There was a room off the main one they all slept in. They looked at the straw mattress, had a laugh about the rats that might be inside it, drank their rum rations and lay down on their bed rolls.
They marched next day to Maroeuil. Muriel, the jokers among them came up with it, we’re off to try our luck with Muriel. We’ll be into Muriel in no time at all. Well, they needed something to make them laugh with fifteen miles to march through snow with their feet blistering up and the sky hovering over them like a great grey sack. He still dreams about it, marching under the low sky and the snow coming at them and the blunka-blunka of gunfire somewhere out beyond.
27
They took over from the French Territorials the day after that and they were right in the midst of it, working in teams of fifteen with a lance corporal, a corporal, a sergeant and an officer leading. Those first two weeks they had beneath the Vimy Ridge, well, it took quite a bit of looking and taking in before he could believe what was right there before his eyes.
The land as far as you could see was gouged and bare and ruined, there were countless numbers of soldiers and row after row after row of trenches, deep in mud that had turned to thick, dark, stinking liquid. There seemed no rhyme nor reason to the pattern of those trenches, zigzagging as they were off into all directions, crossing each other with no signs, it seemed, of where any one of them led.
And above it all were the crashes and thuds, the boom and the bellow of the big guns, the shells whistling followed by the deep rumble of explosions, the shouts and cries ringing out. It was the noise that got him more than the ground shuddering beneath his feet and what was before his eyes. It was the noise that could have broken him.
The network of tunnels they went down into were little more than rabbit burrows, they were that shallow and tight; they called it the Labyrinth for good reason. And what he and the other lads came to see was that despite all the marching and digging and piling up weapons in order and bloody boot-cleaning, when it came to it they knew sod-all about what they were there to do and the officer in charge of their team, despite his orders, clearly didn’t know his arse from his elbow either. They knew nothing of trench warfare and, even worse, sweet fanny adams of what was expected of them underground. Despite a Governor and a General and a High Commissioner and Lord Kitchener and all of the rest of the high-ups in the ranks making their inspections and giving their speeches and sending telegrams pronouncing them fit for service, they were like kiddies thrown off into the bally deep end.
Lucky for them, the Highland Territorials were in the trenches and they were good fellows, happy enough to help them work out what was needed to be done. He’d heard a good story about the Highlanders: the ladies from Arras had thought they were women, them in their kilts, so they’d gone swimming naked with them. It only happened the once.
He liked the Scots. Different from the English. Tommy, well, he was a good enough bloke, but the brass hats giving the orders were another affair altogether. Though there were good men among them, most of those bastards thought they were a cut way above all the rest. Worst of it was they were only officers, most of them, because they were sons of this lord or that earl and they knew bugger-all about fighting. If it was up to him, he’d take a soldier’s word about what was what and what should happen, any day of the week.
The first job was cleaning out galleries the French had built. That took three days of digging but by the end of it the place was set up well enough with everything in better working order. Under the ground you could hear all that was going on above you: the lads walking on the trench boards, the machine guns and the mortar and the fifteen-pounders and all. Mixed up in that were orders being shouted and the whistles going off that signalled they were being sent over the top.
Then there was the crying out. In those first days it walloped him right in the gut that there were lads up there, no more than boys some of them, hurt and dying and no more than a few yards away. When he walked out through the trenches after a shift he knew he was treading across feet and hands and other parts of bodies, torn off and mouldering down there.
He tried to keep his eyes ahead and not think of it. Once he caught a glint in the mud by the duckboards, bent over and took the bit of mud it was embedded in up in his hand. Well, he was looking down, trying to puzzle out what it was, this little thing all covered with dried mud, but with an edge of gold along the top. He scratched at the mud with his fingers and, Jesus, Jesus fucking Christ, it was some poor bastard’s tooth he was holding, some poor bastard’s fucking gold tooth. He threw it down and walked on, Christ oh Christ, and he could still feel the edge of it against his fingers.
That upset him more than anything, more than the hands and the boot he came upon once with half a leg still in it. Well, the tooth was from some poor bugger’s mouth and where was his head lying? He’s become accustomed to that, a man has to, though sometimes he wonders what it’s doing inside him now that the bodies and the mud and the rats and the stink have all become one to him, not one of them worse or more alarming than anything else. Rats and guns and screams and whistles and shouts, along with the fear he’ll make a mistake that’ll get some more poor sods killed, is what’s normal and part of every day.
He still feels the lice as a pest. That first week he came upon one of the Jocks in a trench, stripped down and holding a lit cigarette to the seams of his shirt. He’d heard the Scots were all mad, despite their good humour, but he couldn’t help but stare.
‘What’re ye gowking at? Ye nae seen the wee beasties yet?’
Well, Jock was only doing what he’s done himself a thousand times or more since, burning the lice out of the seams of his clothing where they like to meet up with each other.
They had the two weeks in the Labyrinth, that was their training ground, and then they were sent to the Chanticleer front, the trenches beyond the city of Arras that’s been their home for the past two years. The lads are billeted at the French barracks close by the town and the officers at the grander houses. The town has been beaten about by all the shelling but, still, there’s a marvellous symmetry in the two cobblestoned squares and the buildings encircling them. The lower grounds are long stretches of balanced archways with the shops behind them and above that are all the houses set with little-paned windows each one joined yet made separate by the roof curving above it. There’s the tower in the main square, set off to the side, and stately and noble-looking and all sorts of carving are set into the walls: soldiers and bells and helmets and sheaves of wheat.
Most of the citizens have left; the folk who’ve stayed are out to make the best of a bad job and take some money out of it. They’re in the little shops and they own the cafés and the estaminets; come the night and the streets are filled with soldiers there for picture shows and concerts, girls and drinking.
It takes months to dig out a tunnel, timbering it up along the way. Either you’re up to your knees shovelling chalk and muck or you’re crouched down with your ear against packed dirt listening out for the Germans who’ll be doing much the same in their own tunnels. It comes down to a race against Fritz for who will set the explosives first and since he was in first he has the advantage; he already had his own system of galleries in place so theirs have to go somewhere in between.
One of their main jobs has been to establish listening posts in their tunnels so they can find out exactly where Fritz is and what he’s up to. They have to take care that their own tunnels aren’t too close: he’s heard of British tunnellers breaking into the Germans’ and the fights that have gone on between them.
So it’s careful work and it’s hard work and so long as he can keep from not thinking about what’s above him he’s all right. If you hear movement, the sound of a pick or a shovel above or below where you are, you have to stop working, stay quiet and patient and once they’re close enough you set the explosives, get out of there and blow them to the heavens. But by God you have to keep your wits about
you and your nerves in check because there you are in the dark with naught but candles for light, digging, using your picks, with the feeling that at any time it’s you and those around could be blown to smithereens. One instant there’s twenty or thirty living men and the next there’s nothing but a crater filled with earth and rocks and shreds of metal and tattered flesh and bone, all doused in blood.
He’s heard lads say they’ve become used to it down there and they’re not bothered any more by what might occur. But every time he goes down he’s listening for the scuffling and hauling that tell him Fritz has got there before him and he’s packing and charging his mine. He’s listening for it so hard his body’s sometimes quaking with it. He’d never admit it to another living soul how afraid he is every time he goes down; he wonders if it’s the same for them all and it’s only cockiness making lads deny that.
He’s earned himself a reputation for the listening because there’ve been no explosions on his shift and they say he’s lucky. While he’s not one to skite, he understands he has a talent for making out, despite the guns and the shouts and the cries above him, that scrape and hammer of the pick and the rustle that tells him a mine’s being set and charged.
One of the brass hats said he’d watched him working and liked what he’d seen. He’d go up in the ranks if he kept up with the effort and he’d send him along for extra training. Well, you couldn’t argue with an officer, so there he was pulled out of the ranks and sent along with officers and NCOs and sappers to the Army Mines School.
First up was to learn about rescuing operations and that was where he’d come up against the Proto. He’d looked at the configuration of containers and cylinders and valves and he’d wondered how in the hell a man could crawl along a tunnel with all of that contraption strapped against his body.
‘All the air outside of this needs to be cut out so you breathe out through the mouthpiece like so, out is what I’m saying and that goes through here. And here it’s purified with carbonic acid and stored in this bag. Then it’s mixed with the oxygen from these cylinders and that’s regulated with this valve and bypass and that’s what you breathe in.
‘This will keep you alive. You being alive means lads that’re trapped down there have a chance. Either that or you can bring out their bodies and they can be buried decently.
‘And don’t you be staring at this like it’s some second-rate bit of nonsense the army’s got you putting on. You’re lucky you’ve got them. All the first poor bastards that came upon gas had to make do with was the ammonia from their own piss. That’s right, they soaked their socks in their own piss and tied them on, stinking and all, to try to contend with the gas. So count your lucky stars.’
He’d watched and listened but, by God, the first time he’d got it all strapped on and attached he’d thought he was going to make a fool of himself. It was all he could do to stop himself ripping the mouthpiece out of his mouth because he was going to either collapse or spew his breakfast up right there into the thing. It was the smell and the taste of the carbonic acid, the feeling he was being suffocated.
Bad enough to have it strapped on out in the light of day but then it was into the tunnels and them so cramped and dark and filled with smoke you were blinded and with nothing to breathe other than what came through this thing that was smothering you and making you retch. He had to inch forward on his belly, to just keep shoving himself forward, breathe, crawl, do what you have to do to get out and then in front of him was the sprawled dummy that he had to drag with him another eighty feet or so and up the shaft. Jesus, the relief when he was out again and could take out the mouthpiece and breathe. Taking your time weren’t you, Bright? Lucky there wasn’t some poor sod waiting down there for you.
Using the Geophone is the next lesson and that’s a better one. It’s a marvellous piece of work, the Geophone, and it’s the simplicity of the whole affair that strikes him first: just those two wooden discs and mica plates holding a layer of mercury in the centre and rubber tubes connected to the stethoscopic earpieces and you could pick up sounds all of a hundred and sixty feet away. You put the discs on the ground, kneel beside them, get the earpieces right and move the one disc round the other until you get what you’re hearing the same in each ear. Once you’ve got that, you can work out where it’s coming from and take your compass bearing.
The difficulty, though, is you hear everything through it: the sentry above you kicking the firestep trying to get some blood back into his feet sounds as if he’s in the next-door tunnel. Mix that up with the rats carrying on with their eating and fucking and you have to tell all that apart from Fritz getting ready to blow you and the rest of the lads to kingdom come. It’s hard to stay concentrated as well. You crawl out beneath no man’s land and you’re there crouched, breathing in the foul air, listening with nothing but a candle keeping the tunnel lit. Well, a man gets cold and he can get bored as well along with the anxiety of hearing Fritz. It’s easy after a few hours to see shadows coming up at you through the dark. Easy, too, to let your mind go off into what’s behind or in front of you. Dad and Mother and the sisters. Pansy. The girl. She’ll be getting on for two years old now. Mother says she’s bonny and doing well.
Though he’s got accustomed to it he can still remember that first time, crawling through to the end of the tunnel and kneeling there with the Geophone alone and trying to work out the sounds coming through. One from another they came at him, all somehow magnified in the dark, and he knew that if he didn’t find the right way of using it he’d be responsible and it could be hundreds of lads killed because of him.
But he has a talent for it. Doesn’t know altogether himself how he does it; most probably it’s being a coward that’s given him the extra sense for hearing when there’s a danger. But he’s good at picking up on where the vibrations come from, either above or below, and what they mean. It’s why they call him lucky.
Tam gestures to him and he puts down his pick. Well, that’s another day done and there’s the next one tomorrow.
28
It’s another morning with him and Tam walking out to their shift. The wind is coming their way and they’re getting the full stench of rot. There’s nothing but mud around them and great craters opened up with the few trees that are left split and dead, nothing but stumps with a few blackened branches hanging down. He wonders if the earth will ever recover from what’s been done to it. The war has brought about the death of seasons and all that’s natural to them, the planting and the growing and the harvesting all gone. He hears, sometimes, the starlings imitating gunfire.
August it is, with the beginnings of the cold weather and winter not far away bringing more bitterness and endless rain and snow. He remembers how that first time he saw it from the train the snow had seemed so lovely. He recognises it now for the nuisance that it is. They’ll be going through another winter, looks like it. They aren’t giving in and Fritz isn’t either, from what he’s heard said.
He wonders how they up there, the generals and the like, will decide when the war’s finished. What bit of ruined land will they pick on to show who’s won? How many towns would that include? Would there have to be a city or two as well? Will Arras be a part of it? Will it become German or stay French or could they give it to the Belgians? They say most of Belgium is a right mess. Arras is close enough that it could join with Belgium and perhaps getting something more back could make up for what’s been lost. Well, it’s all a game for silly beggars whichever way it goes.
Arras has been the closest they’ve got to the kind of French life Tam talks of as Gay Par-ee and him and Tam and the other lads have days off starting tomorrow so that’s where they’ll be tonight. He’s not feeling too much like joining in on any fun right now, but he might feel different come the night when the shift’s finished.
‘You right, mate? Cat got your tongue?’ Tam’s come up closer to him and biffs him across the shoulder.
‘Right
enough,’ he says back.
‘You heard about Johnstone?’ Tam’s laughing. ‘In the glasshouse he is. They’re calling him a spy.’
Clem’s heard the stories of New Zealanders being accused of being spies. If Tommy comes up against anyone in the trenches talking with an accent he doesn’t recognise he’ll more likely than not put it down to it being a German one. Well, the Tommies are only too happy to find themselves a spy since it’s a month’s leave they get if they catch one. He hasn’t heard of any of the New Zealand lads ending up arrested, though. From what he’s been told most of them land up in the company battalion’s headquarters being given a couple of whiskies for their trouble. ‘How’s he ended up there?’
‘He got on the wrong side of Wallace, didn’t he? Didn’t like Wallace’s orders so he had a few tricks with him, pretended he was deafened by the guns and couldn’t hear his orders and then he’s sent him off, once or twice, in the wrong direction through the trenches.’
Wallace was a new officer and nobody liked him much with his manner of making it clear he was a cut above colonials. That and the way he had of barking out orders.
‘Wallace wouldn’t like that.’
‘He didn’t, and so when Johnstone was due to go off duty Wallace put it about there was a Hun spy around pretending to be a New Zealand soldier and he had to be looked out for. Johnstone got a bayonet in his ribs and when Wallace was asked to identify him he said he didn’t know him. So Johnstone’s in the glasshouse until he can prove who he is.’
‘Christ!’ He has to laugh, though in truth he doesn’t feel much like it.
Because the truth is he’s done something stupid. Something that he’d learned in the early days not to do and that was let himself get friendly with lads in the trenches. Not that there isn’t friendliness between those digging and them in the trenches, though there’s some of them there who resent the tunnellers; for a start-off, they’re safer down there under the ground while those in the trenches have the likelihood of shells coming in or a sniper picking them off. Besides that, them under the ground have a job to do all the time, while Tommy up above has to wait for the call to go over the top and the rest of the time he’s there cold and hungry and dirty and bored with not much other to do than scratch at the lice on his skin and in his hair. Then, into the bargain, the tunnellers get better pay.
Through the Lonesome Dark Page 22