by Keely Hutton
By the time they pulled into the station in Poperinge, Frederick wanted nothing more than to disembark the smelly train he’d been stuck on since their ferry had docked in France so he could distance himself from his traveling companions, but the lieutenant who met them on the platform prior to their transport to the town of Ypres had other plans.
After a quick meal consisting of a bowl of bland stew and a stale biscuit and an even quicker bathroom break, the lieutenant led the recruits to the main road, where Frederick expected to find a row of vehicles waiting to transport them to the front.
“It’s rained for over a week now, making the roads impassable by vehicle,” the lieutenant announced, “so we’ll be marching to Wipers.”
“I believe the town’s name is pronounced e-pris, sir,” Frederick said.
The lieutenant’s eyes narrowed on Frederick. “I didn’t ask for a lesson in linguistics, soldier. Now get marching!”
Frederick’s feet sank seven inches into the mud and manure with every step of the eight-mile trek to the Allied front, positioned two miles outside the town of Ypres. His teeth chattered from the frigid early-morning air, and his legs burned with the effort it took to march through the cold, thick sludge. He knew he would never be able to wipe his boots clean, but he held his head high and marched on, always staying several steps ahead of the other soldiers.
George, the ginger soldier with the cackling laugh and big mouth, lobbed taunts like hand grenades at him as they marched, but Frederick refused to let the tall miscreant or the friends he called Tommy and Mouse know any of his insults had hit their mark. To distract himself, Frederick mentally wrote and revised a growing list of complaints, which he was determined to recite to Major Norton-Griffith upon their meeting, starting with the fact that most of the men in this unit were not trained to march in a straight line, much less to fight on the front lines.
Frederick, of course, had been trained to do both at boarding school. He had no doubt that when they arrived at the Ypres Salient, whatever error had placed him with this motley band of ruffians and vagrants would be corrected. A soldier of his caliber was born to lead troops, just as the Chamberlain men had for generations. Of course, the officers would not be aware of his family or his Eton education. He was three years shy of graduating and had been forced to perjure himself to join the army, but surely his impressive lineage, education, training, and experience would be obvious to his superiors the second they witnessed him in action.
Frederick slid his cold hands into the pockets of his greatcoat, where his left hand brushed against the silky vane of a long plume. He’d received the white feather three weeks earlier, when his classmates slipped it beneath his dormitory door after he refused to fight a younger student who’d challenged him. No explanation or message accompanied the feather. It needed neither. Frederick knew its meaning the second he spotted it. Everyone did.
Coward.
He’d kept the feather as a reminder of what he had to do. He’d prove them all wrong. His classmates, the army, his brothers, his father, even the gutter rats trudging behind him. Frederick Chamberlain was no coward. He was born to fight. He was born to lead, and after the war, his name would be engraved on the walls of Eton with the names of the prestigious school’s other war heroes. His portrait would hang in the Chamberlain family gallery, alongside his brothers’ and his father’s. The men and boys marching with him would treat him with respect. And once they heard of his victories against the Germans and saw the medals that would someday hang from his uniform, his perjury at the recruitment table would be forgiven and any difference in age existing between him and the other men fighting for crown and country would be forgotten. Leaving the feather in his pocket, Frederick marched on, determined to catch up to the lieutenant leading the way and distance himself further from those falling behind.
Their unit reached their destination as the sun crested the crooked lines of trenches stretching along the horizon. The lieutenant then divided them into groups. Some of the older soldiers were handed shovels and escorted to the front line to dig trenches and dugouts for the infantry. Others were ordered to report to the Royal Engineers tasked with repairing and reinforcing the muddied roads they’d just traveled. A medic informed a group of soldiers not much older than Frederick that they’d be serving as stretcher bearers at a nearby Regimental Aid Post.
Poor saps, Frederick thought as he watched them leave. How embarrassing to wear the uniform but not be a real soldier.
With most of the other recruits headed to their assigned posts, Frederick glanced around to see what officer he’d have the honor to serve. A block of a man with a shaggy gray mustache sprouting beneath a bulbous, ruddy nose that looked like he’d plucked a red potato from the ground and smashed it onto his face was all that remained.
“Guess that means you boys are with me,” the man said.
Frederick stepped forward and saluted. “Major Norton-Griffith, sir. It is an honor to meet you. I was wondering if I might have a word with you in private.” He cast a disgusted glance back at the other boys. “I have a few concerns I believe you will want to address immediately.”
The man adjusted his metal helmet to get a better look at Frederick. “I’m not Hellfire Jack, so you can save your salutes and concerns. I’m Bagger.” He then tossed each boy a burlap sack.
Stunned by the man’s response, Frederick stared down at the coarse bag and tried to figure out how best to address a superior who refused to tell you his rank.
“Put on your helmets and follow me,” Bagger ordered.
He didn’t wait for the boys to dig their helmets from their kit bags before plodding in the direction of the reserve trenches, two trenches back from the front line. “First rule in the trenches: keep your head down at all times. You even think of putting a hair above those”—he motioned to the wall of sandbags that lined the top of the trench—“and Fritz will try and give you a close shave. Our front line may be two hundred and fifty yards away from the Germans, but their snipers seldom miss.”
The boys jammed on their helmets and, keeping their heads below the top of the trench, scrambled to catch up with their new superior. The squat man lumbered down the long, muddied stretches and sparse wooden duckboards lining the floor of the zigzag path, his broad shoulders hunched and head low.
Carved into the Ypres farmland, the trench ran ten feet deep and six feet wide, allowing just enough space for two soldiers to pass each other.
Bagger didn’t look back as he explained the number of ways one could get maimed or killed on the Western Front. His voice, flat with boredom, droned on as though he were running down a list of items the boys were to pick up for him at the market. “Eggs, bread, milk … influenza, tuberculosis, pleurisy, pneumonia, trench fever…” Frederick tried to pay attention to the numerous warnings, but the sights, sounds, and smells of the trenches held his senses hostage.
Soldiers, their skin and uniforms caked with dried mud, huddled against shallow wooden benches pressed into the clay walls and took long drags on cigarettes clutched between filthy fingers. They cast the boys the barest of glances as they passed. Between the benches, small dugouts, carved into the trench walls, cocooned sleeping soldiers. Surrounded by dirt, with their eyes closed and bodies still, they looked like freshly buried corpses. Frederick averted his eyes, shaken by the thought.
High above the battlefield, thin smears of clouds inched across a crisp morning sky, yet within the trenches, the air was a sour stew of damp earth, cigarette smoke, body odor, and worse. Frederick pulled a folded handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his nose and mouth to stave off the reek of rot and death, but it clung to every breath. He glanced back at the boys pulling up the rear. Tommy held a hand over his nose, but George and Mouse walked along as if unaffected by the putrid odors.
No doubt boys like them are accustomed to such a stench, Frederick thought as he quickened his pace. After several shaky steps, his mockery of their resistance to the nauseating scents tu
rned to envy as he ripped off his helmet and heaved the contents of his stomach into the protective headgear.
George laughed, and Mouse looked away, but Tommy stepped forward. “You all right?”
Frederick waved him off, took one whiff of his vomit combined with the smell of the trenches, and puked again into his helmet.
“Breathe it in, boys,” Bagger said with a humorless chuckle. “That’s the smell of glory.”
When nothing remained in Frederick’s stomach, Bagger grabbed the helmet from his hands, dunked it in a puddle at the base of the trench wall, gave the dirty water that filled the helmet a quick swirl, and then dumped the water, along with the vomit, back into the puddle.
“Don’t worry, lads,” he said, jamming the helmet back onto Frederick’s head. “Out here you eventually get used to the stench—or you get killed. Either way, you won’t be minding the smell anymore.” He chuckled again at the look that flashed across Frederick’s pale face before continuing to lead them through the trench.
Bagger navigated the narrow path like he was walking through a minefield, stepping over and around puddles of fetid water oozing up beneath the wooden planks lining the trench floor. “And if you like your feet, watch your step. Keep ’em dry or lose ’em.”
Frederick yanked his foot out of a puddle and shook the water from his boot. He’d heard stories of soldiers losing a foot or leg to gangrene. He did not intend to be one of them.
They were quiet after that, even George, whose cocky grin had fallen into an unamused scowl. Frederick tried to keep pace with Bagger as they trudged through a communication trench that connected the reserve trenches to the support and front-line trenches, but a sleepless night and miles of marching through the mud finally took their toll. His feet dragged, and his eyelids drooped.
Bagger led them into a section of the support trenches, where he finally stopped. He turned to face the boys, and Frederick collided with the man’s barrel chest.
“Sorry, sir!” Frederick said, stepping back and standing at attention.
“I told you, call me—”
“Yes, sir, Bagger, sir.”
“What’s your name?” Bagger asked.
Frederick raised his chin and pulled back his shoulders. “Frederick Chamberlain, sir—Bagger.”
“What’d you do before joining up, lad?”
“I was a student. At Eton, sir.”
Bagger shook his head. “Thought so. Well, Eton—”
“It’s Frederick, sir.”
Bagger scratched at the gray stubble peppering his cheeks and chin. “Out here, you’ll answer to whatever I call you.” He looked past Frederick to address all four new recruits. “Understand?”
“Yes, Bagger,” George and Tommy answered. Mouse nodded.
“Understand, Eton?” Bagger stared at Frederick, waiting for his response.
Frederick pursed his lips, fighting the urge to explain the importance of military protocol and decorum to the man standing before him, but decided it wiser to save his breath for a real army leader. “Yes, Bagger.”
“Good.” Bagger waved a beefy hand behind him. “Welcome to your new home, boys.”
Frederick looked around at the narrow trench. Sleeping soldiers already occupied the shallow benches and dugouts.
“Are we to take over the next shift, Bagger, sir? Will we be using their weapons?” He held up his burlap sack. “Is that what these are for? For keeping the rifles dry when we aren’t fighting?”
Bagger laughed. “Didn’t Hellfire Jack’s recruiters tell you? You’re not here to fight on the front line.”
He grabbed Frederick’s shoulder and shoved him toward a narrow entrance in the trench wall.
“You’re here to work under them.”
The boys stopped at a doorway framed with thick lumber beams and peered inside. Wooden planks, wedged into the angled clay floor, led to a dimly lit tunnel carved into the ground separating the support trenches, the second line of Allied trenches, and the front line.
Bagger motioned the four young recruits down the hole. “Welcome to the clay kickers, boys!”
SIX
DARKNESS SWALLOWED THE labyrinth that stretched beneath the Allied trenches and burrowed deep under no-man’s-land toward Messines Ridge, the higher ground occupied by thousands of enemy troops.
With uncertain steps, the boys followed Bagger into the tunnel. They passed a dugout packed with filled sandbags stacked to the ceiling.
“What are all the bags for?” George asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence closing in on them.
“They’re for camouflage. If we get word that the Germans have breached our lines, we use them to seal off the entrance. We don’t want the enemy discovering our tunnels.”
“Now, when you say ‘seal off the entrance,’ you don’t mean with us in the tunnels, do you?” George pressed.
“That’s exactly what I mean. We stay down here and wait quietly until the threat has passed. When it has, our infantrymen will remove the bags.”
“And if the threat doesn’t pass?” George asked.
Ignoring the question, Bagger ushered the boys inside a second, larger dugout carved as an offshoot of the main tunnel. Wooden posts and slabs, with wire netting stretched between them, jutted from the walls on either side of the cave-like room, creating eight narrow bunks. Men slept curled up on three of the bunks. Not one woke or even budged when Bagger and the boys entered. In the middle of the dugout, four wooden chairs surrounded an overturned crate, cluttered with flickering candles, dirty tin cups and plates, and a worn deck of cards. A birdcage rested on a square wooden board wedged into a corner near the “ceiling” at the rear of the dugout. Inside the cage, a small yellow canary, a speck of sunshine in the darkness, hopped from its perch to the side of the cage and back, its crisp tweet piercing the silence of the underground barracks.
Thomas knew the flap and scratch of the bird’s movement, the clip of its chirp, and the trill of its song meant life to miners. When a canary stopped singing and dropped from its perch, miners knew their deadliest enemy, carbon monoxide, was present and they had minutes, maybe only seconds, to escape.
Without odor or sound, the lethal gas crept upon unsuspecting miners as they worked deep beneath the earth, leaching away their oxygen and suffocating them into wakeless sleep. During his three years in the coal mine, Thomas had learned that explosions, even ones as small as a bullet firing, in confined, unventilated areas, could unleash the miners’ deadly foe. If you weren’t paying attention, if you forgot to regularly listen for the canary’s song, or if you neglected to check whether the bird remained on its perch, you were as good as dead.
As Thomas watched the canary hop around its cage, calling out to them with a rapid, high-pitched greeting, he pulled a long breath deep into his lungs.
“This is our dugout,” Bagger said. “We work in eight-hour shifts. One on. Two off. Our crew covers the nine P.M. to five A.M. shift. When you’re not working, you can go up top, behind the trenches, for some fresh air and to get some food, but we sleep, eat, and relax in here.”
Dread, cold and heavy, pooled in Thomas’s stomach. He’d left the coal mines of Dover and traveled to the Western Front only to end up underground again. Reminding himself of his reason for coming to Ypres, he pushed away thoughts of working and, worse yet, sleeping beneath the earth and started calculating how many hours of sleep he could survive on and how much time that would leave him when he was off-shift to search the trenches for his brother.
Now that he’d made it to the Western Front, Thomas couldn’t afford to waste any time. He knew finding his brother wouldn’t be easy, but he had to try. James would look for him if their roles were reversed. And when Thomas found his brother, they’d make their way home to their family, where they belonged.
While Bagger lectured the boys about storing food to keep rats from infesting the tunnels and explained where in the trenches they’d find the holes they were to use as their latrine, Thomas considered the f
act that if he could convince one of the other boys to help him look for James, he would double his chances of finding him. But who could he trust?
His only interaction with Frederick Chamberlain was being on the receiving end of the Eton student’s disgusted glares. He’d be no help. Charlie seemed nice enough, but walking through the trenches, the boy had looked like he was about to jump out of his skin. Thomas doubted he could convince him to return to the trenches again on a regular basis. That left George.
Thomas knew him the best, but that wasn’t saying much. Despite the fact that he talked constantly, George never spoke about his family or home, and even though he’d been true to his word about getting Thomas to the Western Front, he’d only kept his promise because doing so benefitted George. Even his decision to enlist had nothing to do with Thomas or with helping anyone but himself. The lanky street urchin had only decided to enlist after he saw the contents of Thomas’s kit bag and overheard the recruiter say they’d be provided with two meals a day, a place to sleep, cigarettes, and five more shillings a day than the infantrymen.
Despite George’s reasons for joining, Thomas was glad he had. He’d distracted Thomas with funny stories on the long train and ferry rides and during their march to Ypres when images of James lying dead on some foreign battlefield crept into Thomas’s thoughts. But he didn’t trust George. If there was a chance that sharing Thomas’s secret would earn George favor with Bagger or the rest of the crew, Thomas had no doubt the London con would betray him.
No. He couldn’t risk telling anyone. He would have to find James on his own.
Bagger nudged Thomas’s shoulder with a sausage-link finger. “Take off your boots. All of you. You can leave them in here.”
Thomas, George, and Charlie immediately started unlacing their boots.