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In the evening the barrage let up. Billy considered whether to retreat. There seemed no point in doing anything else, but he was afraid of being accused of desertion in the face of the enemy. There was no telling what superior officers might be capable of.
However, the decision was made for him by the Germans. Suet Hewitt, the lookout on the ridge, saw them advancing from the east. Billy saw a large force-fifty or a hundred men-running across the valley toward him. His men could not defend the ground they had taken without fresh ammunition.
On the other hand, if they retreated they might be blamed.
He summoned his handful of men. "Right, boys," he said. "Fire at will, then retreat when you run out of ammo. " He emptied his rifle at the advancing troops, who were still half a mile out of range, then turned and ran. The others did the same.
They scrambled across the German trenches and back over no-man's-land toward the setting sun, jumping over the dead and dodging the stretcher parties who were picking up the wounded. But no one shot at them.
When Billy reached the British side he jumped into a trench that was crowded with dead bodies, wounded men, and exhausted survivors like himself. He saw Major Fitzherbert lying on a stretcher, his face bloody but his eyes open, alive and breathing. There's one I wouldn't have minded losing, he thought. Many men were just sitting or lying in the mud, staring into space, dazed by shock and paralyzed by weariness. The officers were trying to organize the return of men and bodies to the rear sections. There was no sense of triumph, no one was moving forward, the officers were not even looking at the battlefield. The great attack had been a failure.
The remaining men of Billy's section followed him into the trench.
"What a cock-up," Billy said. "What a godalmighty cock-up. "
{IV}
A week later Owen Bevin was court-martialed for cowardice and desertion.
He was given the option of being defended, at the trial, by an officer appointed to act as the "prisoner's friend," but he declined. Because the offense carried the death penalty, a plea of Not Guilty was automatically entered. However, Bevin said nothing in his defense. The trial took less than an hour. Bevin was convicted.
He was sentenced to death.
The papers were passed to general headquarters for review. The commander in chief approved the death sentence. Two weeks later, in a muddy French cow pasture at dawn, Bevin stood blindfolded before a firing squad.
Some of the men must have aimed to miss, because after they fired Bevin was still alive, though bleeding. The officer in charge of the firing squad then approached, drew his pistol, and fired two shots point-blank into the boy's forehead.
Then, at last, Owen Bevin died.
Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Late July 1916
Ethel thought a lot about life and death after Billy went off to France. She knew she might never see him again. She was glad he had lost his virginity with Mildred. "I let your little brother have his wicked way with me," Mildred had said lightheartedly after he left. "Sweet boy. Have you got any more like that down there in Wales?" But Ethel suspected Mildred's feelings were not as superficial as she pretended, for in their nightly prayers Enid and Lillian now asked God to watch over Uncle Billy in France and bring him safely home again.
Lloyd developed a bad chest infection a few days later, and in an agony of desperation Ethel rocked him in her arms while he struggled to breathe. Fearing he might die, she bitterly regretted that her parents had never seen him. When he got better, she decided to take him to Aberowen.
She returned exactly two years after she had left. It was raining.
The place had not changed much, but it struck her as dismal. For the first twenty-one years of her life she had not seen it that way but now, after living in London, she noticed that Aberowen was all the same color. Everything was gray: the houses, the streets, the slag heaps, and the low rain clouds drifting disconsolately along the ridge of the mountain.
She felt tired as she emerged from the railway station in the middle of the afternoon. Taking a child of eighteen months on an all-day journey was hard work. Lloyd had been well-behaved, charming fellow passengers with his toothy grin. All the same he had to be fed in a rocking carriage, changed in a smelly toilet, and lulled to sleep when he became grizzly, and it was a strain with strangers looking on.
With Lloyd on her hip and a small suitcase in her hand, she set off across the station square and up the slope of Clive Street. Soon she was panting for breath. That was something else she had forgotten. London was mostly flat, but in Aberowen you could hardly go anywhere without walking up or down a steep hill.
She did not know what had happened here since she had left. Billy was her only source of news, and men were no good for gossip. No doubt she herself had been the main topic of conversation for some time. However, new scandals must have come along since.
Her return would be big news. Several women gave her frank stares as she walked up the street with her baby. She knew what they were thinking. Ethel Williams, believed she was better than us, coming back in an old brown dress with a toddler in her arms and no husband. Pride comes before a fall, they would say, their malice thinly disguised as pity.
She went to Wellington Row, but not to her parents' house. Her father had told her never to come back. She had written to Tommy Griffiths's mother, who was called Mrs. Griffiths Socialist on account of her husband's fiery politics. (In the same street there was a Mrs. Griffiths Church. ) The Griffithses were not chapelgoers, and they disapproved of Ethel's father's hard line. Ethel had put Tommy up for the night in London, and Mrs. Griffiths was happy to reciprocate. Tommy was an only child, so while he was in the army there was a spare bed.
Da and Mam did not know Ethel was coming.
Mrs. Griffiths welcomed Ethel warmly and cooed over Lloyd. She had had a daughter of Ethel's age who had died of whooping cough-Ethel could just about remember her, a blond girl called Gwenny.
Ethel fed and changed Lloyd, then sat down in the kitchen for a cup of tea. Mrs. Griffiths noticed her wedding ring. "Married, is it?" she said.
"Widow," Ethel said. "He died at Ypres. "
