No Man's Land

by Reginald Hill

  The enemy’s expected spring attack had been going on for almost a month now. To the north, Canadian units had taken the heights of Vimy, a victory balanced in staff eyes by the tremendous damage being inflicted on the French above the Aisne away to the south. To the man in the line, however, north and south didn’t matter, not above a mile anyway. What mattered was the enemy in front of you which in this case was the English. They’d been advancing steadily and seemed determined to keep on advancing even though it made more sense for them to consolidate. At command level, this was recognized as a device to take pressure off the French on the Chemin des Dames. At front line level it was recognized as a bloody nuisance.

  At the moment along the half-mile of front covered by Lothar’s regiment, no-man’s land consisted of a long mound, like a basking whale. Wooded and with a concrete blockhouse, it had been a defence strongpoint till a ferocious British bombardment had razed the trees and shattered the concrete. The Germans had retreated and put down an equally fierce barrage, forcing the enemy advance to halt at the foot of the ridge.

  Those on either side were not unhappy to have the rare luxury of a sheltering land mass between them and the enemy. But such a key feature could not be allowed to remain unoccupied for long. And this was where Bermann’s finger was stabbing.

  Soldiers give their landscape familiar nicknames. Some wag had called this long ridge the Brocken after the famous haunted peak in the Harz mountains in whose foothills Lothar had grown up. Suddenly he laughed.

  ‘Someone must wish me ill, I think.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Bermann, oddly irritated.

  ‘Only that the witches gather on the Brocken to worship Lucifer on Walpurgisnacht. That’s April 30th. Tonight! Just a joke.’

  ‘People can get tired of your kind of jokes, Sergeant,’ said Bermann sourly. ‘You’ll go at midnight. There’ll be two signallers with you to lay the telephone wire.’

  ‘One will be enough,’ said Lothar. ‘Less chance of making a noise and disturbing those witches.’

  Outside the lieutenant’s dug-out, it occurred to Lothar that perhaps Bermann’s reaction to his joke had been because there was too much truth in it. It was a dangerous job and there were plenty of precedents for getting rid of troublesome soldiers by putting them in exposed positions.

  On the other hand, when he reached the crest, there was no doubt it was a militarily justified risk. The battery hurled over a few big ones to keep the enemy’s eyes and ears busy while he made himself comfortable in the ruins of the blockhouse, and the flash of their explosions plus the light from a fitful moon revealed a panoramic view of the British lines.

  The signaller checked the telephone, then beat a grateful retreat. Lothar took a last glance westward through the spyhole he had created for his narrow telescope. The battery had fallen quiet again, not wanting to draw attention to the possibility of activity in no-man’s land by a too enthusiastic bombardment. The moon suddenly swam brilliantly into a large, open patch of sky. It was far too light for there to be much danger of raiding parties advancing from either side and Lothar allowed himself to relax, rolling over on his back and staring up at the stars and the riding moon with unblinking eyes.

  He let his thoughts drift, first eastwards across the chalk plain of the Champagne and the long German miles beyond to Schloss Seeberg. Nothing but pain lay there and he changed direction, heading to the west, crossing over the long line of British troops perhaps already massing for the next attack, over their artillery emplacements, over the desolation of a countryside which the war had already left pocked with shell-holes and worm-eaten with trenches, then on to the spring-fresh, untouched landscape of Brittany and Normandy, across the Channel to Hun-hating England, across the Atlantic to America, preparing now to fling new supplies of eager young men into the boiling pot.

  There was little for comfort in that direction either. He felt himself totally isolated, caught here at a point of balance between forces whose slightest shift could destroy him.

  He dared not move. He lay quite still, staring at the moon and the stars as though he might at last absorb, or be absorbed into, their cold and cleansing light. It was weeks since he had felt so much at peace.

  Amazingly, and if he were caught, criminally, he drifted into sleep.

  In his sleep he dreamt he dived deep into the lake-pool near the castle. Deep, too deep. He reached the bottom and the drifting weeds caught at his limbs and coiled around them and held him there to drown. But he knew they were not really weeds but the tangles of Sylvie’s hair.

  With an effort of will he broke loose and forced himself to the surface of waking.

  It was dawn. There was sunlight already on the eastern slope of the Brocken. He rolled over on his belly, stiff with cold and immobility, and peered through his narrow telescope. The face of a soldier, pale and strained, leapt up the hill at him and he cried out in shock. Then he looked again traversing from left to right.

  There was no mistaking. This was no isolated patrol he’d picked up. As he lay asleep the British forces opposite had come out of their trenches without the usual preliminary bombardment and were advancing steadily up the protecting slope towards him.

  3

  ‘All right, lads, not long now,’ said Sergeant Renton’s voice, confident, comforting. ‘Take your time, go at it steady. Remember, they can’t see us till we get to the crest, so no hurry. You know what day it is! May the first. May Day! Let’s make the buggers do a right morris dance, shall we? What do you say, Josh? All right, lad?’

  Josh Routledge did not reply.

  He stood quietly by the fire-step looking up at the distant ridge, already rimmed red with the advance fire of the rising sun.

  But though he said nothing, the sergeant’s words set up resonances in his mind.

  May Day …

  Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning …

  May Day, holiday. Not holy day. Dancing, a queen, drinking, merriment. In Outerdale a special day … walk a mile out of the valley and men still working … but in Outerdale …

  Red sky in the morning …

  Mist. But above the mist, red sky … beyond the moon, red sky … at the height of noon, red sky … blood red, flame red, shame red … always warning never delight…

  Tea sweet with rum … everything clear beneath the red sky … the pool of urine at his feet where he’d pee’d a minute or a year ago … a rusting tin of Maconachies … an insect licking it clean … his silent companions looking inwards …

  Red sky inside … the shepherd’s died …

  Words …

  Renton’s … confident … reassuring …

  Maiden’s … high-pitched … blustering …

  Sounds .. .

  No guns yet … no warning … speed, surprise, up the hill and catch them sleeping …

  But whistles now … distant, mist-muted, drifting up to the fells from the village football field on a still winter’s day …

  Over the plonk … the hardest part … the burden heavy … a broken-legged ewe carried down from the Crags … his father’s knife swift … red sky …

  Uphill … always uphill … never a summit … never a downward plunge … riding the scree as the storm breaks around …

  Now the guns … ours, theirs … indifferent shells … no distinction … the earth’s May Day dance … red sky at our feet …

  Voices beside … cheerful, reassuring … Wilf in the fell race … grasping my arm, clapping my back, then going on to win …

  Wilf!

  No. Renton. Immortal … enduring … indestructible …

  Renton!

  Gone in a puff … gone in a flash … part of the red sky.

  Almost the top … just once more the summit … look down from a peak … below, field and fell … below, Outerdale …

  Never to reach it!

  A ring of volcanoes … earth, stone and fire spiralling upwards … the summit crumbling … sliding towards him … not reach the summit bu
t be reached by the summit!

  Noise, blast, heat, silence.

  A tarn of silence scooped just for him … lie in it, float in it, drown in it …

  But not alone … down earthy sides a body slithering ….

  Lieutenant Maiden …

  Mouth working, tongue wagging … but still the silence.

  Hand pointing … mouth gaping … but still the silence.

  Gun pointing … shaking but pointing … commanding .. .

  Leave the silence.

  In the pistol is silence forever.

  In the pistol … Wilf? In the pistol … Outerdale?

  Perhaps not.

  But in the pistol, silence. For ever.

  Sit in the earth and hope for the pistol.

  Hope for the pistol. Be part of the red sky.

  4

  His conditioning must have gone deeper than he believed possible. For a few minutes after his initial shock, Lothar von Seeberg became the perfect, efficient military machine.

  Cranking his telephone, he passed on news of the attack in terse sharp phrases, giving distances, dispositions and strengths. The response was rapid. Within the space of a minute the shells of his own guns were being hurled over his head and dropping on to the slope below. They would slow but not stop the advance and it wouldn’t be long before his own position was overrun. Mechanically he continued to give reports on the enemy’s progress and the accuracy of the artillery range.

  The expected response from the British was not slow in coming and as their belated bombardment began, it struck Lothar that for the moment the crest of the Brocken was the only area within a quarter of a mile in either direction which was not being shelled. It was a very temporary safety. The advancing soldiers and his own shells would soon be arriving here and he could expect no mercy from either. It looked as if the authorities would very soon have their von Seeberg problem solved for them. He only wished that they could have known how indifferent he was to the imminence of death.

  A voice was speaking in his ear. It came from the telephone and it was calling his name.

  ‘Lothar? Hello, hello! Are you there, Lothar?’

  It was Loewenhardt’s voice.

  ‘How pleasant to hear from you again, Dieter! I thought Lieutenant Bermann was doing all your talking nowadays!’

  ‘Lothar, what’s the situation up there?’

  ‘Well, we’re giving them a nasty time,’ said Lothar. ‘But they’re still coming in steady bursts. They’ve learned a lot since the Somme, it seems. I estimate they should be up here in ten to twenty minutes.’

  ‘Lothar, you’ve got to get down from there.’

  ‘That may be difficult,’ he answered almost gaily. ‘Unless you can persuade the British to stop shelling. In any case, I quite like it here. You could see the peak of the Brocken from the old tower at Schloss Seeberg, you know. I always wanted to spend Walpurgisnacht up there to see if the witches really danced with the Devil. Well, they do, Dieter, believe me. They do.’

  He was sounding light-headed, almost hysterical, he knew. But a man about to die, eager to die, was entitled to a little hysteria.

  There was a long silence at the other end and he began to suspect the cable had at last been severed.

  ‘Hello? Hello?’ he said, realizing self-satirically that he was disappointed at losing a sympathetic audience for his last words. ‘Dieter? Are you there?’

  The reply came in a rush, as though the words had forced themselves out.

  ‘Lothar, the ridge is mined. It’ll be blown in five minutes’ time. Get down off there now!’

  The line went dead. Lothar let the receiver drop. It was useless. No one was going to talk to him on that any more.

  He was astounded. How very curious. Despite all he knew of them, despite the warnings he h id received from Dieter, despite Bermann’s note-taking, despite his own crazy desire to push them to the breaking-point, despite everything, it had never occurred to him that they would actually conspire to kill him. Expose him to danger perhaps. But not stake him out to die!

  But it was such an obvious stroke! Instead of a living nuisance, a class traitor, a possible focus within the army of growing discontent with the war, they would have a dead hero. Lothar von Seeberg, true to the great traditions of his class and family, remained at his post in the face of the advancing enemy!

  A few moments earlier, he’d been ready to die. But that had been his choice. He felt in no mood to oblige them by accepting their choice.

  He rose to his knees and slung his rifle over his back, his mind wrestling with the problem of what to do next. An enemy on both sides and a mine beneath his feet – there was nothing in Marxist dialectic to deal with this situation! But movement was of the essence, and the quicker the better. He pushed himself to a crouching position, but that was as far as he’d got when a huge explosion flung him to the ground again.

  So much for Dieter’s timing! he thought madly as the earth rippled beneath him and the ruined blockhouse rocked and started to make its own way down the western slope of the Brocken independently. The previous shell-blast must already have half-deafened him and now the process was completed so that he found himself sliding slowly towards the enemy on a toboggan of concrete in total silence.

  The slide seemed to last a long time. Then it was over as if someone had switched off the sun.

  He awoke, perhaps seconds, perhaps hours later. He was in what seemed like a cave with a small triangle of light at his feet. Carefully he felt himself all over. There were many areas of pain, but none of agony. His nose was bleeding. The blood was still hot and sticky, so probably that meant it had been seconds rather than hours. He began to slide towards the light and immediately found himself stuck. It took several moments of fighting an old terror at the thought of being trapped in an enclosed space to realize that it was his rifle which had become wedged in the opening. He managed to draw his bayonet from its scabbard and sawed through the riflesling across his chest. Then he resumed his wriggling once more and a little later was out in the open air, if you could call this dust and smoke-filled atmosphere air.

  He had exchanged a small hole for a big one, he realized. The smaller one was formed by a delicate interdependence of bits of concrete which in any less subtle arrangement would probably have crushed him to death. The larger, he surmised, had been excavated by the mine. The sappers’ plans for total destruction of the Brocken seemed to have been thwarted by a long fault in the rock which had channelled the blast out sideways rather than upwards. It was in a long, narrow and deep trench running along the probable line of the fault that he found himself. And he wasn’t alone.

  About fifty yards away through a haze of dust-motes he could see a curious tableau which struck him instantly as having something Biblical in it, Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac perhaps. Two British soldiers were involved. One of them, an officer, was standing over the other, a private, who sat perfectly still in a rather childish position with one leg crooked under the other and his rifle resting across his lap. It struck Lothar that he couldn’t hear what the officer was saying despite the visual evidence that he was shouting.

  He put his little fingers into their respective ears and excavated a vast amount of dust. Slowly sound returned, albeit through a dull ringing which was the aftermath of the explosion.

  Now he could hear the officer.

  ‘You cowardly little bastard!’ he was screaming. ‘They should have shot you with your brother! I’m giving you an order. Are you going to obey it?’

  The seated man looked up at him indifferently.

  The officer drew his pistol and flourished it wildly. He was, Lothar guessed, completely hysterical, and this crazy scene had as much to do with his own reluctance to get out of the safety of this hole as with the boy’s.

  Still, it wasn’t himself he was about to shoot.

  And he way about to shoot, there seemed no doubt of it.

  ‘For the last time, Routledge,’ he said in a voice breaking like
a pubertal boy’s. ‘I order you to get up and move forward. Now!’

  The pistol was held six inches from the sitting man’s head. The muzzle trembled violently, but at that range the acceptable margin of error was huge. The sitting man looked up still unconcerned. Then slowly his dust-caked face split open in a gentle smile.

  ‘You’re a traitor!’ cried the officer, now reverted to full alto. ‘A traitor and a coward. In the name of the King …’

  Lothar slid his hand back into the hole, grasped his rifle butt, pulled it out, brought the weapon up to his shoulder and aimed it in a single smooth movement learned not from any army weapons instructor but from a childhood of handling hunting pieces in the forests of the von Seeberg estate. The pistol muzzle was touching the sitting soldier’s head as Lothar squeezed the trigger. The officer jerked sideways and fell.

  It was, Lothar realized, the first shot he had fired at a human being since the war began.

  And then he mocked himself with the memory of all those thousands of high explosive shells he had been in part responsible for hurling into the enemy line during the past three years.

  Slowly he advanced. The sitting soldier did not move. As Lothar got closer he saw that he was nothing more than a boy. He greeted Lothar’s appearance with as little interest as he had greeted the threat to his life.

  Lothar examined the officer. He was dead. A young man also, not as young as the other, but young for ever now.

  Lothar sighed, laid his rifle against the corpse and crouched beside the boy.

  ‘Hey, Knab’, wie heisst du?’ he asked. ‘What are you called, young man?’

  At first he thought there was going to be no response, but at last the wide light blue eyes, bloodshot with lack of sleep and excess of dust but still childish in their unblinking curiosity, turned to look at him. Another long moment passed. Then the boy nodded as if acknowledging that in whatever twilight land his mind inhabited, there was no incongruity in being addressed in English by a German soldier who had just saved his live.

  ‘Josh,’ he said.

  ‘Well, Josh, I am Lothar. My friends call me Lott.’