noise was fairly continuous now, but nothing had so far come near. The rain had found the right angle for soaking us, and the track was slimy into the bargain. I put down more sand as we came by the crater-pond where Captain Leo Tate had died. The water remained uncollected, looking black and evil; in fact the quantity was growing. The different rumble came as we went over the Ancre on the girder bridge, and Captain Muir leant out, doing his best to see the bridge and the water below. He made another note.

We passed what Tate had called the Old Station; next came Holgate Villa. Men were moving about beyond it. What lot were they?

A new feature came up now: a passing loop. I could just make it out in the dark. In time there’d be a control point there. The twins had been part of the gang that had put that in – made a decent job of it, too, since we didn’t jar on the points. We came into the next lot of trees, and were descending now, so the bloody things seemed to be