My Hundred Days of War by Darrell Duthie

Author:Darrell Duthie [Duthie, Darrell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Esdorn Editions
Published: 2018-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

CHAPTER 21

15th of September, 1918

Canal du Nord, France

The wind was blowing a harsh and piercing gale in my face. I scarcely felt it, nor did I really notice the roar in my ears. It was exhilarating.

The French countryside was inching by, a quilted patchwork of greens, yellows and off-browns, striped by meandering country roads. And then I caught sight of Arras. The curving streets and open squares of the city were reduced to a maquette, the kind we painstakingly constructed before every battle. I spotted the Cathédrale, prominent in the model town of small grey building blocks, a holed and crippled version of what it had once been, but proud and defiant all the same. The belfry and the town hall resembled not so much themselves as a jagged mountain of stone.

We were climbing.

I peered down at the little roads, the pinpricks of things I recognized. I was astonished how my nervousness had all but evaporated. In the short time that my attention shifted from my nerves to the sights, we were well on our way. It felt peculiarly safe up here in the emptiness of the sky, in this ungainly contraption, with a comforting quilt-work of clouds stretched above.

Once Arras passed underneath, the ground assumed a uniform brown colour. Shell-holes and trenches dotted the landscape. We flew on and I saw the darker zig-zag patterns of the trench systems running from north to south, edged by broad belts of wire easily visible from above, one after another. I shook my head. To think we’d made it through all those.

‘Look,’ Captain Catchpole shouted. Startled, I pivoted round in my seat. As the “observer” I was seated backwards with a fine view of our tail. He dabbed his finger downwards repeatedly, as if he were typing out Morse code for the hard of hearing.

Below was the Arras-to-Cambrai road. We were crossing in a north-easterly direction. I could see all kinds of miniature vehicles moving along, and the slower moving shapes of horses. Astonishing really. They looked identical to the toys I’d played with as a child.

The leather, fur-lined headgear I was wearing was warm enough, the goggles which I’d awkwardly wrestled with on the ground fit fine. I felt a tap on my shoulder and craned my neck around again. ‘The Canal du Nord,’ shouted Catchpole.

‘All right. Thanks,’ I bellowed in response, the plane already banking to the right. I saw the flooded marshes beside the waterway, the village of Oisy-le-Verger off to the left on the far side of the canal. It was from those heights that the Boche were pouring down machine gun fire. Between that, and the shelling from the artillery to the north, my division, holding the line, was suffering almost two dozen casualties a day.

The shelling was due to our unenviable position. After weeks of battle, and despite the softening resistance, the rest of the First Army north of us, and the entire Third Army to the south, were still miles behind. So that left

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