The War Game Read online

  Contents

  Chapter 1 Soft, short shirts

  Chapter 2 Pawns and practice

  Chapter 3 Postcards and plans

  Chapter 4 Christmas comforts

  Chapter 5 Silver and brass

  Chapter 6 Salutes and songs

  Chapter 7 Pot-holed pitch

  Chapter 8 Shots and sweat

  Chapter 9 Truce trouble

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  Soft, short shirts

  Northern France – December 1914

  Albert Watson sang at the top of his voice as he marched along the crumbling roads of France. The other soldiers liked to sing ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’. But Albert didn’t even know where Tipperary was. He didn’t care if it was a long way or a short way to Tipperary.

  They had sung themselves silly with, ‘Forward Joe Soap’s army, marching without fear.’ He knew that ‘Joe Soap’ meant ‘dope’, a dummy, and he didn’t like to think he was in an army of dopes.

  Albert hated the song,

  ‘I don’t want to be a soldier,

  I don’t want to go to war,

  I’d rather stay at home,

  Around the streets to roam.’

  It just wasn’t true that he’d ‘rather stay at home’… though he did miss home on the coldest nights. And of course he missed his mum’s cooking when he chewed on the stew at the army canteen. Even the plum and apple jam was tough.

  No, Albert could bear the homesickness. He was proud to be on his way to fight the Germans. And he was happy now the troop were singing his favourite marching song.

  He chanted the words to the beat of a thousand boots.

  ‘Yes, Sister Susie’s sewing shirts for soldiers,

  Such skill at sewing shirts my shy young sister Susie shows,

  Some soldiers send epistles, say they’d sooner sleep on thistles,

  Than the saucy, soft, short shirts for soldiers sister Susie sews.’

  He could always manage the tongue-twisting words while his mates tangled their tonsils. He remembered the time Charlie Embleton tried to sing, ‘soft, short shirts’ and managed to spit out his false teeth. They fell in the mud and he had to scramble to collect them before the man behind stepped on them. Charlie knew he’d never get new teeth in the battlefields of France and Flanders.

  As Charlie had stooped to collect the teeth, the man behind had fallen over him and twenty troopers ended up in a heap on the rutted road. The sergeant was furious. Mind you, it didn’t take much to make the sergeant’s moustache bristle, his face turn red and his throat roar like Barney’s bull.

  The sergeant punished Charlie by placing him on guard duty from midnight till sunrise at eight the next morning. Charlie kept himself happy by singing rude songs about sergeants.

  ‘If the sergeant steals your rum, never mind;

  For he’s just a drunken sot,

  Let him have the ruddy lot,

  If the sergeant steals your rum, never mind.’

  Albert liked old Charlie. Albert’s dad had died in a coal-mine when Albert was nine. Charlie was a bit like a dad to him, now they were so far from home.

  When the Sister Susie song had finished Albert made sure the sergeant wasn’t looking, and turned to Charlie, marching by his side.

  ‘I didn’t hear you singing soft, short shirts, Charlie,’ the young man teased.

  Charlie glared at him and pointed to the sharp blade on his belt.

  ‘See this bayonet, sonny boy?’

  ‘Yes, Charlie.’

  ‘Then shut up or I’ll stick it in your backside.’

  ‘Shut up about what?’ Albert asked.

  ‘About me singing soft, short shirts…’ Charlie tried to say.

  But before he could finish Charlie’s teeth had flown over Albert’s head and into the ditch at the side of the road.

  Chapter 2

  Pawns and practice

  The first days in France were spent training. Albert spent a lot of time having his ears battered by the Barney’s-bull bellow of the big, bruising bully of a sergeant. The lad ran up and down the camp training ground. His bayonet was fixed to the barrel of his gun as the troop took it in turns to stab at straw-stuffed dummies.

  ‘Stick it in as far as it will go… twist it… pull it out,’ Sergeant Carter shouted.

  As they rested with a tin mug of bitter tea, Albert turned to Charlie. ‘You were in the last war, in South Africa.’

  Charlie’s back went straight. ‘I was. Out in the heat of South Africa. Not like this freezing mud. We was fighting for old Queen Victoria in them days. Till she died, of course. Then we was fighting for King Edward.’

  ‘But did you stick your bayonet into many men?’ Albert pressed. ‘I mean… I can stick it in a dummy. But a real man, that’s different.’

  Charlie chewed on a piece of tobacco. ‘No, son. These days you can’t go charging at your enemy with bayonets. Not even back in Queen Victoria’s day. I never stabbed anyone. They shoot you before you get to fifty yards. With the machine guns them Germans have, they’d wipe us all out before we got over their barbed wire. No, son, bayonets aren’t a lot of use in this war.’

  Albert nodded. ‘So why are we practising with them?’

  ‘Because that’s what the officers want. Have you ever played chess?’

  ‘You want to play chess?’ asked Albert. ‘Now?’

  Charlie sighed. ‘I’m just saying, do you know what chess is?’

  ‘Of course I do, Charlie. I’m not daft. I went to school till I was thirteen.’

  ‘You move your men around a chess board, right? Well, our General French has a big board like that. He has two armies – the First and Second Armies. And our friends in France and so on have their own armies. And the generals move us around like pawns on a chess board, see?’

  ‘And the Germans do the same?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Charlie nodded.

  Albert stamped his feet to warm them on the cold, hard earth of the parade ground. Everything was grey and brown. The sky was the colour of a coal-miner’s bath water but not so warm. There was a steady rumble like thunder as the big guns on each side sent their shells down like steel hailstones.

  ‘When do we join this game then, Charlie?’ he asked.

  Charlie looked up at the sky where the flashes from the guns lit the low clouds. ‘We’re not far from the fighting, son. We’ll be there this time next week.’

  Albert nodded slowly. ‘That’s Christmas in the trenches for us, then?’

  Charlie blew out his cheeks. ‘Christmas? In a war Christmas Day is the same as any other day.’

  But for once Charlie Embleton was wrong.

  Chapter 3

  Postcards and plans

  Captain Forsythe called the troops onto the parade ground the next day. ‘Stand easy men,’ he began. The soldiers relaxed but looked grim. They knew what was coming.

  ‘Tomorrow you move ten miles forward. You men will be the reserve line. The chaps at the front in the trenches are ready for a break. The day after tomorrow you will take their place. Half of you will be the front line and the other half the rear line. You’ll swap over every twelve hours.’

  Captain Forsythe was young – maybe just twenty years old – and had the shining pink face of a schoolboy.

  ‘You may write postcards home tonight,’ he said.

  ‘That’ll be in case we don’t come back,’ Charlie muttered out of the side of his mouth.

  ‘But you must not say where you are. A German spy may read your message and discover our plans.’ The young officer tried to look like a stern school prefect. ‘This is top secret stuff. Any questions?’

  Albert’s hand shot in the air as if he were in the classroom. ‘Please sir,’ he said.

  �
�Yes?’

  ‘Will we be attacking with bayonets or rifles or machine guns?’

  Captain Forsythe looked unsure. ‘I don’t think you’ll be attacking at all.’

  ‘So why are we going?’ another soldier asked.

  ‘Because those are our orders,’ the officer said, blushing a little.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Charlie put in, ‘but I think he means, why do we have those orders?’

  Captain Forsythe cleared his throat.

  ‘The Germans are the attackers. We have dug lines of trenches, hundreds of miles of them. The trenches are filled with British and French troops like us. Our job is to stop them getting any further. If we aren’t there then the Germans will take over the whole of France. Their next stop would be Britain. Your children will be speaking German if you men don’t do your jobs.’

  ‘So we defend?’ Charlie said.

  ‘Unless orders come for us to attack,’ Captain Forsythe said.

  He gave a shrug. ‘For now, defend. Stay in your trench. If you see a German, shoot him.’

  ‘If he doesn’t shoot us first,’ someone muttered and the men laughed.

  ‘Well, keep your heads down,’ the Captain said.

  ‘Ah,’ Charlie said, ‘but if we keep our heads down, we won’t be able to see the enemy. They could run across from their trenches and jump into ours. How can we shoot the Germans if we can’t stick our heads up and look for them?’

  ‘Look out from time to time,’ Captain Forsythe shouted, his pink face now turning red. ‘Lift your eyes over the top.’

  ‘What about if the German shoots me in the eye?’ The men laughed louder.

  Captain Forsythe carried a short wooden stick. He rapped it against his leg, then pointed it at Charlie Embleton. ‘Sergeant Carter.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’ the sergeant said smartly.

  ‘Put that man on a charge. Have him cleaning the toilets from now until we march to the trenches.’

  The sergeant’s grin split his face and showed his yellow, tobacco-stained teeth. ‘It’ll be a pleasure, sir.’

  Charlie Embleton sighed and began to sing, as softly as sister Susie’s shirts, ‘If the sergeant steals your rum, never mind.’

  Chapter 4

  Christmas comforts

  A wind blew hard across the North Sea. The wind didn’t stop at Belgium. It brought flecks of snow to the trenches of northern France.

  Albert wore mittens with no fingers. He rested his rifle against the hard-frozen wall of the trench and blew on his hands. ‘It’s cold,’ he said and shuddered.

  ‘Good thing too,’ Charlie Embleton said.

  ‘My toes don’t think it’s good,’ the young soldier argued.

  ‘If the ground wasn’t frozen then you’d be standing in mud. And mud’s worse than ice. You can wrap up against the cold, but mud… what does mud do?’

  ‘I don’t know. What does mud do?’ Albert asked.

  ‘It seeps through every seam of your uniform. You get wet as well as cold, and it takes a lot longer to warm up.’

  ‘So cold is good, eh?’

  ‘Cold is good. And remember, it’s as cold for Jerry as it is for us.’

  Albert slowly raised his head above the edge of the trench and looked through the rows of barbed wire to the German trenches. ‘Is that why they’re quiet?’ he asked.

  ‘It is.’ Charlie nodded. ‘The Germans don’t have muddy little holes in the ground like us. They have proper underground shelters, cosy and warm. You’ll see when we start attacking in the springtime. We’ll capture one and be snug as rabbits in a burrow.’

  ‘We have to wait till spring to attack?’ Albert sighed. ‘I’ve been in the army six months now and I’ve never fired a bullet at an enemy.’

  ‘You’ll see plenty of bullets soon enough. It’s the one you don’t see that’s the dangerous one. That’ll be the one that hits you if you don’t keep your head down.’

  Albert ducked back down under the cover of the trench. He stamped his feet and blew on his hands again. ‘They said this war would be over by Christmas. They say that back home a million men have rushed to join the British Army. They’re all worried that the war will finish before they get here!’

  Albert shivered inside his khaki uniform. It fitted badly: the jacket was too baggy and let in draughts around the neck and sleeves; tight khaki bandages were wrapped round his legs to keep out mud, but they made those legs look thin enough to snap. A German would see those matchstick legs marching towards him and die laughing. The young man’s large boots and frost-red nose made him look like a sad, brown clown.

  He looked down at Charlie. The older man had cropped hair that showed grey where he’d pushed his helmet back. Charlie sat at the entrance to a crude cave dug into the frozen soil. He was trying to boil a kettle over a small fire in a biscuit tin.

  ‘Tell you what, Albert,’ he said, wiping a dew-drop off the end of his battered nose. ‘We’ll try to keep this war going a bit longer, shall we? Just to give you a bit of excitement?’

  ‘You can,’ Albert said. ‘I’m due a bit of leave in the New Year. I want to get back home and see my mum! I’ve never had a Christmas away from home before.’

  ‘When you’ve been in the army as long as I have…’ Charlie said solemnly.

  ‘Here we go,’ Albert muttered into his cupped hands as he breathed on them for warmth. ‘The Boer War. Next you’ll be telling me you fought for Britain when Julius Caesar invaded.’

  ‘When you’ve been in the army as long as I have, you’ll forget what a Christmas at home is like!’ Charlie declared.

  ‘Well, Christmas at home is warmer than it is here, I can tell you,’ the younger man sniffed.

  ‘I told you, you don’t want it any warmer, son! If it wasn’t for the cold we’d be over our ankles in mud.’

  ‘You always look on the bright side, don’t you, Charlie?’

  ‘You have to, son. It could be worse. We could have had orders to attack the German trenches today. Some German sniper could have sent you a little present from the end of his rifle. You could be lying out there in No Man’s Land with a bullet in your brain,’ the older man told him. ‘Though you’d probably be safe, come to think of it. Your brain being such a small target and all.’

  ‘Ha ha. Very funny, Charlie.’

  ‘And you’ve got your chocolate and your tobacco and your Christmas card from the king and queen, haven’t you? Your Christmas comforts.’

  Ah, yes, Albert thought. The best thing that had happened to him since he joined the army. Maybe the best thing that had happened in his life.

  Chapter 5

  Silver and brass

  Albert Watson slid a hand into the pocket of his great coat. The card was there. A Christmas card. The most amazing Christmas card he’d ever had.

  It was a card from the king himself. It made him proud to have that message, even if it was just a print of His Majesty’s handwriting. Albert didn’t need to read it because he knew the words by heart. But he stole a look at it anyway.

  ‘May God protect you and bring you home safe.’

  He’d read the words a hundred times until it was too dark to read them any more. ‘Bring you home safe,’ he thought. Those four words were the ones that made him just a little homesick.

  ‘It’s quiet, isn’t it?’ he said suddenly. ‘Do you reckon Jerry’s gone home for Christmas? I haven’t heard a shot for hours.’

  The thunder of the guns had faded with the setting sun. There was no use firing when you couldn’t see what your shells were hitting.

  Charlie was leaning forward, his putty-coloured face pale and frozen in the faint light of a half moon. He stared across the wasteland – shattered earth with ice-filled pits where a shell had landed. The mud was silver in the light and looked like the surface of the moon itself. No Man’s Land, they called it.

  Charlie’s hand slid down and wrapped itself round the rifle that lay there. ‘What’s that noise?’ he whispered.

  Albert raised his h
ead and looked across No Man’s Land towards the German trenches. Charlie jumped forward and dragged the young man roughly down. ‘You want to get your head blown off, young Albert?’ he hissed. ‘There’s marksmen just waiting for idiots like you to look over the top! Snipers. The best shots in the German army.’

  ‘You hurt my elbow!’ Albert complained.

  ‘Shush! Listen!’

  The two men huddled on the frozen floor of the trench and strained their ears. ‘It’s a band!’ the young soldier breathed. ‘It’s a blooming brass band!’

  ‘Maybe they’re going to attack us with trombones.’ Charlie chuckled.

  ‘No! They’re playing Silent Night!’

  ‘A bit risky, that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s giving away their position,’ the older man explained.

  ‘But it’s lovely,’ Albert said. His throat was tight and his eyes pricked with tears.

  There was a faint whistle over the top of the music. The men clutched their heads and shrunk down, not knowing where the shell would land. It grew louder till it was a wail that drowned the music and it ended with a sudden crash that came from the far side of No Man’s Land.

  ‘I told you,’ Charlie said. ‘One of our gunners isn’t in the Christmas spirit. He missed their trenches by a long way. He was closer to us than the Germans.’

  ‘Our gunners wouldn’t shell their own men.’ Albert gave a nervous laugh.

  ‘It’s happened before,’ Charlie said grimly.

  The men rose to their feet and peered over the rim of their trench. A spiral of blue smoke climbed into the sky as echoes of the explosion faded into the night.

  ‘What did our gunners do that for?’ Albert groaned. ‘That was nice music, that was!’

  ‘That’ll be the generals for you.’

  ‘Don’t they know it’s Christmas?’

  ‘Christmas? They can’t even spell the word.’