The Sons of Adam

by Harry Bingham

  ‘You could be shot for this.’ Guy’s voice was husky, little more than a croak.

  ‘Oh, and one other thing. It’s no great odds to me, but I know Alan would prefer not to be separated from his men. He’s not quick to win their liking, but now he’s got it, he’d be desperately loath to start the whole business again from scratch. As they are now, his men would walk through fire for him.’

  ‘It really isn’t up to me.’

  ‘No. I don’t expect it is. But you’re a highly thought-of staff officer with the ear of General Haig. You can sort this out if you want to, just as you helped create this situation in the first place.’

  ‘I can’t promise anything.’

  Tom smiled. His hand was on the door. ‘You don’t have to. When you wake up, you’ll remember that I deserted my post on the front line, stole a motorcycle, broke into your room, and pointed a loaded revolver at your head. So you’ll do everything you can, won’t you, cousin?’ Tom didn’t wait for an answer. He opened the door, and, for the second time that night, brushed aside the night-gowned housekeeper who had been listening at the door. His footsteps marched off across the landing and down the stairs. ‘Don’t forget, cousin, I know who you are.’

  Ten seconds later, a motorcycle roared into life and shot off into the enclosing night.

  It wasn’t long before Tom was proved right.

  Five days later, Major Fletcher loped his way ape-like into Tom’s dugout.

  ‘Good news for you, Creeley. Mix-up at HQ. You’re sticking here instead of buggering off to the 21st. It’s a bloody shame from my point of view, though.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?!’

  ‘Won’t be able to get my millinery done for free. What? What? What?’

  Fletcher roared with laughter at his joke and dug down amongst Tom’s belongings to find the bottle of whisky he kept there. Shellfire, heavier than usual that night, thumped the air and sent shock waves through the ground. Particles of chalk fell from the ceiling. Fletcher poured the whisky into a couple of mugs.

  The earth quaked around them. They drank.

  20

  Incident and consequence. Cause and effect. Each effect becoming in its turn the trigger of a whole new cycle.

  A trench raid. A medal honourably won. A need for officers. Guy seeking to separate Tom from Alan. Tom breaking in on Guy. A junior officer pointing a loaded gun at a senior officer’s head. The causes started out small, hardly visible even. But the effects were no longer so small.

  And they were growing all the time.

  Beechnuts crunched underfoot. It was the first hard frost of November and ice glittered on the empty twigs. The forest felt like a fairy-tale wood. The two men walked a good distance, chatting about a hundred things, but it was only when they were deep into the forest silence that Alan finally brought up the subject that had been plaguing him.

  ‘I happened to see Guy in the village the other day,’ he said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He had some extraordinary story about you and that transfer to the 21st.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That you thought he had been behind the transfer instruction in the first place, that you wanted him to reverse the decision.’

  ‘Perfectly true.’

  ‘And that you burst in on him waving a gun.’

  Tom laughed. ‘Almost. I did burst in on him. I didn’t have a gun on me. He had one on his dressing table, which I think he’d started to load when he heard me come in downstairs. I did point that at him briefly. I don’t really know why.’

  He was completely without embarrassment. Alan stared at him incredulously. ‘You aimed a loaded gun at him?’

  ‘Yes – at least I assume it was loaded. I didn’t really bother to check. Look at this.’ Tom eased some leaves aside with his toe and revealed the gleam of copper wire by a bare root. It was a trap laid for rabbits. ‘Neat job, eh? Here, what about this?’ Tom pulled a salami from his pocket that the two men had been intending to eat for lunch. Tom slipped the sausage through the loop of wire and drew the wire tight. He scattered leaves back as they had been before. Tom began to shake with laughter at the thought of the trapper returning to find his catch.

  ‘Tom! For God’s sake!’

  ‘What? I’d be damn pleased to trap a sausage.’

  ‘Not the trap, you idiot. Guy. You aimed a gun at him?’ Alan was shocked. He was also upset and torn, as he always was when Tom and Guy quarrelled.

  ‘Yes. I don’t think he enjoyed it much. But it did the trick, didn’t it?’

  ‘But for heaven’s sake! You can’t just go waving a gun at him. What in hell’s name did you think you were playing at?’

  Tom’s nonchalant attitude suddenly disappeared. Alan had begun to shout and he had a tendency to sound preachy and schoolmasterly when he was angry about something. Tom never put up with that and he didn’t now.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ he said coldly. ‘I think – no, that’s not right, I know – that your so-called brother wanted to see us separated, and I knew that I could frighten him into undoing the damage. What’s more –’

  ‘But you can’t just aim a gun at him.’ Alan was angry and his voiced was raised. ‘You have to learn some limits. Guy has his faults but he is my brother –’

  ‘Oh? He’s your brother, is he? So what the hell was he thinking of then, separating the two of us?’

  ‘You’ve no evidence that he ever wanted to separate –’

  ‘No, you’re quite right. And after all, as you point out, he is your brother so he couldn’t possibly wish to hurt you.’

  ‘Listen, whatever else he may or may not be, Guy is family – my family, I mean, and –’

  ‘Your family? Your family? What am I then? What am I? The fucking gardener’s boy?’ Tom was shouting, his breath building storm castles in the freezing air. He was extremely angry.

  ‘For God’s sake, Tom! Calm down! If you’d mentioned your suspicions to me I could have had a word. It didn’t need you to aim a bloody –’

  ‘And just possibly you’re wrong. Had you thought of that? Perhaps aiming a gun at his head was just precisely what was needed. Or is your bloody good nature going to get in the way of seeing straight every time there’s a problem?’

  Up till now both men had been panting with the effort of the argument. They were shouting hard at each other and Alan had unconsciously picked up a stick as though intending to assault Tom with it.

  They felt ready to murder each other.

  And then, as so often in the past, the anger slid away as though it had never been. The bottom dropped out of their rage and calmness returned. Though he wouldn’t admit it – not even to himself, perhaps – Alan knew that Tom was right. Alan’s reliance on decency and fair play would never have had the impact on Guy that a loaded gun would have had.

  ‘Listen, old fellow,’ said Alan. ‘You and I have always been close. Closer to each other than to anyone else. Guy doesn’t get a look-in. But when all’s said and done, and whatever Guy did or didn’t do, I think –’

  ‘He did do it. I know he did.’

  ‘Well, even so, I could have spoken with him. It didn’t –’

  ‘And he’d have told you that the whole matter had nothing to do with him and you’d have believed him. You always do.’

  They walked a few paces more in silence. Alan looked long and hard at some animal tracks. Hare. He could see fox tracks as well. If he listened carefully, he could hear the almost silent animals of the forest: the cautious footfalls of the deer, the quiet munching of the rabbits, the tapping of woodpeckers in the trees. He looked up.

  ‘Take care, brother,’ he said. ‘You play a dangerous game at times.’

  Tom smiled brilliantly and gave an airy wave. ‘That’s what comes of being a gardener’s son. Nothing to lose.’

  He was wrong, of course. And it wouldn’t be long before he knew it.

  21

  It was nine months later, 10 August 1916.

  Al
an and Tom were both alive, both intact. That was the good news.

  Meanwhile, the war was continuing. The Battle of the Somme was in progress. In the last six weeks alone, a hundred thousand British soldiers had been killed or wounded. So far, Tom and Alan’s battalion had been kept out of the conflict, but that happy interval was about to end. The battalion was due to attack the very next day. The fighting would be as severe as anything the two men had ever experienced. Casualties were certain to be high. Perhaps colossal.

  That was the bad news.

  And, in a way, it was untrue to say that both men had survived intact. They hadn’t. They couldn’t. No man survives, life in the combat zone for very long. Nerves shred. Humanity frays. The spirit fails.

  Of the two men, Alan had been worse affected. Devoted to his men, he often pushed himself too hard. Too serious to unwind easily, he found relaxation difficult. He smoked. He rode. He wrote letters home.

  And he’d found a girl.

  Called Lisette, she was pretty, dark-haired, smiling and kind. They’d met by accident one day in a village seven miles behind the lines, Ste Thérèse-sur-Tarne (‘Saint Tess’ to the men). He was billeted there. She was the daughter of one of the local farmers. Caught outside during a rainstorm, he helped her home. They ran into her farmhouse, shared some coffee, laughed together. She invited him back. And back. After three visits, he could take a hint. Excited and embarrassed in about equal measure, he undressed in her little bedroom. They made love. During the rest of the fortnight that Alan was in Saint Tess, they met on a further nine occasions, making love on eight of them.

  The evening before the assault found the battalion sheltering in the wreck of what had once been a village. The officers’ mess was a ruined cellar, whose entrance was neatly flanked by two rows of shell cases, graduated in size, ranging up to the height of a man.

  Tom was still Tom. He was handsome, brilliant, unmilitary, courageous. But over time, his outlook had blackened. He lounged against the cellar wall, barely protected by the sandbag parapet in front of him. He picked up a flint and threw it out beyond the sandbags.

  ‘A fine place to die,’ he commented.

  ‘For God’s sake!’

  Alan jumped to find a piece of wood to ward off Tom’s unlucky words. A discarded crate lay nearby and Alan passed a chunk of it to Tom, who touched it absently. The side of the crate was marked in English: ‘Shell Motor Spirit’. Tom nodded at the marking and smiled.

  ‘Good choice.’

  ‘Let’s get out there right away, shall we?’ said Alan. ‘After the war, I mean. Not wait any longer.’ He meant get out to Persia, of course.

  Tom laughed and shook his head.

  ‘What?’ said Alan defensively. ‘You can’t want to go back to Standard, can you? Lord knows, I couldn’t stand to be cooped up in somebody else’s office.’

  Tom laughed again, kindly this time. ‘That’s not what I meant, old man. I meant … Look, you don’t think we’ll both survive this, do you?’ Tom spoke quietly, talking almost to himself. ‘But there are worse things, after all.’

  ‘Tom, for God’s sake!’

  ‘If I’m to die, I’ve decided to fight like a maniac first. Take a few Boche with me.’

  ‘Don’t speak like that. Don’t even think like that.’

  Tom shrugged. ‘I haven’t always thought like that. This whole damned war is so stupid, I couldn’t see much purpose in trying to fight it hard. I still can’t, in a way, except that one has one’s self-respect to think of.’ He flicked his white and purple medal ribbon thoughtfully, then his tone changed again. ‘If I am killed, will you promise to do what you can in Persia?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Drill. If there’s oil, you’ll find it. If there isn’t – well, at least you’ll have tried.’

  ‘We’ll find it together.’

  ‘You’re probably right. Dead or alive, I’ll be there in spirit. But promise me, brother. Your most sacred promise.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘And don’t give the damn thing away to a bunch of stupid stockmarket investors. I mean, you’ll have to at some point. But not straight away. Find the oil first.’

  ‘The oil first, if humanly possible.’

  Tom gravely nodded his acceptance. ‘Good. Good man.’

  The way he said it, it sounded like goodbye.

  22

  The battalion moved off at eight that evening. Its goal: a full-frontal attack on enemy positions.

  It was pitch-black and raining, and the ground was evil. Three times, artillery fire forced the company to flatten itself into whatever cover was available. Each time the shelling lifted, the company moved forwards again, leaving a small handful of wounded men behind. On one occasion, Alan was struck with a shell splinter, shaped like a goose quill, in his shoulder blade. An NCO lying in the ditch next to him tweaked it out with finger and thumb and threw it away. Neither man commented on the incident, or was even thinking about it five minutes later.

  They reached their designated position shortly after midnight. The men ate rations from their packs and were given permission to rest until four.

  The rain settled in and grew heavier. Time moved with agonising slowness.

  At four o’clock, a thunder of British artillery opened up behind them, and they could hear the torrent of shells crashing down on German positions. The men listened in silence: half pleased at the thought of what the shells were doing to the enemy, half terrified because of what this implied for the coming offensive. Alan stayed with his men. Although Tom was close by, he might as well have been on another planet for all Alan knew of him.

  Four thirty approached. The rain was beginning to fall more gently and a meagre grey light began testing its options on the eastern horizon. Alan’s eyes struggled to follow the luminous figures on his watch. The second hand swept remorselessly round. And finally, it was four thirty precisely. Alan raised his hand and dropped it: the signal to advance.

  His men moved off. For several seconds, there was silence – beautiful silence. Then, almost simultaneously, three flares rose from the German-held salient. The flares disclosed what the German defenders already suspected. There was a trickle of rifle fire, then a din of machine guns, then the extraordinary violence of concentrated shelling. Air became metal. The noise was so indescribably loud that the sense of hearing fell away until it was almost like walking into silence.

  Alan saw the men next to him hold their positions, just as they’d been drilled. No clustering together, no turning human lives into simple targets for German gunners. But the men walked as though into a gale. Bent over. Doubled up.

  As he watched his men, he saw one of them struck full in the chest and sink to his knees with a soft ‘Ah!’ of release. Another man bent down, apparently to fiddle with his bootlaces, but he bent too far and slid to earth with dark red tongues of blood where his face should have been. All around, men were falling when they should be walking. Alan watched in mounting amazement and shock. His platoon was being destroyed, his beloved men massacred, soldierlike and courageous to the end.

  Still they advanced.

  Alan had no real recollection of the next few hours. Only by midday did the true situation unfold. The attack had largely failed. The attackers had bitten off a chunk of German line at huge cost. The two opposing artilleries screamed at each other. In the chaos of collapsed and broken trenches, both sides attempted to reconfigure their defences.

  The day passed.

  The list of known casualties was appalling. More than half of Alan’s men had been killed or wounded. So had all of his NCOs. So too with Major Fletcher, whose left arm had been torn off by a shell, and who had been found sitting upright in the mud, holding his arm between his knees, repeating endlessly, ‘My poor boys, my poor bloody boys …’

  There was no word of Tom.

  For two more nights and days the fighting continued. Alan was tired beyond tired, shattered beyond endurance. And then finally, he was given permission
to rest.

  The permission came in the form of a German Minenwerfer, which hurled through the air looking something like a flying dustbin, but a bin packed with enormous destructive power. The canister detonated twelve yards away on the unprotected side of the parapet. Afterwards, Alan thought he recalled seeing the flash of detonation before it reached him, but supposed he must have provided details of the explosion from his imagination.

  And that was all.

  The flash – then silence. No pain. No slow fade-out into unconsciousness. Simply a plunge into blackness. Total blackness.

  And still no word of Tom.

  23

  Alan woke in a tent full of iron beds and soldiers. The atmosphere was foetid with the smell of hot air under canvas and the odours of blood, iodine and unwashed clothes. Men in the tent next to Alan and in other tents and huts beyond groaned and called out in their sleep.

  Alan stretched himself gingerly. He felt indescribably sore. Although nothing felt broken or missing, Alan knew that wounded men were often unaware how badly wounded they were. He wriggled in his narrow cot, trying to get an arm down to reach his feet under their coarse army-issue blankets. He was so stiff that the effort made him pant. He finally managed it, however, and ran his hand over his toes. Nothing.

  He sank back in bed, temporarily satisfied. The men in the ‘moribund ward’ often had red labels tied to their toes to indicate their status. There seemed nothing like that here.

  He slept.

  At dawn, he woke again, when a doctor, a major in the RAMC, was making his rounds.

  ‘Am I hurt?’ said Alan. His mouth worked awkwardly – even his jaw ached like hell – and the words came out as if spoken by a foreigner. The doctor reached for a pulse. The pressure of his thumb was painful and Alan felt as if he could feel the passage of blood up and down his arm.