The new man was Second Lieutenant Nightingale, a tall tubular boy with the nascent fluff of his regulation moustache barely showing on his upper lip. His shyness was palpable from the way he stood crouched under the low ceiling with his hands clasped behind his back. When Stephen introduced himself he shook hands and bowed very formally, all the while eyeing the heavy rifle as Stephen unslung it and stood it in the corner. Wilson was by the window, trying to push the cork into a bottle of wine with a round of rifle ammunition and the heel of his hand.
‘That’s a very fine gun,’ Nightingale said, nodding into the corner, ‘it’s not standard issue is it?’
‘No, it’s not. As a matter of fact it’s an elephant gun.’
‘Oh, really?’ Nightingale nodded his head, as if that were the most normal thing in the world, and lapsed into silence once again.
Stephen tried to mask his smile. D’you get many elephants around here? God! Had he ever been that young?
‘You need them for the snipers.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘Do you need a hand?’ Stephen asked Wilson, who was writhing around the bottle with his bony limbs and growing quite red in the face.
‘A corkscrew would be better,’ he gasped, but with a squeak and a pop the cork finally gave way and he poured the wine into three enamel mugs lined up on the windowsill.
‘A toast!’ Wilson began, handing around the mugs. Then he peered at the left breast of Stephen’s tunic, ‘Where the devil is it?’
‘It’s in my pocket.’
‘Give it here,’ he demanded, and Stephen flushed as he pulled the jewellery box from his pocket and handed it over. Wilson set down his mug and deftly pinned the cross onto his filthy tunic.
‘Here’s to you, Mr Ryan,’ he said and they drank. The wine tasted sweet and sharp in his clammy mouth. Then Nightingale leaned across and shook his hand again.
‘Congratulations, lieutenant.’
‘Thank you very much.’
Wilson drained his mug and picked up the bottle again. He emptied it between the three of them.
‘And here’s to Mr Devereux,’ he said, with a cold look in his eye.
Nightingale looked uncertainly between the two of them.
‘Any news?’ Stephen asked.
‘He’ll live.’
‘Then here’s to him!’ Nightingale blurted. The wine was telling already. Wilson gave Stephen an amused look and raised his mug.
‘Aye! Here’s to staying alive, Mr Nightingale.’
* * *
16 February 1917
I slept the sleep of the dead last night. I only had a couple of blankets on bare floorboards for my bed, but I could have slept on broken glass. I went ten hours straight through and, by God, I feel much better for it now! When I woke up, my tunic had been cleaned, the buttons polished, and the little purple and white ribbon sewn over the pocket. I felt like a new man when I put it on!
Devereux has been transferred to a hospital in England. It appears he will live, but he is to be discharged wounded – a cripple for the rest of his life. I’m not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand I feel sorry for him – I wouldn’t wish it on anybody – but on the other hand, I’m glad he won’t be back.
Wilson went over to Battalion HQ this morning and he was in a right old taking when he came back. It appears I’ve become a bit too famous for my own good. What with Devereux kicking up a stink about me, and then Wilson recommending me for the MC – not to mention the business with the sniper – my name has become known to the divisional staff. This is not a good thing because being known to the brass hats makes you liable to be volunteered for the next hare-brained scheme they dream up.
In my case, the scheme is not one of their own devising, which is some comfort, at least. The Royal Engineers want to borrow officers for a big tunnelling job they have on near Messines. I don’t know the first thing about tunnelling, but my name has been put forward anyway.
Wilson is put out because he’s short of officers. He’s always been short of officers – as long as I’ve been here, we’ve never had a full complement – but if I go we really will be cutting it a bit fine. Gardner is all right, but Nightingale has literally only been here a day. The CO has promised him a couple more, but God knows where he thinks he might find them.
Of course, they can’t make me go. It puts Wilson in such a fix that I suggested I might refuse the posting, but he told me not to be a bloody fool. With over two years served I am due a promotion but I can kiss that goodbye if I say no. On the other hand, if I do take the posting then it will be a sort of dry run: I will be in command of a tunnelling company, which will make me an acting captain. Provided I don’t make a complete mess of it, that rank should be made permanent when I come back in a couple of months.
(Later)
Now it turns out that I leave tomorrow. I hadn’t expected it to be so quick, but I was summoned to HQ just before teatime and told to pack my kit and report for training to the Engineers first thing in the morning. Just like that. The battalion is going back up the line tonight, but I am left behind. I shook hands with everybody as they left and they all wished me luck. It surprised me how sad I was to see them go. I’ve only been here a few months, but it’s like leaving home all over again.
Part Three
X
Silence. It was so intense that he could hear the candle burning, the wick hissing and spitting in its little pool of fat. It flickered on the pale, strained face of Sergeant Page, who knelt with his eyes closed and his whole being focused on the tubes that snaked out of his ears. He looked like he was listening for a heartbeat in the earth, and Stephen wondered how he could hear it over the thunder of his own. The others were as bad – all frozen with picks and shovels in their hands, all afraid to breathe, all rolling their eyes to the ceiling, waiting for it to come crashing down. They had all heard the voice too, as clear and crisp as if it had come from just down the tunnel. But speaking in German.
He raised his eyes to the roof. Ninety feet of earth held up with a few planks and boards. Ninety feet above, men were walking around in the open air; shells were falling, feet marching, guns pounding. But no sound penetrated this deep. The tunnel was as silent as the grave.
Don’t bloody say that.
He shivered and swallowed his nausea. The revolver was heavy in his hand, his palm sweaty on the grip, but the air was cold and clammy against his skin, and the miserable candle gave no warmth at all. It was stale too; they’d stopped the windjammer the moment they heard it, and now he could get the stink of fear.
If Page was afraid, he gave no sign. His face was like marble until he opened his eyes and the whites showed up the grime. Slowly, deliberately, he picked up the bell and moved it a foot to his left. He closed his eyes again to listen, and Stephen silently willed him to hurry up, for Christ’s sake. The muscles in his legs were burning with cramp, and he thought if he didn’t hear something soon, say something, feel something other than this awful bloody tension, he would explode in a fit.
But Page wouldn’t be rushed. He’d been a miner before the war and he knew what he was at. He looked like a miner too: short and stocky and hewn from stone himself. Stephen envied him his coolness. He could never be so at home down here – the best he could do was endure it and hope the men didn’t notice. But these alarms were testing his nerve. This was the third one in as many days. Yesterday it had been a prolonged scraping sound, like something being dragged through the earth, and the day before it was muffled footfalls thumping overhead.
He tried to console himself with the thought that nothing would happen as long as they could hear them. Page had been through all this before on the Somme, and he’d tried to reassure Stephen after the first alarm.
‘Ain’t nowt to worry about if tha can ’ear the buggers moving about,’ he explained in his hoarse Yorkshire whisper. ‘But when tha’ can’t ’ear ’em, that means they’ve scarpered, an’ probably lit thon fuses!’
That’s what th
ey were all afraid of. Not a break-in – they were ready for that – but a countermine. No warning, just a shattering thump and the roof would come crashing down on top of them. Ninety feet of solid earth. He shuddered again.
Page’s stony features slowly gave way to a smile. He opened his eyes and shook his head.
‘Miles away,’ he said in a whisper that seemed like a shout after such profound silence.
Long-held breath came out in a gush. Men chuckled and clapped each other on the back while Stephen rolled back and stretched out his aching legs. Even his hand was cramped around the revolver, and he flexed his fingers, feeling the sweat cool between them. Christ, it was good to move again.
‘Come on then, lads. Let’s be having you,’ Page whispered, and some of the men crawled forward to the face of blue clay at the end of the tunnel. One of them settled his back against the wooden frame and took the spade from his mate. The others stood with their sandbags, ready to take the spoil.
Stephen felt Page looking at him. He had the keen-eyed look of a terrier at a burrow.
‘Carry on, sergeant,’ Stephen nodded, and the man at the frame kicked the spade into the earth with a loud snick. A curling sod of clay fell away from the wall and the tunnel grew a few inches longer, a few inches closer to the enemy line.
* * *
I5 April 1917
This is all supposed to be top secret, but the scale of it is so huge that I have to write these figures down or I will never believe them myself! I’ve been working underground for nearly two months, but I had no idea of the size of the project until I went to an officers’ meeting at General Plumer’s HQ yesterday.
Plumer himself was in charge of the meeting, and handed around some typed pages listing the progress on the various tunnels and the amount of explosives we plan to use. I must say, I was aware there were other tunnels, but I had no idea there were so many – and absolutely no inkling of the sheer tonnage of explosives we will be using. When I read my sheet I nearly put my hand up to ask if there was a typing error!
The fact is that my tunnel is only one of twenty-four that we are digging under the Messines Ridge. Twenty-four! And mine is by no means the largest! The scheme has been in the works for nearly two years now and should be completed in another two months.
Our objective is nothing less than the ridge itself. The Germans have held it almost since the start of the war and it gives us nothing but trouble. It dominates the entire sector, and from the top they have a clear view not only of our lines, but also of our rear areas and all our movements around Ypres. It is too easily defended to give us any hope of taking it with a frontal assault, so we are digging all these tunnels and filling them with nearly five hundred tons of explosives. Then, one fine morning in June, we’re going to detonate the explosives and blow the Messines Ridge right off the map.
This is all very easy to write down, but the reality is damned hard work. Even though we have finished digging, it will take thirty tons of ammonal to all the blasting galleries in our mine alone. That’s thirty tons in waterproof bags and cans that all have to be lowered down on ropes and then carried hundreds of yards to the minehead. Thirty tons! And then there is the wiring and tamping that still has to be done. Two months sounds like a long time, but I think it will be barely enough.
4 May 1917
The Boche blew a countermine against our tunnel yesterday. It was my day off, so I was above ground, but it still put the wind up me.
I saw the damage when I went down this morning. They blew in a small side gallery and caused a partial collapse in the main tunnel. It’s not very serious: we didn’t lose anybody and it only took a couple of hours to shore up the damaged section – but now there can be no doubt that they know exactly where we are.
The strain is intense. Every time I go underground I count the minutes to the end of my shift. I yearn for my days off. The weather is getting warmer and there is nothing better than to go to an estaminet and sit outside with a mug of beer and a plate of pommes frites. But always outside. This bloody tunnelling is making me claustrophobic.
I also yearn to go home. It’s just over a year since I left Ireland and I miss the place. I never thought I would be so sentimental about it – I certainly don’t think I was this homesick when I was in Turkey. I get letters every week from Lillian and Billy – and even the odd one from Joe — but sometimes they just make it worse. Every night I go to sleep thinking about Lillian, and when I wake up my first thought is how much I miss her. I can’t believe it’s a year since I saw her, and even though I look forward to her letters every day, I can’t wait to get back and see her again. But there’s no point crying about it. Even though I’m overdue for leave, there’s no hope of it coming before we blow the mine. Still, that’s only a few weeks off, and then I’ll be on my way. A fortnight in Ireland at the height of summer! Sometimes it’s all that keeps me going.
(Later)
We just put the last of the ammonal in the blasting gallery. It makes quite a sight – a bit like a cavernous greengrocer’s with all the bags and tins stretching away into the dark. I’m glad it’s done because the bloody stuff smells pretty foul and whenever we come up after a shift we always seem to reek of fish.
Everybody shook hands when the last bag went in. There could be no talking or cheering, of course, but I knew damned well what all the lads were thinking: They won’t know what hit them.
Even so, there wasn’t much time for celebration. Now we have to tamp the charge – meaning block up the tunnel with tons and tons of sandbags – and the whole lot has to be wired. This is a bit technical for a poor bloody infantry officer like me, so we are getting an RE major in to supervise. His name is Macmillan and he came down and walked the gallery with me this evening. On the way, we passed the site of the collapse and he stopped and whispered to me: ‘That looks fresh!’
I didn’t say anything because even thinking about it gives me the willies. The Boche will be listening and, if they think we’re still working they’ll blow another mine, and another, until they bury us all alive. Our only hope is to get the job done and blow them all to kingdom come before they stop us. The strain is very bad. Another four weeks left and then I’ll be out of this hellish place and back above ground, where I belong. But every minute I’m down here I’ll have those words running through my head:
They won’t know what hit them.
And I’m not thinking about the Boche.
* * *
Stephen scrambled into the bright daylight with the desperate urgency of a newborn. The shock of it was overpowering. The sun stung his eyes and the air felt sharp against his skin, and he collapsed on the grimy duckboards with his chest heaving and his head spinning. He couldn’t breathe. He was choking and retching as he threshed around on the ground, but he could get no air. Then, at last, he coughed up a great gob of slimy mud and his throat was clear. He sucked the air into his lungs with an enormous heaving gasp.
Still he wasn’t right. There was grit under his tongue, earth in his nose, his clothes, his ears. He tried to get rid of it, shaking himself like a dog, spitting, pulling at his clothes. His ears were the worst. They felt blocked, muffled. He could hear his breath sawing in his chest, but everything else was muted, distant. Christ Almighty. Had he gone deaf?
He saw a pair of boots running silently towards him. It was Macmillan. He felt his hand on his shoulder and looked up into his worried, fearful face. His lips were moving.
‘What?’ Stephen bellowed, and even the sound of his own voice was muffled. He shook his head again, trying to dull the loud ringing in his ears.
‘What happened?’ Macmillan shouted. He was so close that Stephen felt spittle splash his cheek, but he could hear him. Barely, but he could hear him. Thank Christ! Another shake and something seemed to give way inside his head. There was a pop and he felt air in his ears.
‘I said, what happened?’ Macmillan shouted again, so loud it hurt.
‘I heard you!’ Stephen rolled away and push
ed himself into a sitting position, still doggedly shaking his head. Behind Macmillan, he saw Page and Murphy lying together against the wall of the trench. Page had his round face turned up to the sky, blood oozing from his eyes. ‘I don’t know what happened.’
‘What do you mean? You must know what happened! Did it collapse?’
‘Of course it fucking collapsed!’
‘But what caused it? Think, man! Was it a camouflet? Did you hear an explosion?’
‘I can’t . . .’ he shook his head again, frowning. All he could remember was the sudden dark. The awful bloody blackness falling down on them. ‘I don’t remember what happened. I just . . . I don’t know. The lights went out.’
‘Oh, fucking hell,’ Macmillan rocked back on his heels and held his head in his hands. He was only a year or two older than Stephen, but he looked gaunt and aged. The work was wearing him out. Three of these mines were his, and the closer they came to completion, the more strain came onto him. Christ knew when he’d last slept. All he did was check wiring, test connections and fret about the damp in the galleries. He’d come so close to being finished – the mines were due to blow in the early hours of tomorrow morning. Thirteen more hours and his work would have been done. But now . . .
‘We must go down and see if the wires have been cut,’ he said decisively, and Stephen looked at the hole he’d crawled out of. There used to be a door, but the compressed air from the collapse had blown it off its hinges. The naked opening gaped at him like a wound in the earth, black and uninviting.
‘All right. I’ll go with you,’ he offered, though his stomach churned at the mere thought of it. Macmillan smiled and clapped him on the shoulder.
‘Good man. Back in a tick.’
When he ran off, Stephen sagged against the wall of the trench. The summer sun was warm on his face but he was seized by uncontrollable fits of shivering. Now that his hearing had returned all he could hear was the noise of shells thundering across the sky. It was the final bombardment, a prolonged battering that would keep the Boche in their deep dugouts. But anybody who was underground when those mines went up would almost certainly be killed. If their dugouts didn’t collapse then the concussion would kill them, and any survivors would be deafened, stunned and insensible when the assault troops charged across the craters.
The Soldier's Song Page 19