Through the Lonesome Dark

by Richardson, Paddy

  Around midnight they hear the singing that comes surging out of the darkness, the rumbling bass and the soaring that rises above it of young boys’ voices. They’re quiet, every one of them. Some of the lads have said they hate the Germans and Clem has hated them as well from time to time but most here see the Germans as the same as them, just soldiers doing their job. All the whys and wherefores, King and Country; that tommyrot has gone out of the window long ago but still they’re stuck here with this war and the only way out of it is to kill as many Germans as they can as quick as they can so they can go home.

  But even the lads who’ve said they hated Germans are quiet now. ‘Silent Night’, it is. ‘Silent Night’ that they’re singing. Any words they can make out beyond the sound of gunfire and shells are different but the music is the same. Johnny starts to play and Clem joins in and the lads are singing too.

  ‘Those bastards stole our song.’ It’s Murray White, one of the haters, who speaks out after.

  ‘Theirs first,’ Johnny says.

  ‘You telling me it belongs to the Krauts? You don’t know what you’re bloody talking about, matey.’

  ‘It’s Austrian.’ Johnny closes the piano lid and stands up. ‘Not German, but close enough.’

  ‘It’s fuckin’ English. Anyone can tell you that.’ Murray’s face is red in the candlelight and his voice slurs.

  Well, Johnny’s not giving in. He’s clever, Johnny, and he knows what he’s talking about. ‘First played Christmas Eve in Obendorf. Obendorf, Austria.’

  ‘You smart little shit. We sung “Silent Night” in church the first year of the war before I come over. We would never’ve sung a German song.’

  Johnny shrugs. From the look on his face he’s having a good laugh but now Murray has Johnny by his shirt and Johnny’s got his fists up. Jim Heta comes in on it grabbing Murray and hauling him back. ‘That’s enough of that.’

  So Christmas night ends up a bit queer. Clem can’t sleep afterwards. Well, he has a bellyful of tucker and booze inside of him and, if that weren’t enough to keep a man from sleeping, it’s freezing cold down here in the quarters. That and all the talking and the music tumbling together in his head.

  Tam mixed up in it as well. Tam and Josette. The look on his face, furtive yet happy as well, as he left. He’d said he loved Josette. Yet hadn’t he said he’d loved Ellen? Is that what love is, slippery and frail, changing from one day to another? Best not think about all that. Best to put all of that out of his head and try to sleep.

  37

  Early April, they’re told, the balloon is to go up, so there’s even more of a push on to get the work done. They’re back on eighteen-hour shifts, in it with everything you have, lads, the officers tell them. By the end of December, they have six thousand feet or so of tunnels dug out, seven quarries connected up, the sappers haul the cables through and the electricity is working. In January they’re working on setting up the kitchens, the sleeping quarters and the medical centre. It’s hard to say goodbye to the Pioneers at the end of February. Along with the rest of them here, they’ve left reminders on the walls they were there. Kia ora written in large script along one wall, ferns drawn alongside it along with names and numbers and the places they’d come from.

  It’s the middle of winter and colder even than the last one. There’s talk of some poor buggers further up the line with a gas attack on and when they went for their masks the breathing tubes had frozen up. Their own luck has started to run out and all; they’re getting their own share of lads killed. Twenty feet under is safe enough but the tunnels rise up so that at the end there’s only inches of earth covering the timbered roof so anyone working there is at risk of being hit by shells, from their own side more often than not.

  Just about every day the news comes of another lad copping it or sent up to the field hospital. Snake Kelliher, they said, has lost one leg and looks likely to lose the other as well. They’re all getting jittery what with April coming up so fast and what has to be done by then. There’s the pressure of the work, the added danger of it as well of booby traps to be fitted and the exit tunnels packed with explosives in case Fritz decides he’d like to come through for a look. He sees lads’ hands trembling when they come off a shift and there’s plenty losing their rag, arguing the toss over anything and nothing.

  If the campaign succeeds the way it should, they’re saying the war could be over in forty-eight hours. It’s only weeks away now, and both sides are having a right good go at each other with the mortar and infantry going all hours. There isn’t a moment the air isn’t full of blasting and gunfire, not a moment when the earth isn’t groaning and shuddering.

  Jesus bloody Christ. It comes as a whisper. He’s working near the exit tunnels along with Tam and Sonny Baker and Jimmy Sykes from the old lot and new men in the party he doesn’t know so well. He looks up, sees Jimmy and Sonny further along gripping on to their shovels. There’s a hole, a foot wide at least, earth and rock crumbling around it and behind it a clear, wide space and, Jesus bloody Christ all right, it’s a fucking Bosche gallery and there they are on the other side with all their own tunnels and galleries leading off it exposed. All that’s needed now is for Fritz to come down through his tunnel or for one of his planes to come hedge-hopping and get curious enough for a closer look and then taking back what he’s seen and it’ll be all up with the whole bally scheme.

  They stand for a moment every one of them taut with the strain of that great fucking hole there in front of them. ‘We’ve got to close it off,’ Sonny Baker says it and Clem almost laughs with the silly bugger saying aloud what’s clear to every one of them. What’s not clear is how it’s to be done without Fritz being alerted that something’s going on down there in his own tunnel.

  ‘We need more lads,’ he says.

  Whatever’s to be done, it has to be done quickly. They send Jimmy back to report what they’ve found, then they sit tight. Well, it’s all they can do without the supplies they need but it’s there on the face of each of them, the strain of thinking any moment they’ll hear the sounds telling them there are men moving towards them along the German tunnel.

  It’s a relief when Jimmy is back with the men. They work it out in whispers and gestures. First of all they cover the floor with sacking and wrap it around their boots then they work quiet as they can, some of them using push-picks to dig out the clay, others holding out sandbags they slip it into. Every rat scuttling across the floor, every movement they make, every breath and it feels like they’ll have Fritz down on them.

  Well, they’ve done it, it’s filled in. The brass hats have sent down orders to charge the gallery when it’s secure. They carry in the more than two thousand pounds of ammonal that’s been brought down, tamp it with the sandbags they’ve filled, seal it up and they come out grinning.

  Jesus. Jesus Christ. That fucking great hole, thinking Fritz would be on to them, that they’d die down there and the whole shebang discovered into the bargain. Jesus bloody Christ. Sonny sticks his hand out and they’re all joining in, shaking hands and laughing. Tam holds his hand out to Clem and Clem shakes it. He clasps Tam’s hand firmly and shakes it hard.

  Captain Vickerman sends a message they’re to have double rum rations and an extra twenty-four hours’ leave. Well, they knock the rum back, then they set off to the nearest estaminet. There’s days of snow frozen on the ground and next they’re slithering and sliding over, swearing and laughing. At the estaminet they get right shickered up. He and Tam don’t have much to say to each other at first, but bit by bit they start yarning, not about anything hard nor important, not about Josette, but that’s all right. Main thing is they’re talking again.

  38

  The caves are levelled, the cookhouses, washing places, latrines, electric lights, gas doors and gas curtains are in, everything is set up and the troops are coming in, more each day. The ninth of April it’s to be and in the meantime there’s not
much more for the soldiers down here to do other than amuse themselves. Clem sees them playing cards and writing letters, the last they will ever write for some of them. Some chip their names and carve pictures into the walls.

  Most of their own lads are sent back to the billets for a spell of rest. Clem’s party, though, were on rest in the final week and are ordered back. It’ll be them at the front of it. Zero hour is 5.30 a.m.

  They’re to patrol the entrances, the gas doors, the galleries and the caves lodging the troops. In the past days the bombardment has intensified from their own side; they’re giving Fritz everything they have, hitting him hard, trying to knock out as many guns as they can to make them weaker for when the attack comes. Down here they’re watching out for breaks along the tunnels from the hits. The shells, the shaking, the guns, nothing lets up and though he knows the place is solid there are times he thinks the whole bally show’s coming down on them.

  On the night of April the eighth his group is put in charge of one of the front tunnels. They’re right below Fritz’s wire, around twenty, thirty yards from his front-line trench. Just beyond where they are, there are machine guns set into position at a clear, close range. Their own job is to come just before dawn at Z hour when they’re to open up the end of the tunnel into no man’s land, turning it into an open trench leading directly into Fritz’s front line.

  There’s something telling him that shrill, sharp whine he can make out among the cracks from the rifles, the dd-dd-dd-dd of the artillery, the squeal of whizz-bangs and the whistle and the thud and crack as they land, well, it’s heading their way. There’s the shriek, then the dull thud as it hits, the roof starts caving and there’s gas coming in.

  They rig up a gas curtain behind the first break and light a fire to draw out the gas.

  ‘It’s not working.’

  There’s nothing for it but to push forward, get the end opened up and let air in to clean out the gas. There are nearly two hundred yards of it to get through and there are no lights down here, only candles to light their way, and they fumble their way, half-blinded anyway by the gas masks. His eyes and nose are streaming, he’s half-suffocating and he stumbles, feels Tam’s hands at the back of him, shoving him.

  The first lads there tear at the cover. They can’t make it. The next lot take over, then more behind them. Then by Christ it’s done and the night air and the night sky is around and above them and they’re hauling off the masks, sucking in air. He holds the sweet coldness in his mouth.

  They’re at the opening and there’s something so wrong Clem feels uneasy, right down into his gut, until he realises it’s the sound he’s missing. Everything has gone quiet. He makes out the German defences, the stakes in the ground, the wire, the parapet and above that a blue-black sky streaked with the winter sun rising. There’s a lark starting up.

  Shuey shu-ey. Shuey shu-ey.

  Then it comes like God’s own thunderclaps, so loud and so vicious it seems his ears have burst but it’s their own mines set by their own lads and there goes the whole of the German parapet up in flames.

  They’re coming towards them, steadily approaching, waves of them, some of them calling out, holding up their hands as they pass them by. Wave after wave after wave of khaki-covered men.

  Wave after wave after wave.

  Part Six

  and you’re a man reprieved to go,

  Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.

  But the past is just the same — and War’s a bloody game . . .

  Have you forgotten yet? . . .

  Look up, and swear by the green of the Spring that you’ll never forget.

  ‘Aftermath’, Siegfried Sassoon

  39

  He’s got this far but he needs to give himself a spell before he does the final bit. The leg’s giving him hell. He’s been careful, slathering the stump with the ointment the doctors gave him and doing what they said, easing it into the wooden cup gentle and keeping the straps firm but not too tight. Still, he’s not walked so far on it up until now.

  He’s become used to it; he can tolerate the raw rub against his skin when he’s walking and the padding of the sheepskin helps with that. The pain always there, day and night, gives him gyp whether he’s moving about or not and that’s not easily helped.

  The doctor told him what he thought was causing it. ‘They took the leg off with a guillotine in France. We don’t do that any more here because of the risk of leaving the nerve ends exposed. Added to that, well, there’s what we call sensory hallucinations that sometimes comes after an amputation and that could be causing you pain as well. We can hope that it will ease with time. With most it does. Eventually, that is.’

  He’d liked Doctor Freeman; liked the clipped, clear way he spoke, the matter-of-fact way he’d told him what to expect. The wound was clean: given time it would heal. For a while it was crutches and his trouser leg pinned up then they’d tried him with the fancy prosthetic, the hinging on what was supposed to be the ankle, all the strings and paddings and bells and whistles, but in the end he’d opted for what he knew he could manage. Just a wooden peg leg. It was his left leg. They’d joked at the hospital he’d have to go shopping for shoes with a man who’d lost his right one and save half the price.

  In the hospital there were some better off than others and some worse, but all in all they were in the same boat: damaged but trying to make the best of what they were left with. There’d been a fair bit of larking around in the ward and then the nurses got them out into the grounds. More a park it was; the place had been some rich man’s country house before the war and it was turned into a hospital. The ones up on their feet would have a go at kicking a ball around, the ones who weren’t had wheelchair races. They were a rum-looking lot, all right, with their crutches and pinned-up trouser legs or sleeves.

  Now he’s on his own. He lights a smoke, puts his stick down and settles himself on the grass. The sky is dull, though there are shafts of blue coming through; blue streaked with yellow and the air thick with pollen. It’s mid-spring and warm enough. He loosens the strap holding on the peg and gives his stump a rub. It’s sore, chafed and itchy as well. The itch drives him mad some nights. He’s done what he set out to do, though. He got off the train at Greymouth and he’s walked it with his stump and his stick. That’s what he told himself he’d do when he was in hospital and thinking about getting back home. He’d walk it home from Greymouth; didn’t matter how long it took.

  It was because of the gangrene they took the leg off. He remembers the stink in the hospital in France; so close around him, he couldn’t tell where it was coming from. He’d thought it was like that other time, him lucky again just ending up with a few scratches and a banged head, only this time a hurt foot as well. He’d been in a day or so and he’d woken up sweating, finding it hard to catch his breath and he reached for his water and he had it all down on him, the cup and all because he couldn’t hold on to it.

  Then he couldn’t pull himself upright and his foot, by Jesus it was giving him gyp and the dressing was like a vice around his ankle. He came over dizzy and next he was hanging half-in, half-out of the bed not knowing where he was. The nurse came running and helped him back up onto the pillows, touched his forehead and pulled back the sheet. He heard her breathe in and then she was snipping around his ankle, drawing back the dressing off his foot and he could smell the stink coming worse. She smiled at him, trying to be nice, and said she’d only be a minute, she was getting Sister.

  ‘We need to get you into surgery, Private Bright.’

  He knew what was going to happen but he asked it anyway: ‘You won’t let them take my leg off?’

  ‘It’s not up to me, Private Bright.’

  They took it off just below the knee and they said he was lucky. He’d been lucky throughout this whole stinking war and now he was lucky to have half a leg left and to be going home. Recuperation in a
hospital in Cornwall.

  A whole lot luckier than some. In the hospital he’d heard the stories from the poor bastards who’d been at the Battle of Broodseinde. The rain had been the worst it’d been in seventy years that October and it’d turned the heavy clay ground into a swamp so there were men sinking into the craters and suffocating. There’d been forty million shells used there and that in an area less than fifteen miles. Nearly nine hundred New Zealanders dead and three times that hit, and men carrying their mates in their arms as though they were babies.

  He’d sent a telegram from Christchurch so they’re expecting him but he didn’t give them a time or even a day. He doesn’t want any fuss. Just wants to slip in, see how the land lies. Pansy, the girl Lena, Dad and Mother. Jeanie’s married. She was only a girl when he left and now here she is a married woman with a baby coming and Alice off to the high school in Greymouth. Alice was the clever one.

  He closes his eyes a few moments, almost sleeping. The sun’s come out, there’s the hum of bees in the tree above him and there’s Tui giving him his song. He’s drowsy, his stump’s as sore as it’s ever been, but then he’s walked longer than he ever has since he lost it. There’s the chafing he’s got used to but there’s also been the jarring to his knee and hip that comes from using it more.

  Still, you can’t complain. Better than losing your arm; you can make do when it comes to a leg. A hand is a whole different story. One of the boys had been laughing about that, holding up the hook they’d given him. Try cuddling up to a girl with this one.

  No, he can’t complain.

  Wave after wave they went out, some of them looking back, raising their arms, calling out to them as they went past. Well, the mines they’d set were a success. They got rid of two of the German dugouts. Wide and deep, huge craters was what was left. That’d earned them fifty yards more of trenches and their lads had pushed four miles ahead of that.