No Man's Land

NO MAN’S LAND

Trench Raiders Book Three

by Sean McLachlan

Smashwords edition copyright 2015 Sean McLachlan

Cover design by Andrés Alonso-Herrero. Public domain image courtesy Library and Archives Canada.

The characters in these works of fiction are fictional or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

For Almudena, my wife

And Julián, my son

CHAPTER ONE

August 1915

If there was one thing the Great War had taught Sergeant Hugh Willoughby, it was that it was generally fatal to make a mistake in No Man’s Land.

And he had just made a fundamental one.

He had told himself that it would be all right to go out alone. A thick cover of clouds hid the moon, the Hun had been quiet the past few days, and he was only going to have a quick look at their wire under the cover of darkness.

One should never go between the trenches alone. Even Crawford didn’t do that anymore, not that he was available for this little adventure. He was locked up at battalion for nicking an officer’s bottle of vintage claret.

None of the others Willoughby could rely on were available either. Black and Hedges had sentry duty, Fisher was in hospital with a fever, Captain Cole had far too much to do, and he didn’t trust any of the new men.

So here he was alone in a shell crater trying to figure out who was in the next crater over.

The sounds came indistinct but unmistakable—the soft rustle of a body shifting. That was all.

That was enough.

Willoughby lay on the rough side of the crater, a captured Luger in one hand and his koummya in the other, and waited for another sound. He did not carry his rifle. The Lee-Enfield was the finest infantry weapon in the world, but far too bulky for this sort of work. Instead he relied on two gifts. The koummya, a Moroccan curved dagger, had been a gift from some Colonial troops during the Battle on the Aisne. The Luger had been Crawford’s Christmas present to him. That and some saucy photos of French prostitutes.

A flare sizzled into the sky from the British line about four hundred yards to his left, distant enough that it only cast a feeble light. He closed one eye to preserve his night vision and took a glance around at his crater, seeing it for the first time. It was about half full of water, the surface closer to his feet than he thought. He pulled up his legs a little, the rasp of the flare covering the sound of his movement. It wouldn’t do to splash his feet in the water. He was in enough trouble as it was without making any noise to add to it.

Willoughby waited until the flare descended somewhat and the light no longer shone inside the crater. The edge was irregular and he could raise his head partly above the rim next to a lump of mud on the side and still be in shadow. Plus the wavering light of the dying flare would make it harder to discern any movement if someone was looking his direction.

With the barrel of his Luger leading the way, he peeked over the edge. Before him stretched a wasteland of bodies and craters, the wreckage of what had once been prime French farmland.

The adjoining crater and its mysterious occupant were closer than he had thought, only a few feet away. Whoever it was, they were as good at sneaking around this manmade Hell as he was.

There was no sign of him. That was good. It meant that he was lying low until the flare died out before moving again, showing that he hadn’t heard Willoughby and wasn’t peeking over to try and spot him.

At least Willoughby thought so. There were no dark spots on the crater rim he was watching, and only one or two in the next crater over. As long as he wasn’t mistaken about which crater the noise had come from, he wouldn’t get a bullet in the brain in the next few seconds.

The flare guttered and died. Willoughby opened his other eye.

"Schnell."

The word had come as the faintest whisper. Willoughby leveled his Luger at the crater and gripped his koummya tighter. He’d prefer to use the Moroccan dagger rather than the captured pistol. A gunshot might elicit a burst from the Maxim he knew was fifty yards away and a bit to his right, but there were at least two Germans close by and he didn’t fancy his chances in a hand-to-hand fight.

Then he saw them—three dark shapes against the almost black background. They squirmed over the far edge of their crater, heading away from him and towards the British line.

Delightful, Willoughby thought. A patrol between me and home.

Willoughby waited a full minute, allowing them to get well ahead before following. Then he wormed his way between shell craters in the path he hoped they had taken. He stopped every few yards to listen but couldn’t hear them. Assuming they were still moving, which made sense since they would want to get some distance ahead before another flare went up. He could tell they were good at this, almost as good as he was and he was damned good. The war had done wonders for his self-esteem.

An almost inaudible rustle to his left rear made him freeze. No, that couldn’t have been them. He couldn’t have passed them already. There were more Germans out here.

Willoughby lay prone as he heard more sounds of movement, both to his left rear as from before and also to his direct right. At least three or four men to each side of him, probably more.

He was right in the middle of a German patrol.

Patrol? No, they were too spread out. He was in the middle of a raiding party. Those in front, his friends from the crater, were the scouts, while those to either side were the left and right flank.

Which meant that directly behind him would come the reserve.

He was in their way and he didn’t dare move for fear of getting caught in the crossfire of the flankers.

Then he heard the reserve approach. His ears could practically pick out each man in a rough line following up the scouts and flankers. These men were less experienced. They were about twenty yards behind him and moving quickly, as if worried they would be left behind.

Inexperienced. That meant jumpy. If he moved would they assume he was German, or start firing at the slightest sound?

If they stumbled across him they might see he wasn’t one of them, even in this dreadful dark, and if a flare went up he was surely a dead man.

He had to move.

Willoughby crawled forward as quietly as he could in what he could best judge to be the dead center of the German formation.

The men will rib me about this one, he thought, assuming I get a chance to tell them.

For the next ten yards he moved in tandem with the raiding party, desperately trying to think of a way out of this bind. He had to warn his friends without getting killed in the process.

What would Crawford do in this situation? Something daft, no doubt.

Very well, do something daft.

Willoughby rolled into the nearest shell crater, deliberately making plenty of noise by splashing into the puddle at the bottom.

To his disappointment no one shot at him.

All right, chaps, allow me.

Making sure the muzzle of his Luger was hidden out of view beneath the rim of the crater, he fired three times into the air. He was rewarded a few seconds later with the burst of light from four flares arching up into the sky, and an instant after that the roar of the two nearest Lewis guns. The British machine guns raked the brightly illuminated landscape, the deafening rat tat tat punctuated by screams and the thud of Mausers firing back.

In half a minute the Lewis gunners were joined by the riflemen of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, who added the bullets of their Lee-Enfields to the slaughter.

Even through the cacophony of the gunfire Willoughby could hear the sounds of precipitous retreat as the survivors of the German raiding party fled back to their own lines.

Fools. You’re letting your fear get the better of you. You’ll be gunned down for sure.

But what of his friends from the crater? Those scouts were too smart to run pell-mell for safety they could never hope to reach. No doubt they were still alive, hiding in some declivity between him and home.

And now they knew he was out here. Not even those fools in the rear party would have been stupid enough to fire for no reason. No, any Hun with a brain still safely encased inside his skull knew there was a British soldier out here.

There was nothing to do but wait for the show to die down. More flares went up, but after a minute or two the Lewis guns stopped and the rifle fire became desultory. Then it stopped altogether. The flares stopped lighting up the sky a few minutes later.

Willoughby waited. The German scouts, no doubt, waited too.

After a few minutes another flare shot up. There was no fire from the British trench. Only the intelligent remained alive out here, and no one intelligent would have moved.

The flare died down. After a few minutes of darkness another went up. Still no fire came from his friends in the Oxs and Bucks.

Darkness again. A Lewis gun chattered, firing blind in the hope of getting someone sneaking out of their hole. Willoughby took the opportunity to top up the Luger’s magazine while the sound would be masked. The firing died away just as he snapped the magazine back into the pistol.

A few more minutes of nothing.

Wait, what was that? Movement?

He strained his ear but couldn’t discern any more noise.

Then from close by he heard a strange metallic pop. There was an almost silent whoosh of air and then something plopped into the mud next to him.

Willoughby leapt out of the crater. A pair of Lugers fired at him and he felt the heat of the bullets pass close. As he landed in the mud there was a loud boom from the crater he had just vacated. Mud and water splashed onto him.

A moment later the Lewis guns tore the air. A flare went up as Willoughby pressed himself flat into the mud. To his joy he saw the chewed up remnants of a log between him and home. Bullets pattered off it, spitting splinters into his face, but none found him.

He seriously doubted they found his German friends either.

After an agonizing wait the flares and firing died down again. He waited a full hour more before he moved again. Of the German scouts there was no sign.

With infinite care he made his way back to the British line, calling out the password once he reached the British wire. He did this from a shell crater in case one of the new men got panicky and shot at the sound.

A minute later he slid over the edge of the trench. Corporals Black and Hedges were there to greet him.

You all right? Black asked, staring at him with wide eyes.

Quite all right, thank you, Willoughby replied with a grin. Just enjoying a quiet stroll. Anything interesting happen while I was away?

CHAPTER TWO

Corporal Emmett Crawford sat on the hard wooden palette that served as a bed in his jail cell and cursed his luck. Who would have thought it? He had spotted a Negro caring for a pile of steamer trunks by the side of the road in Givenchy and immediately appreciated the possibilities. The fellow was obviously some servant of a foreign officer, perhaps from one of the Indian units, so there was bound to be something juicy in those trunks. Who would have thought it would end like this?

Crawford had been getting a nip in the estaminent across the street, a fine little place where an old French widow sold cheap wine and hot drinks to the enlisted men. He was savoring his second glass of plonk, thinking of an excuse for why he would be late coming back from delivering a message to brigade, when he’d noticed the fellow—black as the ace of spades and looking colder than Father Christmas skinny-dipping at the North Pole. The poor blighter huddled alone amidst all the steamer trunks getting pelted by a cold rain. Obviously they didn’t have