Andrew Martin - The Somme Stations

‘What’s this place?’ he said.

‘It’s a position ,’ I said. ‘The first of two.’

‘Are you planning on stopping here for long?’

Another shell came, drowning him out.

The conclusion of Butler’s conference with the gunners was that we would all have to help cart the shells to the gun position off in the trees. That suited me. The faster we could get unloaded the faster we could clear out. We formed a chain with the artillery blokes – about twenty in it, all told, including Muir. I took up my own position some way into the trees, and could see one of the Howitzers we were feeding, and the gang of blokes around it. The gun was like a dangerous animal – a giant dinosaur-bird that couldn’t take wing, but kept trying. Every time it spat out another shell the blokes span away from it with blocked ears, and the wheels of the bloody thing leapt a foot in the air.

The first gun position accounted for nearly half our load of shells. An artillery bloke handed Oliver Butler a chit that I knew to be a proof of receipt. At that moment I heard the whistle of a 5.9. We all crouched low and it came down on the other side of our train, nearer the front than the back. Another came down half a minute later in the same position; then a third. It seemed to me the Germans had us under observation; or anyhow that they’d got a fix on the gun position we’d just delivered to, but were persistently aiming a little long. Then again, if they hit shells on the three wagons that remained loaded we’d all go up, train crew and gun position both.

‘Are we to let the Germans blow our engine up?’ Tinsley yelled.

‘The question isn’t the engine,’ I yelled back, and another fucking shell came. ‘… It’s the ammo coupled up behind it.’

‘ I think it’s the engine,’ said Tinsley.

I said, ‘Well, there’s no point hanging about here. We either go and get it back or we leg it.’

‘I vote leg it,’ said Dawson.

‘No,’ said Tinsley, ‘we get it.’

I turned round and made a gesture indicating that Dawson, Oliver Butler and Muir should get clear. They might think of alerting the gunners as well.

‘Rendezvous at the control point, Stringer,’ said Muir, which meant we would be retreating to the junction, abandoning the second delivery. Muir seemed only too keen to get away, and I couldn’t help thinking that our own Captain Quinn probably wouldn’t have backed off in such a hurry.

I looked at Tinsley and he looked at me; we began to approach the simmering engine at a steady pace. It was important somehow that I did not trip on a root or snap a burnt branch, and I had a fancy that Tinsley was looking at the business in the same way: we were stealing the engine back. Another shell came down on the far side of it, and that was a little further off than the previous, but then came another that was closer , and I had the idea – although it seemed impossible – that the Baldwin had rocked on its rails.

‘Twenty tons,’ I shouted at Tinsley, ‘and it bloody tilted.’

‘Five tons of coal ’n’ all,’ he said.

We were within ten feet of the engine. If the pair of us cop it now, I thought, I will never see my children again; Tinsley will never graduate to the footplate; the wife will never get her kitchen garden… and I will never read The Count of Monte Cristo . But I wasn’t going to do that anyway.

We got to the engine, and climbed up. The pressure was fine; the fire was fine. A shell came. Tinsley screwed off the brake, and I pulled the reverser. Another fucking shell – couldn’t these fucking Krauts leave off for a single moment?

‘I’ll just give her a breath of steam!’ I practically screamed at Tinsley, and we started to roll. He was dead white. I recall that he was nervously running his filthy hand over the few pimples he had about his chin. He was the age for pimples. He wasn’t shaking, however, whereas I had once again started to shake. As we rolled under the rain of shells, I tried to tell myself that the difference was down to Tinsley’s not having as much to lose – no wife and no children to leave behind – but there was no reason why a lad shouldn’t have more pluck than a man of thirty-three.

I had come to the end of my courage; I was in sore need of a Woodbine, but I’d smoked my last. There was just one chance left… I put my hand inside my soaking greatcoat, and felt my tunic pocket. Well, I was on bloody velvet: a whole packet of the Virginians Select! I’d forgotten I’d had them there in reserve. I had no match, but Tinsley would have one. Who ever heard of a fireman without a match? He saw my hand as I took the light, and he said, ‘Cold!’ so as to provide me with an excuse for shaking. I thought: he’s up to the mark, this kid.

We’d rolled back to the control point, but the shells were still falling, and the half-witted corporal was nowhere to be seen. He’d taken refuge in his dugout. Dawson and Butler were waiting. Butler held a hurricane lamp; I could see by it that he had a strange expression on his face; I couldn’t make it out. Behind him, Muir was shouting into the dugout. I believe he was saying that we would have to return to Burton with our half load, and that the half-witted corporal ought to telephone through to the gun position expecting a delivery, and tell them it was no go. If the next Baldwin had already set off from Burton Dump, we would have to work out a crossover at the passing loop.

I then heard Butler’s shout: ‘Good work Stringer! Bit of all right that!’

That was him all over. He knew that the odd word of praise counted for more than if he’d come out with them all the time. It was a kind of power that he exercised.

As we rolled, he climbed onto a wagon, as did Dawson; Muir got up onto the footplate once again. He congratulated Tinsley and me, and I thought it only fair to say, ‘You’ve the boy to thank really.’

Tinsley’s determination to reclaim the train had probably saved the life of every man in the vicinity, for the shells were continuing to fall where the train had been, and I was sure that one or more had landed square on the line over there. As we trundled backwards, we did seem to be leaving the worst of it behind, and I gradually stopped shaking. Of course, the kid had seen me, so I’d have to take care about talking down to him in future.

We came to Naburn Lock, and I opened her up a bit as we started reversing along the gentle ascent to the New Station, then the passing loop. As Holgate Villa was drawing slowly forwards on my right, I drew Tinsley’s attention to rather low water in the gauge. I then looked backwards, and saw Dawson at his brake, smoking and looking sidelong, and Oliver Butler on his brake behind. I turned back forwards. Tinsley was working the injector as another shell came, and we both ducked at the sound of its whistling flight, knowing the cab walls and the cab roof would give some protection either from the blast if it was high explosive, or from the bullets and pieces of shell casing if it turned out to be shrapnel. All the shells that had come near so far that night had been H.E., but this was shrapnel. I knew by the spattering sound – like a harder rain – of the metal fragments on the wagons and shells behind. I turned around, and I saw – too fast – the white face of Oliver Butler. There was nothing – by which I mean there was nobody – between me and him. Dawson was down, stretched flat on the shell boxes of his wagon. I didn’t even knock the regulator off, but began scrambling over the coal bunker to get back to that wagon. At the same time, Butler was coming forward from the back of the train. He got there before me, and he removed Dawson’s tin hat, and put his head close to Dawson’s, as though listening for breath. But when I got up to the two of them, I knew there would be none. I stood, balancing on the wagon and looking down at Dawson’s face, which Oliver Butler had turned slightly to the side. The shrapnel had blown in from the left, coming under the tin hat, and taking that side of the head away. Most of the funny moustache remained, which he would now never either grow to a proper length, or shave off entirely.