Chapter Twenty Three - Battle
Captain Zommel, the battery commander, pulled on his boots, buttoned up his tunic and accepted a cup of coffee from his orderly. He ducked out of his tent and walked down to the command dugout to hear the latest reports. To his right the line of crew tents was dull in the pre-dawn half light, the horse and limber lines beyond them invisible. To his left the gun line was indistinct except for the six fingers of the gun barrels pointing skywards, silhouetted against the pale dying night. Below the gun barrels all was hidden in the gloom, only the occasional shout from a gunner at work came across the wet chill night-grass of the field. Yesterday they had bounded forward some fifteen miles from their positions on the Restormellian border to here, on the outskirts of Greycastle town. Zommel expected to be conducting fire missions against targets south of the town today, retreating enemy traffic columns most probably. There didn't seem to be much fight in these people, one good hard punch over the border in the first two days and they had crumbled.
When he first heard the low drone of airscrews he paid little attention, it was probably one of their pre-dawn patrols going south to photograph enemy positions. He stepped down into the dugout and greeted the telephone operators and his second in command, Lieutenant Hoffer. Half way through discussing the night's communications with Hoffer, Zommel stopped paying attention to the conversation and started paying attention to the hum of airscrews. He noticed them getting louder, it was either a large ship far off or a medium one close by, certainly no photographic scout. He looked up. In the east the sky was paling and the hills of the upper valley in which Greycastle lay were moving. He frowned. He was familiar with the terrain, he'd studied maps and sand models enough times in the weeks before the war. There was a large distinctive ridge across the head of the valley, slab-sided and scarred by the mines, the piles of spoil. Yet this morning it was moving.
"Air alert! Sound the alarm!"
He turned to one of his operators, "Get me regimental headquarters at once!"
The strident clanging of the alarm bell brought the battery to life, gunners ran to the dugouts and the maxim gun crews swung their weapons skywards, checking bullet belts and pulling on steel hats. It began at the far end of the field, an orange burst, silent and pretty, blossoming like a huge flower, blooming, growing and sprouting, another grew in the grass next to it, impossibly bright, as big as a house, further orange blooms walked down the field, their roots digging deep into the wet soil and hurling it up and outwards in powerful cascades. The sound of their sudden creation rolled down the valley in a series of loud barks, each enough to numb the senses.
"Is the line to regiment open?"
"Yes sir."
Zommel grabbed the headset,
"Sir, third battery here at map reference F233. Air attack, from the east. A cruiser, possibly bigger."
"Can you identify?"
The maxim guns to either side of the dugout spoke, the noise of their chattering and the roar of the exotic orange blooms growing rapidly down the field, garbled the conversation.
"Say again?"
"Identify the enemy vessel!"
Zommel looked up over the parapet and saw hell. The whole ridge of the top of the valley seemed to have torn itself from the earth, risen into the dawn sky and come down upon him. It was huge. And low. He couldn't see both ends of it without turning his head. From the vast black bulk of the belly of the thing gun turrets hung and turned and spat flame, on its outer flanks air defence barbettes swung from side to side alert for enemy aircraft. Another big vessel was more distant coming down the far side of the valley. As the shells struck they tore the earth and the soil moaned and writhed, convulsed and leapt. His battery's left hand gun position vanished completely, small unidentifiable black pieces whirling upwards and spinning away into the dawn. The second gun dugout took a shell beside it and the huge artillery piece jumped, actually jumped in the air like a startled thing and flipped over on its side, laying down like a tired dog. The iron shod wheel, eight feet in diameter came spinning over Zommel's head, thrown like a child's toy. He heard it strike the ground behind him and go bouncing down the slope towards the road. The shell bursts walked down his gun line, obliterating it. His command vanished before his eyes.
"My god. It's Leviathan!"
"What? It can't be this far north! They have no base up here!"
"It's Leviathan I'm telling you!"
"Get a grip, Captain, that's impossible!"
"If you don't believe me, come and look for yourself! I need air support now, and the batteries to the west will, it's heading west."
The secondary turrets clustered low on Leviathans starboard flank were brought to bear on the battery support lines. The row of tents vanished in an instant, burning canvas fluttering, the horses whinnied and screamed and writhed and lay still, the wood and iron of their limbers flying two fields away.
"Down, get down, get into cover!"
The captain dived into the bottom of the dugout and his telephone line went dead, torn in a dozen places. The air defence machine guns sited either side of the command dugout was a standard deployment, a sensible tactic to preserve the command personnel from scout attack. Maxim guns were useless against this gigantic attacker, all they did was draw it's attention. The two forward gun turrets swung down and fired a salvo at the machine guns and the trench system between them. As the whole dugout was instantly obliterated, Zommel, Hoffer and the other eight men of the battery headquarters didn't feel a thing.
--I--
---o-o-oOo-o-o---
I I
The men lay on their fronts on the grass. They had been here an hour now and the dew had formed on them, on their rifle barrels and on their leather equipment belts. They lay in lines, by platoons, by companies, by regiments. Across the fields and in the woodlands, the plantations and the coverts. Each man was alone, thinking his own thoughts. Thinking of wife, or lover, or mother, or speaking with a protecting spirit, seeking private forgiveness for past acts.
The artillery bombardment had been going an hour now. The smaller guns, the light fast gallopers were sited directly behind the infantry start line and sent their light shells over clattering like hail. These shells were too small to destroy dugouts or buildings but were shrapnel rounds, each steel case would airburst on arrival a few tens of feet above the ground spewing out a hundred steel bullets. Their purpose was to kill and maim anyone or anything that moved above ground and once those targets were eliminated they denied the enemy the ability to move at all. The medium guns were firing their big shells into the enemy forward positions, destroying communications, defences and weapons pits. The heavy guns, sited miles back, sent their dustbin sized shells spinning over, each whirring and moaning like a train. These went far into the enemy rear positions hitting headquarters, artillery, supply dumps, transport columns, troop forming up areas.
Some of the infantrymen looked up. Above the zone filled with shells where nothing could fly, higher in the dawn sky the airships moved. Light scouts covering the army as it prepared to go, medium bomb vessels droning over in groups to attack the enemy front line. And somewhere out there, far ahead, miles away over the hills, sowing destruction behind the enemy left flank, were the two battle cruiser groups, Leviathan and Thunderer, each accompanied by their two cruisers and squadron of frigates. Thunderer had been rushed into battle with her shakedown trials incomplete, it was well known that a number of dockyard hands were aboard her, finishing off vital systems. But for this offensive, without Goliath, Thunderer was needed.
Suddenly the Numenaorian guns fell silent, the artillery bombardment ceased. The air seemed loud just from the silence, the quiet offended the ears. Men who had been speaking aloud to themselves suddenly ceased talking, self conscious. For a while there was nothing, nothing but the wet land and the lightening sky in the east. Then the whistles blew. At first distant on the right flank then coming closer, the platoon commanders stood and blew on their whistles. Just here, in the copse of silver birch, before the signal came, before the men stood and walked and went to kill, there was a brief sound, a sound that mocked the men and the war, mocked the whole reason they were here. Just before it happened a blackbird sang. High up in the birch trees it sat seeing the dawn and driven only by what it knew, rejoicing in a new day, it sang. A beautiful sound it was, the song fluttering and growing, dipping and pleasant.
Then the whistles, then the green coated men standing up in lines, then the clenched jaws and fists around rifles, then despite the cold, the sweat under armpits, then the first step and the second, backs bent, kept low, up the slope and over the grassy ridge and down towards destiny.
--I--
---o-o-oOo-o-o---
I I
Private Hjutens had lied. Lied about his age. Lots of his factory mates had too. Everyone knew you had to be eighteen to get in the army, so he had lied and told the recruiting officer he was eighteen. Easy. He was fit, strong, alert, good eyesight, so he was accepted. Some of his factory mates were too. The army was much better than working in the soap factory with its endless mindless labour, heat and stink. When the first hints of war got mentioned in the papers he and his friends had discussed it and then, one evening after a few drinks several of them had built up a group courage and gone to the town recruiting office and become soldiers. Hjutens enjoyed it, out in the fresh air, warm clothes, laundry done for you, food not too bad, always on the move from place to place, and best of all, the girls. Everywhere they went the girls liked soldiers, each town they marched through they would run beside them and give them flowers and kisses and in some towns, when they camped for the night, much more. Oh, yes, much more. He smiled. In a years time there might be a few little baby Hjutenses bawling in those towns. Yes, the girls loved a soldier.
He had joined a machine gun company because they did less drill, marched less and their heavy Maxim guns were carried on the backs of steam lorries. The machine gun corps also had more technical work, more plotting of lanes of fire, angles of enfilade and other clever stuff, it was good in the army. Not only did you exercise the old man in your trousers but your brain too.
This morning the sixteen year old Hjutens was on duty with his gun team and three other Maxims from his company protecting the left flank of an infantry battalion that had been allotted a defensive line along a canal. They knelt in their dugouts behind their sandbags and watched the mist on the canal and the far bank, indistinct in the murk. The bridge had been blown and there was no easy way to cross unless the enemy had boats or airships and in the last few days the Marinaen army had demonstrated that it had few of either, or rather it lacked the intelligence to use them correctly. He and his platoon had kept count of the number of Marinaen airships they had seen shot down. Sixty seven. In a week. Sixty seven shot down ships. And that was just the ones they had seen, in their small sector. The enemy seemed clueless, sending out single craft or pairs on patrols and getting jumped by half squadrons of Restormel craft, six at a time.
Hjutens felt bad about it some days, this war was bloody stupid anyway, the Restormel Government had good claim to the coalfields going back fifty years to an old partition of land under a previous royal marriage. Why the Marinaen King insisted on fighting such an obviously stronger nation baffled him. So this stupid war had resulted and because of stupid kings and stupid politicians Marinaen men died. But Hjutens wasn't that concerned. The more Marinaen men that died, the more Marinaen girls would be without lovers and that was where he came in, he was sure a lot of unhappy girls would need comforting when this was over. Oh, yes, lots of comforting.
The artillery bombardment had started at four in the morning, an hour and a half before dawn. Hjutens didn't know the enemy even had any artillery left, let alone in range of them, this far to the west of Greycastle. But evidently they had because the barrage was heavy and relentless. Their sector seemed to be targeted by light guns firing airburst shrapnel which was no problem because the sandbagged earth covered roofs of the machine gun nests kept that out easily. A few mediums came over mixed in with the light stuff and one round dropped very close, maybe even on the right hand gun of their platoon. He could hear someone screaming for a few minutes but he shut the sound out of his mind and it eventually stopped. He could hear heavies coming over though and their dull roaring bursts behind him. Seemed like the people up at HQ, a mile behind him, were getting their arses kicked.
The disquieting thing, the thing that bothered him most was the lack of shells flying the other way, the Restormel guns seemed to be silent and that was odd. In the past few days any movement by the enemy drew down upon his head a quick reaction from the Restormellian gunners, their air spotters always patrolling above the battlefield protected by the ever present scoutships. But this morning, nothing.
At five thirty the barrage ceased and a strange quiet filled the air. The artillery was still coming over but had set a new range and was now lobbing shells well behind them. Oh, well, the boys in reserve needed waking up anyway, lazy buggers. Hjutens and his gun crew crawled out and manned their gun, digging it out of the fallen earth and repairing their emplacement, working quickly and quietly, all by the field manual. A call along the line for a doctor went past, the crew of number one gun had been blown to pieces and next to them curses from the number three gun pit revealed their gun was damaged and wouldn't fire. Two guns lost, two left. Their captain split the crew of number three, allocating them between number two and four as extra ammunition carriers. Rumours came along the line that the infantry to their right had suffered many casualties in their open rifle pits.
Hjutens looked down his gun sight swinging the barrel left and right, sweeping the far bank of the canal. Anyone who tried to cross here would need a boat, and Hjutens would be making life very unpleasant for them.
Then he heard the noise. A faint clanking sound, like a hundred handsome cab tyres over cobbles. He listened carefully trying to put a finger on it. It also sounded a little like the journeymen working in the brewery next door to the soap factory, unloading their steel beer drums that clanked and banged on the stone yard. But you'd need fifty journeymen unloading all at once to produce this sound and he doubted very much that anyone was delivering beer the other side of the canal at this time of day. The clanking and clattering got louder and behind that sound was something else, a rhythmic swishing noise, a hissing. He knew what that was, a steam power plant. But the only steam vehicles his army used were transport vehicles; lorries or artillery tractors, nothing that would be near the front line.
Then he saw it. He saw it clearly but he still didn't know what it was he was seeing. A wide low dun coloured thing it was, like a giant turtle or a giant upturned tin bath. It moved towards the canal. It was plated at the sides and had some kind of skirting that ran along near the ground. On top was a short armoured trunk, out of which steam issued in busy, purposeful snorts. On the roof were vision slits and armour glass periscopes just like the turret of an ironclad.
"Enemy to the front! Range two hundred!"
The call went along the line and some way to his right the chatter of rifle fire began, he could see nothing out of his dugout's vision slit except a hundred yards of canal bank and the giant beetle.
"Fire, dammit! Open fire!"
Eye to his gunsight, finger disengaging the lock, Hjutens squeezed the trigger, he held it for three seconds, let off, checked his aim, held down again for two seconds and let off again. Every fourth bullet was a tracer, trailing a red line behind it as the chemically coloured propellant burned. He saw his shots hit the tin bath and bounce up, winging away into the darkness with a sound like pebbles on a tin roof. He squeezed again for three seconds, swinging the gun barrel a little to see if angled shots had any effect. The bullets bounced from the plating of the thing, each one leaving an orange glow where it struck and curving away in lazy arcs overhead as their energy expended, like children's fireworks. He kept firing as the thing crept up to the canal bank, in short controlled bursts so as not to overheat the barrel or wear the rifling. To his right he could hear number two gun chattering away as well, but he couldn't see its target.
"Ammo out! Fresh belt!"
More ammunition was loaded and the second man banged his right shoulder.
"Loaded!"
Hjutens kept firing but he soon realized he was wasting his time. He was a good aimer, good eyesight. He'd been made gunner after all. He swung his gun up and down, left and right. The big steam powered tin bath sat on the far side of the canal for five minutes doing nothing. Hjutens aimed at the side plating, the hanging protective skirts, the armoured trunk, the periscope glasses. He even managed to get a shot or two into the vision slits or ventilation trunks or whatever they were but this seemed to bother the tin bath not at all. And then, it moved. It began to creep forward. It reached the canal bank and it's nose hung over the water, further and further, sticking it's nose out like a cat investigating a pond full of goldfish. To his right some way off a series of explosions came, dull rumbles, the shouts of men.
The young machine gunner rattled off short controlled bursts at the thing, trying even to skim shots off the water like stones to get ricochet hits up against the underside.
"Ammo out! Fresh belt!"
Pause. Click of the belt, bang on the shoulder.
"Loaded!"
He didn't fire. There was nothing to fire at. The armoured front of the thing was impervious. They needed medium artillery for this, a good sized shell slap on the thing's back would do it. But the Restormellian artillery this morning was silent. In awe Hjutens watched the huge thing hang out over the canal bank at an impossible angle, balancing like some freakish fairground trick. Then the nose began to tilt, it dipped slowly down, the bulk of the thing hanging beyond it's centre of gravity off the canal bank. It swung down and with a titanic splash struck the canal and sank under. It moved forward burrowing under water, sending a bore like wave across to the far bank. The long turtle like body slid down and Hjutens saw the ventilation trunks and vision slits slide down retracting flush with the carapace. He squeezed off a few bursts at the back of the thing, testing the roof armour but got the same result. It was as he was watching his shots deflect over that he saw the second one. It was behind the first and staggered a little left approaching the canal.
"There's two of them! Bullets having no effect!"
"Keep firing damn you. We must hold this canal line!"
"What with?"
"Shut your mouth and keep firing."
Underwater the thing was even more sinister, it made a low spreading wave and only the exhaust trunk was visible. It reached the near bank and the muzzle began to rise, breaching the surface and creeping up the slope. This close it was huge, as wide and tall as a railway locomotive, but completely faceless, silent apart from the clanking of its machinery and the sizzling of the steam plant. Hjutens had a small opportunity to place a well aimed burst under its belly as it climbed out but without apparent effect. Forty yards, thirty yards, the thing was going to simply crush them.
"Alright, pull out, pull back, move! Move!"
The five men withdrew from the dugout and scuttled back across the open ground to the next line of trenches. The steam landship lifted a hatch in its nose and a machine gun protruded, a short burst of fire and the brown coated figures fell and twitched and lay still. In the towns the machine gun company had passed through, the little Hjutenses would remain for ever fatherless.
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18 – 19 March 2007
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