The Emma Harte 7-Book Collection: A Woman of Substance, Hold the Dream, To Be the Best, Emma’s Secret, Unexpected Blessings, Just Rewards, Breaking the Rules. Barbara Taylor BradfordЧитать онлайн книгу.
a furious drive to his right into Trônes Wood. The wood stretched across a narrow valley along which a stream ran to Fricourt, and the Germans had two railway lines running through it, connecting it with Guillemont and Combles. Trenches extended across the centre of the wood and down the northern and southern sides; wire entanglements reinforced by machine guns protected the western edge against assault. In essence, it was a long, wide wedge of ground, 1,400 yards from north to south, and 400 yards along its base, driven against the enemy’s second line at Guillemont and Longueval.
The British had already moved into the wood and the Lancashires had gained a partial grip on this dense green tract. But there was a terrible disadvantage to this new British salient. It was covered on all sides by German infantry. General von Arnim was exerting all his available strength in men and shell to hold and cut off this long strip of woodland. Four times the British had advanced further and been repulsed by von Arnim, who was spending his men’s lives in tens of thousands to recover the whole of Trônes Wood, a vital and strategic position in the great Somme Offensive. At night, unperturbed by his incredible losses, von Arnim flung out more divisions to repeat the enveloping assault. For the fifth time, his men utterly failed under a hurricane of shell fire from British guns west of the wood and French guns near Hardecourt. But a sixth desperate attack by the British enabled the German general to regain the greater part of the wood. Meanwhile, Sir Henry Rawlinson’s orders had come down to the British field commanders operating below the Bazentin ridges: Smash through Trônes Wood, destroy the German bulwark and press on and upward to Longueval and Bazentin.
Now on the afternoon of 13 July the wood was again swept by Allied artillery as the Seaforth Highlanders approached to reinforce the Lancashires. It was a grey day, the overcast sky fiercely illuminated by great arcs of vivid red gunfire and exploding shells, and filled with British aeroplanes strafing German observation balloons.
‘Fix bayonets!’ came the terse command.
Metal hit metal with deadly precision.
‘Forward march!’
Rifles drawn and ready, they moved ahead, in perfect step, as though they were one giant body of tartan and khaki, backs straight, eyes sharp, heads held proudly high. They were tall and strapping men, these Seaforth Highlanders, whose fierce indomitable courage and their dark green-and-navy regimental kilts had induced the enemy to name them ‘the ladies from hell’.
Into the wood they moved, stalwart and determined in their deadly purpose, seeking a terrible vengeance for their fallen comrades. The battle was atrocious in its ferocity and men were mercilessly cut down in increasing numbers on both sides. After several hours of general ploughing fire, the British guns massed in a single gigantic machine-like effect, tearing up the ground, hurtling mud and rocks, trees and men wantonly into the air. But this massive effort, as terrible and as destructive as it was, enabled the Seaforth Highlanders to drive the enemy back. The British penetrated deeper and deeper into the wooded area, now so smashed and riven apart it looked as if it had been cracked open by an earthquake.
After swaying, hand-to-hand fighting of the most relentless kind, a group of the Seaforths won a small but satisfying victory when they managed to capture the upper portion of the wood. A young captain, who was the only senior officer in the group, set up temporary battalion headquarters with a couple of lieutenants and instructed the men to seek cover in the trenches running on the southern edge of the forest. Their orders: Hold fast to the last man.
Blackie O’Neill wearily wiped the mud from his face and glanced around swiftly at the men in his trench, his bloodshot eyes seeking out Joe Lowther. He was not amongst the handful crowded together and Blackie wondered, with numbing dread and the most awful sinking feeling, if he was alive or dead? Had Joe made it to this sector? Or was he out there with the other corpses? Blackie crushed down on this fearful thought, refusing to contemplate such a chilling idea. Perhaps Joe was with the rest of the regiment who had been thrown back with the Lancashires. He prayed to God he was.
Spotting a particular pal, a Yorkshireman called Harry Metcalfe, Blackie edged down past the other men to join him, his boots sinking into the slime which squelched and sucked around his calves and seeped through his gaiters. His nose curled with distaste. The mire had a peculiar putrid smell of its own and intermingled with it was the gagging stench of urine, vomit and excrement, strong reminders of the previous occupants.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! There’s so much bleeding mud we’re going to drown in it before we get out of here,’ Blackie said when he reached Harry.
‘Aye, there’s summat to that, lad.’
‘Have you seen Joe Lowther? We got separated out there.’
‘Last I saw of him he was going arse over tit into a trench back yonder. He’s safe, mate.’
‘Thank God for that. I thought he’d bought it.’
‘No, he didn’t, but a lot of our lads did. I saw MacDonald and Clarke both go down like ninepins. Poor bloody sods. Mac got blown to smithereens by a shell and Clarkey was shot in the face and chest. Mashed to a pulp he was.’
‘Oh sweet Jesus! Clarkey has a young wife and couple of bairns back home. Just babies.’ Blackie’s eyes closed, his face grim. ‘Oh God! This lousy rotten war! This stinking filthy lousy rotten war!’
‘Here, take it easy, Irish,’ Harry said, throwing him a sympathetic look.
Blackie leaned back against the wall of the trench, resting his head against a sandbag. He was suddenly drained of all strength and filled with a rising nausea caused by the feculent trench, the stink of smoke and explosives polluting the air, and the gamy effluvium of the men. All were fouling his nostrils. The pounding of the cannons still reverberated in his ears and for a moment a dizziness enveloped him.
‘You badly, Blackie lad?’
‘No, just catching me breath,’ Blackie said, opening his eyes. He looked more closely at Harry. His khaki jacket was covered in blood. ‘How about you? You didn’t get hit, did you, Harry?’
‘No, not me. I’m just caked with this pissing mud. And a Jerry’s guts.’ Harry glanced down at the khaki apron covering his kilt, which all Highland troops were issued with for battle, and made a face. ‘And when this muck hardens I’ll be as stiff as a board. You too, by the looks of you, me old cock.’
‘Don’t tempt providence,’ Blackie protested, his Celtic hackles rising. And then he laughed, grimly amused by his ridiculous comment. Here they were, engaged in violent warfare, their lives on the line, and he was being superstitious.
Harry gave him a lopsided grin. ‘Got a fag-end, mate?’
‘Sure an’ I do, Harry.’ Blackie fumbled for his cigarettes and they each lit one.
‘It’s no bloody wonder our lads call this Hell Hole Wood. It was a sodding inferno out there. We’ve had a lucky escape, Irish. Aye, we have that.’ Harry pushed back his helmet and rubbed his muddy face with his equally muddy hands. ‘I’ll tell you this, Blackie, I never thought I’d be hankering to get back to Huddersfield to me nagging old woman, but by bleeding hell I wish I was there right at this minute, listening to her nag. And supping a nice warm pint of bitter. I do that. She suddenly seems like Lady Godiva to me – and with bells on!’
Blackie grinned but said nothing. He was thinking of his own sweet Laura. He closed his eyes, drawing on the soothing memory of her loveliness, of her shining immaculate face, to obliterate the visions of death and bloodshed that engulfed his mind.
‘Here, mate, don’t start copping forty winks!’ Harry nudged Blackie in the ribs. ‘Got to keep our bleeding wits about us, you knows, at a time like this. We ain’t on a flaming day trip to Blackpool, lad.’
Blackie blinked, straightened up to his full height and drew on his cigarette. He and Harry exchanged full and knowing glances and hunched further together, settling in to wait. They did not know what was in store for them or what their inevitable fate would be, and neither of them dwelt on it. For the moment they were relieved to have this small respite from the horrendous fighting.