Secret Soldiers

by Keely Hutton

  When the boys and men finished the song and had said all they could manage to say, Thomas picked up Max, who lay whimpering on Bagger’s grave, and carried the small dog back to the dugout.

  Boomer accompanied Mole to the Regimental Aid Post to have his ears examined for hearing damage from being so close to the blast. Though the boys were alone, they did not venture into the trenches that day. They stayed in the dugout, where Charlie drew sketches of Bagger and Bats while George constructed wooden frames for the pictures from scrap wood he’d scrounged up in the trenches. Thomas consoled Max, who paced the dugout and jumped onto Bagger’s bunk, searching for his master, and Frederick spent hours writing and rewriting condolence letters to the men’s families, telling their wives and children how nobly both men had served their country.

  Thomas’s chest ached with renewed grief when Frederick asked Mole the men’s real names to use in the letters. Their nicknames had confined Bagger and Bats to the tunnels and the war, in Thomas’s mind. Before their deaths, he’d given little thought to the lives they’d lived prior to the war or hoped to reclaim after. Now suddenly they weren’t just tunnelers. They were husbands and fathers with families praying for their safe return. Was Bagger’s wife saying the rosary beside a photo of her husband before bed? Were Bats’s children struggling to get by in their father’s absence?

  While the others slept that night, Thomas lay awake in his bunk with Max curled up next to him on one of Bagger’s shirts. Thinking of all Bagger and Bats had sacrificed for their crew and all their families had lost, Thomas couldn’t help but wonder if his decision to follow James into the war would cost him and his family more.

  * * *

  A somberness filled the tunnels and dugout in the week following their crew members’ deaths. The medics assured Mole that his hearing loss was most likely temporary, but his annoyance over the constant ringing in his ears and having to ask everyone to repeat themselves, coupled with his grief over the loss of his closest friend on the Western Front, soured the kicker’s normally cheerful disposition. Listeners and baggers from other crews that had completed their mines helped Mole, Boomer, and the boys with their gallery. Each shift brought two new temporary members to their crew. Recalling Mole’s advice to Charlie after Feathers died, Thomas didn’t bother to learn their names.

  In the dugout, Bagger’s and Bats’s empty bunks served as constant reminders that death had found their crew under no-man’s-land, and the boys feared, as they continued to dig beneath the battlefield, that it would hunt them down again. Even George, who’d faced death all his life and laughed at its attempts to claim him in London, counted down the minutes to the end of each shift in the tunnels. He hadn’t lied to Thomas when he claimed he’d never feared death because he had nothing to lose, but that was before.

  The moment Thomas had invited George to come home with him after the war, he’d given George hope for a future George had never dared imagine before, and with that gift of hope came the burden of fear. Fear that death would steal it all away.

  Early one morning, a week after the breach in the tunnel, George went looking for Thomas to tell him he’d decided to accept his invitation to join him and his family in Dover after the war. He checked Bagger’s and Bats’s graves first, as Thomas often visited there after their shifts to say a prayer and tell them about the progress the crew had made, but he didn’t find Thomas there that morning. George had turned back to look for him in the trenches when he spotted Thomas sitting in the poppy field under Feathers’s elm tree.

  His head bowed and his back to the battlefield, Thomas did not see George approaching. Max slept curled up on his lap, and as George got closer, he overheard Thomas talking.

  “We finished the Maedelstede Farm mine today. Other crews sent men to help, so we’d finish on time.”

  Not wanting to intrude on a private moment, George stopped and waited as Thomas continued the one-sided conversation.

  “All that’s left is to charge the chamber. Boomer said they’ll blow twenty-three mines on the seventh.” His voice trailed off. “Only three more days.”

  Three more days, George thought, and our mission will be over. But what would that mean? Would the remnants of their crew be sent home? Not likely. George knew how to play the odds, and the odds were that if the mission succeeded, they’d be sent to another stretch of the Western Front, where they’d be ordered to again burrow beneath a battlefield and undermine the enemy’s position. If the mission failed, they’d be handed a weapon and put in the front-line trenches. Either way, the odds of the rest of the crew surviving the war were dwindling with every day they remained on or under its battlefields.

  Thomas reached up and gripped the medals hanging from his neck and said something George didn’t expect.

  “I’m sorry, Grandad. I’ve tried to find James, but I’ve failed. If I don’t make it home, my friend George has promised to give Mum and Dad a letter from me, so they’ll know what happened and hopefully someday find some peace.” His voice cracked. “But they’ll never be at peace if we don’t find James, so please, if James is with you”—Thomas sniffled back tears—“send me a sign. Please, Grandad. I can’t do this alone.” Max stirred from his slumber and licked the tears sliding down Thomas’s face.

  George left before Thomas spotted him. He walked to the dugout, where he found Charlie asleep on his bunk and Frederick writing in his notebook.

  “Where are Mole and Boomer?” he asked.

  Frederick did not look up from his writing. “In the trenches, scrounging up some food.”

  George checked Charlie’s bunk to make sure he was really sleeping, then he pulled a chair close to Frederick and straddled it backward. “We need to talk,” he whispered.

  Frederick closed his notebook. “Is something wrong?”

  “Yes … No … I don’t know. I just need you to do me a favor.”

  “What kind of favor?”

  “I need you to write me two letters.”

  His curiosity piqued, Frederick opened his notebook to a clean page. “To whom?”

  “You’re not going to like the first.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I need you to write to your father.”

  Frederick snapped the notebook closed again. “You’re right. I don’t like it.”

  “But he’s the only one who can help.”

  “Help what? Send me home?”

  “No. Find James.” George ran a hand through his hair. “We’ll never find out what happened to him searching the trenches, and with the end of the mission less than three days away, we’re running out of time. Your dad is our best hope. He could ask around. Someone higher up has to know what happened to Thomas’s brother.”

  “He’ll send for me the minute he gets the letter,” Frederick said.

  “Who cares if he drags you home? Get out of these tunnels before you end up under the poppy field with Bagger and Bats.”

  “I can’t go home.” Frederick grabbed his notebook and pen and stood. “Not yet.” Then he left the dugout.

  George followed him into the tunnels. “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, George.”

  “Because of your father?”

  “No.” Frederick kept walking, determined to get out of the tunnels and away from George, but George ran ahead of him and blocked the exit.

  “Let me pass,” Frederick said.

  “Not until you tell me why you can’t go home.”

  “Why do you care?” Frederick asked.

  “Because whatever the reason, it’s stopping you from helping Thomas find his brother.”

  Frederick’s shoulders slumped.

  “Why can’t you go home, Eton?” George repeated.

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “Because I haven’t done what I came here to do.”

  “And what’s that?”

  Frederick’s head dipped. He exited the tunnel and sat down in a small dug
out in the support trench wall. “Prove I’m not a coward.”

  George followed him outside. “To who?” he asked, his voice rising with frustration. “Your father?”

  “No.” Frederick pulled the broken white feather from his pocket. “To myself.”

  George stared at the feather. He’d seen men on the streets of London receive white feathers for not joining the army. He didn’t know who had given Frederick the feather, but he knew what it meant. “Eton, you’re not a coward. Look at all you’ve done. Charlie and I would be buried beside Bagger and Bats if it weren’t for you. You’re as real a soldier as any man on the front line, and I’ll fight anyone who dares say otherwise.”

  Machine-gun fire ripped across no-man’s-land, shattering the silent stalemate between the trenches. Frederick crouched down behind the sandbags. When he realized he wasn’t in danger, he looked up at George. “Real soldiers don’t run away from a fight or hesitate in the heat of battle. They don’t tremble in fear in their bunks or cry over the enemies they’ve killed.”

  Pressure built in Frederick’s throat and behind his eyes, but he would not cry. Chamberlains did not cry. “I came here a coward, George. I can’t leave here as one.”

  George took the feather from Frederick and ran it between his fingers, straightening out the bent spine. “You think being scared makes you a coward? What kind of rubbish do they teach you at Eton? That soldiers aren’t scared? We’re living beneath the front line of a war. Only a fool wouldn’t be scared. What matters is you came here anyway, and when your crew needed you, you were there for them, despite being scared. That’s real courage, Eton. And if that doesn’t make your father proud or get your name engraved on the wall of that fancy school of yours, you let me know.” He lifted the feather. “I’ll carve your name on the bloody wall myself.”

  Sniffing back unshed tears, Frederick smiled. “You don’t know how to write.”

  “I have no doubt you’ll make sure I spell your name correctly.”

  Frederick laughed. “You’re probably right.”

  “Of course I am.” George tucked the feather in his unruly hair, so it stuck up like the plume of a hat. “You should wear this with pride.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Probably, but that doesn’t mean I’m not right.” He handed the feather back to Frederick. “That feather may have brought you to the front, Eton, but your courage has kept you here.”

  Frederick tucked the feather behind his ear. “Who knows? Maybe it’s a new style that will catch on here in the trenches.”

  “Absolutely. Especially after we blow the ridge and become war heroes. Everyone will want a white feather just like yours.” George lit a cigarette and sat beside Frederick.

  “Do you really think the army will reveal what we’re doing?” Frederick asked. “If we fail, they’ll cover up the work we did. If we succeed, they’ll want to keep our work secret to maintain the element of surprise over our enemies, so they can reuse the method under other battlefields. No one will know what we’ve sacrificed for crown and country.” He stared off in the direction of Bats’s and Bagger’s graves. “Or what we’ve lost.”

  “We’ll know,” George said.

  Frederick nodded.

  “So,” George asked, “will you write to your dad about James?”

  Frederick nodded again and then opened his notebook and wrote a brief letter to his dad explaining where he was and the situation with Thomas’s brother. When he finished, he pushed up his glasses to rub his eyes and turned to a fresh page. “What about the second letter?”

  “I need you to write me one, like you did for Tommy and Mouse, and if things go wrong, I need you to deliver it to someone for me. And you have to promise not to tell anyone about this.” He held out his hand. “Do I have your word, Eton, as a real soldier?”

  Frederick took hold of George’s hand and gave it a firm shake. “No, you have my word as a secret soldier.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THE SUN HURT the young soldier’s eyes when he and twelve Allied prisoners were escorted from the German field hospital. Under the medical staff’s care, his wounds had scarred over without infection, and his broken leg had healed. His eyes watered when exposed to bright light, and though he could hear again, the low ringing in his ears remained. The nurses had fed him and the other injured prisoners, but food was scarce even for the German troops, leaving few scraps for their captives. During his recovery, the soldier had lost what little extra weight he’d carried with him when he’d charged into battle months earlier.

  But he was alive. Through every aching step, twist of hunger, and nightmarish flashback, he reminded himself that he was alive. The young soldier tried not to dwell on what awaited him in the prison camp in Germany as he boarded a train with the other prisoners and their guards.

  When the train stopped an hour later, the prisoners were marched for over two hours. In the distance, the young soldier heard the rumble of artillery and the staccato rhythm of machine-gun fire. With every dozen steps, the sounds of battle grew louder. As they crested a small rise of land, the young soldier’s steps faltered, and his heart sank at what lay before them. Crooked lines of trenches framed two sides of a pockmarked battlefield. His mouth went dry, and a sharp pain radiated from the center of his chest. They were not being taken to a prison camp to be used as laborers at German farms, factories, or mines. They were being marched back to the Western Front to work on the German front line.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THE CREW SPENT their last few shifts hauling explosives down the tunnels to pack in the Maedelstede Farm mine, one of twenty-three hidden beneath a stretch of seven miles of enemy trenches. The beams above their heads groaned, and clots of clay shook free from between the boards under the constant bombardment of gunfire and howitzers raining down on no-man’s-land as the crew stacked the waterproof tins of ammonal from floor to ceiling in the chamber. Not an inch of space remained. Thomas helped Boomer embed an electric detonator, connected to the lead, into the powder of one of the tins before inserting loose detonators into every third tin crowding the chamber. They then ran the leads and fuse up to the top of the main shaft while the rest of the crew set to work tamping the mine.

  “We spent months taking all of this clay out of here,” George complained as he lifted another heavy sandbag from the shaft onto the tram to be dragged down the gallery toward the Maedelstede Farm mine, where it would be stacked on the hundreds of bags already packed tightly in the gallery. The bag left a blue streak on the front of his shirt and trousers, which were already caked with wet clay. When it dried, the blue clay ground into the crew’s clothes and skin faded to a ghastly white, leaving the tunnelers looking like walking corpses. “Why are we hauling it all back down?”

  “The charge chamber needs a solid back when it’s fired,” Boomer said, tossing another bag on the pile. “Explosions seek the path of least resistance. We want that path to be straight up under the German trenches, not back down these galleries toward ours. We’re trying to break the German lines, not our own.”

  Frederick rolled his sore shoulders. “Fine, but how many more rows of bags do we need?

  “To be safe, we need the tamping to be one and a half times the distance of the solid ground we’re setting to break through, so keep hauling, boys.”

  The crew finished tamping the mine the day before the attack. That evening, Mole returned to the dugout from a meeting with the other crews’ leaders at the command center.

  “Is the mission still on?” Boomer asked.

  With a frustrated groan, Mole rubbed his ears. “What?”

  “Is the mission still on?” Boomer repeated louder.

  “Yes,” Mole said, pouring himself a cup of lukewarm tea from the crew’s kettle. “British planes will bombard the German lines to camouflage the noise of the Allied tanks moving into position on our lines over the next two hours, and our infantry has been notified about the mission and will storm no-man’s-land and take the German trenc
hes after the mines are fired. If all goes as planned, they should meet little resistance.”

  “So our mission’s not so secret anymore?” George asked.

  “Not to anyone except hopefully the Germans.” Mole drained the last drops of tea from his tin cup. “Though it won’t be a secret from them for much longer.”

  “Are the other mines ready?” Boomer asked.

  “General Plumer said the Germans withdrew from the area above the Birdcage mines. He ordered all four mines in that area be held in reserve and not fired, but the nineteen other mines are set to detonate. Zero hour is 3:10 A.M.”

  “That’s going to be one hell of an explosion,” Boomer said.

  “The largest the world has ever seen,” Mole said. “Before he dismissed us, Major-General Harington told us we may not make history tomorrow, but we’ll certainly change the geography.”

  George glanced over at the empty bunks of their lost crew members. “Just wish Bagger and Bats were here to see it.”

  Thomas nodded. “We have to make sure those mines blow, in their honor.”

  Before Mole and Boomer left the boys to recheck the leads and fuses running from the Maedelstede Farm mine to the top of the gallery shaft, Mole pulled an envelope from his pocket. “I almost forgot, Mouse. This came for you.” He handed the envelope to Charlie. “Last day in the tunnels and one of you lads finally gets some mail from home. Better late than never, I guess.”

  Charlie stared at the envelope for several minutes after the men left.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” George finally asked.

  Charlie swallowed hard. “What if it’s bad news?”

  “What if it’s good news?” Thomas replied. “Only one way to find out.”

  Charlie tore open the envelope and pulled out a single sheet of folded paper, which he handed to Frederick. “Would you read it for me, please?”