One Good Turn (3 page)

'Because this is hell,' Stubbs said. 'And people want out. Take morphine like the Chinese sailors take it, and you're wherever you want to be. I know you. I've been watching. Get me a soft bed, get me a yellow armband and you and me can really go places. I reckon morphine's the one thing you boys can't get hold of and, funnily enough, it's the one thing I can.'

When Stubbs was at school, there was one Latin phrase he learned between his frequent beatings:
carpe diem.
Seize the day, it meant. Or as his old grandmother used to say: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Two days later, Stubbs was the personal servant of a Captain D'Arcy, whose full name was Lord Frederick Arthur D'Arcy. D'Arcy was hugely rich, as thick as a plank and a morphine addict. To be honest, Stubbs reckoned, the more drugs he took, the better it was for all concerned. God help the British Army if that joker ever got off his camp bed, and tried to do his bit for King and Country.

Stubbs's cushy job lasted two months. As long as his supply of morphine was there, he was left alone. But as soon as it dried up, it was all over. As demand for morphine increased, so the pressure on the doctor grew and in time he snapped. Instead of committing suicide, he gave up his job in the training camp and volunteered for the next best thing: to become attached to an infantry battalion on its way to the front for the next big push.

Without his supply of morphine, Stubbs's pet officer became very ratty. One day he woke up to find Stubbs going through his private letters, and it dawned on him that certain family heirlooms had gone missing recently. Now he came to think of it, this began when his new batman had arrived.

Captain D'Arcy was not a man to make a fuss, but he had gone to the right school and he knew the right people. That very day Stubbs was sent back to his old regiment. He was sent to the front with sixty pounds of kit on his back.

Now the prisoner's court martial was out of the way, he had been allowed to wash. He had found that the whole of his back was burned, as if he had been out in the fields for too long without a shirt. In two patches, the burning was more serious and his blisters covered raw flesh and pus.

A doctor had come in, taken a quick look at the weeping wounds and put a dressing on them. The prisoner knew why he hadn't taken more care: a firing squad was going to shoot him the morning after next. There was no point in wasting dressings on a man who was about to die, when there were men who could be saved elsewhere. Proper men. Proper heroes. Men who deserved to live.

The prisoner had also been unchained. He had moved an old chest, so that he could stand on it, underneath the broken airbrick. The light fell on his face and made him feel alive. And he liked trying to make out what the sounds were in the street outside: the rolling crunch of wagon wheels, the steady tramp of men marching, the murmur of French, the rare sound of birds.

Take two, do, take two. Take two, do, take two.

That was a woodpigeon.

Teacher, teacher, teacher.

That was a great tit.

All of a sudden he heard a voice in his head. 'And the yellowhammer, he goes:
a little bit of bread and no cheese.'

That was his father.

A picture, as clear as day, appeared in his mind. His father was talking to him at the ford by the big gate onto the moor. He loved the ford when he was little, loved the way the brown, peaty water curled around the stones and washed away the mud of the sheep and cattle.

Dartmoor. That was it. He was from Dartmoor, and his father had a small farm on the edge of the moor outside the village of Lydford. They had a flock of sheep, a few cows and a couple of Dartmoor ponies because his mother loved them.

The memories lit up the prisoner's mind like a shaft of golden sunlight. They were almost too vivid to bear. He could see his mother making clotted cream to sell to the hotel down by the station; and himself, as a boy, dipping his fingers through the crust when she wasn't looking and letting the velvety taste melt on his tongue and slip down his throat. He remembered saddling up Mouse, his own pony which he had hand-reared, and riding out for long days on the moor, and he heard the curlews calling from the valleys and saw the rooks and the buzzards circling overhead.

He remembered the harsh winters, wading thigh-deep through the snow to feed the cattle and check on the sheep. He remembered taking the job in the squire's stables where he mucked out, and helped look after the two great hunters the squire kept. Castor and Pollux they were called, and there weren't two other horses like them in Devon.

He was sixteen when the war started. Everyone had a father, a brother, an uncle or a friend who was caught up in it. But when the army started recruiting in Tavistock, the nearest town, his mother wouldn't let him go. The squire said the same thing when he caught the boy moping behind the stables and asked what the matter was.

'Don't be such a bloody idiot,' he snapped. 'War is war and to be avoided at all costs. I lost my brother in South Africa. Know how he died?'

'A Zulu warrior?' the boy asked hopefully.

'No.'

'A Boer?'

'No. Nor was it the Queen of Sheba. It was dysentery. Do you know what he was doing? He was running a place called a concentration camp and the dysentery swept through it. And who was in the camp? Boer women and Boer children: held there so the army could burn their farms and shoot their animals. That's war,' the squire said. 'Only a fool wants to fight.'

'But I want to do my bit. I want to have a go at the Hun.'

'A few years ago the Hun was your brother,' the squire growled. 'Prince Albert, our own King's father, was a bloody Hun. The Queen was a bloody Hun. The bloody King's a bloody Hun, if you ask me.' He stormed off, hitting the nettles with his walking stick. 'They're all bloody Huns!'

This had just left him even more miserable. How could he not fight when so many others of his age were joining the Devonshire Regiment? And what would it be like when they came home and found him still there, with straw in his hair and muck under his nails? The squire was bitter. That was all. For him it would be different.

He had left his sleeping parents with a loving goodbye note and had taken the 5.45 morning train from Lydford to Exeter. There he quickly found a recruiting station.

'How old are you, sonny?' the sergeant had asked.

'Seventeen, sir,' the prisoner had replied.

'Well, walk to the cathedral and back. By that time you'll be eighteen and old enough to enlist,' the sergeant had said with a wink.

All went smoothly. Training camp in the north of England was not very pleasant, until the drill sergeant discovered that he had a way with horses. Then everything changed.

In the old days when you joined the army, it was said that you took the King's Shilling. It was a joke these days that a horse was worth more than a man, because a man might cost a shilling but a horse could cost anything up to £40. Every week, gypsy traders would drive their horses to the camp to sell them. The prisoner was standing by the ring one day while an officer was trying to choose a mount. He looked from the outside of the ring and eventually pointed to a lively bay with a blaze on its forehead.

The prisoner could not believe his eyes, so much so that he ran up to the officer and blurted out: 'You can't buy that!'

The horse trader looked daggers at him. 'This is a fine horse,' he said. 'I've never seen the like and this gentleman is clever enough to spot it.'

'He's lame in the back leg. He's got no wind and his mouth's cut to ribbons, which means someone's tried to control him but failed. That's the best one in the ring,' he said, pointing to a quiet chestnut horse. 'He's strong and steady, but don't pay a penny over twenty quid for him.'

After that, he worked with horses and was happy.

Three weeks later he was in France, with the Artillery Brigade of the 7th Division.

The artillery couldn't work without horses. One of the horses' most important duties was to pull the field guns into position and keep them supplied with shells. As a good six-man gun crew could fire twenty rounds a minute for hours, the riders were kept busy bringing a supply of shells from the ammo dumps.

And it was true: the horses, wherever possible, were treated better than the men. They were stabled back from the lines, away from the worst of the German artillery fire; they did not live up to their knees in muddy water. And unlike a soldier, unless he was a high-ranking officer, each horse was looked after by a team of grooms and riders, who cared deeply for their animals.

The prisoner thought back to an event in July that summer, not so long ago. It was before the rains came, and the weather had been good. There had been rumours that the army was going to make a big push into Ypres, but no one took it seriously. He was experienced by then, but most of his work had been moving guns and ammunition behind the lines.

One morning, however, his sergeant, who was another Devon man called Sid Mitchell, had beckoned him over.

'Last night they moved four sections of B Battery forward,' Mitchell said grimly. 'They've been shot up badly and it's up to the lads of A Battery to keep them supplied.'

'What's the problem?' he asked. 'I mean, why is it worse than anything else?'

'Well, it's like this,' Sergeant Mitchell said. 'Our position is very exposed. All through the war, we've managed to keep hold of a sort of bulge that cuts into the enemy line. But here's the problem, son. This bulge is surrounded on three sides by enemy-held hills. That means our German chums can sit up there, bomb the hell out of us and we just have to take it. We've tried everything. We even dug under one of those hills and blew the whole thing up with 91,000 pounds of high explosives. The Prime Minister heard the explosion in Downing Street but even that hasn't changed things. You still cannot move in that bulge without a German on a hill seeing you and shooting at you with a rifle, or a cannon, or a howitzer. They specially like shooting at artillery trains. Are you ready for it, mate?'

'As I'll ever be,' the prisoner said. He went to make sure his team of horses were ready, and that the ammunition wagon was tightly packed so the shells couldn't slip around.

He was riding his lead horse through bullets and shells and pieces of flying metal and pushing it as fast as he dared. The enemy guns knew exactly where they were, had their range and were waiting for them. As soon as they got onto the narrow road, the bombardment shattered the sky. Lumps of metal hissed past his head. High explosives churned up the marshy earth on either side of the road. The mud that showered them was mixed with fragments of corpses that lay there.

There was a scream from behind! He stopped. One of the horses in the team behind had lost half a leg. The beast was plunging and rearing, screaming with pain, and would soon drag the rest of the team and the ammunition wagon off the road and into the mud.

'Ride on,' Sergeant Mitchell shouted. 'Get out of here! Get this ammo forward and maybe our guns firing can keep them quiet for a while. It's our only chance!'

The boy got his team going again. Once they were moving, the horses were easier to control, if you could stop them bolting. He kept his eyes ahead, trying not to take in the scene beside the road: dead horses, dead men, bits of men. Ahead of him and to the sides, he could see the low hills where the Germans waited. The battery he was trying to reach was a quarter of a mile further on, where there was a drier patch of ground.

When he reached the field guns, they were silent. Two had been knocked out, and one was surrounded by shattered bodies. The only one with a fit crew had sunk so deep into the mud that its barrel was pointing at the sky.

He saw what he had to do.

He called one of the gunners over. 'Help me unhitch the ammo cart and we can pull your gun out of the mud with the horses!'

The gunners unhitched the wagon, and he led the frightened beasts across the mud to the gun. Men from the other guns saw what was going on and came to help, as enemy shells howled overhead and exploded in mid-air, showering them with shrapnel. He coaxed the horses forwards and managed to turn them so the traces could be hitched to the back of the gun.

'Come on, you beauty,' he whispered in the leading horse's ears. 'Get us out of here. Come on. COME ON!'

He swung himself onto the horse's back, and leaned over its head to urge it on. He saw the great sinews in its shoulder shiver, felt its feet slip, hold, slip, hold.

'COME ON!'

The hooves gripped. The wheel of the gun moved an inch, then two. The men put their shoulders against the spokes and pushed with new strength and forced the wheel from the grip of the mud.

The gun was free! The horses had done it.

One of the gunners came up to him. His face was grim but determined. 'We'll be able to work the gun now. Thanks. What's your name, mate?'

'Ransom,' he said. 'Private Chris Ransom.'

'Well, you deserve a bloody medal. Now get the hell out of here.' A drop of rain fell on his face. 'Great. Rain. That's all we bloody need.'

Back in his cellar, the prisoner breathed a sigh of relief. He had a name. Surely everything would be all right now.

John Stubbs stood on the firing step of the trench, his gun snugly tucked into his shoulder. Above the trench, a rampart had been built out of sandbags – mudbags to be more accurate – and he was gazing through a tiny gap over no-man's-land. Look through anything bigger and a sniper would put a bullet through your eye. Sometimes the men put an old steel helmet on a stick, held it above the rampart and took bets on how long it would be before it was shot. The shortest time Stubbs had seen was three seconds.

He saw a movement and fired. The rifle kicked back into his shoulder and immediately his hand moved to the bolt and fed another round into the breech. He fired again. The rat, horribly fat, was knocked backwards from its perch on the back of some poor, sod who had died out there. Stubbs began to look for another one. It was better than doing nothing.

Rain ran off the brim of his tin helmet in a near solid waterfall. It fell on his front, his shoulders and down his back.

He was wet through, chilled to the bone and could not get any colder. In fact, he had been wet and cold for almost two months now, and had forgotten what it was like to be dry and warm. The big guns far behind their lines had started up before dawn. Shells moaned or whistled overhead, depending on their size. The ground shook.

The private next to him seemed to be shouting something. Even though he was only ten feet away, Stubbs couldn't hear a thing through the din. He pointed to his ear and shook his head.

The private glanced down the line, checking to make sure no one could see him leave his post, which was a court-martial offence, and shouted in Stubbs's ear: 'Attack's coming.'

Stubbs nodded.

'We're in the first wave.'

'Can't be,' Stubbs shouted back. 'We've been up here for eighteen hours. They always bring fresh troops up for an attack.'

'They've run out,' the private bawled back. 'Didn't you hear? The Aussies got cut up something rotten in some wood or other. It's up to us to win the war, mate.' He spat and moved back to his post.

Stubbs had been in attacks before but never in the first wave and he had always managed to fall into a handy shell hole and act wounded. But a new, fire-eating captain had arrived who would not allow any of his men to shirk.

Stubbs hunched down and tried to think of a way out of this mess.

The Big Push had taken place at the end of July and, like every other big push, had failed. The plan was to advance out of the bulge at Ypres and take the German hills that surrounded it. The Germans would then have to move a few divisions down to the battle. This would take the pressure off the French and even encourage them to mount an attack. There had been rumours that the entire French army was on the point of mutiny.

In preparation, special miners had dug tunnels under Messines Ridge, filled them with explosives and blown the hill up in the biggest man-made explosion the world had ever seen. Twenty thousand Germans died in that single explosion. Over the following weeks, three thousand guns had fired four and a half million shells to cut the German wire and knock out their machine-gun posts.

Then the rains had started. And a good summer had turned into the wettest one on record. But the British Army never let details like that stop an advance. The only trouble was, when they tried to attack, they got stuck.

The ground, which was wet already, turned into something no one had ever seen before: a new substance somewhere between mud and water. If you fell off one of the duckboard roads, you drowned, even though there might be men marching alongside you, just a few feet away. If horses or mules fell into the mud, they had to be shot because they were too heavy to pull out, and there was no way they could ever struggle free.

To attack across such ground was impossible, but wave after wave of men were sent into battle, only to sink up to their waists in mud and get shot by the enemy. Others tried to take shelter in craters, where they drowned. (Just as a reminder that no one ever learns the lessons of war, a cemetery where Belgian and French soldiers had been buried during the first weeks of the war, was blown up. The bodies were blown high into the air. When they landed, the men marvelled at their uniforms: the elaborate braid on their shoulders, the beautiful, useless helmets, the fine leather of their belts and boots.)

And on and on it went. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week.

Stubbs had more or less reached his breaking point. He could stand in a trench up to his thighs in water for hours on end, but could not do anything else. He was certain that, if he was ordered to go over the top, he would refuse. And if someone threatened to shoot him there and then, he would simply stand still and take the bullet.

His moment of truth had happened the day before, when his brigade had been moved forward after a couple of days behind the lines. They were marching along the duckboards when Stubbs realised that the ground beneath his feet was too soft. He looked down. Where he was marching, the duckboards had been blown up and, in their place, someone had lain a row of dead German soldiers, like closely packed railway sleepers. When you walked on them, stuff bubbled up from their mouths – or out of their necks, if they had no head.

None of the horrors he had seen before had particularly bothered him, but for some reason this did.

Deep down, he supposed, he must have some respect for his fellow man. Deep down, he must have hoped that when he died, his body would be treated with some respect. Now he saw that he would be treated . . . well, as badly as he had treated his fellow man when he was alive.

The attack could be only minutes away. Already the troops would be gathering in the trenches. Men would be touching lucky mascots, smoking a last cigarette, checking that the standard issue Bible was stuck firmly in a pocket over their hearts.

The bombardment was getting more intense. Stubbs felt a tap on his shoulder. A sergeant he dimly recognised was standing behind him, leading a group of men with trench ladders. The sergeant gestured for Stubbs to stand to one side, and he spread the fingers of his hand twice. Ten minutes to the attack? Stubbs felt sick. Odd how his mouth could go dry in all that wet.

He jerked his thumb at the dug-out behind him and mimed smoking a cigarette. The sergeant nodded.

The dug-out had been abandoned a couple of weeks before, when a German mortar shell had killed all the men in it. It had been the third time that had happened and the men now thought it unlucky. Now, all that was left of it was a sheet of corrugated iron balanced on top of some broken wooden props and a pile of old ammo boxes to sit on. Stubbs sat down next to a roll of telephone wire and a pot of paint for making the signposts that were the only way to get around the maze of trenches.

He tried to think.

In response to the British guns, the German guns started to fire. Shells exploded either side of the trench, showering it with mud. Shrapnel whistled past. Fragments rattled on the thin iron roof. This would go on until the British 'creeping barrage' started. This was a line of exploding shells that moved slowly forward and cleared the ground in front of it. The idea was that, with the shells landing all around them, the German artillery and machine-gunners would have to keep their heads down, and the British troops could advance in some safety. Of course, it never worked like that.

Stubbs felt panic rising.

An enormous explosion shook the ground, blowing the roof of the shelter high into the air. But as it crashed down inches from Stubbs, a desperate idea came to him. He slipped his rifle off his back, and before he could think things through, dug the sharp edge of the bayonet into his forehead and opened up a jagged wound. At first he could just feel a cold dull pain. Then it quickly turned hot as the blood ran from the wound over his forehead and down into his eyes.

He staggered into the trench, one hand clamped to his forehead, the other waving ahead of him.

'Help me, help me. Oh my God, I can't see! I'm blind!'

His hand was torn away from his forehead and he heard a voice calling for first aid. Stubbs felt hands dab at his forehead and clear the blood from his eyes.

'We haven't got time for this, doc. Just slap a bandage on him and he can sit tight. What's the matter, doc?'

Stubbs looked at the soldier the captain was calling doc, and his heart sank. It was the doctor from the Bullring. The game was up.

'I think you'll find he's fit, sir,' the doctor said.

'Really? What makes you think that?'

'Flesh wound, sir, and self-inflicted. Look at his bayonet tip.'

'What?'

If Stubbs had kept his head he might have got away with it, but he cracked.

'You bastard!' he shouted. 'You evil bastard!'

'I know this man,' the doctor said. 'He was . . . he's a crook and a coward. He waited for a big shell burst, then nicked his forehead with his bayonet to make it look like a shrapnel wound. I'm sure of it, sir.'

The captain's whole manner changed. Now he spoke in a cold, clipped voice. 'Normally, I'd send you back to HQ. in irons or shoot you on the spot. But I've got a better idea. I know how to punish you properly. Doc – tie up that man's head. Sergeant, see that white paint? I don't want to lose this worthless piece of scum in the smoke. Take the brush and paint a white C, big as you like, on the back of his tunic. I'm going to be right behind him with a gun. Right, men, into positions. Wait for it. Wait for it. Remember, men – the barrage moves at a steady marching pace. No slacking! Keep up the pace! No one wants to get caught in the open!'

He took out a pocket watch.

The barrage from the British guns started up with a new fury. Faintly, from the left and right, came the sound of whistles. The sergeant blew his, and Stubbs found himself being pushed up the ladder and over the top of the trench. He felt the captain's gun in his back, heard him shouting and then simply concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

Ahead of him he could see the flashes of the shells exploding through the wall of smoke. For about five yards, the going was awful. Then it got worse. It was a huge effort just to lift his feet up out of the sucking mud.

Another five yards, and the mud was over his knees. Stubbs found that just lifting his leg high enough to take a step sent burning waves of agony along his thighs. One step, then another, then another.

'On, on!' The captain's voice was high and frantic.

No wonder. The men were making almost no progress and the barrage was moving further and further ahead. By now they should have gone a hundred yards. In fact, they had not moved a hundred feet and the line of men was broken as they all struggled to move forward in any way they could.

He heard the captain shout 'Hold the line! Hold the line!' but it was hopeless. Stubbs decided to make progress as slow as possible, slipping and falling, and then taking an age to get up. Now it was getting really important to find shelter. If the barrage passed over the first few German guns without knocking them out, the British soldiers would be caught in the open. They would be sitting ducks.

The going got even harder. They were creeping up a slight rise. In front of them the ground was dotted with broken trees. Trunks were blasted off about two feet from the ground. Roots twisted their way through the mud as if they were desperate to escape. The roots tripped them; the trunks forced them to find ways round them. There were bodies everywhere. Bodies and bits of bodies. Stubbs rested his weight on a tree trunk to try and get his breath back. His lungs felt as if they were on fire and he had lost a boot in the mud somewhere.

Then he felt his senses sharpen and he peered ahead. The smoke from the barrage was beginning to thin, and he thought he had seen something grey and solid out there.

'Keep moving, man! Hurry!' The captain jabbed at him.

He took a step. Then another. Directly ahead lay a crater so big that it could only have been made by one of the huge mortar shells. There was a pool of water at the bottom. But because they were on a slight rise, the water table was that much lower and the sides of the crater would give some protection.

'Don't stop or I'll –'

Two things happened at the same time. Twenty yards ahead of them a machine gun started up, flashes flickering through the smoke. At the same time, a shell exploded in the air ten yards behind them. Stubbs and the officer were blown forward by the blast into the crater.

Stubbs felt himself slip down the muddy sides of the hole. He let go of his rifle and dug into the mud with his fingernails.

His feet splashed into the water. It rose higher and higher. Now it was round his knees, now his thighs, now his chest. He'd seen men hide themselves in craters only to drown. He forced his fingers into the mud and, just as he felt the chill wet of the water tickle his chin, he managed to hold on.

The water was helping him to float. By plunging his hands deep into the mud, he managed to work his way round the edge of the pool to where the sides were not so steep. Above him, he could see the officer crawling towards the crater's rim.

He followed.

The German machine gun just in front of them was firing non-stop now, and sounded very close. Stubbs lifted his head very slowly above the crater's edge. The gun was in a concrete pillbox, its muzzle poking out from the dark slit. It was so close that he could see the detail of its barrel. It was familiar to him, of course: the gun the Germans used to mow down the Allies was almost the same gun that the Allies used to mow down the Germans.

The captain climbed sideways until he was close to Stubbs. 'Right, Private,' the captain said, 'no one's going anywhere fast as long as that gun is pinning us down. What say we take it out?'

Stubbs glanced at the officer. This was the same man who had driven him into battle at gunpoint?

'What do you suggest, sir?' he asked.

'Right, what I'm asking you to do isn't going to be easy. In fact, you are going to need a cool head and every scrap of grit you've got. I want you to go about ten feet in that direction over there and take a few shots at the pillbox to draw his fire. That should give me enough time to stick my head up and post a couple of Mills bombs down the letter box. Do this and . . . well, I'll forget the little incident earlier, eh?'