Chapter 10 Holding the Line
“Three weeks in No Man’s Land as a stretcher bearer.” Charlie’s words hung in the air between him and Ned.
He hadn’t planned on saying anything about the field punishment. Charlie had wanted to sneak a kiss and then go, but he wasn’t able to prevent the words escaping.
“What happened? Who handed down the punishment? Was it Pemberton?” Ned’s voice was tight with anger.
“At least I’ll have my rifle,” Charlie answered instead. “When the French punish their soldiers, they send them over the top unarmed and wait for them to die.”
That didn’t answer any of Ned’s questions, but if Charlie couldn’t protect Ned from the knowledge of his field punishment, at least he could protect Ned from the reasons.
If Ned knew the truth, he would go straight to the higher-ups.
Maybe even confess to Pemberton’s witch-hunt.
Lieutenant Edmund Pinsent would think it was the right thing to do, to protect Charlie and face the consequences of his actions.
But Charlie protected Ned too. Charlie was the one who’d kissed and held Ned, and who had sat with him in his silk dressing gown while reading him ridiculous books.
So Charlie was going to keep his mouth shut and hope he survived the next three weeks. Which meant no more questions.
“Ned, I can’t…” Charlie held his forehead against Ned’s for a moment. “I need you.”
Ned was already kissing his neck, fumbling with his belt, but Charlie could sense that he was waiting for Charlie to take control.
Except that wasn’t what Charlie wanted. Not knowing how to explain his splintering thoughts, Charlie dropped to his knees.
Ned froze. Charlie had never offered this before, and Ned had never asked.
“You sure?” Ned whispered as Charlie fumbled with Ned’s half-undone trousers. It occurred to Charlie that maybe Ned didn’t want to switch roles.
Charlie looked up. “Do you not want me to?”
“I will dream about this for years, but only if you want it.” The conviction in Ned’s voice calmed Charlie’s fears.
“I want to try.” Charlie began to undo the buttons, exacting another groan from Ned as he pulled out his hard cock and leaned in.
He was immediately overwhelmed. Ned’s taste was stronger than he imagined.
Charlie hadn’t previously thought his mouth was small, but it seemed there wasn’t enough space, and he wasn’t sure how to hold his jaw.
Ned didn’t try to guide him, he just ran his hands through Charlie’s hair over and over again.
Charlie was sure his hands were supposed to be doing something, but he wasn’t sure what, and he couldn’t figure out how to get a rhythm.
He was probably making a right mess of it, and wondered if he should stop.
“Oh God, Charlie.” Ned’s voice shook. Clearly, Charlie was getting some part of this right. He hollowed out his cheeks again, and moved his hand around in a corkscrew action around Ned’s cock.
Charlie lost himself to the act, revelled in the power and control of bringing Ned pleasure.
Charlie was aching with his own need but felt oddly grateful that the focus was all on Ned, his own pleasure heightened by the intensity of it all.
He glanced up to see that Ned had his hand nearly stuffed into his mouth to block the noise he was making.
There was a gentle pressure on his shoulder, Ned panting, “Too much, too good. Need to stop.” Charlie pulled off and knelt there for a moment, basking in the vulnerability Ned only showed in these moments.
Charlie stood up and leaned against Ned. “I did it right?” Charlie knew he was fishing for compliments and didn’t care.
“Christ, yes,” Ned responded, his eyes still closed.
Matthews’ voice cracked across the trench lines. “Anyone seen Villiers? Lieutenant Pemberton’s yelling for him.”
In a single movement, Ned had Charlie pressed up against the wall as his hands grappled with Charlie’s fly.
Charlie was a bit taken aback with the strength Ned had displayed.
“I saw Corporal Villiers down the trench line ten minutes ago,” Ned called out, his voice sharp and harsh, while his hand, now inside Charlie’s trousers, deftly worked him up and down.
Ned’s eyes locked with Charlie’s. Everything was there, the fear, the despair, the hope, the raw physical need. Charlie bit his lip to keep from crying out. Ned pressed his mouth to his, muffling Charlie’s moans.
Protected in the shadows, with Matthews sent away on a wild goose chase, Charlie kissed Ned with everything he had to give.
???
Maybe it was only an accident that Charlie’s first day of field punishment was the same day as the division's re-entry into the ongoing disaster of the Somme. Sometimes the war didn’t need any help to be awful.
The 1st Londoners, like the rest of the BEF, were scrambling for every inch of land. When the order had gone out to ‘hold the line,’ Charlie had almost laughed. Reality was so fluid that gains between the two sides sloshed back and forth like water in a bathtub.
After ten days, No Man’s Land was a nightmare come to life. There was no time to bury the dead, and corpses gathered in heaps. The rain was unending, and the stretcher bearers worked with eight men to each stretcher, and each ambulance required six horses to drag it through the mud.
Dimly, Charlie was aware that he was halfway through his punishment. He’d spent a week and a half dragging the dead and dying off the battlefield, eating and sleeping in the snatches of moments in between.
Now the division was preparing for yet another offensive attack. Charlie was more aware than ever that all it took was a single sniper bullet and it was angels and the pearly gates. Or worse—the echo of a shell round and becoming one of the mangled injured.
“Villiers!” He turned around to see Matthews coming down the line, wobbling slightly on the duckboards under the weight of his pack, glasses askew. “I heard you were sitting up here.”
“Thought I would take a moment of peace and quiet.”
Matthews snorted in laughter. “I was thinking you were hiding from the shouts of joy that Henderson’s girl accepted his proposal.”
“About time he got a response.” Charlie tried not to feel a twinge of sadness that he had missed that moment; he would’ve liked to see Henderson’s face.
“Well, be warned. He is already asking people what they should serve at the wedding breakfast.”
“That’s enough to drive me to go into No Man’s Land voluntarily.” Charlie said as he offered Matthews a cigarette.
???
Battle does funny things to one’s brain.
Ned had told Charlie a story once about these Vikings called berserkers, but Charlie didn’t really know why Vikings were relevant to going into battle.
Once the rush of battle hit him, certain things became very clear and focused while others became fuzzy and blurred.
Afterwards, he would never be able to recount the battle in anything more than a flash of moments.
His memories would dissolve into fragments, like the patchwork quilts his mother made, each memory detailed but distinct from one another.
They could be stitched and arranged together any which way.
???
The mud crunched under Charlie’s boots as he went over the top.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a red poppy pushing through the mud.
There was something very disturbing about those little flowers, how they could bloom surrounded by so much destruction.
So fragile—high stalks, blood red petals that caught in the wind too easily. How was it that they came back first?
His boot trampled the blooms as he ran forward.
There were always too many screams to know where to start. He looked at one poor bugger and figured there were too many insides on the outside for him to be alive, or to be alive much longer. Wasn’t he the chap with the good corner bunk? Charlie moved on.
Barbed wire caught on his uniform and ripped a hole in his trousers. Fuck.
“Keep going, you bastards! We need to take down the fucking machine gun!” Charlie knew that accent, but surely Lieutenant Pinsent wasn’t actually swearing?
Maybe Charlie was rubbing off on Ned. The thought made him laugh.
A man moaned as Charlie hobbled back to the BEF lines—why were both of them sweating so much? Or was it blood?
It was hard to move fast when you only had three legs between you.
The blast. Thrown through the air and wondered if this was what it was like to fly.
He landed in the mud. Too scared to move because he might find he didn’t have anything to move. Pain shot down to his toes and relief washed over him. He still had his legs and feet, at least.
A call for a stretcher bearer. He peered up from the crater and saw three lads in worse shape than him about fifty yards away. He knew he should wait for the other bearers, wait for the stretcher at least.
Motivation pulsed through him. Was it strange he preferred this to fighting Jerrys? What kind of man prefers to spend his days bringing in the dead and dying versus fighting the enemy? Once or twice he even helped a few blond boys who said ‘danke.’ He didn’t even feel guilty about it.
He crawled toward the lads.
“Hold on!” he yelled.
He didn’t know if they heard him. The shelling was deafening, a drumbeat without end.
“What the hell is Villiers doing?!” Ned shouted and blew his whistle. “Retreat! Retreat!”
Charlie ignored the call. He wasn’t going to leave those boys behind.
As he edged his way forward in the mud, he wondered if this was how Ned felt when he aimed and took fire at the rocks beside the Germans that night in No Man’s Land. Like death wasn’t that scary anymore.
Charlie miraculously made it to the crater and found three terrified privates. Two of them were uninjured, but the third had a mangled mess where his left leg had been. Off to the side, Charlie spotted a fourth body, clearly dead from the way the boys were avoiding looking at it.
“Are you going to save us?” asked one of the boys, voice filled with fear. “Where are the other stretcher bearers?”