Casca 21: The Trench Soldier Read online

  The cafe proprietor had meanwhile freed himself and called the gendarmerie who were searching the streets for two British soldiers described as "of enormous physique and hideous aspect and heavily armed." They found no such monsters, and the search was called off.

  At dawn the next morning Casca and the others were carried on a mule-drawn cart to a railroad station where they were loaded into a cattle truck. Captain George was conveyed separately and was placed in a passenger car with a number of junior French officers. On the platform a band was playing the Marseillaise to cheer the long train of cattle wagons crammed with troops, horses, and mules on their way to the front.

  On the opposite platform another band was playing the Marseillaise to welcome an ambulance train returning from the front loaded with men in muddied, torn uniforms, swathed in blood-soaked bandages. On both platforms fashionably dressed women were handling out little French flags, sprigs of flowers, and tracts from the Bible.

  Cockney Dave considered that they had done well. "If we had behaved ourselves like good boys, we would be walking back to the unit – and we'd have missed this fine entertainment," he said as he tried to fondle the front of the dress of a woman handing him a pamphlet.

  Back at their lines they were paraded before Major Cartwright who seemed to have some trouble suppressing a grin as he read to them the note of protest that he had received from the office of the Military Governor of Paris. "Disgraceful events such as this must be speedily and heavily punished if the unity of the great nations of the Triple Entente is not to founder upon the rocks of such barbarism. At this historical juncture, we cannot afford to tolerate such outbreaks of sordid perversion as these drunken louts perpetrated. This sort of behavior by foreign troops will not be tolerated, and any repetition of such behavior by rabble from the other side of the channel will be met with suitably severe treatment by way of jail, the whip, the rope, or the firing squad."

  Major Cartwright looked up from the screed and spoke to Casca. "He goes on to outline your offences, which consist of laying in wait to fall upon law-abiding French troops, holding up a restaurant and consuming its wares without payment, and forcing a French citizen to gag his wife and daughter with his own table napkins while you attempted to violate them on his dining table. Is any of this true?"

  "Not a word of it," Casca replied easily. "The poilus fell upon us, we paid mightily for what we ate and drank, and we made no such unsuccessful attempt upon his wife and daughter."

  "I'm glad to hear it," Major Cartwright said and dismissed them.

  Captain George did not get off so easily. Although he had not been accused of being in the fight, he was demoted to lieutenant for "conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline," in that he had spent his leave in the company of enlisted men and NCOs, a serious breach of protocol in the eyes of the British Army.

  But not one that concerned George. "If they're going to bust me for associating with my friends, they can bust me right back to private, and then it will be no offence."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The next morning Casca was posted back to the aeronaut. station. He was airborne shortly after dawn with Captain Bryce-Roberts. They were greeted with fusillades of rifle fire as they crossed over the German trenches toward the enemy's artillery emplacements.

  "Blighters seem determined to get us," the captain said. "Dump some of that ballast, and we'll take her higher."

  Casca dropped a full sandbag, counted to three, then let go another and then another, counting each time and noting with satisfaction that, as he had hoped, they fell in a rough line as the balloon rose and the tether line pulled it back over the trenches, attracting another furious burst of rifle fire. On his next count he dropped a Mills bomb and saw it explode on the earthworks in front of the German trench. The rifle fire ceased abruptly.

  "Bravo!" Bryce-Roberts cried. "That shut the blighters' yaps. Pity it didn't land in the trench."

  "The next one will," Casca promised himself.

  "Hello," Bryce-Roberts shouted, "what's with the hospital?"

  Casca focused the glasses on the blazing tents. Tiny figures were moving in all directions, mule-drawn wagons maneuvering to no apparent purpose. Clouds of smoke and dust were appearing here and there among the tents which were collapsing like card houses.

  "We're shelling it, sir."

  "Hell, that won't do. Get me a pigeon." The officer wrote furiously, recopying coordinates from his map. He clipped the message to the pigeon and threw it over the side.

  "Bloody fools!" Bryce-Roberts fumed. "They've mixed up the coordinates."

  "Maybe somebody decided to make the hospital a target," Casca suggested.

  "Then they're worse bloody fools yet," Bryce-Roberts snarled. "There's no point in wasting shells on men who are dying anyway. The job is to knock out those bloody guns that are plastering our boys. And anyway, it's not cricket."

  Casca had never understood cricket even when he had played the game. He moved the glasses back to the shambles of bleeding mules and men among the ruined tents. "No," he said, "whatever it is, this certainly is not cricket."

  They watched in mounting frustration as the carnage beneath them increased, the British artillery plastering the hospital tents over and over while the unhampered German guns were pouring an equally fierce barrage into the British lines.

  Bryce-Roberts was fairly dancing in rage. He turned to Casca. "I say, d'you have any more Mills bombs?"

  Casca had brought half a dozen, all he could manage to steal from the vigilant quartermaster sergeant.

  "D'you think you could do that trick again if I can get in position?"

  "I'd sure like to try, sir."

  Bryce-Roberts was spilling gas from the balloon and they were sinking fast, the tether line paying out so that they swept toward the German artillery. They passed so low that Casca could see men's faces, and he pulled the pins from two Mills bombs and hurled them downward. The first fell short, but the second exploded on the ground close to a howitzer. The gun crew fell to the ground, either hit or taking cover, but one gun was at least temporarily out of action.

  But now they had drifted beyond the guns, and Bryce- Roberts tugged at the communication cord. They began the ride back as the tether line was hauled in.

  This time Casca succeeded in dropping all three Mills bombs among the guns but didn't clearly see the results as the balloon was moving faster and faster and was now once more over the trenches. Casca could hear the whine of bullets and knew that the German rifle fire was coming close. He dropped two sandbags on the men below him and emptied his rifle magazine at them.

  The German riflemen were now getting their range, and Casca was looking directly into their flashing gun barrels as he traded shots with them.

  But Captain Bryce-Roberts stood at the rail of the basket as calmly as if he were on a yacht at Cowes, shooting a sun-sight with his sextant to accurately pinpoint the position of the guns beneath them. Only when he was satisfied that he had correctly established the coordinates did he tug at the communication cord.

  But now the balloon started to fall again, and Bryce-Roberts tugged frantically at the communication cord, shouting to Casca, "Drop all ballast! Dump the pigeons, your gun, everything! The blighters put a hole in the bag!"

  Casca didn't need to be told twice. The British lines seemed a long way in the distance, and the German trenches horribly close. And, for sure, the Jerries would have a hot welcome waiting for the balloon crew who had directed the fire onto their hospital. He cut loose all of the sandbags and the balloon rose for a moment, then settled again toward the earth. He helped the captain throw over the pigeon cages and map table.

  Casca picked up two large knapsacks. "What about these?" he asked.

  "Mmm, parachutes. Curious idea – open like an umbrella. Don't really know if they work." He glanced down at the ground. "We're too damned low to try anyway. Throw them over."

  Bryce-Roberts unbuckled his holster. "Guns too!" he shouted. But Casca point
ed back toward the German lines where dozens of Germans were clambering out of the trenches and running into no-man's-land beneath the fast descending balloon.

  "Mmm," muttered Bryce-Roberts and held onto his pistol. He unbuckled his splendid Sam Browne belt. "The pater wore this at Spion Kop," he said regretfully as he threw it over along with his binoculars, cap, water bottle, and whisky flask. "And this," he sighed as he threw over his brass sextant and its teakwood box, "my grandfather used alongside Nelson at Trafalgar."

  Casca had jettisoned his pack, bottle, helmet, and everything he could lay hands on but his rifle and ammunition.

  They seemed to be only yards above the ground. More and more Germans were joining the chase, and it appeared to Casca that they were getting closer and the balloon getting lower with their every stride.

  "Couldn't be more than twenty feet," he heard the captain shout. "No heroics, mind. Forget the bloody balloon. Jump the moment we hit the ground and run like bloody hell. Our boys won't shoot at us, they can see us now."

  Casca looked ahead. It still seemed a hell of a long way to the friendly trench with its protecting entanglements of barbed wire. It was then that he recalled throwing over the wire cutters.

  The aeronaut station was way behind the line, and they were now so low that Tommies atop the earthworks of the British trenches were tugging at the tether line where it sagged across the trenches, shouting and waving encouragement while other Tommies were firing at the advancing Germans.

  "Cut the wire! Cut the wire!" Casca found himself screaming uselessly.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The basket hit, bounced high, hit again and dragged to a stop.

  Bryce-Roberts and Casca were tumbled in a heap on the floor of the basket and thrashed about like a fish in a dry bucket, trying to extricate themselves from each other, the basket, the sagging bulk of the balloon bag, and the tangle of lines that seemed to be everywhere about them like a net. The Germans were shooting at them, and Casca prayed that the heat of a bullet would not ignite the hydrogen in the balloon.

  Then they were out and running, rifle fire behind them. Casca cursed the bayonet slapping against his thigh and the nine pound rifle in his right fist, but he held onto it. He would need both at the wire.

  The British trenches were still a hundred yards away. A large knot of Tommies watching them approach, a few kneeling to aim carefully at the leading Germans. Casca took a single glance to the rear. The furious, but now elated, Germans seemed to be gaining on them, firing wildly as they ran. He saw one man go down, but there were dozens still on their feet.

  Fifty yards now and Bryce-Roberts was screaming, "The wire! The wire!" Casca wondered that he could spare the breath, and then heard his own voice shouting, too.

  Maybe somebody heard them. Casca saw a sergeant start clipping at the inside wire, and he was joined by an officer and then another. At last they realized the problem, and more and more men worked at the entanglement, bending back the barbed strands as the men with the cutters severed them. But it was slow work, and there were three rows of wire.

  Twenty yards. Fifteen. He shot a glance at Bryce-Roberts, and their eyes met. "We'll make a stand at the wire!" the officer shouted.

  And then they were there. The Tommies had cut through the first entanglement and were now working on the second. Three or four riflemen on their knees were firing at the Germans. All the others were watching like a crowd at a soccer game.

  Casca swung around, firing a shot from the hip which brought one of the leading Germans to his knees. He worked the bolt action as he brought the rifle to his shoulder, now taking aim at the tightly packed knot of Germans. From the corner of his eye he could see Bryce-Roberts standing as if at a practice range, methodically aiming and firing his pistol.

  From behind the wire more Tommies opened fire, but the Germans kept coming and kept shooting.

  Bryce-Roberts stopped to reload, and Casca saw the pistol drop from his hand as a bullet struck his arm. A moment later Casca felt a scorching pain in his thigh, and he fell to the ground. Bryce-Roberts dropped beside him and both of them lay there reloading, and then they were firing again.

  Behind the wire the Tommies were, at last, getting organized and were now pouring lead into the crowd of Germans.

  But they kept coming. The shelling of their comrades in the hospital had them enraged, and they wanted the aeronauts at all costs.

  Bryce-Roberts coughed, ceased firing, and fell flat. At the same instant Casca felt his left side torn open and was quickly drenched in his own blood.

  Two out of three of the Germans were now falling to the British fire, but still they kept coming.

  Casca's rifle was empty, there was no time to reload.

  The closest German was only yards off. He got his bayonet fixed and pushed himself up onto his knees. "Like a Welsh coal miner," he thought as he ran the bayonet up into the first German's balls. The man went backward screaming, leaving the bayonet free, and Casca hammered it into another German's knee.

  It was all he could do. A great wave of nausea engulfed him, his eyes clouded, and he collapsed, thrusting feebly with his bayonet at a third German whose rifle butt smashed the gun from Casca's grasp, then thudded against his skull.

  Several hands grabbed him. Others picked up Bryce-Roberts. The Germans turned and ran, carrying the two bodies.

  The British troops now had an opening in their wire, and they came pouring out, shooting as they ran. The first of them caught up with the Germans and fought them, shooting, stabbing, clubbing with their rifle butts, kicking and punching as they tried to wrest the two bodies from them.

  The Germans stopped running and made a determined stand, decimating the front ranks of the Tommies.

  More and more men streamed out from the British trenches, one squad with fixed bayonets led by a lieutenant.

  The Germans formed a tight cluster around their unconscious captives and traded bullets and bayonet thrust until there was not a man standing.

  Casca awoke in the field hospital.

  He ached and burned all over. When he lifted his head from the pillow, it felt as if he had slammed it into a wall, and he fell back groaning as his head throbbed as if under a succession of hammer blows. When the pain in his head diminished somewhat, Casca became aware of his other hurts. His right leg seemed to be on fire. His left side felt as if it had been opened with a wood saw. His exploring hand found blood-soaked bandages on both wounds and on his head.

  A white jacketed captain came to the foot of the cot and looked down at him. "Well, you’re certainly a tough 'un," he was saying when the front of his jacket exploded open and he covered Casca with guts and blood, then crashed on top of him.

  Casca registered the explosion that was followed by a succession of others as shell after shell burst in and around the hospital. Casca could hear men screaming and cursing. He was dimly aware of hurried movements as rescuers dragged wounded patients out of the shambles. But nobody came near him. He lay unable to move, crushed by the corpse of the doctor.

  The bombardment went on and on. Somewhere nearby a fire started. Casca was aware of flames near the edge of his field of vision. He could smell burning and then the sickly stench of burning flesh. He could hear orders being shouted and men running. The flames died away, but the stink got worse, so strong that he could distinguish the odor of scorched flesh from the stench of the stinking mess that covered him.

  The shells kept coming, landing now in some other part of the hospital as the Germans methodically laid waste the entire establishment.

  The agony in Casca's side became immense. From long and painful experience, Casca knew what was happening. The Jewish prophet who had cursed him with his dying breath was yet again wreaking vengeance upon him, restoring him to life, the tissues of his body repairing and reknitting to keep him alive. The process was an agonizing reversal of the wounding, the tissues tormenting nerve endings in their reconstruction. It was exactly like being shot all over again but without th
e anesthetic effects of either shock of unconsciousness.

  Casca wanted to scream, and maybe he did. In the bedlam of shouts, groans, explosions, the bellowing of wounded mules, the despairing shrieks of the reinjured wounded, he would not have heard, would not have known, his own voice.

  Perhaps he lost consciousness, perhaps the hours of suffering simply ran together in his mind. But at last there was an end to the shelling.

  It was night. Small sounds came to him. The whimpering of somebody crushed among the wreckage, the snorting of dying horse, distant shouted orders, from somewhere the crackle of flames, and, farther off, rifle and machine gun fire.

  Closer he could see the flicker of lamps and candles and hear people moving about. He could hear the sounds of effort, occasional grunts of distaste or disgust as the dead were manhandled out of the ruins of the hospital tents.

  The dead doctor's body was lifted off him, and then Casca felt himself being lifted.

  "Boy, this one's really rotten," he heard.

  Then a weightless sensation, and he was crashing heavily amidst other stinking, mangled bodies.

  "Hey Bill," the voice said again, "we've got a mix-up here – this fella has two left legs."

  "Oh, then that'll be Williams, Arthur," a laconic Cockney voice replied. "Williams was in my drill squad – was always turning the wrong way. Our sergeant used to say that he had two left legs."

  A rough jerk and they were jolted away to the slow clicking of a mule's hooves and the creaking of wagon wheels.

  The ride seemed to go on forever. No sound came from any of those around him, and Casca guessed that he was the only one alive in the cart. It only took another instant for him to realize that he was on the wrong side of a burial detail.

  Even before his experience on Calvary, Casca had hated burial detail, and always strove to avoid the duty. But seen from this angle, burial detail was a real, stinking horror.

  The bodies had been piled with a great deal less care than meat in a butcher's wagon. Some, like the doctor, had been blown apart, others had been killed while undergoing surgery. Many were in several assorted pieces; arms and legs, spare hands, heads, entrails were loose all about the cart.