Secret Soldiers

by Keely Hutton

  “You won’t go alone,” he whispered. “I’m here. You’re not forgotten.” His breathing shallowed, and his vision dimmed as the carbon monoxide seeped into his blood. Numbness crept from his fingers and toes through his hands and feet, up his arms and legs. After years of tormenting him, death was finally showing mercy.

  No fear. No pain. A peaceful numbness.

  “We’ll face it together,” he whispered to George. “As soldiers. As brothers.” Then he rested his head against George’s shoulder, closed his eyes, and waited for death to claim him. He didn’t know if it would ride in on a thunderous explosion or slip in on the whisper of a final sigh.

  But death did neither. It scraped and groaned, creaked and clanged, mumbled and barked.

  Barked? Thomas shook his head to free himself of the hallucinations gripping his mind, but the noises grew louder. Someone called his name. Large hands grabbed him. Pain seared through his leg as his body was jerked up, but he’d screamed his throat raw and could only release a weak whimper. Strong arms held him tight against a barrel chest. A voice screamed.

  “Go! Go! Go!”

  His limp body was jostled with every pounding step.

  “What about Shillings?” another voice asked.

  “He’s there, but I’m not sure he’s alive.”

  Thomas tried to tell them they couldn’t leave George behind, but his head spun with dizziness, and the words he needed swirled past too fast for him to grasp. The only word he could find was “No.”

  They couldn’t leave George to face death alone. He’d promised.

  His rescuers ignored his plea. At the base of the shaft, he was passed up the ladder from one set of hands to another.

  “Get to the support trenches! Now!” a gruff voice ordered.

  And then they were running again. Timber beams and clay walls blurred past. Night air chilled Thomas’s damp hair and clammy skin as they broke free from the tunnels and pressed through the trenches. Thomas’s head fell back. His unfocused eyes trailed the full moon glowing against the darkness of the early morning sky.

  The arms eased him gently onto a bench. “Take deep breaths, Thomas.” Frederick’s face came into focus. He held a canteen up to Thomas’s lips. “Drink.”

  Thomas took one small sip and then another. His throat burned with each swallow.

  “As soon as we can get a medic, we will,” Charlie said. “Stay awake until then.”

  Max jumped into Thomas’s lap. Thomas winced at the pain in his leg but wrapped the dog up in a tight embrace while Max licked his face. Frederick and Charlie sat on either side of him.

  “Are you all right?” Charlie asked.

  Thomas didn’t answer.

  “We didn’t think we’d get you out of there in time,” Frederick said.

  “George.” Thomas forced the name through his aching throat.

  Charlie’s head dipped forward.

  “Mole said they were able to break through faster because George had dug out a lot of clay on your side,” Frederick said. “We would never have gotten you out in time if he hadn’t.”

  “Did Mole go back for him?” Thomas asked.

  “He wanted to,” Frederick said, “but Boomer stopped him. He said they couldn’t risk more men getting caught in a collapse this close to zero hour.”

  “They were still arguing when Mole ordered that we carry you to the support trenches,” Charlie said.

  Fresh tears welled in Thomas’s eyes. “It’s all my fault.”

  Frederick placed a hand on Thomas’s shoulder. “You couldn’t have known the gallery would collapse.”

  Shifting his leg to try to find a less painful position, Thomas heard something crinkle. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick envelope.

  “What’s that?” Charlie asked.

  Thomas opened the envelope and pulled out a stack of British pounds and a small brown ledger. “George’s winnings and pay book.” His fingers went numb holding the money his friend had worked so hard to win and earn.

  “There’s more,” Frederick said, pointing to a folded piece of paper that had fallen into Thomas’s lap.

  Thomas opened it.

  “That’s the letter I wrote for you,” Frederick said. “The one you asked me to write to your family in case—” He didn’t finish his thought.

  The letter shook in Thomas’s trembling hands. “I gave this to George to deliver to my parents. He must have put it and the money in my pocket when he realized—” Unbearable grief bowed Thomas’s head and strangled his words. “He shouldn’t have been down there. None of you should have. This is all my fault.” Sobs shook his shoulders. “George gave me his mask. Why did he do that?”

  “You tried to do the same for him,” Frederick said.

  “But I was too late.”

  “We all were,” Charlie said.

  Frederick reached into his coat. “George made me promise to give you this if anything happened.” He took out a folded sheet of paper, wrinkled from the days in his pocket.

  “What is it?” Thomas asked.

  Frederick unfolded the paper. “After I wrote letters for our families, George asked me to write one for him.”

  Thomas’s throat ached, and his bottom lip quivered with barely contained sobs. “Will you read it for me?”

  Choking back tears of his own, Frederick nodded and cleared his throat.

  Thomas,

  I’m not one for words, and I’m really hoping you never see this letter because if you do that means I’m dead. You’re the closest thing to family I’ve got out here, or anywhere, and if I’m to die in this war, there are a few things I need to say.

  First, I owe you an apology. I shouldn’t have conned you into coming to the Western Front. I’ve never met your brother, but I know James would agree that you don’t belong here. You should be home with your family.

  Second, I want to thank you for asking me to come to Dover with you after the war. I don’t know if you meant it or if your family would really ever have taken me in, but thank you for asking.

  And lastly, I hope you find your brother. You’ve refused to give up or forget him. If only all of us were so lucky to have a brother like you.

  So, Tommy, I guess this is goodbye. May you have a long, good life, sailing the Channel with your brother. If you can, every once in a while, spare a thought for a lying thief from London. You’ll be the only one who does.

  George

  Charlie bowed his head to hide his tears, and Frederick folded the letter and handed it to Thomas, who tucked it in his pocket.

  The boys sat in silence as artillery fire continued to rain down across no-man’s-land. On the other side of the battlefield, tens of thousands of German soldiers slept, unaware of the nineteen mines, packed with nearly one million pounds of ammonal and gun cotton, beneath their feet. Nineteen charge chambers, at the ends of tunnels carved from the earth by thousands of tunnelers, who’d worked tirelessly, day and night, beneath no-man’s-land. Secret soldiers, who’d labored and fought on a battlefield most didn’t know existed. For months and years, they’d lived, worked, eaten, and slept in those tunnels. And some, like George, had died in them.

  Thomas took the necklace from his pocket and clutched his medals in prayer that George and all the tunnelers who’d sacrificed their lives under the Western Front would someday rest in peace. Suddenly, the Allied guns fell silent, and an eerie quiet settled over the battlefield. The absence of noise seized Thomas’s breath. If they’d succeeded in their mission, he knew what would follow. Holding Max, Thomas struggled to his feet. “I have to see.”

  Frederick and Charlie helped him across the duckboards and onto a fire step, where they peered through holes in the parapet. The silence stretched on, taut and tenuous until it snapped with mute explosions that rumbled, deep and low, beneath Messines Ridge. The ground bucked and tremored, knocking soldiers on both sides of no-man’s-land off their feet, but the battlefield held firm against nearly one million pounds of explosives. />
  Thomas closed his eyes. They’d failed in their mission. Fresh tears ran down his cheeks at the realization that Bagger, Bats, and George had died for nothing. Scrubbing away his tears, he was starting down the fire step when no-man’s-land erupted.

  The boys watched in horror as towers of fire punched from the bowels of the battlefield, tearing through the German trenches. The force of the blasts lifted concrete bunkers from the ground and tossed clods of earth the size of houses into the air. A wall of flame, blazing a blinding ember red, ignited the sky along Messines. The boys ducked below the parapet, shielding their faces from the intense light and blistering heat. Charlie wrapped his arms around Poppy’s cage, and Thomas huddled over Max, who whimpered in his arms.

  The explosions signaled the Allied troops waiting in the front-line trenches. Their rifles and artillery aimed across the battlefield, they unleashed the full fury of over two thousand guns on what remained of the German line in a creeping barrage so loud it was heard as far as London. The boys covered their ears against the gunfire, but their hands did little to lessen the deafening noise. Below the noise, a command shot through the trenches.

  “Attack!”

  Thomas, Frederick, and Charlie peered back through the holes in the parapet and watched in awe as eighty thousand soldiers climbed over the top of the trenches. Guns raised and firing, they rushed across the battlefield, stepping over fallen comrades and dodging falling debris, burning trees, and tangled lines of “devil’s rope.” Thick smoke and anguished screams rose from giant craters pocking the ridge.

  Voices, wailing in pain and fear, crowded the tight spaces between artillery blasts and gunfire. Their pleas, spoken in different languages and varying accents, collided and combined into a universal cry for help.

  Thomas could no longer bear to watch or listen. He turned to ask Frederick and Charlie to help him to the Regimental Aid Post when he heard another voice cry out, but this one sounded familiar. Thomas closed his eyes and strained to hear it over the battle raging in front of him. After several seconds, the voice cried out again.

  “Help! I need a stretcher bearer! Hurry!”

  Thomas turned to see a man rushing through the support trench toward them. Thick layers of dirt and clay encrusted the man’s face and uniform, but Thomas knew him immediately by his stout build and lumbering gait.

  “Eton!” Boomer yelled. “Get over here!”

  “What’s wrong?” Frederick asked as he ran to meet the miner. “Is Mole hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” a gravelly voice behind Boomer answered. “But he won’t be if we don’t get him to a medic now!”

  The world tipped, and Charlie grabbed hold of Thomas as Thomas’s uninjured leg gave way at the sight of the crew’s kicker rounding a corner of the trench with George cradled in his arms.

  FORTY

  THE FIRST EXPLOSION ripped the prisoners of war from their sleep and yanked the young soldier to his feet. Panicked German soldiers ran through the trenches, grabbing any helmets and weapons they could find and screaming orders in their chaotic rush toward the explosion. When the trench was clear, the young soldier scrambled onto a ladder and carefully raised his helmeted head above the parapet. He looked north to Messines, the direction of the earth-shaking blast. Eighteen more explosions followed, each as powerful and devastating as the first. The distant ridge was a hellscape. Volcanic eruptions punched through the earth like fiery fingers, reaching up to claim the thousands of German troops positioned along the seven-mile stretch of trenches.

  Those not pulverized in the explosions or swallowed by the opening earth stumbled onto the battlefield in disoriented shock and surrendered to the approaching Allied forces. The young soldier didn’t know how, but after years of bloody stalemate, the Allies had succeeded in breaking the German line. He glanced down the trenches. The German troops were in disarray. Now was his chance to escape. Smoke, dirt, and debris thickened the night sky above, but the young soldier knew the Allied trenches waited just beyond in the darkness.

  Fear and hope pounded through his heart in frantic beats as he scaled the last rungs of the ladder. Since his capture, home and his family had never seemed closer. He paused before climbing over the parapet and looked back to the dugout. The prisoners whom he’d worked alongside for the last month remained huddled together in the earthen shelter. Their eyes wide with confusion and terror, they watched the young soldier. With frantic gestures, he motioned for them to join him.

  “Come on!” he screamed. “We must go! Now!”

  When they didn’t move, he jumped into the trench and pushed them toward the ladder.

  “Go! Now! Hurry!”

  The British, Australians, and Canadians obeyed, and after a moment’s hesitation, an older Belgian followed them over the parapet and onto no-man’s-land. Only the French boy remained. With his eyes squeezed shut and his ears covered, he cradled his head and rocked back and forth.

  No more explosions ripped through Messines or quaked the earth, but the gunfire from the Allied lines continued, and the young soldier knew the Germans would soon regroup. Their chance of escaping lessened with every second they remained in the trench.

  “Come on!” he yelled.

  The boy’s eyes sprang open, and the young soldier pointed to the ladder, but the boy shook his head. The Allied gunfire grew closer, and the young soldier flinched at the sound of return fire from the Central Powers, just south of their position.

  He grabbed the boy’s arm. “We have to go now!”

  The boy yanked free of the soldier’s grip and rocked faster. “Non, non, non,” he muttered with every sway forward. He squeezed his eyes closed again, sending fresh tears spilling down his round cheeks.

  The young soldier knelt before the boy. “Please,” he begged. “I have to get home to my family.”

  The boy stopped rocking and looked up at him. “Famille?”

  The young soldier nodded. “Famille.” He pictured each of their faces.

  Dad. Mum. Letitia. Charlotte. Tommy.

  Taking the frightened boy’s hand, the young soldier helped him to his feet. Farther down the German line, a howitzer cannon fired, and the French boy froze. His hands flew to his bare head as his wide eyes frantically searched the trench for a helmet.

  The young soldier rubbed a shaky hand over the boy’s messy hair. “Everything’s going to be all right,” he said, taking off his helmet and securing it on the boy’s head. “I promise.”

  Then the two climbed the ladder.

  EPILOGUE

  THOMAS’S INJURIES EARNED him a one-way ticket to Dover—and an honorable discharge. Two months after the detonation of the mines beneath Messines Ridge, he hobbled down the dirt road to his family home and prayed to find that his brother had returned during his absence. But James never returned home.

  The Great War raged on for seventeen months after the Battle of Messines, and though the British military commended the tunnelers for the successful execution of their mission, they were not asked to repeat it. Tanks and planes were mobilized for the rest of the war, breaking up years of entrenched fighting and making the tunnelers obsolete. Some were sent home. Most were sent to the front lines.

  Weeks after the Allies and Central Powers signed the Treaty of Versailles, the Sullivans received an official letter stating that James’s status had been changed from missing in action to killed in action. No details were provided, and no remains were recovered. Despite Thomas having escaped the tunnels of the Western Front, his mind remained trapped beneath no-man’s-land. At night, he could still hear the enemy clawing at the clay walls and feel the tremble of explosions quaking through the earth. When summer storms swept in from the North Sea and thunder cracked across the sky, Thomas scrambled for cover. His mum would find him huddled beneath the kitchen table, cradling his head and crying.

  He never returned to the coal mines. The mine supervisor promised a job would be waiting for him when he was ready, but Thomas knew he’d never be ready, so when his leg h
ealed, he walked to the docks of Admiralty Harbour to look for work. The owners of the various shipping companies were eager to hire war veterans, so Thomas spent the next two years working the docks, learning as much as he could about boats and the shipping business. Every morning, when his head and body ached with fatigue and his leg throbbed with pain, he remembered James and the dream they’d shared, and forced himself to get out of bed.

  On Thomas’s seventeenth birthday, he pooled his dockworker’s earnings with his and James’s army wages and purchased his own boat. It was a small, battered vessel, but it was sturdy and had weathered many seasons on the Channel. Thomas hoped with some repairs it would weather several more.

  It took months to ready the boat, but two years after the armistice was signed, Sullivan Brothers Shipping was ready to launch.

  “That should do it,” Charlie said, putting a last stroke of red paint on the stern of the boat. “What do you think?”

  The lettering matched perfectly with the company name painted in blue on the starboard side. “It looks great,” Thomas said, smiling at Charlie’s work.

  A pleased blush tinted Charlie’s cheeks. “You like it?”

  “You did a fine job, son,” Mr. Sullivan said, resting a reassuring hand on Charlie’s shoulder.

  Charlie’s blush deepened. “Thank you, sir.”

  A gust of November wind swept across the Channel. Mr. Sullivan blew into his cupped hands for warmth and then rubbed them together. “You boys couldn’t have planned to christen this boat in July?”

  Ignoring the aching cold in his own hands, Thomas tightened the ropes mooring his boat to the dock. “If the Germans had surrendered earlier, we might have, but they didn’t, so it had to be today.” He glanced up at Charlie. “Two years from the day the war ended.”

  Charlie smiled.

  As they waited for the paint to dry, Charlie’s little brother, Henry, ran up the dock with Letitia, Charlotte, and Max trailing behind him. “We did it!” he exclaimed, pride spreading in a wide smile across his freckled face. “We passed out every flyer.”