Dead Man's Land Read online

  Watson leaned in close towards the ghastly wound, the clinical part of his mind noting the teeth and bone that had been forced into the remaining flesh, the dull shards of metal that would need extricating. And there were the patches of the wound that had been cauterized to shiny circles of seared flesh by intense heat. As he came close one of the man’s eyes snapped open, causing him to start, but he held his ground. There was no sight in it, no spark of consciousness. Lovat, thank God, had been rendered senseless. He gently brushed away a pair of lice, no respecters of rank, that had emerged from the lieutenant’s hairline.

  ‘It says “M” on his label,’ Jennings said. ‘They gave him morphia. Could that have depressed his breathing?’

  ‘Possibly.’ And perhaps, Watson thought, somebody at one of the dressing stations of the field ambulance had decided they might perform a mercy and given him a larger-than-necessary dose. It would have been understandable.

  Watson took the Wilsdorf & Davis from his wrist. They might be considered a touch feminine in London circles, but a wristwatch, especially one with a shrapnel guard like the W&D, made more sense that his usual half-hunter, now he was back in uniform. He unbuttoned the top pocket of his tunic and swapped the timepiece for the ivory-handled magnifying glass he always carried about him, the one with the inscription he valued so much. ‘Can you fetch that lantern, Nurse? I need more light.’

  She did as instructed and soon he was looking at the damage in even greater detail. It was a struggle to keep a growing feeling of revulsion in check, both at the wound and the weapon that had made it. He was used to the sight of injuries, but this was of a far greater magnitude than he had experienced in his previous life. Perhaps Tiger Mac had been right . . .

  Watson straightened up, took a deep breath, focused his mind. He was out of practice, that was all, grown soft. Too much fanciful writing, not enough doctoring. He summoned the dispassionate clinician of old and moved in closer once more.

  ‘I need some forceps,’ he said, taking off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. ‘You were right, Staff Nurse Jennings. There’s gauze or similar from the dressing occluding the trachea.’ Or what was left of it.

  There’s something else.

  The voice in his skull was so burnished and clear, he almost looked over his shoulder for the speaker. But that would have been ridiculous. He knew it could not be his old friend. It was just an echo of times past.

  You are looking but not observing. Or rather, not observing with all your senses. Think, Watson, think.

  Then he had it, the sensation almost overwhelmed by dozens of others. He concentrated on it alone, slowly isolating it, stripping away the competition, pinning down the few stray molecules in his nostrils. He could smell burned garlic.

  Well done, Watson, the voice said, rather patronizingly. Nevertheless, as he worked the compacted material free of the windpipe and the poor wretch made a gurgling sound in his throat, he allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction. Which then faded as he remembered what the burned garlic indicated. Yet another perversion of the art of war.

  ‘Pre-op,’ he said to the nearest orderlies. ‘Adrenaline chloride on the wound to stem bleeding. And ask the anaesthetist to use a rectal infusion of ether. I’ll add it all to his label.’

  Watson extracted a stubby pencil from his pocket and wrote the instructions in blocked capitals. ‘Understand? Rectal. Plus GSE. Glandulae suprarenalis extractum. That’s the adrenaline chloride. And I want any shrapnel extracted saved and delivered back to me.’ He wrote that down, too.

  He watched as the stretcher was slid off the table, to be immediately replaced by another. He scanned the label attached to the man’s sleeve, next to the ‘wounded’ stripe, which showed the poor devil had been hit before. ‘PAW’, it read, and gave his name and rank. He was with the Royal Scots Fusiliers. Not, Watson noted, from the battledress trousers, a kilted regiment; how those that did wear the tartan managed in the cold and filth of the trenches beggared belief. Watson looked at the abdominal dressing and at the red stains creeping around the side of it.

  ‘Major Watson. Hello, sir.’

  He looked up to see a face full of anguish that he didn’t, for a moment, recognize.

  ‘De Griffon?’

  The man nodded and his face relaxed into the broad, open one Watson remembered from his time in Egypt, where he had been investigating the mechanics of the new blood transfusion methods in field hospitals. De Griffon’s unit had been one of his first guinea pigs. ‘Good Lord, what are you doing here?’

  Robinson de Griffon’s head was moving back and forth, as if he were watching an accelerated game of tennis. ‘Looking for my men.’

  ‘Your men?’

  ‘Yes. The Leigh Pals. “A” Company.’

  ‘In this part of the line?’ Watson asked.

  ‘We are, yes.’ He gave a nervous laugh. ‘Small world, eh, sir?’

  In Watson’s limited experience of them, wars made for very small worlds. It was astonishing to him how often he ran into old colleagues from the Berkshires. ‘What’s happened?’

  De Griffon took off his cap and ran a hand over his wayward hair, smoothing it down for a few seconds. ‘We were on our way back from the front when a stray shell hit one of the columns. Damned bad—’ He turned to Jennings and shrugged apologetically. ‘Sorry. Bad luck. Two dead. Shipobottom, Carlisle, Morris, all quite seriously injured. Hoped they might be here.’

  His lower lip quivered slightly and Watson thought he might cry. He noticed that de Griffon had been promoted since he last saw the young man. He was now a captain. How old was he? No more than mid-twenties, surely. And unlikely to have known anything like war, given his cosseted background. De Griffon was a far cry from one of the ‘Temporary Gentlemen’ they talked about. Still, his heart was clearly in the right place and rapid promotion was, he supposed, another feature of this conflict.

  ‘I haven’t seen Shipobottom here, no.’ Watson didn’t recall Carlisle or Morris, but the curiously named sergeant was not a man you forgot in a hurry.

  ‘There’ll be another reception tent taking the overspill,’ said Jennings. ‘About a hundred yards up the hill, on the left. I should imagine they are in there.’

  De Griffon looked relieved. ‘Thank you, miss. I hope to see you soon, Major.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ Watson said. After he had gone he glanced at his nurse before turning his attention back to the new patient. ‘That is one anxious young captain.’

  ‘The officers become very protective of their charges,’ Jennings said. ‘Often they are like father figures to men ten or fifteen years older than them. It’s strange to see sometimes.’

  ‘Right, who do we have here?’

  ‘McCall, sir. Is it no’ a Blighty, Doc?’ the soldier on the stretcher asked in a broad accent once he realized he had Watson’s full attention. Beneath the mask of filth was a mere boy of eighteen or nineteen.

  ‘Well, let’s take a look,’ Watson said noncommittally. Being a Blighty or not was the least of the lad’s worries. He had read papers on the survival rates from abdominal wounds, of the festering caused by the soil and cloth forced into the lacerating wounds by the shrapnel. Of the resulting gas gangrene, which caused the skin to inflate until it was as tight as a drum before it split and released, as Mrs Gregson had observed, a smell of putrefaction that, once inhaled, was hard to forget. Some of the isolation wards at Bailleul had reeked of it even after repeatedly being scrubbed down.

  Watson registered the wound stripe on the lad’s soiled tunic. ‘Where did they get you last time?’

  ‘Bullet in ma shoulder, sir. No real damage.’ Watson’s own, now ancient, wound in the same location stirred in sympathy. ‘I don’t wan’ it to be a Blighty, sir.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Watson asked, surprised.

  ‘Aye. Don’t wan’ to leave ma pals. Don’t you believe wha’ you hear. There’s parts o’ this war that’re reet gut fun.’

  Watson winked, as if they wer
e sharing a guilty secret. The man was right; there was a dangerous thrill to conflict, and marvellous comradeship. Some thrived on it, no matter how gruesome the conditions. There was much Watson had missed when he left the army. That, however, had been a different kind of war. Although he supposed some things never changed – the thrill of being tested in battle and coming through head held high, eating, sleeping and fighting alongside men you would lay down your life for, the bittersweet elation of a victory, no matter how small. It could be a euphoric mixture. He had rarely experienced anything quite like it since, apart from when Holmes had stirred him out of his comfortable existence.

  ‘Staff Nurse Jennings, can you fetch me some scissors? Best take a look at what’s under here.’ He rechecked the label. No ‘M’. Just ‘PAW’, name and rank. ‘Did they give you anything, Private, at the dressing station?’

  ‘Like wha’, sir?’

  ‘Something for the pain?’

  ‘MO had a wee bit of rum. It’s naw too bad.’ He managed a cheerful grin, but it soon faded.

  ‘Lie down now. We’ll get you something. Morphia, please.’

  ‘There is none left,’ hissed Jennings.

  ‘What?’

  ‘No morphine. We have sent to the Big House for more.’

  ‘Aspirin, then. You have that?’ It wasn’t a given, as phenol shortages had curtailed production of the drug on both sides.

  ‘We do.’

  ‘Then we’ll try that.’ Aspirin might be a German drug, but he was sure the lad wasn’t too fussy. ‘Hold on, any tinctura opii camphorata?’

  ‘Yes, I believe so.’

  It was the weakest of all the opium preparations, but had the edge on aspirin.

  While an orderly went to fetch the elixir, Watson cut away the top swathe of bandage. More blood began to well from the edges. ‘Doesn’t look too terrible,’ he lied. ‘You lay your head back down, Private McCall. Have a little rest.’ He wrote ‘M REQUIRED’ on the docket. Then ‘X-RAY’.

  The boy did as he was told, and as Watson worked at removing the layers of bandaging, he spoke softly to Jennings as she fed the boy the newly arrived elixir. ‘I meant to explain myself earlier. Before Sister interrupted.’

  ‘You have seen the worst of Sister Spence, Major. She’s a good, dedicated woman.’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’ He pointed at her neck. ‘I meant about that tiny blemish, although I fear that is too harsh a word for such a delicate thing, at the base of your throat. Only the St Kitts sandfly, Culicoides clasterri, also found on Nevis, leaves such an attractive, star-shaped scar.’

  ‘Ah, yes. We used to call it the Sweet Itch.’

  ‘And the only business that would take a British family out there, other than perhaps the Church, is the sugar business.’

  She raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Tell me, Major Watson, do you always check your nurses’ throats for blemishes?’

  Her cheeks dimpled fetchingly as she smiled. He felt himself warming under the collar of his now blood-spattered shirt. He resumed cutting.

  ‘And how do you know about the sandflies of the Caribbean, Major?’

  ‘I think we’ll need some towels here. The flies? Oh, I read a monogram. Recommended by . . .’ He paused. ‘I had a very good tutor, Staff Nurse Jennings.’

  Good? The very best, Watson. The very best.

  He ignored the comment. It was a trace memory, playing tricks on him. He was aware it could have no connection to his former colleague and friend because, should they pass in the street, Watson knew full well that Sherlock Holmes would no longer give him the time of day.

  SEVEN

  Sitting in just his singlet and longjohns, Ernst Bloch opened the box of cartridges his father had posted to him and removed the upper layer of the compressed cotton wool that swaddled them. He carefully placed ten of the bullets onto the baize covering of the portable card table at the foot of his bed. They lay next to the pipe he intended to enjoy as soon as he had finished this little task. He wouldn’t worry about the smoke from his potent black tobacco affecting his fellow soldiers, because there were none.

  Bloch occupied his own cubbyhole in one of the deep, airless dugouts. He was curtained off from the regular troops in his own miniature Siegfried shelter. Nobody in the regular army cared much for snipers, not even those on his own side. The conscientious objectors who cleaned the latrines were held in higher esteem.

  Bloch didn’t care. At least, unlike poison gas or the flamethrower, there was still a sporting element to his hunt for a target. It was a way of waging warfare that went back to the Crimea and the Edinburgh Rifles, who had first used telescopic sights to kill Russian gunnery officers. Bloch had done his homework; he could justify his trade in any argument, but it had long ago become tiresome. Let the cannon fodder grumble about him and his opposite numbers on the Allied side.

  He weighed the first of the rounds on the little scales he had set up. Then the second and a third. All three were within a fraction of a gram of each other. Satisfied, he stood a steel ruler on its side. A half-moon depression had been milled out of it and into that he slotted the cartridge, adjusting it until he found the centre of gravity. He repeated this four times, noting the balance point was identical in each case. His father had followed his instructions to the letter.

  Schaeffer came through with a cup of coffee for him and quickly retired, pulling the thick blanket that doubled for a curtain back into place as he went. He knew that Bloch didn’t want to be interrupted while he polished his ammunition or stripped down his rifle. A grunted thanks was the only exchange.

  Bloch felt a vibration in the earth, an explosion high above, too distant to register as sound. The German trenches were dug deep and snug, excavated on higher ground, in well-drained soil, which meant they could easily reach forty metres or more into the earth. The British and French were in the soggy lowlands and they were living in shallow gashes in the earth, poorly revetted with wood and parapeted with sandbags to give them extra depth. He had been in the French trenches on a night raid in the early days, before he transferred to the sharpshooters. They were shameful.

  ‘Bloch.’

  ‘Sir.’ He put down the bullet he had been wiping with a cloth and stood to attention. The blanket was whisked back and an officer joined him in the compact space. It was the sniping section supervisor, Hauptmann Lux, a Saxon by birth, now attached, like Bloch, to the Sixth Army. Lux was not a tall man, but held himself well, and his uniforms always fitted immaculately. Next to him, Bloch always felt like the unfinished country lad he was. It could have been worse. Lux could have been a prick of a Prussian. That would have been unbearable.

  Lux looked Bloch up and down, bemused at a man in his underwear standing ramrod straight, as if waiting for a kit inspection. ‘At ease, Bloch. Jesus, it’s hotter than hell down here.’ Lux took off his cap, wiped his brow and looked around Bloch’s impressively neat cubicle. His eyes fell on the needle-nosed bullets. He picked up the scales. ‘Private ammunition?’

  ‘My father makes them, sir. They reduce flash and smoke. But weight and balance are critical.’

  Lux nodded, not really caring. Every sniper had his rituals, his superstitions and some specialist equipment he believed gave him an advantage over his fellows. ‘An officer today, I hear?’

  Bloch knew Lux received a daily tally from all his snipers and, for corroboration, their spotters. ‘Sir.’

  ‘That is twenty-nine kills, I believe. Or at least, twenty-nine confirmed officers.’

  ‘Yes.’ The actual tally was close to a hundred, but, since his overenthusiastic early days when he shot anything that moved, he had become much more selective.

  ‘One more and it’s an Iron Cross, Second Class for you.’

  Bloch remained impassive. He wasn’t doing this for baubles. He didn’t even do it because he hated the British individually; there were times when he felt sorry for the young officers he caught in his sights. But he detested the British imperial arrogance that led the country to thin
k it deserved a hand in every nation’s affairs. He did this job because he believed in a strong Germany that wasn’t dominated by an insignificant island with inflated ideas about its importance. And he did it because he was good at it. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘And a week’s leave.’

  Now Bloch allowed himself a ghost of a smile. However, it didn’t do to dwell too much on the carrot of a few days with Mother, Father, sister and perhaps Hilde. The army had a habit of cruelly snatching away a furlough at the last moment on the flimsiest of excuses.

  ‘There are fresh British units moving into this section,’ Lux said. ‘Untested. Kitchener’s New Army. They’ve been a long time coming, eh? The theory is they will get used to trench life in a quiet section. Learn something from the Scottischers who are already here.’

  Bloch was not surprised by Lux’s knowledge. The army’s intelligence about which divisions and regiments they were facing was always excellent. He assumed they had good spies somewhere over the wire.

  ‘A section defended by untried troops is an opportunity for us to try something different.’ Lux indicated Bloch should move to one side, then took out a map and laid it onto the bed, smoothing the folds with the flat of his well-manicured hand.

  It showed two thick black lines, representing the opposing trenches, snaking across the page, the loops sometimes coming close, within, Bloch knew, twenty metres at some points, then diverging again so that no man’s land might be a void of a half-kilometre in width. Lux pointed to a red trace that had been drawn from Ploegsteert village through the nearby woods. ‘This road is the one they call the Strand. Here, Oxford Circus. Have you ever been to London, Bloch?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘It doesn’t match Berlin. It is far dirtier, more squalid, but it has a certain grimy charm. And they know how to throw a decent dance, I will grant them that. Perhaps you’ll be there one day soon, eh? When it belongs to us.’ He carried on when Bloch did not reply. ‘This area,’ he pointed to the east of Ploegsteert Wood, ‘is The Birdcage and this is Somerset House. Brigade HQ for the British here. This is where the new officers will be briefed about the sector. And here . . .’ another stab at the map, ‘. . . is the church steeple of Le Gheer. Now, Bloch, thanks to shelling of the woods and a subsequent fire, we believe there is a clear sight-line from this steeple to Somerset House. A good sniper could lie low up there and perhaps pick off half a dozen senior officers at one session. Including . . .’ he paused while he took out a newspaper cutting, which he unfurled for Bloch, ‘. . . this man.’