Chapter 12
Battle hardened after two months at the Somme, Ash no longer jumped at every whistling, thundering shell, nor had she wet her pants since that very first run.
B Company lost a great many soldiers in those long weeks, but Ashley and her friends had so far made it through mostly unscathed. Blake spent some time in the field hospital recovering from a gunshot wound, but by September, and despite many new faces, they were all back together again.
Near Morval, they took over trenches unlike the ones Ash had grown used to. These were the deepest she’d ever seen—permanent trenches lined with drains, concrete walkways instead of mud-slick duckboards, and dugouts reinforced with more concrete instead of crumbling clay.
It might as well have been the Savoy Hotel. Ash would be very happy to stay there for the remainder of the war.
“It’s a captured German line,” TomTom whispered.
“It never is,” Coop argued in disbelief.
“Hand to God. Heard it from the Old Man himself.”
“Mercy,” Ash breathed, because if Captain Davies said it then it must be true.
She tiptoed down the trench half waiting for a trap to spring, half wishing Tom hadn’t shared this bit of news.
Everywhere she looked, there were remnants of lives interrupted—discarded tobacco tins and old, tattered books.
German lads had eaten and slept and dreamed and died there, same as the Surreys planned to do. They were all cogs in the same machine, far greater than themselves, no more at fault for what was happening than a rifle used to down a pheasant from the sky.
“What do you make of this?” Blake asked, interrupting her heavy thoughts and holding out a tiny, folded slip of paper. “Found it pinned up in our dugout.”
Ash reached for it and he snatched it back, holding it over her head. “Read it to us then,” she said, irritably.
Cooper grabbed it from him and handed it to Ash, ignoring Blake’s angry protests as they all crowded around to see, surrounding her like a fortress, so close she could feel their breaths.
TomTom’s hit her full in the face. Stew’s tickled one ear and Blake’s the other, while Cooper’s danced gently across her arm.
But it was Rook’s solid form behind her that raised the hairs along the back of her neck and sent warmth trickling down her spine.
Kitchener is buggered.
Falkenhayn is buggered.
You’re buggered. We’re buggered.
Let’s all bugger off home.
“Well…” Tom said.
“About sums it up,” Stew agreed.
“Kind of poetic.” Ash folded the note and offered it back to Blake, who shrugged, so she put it in her breast pocket where she kept the book that Rook had given her.
“Is it just me, or is Fritzie’s English getting better?” Cooper teased.
“Must’ve been up there for an age,” Stewart said. “Old Kitch has been dead since June, unless they know something we don’t.”
“It’s true he’s buggered then, isn’t it?” TomTom said.
“Walls have ears,” Rook warned softly, glancing up and down the trench for spies.
“They blamed him for the shortage of shells and then he was lost at sea,” Tom protested. “What’s that if not buggered?”
“I heard it was the Irish Republicans that did him in. Read it in the papers,” Blake whispered.
“What, in The Wipers Times?” Ash asked, rolling her eyes at the trench magazine printing conspiracy theories.
“Sure it wasn’t Lloyd-George himself? Seems like he’s got plans to spare,” Cooper muttered as they drifted to their places for the evening watch.
The direction of the battle shifted with the wind and so after the watch, they were ordered to build out a new fire step down the length of the German communication trench.
Rook stood sentry while the rest of them stacked sandbags through the night, and all the time Ashley couldn’t stop thinking about the lad who’d written Blake’s silly note.
Was he just like her? Eighteen and far from home for the first time in his God-forsaken life?
Did he have friends he would die for or a…
frisson with the sharpest shooter he’d ever met?
Was he even still alive? Somehow she hoped so.
“If anyone develops a sudden craving for sauerkraut, do alert me immediately,” Lieutenant Napier said in his trademark, solemn tone while he eyed the concrete walls like they unnerved him.
Ash laughed but stifled it quickly when she was the only one.
“I thought it was funny,” Rook murmured, his face as straight and grim as stone.
“I can see that,” Ash teased, and he raised his eyebrows as if he had no idea what she meant.
“Pick up the bloody pace, lads,” Sergeant Major Chapman called.
“You’ll be standing to for morning watch if you have to bloody stand on each other’s backs, and I’d just as soon you didn’t.
Those bastards know we’re here in their cushy line, and they’ll be coming for us.
Finish early and you can practice tossing grenades. ”
Tom sighed. “Hasn’t every minute since we left England been practice enough? What’s one show but practice for the next?”
“Practice makes perfect,” Ash quipped by rote.
Unfortunately the officers heard their brief exchange.
“Practice keeps you from blowing your pretty fingers off,” Chapman growled, his face popping in between Ash and Tom.
“Fingers,” Napier scoffed. “Who needs them? Sure you could train a monkey to do up your buttons for you and hold your todger while you piss.”
That made Tom chuckle, so when Chapman followed with, “Are we downhearted, Private?” he could reply wholeheartedly, “No, sir!”
As it turned out, however, there wasn’t time to practice. The predicted trench raiders didn’t arrive, but a German bombardment began well before the dawn, before the last sandbag was even set in place.
Boxes of grenades were dragged to the new fire step, and Chapman quickly refreshed them on the proper technique to pull the pin and throw.
“The trick with this is to lob it sideways. Wind your arm back and release before your hand goes past your shoulder,” Rook told Ash. “Makes it less likely to fall straight down and bounce back in your face.”
Ash nodded, and held her arm out to the side, tossing it up in a sweeping arc just like he’d shown her, and Rook jostled her shoulders to show his approval.
“You’ve a keen arm, Ashley,” Lieutenant Napier called. “Perhaps you should transfer to artillery. They’re running low on grenadiers.”
And while Ash was dead-pleased her childhood spent hurling rocks at Whitechapel hooligans was paying dividends, she shook her head.
“I think I prefer running, sir, if I’ve a choice.”
“Do any of us have a choice?” he replied soberly.
“Are we downhearted, sir?” Blake asked.
“You will be, if you don’t face front and throw,” Napier replied, smacking the brim of Blake’s helmet down.
For what felt like hours, they competed to see who could throw the farthest and the fastest until Ashley could barely raise her arm for another go.
The captain and Sergeant Major Chapman did select a few men to transfer to artillery, and just when it seemed the Germans might be running low on their own grenades or stamina or both, Rook shouted, “The hell?” and reached for his rifle.
Ash peeked over the top just long enough to see a German soldier who’d taken matters into his own hands charging towards them across No Man’s Land firing a machine gun for all his worth.
She ducked back down, as they all did, except for Rook.
The smoke and flash of bombs made the whole scene look exaggerated and slowed down like a silent film as Rook took aim and fired one single shot, dropping the soldier to the ground in instant, deafening silence.
He nodded to acknowledge the kill, then solemnly hung his head and closed his eyes as though in prayer, and Ash wondered if he might not prefer to be a runner himself.
“Ashley, a message!” Captain Davies called. She handed her grenade to Tom and was at the Old Man’s side in an instant while he dashed off a note and passed it over. “Regimental HQ. Let them know we’re nearly out of bombs up here. And make sure Private Rook’s valor is mentioned in the dispatches.”
“Yes, sir,” she grinned, and took off running, fast as a leopard, determined to make it there and back in record time.
When she returned, the Surreys had just assembled for dinner rations, and Ash took her place at the end of the queue, hunger gnawing at her belly so hard she ached all over.
No sooner had she lined up, however, than Rook pressed her shoulders gently against the side of the trench, shielding her from view.
“You’re bleeding,” he growled, scanning her face and every inch of her body. “Were you hit?”
“What? No,” she said, following his manic gaze down to where blood had stained her uniform between her legs. “Oh God,” she breathed.
Her menses had come early—or was it late? She tried to do the math. What day even was it? She’d run out of bandages weeks ago and never had the chance to scrounge up more.
“What day is it?” Rook’s words echoed her thoughts.
Her head shot up to look at him. “What?”
“How many fingers?” he asked, holding up two.
“I’m not bleeding from my head. It’s—it’s—” She stared down at the mess trying to think up some plausible excuse.
“Blimey, Ash, that’s a lot of blood,” TomTom whispered, peeking around Rook’s shoulder.
“Dysentery, I—I think,” she stammered.
“Dysentery?” Rook repeated, as the officers began to notice his concern. “That’s all?”
She nodded quickly. “I’m fine.”
”You’re sure no one was…” He trailed off, pressing his lips together as Tom’s gaze darted back and forth between them and Captain Davies began to make his way over.
“No one was what?” she asked.
Rook closed his eyes a moment, miserably uncomfortable, but he forced himself to whisper, “No one was rough with you? Reid or one of the others?”
Ash shook her head. Rough with her? Did he mean like Billy Boyle? Had Rook sussed out she was a woman?