Chapter 9
After a few days of rain, the Surreys were ordered to take up their kits and march towards their new home in the front line of nearby trenches.
Just after dark, lit only by a handful of torches, they tripped down short steps into walls of mud and net and sandbags as periodic gunfire rent the quiet and the occasional shell whistled overhead, each one causing Ash to jump.
A damp chill permeated the stagnant air, like one of Dickens’s days where it was summer in the light and winter in the shade, as though the creeping finger of death had already traced their names down each slick wall, claiming them all as its own.
The sergeant major smacked both Tom and Stewart up the back of the head as they passed by. “Keep your pretty heads down if you’d like to take them with you when you leave,” he warned.
“Remember how you’ve come. Especially you runners,” Captain Davies said, patting Ashley on the back.
It smelled worse than a sewer, and gazing up at the dark, starless sky, Ash felt like a rat trapped in that sewer. “What if it rains?” she wondered aloud to TomTom. Could the trench fill so completely they’d be forced to swim along the surface to be picked off by snipers or else drown?
“If it rains they call a truce, and we all go into No Man’s Land for tea,” Lieutenant Napier remarked so earnestly that for a moment she believed him.
Sergeant Major Chapman stifled a snort and said, “Gum boots are distributed as needed. There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bloody proper footwear.”
Ash had brought a dozen pairs of socks, but what was the point of dry feet when the rest of her body would be soaked to the skin?
Though it seemed like wandering through a maze, Ash knew from her maps the trenches made a zigzag sort of grid, never running straight for more than a few meters before turning sharply back and then back again.
They made their way slowly and quietly down the communication trench dubbed Bell Avenue, passing signposts when they transected the reserve and support trenches as they continued on towards the very front.
Every so often another red-banded runner would shove his way past, coming or going, hardly sparing the Surreys a glance, so intent was each upon his mission.
Rook, for his part, seemed to withdraw more deeply into himself as they turned down the forward line.
Like many men, Blake and Cooper teased and jostled each other as they walked, trying to release their fizzing nerves.
Not Rook. His posture grew stooped, eyes roving, searching for any hidden danger without a pause.
They finally halted in a section of trench with a handwritten placard dubbing it the incongruously cheerful Cherrydale Lane.
Captain Davies nodded for Rook to take first watch, and the sniper stepped up onto a ledge just high enough to let a man peek over the top, stretching himself up the sloping side, head down, using a sort of mirrored periscope to peer out into the darkness.
“Get comfortable, lads,” Davies told them, his jaw set and head swiveling like Rook’s.
“Make way,” someone shouted, and Ash pressed herself to the side as heavy footsteps thundered down the wooden walkway. “I’ve a message for Captain Davies—make way,” the man panted.
“I’m Davies.”
The runner held out his note and then collapsed, face down in the mud.
“Ho!” Cooper shouted, jumping back.
Ash stepped forward to help the runner to his feet—then paused when she realized his coat was soaked with blood from half a dozen bullet holes, and she threw up right there in the trench.
Captain Davies seemed momentarily frozen, staring between the battered paper in his hand and the wounded runner on the ground. “Find a stretcher bearer,” he told TomTom, who set off at a run, back up the line the way they’d come.
Skimming the note, Davies whispered, “God damn bloody hell.”
“Sir?” Lieutenant Napier asked.
“Orders. But there’s a bloody bullet hole right through the god-damned date and time. Runners!” he bellowed.
Ash wiped her mouth on her sleeve and stepped up alongside Cooper and Blake, though she was having trouble taking her eyes off the man at the captain’s feet who she was pretty certain must be dead.
“It’s too important. I shall send all three of you,” Davies told them. “Go to Captain Owens of the West Kents. They’re in”—He referred back to the note—“St. George’s Street Trench. Take separate paths. Tell him his runner was killed and we need to clarify the orders. Date and time, you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” they replied.
“Go. Now. Quickly, but carefully. Be on your guard. Whomever did this is likely still out there.”
Blake and Cooper clasped hands for a moment, then Blake turned right and Cooper went left, while Ash just stood there, finding it hard to breathe. She didn’t know what to do or where to go.
“All right, Ashley?” Davies asked.
“Yes, sir,” she lied, staring down at her own sick.
“Better out than in,” he said, patting her back and turning down the trench.
She glanced in the direction Blake had gone and found Rook watching her, offering a grim nod, and somehow, that was the encouragement she needed to get moving.
Heading off in the same direction as Cooper, she figured he turned down the first communication avenue, so she kept going down the forward line, squeezing past groups of other soldiers, heart pounding in her ears, feeling as though she’d already run a mile.
Moving on instinct as the captain had told her, she pictured the map in her head, the official names of each combat line and communication trench swimming around on the page as she tried to pin them to their proper locations.
She couldn’t recall exactly where St. George’s Street was in relation to herself, only that she was pretty sure it was to the northeast, so she continued on, hoping that at some point she’d see a sign she recognized to help her find them.
Chest burning, Ash came to an abrupt halt when her way was suddenly blocked by a muddy cave-in. All around her, men were hard at work with shovels and entrenching tools, cutting through the collapsed mud to clear the path and building up a new side with fresh sandbags.
“You’ll have to go over,” a northern accent told her. It was either that or waste precious minutes running back the way she’d come.
“Go on,” another man said. “They’ve been quiet enough tonight. Tell Ned to hold the wire for you.”
The first man nodded. “Hop on the fire step, and I’ll give you another leg up.” So she heaved herself up onto the high step as Rook had done when he’d taken the watch.
The man stepped up beside her, bending his knee so she could use his thigh for another boost and offering his hand to steady her.
Hardly breathing, Ash grabbed his hand and shoulder, then stepped onto his leg gaining just enough height to slither over the parapet on her belly.
A man in the midst of repairing barbed wire turned on her, revolver in hand.
“Don’t shoot,” she whispered. “Ned?”
He put one aggressive finger to his lips and motioned for her to keep going, so she slid under the wire and crawled through the mud on all fours until she got up the nerve to run.
She hadn’t gone more than a few meters when sniper shots rang out, whizzing so close she could swear she felt them like the beat of a mosquito’s wings.
Her heart may have actually stopped and she definitely wet herself before she tripped over a body and stumbled back into the forward line, thankfully on the other side of the cave-in, where she lay, winded, on her back. Everything hurt, almost too much to breathe.
“You hit?” a man asked, peering into her face.
“Don’t think so,” she gasped, and after he helped her up and handed back her helmet, she asked him, “Am I close to St. George’s Street?”
“Aye. But there’s easier ways to get there.” He pointed eastward. “Take the next left. You’ll see the signs.”
“Thanks,” she told him.
“Thought you were a raider. Lucky you didn’t get the business end of my bayonet,” he replied, sending a shiver down her spine before he turned back to face the expanse called No Man’s Land once more.
The mud covering Ash from head to toe was beginning to dry, weighing down her uniform, by the time she found Captain Owens in his dugout reading a letter.
“What happened to you?” he asked.
“Trench collapsed. I had to go over the top.”
“Davies sent you?”
She nodded.
“Wasted your time, then. Your friends have been and gone.”
Ash was glad they’d made it through, but she wasn’t looking forward to the exhausting run back to Cherrydale Lane as she turned down the avenue once more.
“Wait,” Owens called after her. “I’m down a runner. I need you to take another message.”
“To Captain Davies, sir?”
“No. Maricourt Trench.”
Ashley’s heart fell. Maricourt must be at least another mile east.
“Can’t be helped,” Owens said, shoving his note at her. “Major Mayweather. Deliver it and then get your arse back to your post. We go over the top at 7:30 sharp.”