When dawn finally comes, little more than a greying of the black, I get my first glimpse of the craters. It’s like the tundra I’d once travelled to, but devastated and pocked, so empty of any vegetation that it’s impossible to imagine anything once grew here. The area in front of me is pitted with craters of different sizes, some too small for a man to take cover in, others so large they might be small valleys. This is the place where each side took turns tunnelling underneath the other and placing huge amounts of explosives, then setting their fuses just before offensives.
One night, late, Thompson appears in front of Elijah and me and says, “Let’s go.”
He leads us to where Sean Patrick sleeps and wakes him up. “Let’s go,” he repeats. I watch Sean Patrick climb tired like a tall, thin child from his blanket.
We make our way to Thompson’s house, as he calls it, and there he tells us to take off anything that might make unnecessary noise. McCaan and Graves have joined us there too. I wonder why Graves is coming along. He is old, probably too old for this war. He has been in a war already in a place called Africa. Maybe that is why Thompson and McCaan have included him.
Thompson pulls out a chunk of charcoal and blacks his face and arms and hands and any other exposed skin. He doesn’t say anything, just expects us to watch and to learn, and I think to myself that Thompson is very much an Indian this way. He hands the charcoal to me and I do the same, then hand it to Sean Patrick. When his face is blacked, the whites of Sean Patrick’s eyes glint in the night and it makes me think he is afraid. Sean Patrick’s hand shakes a little when he passes the charcoal to Elijah. Thompson hands each of us a black woollen cap and shows us where he straps his knife to his chest for quick grasping. Like all of us, he has ground off the wicked and sharp teeth along the blade’s spine that are meant to do maximum damage in the thrust and removal. The Germans would kill the Canadians on the spot if they were to capture us and find those teeth on our knives. The Canadians do not blame them. We would do the same.
It is only then that I notice how closely McCaan watches us. I nod to him and he smiles, his swollen eye that was hurt from the periscope still evident even in the darkness.
We have all heard about the party that was sent out last night that did not return.
Thompson and McCaan have revolvers strapped around their waists. Graves is in charge of a Lewis gun, and Elijah and I are told to carry the extra drums of ammunition for him. Elijah, Sean Patrick and I carry our Ross rifles and as many extra rounds as we can. McCaan hands everyone a small sack of Mills bombs, the ones that remind me of heavy pinecones. “Useful in close quarters,” he says.
“We’ll travel in teams of two,” McCaan goes on. “Keep in mind where the others are. Observation balloons spotted Fritz in some of the big craters the last few days.” He rubs at the charcoal on his forehead. “Frankly, we don’t know which ones are ours and which are theirs at this point. Our job tonight is to get some idea of what’s going on.”
Elijah nudges me and says in Cree, “We’re going over the top. We’re going Fritz-hunting in the craters.”
“Take care of any business now,” McCaan says. “We go over the top in five minutes.”
Above the trenches the world feels opened up again. Elijah and I are teamed, following Thompson and Graves. McCaan and Sean Patrick take the rear. Although activity in the area has been quiet, Fritz continues to keep this part of the line reinforced. They battled too hard to lose any ground. Tonight our group is responsible for scouting out one of the bigger craters.
They call what we do crater hopping, moving from crater to crater, peering over the sides first before slithering into them like snakes. The bottoms of each are filled with water. Some of the holes are almost full.
Thompson makes the sign that the next one is the objective. Elijah and I spread out to his left, McCaan and Sean Patrick to the right. At the same time we all peer over the side to see what’s below. This crater is the biggest I’ve seen, twenty or thirty feet of deep wall before the water starts. Something down below moves along the water’s edge. As a flare goes up, I see three figures. There is enough eerie green light that I make out the cut of their Canadian uniforms. Elijah slides in before the others and is down beside the three men before they even know he’s there. I make it down to him. Two soldiers lie still and one is awake but weak-headed. Elijah takes a canteen lying beside him to give the soldier some water, but it’s empty.
McCaan slides in beside us. “Next time, you wait for my direction, Private Whiskeyjack.” He pulls his canteen from his belt, unscrews it and pours a little water into the soldier’s mouth. “We’ve got to get this one back,” he says.
The others join us at the crater bottom. I can tell that Elijah is about to ask what we should do about the two unconscious soldiers, when we see at the same time that their faces are hardened with death.
“Whiskeyjack, Bird, Graves, crawl to the lip and keep watch,” McCaan says. “I’m going to help the private here in carrying this one back to our line.” He points to Sean Patrick. “We’re still close enough that it won’t take long. When I come back we’ll get an idea of who’s in what crater.”
We have no choice but to nod.
“Let’s go,” McCaan says.
All of us pick up the wounded soldier and help to carry him to the lip, where McCaan and Sean Patrick take him under the arms and begin dragging him into the darkness. Elijah, Graves and I lie with our weapons pointing at the black, and I am wondering what I should do next when the familiar whistle comes to my ears, faster than I can react to. An explosion close and to my right lights up no man’s land for a moment, and when the brightness from it dies, flashes of light remain behind my eyelids.
I slip down for protection as another shell crashes in. From its sound I know that it is not big, not something terrible like a seventy-seven. I realize with a bit of satisfaction that I’m beginning to recognize enemy artillery.
But Fritz has spotted us out here. The bombing intensifies until we are forced down to the bottom of the crater. I lie curled in a ball, my face buried in mud and arms covering my head, my legs in the water, wondering if a mortar is going to land in the bottom of this hole and kill us all in one shot.
“They’ve got us just about pinned,” Thompson says in a brief moment of quiet. “Got to get out of here.” He scrambles up the side and we follow. It is not until we are at the top that I realize I’ve left the machine-gun ammunition down below. Too late for that now.
We dash for another smaller crater and roll into it, wait a moment, and then make a dash for another one that we hope will be deeper. The whiz-bangs come in then, going off with pops, their splinters chasing me like great angry insects. This crater is deeper, but the bottom too is filled with water. The stench is horrible. Another explosion lights the darkness. Arms stick up from the pool of water, some with fingers curled like they are grasping something I cannot see. A few bare feet stick straight out of the water as well. I wonder what has become of the boots.
The sky flickers as if full of lightning, and when I look I see that the water is more a stew. Besides the limbs, rotted faces peek over at us. I see the eye sockets are empty and their lips have pulled back from their open mouths so that they look like they’re screaming.
“Xavier, see those faces there,” Elijah says to me in Cree, pointing with his rifle barrel. “They look alive.”
He is right. When shellfire flickers, the water shivers with explosions and the faces come alive. I feel like I’m going to be sick. The stink is worse than animal rot. I look away at the others. Graves, too, seems like he is about to become ill, but Thompson’s face remains passive as he listens carefully for the bombardment to recede. It doesn’t.
I slip into a strange half-sleep lying there below the earth’s surface with the dead. I know that I’m safe here, know that my time to join them is not going to be today. When I open my eyes again, the sky is noticeably lighter, and I realize just before Thompson mutters it that we won’t be ge
tting back to our side until after another nightfall.
“The good news, as you can tell, gentlemen,” he says, “is that the bombardment is done, but there will be enough light behind Fritz in the next short while that we’ll stand out like silhouettes if we try to get back to our side.” He points his rifle at the terrible mess below us. “I vote that we find more agreeable accommodations before it’s too late, and hole up for the day.”
One by one, we slip out. I’m surprised that Thompson leads us closer to the Germans rather than toward our own side. I trust Thompson, though. He must have his reasons. We crater hop, but none of the holes offer enough shelter.
In one hole the four of us lie still beside one another. I can feel the morning chill up my back. I realize I’ve been clenching my teeth so that they ache. I have lost my sense of direction, but then realize that the lightening sky to the east is obviously where Fritz is. I’m exhausted.
What appears to be a tall parapet is clearly visible ahead of us. I’m not sure if it is Fritz’s front line or one of the great craters that Thompson talked about. The landscape is stranger than anything I’ve ever seen. Pocked and pitted, little valleys of mud filled with water and corpses. Thompson goes first toward the parapet, Graves follows with his machine gun, then goes Elijah, with me pulling up the rear. This had better be the place that we will stay today. With the sun on the verge of rising, we will be spotted and killed.
We make our way up the ten feet of mud that is the side of this pit and carefully peer down. It seems deserted. Some water fills the bottom, but plenty of places look very good for hiding. We crawl down into it, rifles ready in the event that we surprise any Hun. Scouting around the perimeter, we can see it is abandoned for now. Lengths of tin roofing and chicken wire lie scattered about. Thompson says it must have served as a listening post for Fritz at one point. Apparently, Canadian artillery found its mark.
He points to a trench that runs east from the crater. “That one there goes straight to Germany,” he says. “We’ll have to post a man fifty or sixty feet in to keep an eye out for any visiting Fritz.”
We group around a stretch of old canvas and count out our arms and ammunition. Ten Mills bombs, two rifles and plenty of rounds, Thompson’s revolver, and Graves’s machine gun with only a couple of drums of bullets. I wish now that I’d turned back last night and retrieved what I’d left behind. “Two rest, two keep watch,” Thompson says. “Fritz doesn’t know we’re here, but the bad news is that neither does our side, so try to find a place that gives a little cover from shellfire.”
We decide that Graves and I will rest first while Thompson goes down the trench as a sentry and Elijah keeps watch in the crater. I pull some chicken wire over a cut in the crater that will make for a comfortable nest. I cover the chicken wire with a few boards and a layer of mud. Slipping into it with my rifle, the exhaustion washes over me. I know I’m invisible here and the tension slowly recedes from my jaw. Sleep comes fast and deep.
My eyes open to sunlight cut by diamonds of shadow. For a moment I’m not sure where or who I am. I just am.
The brightness of late morning shines through the chicken wire and across my face. I wiggle myself a little so that my head is free of my nest and I stare up at the blue sky. Not a cloud, only the blue of morning. Small birds dart across the crater chasing one another. One swoops in and lands close to my head. It doesn’t know I’m there and begins to primp itself, just a few feet away from me, its feathers shining in the sunlight. It is a type I’ve not seen before. The eyes are black as night. I blow on it and, startled, it hops, then flits away. For a while nothing moves. Pure silence. It’s not something I’m accustomed to any more.
I inch out of my nest in such a way that my movement won’t be noticed. I peer about, rifle at my side and ready. Graves is curled up close by, sleeping lightly. Elijah sits at the other end of the crater, rifle across his lap. Every few seconds he scans the parapet above him. I wave to him. He smiles and waves back. I make my way to him.
I feel good but a little groggy. Sitting side by side, we pass a canteen of water. “Get some sleep,” I say. “You look tired. Crawl into the place where I slept. It’s comfortable.” Elijah doesn’t put up a struggle, just gets up and walks to the nest and goes in.
I find a cut in the crater that gives some cover and sit there with my rifle on my lap, listening. Big guns have started up in the distance but they are miles away. It’s as if the war has moved to another place. It has sucked the life from Saint-Eloi and left it like this, has moved on in search of more bodies to try and fill its impossible hunger.
I figure it’s safe enough to light a cigarette. No one will notice it in the sunlight. I started smoking to fit in. Now I like it. Sometimes I send up prayers on the smoke.
I take a cigarette out of my kit. The flare of the match makes me want something more, but I don’t know what it is. Maybe I’m reminded of the danger of the night, see the shellfire in the match’s light. I don’t know. All I know is that I’ve got a little time alone. I pull the smoke down into me. It tastes like bitter spring greens on my tongue. Reaching into the inner pocket of my tunic, I undo the moosehide bag in which I keep the tobacco that protects me. It is the bag Auntie gave me before I left. I put the bag back in. It feels warm against my skin, like it is filled with blood.
I hear the scuffle of feet and train my rifle on the trench that runs out of the crater. Thompson appears, looking tired. He sits beside me and lights up a smoke too.
“It’s as if Fritz has headed back to the Rhine,” he says. “I went down that trench a good hundred feet but no sign of anything. I came back half that way and sat all morning long. You wouldn’t think there’s a war going on.”
I must listen carefully to understand him.
An aeroplane drones above us, silhouetted by the sun and hard for me to identify. “Looks to be one of ours,” Thompson says. “You can see by the outline of the wings. Observation plane. Stay still. If it spots us it might take us for one of them and call a bombardment in on us.”
I listen, basking in the warmth.
“Did you send Elijah off for some rest?” Thompson asks. I nod. “You’re a quiet one,” Thompson says. “I’d have said that’s an Indian trait, till I met Elijah.”
We laugh.
“Why’s his English so good?” he asks after a time.
“Him, he stayed in residential school a long time,” I say. “Him, he had no parents, so the nuns kept him.”
Thompson leans back and stares up at the sky. “Your English is getting better,” he says. I smile. “I watch the way you two walk about,” Thompson says. “I figure I know true hunters when I meet them.”
Another plane drones somewhere we can’t see.
“A cup of coffee and something to eat sure would be nice right now,”Thompson says. “I’m going to rest awhile and dream about it. You take the trench, but don’t let your curiosity get you and go down too far. Fifty or sixty feet is plenty. If Fritz does decide to come along, you can get back here and warn us.”
We both get up and Thompson rouses Graves. I head down the trench. Nothing’s in it but the mud walls. I find a place to sit where I can get a view down the laneway but can’t be seen. I don’t mind sitting here, waiting for the darkness that is still many hours away. My head floats up above this cut in the earth and into the blue swatch of sky above me. I listen to the rhythm of bombing in the distance.
The afternoon is waning when I make my way back to the crater. The sun has begun its slide down behind the Canadian lines. Graves sits by the side of the crater, his machine gun pointed at the trench I emerge from. Graves nods to me as I walk out. We wake Elijah and Thompson.
When it is dark enough, Thompson gathers us and we make our way out of the crater. As I crawl out, I see an old German helmet. It is the rarer kind, made of leather and cloth with a spike on top. Elijah grabs it. He straps the helmet to his pack.
Instead of leading us back to our own trenches, Thompson has us wait by the
lip of the crater. He hands each of us two Mills bombs. “I’ve got a feeling they’ll be coming this way soon enough to look around,” he says. “If you hear them scrounging about below, pull the pins and throw these in. Then we’ll make our way back quick.”
When twenty or thirty minutes pass and I begin to think that Thompson is mad, I make out the sound of men sneaking about below. I can hear them whispering, can hear the step of boots all around where I’d slept this morning. Thompson gives the nod and we set and throw the bombs in at the same time. They explode in a series of concussions. Men scream. Thompson takes Graves’s machine gun and crouches at the lip, sprays into the crater until all of the rounds are spent. I’m amazed at the little man’s actions. He kills with such ease.
“Let’s go, boys,”Thompson says.
We move from crater to crater, the ground a little more familiar now, and finally drop into the safety of our own lines.
I replay it over and over in my head so that I don’t sleep all night, pulling the pin on my Mills bomb, throwing it and watching it arc until it disappears into the crater, the concussion and screams. I have killed someone now.
The next morning after stand-to, Thompson approaches Elijah and me. He talks to both of us, but his words are for Elijah. “What do you think of the last days, Whiskeyjack?” he asks, lighting a cigarette, exhaling and looking at the sky.
I can see that Elijah knows exactly what Thompson’s asking. Thompson is asking if Elijah likes killing. Elijah considers it for a moment. “It’s in my blood,” he finally says.
Thompson smiles, then walks off. He didn’t ask me the same question. Does he sense something? How am I different? A strange sensation, one I do not recognize, surges up my spine.
KISKINOHANAASOWIN
Learning
Three Day Road Page 8