Read Online Starshine by John Wilcox - Free Book Online

was continuing elsewhere. And this was confirmed when, in the mid afternoon, Jim noticed that heads were turning along the line of the trench – now much more substantial – as news of mouth was being passed along.
    Eventually, it reached him. ‘The village up top has been retaken by the bloody Worcesters,’ said the man to his right. ‘They’ve brokenthrough up on the top from the left. Looks as though we shall be movin’ on soon.’
    And so it proved. Within the half-hour, orders were given to load their equipment and move out. In open order, with bayonets fixed, they left the comparative security of their trench and moved up the slope towards where the blackened remains of Geluveld were smoking and serrating the skyline. Hickman realised that defending a position was one thing and attacking, over open ground, was very much another. It was the first time that he and Bertie had advanced in daylight and, walking steadily up the slope, they both felt unprotected and virtually naked. Jim remembered how easy it had been to mow down the Germans when they left their positions and came out into the open. At least now he and his comrades were spread out in open order, but even so, they would offer inviting targets to machine guns set up behind the wall.
    Yet their advance was unhindered and not a shot was fired as they breasted the ridge. A disconcerting sight met their eyes. Hardly a building, it seemed, had been left standing in the village, and streets forming the crossroads were marked now only by rubble and blackened timbers. Corpses of soldiers, British and German, lay unburied where they had fallen, some of them scorched by the flames.
    The little major bustled over. ‘Take cover where you can and rest,’ he called to the men. ‘Captain Yates, take Lieutenant Baxter and a platoon and reconnoitre to the left and see if you can link up with the Worcesters. The colonel is establishing battalion headquarters in what’s left of that school over there. Report back there.’
    Yates beckoned to a young subaltern, a sergeant, another corporal and to Jim, and a makeshift platoon of some twenty-five men began cautiously to patrol down what seemed to be left of the main street.
    They had been walking for perhaps ten minutes when a suddenrattle of machine-gun fire and then another broke out ahead of them and they all went to ground instinctively. A mortar banged and a fountain of earth and rubble sprang up to their right. Then another mortar shell exploded to their left, with the same result. A sharp crack of musketry sounded ahead and bullets began to strike the road and masonry around them, ricocheting away in a succession of pings and whines.
    ‘Into that ditch on the right,’ shouted Yates. They followed him and tumbled into a rubble-fringed irrigation ditch, but not before two of their number fell on the roadway and a third crumbled just as he reached the dubious safety of the ditch.
    ‘Where the hell are they?’ asked Yates of Baxter.
    ‘Can’t see ’em for the life of me.’
    ‘In the churchyard, to the right,’ called Hickman. ‘Look, the place is crawling with them.’ He pointed.
    Grey-coated figures could now be seen flitting between the gravestones and the fallen masonry. As they watched, two men spreadeagled themselves on either side of a third man, who squatted and began assembling something.
    ‘Can you see ’em, Bertie?’ called Jim. ‘He’s setting up a machine gun just between those tombstones. It’s a long shot. Can you get him? You’ll have to be quick.’
    Murphy nodded but did not reply. Instead, he adjusted his rear sight, licked his thumb and rubbed it on the end of his rifle, levelled it and fired. The German machine-gunner rolled over.
    ‘Good shot, Murphy,’ called out Yates. ‘Glad you’ve swallowed your principles.’
    ‘Ah, it’s different if I’m shit scared, sorr.’
    ‘We can’t stay here.’ Yates was addressing his lieutenant.
    ‘Withdraw, of course?’
    ‘Good God,