The Moon Field

by Judith Allnatt

George had withdrawn into himself. When he was in the trenches, pumping or baling, he worked like an automaton, using the repetitive movements as a way to block out thought. When at rest, he went with Haycock and the others to the warm estaminets; he saw their spirits revive with food and drink. Once he would have taken the opportunity to sketch the animated faces of the men, capturing their laughter over ribald jokes or their intense concentration over the roll of a pair of dice. Now he could raise no interest; after the horrors of the day of the attack, everything was overlaid by a cold numbness. He had not put pencil to paper since and his sketchbook now lay at the very bottom of his kitbag. The pictures of home that he tried to call to mind were ousted by images of the ruined land of the battlefield: the colours of hills, pasture and sunlit water smeared into a muddy morass and a shattered wood. He couldn’t imagine ever wanting to draw or paint again.

  The men’s talk of long-anticipated letters and speculation about Christmas comforts for the troops swirled around him, hazy and inconsequential as the fumes from the stove. He envied them their ability to live in the moment, to take the blessings of fire and food and forget. He said little, drank steadily and hoped for the kind of sleep that brought oblivion.

  But the dreams still came. Repeatedly he dreamt of digging with bare hands, trying to free a body from the sticky soil. Sometimes he woke, sweating, before he could get it free, sometimes he lived again the moment when he saw Edmund’s terrible wound, sometimes when he turned the body over and saw his face, instead of a dead stare, the eyes were open and conscious. Eyes full of pain that looked to him for help. Waking among the sleeping men in the farm shed that was currently his billet, he would cry out and flail around as if still searching for something lost. Coming to himself again, heart thumping, hoping that no one had woken, he would sit up, wrap his arms around himself and rock to and fro trying to block out the voice in his head that berated him for his weakness, his fear, his cowardice.

  Unable to sleep, he remembered Violet’s face when she had received the letter to say that Edmund was to go overseas. He had thought her tears had hurt him then but now he saw his pain for what it was: merely a wound to his childish ego. Over and over, he imagined her getting another letter, the letter that would come from Edmund’s family and how her face would fall in disbelief then crumple into grief. It was his fault and he couldn’t bear it. It was all his fault.

  He lay on the brick floor with his head on a sack of barley straw, unable to achieve the sanctuary of deep, undreaming sleep. Some time around dawn, as others began to shift and turn in discomfort, he would fall into an uneasy sleep where other deaths returned to him: the pale ovals of faces seen through water; the look of surprise on the young German’s face as he clutched George’s arms. He always woke at this point with a strange feeling that there was something important that he’d forgotten. It stayed with him throughout the day, however hard he worked, however blank he tried to make his mind. He remained restless and disturbed, running through the short encounter second by second, feeling that if he could only remember the missing detail it would somehow begin to make sense.

  As December crept in, a new enemy stretched its fingers over the land, turning the trees to white spectres and furring each twig with crystals. The churned soil in the fields hardened under deep frosts that silvered its surface, freezing it in choppy waves that crunched and broke underfoot. As the temperature plummeted at night, thin plates of ice formed on the surface of the water in the trenches at the edge of the wood, and crackled and broke as men moved through them on legs stiffened to stilts by the cold. Unable to haul themselves out at the end of the night’s watch, the relief would help drag them out, their hair and beards rimed white, their faces with a blue, cyanotic pallor.

  When at last a thaw came, returning them to the slime and suck of mud, orders immediately came that there was to be an attack all along the Front. Their specific objective was to capture the burnt-out house used as cover for German Maxim guns and Hunton was to lead half of their company out, Carey having been hospitalised when he developed an infection that turned his foot into one huge, hot, red blister. George was unsurprised to find, when the corporal came down the line to muster the troops who were to take part, that, along with Rooke’s, his name was indeed ‘on the list’.

  Along with the other men, he followed the corporal back to the command trench where Hunton explained to them that their particular brief was to take the sap trench just to the right of the building, which the enemy was using as access.

  Lieutenant Mallory asked, ‘Has the wire been cut yet, sir?’

  There was a pause. It was too dark to see Hunton’s face. ‘Lieutenant Mallory will take you out,’ he said. ‘Once my section has secured the house, Lieutenant Parks’s platoon will support and we’ll consolidate our position. That will be all.’

  George cowered down with the others on the fire step, still knee-deep in water, as shells fell behind and on the wood. Earlier, the howitzers had pounded the German line and Mallory had affected a bombastic manner and said that the barrage would send the German troops ‘scuttling for their reserve line like ants under a stone’. Now, the Germans were returning fire, seeking out the heavy guns. The noise broke through George’s numbness, the strange detached state that he had sought through working to the point of exhaustion and shutting down his mind until he existed only in the movement of the moment: the lift of a shovel, the hammer of a nail or the press of a pump. Now, in this enforced inaction, the boom of the guns filled his head until he had nowhere to turn, vibrating through his whole body as if it were a tuning fork struck again and again. He began to shake.

  A shell burst nearby with an ear-splitting crash and a rending of wood, and Rooke, who was a little further down, threw up his arm as if in a ridiculous attempt to ward off a blow. A second later, the same thing happened; his head seemed to turn of its own accord, followed by a wild jerk of his right arm in exactly the same pattern. The man on the other side of him said, ‘Watch out! Keep your fists to yourself. What’s the matter with you?’ George jumped down on to the sole of the trench and waded along to Rooke.

  ‘Are you all right?’ He climbed up beside him.

  ‘Got the twitches,’ Rooke said through clamped teeth. In an effort to stop it, he grabbed hold of the sleeve of his right arm and pulled it tight against his body. His head strained round as if the devil were over his shoulder, before snapping back straight. George, ashen-faced, motioned to him to check his rifle but he stared at him in incomprehension. George took Rooke’s hands and put them in position, forcing them to check the bolts. The familiarity of the action took hold, as if Rooke’s brain had short-circuited and recognised the automatic routine; as long as he moved through this well-known sequence, control was returned to him.

  ‘It’ll be better when we move,’ George bawled into his ear. ‘We’ll stick together and run like hell.’

  When the whistle blew, the corporal who was standing beside one of the ladders pushed the first man towards it and then put his hand on each man’s back as they put a foot on the lowest rung, as if counting them out. George scrambled to the top and over the bags that moved and shifted underfoot, propelling him down the slope of the parapet and out into open ground, with Rooke close behind him. Crouching low, they moved as best they could through the mud, towards the spot to the right of the roofless house with its charred walls. The bright trace of bullets flashed in the air around them as they wove around the obstacles of dead men and beasts. The Germans were sending up flares and the greenish light reflected from standing water and the litter of tins. George was aware of Rooke as a dark shape at his shoulder; he had the bizarre thought that it was as if his shadow had broken away from his feet and ran alongside him.

  The rattle of machine-gun fire started: a line of dots puncturing the night. Men fell in front and they veered away, bending double. Ahead, glinting light warned of a shell hole half full of water and, ducking and weaving, George swung to the left of it, back towards the burnt house.
A dark mass of men seemed to be collecting around it, obscuring the flash of the machine guns, and George realised with a jolt of terror that the wire was intact and that men were caught upon it. The bright flash of an explosion was framed in a window as one of their bombs hit home; the machine-gun rattle stopped abruptly and rifle fire took over.

  Suddenly he missed Rooke’s presence. He glanced back and saw that Percy and some of the others had gone right. His figure, slight among the older men, was bowed as he ran. He saw Percy stumble at the lip of the shell hole and put his hand down to the ground, but instead of righting himself, he pitched sideways towards the water.

  George gave a shout and then ran, his breath tearing at his chest. He slipped and slid around the perimeter of the crater. Throwing himself down on hands and knees, he crawled towards the spot where he judged Percy to have fallen. Two bodies lay sprawled together at the rim of the shell hole; one was unknown to George, the other proved to be Addison. Of Percy, there was no sign. George stared in horror at the unbroken surface of the muddy water of the shell hole. He crouched alone by Addison’s body, shivering.

  Bouts of machine-gun fire still spat from the trench. There was no sign of Mallory. Not one of their men had made it to the objective, not even to the wire, which George could see clearly remained unbroken. The only thing he could do was to work his way left, towards the key target of the burnt house and try to join Hunton’s outfit where the main fight was still going on. His mind refused to take in the fact that Percy was gone. How could he be? It wasn’t possible. He had spoken to him only minutes ago, had felt his body behind him, close as his shadow. Crab-like, he edged along, giving a wide berth to the drowned pit beside him, its stench telling him that others had fallen there, to rot in the mud.

  The stretch of ground between him and the house was pockmarked with craters from abortive attempts to destroy the improvised strongpoint. From two of those nearest the building, his fellows had taken cover and were firing on the house. As a flare lit the scene with its powdery glow, George fixed his eyes on the nearest crater; then, as the light died away, he gripped his rifle and struggled towards it. Suddenly he felt a searing pain in his right calf. He let out a cry and dropped to the ground. He curled up, grabbing at his leg, which felt as though a hot skewer had been driven into it. He heard himself moaning. Firing was intensifying around him as the German soldiers in the sap trench, relieved from the pressure of attack, turned their whole attention to the men now coming up in support of the attempt on the house. He couldn’t stay where he was.

  He began to pull himself along on his elbows through the churned mud. Slowly he made for the nearest crater. No shots were being fired from it so he had little hope of finding help there but his first and most urgent need was to get under cover.

  The crater was wide, with a pool at the bottom, but the slope of the sides was sufficiently shallow to allow a man to lie against it and remain out of the evil-smelling water. George slid in sideways on a slather of mud, digging his heels deep into the soft earth wall to stop himself from slipping further down.

  A few yards to the left, a swollen body was sprawled face down, almost bursting out of its clothes. On the other side, further round and nearer to the house, two men lay. The first was clearly dead; he was as slack as a sack and half in the water, but the second had wedged himself above him, his feet braced against the dead man’s back, and was making feeble movements. George lay still for a minute, recovering his breath and trying to master the pain as a flare died away. Below him, the reflection of the new moon floated like a silver sickle in the dark water. The pain in his leg was burning hot. He pulled himself into a sitting position and gingerly unwound his puttees and began to roll up his trouser leg. The skin was dark and slippery with blood; he could feel it trickling down over his ankle and his foot felt wet in his boot. With fingers made clumsy by cold and shock, he fumbled for his field dressing. He found the excruciating centre of the pain, a small hole beside his shinbone and a larger exit wound in his calf; the bullet had passed right through. He tied the dressing round as tightly as he could and then rolled his sodden trouser leg down over it. Behind him, the firing continued. It seemed nearer and louder and George wondered if the support had come up and prayed that there would be stretcher-bearers and that he would be found.

  The injured man on the other side was bulky, heavily built, and every now and then, he made a spasmodic movement, arching his back as if to push himself further up before subsiding again, reminding George of the helpless efforts of a beetle caught on its back. Slowly and carefully, by lifting his wounded leg with his hands and shuffling sideways inches at a time, George began to move towards him but was forced to pause every yard or so. As he lay back to rest, George stared up at the night sky; clouds and stars showed in the gaps between the wavering trace and bloom of flares and the detonating flashes of shells.

  When he was a couple of yards from the wounded man, a flare went up close by and he saw his face in profile: the eyes closed, a thick moustache, the mouth open in a grimace of pain. It was Hunton. He had lost his cap, revealing his balding head, a tonsure of pale skin laid bare. George stopped; the man had tried to harm him at every turn; he hated and feared him. He didn’t want to go near him.

  As if sensing his presence, Hunton lifted his hand a few inches from where it rested on his stomach. His mouth moved. George made himself shuffle closer. There was something very wrong with the shape of him. His other arm, the sight of which had been obscured by his torso, had been completely blown away. His uniform was soaked with blood and he had bled out on to the mud, a dark slick against the yellow marl. The word that his lips were forming soundlessly was water. George searched him for his water bottle, shuddering as he reached over his shattered side, but he couldn’t find it. He undid his own, put his arm under Hunton’s head to lift it and poured a few drops into his open mouth. Hunton’s hand jerked up as he gagged and choked and the water ran uselessly down his chin. George, feeling sick and light-headed, took a swig of the water himself, forcing it down despite its contaminated, petrol taste.

  As the night wore on, he stayed in the same position, trying at intervals to feed Hunton a dribble of water. His breath steamed on the air and the chill from the earth beneath him struck up through his bones. He felt no animosity towards Hunton now; he felt only glad of the warmth of the body beside him and that he was not alone.

  At length he heard several explosions, as of grenades, a great deal of shouting and then the firing died away. He hoped it meant that the house had been taken and that a party might be sent out to gather up the injured and bury the dead. The body beneath Hunton had slipped further down and Hunton’s feet were now in the water. George started to talk to him as he laid his head back on to the mud. ‘We’re going to get you out of this, sir. We’re going to get up nearer the top so I can call for bearers; don’t you worry.’ Painfully, George moved up behind Hunton’s shoulders and tried to drag him further up but his injured leg was useless; his joints had stiffened and there was little purchase on the clay; it simply smeared under his weight. It was difficult even to get himself very far. ‘Don’t give up on me, sir,’ he said as he heaved. ‘Come on … don’t … you … dare … give up on me.’

  He tried again, fitting the fingers of one hand under Hunton’s belt and the other hand inside his collar. The skin felt cold and clammy. He heaved to no avail. When he let go, Hunton’s head lolled forward and George bent over to see his face. Hunton’s mouth hung open and his lids were no longer squeezed shut in pain but smoothed and strangely flattened. The looseness of his face told George that he had been trying to haul the dead weight of a corpse. He let go of him abruptly and cast about him as if unable to believe that now he was entirely alone. He took Hunton by the shoulders and shook him roughly. ‘You bastard! What you go and do that for? Stupid bastard!’ he shouted in the dead man’s face.

  He sat staring at the water for a while. A thin rain began to fall. He watched it dimple the surface and ruffle the edg
es of the sliver of moon. It ran down his face, wetting his eyelashes and making him blink. He no longer felt cold. His leg hurt but it was as if he was somewhere distant from it, aware of pain yet somehow detached. He very much wanted to sleep, and drifted in and out of a dreamy state in which he remembered odd scenes and snatches of sound: wheeling Lillie in her toy cart; Kitty playing the piano as he stood waiting for her in the parlour doorway; lolling on his bed talking to Ted while his mother called up, ‘Do you want some supper, boys?’ Random scenes floated by him and dissolved like bubbles as his mind reached for them. Only when a breeze blew up and the rain grew harder and found its way down his collar and into his sleeves was he dragged away from the sensation of stealing warmth.

  He shook himself. Hunton lay beside him like a slab, rain plastering his scanty hair to his head and draggling the ends of his moustache. George suddenly saw him not as an officer but as a mere man: someone’s husband, someone’s son. He reached across and undid the chain that carried his identity disc; then he slipped his hand into his tunic pocket and pulled out the contents: the smooth surface of a photograph, a folded letter several pages long, a blue envelope. He stuffed the others into his trouser pocket and sat turning Violet’s letter over in his hands. The remembrance of Edmund filled him with despair. He thought that if he ever got out of this he would return the letter to Violet. But how could he write? What could he say? She would still be hoping … He couldn’t break the news to her in a letter. No, if he ever got back he would have to go and see her, tell her face to face, like a man.

  He put the letter into his inside pocket and began to drag himself back towards the lip of the shell hole. He knew that he had lost a great deal of blood and that he was too weak to crawl further, but since the firing had stopped, if he could just get to the edge, there was a better chance that he would be found. He would be able to watch for movement, for a burial party, to call out …