The Lambs

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said Flynn.

  ‘And there was me thinking it pretty obvious,’ quipped Rory. ‘It’s a long story but the short of it is the medics took me. I was with the Orangies up at Thiepval until I managed to persuade them to send me to a proper Irish division,’ he replied with a cheeky grin.

  ‘Have you heard from Mary?’ asked Flynn. He didn’t know why, it just came out.

  ‘Not since she took up with that fella in Dublin. If it’s any consolation, my parents weren’t happy when she ditched you. In fact, they chucked her out, said she was a disgrace. They’ll come around, I’m sure, as soon as they find out where she’s run off to. I’m not sure where she is now but the folks are worried sick about her. Things haven’t been good at home since Terry and all …’ His voice faded. Flynn placed his hand on Rory’s arm.

  ‘How’s your brother Mickey?’ Flynn asked, changing the subject.

  ‘Strangest thing – some woman called Dempsey got him a job in Limerick so he took the family with him. They’re doing fine. Ma wasn’t impressed with him traipsing off to the other side of the country but beggars can’t be choosers, eh? After all, there’s not a lot of call for cripples back home.’

  ‘There’ll be plenty of them when this is over,’ observed Flynn wearily.

  ‘Over? It’ll not end here. That business last Easter was just the beginning. Ireland’s changed since you left. Christ, Kevin, it’s a right mess back home—’

  ‘Hey, looks like something’s happening,’ interrupted Carolan, just as Kettle emerged from his dugout fiddling with the holstered pistol on his hip. Flynn glanced at his watch. Four forty-three. It was almost time. Then there were whistles and cheers. Machine guns cackled. Stray rounds zipped menacingly overhead. Flynn shoved Carolan back to the fire step and as the shelling intensified they could hear bagpipes skirling, taking the Irish to war.

  ‘That’ll be the first wave,’ observed Flynn beneath the weight of his helmet pressing down on his head, making it ache. He noticed Devlin further down the trench; smiling, reassuring his boys. Docherty was with him, dishing out ammunition and advice. Spud was flat on the fire step; ears back, eyes wide. Carolan gave him a biscuit. Kettle was talking to Clee, a study in nonchalance. Then the sergeant major swept his bayonet into the air. There was a pause; a terrible, intoxicatingly electric pause in the buzz of excitement.

  ‘Com-PANY will fix BAY-o-nets!’ Clee’s words echoed along the trench. Flynn felt his flesh tingle. ‘FIX BAYONETS!’ The command echoed down the line. There was the merest hint of a pause, then a sea of blades flashed, rippling and waning in the sunlight like a silver wheatfield. Spent metal zipped harmlessly overhead. Heads buzzing with adrenalin turned to Kettle, eyes shining, drunk on fear and excitement. Flynn’s mouth was dry, the memory of rum’s sacrament gone. Carolan’s hands were shaking, his bayonet wobbling erratically as he struggled to slide it home.

  ‘There you go,’ said Flynn as he clicked Carolan’s bayonet into place.

  ‘Christ, I don’t know if I can do this,’ Carolan quailed, red-eyed and pale.

  ‘Sure you can, Joe. It won’t be so bad once we’re started,’ Flynn lied.

  ‘I should never have let Terry talk me into this shite,’ muttered Carolan.

  ‘You and me both,’ replied Flynn, trying to make light of it all.

  ‘No, I mean it, Kev. Lizzie said there’d be hell to pay,’ he grumbled. ‘You know, I’d be coming back from work about now. She’d be in the kitchen sorting my tea. Maybe we’d have wee ones of our own by now if I wasn’t here. Christ, Kev, she’s too young to be a widow!’ He looked like he was about to cry.

  ‘There’ll be plenty of time for that when we’re done here,’ replied Flynn.

  ‘Who are you trying to kid, Kev? Our fellas have been trying to turf Jerry out of this place since July so what makes today so different, eh? Face it, Kev, we’re not soldiers, not really. We’re just a bunch of eejits who thought this war’d be a craic!’ Flynn shifted awkwardly, unsure what to say. ‘If I don’t make it—’

  ‘Of course you’ll make it,’ interrupted Flynn.

  ‘What? Like Terry or Mickey or the Duke? Like all the others, eh? Stop shitting me, this isn’t some fecking game! Look, if I don’t make it tell Lizzie that I loved her … love her. Tell her I want her to get on with her life. She’s too young to waste it moping over me. You’ll tell her that for me, won’t you, Kev?’ pleaded Carolan.

  ‘You can tell her yourself, Joe,’ said Flynn but Carolan didn’t look convinced as an awkward silence fell like a veil between the two men. Flynn looked away, wondering briefly who would miss him if he fell. It was a very short list. Carolan was right: most of their friends were already dead. More would be dead before the day was out.

  He noticed a piper squeezing himself through the cluttered trench, his bagpipes incongruously anachronistic amid the modern technology of war; a throwback to an earlier, maybe more heroic, age. Then the piper scrambled up onto the parapet, standing upright, ignoring the blast furnace as he filled the tortured air with strains of ‘Let Erin Remember’.

  A shiver passed down Flynn’s spine, the hairs prickling on the back of his neck as the primordial intoxication of the Irishman’s war-pipes swept like a flame along the ramshackle trench. Then Kettle mounted the parapet next to the piper and looked at his watch, pistol in hand, his blackthorn cane clamped under his arm. His whistle hovered near his lips like a referee waiting to call full-time.

  ‘Hail Mary, full of grace …’ muttered the young bomber, Paddy Keegan, as he fumbled through the stations of a worn old rosary, a parting gift from his mother. Carolan crossed himself, eyes blurred with tears, and for a brief moment Flynn felt like praying too, the words rising subconsciously in his throat. Devlin was right: there were no atheists in the trenches. ‘… be with me now and at the hour of our death, Amen.’

  ‘This is it,’ muttered Flynn.

  All around him men strained like rabid dogs on a short leash. Nearby he could see Devlin reassuring his men; calm before the storm. Fitzpatrick looked miles away, staring blankly into the distance, then he saw Fallon’s pinched features poking through the crowd. He needed a leak. Men were peeing against the back of the trench. Flynn joined them, quickly emptying his bladder.

  ‘Do you have to?’ someone asked.

  ‘It’s not like we’ll be coming back,’ quipped someone else just as Spud began yapping around Carolan’s ankles, sensing his master’s distress. Flynn got back to the parapet. Kettle’s whistle blew – a shrill knell rolling along the line. Then there was a pause – a fraction of a second at most – before the dam burst, sending cheering Dubliners swarming over the top.

  ‘Come on, the Dubs!’ bellowed Kettle, brandishing his revolver. Devlin was with him, pale as death, keen bayonet flashing.

  Flynn scrambled up for a better view, hot air washing over him from the German lines. Somehow Spud had managed to get up next to him. His guts churned as he watched Devlin’s platoon vanish, engulfed in a shroud of smoke and flame, lost in the chaos. He gripped his rifle, white-knuckle tight to control the trembling that fear and adrenalin had unleashed. Someone vomited.

  ‘All right, it’s time to go, fellas,’ he called calmly. ‘Just stick with me and watch your spacings!’

  ‘Jaysus, Kev, I can’t do it!’ cried Carolan, burying his head in the parapet.

  ‘They’ll shoot you if you don’t,’ replied Flynn, holding out his hand. Carolan looked up, crying.

  ‘I’m scared,’ he replied. Sergeant Major Clee placed his hand on Carolan’s shoulder.

  ‘We’re all scared, Joe. Now, up you get,’ he said quietly, helping Flynn pull Carolan up over the parapet. Then the sergeant major scrambled up to join them.

  ‘I thought Mr Kettle wanted you to stay here?’ said Flynn.

  ‘Like that was ever going to happen, Sergeant Flynn,’ replied Clee with a wry grin.

  CHAPTER 26

  Saturday 9 September 1916, Ginchy, the Somme
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  The attack had been a nightmare, a bloody shambles as they pushed on to the outskirts of Ginchy. Tortured by shellfire and fought over since July, the town was little more than a name on a map: a shattered pile of bricks easily missed. Disorientated, Flynn staggered along, rapidly losing any sense of time or direction. He had no idea where Clee was: last seen leading a party of men, hunched as they pushed into the teeth of the storm. He had no idea what had happened to Fitzpatrick but he remembered seeing Carolan go down, wounded by a shell fragment as they reached the edge of the village. He could still hear him crying ‘Don’t leave me!’ but he’d had to. Orders were orders and, besides, Carolan’s wound didn’t look too bad. A blighty, that’s all. He left him for the stretcher-bearers. At least Spud had stayed with him, nuzzling his wounds so he wasn’t alone. Anyway, Flynn had enough worries of his own.

  By the time he’d found shelter in a large, flooded shell hole, he was sure he had pissed himself. It was hard to tell. Not that he cared; not that anyone huddled in the crater cared. They were all more concerned by the fragments of steel scything through the air above them. For some reason the words of the ‘Hail Mary’ barged themselves to the front of Flynn’s mind and out of his mouth as if he no longer controlled it. Several others joined in, looking to him like frightened children for some sort of lead. He was sweating and despite the proximity of so much water his mouth was bitter and dry, accentuating his raging thirst.

  The ground trembled, deafening blasts drowning their prayers and curses. Someone was sobbing, dark blood oozing through grimy fingers clutched at a shattered face. Bullets crackled overhead, spitefully hurled from a German machine gun that had them well and truly trapped. He was shaking as fear and adrenalin pulsed through him, the world speeding up and in slow motion at the same time. Keegan was there, looking painfully young.

  ‘What now, Sarge?’ he asked Flynn, eyes pleading, making him suddenly feel old, bone-weary old, as he sat forcing down gulps of rancid air, desperate to steady his nerves. They were looking to him to take charge. That’s what sergeants did. He wished that Devlin was there instead of him. Devlin would have known what to do. Then he got a grip.

  ‘Right, lads!’ shouted Flynn. ‘If we stay here, we are as good as dead. When I say, we move – clear?’ He sloshed across the viscous pool and slithered up the side of the crater. He peeked over. ‘Shit!’ Hot air kissed his cheek as a bullet brushed past and he tumbled back, all arms and legs, noisily, into the filth. Slumping against the crater’s side, he fought to stop his hands shaking, gripping his rifle until his knuckles bulged white.

  ‘You all right, Sarge?’ asked Keegan. Flynn looked up, grinning sheepishly at the lad, who looked scared, and at that moment Flynn cursed the stripes that squatted mockingly on his sleeves, building up everyone’s expectations except his own. They were all teetering on the precipice of fear; nerves brittle, stretched taut. He knew they would panic soon and strangely the thought calmed him, giving him purpose. They wanted – no, needed – him to tell them what to do. It was down to him.

  ‘Right, lads, listen in,’ he said, affecting his best sergeant’s voice, clear, calm, in control – play-acting. ‘Fritz’s got a machine gun about a hundred yards up on the left. If we move right, it looks like there is a trench about thirty to forty feet away. If we can get into it then we’re home and dry. You, Corporal,’ he pointed at a burly lance corporal opposite him, ‘I want you to give covering fire. Then, when I shout; you follow. Clear?’ The lance corporal nodded, sloshing thigh-deep across through the slime into a fire position.

  ‘So, fellas, when I say move you lot go like hell and don’t stop until you reach the trench and if you find any Jerries in it when we get there then give ’em what for, clear?’ barked Flynn. ‘Just remember your drills and you’ll be all right.’ He couldn’t believe he was spouting the same old claptrap he’d heard back in training; unsure who he was trying to reassure, them or him. He tried ignoring the frightened eyes boring into him but couldn’t. ‘PRE-pare to move!’ The lance corporal opened fire. ‘MOVE!’

  Flynn lunged forward, adrenalin tunnelling his vision as he dashed for the ruined parapet. There were bodies everywhere, tattered shreds of khaki. Thankfully he didn’t have time to register faces, all too conscious of the lack of cover as he ran. Then he was down, cowering as best he could behind a thicket of rusting barbed-wire pickets, blazing away at the machine-gun nest, palming his rifle’s bolt – sensing rather than seeing the others belt pell-mell past into the sanctuary of the trench. For a moment his eyes were drawn to the eviscerated remnants of a German nearby, his youthful face strangely calm in death.

  ‘Move!’ Flynn bellowed over his shoulder, seeing the man rise and sprint forward as he covered him. He let him pass, snapped off a few more shots before charging after him to plunge feet-first into the trench. Landing heavily, his boot skidded, sending him crashing onto his backside. He looked down. There was something pale and rubbery clinging to the sole of his muddy boot, something strangely familiar, and for a moment it didn’t quite register what it was. Then he grimaced, shaking the tattered shreds of someone’s face from his foot. He took a deep breath. The air stank, a sickly cocktail of cordite and God knows what. Keegan vomited, smiling sheepishly as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Flynn was glad he’d made it; so had the big lance corporal and three others. The rest were gone. ‘Right, follow me!’ said Flynn as he stood up. There was no point hanging about. They needed to find the others and he needed to find someone else to take charge; someone to take away the responsibility.

  They passed a dead German, his face sallow and grey, eyes staring, vaguely surprised. A briar pipe smouldered in one hand and a mug of coffee steamed in the other, tugging at Flynn’s taste buds. The top of the man’s head swarmed with flies where something had sheared away the top of his skull, his leaking brains reminding Flynn unnervingly of an underdone boiled egg. Keegan posted a grenade into a nearby bunker doorway, the dull crumps urging them to move on. Heavy footfalls taunted them from around the next bend, and the next; always just out of sight. ‘To thee do we send up our sights, mourning and weeping in the valley of tears,’ muttered Flynn, recalling yet another long-forgotten prayer from his Catholic childhood. It amazed him how much he remembered.

  Then he skidded to a halt, convinced he heard voices just around the next corner. Keegan thudded into his back. He grunted. The voices stopped. Keegan handed him a grenade; his last. He could hear people whispering, moving cautiously. They were looking to him, his pathetically small band – for all he knew, the last of the 9th Battalion, the last of the brigade; or even the division, for that matter. They expected him to go first. He loosened the pin, gripping the spoon tight. The last thing he wanted was to kill himself fumbling the grenade. He slipped forward, the bomb heavy in his fist. Sweat trickled into his eyes, stinging them as the sound of his heartbeat blotted out everything as he willed himself forward. Pressing the bomb to his chest, he crouched, taking a quick peek. BANG! A bullet gouged into the woodwork near his head. He ducked back, unsure whether he was alive or dead as he yanked the pin half-free.

  ‘Jesus Christ! We’re British!’ he shrieked loudly, carefully pushing the pin back into the grenade.

  ‘Come out slowly if you don’t want to get shot,’ someone snapped, tersely.

  ‘We’re coming out. There are six of us. 9th Dubs! Don’t shoot!’ shouted Flynn as he approached the corner, forcing himself to at least look relaxed, raising his hands as he stepped into the open. A saucer-eyed youth squatted on the duckboards, holding a smoking rifle. The muzzle lowered, fear easing its grip on the boy’s mind. Flynn could see others huddled behind him, making the most of what cover there was. A surge of relief washed over him. One of them was an officer, a very young officer but an officer none the less, and as he lowered his hands he could feel the weight of responsibility slip from his shoulders like a discarded pack.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Sar’nt. Whoever you are,’ said the officer calmly, in an accent that s
ounded very similar to Flynn’s: middle-class Dublin. ‘We could use your help.’ The officer paused, awaiting a response, but Flynn’s attention was fixed on the corpse at the officer’s feet. ‘Do you know him, Sar’nt?’

  ‘Knew him, sir,’ Flynn corrected, instantly regretting his brusque tone. ‘It’s Mr Kettle, sir. My company commander, or at least he was. B Company.’

  ‘I know,’ sighed the officer, dropping his guard momentarily, raking his fingers through his grubby blond hair before plonking his helmet back on his head. ‘He was a friend of my father.’ Then the officer held out his hand. ‘Lieutenant Dalton. Acting OC, C Company. I guess I’m OC B as well now,’ he added as they grasped hands. Then a shell burst uncomfortably close by, sending them both sprawling in the muck beneath a hail of chalky debris. Flynn cursed. Dalton grinned boyishly. Then the shooting started. ‘You lot, hold your position here! We’ll be back in a minute!’ screamed Dalton over the din. ‘Sar’nt. You come with me!’

  Then he was off, dashing down an old communication trench which emerged in the middle of what had once been one of Ginchy’s streets. Flynn followed him and together they took cover behind a low, broken wall whilst Dalton did his best to locate the enemy. ‘That way!’ he said as they leapt up and ran through a deluge of bullets that crackled by from all directions. Then they were down once more, sprawled behind another shattered wall. Flynn was about to speak but Dalton hushed him, looking bizarrely childlike in the circumstances with his finger to his lips. Then the officer pointed, open-palmed. Flynn slithered forward. He could see Germans mere yards ahead, a nervous undulation of coal-scuttle helmets cresting a nearby shell hole. Flynn could see what looked like an officer barking commands.

  ‘On my word, we attack,’ whispered Dalton, pulling out a grenade. He was grinning. It was madness, sheer bloody madness, but Flynn couldn’t help grinning too. Then Dalton threw the grenade and they attacked, screaming like madmen. Stunned, the Germans’ resolve crumbled, leaving Flynn, ears ringing, at the crater’s edge, threatening the huddled mass with bloody bayonet and loaded rifle as they pleaded wretchedly for their lives. Dalton pointed his pistol at the officer, who meekly unbuckled his gun belt, letting it drop at Flynn’s feet. Blood poured from a face wound but he ignored it, raising his hands. Flynn squatted down, picking up the belt without taking eye or aim off the officer, and tossed it over to Dalton. ‘A keepsake for my little brother,’ said Dalton, slipping the German’s Luger automatic pistol into his pocket.