Free Starshine by John Wilcox

the British was exemplary, for virtually all of them were Regulars and even the clerks and the cooks, who made up the numbers, had been well trained. As a result, the Germans were held at bay, although the casualties along the top of the ridge were growing.
    Jim and Bertie were firing from the reverse side of the wall that had harboured the sniper. His body was still lying near the hole in the brickwork and Bertie’s marksmanship was confirmed by the neat black hole that showed now in his forehead.
    ‘Ugh.’ Bertie wrinkled his nose. ‘I’ll move along a bit, if you don’t mind.’
    Jim wiped his brow. ‘We can’t hold out here much longer, I would have thought.’ He looked behind him. From the ridge the slope fell away into a flat plain on which Ypres could be seen in the distance, with the spire of the cathedral and the distinctive tower of the old Cloth Hall still standing tall. The plain was still dotted with red-tiled farmhouses but the woods that marked it in clusters were becoming ravaged by shellfire and craters had formed in clusters across all the fields. Despite the barrage to which it had been subjected, what remained of the Menin Road could be seen, dipping down to theplain and running as straight as a die to the west. The makeshift trench line that they had scraped out a couple of hundred yards below them stood out for its freshly turned soil rampart but, seen from the top of the ridge, it seemed to offer little cover.
    ‘It would be stupid to fall back down to there,’ muttered Hickman.
    His faith in the judgement of senior officers was already becoming strained, for it seemed that both sides seemed to retain a blind faith in frontal attack against well-armed troops dug in. ‘I just hope someone’s forming a proper plan for retreat. We can’t hang on here and that’s not a proper line.’
    Bertie wrinkled his nose. ‘Why don’t you leave it to the generals to worry about that?’ he asked. ‘Personally, I’m just going to concentrate very strongly on staying alive for a bit, without worryin’ about grand strategy an’ all.’
    Over the next few hours, the position at the top of the ridge descended into a kind of stalemate, with both sides reluctant to make a frontal attack. But the superiority in numbers and firepower of the Germans began to tell and casualties began to mount among the British. Dusk, then, was welcomed by the defenders lining the ridge and as soon as darkness fell completely, whispered orders were passed down the line to retreat in sequence down the slope.
    Jim Hickman gave up a silent prayer as they passed the rough trenches they had dug and continued to march down towards the plain, not wheeling to the right, to his relief, to resume their previously vulnerable positions at Nun’s Wood, but continuing until the ground was level beneath their feet. Eventually, they were halted at newly preserved defensive positions at what he guessed would be roughly halfway between the ridge and Ypres. Here the trenches were comparatively sophisticated, deep enough to offer some protection from shellfire and were shielded, to some extent, by two lines of wire.
    ‘Thank God for that,’ said Jim. ‘Someone’s been thinking for once.’
    ‘And have you heard the rumour?’ asked Bertie.
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘The King of the Belgians, no less, has used his brain and has ordered that the slush gates, or whatever you call ’em …’
    ‘Sluice gates?’
    ‘That’s just what I said. Anyway, the things have been opened on the canals to the north of Wipers, lettin’ in all the North Sea, would you believe it. They say that the water is about half a mile wide and has stopped the German’s advancing and has made the town safe from that side. It’s too deep and wide to cross, so the Belgian troops facin’ them have been able to come across to help us out in the middle, so to speak.’
    Hickman frowned. ‘Sounds good. But it will also free lots of the Boche to move over here against