Chapter 25
The air is restless with the buzz of aeroplanes.
High up in the blue, one little whiteish-yellow bumblebee drones back and forth over the Front, occasionally swooping low as if toying with the German gunners.
I wonder if it was this pilot’s reconnaissance photographs I saw on Gallagher’s desk back in étaples.
Grainy images that convinced old generals to roll the dice and order the big push.
Suddenly a missile goes up from the German side.
I watch, heart in my mouth, as the shell shrieks into the air and then, reaching its apex, bursts into the path of the plane.
It’s a coal box, a high explosive fired from a howitzer, its cloud of dense black smoke smudging out that scrap of sky.
Seconds creep by. And then I hear a gentle puttering and the fragile little craft drifts with a kind of triumphant calm back into view.
‘That’s it, you plucky wee bastard! You show ’em!’
A couple of Tommies lying on the chalk hillside a little way above me leap to their feet, whooping and cheering. Catching sight of their celebration, the pilot banks towards us, tipping his wing in salute. It’s a ridiculous, delightful, heady moment and I wish Danny were here to share it with me.
I give the pilot a wave and begin to pack up my satchel.
It’s been a long afternoon of careful sketching and notetaking but now the light is starting to fail.
Rising to my feet, I flex my fingers around the bag strap and feel the dull ache in my palm.
Danny rebandaged my hands this morning and, despite the odd twinge, they’ve not bothered me too much.
Now my thoughts return to him, as they’ve continued to return to him, over and over, throughout the day.
I hope he found his way safely back to battalion HQ.
I hadn’t wanted to let him go alone but the information we’d gleaned from our time in the listening post could be important, especially our conclusions about the possible depth of the German trenches.
Still, I go over all the dangers he might have encountered across those wearisome miles and I can’t help but worry.
His voice echoes inside my head as I start back down the hill: I care about you. I care very much.
Words that mirror my own feelings about him.
Gazing over the scene before me – the rolling hillside sweeping down to the British line and, beyond, the German-occupied town of Ovillers – I realise that I feel lighter than I have in months.
I’m not sure yet whether the ghosts of my platoon and the German boy will continue to haunt me.
Perhaps they should. But Danny’s acceptance of what I did, his understanding, has lifted at least a little of the burden.
That and his kindness, his tenderness, his care.
I move slowly along the gravel path, checking the time as I go.
Almost seven. I should be back at our trench before ten.
I hope I’ll find him there, waiting for me.
I think of the listening post, of his hand on mine, so strong, so reassuring.
The touch of his skin, the softness of his lips, that warm tingling in my stomach. I ache to touch him. To see him again.
My feet pace out the miles, through communication and support trenches, zigzagging along traverses and then plunging into the eternal mud of the Front line.
I hardly notice the soldiers I pass, their mutterings, their laughter and complaints.
All I can think of is that sensitive, soulful man who slipped into the bunk beside me last night and held me while I slept.
Waking just before dawn, I had found him busy scraping the last of the mud from my uniform.
‘There,’ he grinned, holding up the tunic for inspection. ‘Good as new. And look, I even managed to give your watch a polish.’
He dangled it like a mesmerist before my eyes, swinging the case on its chain. I pictured my mother passing it to me over the garden gate before I left, her face wet with tears. She would like Danny. If the world were different, I think she would.
Tucking the watch back into the breast pocket, he leaned over to hand me my tunic. Then, leaning closer still, he smiled down at me in the bunk. I’d wondered if he meant to kiss me. I had wanted him to. Jesus, I had. But all he did was brush back a sweep of hair from my forehead.
‘Good morning, Stephen.’
‘Good morning, Danny.’
His brow had creased a little. ‘After what we talked about last night, I want you to remember something,’ he said. ‘I will never think badly of you. I only hope...’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’ He turned away. ‘It’s nothing.’
I wondered if he was going to tell me his own secrets.
After all, I had told him mine. Instead, he disappeared in search of our breakfast, leaving me with a head full of questions.
Now, plunging on through the trenches, I remind myself that I know all I need to about Danny McCormick.
As Captain Jackson rightly said, he is a good man.
Clouds mass in from the north. Rain rattles against my helmet, lashing the brown sludge at my feet.
Down one avenue I pass mud-splattered men trying to pump water from the overflowing sump holes that seethe and bubble under every duckboard.
It’s a losing battle, like trying to bail out a sinking ship with a teacup.
Round another bend, I see a repair party perched on a step, wiping rain from their eyes with their thick protective mittens as they screw down a new entanglement of barbed wire.
The impenetrable coil winks in the downpour and makes me think again of Danny’s doubts about the bombardment clearing the German defences.
Half a mile to go and I’m soaked through, puttees sodden, my bandaged hands wringing wet.
It’s here that I run into a horde of men clogging the trench.
The ration carriers from each platoon, bringing up the next day’s supplies from battalion HQ: sacks of bread, bacon, butter, cheese, bottles of rum, tins of indescribable stew.
One carrier – a man with a walrussy moustache to rival Lieutenant-Colonel Gallagher’s – spins around and shouts at his mate: ‘Christ’s sake, Jezza, don’t go spilling bits of bread on the ground, or they’ll be out of their holes before you can say Jack Robinson.’
But I can see that his warning has come too late.
A dozen pairs of jet-black eyes glint greedily in the wall of the trench.
It’s so dark and gloomy with the storm that a moment ago you might not have noticed those few holes peeping out between planks and sandbags.
Now that they’re unleashing a flood of slick black bodies, you can’t miss them.
Fat trench rats wriggle and writhe, squeeze and siphon out of the wall, an inky cascade that tumbles chaotically into the mud and across the duckboards, surging around soldiers’ boots.
With them comes that teeth-clenching chitter, a sound of insatiable hunger that cautions any man to keep out of their way.
Two years of war has made generations of these monsters fearless and I have seen them attack wounded men, gnawing at ears and fingers.
Now the carriers kick out at them as the vermin plunge after discarded scraps, claiming a portion of our ration as their due.
After all, they were here first and they will probably be here long after the last of us has fallen.
As quickly as it appeared, the ravenous tide vanishes, sliding back into the earth that had so recently entombed me. I shiver, half through the icy rain that has found its way under my collar and half through the idea that those shining teeth might easily have discovered my corpse in the dark.
‘Fucking things!’ the walrus-moustachioed carrier exclaims. ‘I swear they get bolder every day. Did you see ’em on the body of that poor bugger from the Manchesters? Couple of ’em very nearly tore his throat out before he pegged out. What a way to go.’
‘You saw a soldier from the Manchesters killed? When was this?’
Walrus turns to me, blinking belligerently from under his helmet. ‘What’s it to you?’
I thrust my arm in his direction and he sees the pip on my sleeve. ‘Out with it, Private.’
‘Oh, sorry sir, what with the twilight and my eyes not being the best, I didn’t see—’
‘Who was killed and where?’ I bark at him. ‘Quickly, man.’
He shoves a finger back in the direction of the communication trench.
‘Young ’un. Curly brown hair. Silly bugger was walking up top when a sniper clocked him.
Fell right at our feet, twitching and groaning.
We sent one of our lads for help but there weren’t nothing to be done.
Boy said he was from the Manchester Regiment and to send word to a Lieutenant Hacksall and a Captain Jackman or some such.
Anyway, he was still breathing when those bloody rodents started swarming in.
Jezza and me kicked ’em off him as best we could, then sent another of our boys to inform his company. Here, he wasn’t one of your’n, was he?’
A private from the Manchesters has been killed, a lad with curly hair, coming back from the direction of battalion HQ.
I take off through the slimy, sinewy maze of trenches.
I don’t pause to ask men to move out of my way.
I shove past them, elbowing bodies aside.
Some merely grunt in surprise, others shout oaths after me.
All I can hear is the slip and hammer of my feet on the greasy duckboards.
Half a mile to our sector, the longest half mile I’ve ever known.
The rain eases, patters, stops. The clouds crack apart to reveal a starless night and that full moon that witnessed my rescue.
Twenty-four hours later, is it shining on the body of Danny McCormick?
No no no no no no. The word taps out like a telegraph inside my head.
We had only just found one another. We had so much still to do, to say, to share.
He can’t be dead. He can’t. Except of course he can.
Here, in this place, there is nothing more natural for an eighteen-year-old boy to do than to die.
But perhaps the carrier was mistaken. Maybe he misheard the dying man’s last words.
After all, the names weren’t quite right – Hacksall and Jackman – it could be a different platoon.
The moment I turn into our trench, I know that I’ve been grasping at straws.
A circle of men stand around the body of a soldier, the corpse laid out on a sheet of gleaming tarpaulin.
Between their legs, I can see a hint of pale skin, horribly waxy in the shadows, and a crop of rain-drenched curls.
I grasp at the wall beside me, stumble against the sheet of corrugated iron embedded in the trench.
In that instant, a flare goes up over No Man’s Land, turning the world into a photographic negative, shadow made light, light turned dark.
As the flare distances and dies, Captain Jackson peels away from the others and comes to meet me.
‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ he says.
‘Danny.’
It’s the only word I can say.
At the sound of his name, Danny turns his head and looks back at me.
I stare. Can’t make sense of it. He is standing in that prayerful huddle with Percy, Robert, Spud, Taffy and the rest of the platoon, and yet he is also on the ground, still and lifeless.
Has he become one of my ghosts, like Phil Danvers and the German boy?
Will it be his gentle voice murmuring Stephen that haunts me now rather than the word Kamerad?
But suddenly he is right in front of me, his hand on my arm, bright eyes shining with unspilled tears.
‘It’s Arthur,’ he says. ‘He was shot on his way back carrying rations.’
Now they all move aside and I see the body clearly for the first time.
Curly-haired Private Arthur Morse, who not three days ago told us of the death of Ollie Murray.
I wonder if it ever crossed his mind that he might be the next of us to die?
All I know for certain is the shame and relief that floods through me.
Relief that Danny is alive and shame that this comfort comes to me at the expense of another man’s life.