Fall of Giants

But, when he looked out again, he saw that the Germans had a different plan. They had split into two groups and were heading left and right away from the ruins. As Billy watched, they began to circle around his position, staying out of range. “Oh, bugger,” he said. They were going to slip between his position and neighboring redoubts, then come at him from both sides. Or, alternatively, they might bypass him, leaving him to be mopped up by their rearguard.

Either way, this position was going to fall to the enemy.

“Take down the machine gun, George,” Billy said. “And you, Johnny, dismantle the mortar. Pick up your stuff, everyone. We’re falling back.”

They slung their rifles and backpacks, hurried to the nearest communication trench, and began to run.

Billy looked into the dugout to make sure there was no one inside. He pulled the pin out of a grenade and threw it in, to deny any remaining supplies to the enemy.

Then he followed his men into retreat.

{IV}

At the end of the afternoon, Walter and his battalion were in possession of a rearward line of British trenches.

He was weary but triumphant. The battalion had had a few fierce skirmishes but no sustained battle. The storm troopers’ tactics had worked even better than expected, thanks to the fog. They had wiped out weak opposition, bypassed strong points, and taken a great deal of ground.

Walter found a dugout and ducked into it. Several of his men followed. The place had a homely look, as if the Brits had been living there for some months: there were magazine pictures nailed to the walls, a typewriter on an upturned box, cutlery and crockery in old cake tins, and even a blanket spread like a tablecloth on a stack of crates. Walter guessed this had been a battalion headquarters.

His men immediately found the food. There were crackers, jam, cheese, and ham. He could not stop them eating, but he did forbid them to open any of the bottles of whisky. They broke open a locked cupboard and found a jar of coffee, and one of the men made a small fire outside and brewed a pot. He gave Walter a cup, adding sweetened milk from a can. It tasted heavenly.

Sergeant Schwab said: “I read in the newspaper that the British were short of food, just as we are.” He held up the tin of jam he was eating with a spoon. “Some shortage!”

Walter had been wondering how long it would take them to work that out. He had long suspected the German authorities of exaggerating the effect of submarine war on Allied supplies. Now he knew the truth, and so did the men. Food was rationed in Britain, but the Brits did not look as if they were starving to death. The Germans did.

He found a map carelessly left behind by the retreating forces. Comparing it with his own, he saw that he was not far from the Crozat Canal. That meant that in one day the Germans had taken back all the territory so painfully won by the Allies during the five months of the Battle of the Somme the year before last.

Victory really was within the Germans’ grasp.

Walter sat down at the British typewriter and began to compose his report.

CHAPTER THIRTY – Late March and April 1918

Fitz held a house party at Tŷ Gwyn over the Easter weekend. He had an ulterior motive. The men he invited were as violently opposed as he was to the new regime in Russia.

His star guest was Winston Churchill.

Winston was a member of the Liberal Party, and might have been expected to sympathize with the revolutionaries; but he was also the grandson of a duke, and he had an authoritarian streak. Fitz had long thought of him as a traitor to his class, but was now inclined to forgive him because his hatred of the Bolsheviks was passionate.

Winston arrived on Good Friday. Fitz sent the Rolls-Royce to Aberowen Station to meet him. He came bouncing into the morning room, a small, slight figure with red hair and a pink complexion. There was rain on his boots. He wore a well-cut suit of wheat-colored tweed and a bow tie the same blue as his eyes. He was forty-three, but there was still something boyish about him as he nodded to acquaintances and shook hands with guests he did not know.

Looking around at the linenfold paneling, the patterned wallpaper, the carved stone fireplace, and the dark oak furniture, he said: “Your house is decorated like the Palace of Westminster, Fitz!”

He had reason to be ebullient. He was back in the government. Lloyd George had made him minister of munitions. There was much talk about why the prime minister had brought back such a troublesome and unpredictable colleague, and the consensus was that he preferred to have Churchill inside the tent spitting out.

“Your coal miners support the Bolsheviks,” Winston said, half-amused and half-disgusted, as he sat down and stretched his wet boots to the roaring coal fire. “There were red flags flying from half the houses I passed.”

“They have no idea what they’re cheering for,” Fitz said with contempt. Beneath his scorn he was deeply anxious.