‘Get up and get into place and I’ll tell you when to take cover. Stay in your place!’
Hamish thrust a Lee-Enfield rifle into Stanley’s hands.
‘Fix the bayonet.’
Stanley fixed the bayonet and rotated it. He was in the front line; would have to defend himself – to kill, if necessary. He slid the bayonet abruptly into its housing over the barrel.
‘If you need tae, drive that toothpick as far home as you can. Aye, and twist it too, before you pull it out – It’s him or you, and for my sake, make sure it’s him.’
There were more shouts.
‘Stay where you are and hold the line!’
‘You’re going into action at once!’
Stanley was pushed aside as another rush of men – not Australians, these, but men in English khaki – came over the fire step and plunged along the trench. Was that the red rose of the East Lancs on those collar badges? Were they men of Tom’s battalion?
Abandoning the bayonet, Stanley rushed after them. Were they Lancashires? Leaping and dodging, he forced his way downstream through the rush of men, with Pistol at his heels, weightless and agile as a shadow. The last of the Lancashires, the one at the back – that one! That last one was Tom’s height and build. Stanley ran, shouting frantically, ‘Tom! Tom!’
No one turned or stopped.
‘Tom!’ Stanley called again, scrambling through men. He reached the intersection and snatched at the back of a coat, missed and snatched again at a sleeve.
‘Tom Ryder. Was he with you? Tom Ryder?’ The soldier rushed on, and Stanley felt, where an arm should be, only a fraying cuff which disintegrated in his hands. He opened his palm and saw shreds of bloodied cloth. Too desperate to compass the man’s wound, Stanley ran on, caught another man by the shoulders, and made him turn.
‘Sir, sir, was Tom Ryder with you? Do you know Tom Ryder?’
The man looked at Stanley, his eyes glassy with fear. ‘Yes, he’s out there, cut off in the Monument. What’s left of C Company is up there with what’s left of the Second West Yorks. Brave, your Tom Ryder – held Jerry up with a revolver, kept on shooting, on and on, gave his men time to pull sandbags into place. There’s a machine gun on them somewhere, snipers on them everywhere, they’re sitting ducks – no ammunition, can’t get a message out, the Signal Station is blown to bits.’ He shook his head, turned and moved on.
Stanley leaped up the nearest fire step, straining to see the group of trees he knew to be the Monument. Everything was quiet there. Behind him, someone was shouting, ‘Retire and get the lads back! Get the lads back!’
Stanley forced his way upstream against the flow of men, back to his post. With trembling, mud-clogged hands, he grabbed his field glasses, and again scanned the ring of trees around the plain.
The Brigadier-General was back, walking along the trench. His voice was calm and slow.
‘Stay where you are. Hold the line. Company Commanders to assemble at the double. We’re in the most advanced position. The enemy’s broken through on our immediate front. It’s through and past us on the right flank.’
Fidget was huddled on Stanley’s platform, next to his pigeon basket. Sodden strands of straw-coloured hair clung to Fidget’s streaming forehead, his gaunt face a picture of alarm, fog and confusion in his watery eyes. The day had perhaps been too much for him. His eyes skittered and his mouth was helter-skelter as he said, ‘We’ll never get out . . . never get out . . .’
Stanley gave an irritated shake of the shoulders. ‘We’re better off than the men in the Aquenne. Would you rather be there?’
‘Stay where you are. Hold the line. Stay where you are. Hold the line . . .’
An hour passed while officers collected stragglers and non-combatants. Men of all stripes were armed, anyone who could still hold a rifle – tailors, grooms, buglers, officer’s batmen, even Cook. Fidget and Stanley waited in line, with bayonets fixed. They were given a dry biscuit, then stretched out into a skeleton battle formation.
The rain was lighter now. Stanley could see where the line, to the left, was scattered and broken, manned by an exhausted ragtag battalion. The English 8th Division in the front line was overwhelmed, had sustained losses beyond endurance. The medical services were overwhelmed, and in the shaft beyond Fidget, wounded Lancs and Yorks were being patched up by their own comrades.
Hamish and the sappers, under Captain McManus’s direction, were setting up equipment in Stanley’s dug-out, building a new forward Signal Station. Stanley, eyes straying helplessly towards the Monument, was supposed to be rigging up the Aldis lamp.
‘There’ll be a counter-attack,’ said Hamish grimly. ‘The generals won’t let Amiens fall, won’t let Villers stay in German hands. There’s no option for them. Sooner or later, there’s going to be a counter-attack.’
Pistol half sat, half crouched, trying to keep his haunches above the sump water of the trench, never taking his eyes off Stanley. An iron roof was dragged over the trench, men hauled up reels of cable, looped wires around the walls, set up the instruments. Looking up from his polishing of the lamp’s lens, Stanley saw the grey dog raise his head too. He saw the dog’s unexceptional looks and he saw in his solemn eyes the wise and loyal soul within. Hamish, too, watched as Pistol’s nose followed Stanley’s hands as they coiled the wire of the lamp, and said, ‘By any measure, that dog is more, laddie, than a dog.’
Early afternoon, 24 April 1918
Aquenne Wood, near Cachy
Stanley looked, for the thousandth time, to the north-west, to the shards of trees that clawed the sky, like desperate fingerless hands.
A Brigade Commander appeared with new staff, all fresh and clean.
‘We must counter-attack at once. B Company will be in the centre, C Company will take the right. Get ready. There’s no time to waste.’
There was disbelief and resignation in the faces of the infantrymen, exhaustion in their slumped bodies, but once again they readied themselves for an inspection and waited for what might have been an hour. There were more shouts, a patrol, waiting, more waiting, more shouts, another patrol.
For another hour nothing happened. The rain exhausted itself. Disagreements within the High Command filtered down as counter-commands.
‘Stay where you are. Hold the line. There’ll be no attack.’
A Lieutenant-Colonel appeared. ‘You’re going into action at once.’
He was met by a Brigadier-General with a rugged and honest face.
‘Brigadier-General Glasgow,’ whispered Fidget.
‘All our artillery is out of action and the enemy has all his guns in position. We’ll be annihilated by the machine-gun emplacements in the Monument if we try to attack.’ The Brigadier-General’s voice was deep and calm, his Australian accent exotic and strange to Stanley. ‘If it was God Almighty who gave the order, we wouldn’t do it in daylight.’ It was good, thought Stanley, to be commanded by such a man.
In the mid afternoon the sun appeared fully. Stanley’s sodden uniform began to steam. The sump water of the trench gave out a rank sweat.
Had Tom escaped? Stanley raised his field glasses and scanned the maze of ridges and pits below, seeing only shovels, water bottles, tin hats, maps, flares, stretchers, petrol tins, bully tins and groundsheets. Was Tom out there, washed up amidst the relics of things that had once been? Stanley saw a figure wriggling, like a worm, out of one shell hole into another. The man didn’t stand a chance, couldn’t even steady a gun in that mud.