by Keely Hutton
After one such explosion, Bats thought he heard movement beyond the tunnel wall. Boomer gave Thomas a quick hand signal, and Thomas started to silently bore a second hole in the wall several feet to the left of the first hole. When he’d drilled deep enough, Bats listened again at the wall to determine whether they needed to load another torpedo. From his position farther down the gallery, Frederick watched Bats’s face for any hint of what he heard on the other side of the clay wall. His muscles tensed, ready to run should the listener signal that an explosion was imminent.
After several torturous minutes, Bats mouthed “False alarm” and gave the crew the all clear. Breathing a sigh of relief, Boomer signaled Thomas to remove the drill and start packing the hole while the rest of the crew resumed their work at the tunnel face.
Frederick, who’d returned with Feathers’s cage to his position behind Mole and Bagger, watched the small boy work, cursing the fact that Thomas would get to return to his family after the war and tell them he’d protected the Allied front by killing dozens of the enemy with explosives. All Frederick would be able to tell his family was that he’d carried sacks of clay, lugged lumber beams, and watched a stupid canary flit about its cage. That would be Frederick’s total contribution to Britain’s war effort—army ornithologist.
He nudged the cage with his elbow, sending Feathers into a flurry of flapping and chirping before the canary settled back onto its perch. Some war hero I’ve turned out to be, Frederick thought, returning his attention to Thomas. At this rate, my father will be too ashamed to let me in the house, much less hang my portrait in the family gallery.
Frederick had contemplated writing to his father and requesting he use his influence to have Frederick transferred to a unit of real soldiers. He felt confident his father would agree and go along with Frederick’s deception, not wanting a son of his tarnishing the family name by having to reveal he’d left school and lied to a recruiting officer, but Frederick wasn’t as certain about his mother. If she saw Frederick’s letter and learned where he was, she would move heaven and earth to bring him home. He’d be an Eton dropout, a military embarrassment, and the shame of his family.
No, he’d have to remain under no-man’s-land with these tunnel rats until he came up with a better plan. Sweat trickled down his face and back as he sat, hating everyone and everything connected to his unbearable situation. He pushed his glasses up for the millionth time, but they slipped down again the second he let go. Adding the stagnant heat and his poor eyesight to the never-ending list of things Frederick loathed, he left his glasses perched on the tip of his nose and returned to plotting new ways to get himself transferred from the clay kickers unit.
When George finally returned with a trolley stacked with timber and a new question for Mole, Frederick stood to help unload the trolley at the exact moment Bagger swung out a hand to cuff George for talking. This time George dodged the blow by jumping back, a move that drove the timber beam he held into Frederick’s gut.
Everyone stopped their work and watched as Frederick clutched his stomach and sank to the ground, unable to draw a full breath. Thomas, still removing the drill from the hole for Boomer, giggled. Frederick glared at him, and Thomas covered his mouth to stifle the laughter.
Sorry, Eton, George mouthed, putting the beam back on the trolley and extending a hand to help Frederick up.
Frederick slapped his hand away. “Don’t call me that,” he whispered, “and pay attention to what you’re doing before you get someone killed.”
“No need to get all poked up about it,” George whispered, an amused smile tickling at the corners of his mouth. “It was an accident.”
“Accident,” Frederick spat, drawing Bagger’s attention, once again, from helping Mole at the tunnel face.
Now it was Frederick who got whacked in the side of the head.
Back to work. Now, Bagger mouthed.
With a roll of his eyes, George returned to the trolley, but Frederick followed him.
“You and your friends,” he whispered, stabbing a finger in the direction of Thomas, who was now clutching his stomach in a fit of stifled giggles, “have mocked and insulted me every chance you get.”
George shoved Frederick, knocking the glasses from his face. “That’s because you’ve looked down your nose at us like we’re gutter rats since the second you saw us on the train.”
Boomer shot the boys a warning look.
Frederick plucked his glasses from the floor and cleaned the smudged lenses with a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket. Putting the glasses back on, he leaned in close, so only George could hear. “That’s because you are gutter rats.”
George grabbed the front of Frederick’s shirt and cocked back his fist. “Well, this gutter rat is gonna bash in that uppity nose of yours until you’re breathing through your eyes.”
Boomer grabbed Frederick while Mole restrained George before a punch was thrown.
“Knock it off,” Bagger said through clenched teeth. “Both of you.”
Frederick struggled to break free from the miner’s grip. “He started it.”
“And I’m gonna finish it,” George sneered, spitting in Frederick’s face.
“Get them out of here,” Bagger ordered in a harsh whisper, “before they give away our—”
“Shut up!”
Everyone stopped and looked at Charlie.
“What is it, Mouse?” Bats whispered.
“Do you hear it?” Charlie asked.
Bats held up his hand, signaling for quiet. Frederick and George stopped struggling, and Boomer and Mole released their holds on the boys. Frederick closed his eyes and held his breath, trying to pick up the noise Charlie heard. Fear trickled like ice water down his spine at the possibilities. Was it digging? Had his fight with George given away their position? Were the Germans packing their own torpedo into the wall separating them? Panic took hold, and he was turning to run when Bats said, “I don’t hear anything.”
“Neither do I,” whispered Charlie. “That’s the problem.”
Before he could explain further, Thomas bent over and vomited. After the second heave, his eyes rolled back, and he fainted.
Boomer rushed over to his apprentice’s side. George, Mole, and Bagger joined him, but Frederick’s attention remained fixed on Charlie, whose trembling finger pointed to the birdcage behind him and the lifeless canary lying on the cage floor.
SEVENTEEN
OUTSIDE THE TUNNEL, Thomas woke to Bagger shaking him so hard his teeth chattered. Pain throbbed through his head with every violent jostle.
“Please stop. I’m all right.” His voice echoed through his skull, sharpening the dull edges of the growing ache.
Despite Thomas’s insistence that he just needed to rest, the old clay kicker carried him to a Regimental Aid Post in a reserve trench dugout to be examined by a medic. The doctor was busy patching up injured soldiers and returning them to the trenches or, for the more serious cases, sending them on to the Advanced Dressing Station for further treatment.
When Bagger explained that Thomas had been exposed to carbon monoxide, the doctor ordered that he be taken to the ADS in an abandoned church in the village of Ypres for examination. Thomas claimed he could make the walk himself, but the doctor ordered two stretcher bearers to carry Thomas. George, Charlie, and Max accompanied their friend to the church, while Bagger returned to the tunnels to help the next crew seal off the leak by filling in the hole Thomas had drilled.
During the two-mile walk to the village, waves of dizziness and the rocking motion of the stretcher tempted Thomas to close his eyes and sleep, but his close call in the tunnel resurrected long-buried nightmares of men dying in the coal mines and sparked renewed fear that Thomas would one day die the same way, without warning, beneath the ground. To stay awake and avoid revisiting those fears, he focused on George’s voice regaling the soldiers carrying Thomas’s stretcher with tall tales Thomas could now recite as he watched the scenery slide by on both sides of the dirt
road.
Three weeks earlier, when Thomas and the other boys had arrived at the Poperinge train station and marched the muddy roads to the Allied trenches, darkness had hidden the towns between the train station and the battlefront. Now, as he was carried through Ypres, the early-morning sun exposed the Belgian village caught in the war’s crosshairs.
Ypres lay in ruins. Medieval structures that had stood tall and strong against time and weather for hundreds of years, had bowed down beneath two years of artillery fire. Crumbling walls, mountains of rubble, abandoned homes, and charred building frames were all that remained. As they neared the ruined church, Thomas gripped his medals and said a prayer that the recent zeppelin strikes over Dover had spared his home and family such devastation.
The church buzzed with voices and movement. Where pews once held worshippers, now hundreds of cots held ailing, injured, and dying soldiers. Damaged statues of Jesus, Mary, and several saints kept a silent vigil over the soldiers as field doctors and nurses, with red crosses stitched on the fronts of their white smocks, tended to patients. While Thomas waited to be examined, the morning sun peeked through the large, round stained-glass window behind the altar and above the sacristy. Its rays broke through the glass, scattering colors across the church floor.
The smell of disinfectant burned Thomas’s nostrils with every inhale. Beneath the strong chemical scent lived other smells. The metallic scent of blood. The nauseating stench of rotting flesh, diarrhea, and vomit. No matter how much bleach and ammonia the nurses scrubbed into the instruments, bedsheets, and surfaces, the smells lingered.
Thomas was thankful for George’s incessant talking to distract him from the moaning, crying, and screaming coming from the other cots, occupied by soldiers suffering from trench fever, gangrene, or injuries sustained in the latest volley of gunfire from the enemy.
After Boomer and the others helped the next crew seal the hole, they checked in on Thomas. Frederick did not join them. Boomer explained that the explosion in the German tunnel had created a pocket of carbon monoxide that Thomas accidentally tapped into when he burrowed too deep in the wall to set their next torpedo.
“I’m sorry,” Thomas said.
Boomer patted his shoulder. “It’s not your fault. There was no way to know the wall was so thin at that point.”
“I could have gotten you all killed,” Thomas added, recalling the men, young and old, whose lives were stolen by carbon monoxide in the coal mines back home.
“That’s why we bring canaries in with us,” Mole said.
At the mention of Feathers, Charlie excused himself to go get some fresh air. He didn’t return until the men were leaving for the dugout. Thomas told George and Charlie to go with them to get some rest, but they refused.
Two hours later, a doctor examined Thomas and told him he was lucky his crew carried him out of the tunnels when they did. A few more minutes’ exposure, and they would have been carrying out a corpse. He ordered Thomas rest and fluids, then released him back to active duty.
George and Charlie accompanied Thomas back to the tunnels. As they neared the entrance, Thomas noticed the crew’s birdcage tucked in the corner beside the door frame. Feathers’s lifeless body still lay at the bottom of the cage.
Charlie knelt beside it. “I’d hoped the fresh air would bring him back too.”
“I’m sorry about Feathers,” Thomas said.
Charlie reached a finger through the wire frame and stroked the canary’s tiny head. “It’s not your fault.”
“No. It’s Eton’s,” George said. “And he knows it. That’s why he didn’t come see you, Tommy. I hope Bagger’s kicking him off the crew as we speak before the idiot gets us all killed.”
“He didn’t know about the leak any more than the rest of us,” Thomas said.
“No, but he should have. He was supposed to be watching Feathers. If he had been doing his job, he would have been able to warn us as soon as the bird started acting funny.”
Thomas’s head throbbed with pain. He was too tired to argue with George that Frederick might have noticed the bird sooner if he and George hadn’t been fighting.
“What will they do with Feathers?” Charlie asked.
Thomas knew the answer. It was the same thing the miners in Dover did with dead canaries. Toss out their bodies, replace them with new birds, and get back to work. But the truth seemed too harsh to speak as Charlie continued to pet the dead canary. Apparently, George did not feel the same way.
“They’ll replace him, just like they do when a soldier dies on the front line or a miner in the tunnels.”
Charlie’s chin trembled. “He deserves to be remembered. Everyone does.”
“Just because he deserves it doesn’t mean it will happen,” George mumbled.
Thomas caught George’s eye and shook his head.
“What?” George said. “It’s the truth, and Mouse knows it. The bird is disposable, just like the rest of us. It was no different in the factory, right, Mouse? A worker gets killed in an accident or falls sick, and the next day a new worker is standing in his spot. There’s no time for mourning or memorializing. There’s work to be done.”
“There’s time now,” Thomas said.
“You want to bury the bird?” George asked.
Charlie looked up at Thomas. Tears welled in his eyes.
“Why not?” Thomas said. “He was part of our crew. His death saved my life. It saved all of us.”
George took off his helmet and ran a hand through his messy hair. “Sure. Why not?”
The boys carried the cage to a field beyond the reserve trenches. The cold, wet March weather that had greeted the boys the morning they’d arrived in Ypres had lingered into April, leaving the abandoned farmlands behind the Allied lines as lifeless and muddy as the battlefield that stretched before them.
“I never thought any place could make me miss the streets of London,” George said as he knelt below a large elm tree. The leafless branches offered the boys huddled beneath them little protection from the rain that had begun to fall in earnest again during their walk from the tunnel entrance. George sank his fingers into the mud beside the trunk of the tree and started to dig a small hole. “But when this war is over, I never want to see mud again.”
“Bats told me in another month or so all of these fields will be covered in poppies,” Charlie said.
Thomas knelt to help George. “That sounds nice. I’ll be happy to see any color other than brown.” He pulled a handful of cold, wet soil from the hole George had started.
“Bats said after shifts last summer he’d come out here and sit among the poppies to remember that even in the middle of all this fighting and death, beauty still exists and life continues.” Tears brimmed in Charlie’s eyes as he stared at Feathers’s still body. “I hope I get a chance to see them.”
“You will,” George said. “We all will.”
When George and Thomas finished digging, Charlie wrapped Feathers in a handkerchief and placed him in the grave, which George covered with the removed mud. No one spoke. Any prayers offered or thanks given were done so silently.
As Thomas stood before Feathers’s grave, he thought back to the bodies strewn across no-man’s-land. Each dead soldier had been replaced without a funeral, without a proper burial.
If we don’t bury our dead, the war will, and us with them.
As they walked back to the dugout with Feathers’s empty cage, Thomas thought of James. If his brother was among the dead on or under no-man’s-land, he deserved to be laid to rest. They all did. Whether James was dead or alive, Thomas would find his brother and bring him home.
When they arrived at the dugout with Feathers’s empty cage, they found a new cage sitting on the corner shelf, and a new canary chirping from its perch.
EIGHTEEN
FREDERICK LOOKED UP from his notebook when Thomas entered the dugout. He was relieved to see Thomas alive and well, but his shame over neglecting his duties in the tunnel and nearly costing Thomas
his life strangled the apology he knew he owed.
After reassuring Bagger and the rest of the crew that he was fine, Thomas collapsed on his bunk with Max curled up next to him. He was asleep before the others finished eating. George glowered at Frederick as he hopped up onto his bunk, and Charlie refused to look Frederick’s way as he placed the old cage on the floor by the wall before climbing onto his own bunk, where he silently stared into the new birdcage. Charlie only looked up once, when Mole announced they’d call the new canary Feathers.
“He should have his own name,” Charlie said, dropping a biscuit crumb into the cage.
“Fine,” Mole said. “We’ll call him Feathers the Second.”
“Actually,” Boomer said, ticking off numbers on his stubby fingers, “he’d be Feathers the Seventh.”
“You’ve lost six canaries?” George asked.
“I think so. This is our seventh, right, Bagger?”
Bagger shrugged.
“He deserves his own name,” Charlie said between clenched teeth.
Bagger smiled. “Look at little Mouse standing up for himself. You might have to give him a new nickname, Shillings.”
George stared at Charlie with an expression of shock and amused admiration. “I just might.”
“Call the bird what you want, Mouse,” Mole said, opening a can of bully beef. “But down here, it’s wise not to get too attached.” The words of advice, spoken with kindness, struck Charlie like a punch to the gut. Turning away from the advice and the rest of the crew so they wouldn’t see his tears, Charlie fed the new canary another crumb.