They went down on their knees to get into the main section and Stephen saw the anxious glances being exchanged among his men. The air had a dense, damp quality. They strained and gasped as they went through a small opening, but then found they could half-stand again and proceeded at a crouch. Stephen noticed the solid horizontal planks attached to verticals at distances of about five feet. From what he could see it had been well done. In the accustomed scamper of the tunnellers there was no fear or sense of the unusual.
The six infantrymen, led by a lieutenant called Crawshaw, were struggling to keep up with those in front. Stephen could hear them gasping. They carried rifles, which made it difficult for them to use their hands to steady themselves.
It seemed a strange way, Stephen thought, in which to have passed the war, like rodents in a separate element. It had shielded them from the impact of the big attacks and the sight of bodies piling up, but the world the miners inhabited had its own ingrained horror.
He would go just as far as the main chamber, then insist on getting back to his men. They would be grateful that he had made the gesture, which would secure the continued cooperation of the tunnellers in the jobs they found most wearing.
The tunnel became narrower and they were obliged to go down on all fours again. The front men suddenly stopped, causing the others to crush together behind them in the darkness.
“I think they’ve heard something,” Crawshaw whispered into Stephen’s ear. “No one move.”
The men lay huddled in the tube of earth as Evans fumbled in his pack and squeezed through them to get up to his three colleagues at the front. After a whispered consultation, Evans squirmed forward to a piece of dry wall and stuck a flat disc against it, into which he plugged a stethoscope. Crawshaw raised a finger to his lips and made a downward motion with both hands. The others lay flat on the floor of the tunnel. Stephen felt a stone against his cheek, and tried to shift his head. He was lodged up against the leg of someone he could not see and had to stay where he was. He could feel his heart moving slowly against his ribs.
Evans lay tight against the tunnel wall, like an unwashed and unqualified doctor listening for signs of hostile life.
Stephen closed his eyes. He wondered whether, if he stayed in this position long enough, he might drift off to a final sleep. The agitation of the other men prevented him from sliding into his own thoughts. He could sense their fear through the tension of the bodies that pressed against his. It was their passivity that made it difficult; even against the guns they had some chance of riposte, but beneath this weight they were helpless.
Evans eventually pulled the stethoscope out of his ears and folded it back into his pocket. He shook his head and pursed his lips. He whispered his report to his lieutenant, who in turn put his mouth to Stephen’s ear.
“Can’t hear anything. It may have been shellfire from the surface. We’re going to press on.”
The men on the floor of the tunnel stirred and dragged themselves back again into their crouching positions, in which they could again advance deeper.
Stephen could feel himself sweating. He could tell by the stench from the bodies packed in around him that he was not the only one. Trench conditions had improved, but not to the extent of providing the men with means of washing, even in hot weather.
The roof of the tunnel began to lift a little, and the smaller men, such as Evans and Jones, were able to walk upright. They came to a junction where the miners’ lieutenant, Lorimer, issued instructions. The main digging party would proceed straight to the listening chamber; the others would go into one of the fighting tunnels alongside, the entrance to which he was now able to point out.
Stephen smiled to himself as he saw the expressions on the faces of his men. They exaggerated their reluctance into comic grimaces, but he knew from his own experience that it was real enough. He was glad he was going into what, presumably, would be the largest section of tunnel. He had no fear of going forward provided he felt he could get back. What had frightened him underground with Weir was when the earth fell behind them and he had for a moment thought he would not be able to turn round.
Crawshaw checked that his men had their grenades and rifles. He himself carried a revolver, which he waved dangerously toward the tunnel entrances. Stephen guessed he was trying to show them how fearless he was. Perhaps they believed him.
He watched them depart. He remembered the feelings of tenderness he used to have for the men when they went into battle or on patrol; he used to imagine their lives and hopes, their homes and their families, the little worlds they carried on their backs and in their minds. He could remember this compassion, but he no longer felt it.
His own party was about twenty-five yards short of the main listening chamber when Lorimer again came to a halt and raised his finger to his lips.
Stephen inhaled tightly. He was beginning to regret having come down. Either Lorimer was nervous, and was turning a routine inspection into something protracted and unpleasant, or else there was real danger. Evans had taken his listening set into the adjacent tunnel. Jack Firebrace was summoned by Lorimer to place his ear against the wall.
Jack covered the other ear with his hand and closed his eyes for better concentration. For half a minute they all stood motionless. In the light of a miner’s lamp, Stephen stared with minute intensity at the grain of a piece of timber about six inches from his face. He traced the tiny lines and indentations. He imagined how it would curl beneath a plane.
Jack pulled back his head from the wall and wheeled to face Lorimer. His urgent whisper was audible to all of them.
“There’s footsteps, going back toward their lines. They’ve got a tunnel west and about ten feet up.”
Lorimer’s face tightened. He said nothing for a moment, then, “Retreating, did you say?”
“Yes.”
“Then I think we should press on and do our work.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “but they may have laid a charge. I mean, there are any number of reasons why—”
“We’ll wait for five minutes,” said Lorimer, “then we’ll proceed.”
“For God’s sake,” said Stephen. “You don’t risk the lives of all these men to—”
The air was driven from his chest before he could complete the sentence as an explosion drove them backward into the tunnel walls; it was as though the soil in front of them had been hurled back by some violent, compacted earthquake. Stephen’s head struck wood. By the jagged light that burned into the earth he saw the flailing limbs and flying parts of cloth and kit, helmets, hands, and spitting chalk that ricocheted round the hollow tube, taking the human detritus with it in a roar of condensed fury.
He lay on the tunnel floor beneath the fields, and still he was not dead. He was aware of earth in his eyes and nose, and of weight. He tried to move but felt himself pinned down, as though the earth had wrapped him in heavy, comfortable blankets and was urging him to sleep. The noise of the explosion seemed trapped in the narrow tube. He pictured his way back sealed off, and a flicker of panic rose in his belly, but died again beneath the heaviness of his pinioned state. The captive sound eventually diminished.
He listened for it to be replaced by the familiar sound of human agony, of men whose limbs had been removed from them or whose brains were going free from their skulls. He heard nothing at first. Then, as the last pieces of displaced earth settled in the tunnel, he heard a long thick sigh; it was a sound he had never heard before, but he knew that it was the noise of several men expiring simultaneously.
He envied them the peaceful exhalation, breath and spirit gone. He tried to move a leg, and found that he could. He flexed his shoulders and arms and felt a raw, sharp pain in the upper right arm. He tried to swallow, but could not gather enough saliva in his dry, earth-filled mouth.
After a few minutes it became clear to him that he was not seriously injured. His legs seemed unharmed. His right arm was damaged, but that would not matter, he thought, unless he needed to dig his way out and
the efforts of one arm were not enough. He needed to move the debris from on top of him, then he could see if there was anyone else alive. He tipped his head back as far as he could, and saw that most of the roof of the tunnel was intact above him. It was the old good luck, the contemptible voodoo of survival.
With his left hand, he began to scrape and push at the earth on top of his legs. Eventually he reduced the weight sufficiently to be able to kick some of it away. He flexed and stretched his legs and found that apart from bruises they seemed to have escaped injury. He rolled his upper body, as though trying to throw off bedclothes, and managed to sit up. He stopped and breathed suddenly from the pain in his arm. He spat several times to clear his mouth. Gradually he gathered enough saliva to be able to swallow, and then to speak. He called out in the darkness. There was a lamp on its side: the glass was cracked but it was still alight.
He heard nothing. He manoeuvred himself on to all fours and began to crawl forward with the lamp. He had been at the back of the group of men when the explosion had gone off; any survivors would therefore be in front of him. There were four miners, who were supposed to do the enlargement work on the listening chamber, and two other infantry. Stephen wondered how far spread the blast had been. Perhaps some of the others in the parallel tunnel had been further from the impact.
As he moved forward he came to a solid wall of detritus. Above it there were still small particles of earth dripping down like rain from where the roof had been blown away. It looked as though a further fall might occur at any moment. Stephen turned around and looked behind him. The way back appeared to be open. Although he would have to go on all fours for the first ten yards or so, he was reasonably certain he could fight his way back to the second lateral gallery where the men had dispersed. From there it would be simple enough, he presumed, to go back into the main gallery and thence to the foot of the shaft.
Something moved in the crush of earth ahead of him. He could see nothing. Then he heard a tiny scraping sound. He followed it with his hands and found that he was touching a piece of material. It was attached to an arm or leg of some kind. Movement was there.
With a growing heaviness of heart, Stephen saw that he would have to try to rescue its owner. He knelt down and began to pare at the weight of earth with the fingers of his left hand.
His right arm was of no use. Doggedly he worked away at the fall of soil, pulling it back with his hand until it had formed a pile, then kicking it away and spreading it out with his leg on to the floor behind him.
He examined his progress with the lamp. Eventually he made a hole around the piece of material, which was a sleeve. He stuck his hand in and squeezed the arm. He could feel it all the way to the shoulder. The sound of a human voice, in pain or greeting, came to him from behind the wall of earth.
Stephen shouted words of encouragement. He rested for a moment, then peeled off his tunic from his sopping shirt. As he freed his right arm he saw the black stain of blood on it.
He resumed his digging. He worried that the earth he took out was supporting other matter that would then fall into the space, closing it up even more heavily.
After an hour he had made a space round the shoulders and head of the man. A piece of timber had collapsed diagonally above him, holding the main weight of the roof off his head, which lay in a protected space. He had been very lucky. Stephen was now close enough to speak to him.
“Hold on,” he said. “Just keep still. I can get you out.”
He thought it unlikely that he could, because of the weight that had clearly fallen on the man’s legs, which were shot out ahead of him toward the original face of the tunnel, but he kept digging and clearing and gasping through his efforts the automatic words of encouragement.
———
Jack Firebrace, entombed in his heavy burial place, felt his life come and go as the air thinned in the cavity about his head. The pain from his crushed legs swept up and down his spine and made him faint, then gasp back into consciousness, then drift away again. He tried to move them because he felt the agony would keep him from dying. If he could feel the pain then he would be conscious and therefore still alive.
In this state he recognized the voice of the man who had once pitched naked into his arms with a dry imprecation, himself on the verge of dying. He could feel the weak hand picking at the soil that trapped him, and he felt a sense that it was right, that he should be rescued by someone he had himself saved; he felt confident that Stephen would deliver him.
Jack’s struggle was with himself. He narrowed his efforts to the battle against the soft, rolling waves of sleep that were his body’s natural response to the pain in his legs. His head at least could move, and he thrashed it from side to side in an effort to stop it clouding over.
Stephen’s soothing voice came in his ear. Jack felt a hand grip under his armpit and try to pull him.
“It won’t work,” he said. “My legs are trapped.”
“Can you hear me?” said Stephen.
“Yes.”
“Who are you?”
“Jack Firebrace. The one supposed to get you back safe.” Jack was surprised that he was able to talk so well. The restored human contact had revived him.
“What happened?” said Stephen.
Jack grunted. “Camouflet probably. They were right above us. They’ve got our tunnel well marked down. They must have been waiting for weeks.”
“Will there be more?”
“God knows.”
“How badly are you trapped?”
“My legs have gone. I can’t move them. My arms are all right. I can help you if you make enough space. I’m …”
“What’s the matter? Are you all right?”
The effort of speech had made Jack faint. “Yes. Don’t talk now. Dig.”
“What if we bring down more?”
“Chance it,” gasped Jack.
Stephen pulled off his shirt and resumed his toil. Jack felt him crawl in alongside in the space he had cleared. He told him to try to support the earth above them by using bits of timber that lay in the wreckage. For hours Stephen worked on one-handed under Jack’s instructions. He was able to create a miniature self-contained chamber within the fallen earth. Jack helped him push and heave the timbers into place above them; he used his hands to pull back more debris until his body was clear to the waist.
Eventually Stephen said, “I must rest. Even if it’s only for a few minutes.”
He lay down in the nest they had made and fell asleep at once, his head resting on Jack’s chest. Jack felt the rise and fall of his breathing. He envied him his sleep, but dared not join him for fear that he would not wake up.
He had said nothing to Stephen, in order not to raise his hopes too far, but he assumed a rescue party would have been dispatched from the trench. Even if they sensibly waited to be sure that there were no further enemy camouflets, they could not be long in arriving.
There was no time in the darkness, but Jack estimated they had been underground about six hours, for about five of which he had been trapped and Stephen had been working to free him.
He pictured Cartwright organizing the rescue party in the bright summer day above them. He made a vow that if he made it up to the surface he would never go underground again. He would pass the rest of his days in the air, with the feeling of sun or rain on his face. He found that he was drifting again: his mind began to follow itself in slow, dreamy circles.
He decided he would have to wake Stephen. If not, he was going to die. He took him by the shoulders and shook him, but Stephen fell back on to him. He slapped his face, and Stephen groaned, then fell asleep again. The weariness of four years seemed to have overtaken him.
Jack began cursing. He thought of the vilest things he could say and shouted them at Stephen. He slapped him again. Nothing would penetrate his fatigue.
Then from behind them, back toward their own line, there came the sound of another explosion. Jack closed his eyes and crouched against the ground. He
expected a core of soil and flame to come leaping down the tunnel, driven by the power of the blast.
Stephen was awake. “Christ. What was that?”
Jack could make out Stephen’s anxious face in the light of the lamp.
“Another one. Back toward our line. They’ve got us marked out all right.”
“What does it mean?”
“Nothing. We must try to get out.”
What it really meant, Jack thought, was that it might now be impossible for a rescue party to reach them. It depended on precisely where the explosion had come.
It also meant that if Stephen had returned without trying to rescue him he could have been safely back above the ground some hours ago.
He said kindly, “You’d better try and pull me out. I’ll be more use to you then than if I’m stuck here.”
———
Stephen resumed his delicate work, trying under Jack’s instructions to build a wooden tent over his legs. It reminded him of the construction they had put over the legs of the gassed boy opposite him in the hospital. He had to clear and build at the same time. Jack helped him force the earth out behind them.
As Stephen worked he thought about the second explosion and the damage it might have done. He felt the death he had wanted come closer to him. Still he could not embrace it.
Eventually the weight on Jack’s legs was small enough for Stephen to pull him free. In the end he came out like a cork from a bottle, though with a bitter scream as the crushed flesh was dragged against the debris round it.
He lay trembling on the floor of the tunnel while Stephen tried to comfort him. If only they had brought some water. It had occurred to him as they left that a bottle would be useful, but he was only supposed to have been underground for an hour.
“How bad is it?” said Stephen when he gauged that Jack could speak.
“I think both legs are broken. And my ribs. There’s an awful pain in here.” He touched his chest.
Birdsong Page 45
