My Brother's War

by Hill, David

  Half an hour later, they all stared out of the open door again. They were passing through a town.

  What remained of a town, rather. Piles of smashed bricks lay alongside the road and railway line. Whole walls had fallen or been blown away, so they gazed into the insides of houses. A bed and a wardrobe; a chair and a table. Next minute, it was Jerry who said ‘Look!’ and pointed at another wrecked building. Rows of desks: they were looking into a schoolroom. What had happened to the children? Were they inside when the shells hit?

  A church was smashed, every piece of glass gone from its arched windows. A big building, with several beds in every room – a hospital, so ruined that they could see right through the collapsed walls and out the other side. Nothing moved on the streets except for a few skinny dogs.

  It was mid-afternoon when the train finally stopped. William and the rest of 3 Platoon climbed down and formed up. A few hundred yards away, across bare fields, lay yet another army camp, with its high wire fences and rows of big tents. This time, though, there was something different. Spaced along the fences, steel barrels pointed towards the sky. Anti-aircraft guns.

  ‘How far are we from the trenches?’ someone asked. Sergeant Molloy, who was pacing along their lines telling them to try and look like soldiers, heard. ‘Far enough away so no nasty shells can reach us.’ He paused and put his head on one side. ‘Hear that?’

  They could. From somewhere ahead, in the direction the train had been taking them, a rolling, rumbling thunder sounded. Guns.

  William felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. Very soon, all his questions to himself would be answered. Very soon, he’d find out if he could handle battle.

  They marched to the camp. Yet another wait, and they were divided among the tents. They ate: a stew of tough, stringy meat. ‘Horse,’ grumbled someone, and William thought again of the sprawled, broken bodies.

  Just as they were unrolling their blankets in the tents, fumbling in the gloom for packs to use as pillows, the eastern sky suddenly burst into flame. A second later, the noise came, like hundreds of metal doors slamming.

  Jerry dived for the tent door, shouting. Herbert and Jack fell over each other as they followed. William hurdled them and stumbled into the open.

  Men were pouring out of all the tents, staring in the same direction. The evening sky was on fire, shafts of white flickering and glaring, red and green stars bursting into light high up, then floating downwards, fading as they dropped. The noise drummed on. Then as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. A last gun fired; a final green flare drifted down. Darkness and silence filled the east again, except for a faraway rumble.

  ‘Someone making a night attack?’ Jack wondered.

  ‘Maybe a sentry saw an enemy patrol,’ another voice suggested.

  Herbert shook his head. ‘Whatever it was, I wouldn’t want to be up there right now.’

  Two nights later, they were.

  Mr Gowing gave them the orders on their second morning. Further along the lines of tents, William could see other platoon commanders also talking to their men. ‘We’re moving up to the front tonight, chaps. We’ll be taking over a nice quiet section of line and we’ll be there for six days. This is what you’ve been waiting for, so make sure you’re on your toes.’ The young lieutenant couldn’t keep the quiver out of his voice.

  Blankets, spare clothes, any letters and papers that might give information to the enemy were to be left behind. They were fed an early dinner of more tough stew and onions. Rifles were inspected. So were boots and uniforms, to make sure no loose metal made a noise as they moved.

  They were issued with bullets: a hundred rounds per man, in clips that they crammed into pouches and pockets. They were laden down with other gear: extra belts of bullets for machine-guns; empty sandbags; shovels; stretchers. ‘Two steps with this lot, and I’ll sink into the ground,’ Jerry complained. Jack grinned at him. ‘First you’re grouching about sitting around. Now you’re grouching about moving!’ As darkness grew, they marched from camp, towards the east where flickers of white and red already jumped and flared along the horizon.

  For three hours, they marched along narrow dirt roads. ‘No talking!’ rapped the NCOs. So there was silence, except for the tramp of boots, the creak of rifle slings, the occasional whisper coming back along the ranks: ‘dead horse on the road ahead’ … ‘shell-hole on the right’.

  William’s back ached under the weight of pack, rifle and shovel, plus the box of Mills Bombs he and Jack held between them. When they finally halted, and were ordered to the side of the road, everyone sank down with sighs and groans.

  The sound of approaching boots grew. Out of the darkness, lines of soldiers appeared, marching raggedly, some limping. Heads were bowed, shoulders bent. They straggled past, saying nothing, close enough for William to see the worn, haggard faces. Would his platoon look like that after six days in the trenches?

  In the next hours, they passed from tiredness to exhaustion, and from order to confusion. The night was so dark that they could see only the man in front of them. Guides who knew the trenches were leading them now and were supposed to take them to their section of the line. But the stops, the way they headed off down one muddy track, then had to turn and come back again, made it more and more clear that the guides were in trouble.

  Muddy tracks were all they had now. The roads had ended. They trudged across fields where shells had torn the ground apart on every side. Water glinted in many of them. More smashed carts. The sickly-sweet smell of something rotting, and they filed past another dead horse, belly swollen, legs stiff and ugly.

  After – five? six? – hours they were so weary, they could hardly keep their heads up. Their boots were thick with mud; every step was an effort. Necks ached and shoulders were raw from pack straps and ammunition belts. The box of Mills Bombs slung between Jack and William thudded against their legs, tripped them and sent them stumbling into the men ahead, who swore and complained. When another halt was called, they flopped down in the mud.

  ‘We’re lost,’ voices muttered. ‘We’ll be caught in the open.’

  William didn’t want to think about that. The guns had been mostly quiet for the past hour. Just a couple of times one roared somewhere, over to their left, splitting the darkness with a spear of red-white. But if they hadn’t reached their trenches by dawn, and the enemy saw them …

  They struggled through a clump of splintered trees, stumbling over fallen branches, bumping into stumps. William could hear Herbert gasping for breath. His own body was one endless ache.

  Across another field. Back again. If I meet that guide, I’m going to kick him right into the German lines, William told himself. But mostly he just plodded on, one step in front of another.

  Yet another stop. They were never going to find their trenches. Any minute now, they’d be told to start digging, try to make some holes they could hide in like beasts. The ground ahead was uneven. Low ridges seemed to criss-cross it. What were—

  Next minute, they were climbing down wooden steps and into a trench. ‘This way,’ voices whispered. ‘Hurry! This way.’ They turned left, turned right, moved on.

  Duckboards clacked under their feet. Walls of timber and sandbags rose on either side of them, high above their heads. Men with rifles stood on ledges, peering through slits in the sandbags. Others lay huddled in cramped alcoves cut into the trench walls, staring at 3 Platoon and the others as they filed past. They’d made it. Finally, they were there.

  They had arrived just in time. Almost immediately, the other troops in the trench began shrugging on packs, picking up rifles, forming up in lines to leave. They were in a hurry, also. Nobody wanted to be in the open when daylight came.

  The other soldiers were Scottish, by the sound of their accents. They whispered to William’s platoon as they filed past, heading back in the direction the New Zealanders had come. ‘Guid luck, laddie … There’s a nasty wee German machine-gun o’er yon. Dinna stick your head up.’

&n
bsp; Inside ten minutes, the trench was theirs. Sentries were posted and took their posts on the ledges – firing steps, William heard them called – staring into the darkness. William and Herbert found an empty alcove and lay down. William was exhausted, but knew he wouldn’t sleep. He was too strung-out. He blinked as a green flare sailed high into the air above them. He—

  The next flare was dull white, yet bright enough to fill the whole sky. It hung there, didn’t fade. And something was hitting his foot. The Germans! Had they — William’s eyes flew open. A grey-white daylight was around him; Jack was standing there, gently (fairly gently) kicking his boot. ‘Rise and shine, Will. You’re on sentry in five minutes.’

  William struggled to his feet. His arms still ached from carrying the Mills Bombs. His shoulders were sore; his eyes thick. He was hungry. Jack held a tin mug out to him. ‘Three spoons of sugar in it. That’ll keep you going.’

  The tea was lukewarm, but it helped. By the time William was standing on the ledge, peering through the tiny slit in the wall of sandbags, he was fully awake. He blinked at the sight in front of him.

  A tangle of barbed wire – coils and loops of it fixed to thick wooden stakes – curled chest-high in front of the trench. Beyond that, bare ground stretched away for a hundred yards or more, cratered with shell-holes, strewn with smashed bits of timber, a heap of broken bricks, the stumps of trees. Further away still, William could just make out more barbed wire, plus concrete or steel shapes rising from the ground like big grey drums. His breath caught as he realised it was the German front line.

  Nothing moved in front of him. No Man’s Land was still. But over there, eyes were watching in his direction. Watching and ready to shoot. William swallowed and gripped his rifle more tightly.

  He stayed on sentry duty for two hours. A breakfast of cold tinned meat and bread was handed up to him in his mess tin. He ate it while he kept watching through the slit. His time was almost over when something twitched and moved just ten yards in front. A grey shape scuttled at him.

  A yell rose in William’s throat. The Huns! He jerked his rifle up, pointed it at the advancing German. The man must have been hiding somehow. How could he have—

  Then William realised. A rat. A grey rat, nearly the size of a kitten. It stopped just five yards away, seemed to stare straight at him. He saw its bald pink tail and pointed teeth. It darted sideways, and began pulling and chewing at a shape half-buried in the mud. Suddenly, William made out the shape of a human hand. He jerked his rifle again and the rat slunk away, dragging something with it. William heard himself gagging with disgust.

  When his two hours were over, he stepped down into the trench and gazed around. Everything was grey or brown: duckboards, wooden or earth walls, sandbags, the crumpled shapes of men sleeping or sitting. The sky was grey. The faces of 3 Platoon looked grey as well. Everyone was filthy, from the trench or from stumbling and falling on their trek to the line. Everyone looked exhausted.

  They became more exhausted as their first day passed. If they weren’t on sentry duty, they were working. They carried boxes of ammunition. They levered buried duckboards out of sucking mud on the floor of the trench and shovelled drier earth underneath them. They strained to lift a heavy machine-gun and its tripod onto a platform in the next length of trench. They dug a deep chamber out of the rear wall and reinforced it with timber.

  When Jerry asked what the space was for, Sergeant Molloy grunted, ‘Just wait ’til there’s an attack, lad. Then you’ll see.’ Jerry stared at William, who stared back as they both understood. Bodies.

  Lunch was more cold meat, straight from the tin. They ate it sitting on the muddy duckboards. Already their uniforms and boots were caked with dirt. Their hands were filthy. They couldn’t wash. ‘Save your water,’ an NCO came along the trench telling them. ‘Drinking only – and not too much.’

  All the while, the guns fired. Their artillery, well behind them now, booming and echoing. Enemy guns from far ahead. The first few times, everyone threw themselves face-down on the duckboards, while the sentries pressed against the walls. But after the first hours, they kept wearily going about their work, although heads still jerked at each explosion.

  A few times, the snarl and rattle of machine-gun fire sounded, somewhere off to their left. But No Man’s Land stayed empty. Nothing moved behind the German wire.

  They were filling sandbags with dirt, to build their trench parapet higher, when a distant droning swelled to a roar, sentries shouted, and as everyone scrambled for their rifles, an aeroplane swept over the trench, low enough for William to glimpse the thick black crosses on its wings. A Hun!

  Next moment, there was a burst of firing somewhere behind them. Yells and screams rose. The aircraft noise faded for a moment, swelled again. Another rattle of shots. Jerry began hauling himself up the rear wall of the trench to see what was happening.

  ‘Down!’ Sergeant Molloy yelled. ‘Get down!’ Jerry had scarcely ducked his head when the air was shrill with the whine and crack of bullets, flashing past just above the parapet. Their platoon NCO strode over to the red-haired soldier, grabbed his tunic, shook him hard. ‘You do that again, O’Brien, and I’ll throw you over the parapet so the enemy can have an easier shot. What sort of a blithering idiot are you?’

  The sergeant’s words were lost as their artillery all opened up at once. William’s hands flew to his ears as the sound slammed at them. All along the trench, men crouched, trying to cover their heads. Sergeant Molloy was shoving at them. ‘Stand up! Ready to fire! Sentries, watch the front!’

  Ten minutes later, as the guns still crashed, a group of men half-stumbled, half-fell into the trench from the open ground behind. William recognised the New Zealand shoulder badges. One held a hand to his face; blood streamed between his fingers. Two others dragged a third between them, his body flopping.

  A First Aid party hurried up. Some led the wounded soldier away. Others knelt over the unmoving man. They spoke to him, felt at his neck, then shook their heads. A blanket appeared from somewhere and was spread over his face and chest where he sprawled on the filthy duckboards.

  For the next half-hour, until a stretcher party came to carry the body away, William kept glancing at the legs in their puttees and boots, lolling limply from under the blanket. I’ve seen my first dead man, he thought. It looks ugly and … and useless.

  A supply party had been caught in the open. The news came down the trench as time passed. The German aeroplane had seen an easy target and attacked. ‘No three-course dinner for you lot tonight,’ Sergeant Molloy told them as he passed. ‘Eat your spare socks if you get hungry.’

  The rest of their six days in the trenches were much like the first. Hours of dirt, hunger, discomfort and boredom. Then a few wild minutes of noise and fear. Then dirt and boredom again.

  On the second afternoon, as William huddled in his muddy sleeping space, yawning and hungry, yells swept along the trench. ‘Gas! Gas!’ Next minute, men were hurling themselves at their packs, dragging out the clumsy gas-masks, jamming them over their faces. Nothing happened. A sentry had seen the smoke from a cooking fire, and panicked.

  On the third night, orders came to double up the sentries. A password was issued: Farm Gate. As darkness grew, the trench was lined with men, eyes straining through the slits between sandbags. Something must be happening, but nobody knew what.

  Those trying to sleep lay with a hand on their rifles. ‘Just make sure it’s not pointing at me, chum,’ Jack told Jerry as they huddled against the trench wall. ‘Tell it I’m on your side.’ Jerry managed a tired grin.

  Hours passed. William’s turn for sentry duty came. He stood on the firing step, shifting from foot to foot, trying to see. Had a shadow moved? No. Was that a man? No, a wooden stake. ‘Farm Gate,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Farm Gate.’ If he did see a man, if he called out ‘Farm’ and the figure didn’t answer ‘Gate’, could he make himself shoot?

  The blackness exploded into light. German guns were firing. Flashes o
f flame, fountains of dirt burst out all across No Man’s Land. The ground was lit as bright as day. William glimpsed rats scurrying into shell-holes. Then darkness again. More explosions, more glares of light. Machine-guns hammered, not far away. Rifles cracked.

  William heard the sentries further along calling out: ‘See anything?’ ‘Nothing!’ Their own artillery burst out, in a madhouse of noise and white-red fire. William pressed himself against the trench wall and waited for the world to end.

  It didn’t. After ten minutes, the noise faded. Occasionally a rifle shot rang out. A few flares rose, glowed, faded. William’s two hours ticked away. In the morning, they learned that a raiding party had set out from their lines to attack the enemy trenches. Nobody knew how many were dead or wounded. Muddle and mess and mix-ups, William told himself. That’s what war mostly seems to be.

  He didn’t feel a hero in the trenches. He was too tired, dirty, hungry. Staying awake and ready took all his energy. One look at the yawning, filthy faces of the others showed they were the same.

  On the fourth night, there were strange creaking noises somewhere behind the German lines. The sentries were more nervous than usual. Mr Gowing came along the trench, looking as exhausted as everyone else. ‘Keep alert, chaps. Something could be up.’

  Something was up. They saw when daylight came. A big observation balloon, floating high above the enemy trenches on the end of a wire cable. A big black basket hung below it.

  ‘There’ll be an observer in that,’ someone muttered. ‘He’ll see exactly where we are. He can signal their guns where to fire.’ The balloon was far out of rifle range. William stared up helplessly.