Chapter 35
Shafts of brilliant sunshine penetrate columns of smoke, painting No Man’s Land in a poisonous kaleidoscope of burned orange and putrid green.
As the last of the platoon staggers to its feet, we form up and, as instructed, begin to walk slowly forward.
Rows of steel-hatted men with bayonets fixed, ambling across a landscape barely trodden by humans in almost two years.
I cast a glance down the line, see a soldier stumble and another turn his head and throw up on the boots of the man next to him.
‘Steady,’ I call to them. ‘Steady, men.’
The tattered curtain of smoke drifts before us, parting and closing, teasing us with glimpses of our target.
Less than a hundred yards to those unmanned German parapets and, in these first moments, all is quiet.
For a fraction of a second, I let myself believe that Danny and I have been mistaken.
That all our observations were at fault and that Gallagher and Beddowes had been right to doubt us.
The bombardment has achieved its objective, their wire is cut and the enemy is wiped out.
It’s a pleasant fantasy. But a sudden break in the curtain soon dispels it.
The wire smiles back at me, cruel and complete.
In the next instant, silhouettes spring up like demonic jack-in-the-boxes in those elevated machine gun nests.
I exchange a stricken glance with Danny.
The German typewriters shatter the silence, tearing great holes in our row, felling soldiers smoothly as a scythe.
Rifles clatter to the ground, dropped from hands both living and dead.
Those who haven’t been hit either stand in shocked bewilderment or scramble to retrieve their weapons.
Meanwhile a fresh harvest is added to that first reaping as the guns open up again and strafe back down the line.
I see a wide-eyed Taffy throw back his head as if in laughter as a fist of bullets slams into his chest. Blood mists the air behind him, granting him the appearance of scarlet wings before he drops.
Others die less dramatically. I see them flop to the ground, some curling in on themselves like children at bedtime.
They whimper a little before taking a last breath, that is all.
I wonder absently if they’re crying for themselves or for those friends around them whose deaths are coming harder.
Piercing screams and burbling pleas from throats choked with blood echo across the battlefield.
Danny begins to reach for a clutching hand and I find myself moving with him, drawn to a man whose chest gapes in the morning sun.
‘Leave him,’ a captain from another company bellows at us. ‘You can’t help him now.’
He’s right. Even if we could somehow magically conjure him to a casualty clearing station, the life is already racing from his eyes.
Still, it almost kills me to drag Danny away.
But the whippers-in, those officers charged with keeping discipline during the assault, have their orders.
Move on at all costs. On, on, on. If any pause, if any retreat, a friendly British bullet will find them.
‘That’s right, boys,’ the same captain nods. ‘Stay steady and keep up a good pa—’
I hear Danny gasp as the officer is thrown into the air, like a marionette wrenched skyward on its strings by some bored puppet master.
A grenade has landed at his feet and he returns to earth now without them, both legs shorn off at the knee.
His orders forgotten, he cries out to us and we race over to the shallow crater that cradles him.
Danny skids down into the hole while I follow behind, wrenching free my field dressing kit, knowing all the while that it’s useless.
The man already sits in half a body’s worth of blood.
We’ve just reached him when another face appears above the crater. ‘Leave him!’ the officer cries in a cruel echo of the captain’s own words. ‘Get moving again. Now!’
‘Puh-lease!’ the captain groans, his head snapping between us. ‘I don’t... I don’t want to... I don’t...’
His eyes roll to the smoke and then appear to fix on a point beyond where we can see. He’s dead and the order is repeated: ‘Leave him. Get moving. On! On!’
Climbing out of the hole, we rejoin our platoon, my gaze skating down the line to check who still stands.
Percy, Robert, Spud and Captain Jackson remain together with about a dozen others from our original number of thirty-four.
I notice Spud look back repeatedly, a longing in his eye for that cramped, muddy ditch that has been his home since he first arrived at the Front.
He flinches as bullets whiz past us and spark against the barrier of our own barbed wire.
Our progress slows. The German machine gunners have been joined by snipers who begin picking off men in a more targeted way.
While the typewriters continue to throw bodies into gory heaps, their eagle-eyed comrades land kill shots with almost perfect precision.
Only one thing is certain in all this chaos: this is not the calm, clean march to victory we rehearsed in that field back in Briquemesnil.
Another of our platoon drops. In the heat and the horror, sweat has run into my eyes and I can’t make out who.
It’s too late to help him anyway, even if we weren’t at risk of being shot by our own commanders.
The platoon behind us has caught up and I see them pass over his unmoving form like an indifferent wave.
Captain Jackson has his revolver arm outstretched and is taking pot-shots through the smoke.
I know I should follow his lead. Not to is madness.
But the gun sits heavy in my hand. I’ve lectured Danny about this, saying that he would have to overcome his distaste for violence if he wanted to survive.
I’d thought my own survival instinct would kick in too, but it seems that exorcising ghosts is not that simple.
Bullets and grenades are useless anyway, the gunners too distant for me to hit.
Suddenly the Germans’ heavy artillery resumes, shells coming thick and fast. The land before us ignites into a towering wall of stone and earth that shoulders aside the smoke and throws men in all directions.
Even the whippers-in can’t control the mayhem that ensues.
Jackson shouts for us to take cover and half a dozen of the platoon – all that remain of us now – drop into the nearest crater.
I crash against Danny as we tumble, our weapons lost in a slide down the high-sided hole, finally coming to rest with limbs entangled in a pool of metal-grey water.
‘You all right?’ I shout.
He nods and we both scrabble to retrieve our guns.
The last to dive for cover is Percy. Glancing back, I see him pause for a split second at the crater’s edge.
I don’t know what causes him to hesitate, perhaps the warnings of the whippers-in still ringing in his ears.
I hear Spud shout up at him, telling the ‘silly sod’ to duck.
In the same moment, it appears as if invisible fingers have reached out and are busy plucking at his clothes.
Shreds of khaki fly from his tunic as his helmet is flicked to a jaunty angle.
He stands there, jerking and jumping, dancing almost, until several bright red islands spread over his chest and stomach.
Robert screams and Percy looks down at himself, his hands ranging across these curious new stains.
We catch him when he falls. Between us, he feels insubstantial, as if he is already fading from the world. Ten hands bring Percy to rest against a patch of dry earth. He looks at each of us and shakes his head. ‘I’m not dying. I’m not. It doesn’t even hurt.’
Danny glances at me, his gaze desolate. ‘That’s right, Perce,’ he says. ‘You just need to rest a little while.’
But Robert pushes angrily at Danny. ‘Don’t lie to him,’ he sobs.
‘All anyone does out here is lie. The Germans will all be dead, their wire’s gonna be cut, it’ll be as easy as pie, boys, you wait and see!
And now look what’s happened. Look what’s fucking happened!
’ He glares at Captain Jackson, who bows his head, as if accepting the blame.
I feel the injustice of it. I want to correct Robert, tell him that Jackson is a good man who tried his best. But deep down Robert already knows this. He just needs to scream at someone.
‘Comfort him,’ I whisper, nodding towards Percy. ‘Don’t waste this time.’
His eyes wet with tears, he nods and hunkers down beside his friend, drawing him into his lap. ‘You all right, Perce, old lad?’ he grunts. ‘Bloody hell, but you weigh a tonne. I knew some bastard was nicking my ration.’
Percy’s brow crumples. ‘I never did. I wouldn’t.’
‘I know that, old lad,’ Robert soothes. ‘I know. You’re the best of us. Ain’t that right, Lieutenant?’
I come to kneel beside him, laying my palm against Percy’s cold cheek. ‘The very best.’
‘That’s right,’ Spud echoes. ‘Best lad in the company.’
Danny leans in and gently slips his hand into Percy’s tunic pocket.
He brings out a small photograph, which he holds up so that the dying man can see it.
Percy’s lips, almost white now, spread into a smile.
‘My Ead. My girl. Will you tell her that I was brave, Robbie? Will you tell her, Danny? Will you?’ His voice becomes thin and frantic.
‘Will you tell her, Lieutenant? Will you tell her, Captain? Spud?’ He shakes his head again.
‘It hurts, you know? But don’t tell her it hurt.
I don’t want her th-thinking of me like this. ’
‘Shhh,’ Robert whispers. ‘You don’t have to worry about anything.’
Danny nods. ‘Keep looking at that girl of yours, Percy. That pretty girl you met outside the school gates all those years ago.’
I smile, despite everything. Trust Danny to hold the detail of another’s happiness close to his heart.
Percy reaches up for the picture, taking it from Danny with bloodstained fingers.
‘I’m frightened, lads,’ he confides. ‘I feel really cold and I can’t see very well.
I can’t... I... I can’t see. I can’t see her, boys. I can’t.’
We all try to reassure him, but Danny waves us to hush.
‘It’s not a scary darkness, Percy, I promise.
It’s like chasing a dream. When you go to sleep, don’t you sometimes hope for a certain dream?
’ He takes Percy’s hand in his. ‘I know I do. When you next close your eyes, you just let go of all your pain and you chase the best dream you ever had.’ He leans in and kisses the dying man gently on the forehead.
‘And we’ll be right here while you dream. I promise.’