The Lion Killer

© 2004 James McDonald

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 11/11/04

ISBN: 1-4208-0899-0 (sc)

ISBN: 1-4685-1060-6 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

BELGIUM 1944

YPRES 1917

LIVERPOOL 1923

BELGIUM 1944

AUTHOR’S NOTE: All characters and events in this novel are purely fictional. Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental. Thanks to my daughter Margaret for editing this novel.

The British Army are lions led by donkeys.

- Attributed to Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937), German General

BELGIUM 1944

The Sergeant walked slowly along the row of white gravestones. Occasionally, he would stop for a moment to read the name. A lot of them he recognized, for this was not the first time he had been here. He had served for four years in The Great War as a private. This was his second war. It was now December and the British Army had been slogging their way across northern France since D-Day, the 6th of June. Now they had just crossed the border into Belgium, where the British had manned the northernmost part of the Western front for the whole of the first war. There were hundreds of British and Commonwealth cemeteries in this area. The land they lay on had been given in perpetuity to the Allies in remembrance of the millions who had died on the Western front. They all were similar in appearance, rows of white crosses laid out symmetrically, which gave the impression that no matter in what direction they were viewed the crosses were in a straight line. The only difference was in their size.

The Sergeant was looking for a particular gravestone, but he could only look through the cemeteries that were near where his unit stopped to rest in the pursuit of the retreating Germans. There were only about two hundred graves in this one and he had just walked the last row when he noticed three separate graves set against a small stone wall. He walked over and looked at the names. It was the one! He bent over and put his hand on the cold stone and as he gazed at the inscription his mind drifted back down the years to the events that happened after the last war.

YPRES 1917

It had rained for six weeks without any sign of stopping. Everything and everyone was soaked. The mud became thicker and more rotten by the hour. The stew of dead horses and corpses stretched across No Mans Land among the blasted stumps of trees and the yellow water-filled shell holes.

The British Army had been attacking along a front which the German artillery had bombarded day and night, causing horrific casualties among the infantry. This was nothing new for the army. Since 1915 at the battle of Loos, where they had lost fifteen thousand men in two days, the Generals had learned nothing.

They continued to believe that somehow the Germans would crack under tremendous artillery bombardments followed by mass infantry attacks. At the battle of The Somme, twenty thousand men had been killed in one morning. The tragedy was compounded by the policy of the so-called Pals Battalions, which were raised by encouraging young men to Join up with your pals. This meant that whole villages, whole factories, whole streets of young men, joined up together, served together, and so were killed together.

The First Liverpool Regiment was one of these Pals Battalions and were veterans of these battles and many other smaller ones where the casualties steadily mounted and the dead were replaced with new recruits to fill the thinning ranks. There were about fifty original soldiers left out of sixteen hundred volunteers who had joined in 1914.

Now, on the morning of October 19th, they crouched in the trenches waiting once again for Captain Hamilton to blow the whistle which would signal the start of the latest attempt to break through the German lines.

Sergeant Major Dyer looked along his section of the trench. There were some of the originals grouped together as usual, there were Bob Gray, Jack White and Walter Moore. They were all miners and had lied about their occupation when they joined up because mining was deemed to be an essential service. They always stuck together, hoping that their luck would hold out once again as it had all through the war. None of them had even been wounded, so they would not be separated. Another trio were Pat McCluskey, Jim Jolly, and Brian Foley.

There were the Ferguson brothers, John and Joe, who had broken their mother’s heart when they joined up together. They were supposed to take over the family butcher’s shop. How is your father going to manage? she cried. Don’t worry about me, said Mr. Ferguson, the lads have to do their duty, I’ll take care of the shop till the war is over.

Jim Johnson and Tom Radcliffe had been born in the same street, went to the same school, joined up together and stuck together all through the war. Johnson was single and Radcliffe was married with a two year old son. Like all soldiers, they were superstitious and had come to believe that if they stayed close to each other, they would survive the war.

Harry Cross and Bob Tate stuck together, probably because they were a bit rebellious and were never out of trouble with R.S.M. Dyer for long. Both of them had been unemployed before the war, so when it started they were among the first to volunteer.

There were others of the originals who would do the same, staying clear of the new men if they could, not wanting to know them any more than they had to, figuring that if they were killed, the less you knew, the less it mattered. They were scattered along the front to beef up the masses of new recruits.

Now, as zero hour approached, the artillery bombardment reached a crescendo, the deafening noise seemed to intensify the sheets of driving rain, the duckboards disappeared in the mud, the sixty pounds of equipment felt like a ton, the bowels cramped with fear and apprehension, and a minute was like an hour. At last the whistle blew and the men clambered up and out of the trench, slipping and sliding in the thick stinking muck till they could stand upright and stagger forward into No Mans Land. As if on cue, the German artillery opened up with deadly accuracy among the troops, excavating giant shell holes which rapidly filled with the hellish mixture of dismembered bodies, mud and the wounded drowning in despair.

None of the men went more than fifty yards before the shell bursts and the machine guns either killed them or drove them to throw themselves into the water filled craters. Another disastrous morning for the Fourth Army culminated in the survivors lying in No Mans Land waiting for darkness, listening to the moaning wounded and praying they would get back to the relative safety of their trenches.

Gray, White and Moore got about thirty yards, and found their way blocked by their own barbed wire which was supposed to be cut. The nearest gap in it was fifty yards away. The German machine gunners were concentrating their fire on these gaps, since they were the only way the British could get near them. It was suicide to try to get through the gaps. The three veterans had seen it all before, they found shell holes to bury themselves in and waited for darkness.

Johnson and Radcliffe’s section started out of the trench and they had not reached ten yards when a shell exploded among them. Instantly five men were blown to bits and Johnson was hurled forward about fifteen yards into an old shell hole which was filled with soft mud; luckily it was only three feet deep, so he could crawl out if it without drowning. He staggered upright and continued towards the German lines.

The same explosion blew Radcliffe back into the trench they had just left. He hit the back wall or parados of the trench, was knocked unconscious and fell face first into the front parapet, still gripping his rifle in both hands. Meanwhile, Johnson kept moving forward, falling more than standing, till he slid into a gigantic crater left by a mine. Desperately he tried to get a grip of anything that would stop him slipping into the mud. He dropped his rifle and dug his fingers into the wall of the crater but could not stop himself sinking deeper into the slime. Just as he felt his strength was giving out, a strong hand gripped his wrist and hauled him out of the mud. Choking and gasping for breath he turned over and looked up into the faces of three German soldiers standing with bayonets aimed at his chest.

Don’t worry, Tommy, one of them said, for you the war is over.

Another group of the pals, McCluskey, Jolly and Foley, never even reached their own wire. Two gigantic shell bursts exploded right in front of them. The mud that they threw up buried Jolly alive in the hole he had fallen into. The other two frantically tried to dig him out before he smothered. The German artillery intensified, and it seemed to every man that they were aiming at him alone. The noise was deafening and the cries of the wounded could hardly be heard above the screaming shells and the hellish chatter of the machine guns. McCluskey and Foley were just about to give up when another shellburst hit right next to where they were digging. In one of those unexplainable things that happen in warfare, the blast threw both of them backwards, and at the same time it blew away the remaining mud which was covering their mate.

Jolly sat up choking and retching. The other two could not believe their eyes. They rushed over and poured some water down his throat. Gasping, he croaked, Right, boys, I’m alright now. They knew this was another fiasco, so they found other holes to crawl into to wait out the barrage.

The whole regiment experienced the same kind of things that morning. The attack failed miserably, the bravery of the troops counted for nothing. Given the conditions and the plan of attack it was simply another recipe for disaster. The Generals learned nothing. They went back to their chateaus to plan the next attack.

The next morning, October 20th, only twenty nine of the original volunteers answered roll call. When someone at headquarters saw the casualty figures they realized that soon the original regiment would be wiped out. This could cause an inquiry, so the regiment was regrouped, the surviving old hands were segregated and billeted together till the Army authorities decided what to do with them. After a wait of three months, they were taken out of the Line for good, and moved to quiet sectors at the rear till the war was over.

LIVERPOOL 1923

When the Armistice was declared on November 11th, 1918, most of the Pals were demobilised within two months. The amputees and the disabled were sent to huge hospitals which were being built all over the country. Bob Gray, Jack White and Walter Moore all got their old jobs back at the mine, since there was a shortage of miners due to the fact that the Conscription Act of 1916 allowed miners to be called up and gave a lot of the surface jobs to women. Harry Cross was still unemployed, he was a small time crook who hung around the racetracks and bookies running errands for money whenever he got the chance. Bob Tate scraped enough money together to buy a little van and started a Rag and Bone business; he would buy and sell second-hand goods and wasn’t too fussy where they came from.

Jim Johnson was in a prisoner-of-war camp near Frankfurt. It took six months for the prisoners to finally get home. After he was welcomed home by his family he heard that his friend Tom Radcliffe had not come back from the war. He went to the Radcliffe house to see Tom’s family; his wife and baby were staying with his parents. They told him that Tom had been reported missing, believed killed on December 1st, 1917 near Ypres. He thought of his friend and all they had been through together. He stayed for a while, but could not say anything to comfort them. He just shook his head and gave the mother a hug, then he went for a long walk to the places they had played when they were boys.

Ah, Tom, he thought, what was it all for?

He walked for a long time thinking about his friend and all the others he had known, then he said to himself, It’s no good brooding about this, I’ll drive myself crazy. Then he went home.

Johnson had worked as a wheelwright before the war but his employer had joined up too and had been killed in France. Now trucks were in demand, not carts, so he got a job as a salesman and repairman travelling around trying to sell the latest model of electric vacuum cleaners. It paid very little, but it came with a van and let him see a bit of the country and anything was better than the dole. The Ferguson brothers went to work in the family butchers and now they were planning to have a double wedding.

These were typical of the millions of soldiers who had survived the war and they had in common with the rest of the country a simple desire to get on with their lives and try and put the horrors of the war behind them.

One morning in September 1923 all of the survivors of the Pals Battalion received a letter with the regimental seal on it. It was an invitation to attend a fifth anniversary reunion of the Original volunteers of the Regiment organized by Captain Hamilton on November 11th, to be held at the British Legion hall in the middle of town.

There were only nineteen survivors who showed up at the reunion. Since the war, three had died from the effects of gas and the other seven had not shown up. Most of them still lived in Liverpool, but a few had moved to other parts of the country. Captain George Hamilton was there, as he was the one who had sent the invitations; he was the fourth line officer they had in the war since the first three had been killed. He ran a successful security firm and lived in Chester.

George Hamilton was forty two, six feet tall and had a slim build. He had sandy hair and had a big moustache which he liked to think made him look distinguished, was well educated in the public school system, which in Britain were actually a series of fee-paying schools, but for some reason was called public. He had inherited a ten-room villa in Chester and enough money to start his own private security company. He was married with two teenage daughters. He never endured much discomfort during the war because his wife made sure George had all the available comforts of home sent to him. Hamilton had been called up after the colossal losses in 1916. As the Army preferred public schoolboys as officers, he was sent to Sandhurst, The British Army College, for a basic course. Due to the losses on the Western Front they were turning out officers as fast as possible. A one or two year course was compressed into two or three months. Hamilton excelled in the class and was commissioned as a captain within six weeks. Then he was sent to France and assigned to the Liverpool Pals. Captain Hamilton loved to wear his Army uniform with his service medals every chance he got. He made sure he never missed the British Legion meetings where he would be invited to all sorts of functions. So he decided to arrange a reunion of his own. It took him quite a while to find all the addresses, but eventually he did and was very happy to see the turnout at the reunion.

The Regimental Sergeant Major Alec Dyer attended, much to the displeasure of some of the men, who had spent time in R.S.M. Dyer’s jails. Dyer was six foot four and weighed two hundred pounds. At thirty-eight, he had a big moon face and jet black hair which was always well oiled and brushed straight back. He was now the chief detective with the homicide division of the Liverpool police department

Colonel Sam Shaw also attended, an old Regular soldier who had been in the Army since 1908. Shaw had joined the Army to see the world. His family was well connected and made sure he got regular transfers around the Empire. He was well liked by all the officers he met on his travels and was promoted regularly within his circle of friends. When war broke out he was at the rank of Colonel. He had never seen any action except at parties and cricket matches but that didn’t stop the Army Brass from making him the C.O. of the First Liverpool. It didn’t really matter because Sam Shaw made sure once they reached France he would never be in a position to have to make decisions. He always followed orders to the letter and would do nothing without them. The losses incurred in each battle made no impression on Shaw. After all, it wasn’t him who gave the orders. He sat out the war nicely in various places throughout France and Belgium making sure his billets were as far away from the front as he could.

Colonel Shaw brought General Sir Henry Smith-Russell, an old friend from Sandhurst who had commanded the Fourth Army, of which the Regiment was a part during the war. He was a friend of Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig, the Commander in Chief of the Empire forces. Haig was a cavalryman who was friends with the King. That did not hurt his rise through the ranks in the Army. His