Secret Soldiers

by Keely Hutton

  “Do you have a shot?” William asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Take it.”

  Frederick pulled back from the scope. “I don’t want to take your thirty-third kill from you.”

  “Go ahead. Another Fritz will find himself caught in my crosshairs soon enough.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Anything for a fellow Eton.”

  Frederick’s nerves crackled with excitement. This was his way out of the tunnels. He could feel it. If he killed the German with one shot, William would undoubtedly recommend he be transferred from the tunnels to the infantry, where he belonged. Frederick couldn’t help but smile as he pressed his right eye back up against the scope. The steel helmet was still visible above the trench line, but now Frederick could also see the profile of the soldier’s face. He didn’t have a mustache like William or Bagger, and his cheeks were round with youth.

  “Can you still see him?” William asked.

  “Yes.”

  The soldier was talking to someone below the trench wall.

  “Do you have a shot?”

  “I think so.”

  The German soldier’s hands and face were animated with broad movements and exaggerated expressions. Frederick wondered if he was telling a story or perhaps a joke. Frederick’s hands, slick with sweat, struggled to maintain a firm grip on the weapon.

  The soldier laughed. His broad smile swelled his cheeks, making him look even younger. Frederick flexed his fingers to break up the tension building in his muscles.

  “Don’t hesitate if you can take him out,” William said.

  Frederick wiped one hand and then the other on his trousers, grateful for the first time in days for the terrible weather. He hoped William would assume his hands were wet from the rain and not from nervousness. He repositioned them on the rifle, but they were already damp with sweat again.

  Still laughing, the soldier turned and looked out over no-man’s-land.

  Frederick curled his pointer finger around the trigger and took a deep breath. He lined the crosshairs of the rifle between the soldier’s eyes. It was the perfect shot. His ticket out of the tunnels. All Frederick had to do was squeeze his finger.

  But Frederick was in no danger. The laughing soldier wasn’t aiming a rifle at him. He didn’t even have a weapon in his hands. In that moment, he wasn’t Frederick’s enemy.

  Frederick’s finger eased off the trigger, and he backed away from the scope.

  “What’s wrong?” William asked.

  Frederick climbed down from the fire step. “He ducked.”

  “Not to worry,” William said, climbing onto his perch and pressing his face to the scope. “He’ll be back.”

  “I better return to my unit,” Frederick said, but William’s full attention was focused on the enemy trenches.

  “There you are, thirty-three.”

  Frederick did not say goodbye or look back. As he walked away from William and his chance to get out of the tunnels, he slipped his hand into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around the white feather. He crushed it until he felt the spine snap.

  Behind him, a bullet exploded from William’s rifle.

  Across no-man’s-land, a laughing boy died.

  TWENTY

  TRAPPED IN DARK silence, time lost its form. The only markers of its passage for the young soldier became the gentle pressure of a cup to his chapped lips, which brought a trickle of water on his parched tongue, and the prick of a needle.

  Sleep brought little rest and no comfort. The morphine numbed his physical pain, but the nightmares forced him to relive every terrifying second of his time on the Western Front.

  He ached with exhaustion but dreaded the morphine injections. He fought back against the hands holding his arm, but his strength had not returned. He had no choice but to surrender to the needle and the nightmares. They were his penance, his punishment for all he had done and all he had failed to do. His deeds on the battlefield were etched in his mind and soul like epitaphs on tombstones. In sleep, he revisited them, carving their lines deeper.

  TWENTY-ONE

  WHEN GEORGE CALLED Frederick a coward, Thomas had expected Frederick to slap George with a glove and challenge him to a duel. He couldn’t believe the Eton boy’s pride would allow such an insult to stand, but hours after Frederick had stormed from the dugout, he returned without a word. He demanded no apology, nor did he offer one. His head bowed, he took off his muddy boots and, without wiping them clean, tossed them aside. He then lay down on his bunk and scribbled in his notebook until Bagger ordered the boys to the lower galleries for their next shift.

  The feud between George and Frederick appeared to have reached a stalemate. Everyone embraced the reprieve, no one more than Charlie. The constant tension between the two boys had strained his already frayed nerves. His frustration over their petty arguments had curdled into anger over the weeks, and when Boomer had carried Thomas’s unconscious body from the tunnels, Charlie had wanted to scream at George and Frederick until his throat bled. He knew which words to use. Which words would stun into silence and which would leave scars so deep they became part of you, as familiar and identifying as your name. But they were Charlie’s secret to keep, passed down from grandfather to father, and from father to son. He refused to continue the cruel tradition. No matter how hot his rage boiled. The secret might someday kill him, but it was a secret he was determined to take to his grave.

  So Charlie said nothing. Instead, he scratched his thoughts and anger into drawings in the notebook George had given him from his kit bag, along with an unused pencil after Charlie had worn down his own. He’d offered to pay George for the items, but George waved his pence away. “Take them,” he’d said. “They’re no use to me.” But Charlie had insisted on paying him something, and when he’d offered George his cigarettes, George gladly accepted the trade. “Now those I can use.”

  When the boys weren’t working the galleries, searching the trenches, or sleeping, Charlie passed the long, boring hours capturing life on the Western Front in his drawings. He drew soldiers sleeping in dugouts, husbands and sons writing letters home, rat hunts and card games in the trenches, and football and boxing matches in the fields far behind them. He sketched snipers on fire steps, injured soldiers on gurneys, and bodies on the battlefield. He drew every member of their crew, including Max and the new canary that Charlie, despite Mole’s warning about getting too attached, had given a new name.

  “Don’t forget Feathers,” Bagger would remind Frederick every time they left the dugout.

  “Her name’s Poppy,” Charlie would correct.

  With a pitying shake of his head, Bagger finally gave up, and the crew started calling the new canary Poppy.

  * * *

  A few days after Thomas’s carbon monoxide poisoning, Charlie woke to find himself alone in the dugout. It was the first time he’d been alone since he’d joined the army. At first, he thought he should look for the others, but instead he lit a hunk of solidified alcohol in Mole’s Tommy’s Cooker, a small, smokeless portable stove, and made himself a cup of tea from the tunnelers’ rations before climbing back onto his bunk. Ever since he’d drawn the sketches of James for Thomas, Charlie had longed for a picture of his own brother, Henry. Taking advantage of the quiet, he opened his notebook and started to draw.

  An hour later, Thomas and George returned to the tunnels after watching a raucous football match between several tunneling crews. As they neared the dugout, they heard a scream and rushed inside just as Charlie hurled a tin cup across the room. Thomas jumped back, and George ducked as it struck the beam above his head.

  “Blimey, Mouse! What was that for?” George picked up the cup and attempted to reshape the dented side. “We all know the tea is rubbish, but no need to take it out on the cups.”

  Charlie’s face blanched. “I’m—I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean to…”

  Thomas stepped into the dugout. Dozens of crumpled balls of paper lit
tered the floor. Charlie jumped down from his bunk and, apologizing again, scrambled to pick them up. “I didn’t mean to make such a mess.”

  “What is all this?” George asked, snagging one before Charlie could. He straightened out the paper. Dark scratch marks partly obscured the image of a boy’s face.

  Charlie snatched the sketch from George. “It’s none of your business!”

  George held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry, Mouse.”

  Clutching the paper, Charlie slumped down in a chair at the table and stared at the ruined sketch. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you like that. It’s not your fault.”

  George and Thomas pulled up chairs next to him. “What’s going on, Mouse?” George asked. “Who’s the boy in the sketch?”

  Charlie placed the drawing on the table. “It’s supposed to be my brother, Henry, but I can’t get it right.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” George asked.

  “It doesn’t look like him.”

  Thomas grabbed two more tin cups and poured tea. “You’ll get it right, Mouse. You’re an amazing artist. You did a great job with the sketches of my brother.”

  “But I had your photograph of James to look at.”

  “Do you have a photograph of Henry you can use?” George asked.

  Charlie shook his head. “My father never had any taken.”

  Thomas placed a cup in front of Charlie. “That’ll make it harder, but you’ll get it right. It’s just going to take some time.”

  Charlie pushed the cup away. “You don’t understand. I don’t have any more time. I should have drawn him as soon as I got here, but thinking about him was too hard.” Charlie grabbed the sketch and tore it in half. “I waited too long.”

  “Nonsense,” George said. He fetched Charlie’s notebook and pencil from his bunk and placed them on the table. “You can still draw him.”

  Charlie slammed his fist on the table, snapping the pencil. “I’ve tried, but it’s too late!” He dropped his head into his folded arms on top of the notebook. “I’ve already forgotten what he looks like.”

  * * *

  Listening to Charlie, Thomas stared into his cup of pale tea. He knew how painful it was when the memory of someone you lost started to fade. It had happened to him shortly after his grandad died. One day he could remember the sound of his grandad’s voice, and the next it was gone. It was the same with James. A week after James enlisted, Thomas could no longer recall how his brother’s laugh sounded when Thomas told him a corny joke. It was like losing them twice. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too, Mouse,” George said, patting Charlie on the back.

  Charlie looked up. A tear slid down his cheek. “I knew when I left it would happen someday. I just never thought it would happen so soon.”

  Thomas pushed back from the table and walked over to his bunk. A few seconds later he returned with the unused pencil from his kit bag. “Talking to you and George about my brother helped me remember things about him I thought I’d forgotten.” He placed the pencil on Charlie’s notebook. “Tell us about Henry.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  AFTER THEIR LATEST argument in the dugout, George and Frederick ignored each other’s existence, except to pass filled sandbags and timber beams back and forth. When Thomas, George, and Charlie snuck out to search for James, Frederick watched them leave and was always awake when they returned hours later from another fruitless search, but he kept his lectures to himself.

  With each shift, they extended the gallery toward the location for the Maedelstede Farm chamber, bracing the newly dug sections with timber. Nine inches at a time. While pulling the heavy bags of spoil to the tunnel entrance and dragging the unwieldy beams back to the tunnel face, Thomas often thought of his pony from the coal mine and wished he had Morty’s help in the tunnels. Thomas would distract himself from the burning pain in his back and arms by remembering his time with James and his dad while he worked. The memories helped pass the time until artillery fire rumbled through the gallery walls, like a giant clearing his throat, and Thomas’s thoughts snapped back to where he was and why he was there.

  James.

  Even with the additional help of Charlie and George, Thomas had found no information about his brother. The closest they’d come was a soldier who said James looked familiar, but then he admitted that after several months in the trenches, all soldiers had started to look familiar.

  After weeks of digging, the boys hoped with every bag of spoil they hauled that the gallery was almost complete, but Bagger kept pushing the crew to dig farther and faster.

  “How much longer are we going to make this tunnel?” George whispered to Bats during a shift, but the listener held a finger to his lips and set back to work at the wall.

  When they retired to the dugout five hours later, hungry and worn to the bone, George asked again. Bagger did not look up from his food. “Until I tell you to stop.”

  “And when will that be?” George pressed.

  Bagger arched his back. It cracked with every twist and stretch. “When we’ve completed our mission.”

  “What mission?” George asked. “The one you haven’t told us about?”

  “Watch your tone, Shillings,” Bagger warned. “I haven’t had my tea yet.”

  George poured a cup and sat down across from the crew leader. Bagger reached for the tea, but George pulled it away.

  The rest of the crew stopped what they were doing and watched to see how Bagger would respond. Even Frederick paused in his writing and looked up from his notebook.

  Bagger set down his ration.

  “We’ve earned an answer,” George said. “Thomas almost died on our mission, doing our job. The least you can do is tell us why.”

  “The boy’s got a point,” Mole said.

  Bagger stared at George for a hard minute, then pushed away his plate. “Fine, but what I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this dugout, understand?”

  George nodded, and the other boys gathered around the small table.

  “That goes for all of you,” Bagger added. “No one outside the tunneling crews can know. Not even the infantrymen hauling our spoil beyond the trenches. The success of our mission depends on its secrecy.”

  “We’re digging behind enemy lines, aren’t we?” Frederick asked. “So we can ambush them from behind?”

  “Wrong again, Eton,” Bagger said.

  “Then what’s our mission?” George asked.

  Bagger waved the boys closer. “To earthquake the ridge.”

  “What’s that mean?” Frederick asked.

  “I know.” Thomas looked at their crew leader. “We’re not just digging galleries. We’re digging mine chambers.”

  Bagger nodded.

  Frederick adjusted his glasses. “I don’t understand. I thought you said we’re not mining for coal.”

  The mention of coal brought Thomas’s thoughts back to Dover. He remembered watching Dad and James work, carefully pouring black powder into cartridges and inserting the cartridges into drill holes to blast the mine walls. “We’re not,” he answered. “We’re digging mines to charge with explosives”—he locked eyes with Boomer—“beneath enemy lines.”

  Stunned by Thomas’s statement, the boys looked to Bagger and the others for confirmation.

  “The Germans hold Messines Ridge,” Bagger explained. “They are completely entrenched on the higher ground. Our men don’t stand a chance against such a fortified position. The army is depending on us to end this stalemate. It’s gone on far too long and claimed far too many lives.”

  “Their trenches stretch on for miles,” George said. “One mine of explosives isn’t going to break their line.”

  “No,” Mole said. “But twenty-four will.”

  “We’re digging twenty-four mines?” Frederick asked.

  “Us and twenty thousand other tunnelers,” Bagger said. “We’ve got miners and sappers from all over Britain, as well as Canadian and Australian miners helping with the missio
n.”

  “I don’t know about you chaps,” George said, “but I’m not too comfortable putting my life in the hands of a bunch of saps.”

  Frederick shook his head. “Sappers are combat engineers,” he said, correcting George before Mole could reply. “They specialize in fortification and demolition, and the British army has the best. We are fortunate to have them overseeing our work.”

  “You’re right, Eton,” George said. “We’re so lucky to be digging their tunnels beneath an active battlefield.”

  “How close are we?” Thomas asked Mole before Frederick and George could get in yet another squabble.

  “The mines have to be dug and packed to blow by early June.”

  Thomas paused in his petting of Max, who looked up at him from the comfort of Thomas’s lap. “That’s less than eight weeks away.” Less than eight weeks to finish the mines, which meant less than two months to find James. “Are we using black powder or dynamite?” he asked Boomer, not happy about the prospect of working underground with either of the two unstable explosives, especially in galleries and mines that were periodically shelled with artillery fire.

  “Neither. We’re using ammonal. It’s cheaper and more stable.”

  “How much?” Thomas asked.

  “Close to one million.”

  “Pounds?” Thomas asked, unable to hide his shock.

  Mole smiled and leaned back in his chair, resting his large feet on the edge of Frederick’s bunk. “The Germans won’t know what hit them.”

  “One million pounds?” Frederick asked. “That’s almost five hundred tons of explosives! That’s unheard of!”

  “Yes, it is,” Bagger said, “and we want to keep it that way until we blow those mines. If the Germans suspect what we’re up to, they’ll rain hellfire on our heads before we finish digging.”

  “One million pounds,” Frederick repeated, sitting down next to Charlie.

  “Now do you understand why we keep our mouths shut about our mission?” Bagger asked. “If we succeed, we could change the course of the war.”