The Emma Harte 7-Book Collection: A Woman of Substance, Hold the Dream, To Be the Best, Emma’s Secret, Unexpected Blessings, Just Rewards, Breaking the Rules

‘No, love, I’m not.’

A few days later she read with gloomy resignation that although the House divided on the bill, the majority of Members were in favour. Finally, on May 27, the new Military Service Act received royal assent.

That evening Emma sat in the drawing room with Frank, who was staying with them again, discussing the news. ‘What exactly does that mean – royal assent?’ she asked.

‘It means that in the great crisis of its destiny the British nation has reverted to the method of Norman and Saxon times, when the King had the right to take in men, ships, and every available chattel in his dominion for the purpose of defending the nation,’ Frank told her solemnly.

She understood. But understanding did not necessarily ease her troubled thoughts.

Emma, having previously always complained, and in the most vociferous voice, of the procrastination and red tape of bureaucracy, now cursed its deadly efficiency. The three men most prominent in her life went with the hordes. First David, with the infantry, and then Joe and Blackie, who left together. At the end of May they had both joined the Seaforth Highlanders, her father’s old regiment, and one that was particularly favoured by Yorkshiremen.

‘Except that I’m not a Yorkshireman,’ Blackie had declared. ‘An Irishman living in England, married to a Sassenach, lapsed from the Church, serving in a Scottish regiment and wearing a skirt to boot. Unique, eh?’ Laura and Emma had joined in his laughter but their hearts were heavy.

Joe and Blackie had been immediately dispatched to Ripon for field training. This picturesque and ancient garrison town was a place of old memories for Emma. Two weeks later they came home on leave for twenty-four hours, en route to Tilbury for embarkation to France. On a damp June morning Emma accompanied them to the railway station. Laura, who was now pregnant, begged to go along, but Blackie was adamant.

‘Not in your condition, darlin’,’ he said gently, stroking her hair. ‘I don’t want you getting distraught and upsetting yourself and the baby.’

At the last minute Blackie almost had to forcibly restrain Laura, who clung to his arm fiercely, endeavouring to hold back the tears without success. But her strained white face was filled with immense courage as they took their leave of her. She stood at the window, a pale image against the glass, waving to the three of them as they walked down the garden path and disappeared from view.

It was a silent journey into Leeds. Emma was staggered when they arrived at City Station. Crowds of troops, from many other regiments as well as the Seaforth Highlanders, were filing through the gates. The gloomy grime-coated platforms were jammed with hundreds more, and women and girls of all ages and classes, wives and mothers and sweethearts saying farewell to their men. Blackie took their kit bags on to the train and Emma and Joe stood on the platform holding hands.

‘You’ll be fine, love,’ Joe said, tightening his grip on her fingers. ‘Don’t worry about me. Just take care of yourself and the children.’

Emma bit her lip, striving for composure. Joe had been surprisingly tender and considerate over the past few months, obviously realizing the time for separation was drawing near, and they had become much closer in many ways. ‘It’s you who must take care, Joe,’ she said softly.

Blackie rejoined them after a few seconds. Emma reached for his hand, pulling him to her. ‘And you, too, Blackie.’ She attempted to laugh. ‘Don’t either of you get into any scrapes—’ She stopped, her lips shaking.

Joe lifted her face to his gently. ‘Now, where’s that famous smile of yours, love?’

‘I’m sorry.’

The whistles began to hoot and clouds of steam and smoke enveloped them as the trains revved up to roll on their journey south. Blackie put his arm around her. ‘Goodbye, mavourneen. Stay well and look after me darlin’ Laura for me. See she takes it easy and don’t let her fret.’ He kissed her cheek, his eyes wet.

Emma swallowed, looking up at Blackie. ‘I will. I promise I won’t let anything happen to her or the baby.’

Blackie leaped on to the train steps and stood hanging on to the bar, turning away to give them a moment of privacy.

Joe took Emma in his arms. ‘You’ve been the best wife, sweetheart.’ Seeing the look of fear cross her face, he added hastily, ‘And that’s why you can be damned sure I’m coming back to you!’

‘I know you will, love. And you’ve been a good husband, Joe. Be careful over there.’

He nodded, choked and unable to reply. He kissed her again and she felt his tears mingling with her own on her cheeks. Joe released her abruptly and sprang on to the steps to join Blackie. The wheels started to grind with a high-pitched screech against the rails and the train began to pull out. It was moving so slowly Emma was able to walk alongside it, holding on to Joe’s hand.

Unexpectedly a lone soldier’s voice rang out, sweet yet melancholy. ‘Keep the home fires burning, though your hearts are yearning …’ Another voice joined in and another and another, until the immense station hall reverberated with the song as troops in other trains and many of the women picked up the refrain, and Blackie’s baritone rose above them all, as rich and magnificent as always.

The train gathered speed. Joe dropped Emma’s hand and she halted on the spot, waving to them. And her luminous valedictory smile was courageous despite her moist eyes. She watched the train until it was lost from sight and then she turned and left, jostled by the crowds, blinded by tears and wondering despairingly if she would ever see either of them again.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE (#ulink_b8782057-b081-56e4-92f8-dd236d239d8d)

They marched through a curtain of shrapnel, ankle-deep in mud, their kilts swinging in the breeze, the skirl of the bagpipes a mournful dirge below the roar of the cannonade. The tornado blasts from the British guns now rose to a fearful and deafening crescendo and the pipes ceased abruptly.

Behind this moving barrage of gunfire came the 51st Division of the Seaforth Highlanders. They had slowly advanced from the Somme Canal, tramping across the sodden and bloody fields ripped apart by shelling, cut deep with trenches and intersected with wire entanglements. Hardecourt was behind them. To the right, Combles and Guillemont. To the left, Mametz. Ahead, Bazentin and Longueval. And the bull’s-eye centre of this triangle composed of the six towns was Trônes Wood – their objective.

General von Arnim was entrenched in that wood. Having suffered heavy defeats in Mametz he had tried to redress his losses on his left by a furious drive to his right into Trônes Wood. The wood stretched across a narrow valley along which a stream ran to Fricourt, and the Germans had two railway lines running through it, connecting it with Guillemont and Combles. Trenches extended across the centre of the wood and down the northern and southern sides; wire entanglements reinforced by machine guns protected the western edge against assault. In essence, it was a long, wide wedge of ground, 1,400 yards from north to south, and 400 yards along its base, driven against the enemy’s second line at Guillemont and Longueval.

The British had already moved into the wood and the Lancashires had gained a partial grip on this dense green tract. But there was a terrible disadvantage to this new British salient. It was covered on all sides by German infantry. General von Arnim was exerting all his available strength in men and shell to hold and cut off this long strip of woodland. Four times the British had advanced further and been repulsed by von Arnim, who was spending his men’s lives in tens of thousands to recover the whole of Trônes Wood, a vital and strategic position in the great Somme Offensive. At night, unperturbed by his incredible losses, von Arnim flung out more divisions to repeat the enveloping assault. For the fifth time, his men utterly failed under a hurricane of shell fire from British guns west of the wood and French guns near Hardecourt. But a sixth desperate attack by the British enabled the German general to regain the greater part of the wood. Meanwhile, Sir Henry Rawlinson’s orders had come down to the British field commanders operating below the Bazentin ridges: Smash through Trônes Wood, destroy the German bulwark and press on and upward to Longueval and Bazentin.

Now on the afternoon of 13 July the wood was again swept by Allied artillery as the Seaforth Highlanders approached to reinforce the Lancashires. It was a grey day, the overcast sky fiercely illuminated by great arcs of vivid red gunfire and exploding shells, and filled with British aeroplanes strafing German observation balloons.

‘Fix bayonets!’ came the terse command.

Metal hit metal with deadly precision.

‘Forward march!’

Rifles drawn and ready, they moved ahead, in perfect step, as though they were one giant body of tartan and khaki, backs straight, eyes sharp, heads held proudly high. They were tall and strapping men, these Seaforth Highlanders, whose fierce indomitable courage and their dark green-and-navy regimental kilts had induced the enemy to name them ‘the ladies from hell’.

Into the wood they moved, stalwart and determined in their deadly purpose, seeking a terrible vengeance for their fallen comrades. The battle was atrocious in its ferocity and men were mercilessly cut down in increasing numbers on both sides. After several hours of general ploughing fire, the British guns massed in a single gigantic machine-like effect, tearing up the ground, hurtling mud and rocks, trees and men wantonly into the air. But this massive effort, as terrible and as destructive as it was, enabled the Seaforth Highlanders to drive the enemy back. The British penetrated deeper and deeper into the wooded area, now so smashed and riven apart it looked as if it had been cracked open by an earthquake.

After swaying, hand-to-hand fighting of the most relentless kind, a group of the Seaforths won a small but satisfying victory when they managed to capture the upper portion of the wood. A young captain, who was the only senior officer in the group, set up temporary battalion headquarters with a couple of lieutenants and instructed the men to seek cover in the trenches running on the southern edge of the forest. Their orders: Hold fast to the last man.

Blackie O’Neill wearily wiped the mud from his face and glanced around swiftly at the men in his trench, his bloodshot eyes seeking out Joe Lowther. He was not amongst the handful crowded together and Blackie wondered, with numbing dread and the most awful sinking feeling, if he was alive or dead? Had Joe made it to this sector? Or was he out there with the other corpses? Blackie crushed down on this fearful thought, refusing to contemplate such a chilling idea. Perhaps Joe was with the rest of the regiment who had been thrown back with the Lancashires. He prayed to God he was.

Spotting a particular pal, a Yorkshireman called Harry Metcalfe, Blackie edged down past the other men to join him, his boots sinking into the slime which squelched and sucked around his calves and seeped through his gaiters. His nose curled with distaste. The mire had a peculiar putrid smell of its own and intermingled with it was the gagging stench of urine, vomit and excrement, strong reminders of the previous occupants.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! There’s so much bleeding mud we’re going to drown in it before we get out of here,’ Blackie said when he reached Harry.

‘Aye, there’s summat to that, lad.’

‘Have you seen Joe Lowther? We got separated out there.’

‘Last I saw of him he was going arse over tit into a trench back yonder. He’s safe, mate.’

‘Thank God for that. I thought he’d bought it.’

‘No, he didn’t, but a lot of our lads did. I saw MacDonald and Clarke both go down like ninepins. Poor bloody sods. Mac got blown to smithereens by a shell and Clarkey was shot in the face and chest. Mashed to a pulp he was.’

‘Oh sweet Jesus! Clarkey has a young wife and couple of bairns back home. Just babies.’ Blackie’s eyes closed, his face grim. ‘Oh God! This lousy rotten war! This stinking filthy lousy rotten war!’

‘Here, take it easy, Irish,’ Harry said, throwing him a sympathetic look.

Blackie leaned back against the wall of the trench, resting his head against a sandbag. He was suddenly drained of all strength and filled with a rising nausea caused by the feculent trench, the stink of smoke and explosives polluting the air, and the gamy effluvium of the men. All were fouling his nostrils. The pounding of the cannons still reverberated in his ears and for a moment a dizziness enveloped him.

‘You badly, Blackie lad?’

‘No, just catching me breath,’ Blackie said, opening his eyes. He looked more closely at Harry. His khaki jacket was covered in blood. ‘How about you? You didn’t get hit, did you, Harry?’

‘No, not me. I’m just caked with this pissing mud. And a Jerry’s guts.’ Harry glanced down at the khaki apron covering his kilt, which all Highland troops were issued with for battle, and made a face. ‘And when this muck hardens I’ll be as stiff as a board. You too, by the looks of you, me old cock.’