and we have another wee battle!
Nov. 14th, 2012 01:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smackenzieWhile the battalion is in the reserve trench, Davies and Powell and the rest of their platoon (or what's left of it) get word that Lt Fiske is alive but has been sent to a base hospital in Amiens to be treated for his wounds. The men are relieved. They know two other platoon commanders are dead – Patterson and Putnam – as well as Captain Bradford's second in command. Of the forty-one men in the platoon on July 1, twenty-three are now waiting in the reserves to be sent forward again. Several men have been sent to the casualty clearing station or a base hospital, so the platoon has not been quite as decimated as the numbers might suggest. But the fact is, only half of them survived their first major offensive intact.
But the ones who remain feel closer than ever.
"And we're still alive, aren't we?" Morehouse says to Davies as they hustle supplies up to the support trench in the middle of the night. Davies hates being a pack mule, but the actual pack mules can't get through the communication trenches with all the mud, and someone has to resupply the forward trenches. He'll be grateful someone's around to do it for him, when they're in the line again.
"That we are," he agrees. "Watch your step there."
"Watch – whoop!"
Davies can hear Morehouse slip and fall behind him, causing a chain reaction all the way down the line of men staggering under the weight of their deliveries. The bottoms of the trenches are mud all the way through, not too deep but slippery and hard to navigate and pitted with puddles. Much more rain, Davies thinks, and they'll start washing away.
Someone behind him swears roundly at Morehouse, who swears back, and soon they're all good-naturedly yelling insults at each other.
"Control yourselves," calls the new platoon commander, a sergeant named Campbell who is replacing Fiske until Fiske has recovered from his wounds. "Back to work!"
Powell is running a fever – nothing much, the medical officer says, but he should rest just in case – and after they're done for the night, Davies brings him some tea. Powell is pretty sure it's somehow related to the wound he sustained when they attacked Montauban Alley, but both Davies and the medical officer have reassured him that it's probably just from sleeping on the cold wet ground.
"Then why aren't you sick?" he mumbles at Davies.
"I'm made of hardier stock than you are." Davies pats his shoulder. "You'll get over it. Probably just in time to join us at the front line."
"Joy." He doesn't sound thrilled. In fact, he sounds a little stuffed up.
"You'll be fine. You didn't come all this way to be felled by a little flu."
Powell sips his tea and says nothing. Davies doesn't think it's very good tea, but it's hot and comforting and the best he can do under the circumstances.
They go back up the line a little over a week later, and while they no longer have to fetch and carry for other battalions, it's back to sentry duty and stand to and shoring up the existing trenches and digging new ones and listening to their own side bombard the Germans in preparation for another attack. Powell recovers and goes back to bitching and moaning about the rats and the mud and the noise, like everyone else.
Sergeant Campbell is a capable leader, it turns out, but Captain Bradford still comes by regularly to inspect the men and, as the time of attack gets closer, to give orders. Davies will be the first to admit he doesn't know the captain well at all – even considering the gulf between private and company commander – but something in him seems to have changed since they took Montauban Alley. He seems much more comfortable with his command, more at ease with telling the platoon what to do, and more at ease among them. Not that he ever seemed uncomfortable talking to the men, but now it's as if he thinks he's one of them.
Battle makes strange bedfellows, Davies thinks. But it's not as easy for him to just ignore the vast difference in their ranks.
Their current objective is a wood might still be sheltering Germans but in any case is blocking the British army's advance, and they need to take it.
"We go at first light," Sergeant Campbell tells them. "Steady nerves. We can do it."
Before dawn they stand to, and as light breaks Sergeant Campbell blows his whistle and they charge over the parapet and into the trees.
Powell and Davies stick close together as the battalion pushes slowly into the woods, using downed trees and underbrush as cover from which to fire on the Germans. The woods are dense and the Germans determined – Davies feels a bullet pinging off his helmet and out of the corner of his eye he sees men go down. He crouches behind a tree trunk, takes aim at the enemy, and fires away. All around him is the sound of gunfire and the occasional grenade, screams and yells and the noises a company of men makes crashing through the trees in pursuit of victory.
The battalion advances and falls back and advances again. C Company holds together this time. No one gets lost. Davies trips over a mess of downed tree branches and lands on a startled, wounded NCO who was using it as cover. After a quick apology, and a minute to untangle his foot from the branches, Davies is off again.
It's exhilarating and terrifying, the same as it was when they swarmed across No Man's Land two weeks ago, but also more claustrophobic. No swathes of fields made nearly impassable by shell craters and mud this time, and no giant tangles of barbed wire, but trees and undergrowth and yes, shell holes. And Germans.
By nightfall they've succeeded in taking the woods and can conduct their prisoners back behind the line and collect their dead. Davies goes back to look for the NCO he fell on, but can't find him. Stretcher bearers must have picked him up, or he managed to make his way back to the casualty clearing station, or even just a dressing station, on his own feet. Either way, he's not dead. Davies takes this as a good sign.
words: 1070
total words: 21,884
note: uh... i hate writing battle scenes. can you tell? :D
But the ones who remain feel closer than ever.
"And we're still alive, aren't we?" Morehouse says to Davies as they hustle supplies up to the support trench in the middle of the night. Davies hates being a pack mule, but the actual pack mules can't get through the communication trenches with all the mud, and someone has to resupply the forward trenches. He'll be grateful someone's around to do it for him, when they're in the line again.
"That we are," he agrees. "Watch your step there."
"Watch – whoop!"
Davies can hear Morehouse slip and fall behind him, causing a chain reaction all the way down the line of men staggering under the weight of their deliveries. The bottoms of the trenches are mud all the way through, not too deep but slippery and hard to navigate and pitted with puddles. Much more rain, Davies thinks, and they'll start washing away.
Someone behind him swears roundly at Morehouse, who swears back, and soon they're all good-naturedly yelling insults at each other.
"Control yourselves," calls the new platoon commander, a sergeant named Campbell who is replacing Fiske until Fiske has recovered from his wounds. "Back to work!"
Powell is running a fever – nothing much, the medical officer says, but he should rest just in case – and after they're done for the night, Davies brings him some tea. Powell is pretty sure it's somehow related to the wound he sustained when they attacked Montauban Alley, but both Davies and the medical officer have reassured him that it's probably just from sleeping on the cold wet ground.
"Then why aren't you sick?" he mumbles at Davies.
"I'm made of hardier stock than you are." Davies pats his shoulder. "You'll get over it. Probably just in time to join us at the front line."
"Joy." He doesn't sound thrilled. In fact, he sounds a little stuffed up.
"You'll be fine. You didn't come all this way to be felled by a little flu."
Powell sips his tea and says nothing. Davies doesn't think it's very good tea, but it's hot and comforting and the best he can do under the circumstances.
They go back up the line a little over a week later, and while they no longer have to fetch and carry for other battalions, it's back to sentry duty and stand to and shoring up the existing trenches and digging new ones and listening to their own side bombard the Germans in preparation for another attack. Powell recovers and goes back to bitching and moaning about the rats and the mud and the noise, like everyone else.
Sergeant Campbell is a capable leader, it turns out, but Captain Bradford still comes by regularly to inspect the men and, as the time of attack gets closer, to give orders. Davies will be the first to admit he doesn't know the captain well at all – even considering the gulf between private and company commander – but something in him seems to have changed since they took Montauban Alley. He seems much more comfortable with his command, more at ease with telling the platoon what to do, and more at ease among them. Not that he ever seemed uncomfortable talking to the men, but now it's as if he thinks he's one of them.
Battle makes strange bedfellows, Davies thinks. But it's not as easy for him to just ignore the vast difference in their ranks.
Their current objective is a wood might still be sheltering Germans but in any case is blocking the British army's advance, and they need to take it.
"We go at first light," Sergeant Campbell tells them. "Steady nerves. We can do it."
Before dawn they stand to, and as light breaks Sergeant Campbell blows his whistle and they charge over the parapet and into the trees.
Powell and Davies stick close together as the battalion pushes slowly into the woods, using downed trees and underbrush as cover from which to fire on the Germans. The woods are dense and the Germans determined – Davies feels a bullet pinging off his helmet and out of the corner of his eye he sees men go down. He crouches behind a tree trunk, takes aim at the enemy, and fires away. All around him is the sound of gunfire and the occasional grenade, screams and yells and the noises a company of men makes crashing through the trees in pursuit of victory.
The battalion advances and falls back and advances again. C Company holds together this time. No one gets lost. Davies trips over a mess of downed tree branches and lands on a startled, wounded NCO who was using it as cover. After a quick apology, and a minute to untangle his foot from the branches, Davies is off again.
It's exhilarating and terrifying, the same as it was when they swarmed across No Man's Land two weeks ago, but also more claustrophobic. No swathes of fields made nearly impassable by shell craters and mud this time, and no giant tangles of barbed wire, but trees and undergrowth and yes, shell holes. And Germans.
By nightfall they've succeeded in taking the woods and can conduct their prisoners back behind the line and collect their dead. Davies goes back to look for the NCO he fell on, but can't find him. Stretcher bearers must have picked him up, or he managed to make his way back to the casualty clearing station, or even just a dressing station, on his own feet. Either way, he's not dead. Davies takes this as a good sign.
words: 1070
total words: 21,884
note: uh... i hate writing battle scenes. can you tell? :D
