by John Harris
The words shocked me and I didn’t know what to say.
‘Come off it, Locky,’ I said after a pause. ‘You’ll still be around when it’s over. So shall I.’
‘Do you think so?’
I paused, considering it. All we had behind us were a few weeks in France and even less in the trenches. It wasn’t a great deal in all conscience, but it was still vastly more than many of the thousands of men about us had. It didn’t amount to much when counted against the experience of the Germans we were to meet, the finest army in the world probably, and one that had twice been through France in forty-five years, but I couldn’t somehow manage to face up to the likelihood of not being alive when it was all over and the guns had stopped.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think I shall. And so will you.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m not so sure,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Did you know I considered dodging this damned business? I thought of telling the doc I’d got neuralgia – or something else nice and handy that you can’t see.’
It surprised me. I’d never thought Locky was the kind of man who’d consider dodging what he’d already conceived to be his duty.
‘Why didn’t you?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘I’ve told you before,’ he said. ‘This damned unit gets into a man’s blood. You get scared of letting your friends down.’ He paused then went on, as though he were putting into words thoughts he was vaguely ashamed of. ‘But then you start thinking you’re letting your wife and family down more,’ he said. ‘What’s the good of comradeship to them, if you’re under the daisies with the worms doing eyes-right and fours-about between your ribs? I thought of saying I was ill. I was going to, right up to the minute when I faced the doc, and then I found I couldn’t. I think I must have been barmy not to.’
I didn’t know what to say. He was so obviously sincere and I knew he wasn’t a coward.
‘Molly would never have known,’ he said. ‘Come to that, neither would anyone else. There are plenty of dodges to beat the doctors. Chew cordite or eat soap. Eph knows them all.’
‘Eph’s still here in spite of that,’ I pointed out.
He nodded and managed a smile. ‘Yes, he agreed. ‘Eph’s still here. But if he’d used one of his dodges, if I’d used one, even if everyone had guessed I’d used one, it wouldn’t have mattered much. No one’ll be able to distinguish the heroes from the cowards when it’s all over, or the ones who dodged from the ones who didn’t. And when I died at a ripe old age, surrounded by sorrowing grandchildren, they’d have remembered me with respect, knowing nothing of what I’d done on the eve of the greatest battle the world’s ever seen. They’d never have known I wasn’t man enough to face it, and the grass would grow just as green over my grave as it will if I’m killed.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,’ I said.
‘Oh, it’s nothing to worry about.’ He put his hand on my arm. ‘I think it was that damned rehearsal that set me thinking. Lines must be straight. Backs must be straight. Rifles must be straight and held neatly across the chest, so that bayonets catch the morning sun. Shoulder to shoulder, just like that kid from Loos told us. No talking. No smiling. No joking. No eating. No sleeping. No hawkers. No German bands. Clean, bright and lightly oiled. This is how they advance down the Horse Guards on the King’s Birthday. This is the way they charged the guns at Balaklava. This is the way they charge the guns in France. Damn it, Fen, it didn’t seem very realistic to me. C’est magnifique mais ce n’est pas la guerre. I’m not in the mood today for the cavalry-and-cricket minds of the generals. I’d rather go home. I’ve listened to Tim Williams too much, with all his talk about defence always being superior to attack. I wish I were like Murray.’
He paused and gave me a playful punch on the shoulder.
‘And yet,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I think I’m glad I’m here, all the same. There’s something about it. There’s something about all these chaps. There’s something in the air, Mark, this morning, and I suppose we’re blessed among men to have experienced it.’
None of us slept, and the likelihood of death was with us all. But we were tired with the move-up and hadn’t the energy to do much else but think.
I sat down on the firestep. I wasn’t looking forward to what awaited me on the other side of the parapet, but I knew I’d be glad to have it all over and done with. The chance of wounds and death wasn’t easy to thrust out of my mind, but at least, I felt, it was worthwhile, to bring to an end all this miserable waiting, all this wretched humping of loads.
I longed to be home, holding Helen to me again. Before I knew where I was, I had us married with a couple of kids. All round me other men were sprawling in ungainly attitudes also trying vainly to sleep, still clutching their burdens, the weapons, the wire, the cans of water, the pigeon baskets, their tin hats shadowing their faces; their boots, their puttees just as plastered with mud as mine, their faces blank with weariness to the point of indifference, their eyes faraway as their minds wrestled with the same uneasy thoughts and the same aching longings.
We’d all attached our entrenching tools in front of us instead of behind, in the hope that they might stop a bullet, and sitting down was uncomfortable, and we shuffled and moved restlessly, wishing the moments would pass, and in the same eternity of time praying that they’d stand still and the future would never come. We were alive now and anything, even this misery of waiting, was better than the other.
Nobody talked much in the charged atmosphere, but I could see eyes moving under helmets, and everyone seemed to be listening intently. Everybody’s hands seemed to be gripping something, a rifle, a strap, a piece of timber, anything, so that none of them looked relaxed, and their expressions showed they knew, just as I did, the exact time, every passing second of it.
I kept thinking of all those waves of men moving forward at the rehearsal beyond the railway at Meycourt, strong upstanding young men laughing and smoking and trying to keep their faces straight because the staff had thought we weren’t taking it seriously enough, and like Locky I uneasily began to remember the words of the boy from Loos. ‘Shoulder to shoulder, they came,’ he’d said. ‘You couldn’t miss.’
We couldn’t write letters, but someone managed to bring mail up from Bos Wood and it was passed round. There were two for me from Helen, and Mason gave me a wry grin as he saw them. ‘I used to get those,’ he said. ‘Now the boot’s on the other foot.’
Eph fished out his crown-and-anchor board and tried to spread it on the firestep. ‘’Oo’s for a game?’ he said. ‘’Oo’s for a tanner on the old mud-’ook?’
But there wasn’t room and no one had any money anyway, and Eph stared round him silently for a moment.
‘Oh Christ,’ he said. ‘What’s the bloody use?’ He screwed up the square of canvas with a twist of his fat red hands and tossed it over the parados.
Hardacre and a few of the men around him were singing softly, but they were all tired and when Hardacre tried to start them on part songs, they started arguing and eventually quarrelling and finally someone told Hardacre to shut up, for God’s sake.
I was surprised to see it was Tim Williams, dressed and equipped like the rest of us, his hand still bandaged and smelling of iodine but daubed with mud.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I asked. ‘I thought you were out of it.’
He smiled, his thin sensitive scholar’s face grey with fatigue. ‘Well, now I’m in again,’ he said.
‘Who said so?’
‘Me. I followed you up.’
‘Get the hell out of it,’ I said. ‘While you’ve got the chance.’
‘Not likely.’ He grinned. ‘I’m going over the plonk with my friends. It’ll be a change to make history instead of always reading it. The colonel’s brother was coming up and wanted a runner. I thought if he can, I can, so here I am. I came up with him, but then I very obligingly lost him. I don’t suppose he’s worried. He’s no intention of going back either.’
‘You�
�re both barmy,’ I said.
He grinned. ‘“We owe God a death,”’ he quoted. ‘“Let it go which way it will. He that dies this year is quit for the next.”’
German shells were banging away now at the front line which, we’d been told, was being held only by a few men with trench mortars to save casualties among the attacking force, and more shells were dropping round the first reserve line. I could see smoking clods of earth and showers of stones flying through the air and shrapnel bursting with high jetting trails of swift sparks and twists of smoke.
Occasionally there was a ribald shout of ‘Foul’ or ‘No ball’ or ‘Fault’, but they were all a little forced and not very funny.
‘Now’s the time to go in,’ I heard Mason say.
‘’Oo says?’ Eph asked disconcertingly as he always did.
‘This is always the best time to go in, before the light’s any good.’
‘Been ’aving lessons, ’ave you, from General ’Aig?’
‘No, fathead,’ Mason snapped. ‘But this is obviously the time – before Fritz can see properly, before the sun gets into the valley. Perhaps they’ve changed the plan.’
‘Not them, mate,’ Eph said. ‘It’ll upset breakfast at ’Eadquarters.’
I found myself hoping Mason was right, but the time passed and I knew it had only been a forlorn hope at the best.
Just before dawn, we were told to push to our left a little to make more room, and we found ourselves in a length of badly sited trench that had been hit several times during the night by counter-fire.
It was a litter of ruined ramparts with smashed timbers, twisted wattle-work and old iron. We were treading on the dead left behind by the previous occupants and the flies were appalling. Even the rats seemed to be leaving and we saw them run up the side of the trench from time to time and disappear into the long grass behind us, fat old-stagers who looked as though they’d been there since 1914.
‘They can wait,’ Eph said grimly. ‘They can afford to. There’ll be plenty of grub about later. ’Ow wide’s No Man’s Land just ’ere?’
‘Too wide,’ Mason growled, ‘with this bloody weight we’ve got to carry.’
The Germans were still dropping their shells into the forward trenches and we could see men climbing out and lying in the grass behind them.
‘He must be making a rare old mess down there,’ Eph said.
Pine pushed his way among us, throwing us all off-balance, and barged his way towards Ashton and Welch, followed by his brother. I noticed that damned dog was still with him. Neither of them wore steel helmets and both seemed unconcerned about the firing. The colonel stared over the parapet for a while at the shelling ahead.
‘He’s got ’em d-damn’ well registered,’ I heard him say.
A few injured men began to make their way back through us from the front line and we had to crouch against the trench walls as stretchers came past. None of the wounded seemed sorry to be out of it and I found I could hardly blame them.
Pine watched them go, his face grave and strained. While he was standing there, the brigadier-general came along the trench, a tall handsome man with a worried expression, and they all started to synchronise their watches as they stood near me, comparing closely typed sheets of orders.
‘8th Div. had a go at breaking in just south of here,’ the brigadier said to Pine. ‘They didn’t get within yards of his front trench. It was stiff with troops. It is all the way along. The London Div. caught it in the assembly trenches at Gommecourt, they say.’ He paused, then went on quickly. ‘I’ve been told I’ve got to be willing to sacrifice the brigade to capture Serre,’ he said.
‘What’s the wire like?’ Pine asked.
‘Uncut,’ the brigadier rapped back.
‘Uncut?’ Pine looked startled, then his brows came down and he looked serious.
‘Not touched,’ the brigadier went on. ‘Shall we say there’s an odd gap here and there, but that’s all.’
‘What about machine guns?’
‘They’re all there. They know we’re coming all right. But I’ll try to get the gunners to put an extra strafe on before zero hour. That ought to settle their hash.’
He went away and we all waited for the strafe to begin, but it never did. I’m sure he tried, but I expect somebody at headquarters decided it would interfere with his artillery schedule and nothing was done. In any case, by this time there was so much noise and so many shell-bursts ahead it was hard to tell just what was happening. We were all numbed by the noise now and you could see the sign Cheerio Crescent, black letters on mud-spattered cheap white paint, quivering with every thump and crash and every shower of stones and dirt.
I was crouching on the firestep, hugging the basketed revetting, when daylight arrived. There was no sign of movement ahead of us. Through the periscopes you could see long waving grass and poppies and charlock and scabious and clover. Apart from a few stakes and strands of rusty wire, it looked like a meadow back home in England, full of bees and insects and warmth. All you could see of the Germans was a low broken ridge of sandbags and a little more wire, and white reserve trenches herring-boning the hillsides.
The daylight increased and soup miraculously appeared. We could see the sun touching the hilltops clearly now and the outline of the trees along the horizon to the east. The rain had stopped completely by this time and the sky was growing lighter, and clear with a jade green luminosity that spoke of a perfect summer day.
There was a mist in the hollows in front of us, lying in white rolls in the folds of the ground, and the larks got up one after another and you could hear the sky full of them. The notes seemed to fall in cascades. One or two birds had got into the trench somehow and were fluttering about as though dazed by the gunfire. They were perching on the bodies trussed in ground sheets that had been there when we arrived, or fluttering against the trench walls, as though they couldn’t find their way out.
Spring managed to catch one and for a second he stood holding it, stroking its quivering body with his finger tip, then he released it and watched it fly away.
‘“Hail to thee, blithe spirit,”’ he said. ‘“Bird thou never wert.”’
I saw him staring after it as it soared away into the cloudless sky, and his eyes were full of a remoteness and longing that seemed strange in Spring.
Then he turned round and saw me looking at him.
‘Nice day for a fight,’ he said with a grin.
‘It’s not the day for dying,’ Mason said snappishly.
He was sitting reading letters on the firestep, though I could see his mind wasn’t on them. Most of the time his eyes rested enviously on young Murray who’d been busy since daylight with the Lewis and his home-made flag and his home-made weapons. He’d finally decided he hadn’t enough hands for all the things he’d proposed to carry in addition to his kit and he’d solemnly offered his coshes and knuckle-dusters to the Mandy brothers. His bounding good humour seemed unchanged and he’d got over his surliness, so that he didn’t seem very different now from the boy he’d been on the Post.
Locky was smoking a pipe and talking to Tom Creak, and Hardacre was cleaning his rifle, his cadaverous face serious, wiping the mud away from the bolt with a look of too-deep concentration that indicated his mind was elsewhere.
Catchpole was sitting in silence, and I was surprised to see he had a small khaki-coloured prayer book on his knees. Henny Cuthbert was forcing himself to whistle but he wasn’t making a very good job of it and his long sad face made him look more like a horse than ever. Eph was sitting with his back to the trench wall, his little eyes distant, his pudgy body hunched, his red face expressionless, lost in illimitable isolation, and I wondered what a man like Eph might be thinking at a time like this – of death, of victory, of Mabel? Or merely perhaps that his feet were hurting him and the straps of his equipment were chafing?
Tommy Mandy had his harmonica in his mouth and was playing it softly, not to please others for once, but because it seemed to soo
the his own uneasy spirit. Tim Williams was reading what looked like a pocket book of verse and Murray had started arguing with Dicehart and Billy Mandy. In a sudden lull I heard his voice.
‘Two goals down in the first ten minutes,’ he was saying. ‘No wonder they lost the cup.’
I could see Bold standing farther down the trench, his face expressionless, a pipe in his mouth, tall, straight-backed, unflinching, a sullen streak of a man, the man of Fontenoy and Quatre Bras and the Peninsula. Men like Bold had stood exactly as he stood now thousands of times before in every corner of the world, apparently unconcerned, considering it unmanly to show the slightest emotion, upright, honest, gentle for all their harsh speech, considerate of other men’s weaknesses, the immortal soldier.
Welch was near us, sitting on a rum jar, smoking a new pipe he’d affected since his leave. He’d started to grow a moustache and the little fuzz of yellow hair on his upper lip caught the sun. He looked like a schoolboy.
Sheridan, the stockbroker, was talking to Appleby who was sitting studying his sheets of orders, his lips moving as he tried to commit them to memory. Ashton looked worried as he stared over the parapet with a periscope.
Every man about me was isolated in his own little oasis of loneliness, each man waiting with a different set of fears and hopes for the sun to come up. It seemed important to me just then to set my mind in order, in the same way that we had all set our affairs in order. It seemed important, if I were to remain untouched by the fears that lurked in the shadows at the back of my mind, that I should know how I felt about God. I seemed to be looking directly into His face just then, yet I was still uncertain of my feelings. It was a hard thing, to believe in God, when I knew that many of us might be dead before the day was out, but it still seemed necessary to reconcile myself to His existence. Strangely though, I found I couldn’t, not then, with my mind so full of so many other disturbing and distracting thoughts, and I remember a sense of panic that nothing would come straight in my head when it seemed so important that it should.
My stomach was twisted with apprehension and my throat dry with a salty sickness and, to take my mind off it, I forced myself to think of Helen and found that her image came to my mind with a painful intensity in this surrounding of ugliness and utility, and all the angularity of warfare; and I thought of home and the sun falling in the parks and dusting with gold the drab little houses on Cotterside Common.