Chapter 33
We tumble towards oblivion.
Faster, now that we are back in the trenches, the hours and days racing by like laughing demons. They never raced before. The dull monotony of the trench was part of its horror. But zero hour is coming and we hurtle on to meet it.
All rest is cancelled. The weather is bad, intensely hot and stuffy with no sign of the sun but frequent storms. Opposite our position, the Germans have put up a sign above their parapet, English words daubed in red paint:
WE KNOW YOU ARE GOING TO ATTACK.
YOUR COMMANDERS ARE DONE.
YOU ARE DONE. WE ARE DONE.
IN FACT, WE ARE ALL DONE.
Spud and Percy throw up a cheeky response:
YOU’RE RIGHT, ME OLD MATE.
SO WHY NOT POP OVER AND WE’LL
SETTLE IT ALL OVER A PINT?
Jackson gives them a rueful smile and tells them to take it down.
Today the bombardment begins. It breaks out all at once, shells screaming in unison, the stagnant air throbbing like an immense heartbeat.
Instinctively, the entire platoon ducks into a crouch, many of them slamming their hands over their ears.
They’ve heard the whine and blast of the big guns before, but nothing on this scale.
None of us have. A theatre of howitzers and mortars roaring together.
A roar so loud they will certainly be hearing it back in Blighty.
I glance at Danny, hunkered beside me, and see his pale face turned to the sky. It’s all I can do not to grab his hand.
The earth shudders, duckboards leaping almost comically into the air before splashing back into the mud.
It seems impossible that this can be maintained for the next five days.
Surely we’ll run out of shells. Surely the gunners will drop dead from exhaustion.
Surely we’ll all go mad from the incessant thunder.
But as another huge body of metal rushes overhead, I know this isn’t true.
If the past two years have taught us anything, it’s that a man can become accustomed to any madness.
By three p.m., we are up and about as usual, reinforcing parapets and parados, oiling rifles, shouting jokes and orders.
Half an hour later, a new bellow joins the bombardment, the sky split by lightning, as if Nature wishes to show that she too can make the heavens shriek.
Rain buckets down and turns the trench into a lake.
25th June
Danny and I revert to our old habit of exchanging notes.
It saves our voices and avoids the absurdity of trying to play Charades in the mud.
Another grim morning, sticky and close, with bursts of bad-tempered rain drilling our helmets.
No one has slept. As Danny licks the pencil and scribbles away, I see Taffy and Spud huddled together on the fire step, forlorn figures in drenched khaki nodding over steaming mugs.
The laughter they shared on stage only a couple of days ago seems a very distant memory.
Can we get out of here for an hour or two? Is that allowed?
I read the note and write back: Let me talk to Jackson. Although I don’t think the scenery will be cheerier anywhere else.
We both glance up at that channel of black cloud boiling overhead.
The captain agrees that our freedom to move about the trenches still holds.
We might even observe something useful ‘that can then be completely ignored,’ he adds drily.
And so we set out once more. The communication trench leading away from the line is choked with men.
Yet more new recruits shoved forward for the push, but without enough room in the forward trenches to accommodate them.
And so they wait here, finding what shelter they can.
It takes hours to squeeze between the grumbling soldiers and reach higher ground.
At last, we find ourselves on a hillside, a scene from Hell spread out before us.
Fires burn and mangled metal litters the ground.
High above No Man’s Land, the rain-slick belly of a German observation balloon bobs ponderously between the lines.
Then, all at once, a British plane emerges from a cloud and makes an arc of the balloon, popping off shots that sound like a toy gun against the storm of the barrage.
Struck, the balloon sways drunkenly to one side before collapsing in on itself, the basket swinging high against the canvas.
In the next moment, the gas cylinder bursts and the whole thing goes up in flames.
It blazes brightly over the battlefield, a second sun plummeting and exploding in the wasteland.
‘Those poor bastards,’ Danny says in a horror-struck voice, then turns to me and asks, ‘Stephen, are you all right?’
I shake my head. How can I possibly save him from this?
26th June
We return to the rise behind our sector, grasping at each other as the wet ground slips under our boots.
It feels good to hold his hand, even in these brief moments.
Panting a little, Danny and I exchange grim smiles before turning back to take in the view.
Coal boxes burst black against the teeming rain, clouds of dust and debris appearing like insistent full stops on the grey page of the morning.
‘Drink?’ Danny shouts above the clamour.
‘Champagne?’ I ask, taking his water canteen.
‘Only the finest, my love.’
The only soldiers close enough to overhear are those manning the howitzers a little way down the hill.
If you know where to look you can spot them, the big guns stowed behind every clump of bush, their sleek black muzzles steaming in the downpour.
The guns are only stopped now to let them cool, and then never for long.
27th June
Word comes down from HQ – the push has been delayed for forty-eight hours.
We will now face our fate on the first of July.
The reason? Bad weather has hampered the bombardment and the top brass want to make sure all the German wire is cut before throwing us into the meatgrinder.
Danny raises an eyebrow when I tell him and I can see the scepticism in his look.
28th June
Smoke shoots up in spouts of yellow, grey and brown before spreading in filthy smudges across No Man’s Land. From our vantage point back in the hills, we can see that the German-occupied town of Montauban has been pummelled to near annihilation.
Danny shakes his head at me. ‘What’s going to be left for us to capture?’
29th June
The original zero hour comes and goes. The men do their best to keep cheerful, spending most of their time in heated debates over the details of the attack, drawing diagrams on the trench wall with their bayonets.
Meanwhile planes scout low over the German line, flying back to drop messages to our artillery.
After a minute or two to realign their target, a salvo of shells falls on a new location, columns of earth and stone, water and wire springing up like miniature volcanoes.
30th June
Days have melted into each other, like mud melts into mud until you can’t tell the texture of one moment from the next.
Ten to ten on the last day before the push.
I snap Grandpa’s watch shut. In a few short hours it will be taken from me by a runner and raced back to HQ where, along with a hundred other officers’ timepieces, it will be synchronised.
Ready so that we can all blow our little whistles in unison – the signal for the latest chapter of this madness to begin.
Up on the fire step, a soldier from the Royal Welch Fusiliers is cutting into our barbed wire, making a path for us all to march through at dawn.
He mutters under his breath as he shears through, using cutters he tells us he bought himself from the Army and Navy Stores while on leave.
There’s something about this second lieutenant, with his strong features, high forehead and cleft chin.
Before he shuffles away down the trench in search of the next fire step, he shares a fag with me and introduces himself as Siegfried. Some kind of poet or painter, I think.
After he’s gone, I mount the step myself and peer out.
Danny is at my side, as he has been almost every moment of the past week.
We’re at one of the narrowest patches of No Man’s Land here and, due to the fact the guns have been paused for a few minutes to allow the wire-cutters to do their work, I get my first really clear view of the German line in days.
The landscape steams in the aftershock of the bombardment, coils of misty smoke drifting across its haunted terrain.
Between them, I glimpse a thick forest of barbed wire – undamaged.
It appears to smile back at me, tigerish teeth grinning in the dark.
I snatch up my field glasses to confirm what I already know in my heart.
‘Not a yard of it,’ I murmur. ‘For Christ’s sake, not even a yard!’
‘What’s the matter?’ Danny asks.
We swap positions and I pass him the binoculars. He thumbs the focus wheel and I see his jaw tighten. ‘Why wouldn’t they listen?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘But they will tonight.’
We report our findings to Captain Jackson who, stern-faced, immediately approves our request and within moments we’re hurrying out of the line.
The passage through the communication trench is almost indescribable.
A thick stew of men squeezed tight into the channels of the earth, shoulder-to-shoulder, bellowing breathlessly at each other, then surging forward as a gap opens up before them.
Wave after wave, pushing, prising, tussling, tumbling towards the Front, and Danny and I like trench rats, squirming in the opposite direction.
At last, we emerge from the sunken road and almost fall over our own feet, giddy with the sense of freedom.
We draw down lungfuls of smoke-seared air and hurry on.
Past the rose-smothered house and the old French church with its overflowing cemetery where we buried Arthur Morse.
On, on, the sky behind us rent by shells.
On, until we reach the chateau and the guard at the door.
This time I don’t wait for permission. I simply tell him that I have vital information for Lieutenant-Colonel Gallagher and push my way into the house.
After a little searching we find Captain Beddowes alone in G Room, the chateau’s old library.
The Snake glances up from the table where he sits among a heap of paperwork.
‘Lieutenant Wraxall and Private McCormick. This is a surprise. Aren’t you supposed to be elsewhere this evening?’
I don’t have time for this. Crossing the room, I plant my hands on the desk. ‘We need to see Gallagher. Now.’
The captain lifts his bandaged hand, as if to twirl that comical moustache, before suddenly realising he’s a thumb and a finger short. ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible. The colonel has retired for the night.’
‘He’s gone to bed?’ Danny boggles. ‘The night before we all go over the top?’
Beddowes shrugs. ‘I’m not sure why you think the colonel’s sleeping habits are your concern, Private.’ He gives us both a cool look. ‘But then I suppose other gentlemen’s bedtime activities interest some more than others.’
‘Get him up,’ I say. ‘He needs to hear this. Captain Jackson sent us—’
‘Now, now, no need to look so murderous, Lieutenant. You can tell me your news and I’ll make sure the colonel hears it first thing in the morning.’
‘That’ll be too late,’ Danny snaps.
Beddowes spreads his hands. ‘It’s the best I can offer.’
‘The German wire opposite our position hasn’t been cut.’ I try to keep my tone level. ‘I’ve seen it with my own eyes, every yard is still intact. If we go over the top tomorrow, we’ll be held up trying to cut our way through. The Germans snipers will have all the time in the world to pick us off.’
‘I think not.’
‘And how would you know?’
‘Even if the wire remains largely intact, and that is a big if, the Germans must be pretty much entirely wiped out by now. Seven days of bombardment. Nothing can be alive out there now.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Danny mutters. ‘You arrogant piece of—’
‘Private, enough,’ I say, grabbing his arm. I turn back to Beddowes. ‘Their trench systems go deep, just like we told you in our reports. Please, Captain, listen.’
His serpentine gaze switches between us and he licks his lips.
‘Tell you what, Wraxall, I’ll make you an offer.
We haven’t seen eye to eye, but I appreciate both your bravery and your brains.
I could pull a few strings and get you into a reserve trench this very night, far behind the line.
You probably wouldn’t have to go over the top at all. What do you say, old chap?’
He offers his good hand, smiling that oily smile all the while.
‘Stephen,’ Danny murmurs. ‘You have to—’
I see Beddowes’ smile broaden at Danny’s use of my Christian name.
I shake my head. ‘I think you told us once to go to hell, Captain Beddowes. Well, let me repay the compliment.’ I lean over the desk and the captain pulls back his hand sharply, fear sparking in his eyes. ‘Damn you for the coward you are.’
We leave the chateau without another word and begin the long march back.
It’s only when we’re passing the old French church that Danny grabs my sleeve and drags me roughly across the graveyard, thrusting me against the covered doorway.
He looks angry, but I don’t think this anger is the dark legacy of his mother.
I believe it comes instead from his love for me.
Tears shimmer in his eyes as he demands— ‘What were you thinking? That bastard was offering you a way out and you threw it back in his face. Why, Stephen? Why? And don’t you dare tell me it’s because of the rules or society or civilisation.
I don’t give a fuck about any of that. I care about you. ’
When I try to reach for him, he bats my hands away. Finally, I make him look at me.
‘Do you think I could sit there in some reserve trench, knowing you were going over the top? Jesus Christ, Danny, you ask me why I did it?’ I sigh.
‘Because I love you. And if I can’t keep you safe, if I can’t save you, then at least I can stand with you.
Whatever tomorrow brings, we’ll face it together. ’
The night roars around us. Flame and iron crack the sky. The earth trembles under our feet. And in the darkness and in the light, his lips find mine.