The Boche returned fire, a lackluster, light artillery. Above No Man’s Land star shells burst into pale greenish light.
Time. Miller was at the ladder and we were going and there wasn’t any time. Cold settled in my lungs and I started to shiver hard. Around me a collection of faceless waiting men. Smoot—I think it was Smoot—fiddling with his bandolier.
Miller’s hand lifted to the rungs. Another deep-throated barrage, then the sharp icy shrieks of the whistles and Miller was up the ladder and gone, another soldier behind him, another.
I touched the wood. I’d lose strength at the last minute. I wouldn’t have the heart. I wouldn’t be able to make it up the ladder, and they would call it a Blighty and send me home. One, two, three rungs. The ladder shuddered under my weight. Ahead was our wire and the holes our sappers had cut. Beyond, the lumpy expanse of No Man’s Land.
It wasn’t real. Nothing was real, not the battle litter that made me stumble, not the rat-a-tat-tat of the machine guns, not me. Especially not me.
Soldiers ahead broke into a run, so I did, too. Was anyone beside me? With the goggles, the sides of the world were gone. There was a slow rolling yellowish fog on the horizon, and all of us were running to it. I sucked air and wondered if the metal taste was the valve or fear or if I was drinking gas.
The fog bank swallowed Miller. I stumbled into the mist after him. Was there anyone beside me? Was I running in the right direction? I could be heading back toward our lines. I’d be safe. No. I’d be caught and court-martialed. God. I could be running on the diagonal and never reach the other side.
The low hum of falling shells. Tooth-rattling blasts all around. And then a figure through the fog, one of O’Shaughnessy’s ghosts.
No, just Smoot, the eyes behind his goggles wide. He tripped over something and went sprawling. I pulled him up and we ran on. We ran until a furious ratcheting of machine-gun fire sent us diving for the nearest shell hole.
We kept our heads down. Around us, bullets slapped the dirt. Should we be stopping here? Would we get in trouble for this? The gas was so thick at the bottom of the shell hole that it had to be seeping through the canvas sacking. I sucked air through the metal straw of my mask. My throat tightened. My lungs ached. I was already dizzy. Smoot stayed where he was, hugging the ground, so I did, too.
The wind picked up. The fog thinned, dark smoke billowing. Someone threw himself into the hole with us.
“What in bloody ’ell’r—” Riddell. He paused, sucking air furiously through his mask’s valve. When he spoke again his words were muffled and strained. “—you doing?”
I saw Smoot hesitate. Then he spit out his valve and said, “Waiting.”
“For bloody what?”
Not me. I wasn’t about to answer. There was too much goddamned gas. My teeth bit down on the valve, the metal sending a shiver up my spine.
Smoot said, each word a risk, “Well, they’re firing . . . at us, aren’t they.”
“ ’Course they’re firing . . . at you! Christ! You a . . . nutter or sommit? ’Course . . . they’re firing.” Riddell took a Battye bomb from his pouch and threw it.
The Battye bombs. The grenades. The jam-pots we’d spent time making. Under fire, we’d forgotten.
I chucked a few toward the machine-gun emplacement. Smoot did, too. We either got the Boche or he moved, for the Maxim went silent. Shells kept falling.
Up and out of the hole, back into dream. People moving ahead. The dying glow of the flares cast green fire down bayonets. My gas mask was heavy. It made my world tiny, cramped, and hot. The breeze blew; black tarry smoke thinned. I caught the tastes of pineapple and pepper. Chlorine.
Gunfire, not the spit of Maxims but the pop-pop of rifles. Riddell fixed his bayonet and started to run. Smoot did too. I tripped and fell over a corpse with a coal-shuttle helmet. Where was I? What was he doing here? Then the breeze blew the smoke to me. Smoot had left me behind and I was alone. Where were the Boche trenches now? I didn’t know what else to do, so I got up and went on.
The flares had gone dark. The only light was that from the explosions. A Maxim started up, this time from a different direction; and I found myself a crater and took cover. Someone was in the hole with me. Not much more than shadow, his gas mask gave him a pale lollipop of a head. To my left an orange flash, bright enough so I recognized the eyes in the goggles. Smoot was watching me.
I reached out to touch him and my fingers sank. My hand was up to the wrist inside his guts and he was still alive and moving around a little; and even when I wiped my hand on my pants and wiped it and wiped it I could still feel the wet heat of his insides. It took everything I had not to throw up in my mask.
What did Smoot expect me to do? I wasn’t a doctor yet. He kept looking at me and I could see the hole in his belly now and his dark glistening liver and his pale guts dangling out. Jesus. How could he be wounded and live like that? Where was Riddell? He was the goddamned sergeant. Riddell would go find a weed for him.
My chest felt jittery inside, like I was going to laugh.
He was trying to get his mask off. I spit out my valve. “No! Shit! No! Don’t do that.” My mouth went searching for my valve again, like a baby hunting for a teat. I took a hurried breath that tasted of pineapple. “Gas in the hole . . . All right. It’s okay.” Jesus. Chlorine. You didn’t feel chlorine happening. You didn’t know for sure it had worked until your own lungs started to drown you. “Stretcher’s coming.”
Guts hanging all down his leg.
“No! Don’t look.” I sucked in a thirsty gasp of tin-flavored air. “Just pulled . . . yourself a Blighty.” Around me bullets punched the dirt.
Smoot’s weak fingers tugged at the mask. I’d have let him take it off if the gas would have killed him any quicker.
Since we couldn’t talk, I lay down beside him so that I could look him in the eye. I thought if I was dying that’s what I would want somebody to do. He reached out and held my hand. He held on tight, and I let him. His fingers were cold. I lay there until the whine of incoming shells started coming farther and farther apart. I stayed until the Maxim went still. By then Smoot was still, too. His eyes were fixed. I pried his stiff fingers off me, stood up, and started walking.
I walked around shell holes and through a ruin of wire. I nearly fell over the German parapet. Except for the bodies, the trench was empty. Nearby, fires smoldered and cast a tense and uneasy light across the corpses.
Down the trench, Tommies were milling. We had taken the forward Boche position, and the sun was coming up.
Miller was there, his gas mask off, regrouping to move forward. The shelling had stopped except for mortars. When I took my mask off, the air was cool. The breeze smelled clean and safe, something like the air after a bad storm. Then it was up and over the muddy parados and the long tiring slow charge to the Boche rear, at a walk. Feet moving: That was all I knew. I didn’t have the strength to lift my rifle, to hold my bayonet in position. I was so tired, I didn’t care if they killed me.
We arrived in the afternoon and found the rear trenches deserted. Miller said we could stop. I sat with LeBlanc on the parapet of the Boche trench and drank the tea Pickering made our six platoon survivors: Foy and Riddell, Marrs, me and LeBlanc.
“Assholes,” LeBlanc said. “Goddamned Brit artillery falls short all the time. If they hadn’t been using those American sawdust bombs they would have killed the rest of us. Hey, Stanhope. Here’s to American capitalism, eh?” And he drank a toast. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. What do you think, Stanhope? Think we should have kept advancing? Miller was for it. Half his company down, but he borrowed some balls from the old Fourteenth. Christ knows, Dunleavy didn’t need his anymore. Think Miller was trying to prove something? Stanhope? You listening?”
I didn’t know what to say. The world was strange there on the other side. I could hear the slow thump of my heart. The remains of that morning’s sweat lay clammy on the nape of my neck. I was happy, Bobby. That’s the strange thing. I felt
life so keen—why didn’t I feel death any sharper? All the platoon but six. Smoot’s blood was caked under my nails, and I used my penknife to clean it. After a while LeBlanc went away.
We rested, and after O’Shaughnessy blessed the corpses, the cadre was ordered up. They buried our dead; then they buried the Boche. They sent the handful of tired-looking prisoners to the rear. Some of the Boche didn’t seem to know what had happened, and had to be led away.
That evening in an intact officer’s dugout Captain Dunston-Smith found a piano. He sat and played Chopin. The music drew Miller and me and three men from another platoon. We all stood, tired and mute, listening to etudes.
It was odd in those tumbled-down trenches that we’d won. Where the dugouts were still undamaged, we found books and letters and pictures: odds and ends of the lives of those who had retreated. Most of the ones who stayed died when the earth caved in. Some died from simple concussion, and we found them gathered in their dark holes, curled up like little kids sleeping, blood caking their nostrils and ears.
We slept, and I didn’t dream, and the next morning Command issued sandbags. We’re to rebuild the trench. Looks like with the ghosties is where we’ll stay.
Travis Lee
FOUR
JULY 5, THE RESERVE TRENCHES
Dear Bobby,
Hope you had a happy 4th, little brother! No hot dogs nor red, white, and blue here, but I had me a celebration anyways. Yesterday morning we were all sitting at the back latrine: me and Marrs and Pickering. I was having a good sit-down myself, not the yellow squirt I get when the water’s bad, nor the dark goat-turd pebbles I get when the food’s not plentiful enough. No, this was a great, glorious golden cigar of a turd that felt fine and upstanding coming out, a British sort of turd. Major Dunn would have pinned a medal on it.
An orange sun was chasing the last of the night, and the breeze felt good on my bare ass. My balls were free and happy. Pickering must have been in a good temper, too, for he called out, “Hey, Stanhope! You know what day it is? Come on, Marrs. There’s no better place for it than the privy. Let’s sing a bleeding revolutionary ballad for our Yank.”
And damned if he didn’t start singing a pretty fair tenor rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner,” complete with farts in all the right places. That boy is possessed of a rare and wondrous talent.
Everyone joined in, and there we were, our bare butts in a line, our voices lifted. The Tommies fell to la-laaing pretty quick, but even when I got to the high parts, I still remembered the words.
Captain Miller rode by with Dunston-Smith, and they reined their horses and lingered awhile, laughing. I couldn’t rightly stand up, but I saluted, anyway. The sun brightened the clouds in glowing bands. Birds warbled. It was a good shit, Bobby. I tell you, it was one of the best.
When it was over, we went back to the trenches. A few whizzbangs came our way, but it was a half-hearted effort. We dug more bodies out of the trench, already bloated, skin gray as their uniforms and spongy. Maggots were moving around in them.
There must be Boche left in the walls, Bobby, for the smell has settled in all the trenches. The stink draws black clouds of flies and, try as I might, I can’t help but wonder what the flies walked on before they landed on my Maconochie. Only if the stew’s hot enough, can I force it down.
I found out that Dewberry pulled a Blighty—a bullet in the thigh. A good wound to go home with. He was a good and friendly rumwallah, and I’m glad for him. Dedoes’s gas mask got torn, and he went home wheezing and blinded. Carver lost both legs. Starks will have to learn to make do without a right arm. The rest are dead—Dunleavy crushed to pulp when one of those American dud bombs fell on him.
I haven’t dreamed of the graveyard in a while, and maybe that’s for the best.
Marrs and I sorted through the litter in the dugouts. I found a portrait photograph of a sweet-faced lady in a feather hat; a half-written letter to “Mutter” in spiky Gothic; a copy of Goethe’s Faust—other people’s memories, moldy and stained. I opened one envelope and found a letter folded carefully around a lavender stalk. The missing Boche must have carried it with him a long time. The flowers had crumbled; only the brittle stalk and its perfume remained. Lavender. I sat down right where I was, closed my eyes, and sniffed the paper a while.
Marrs was the right one to go attic-cleaning with. Pickering or Foy or LeBlanc would have asked me what the hell I was doing. Marrs didn’t. And when I refolded the letter and started to put it on the respectful pile of mementos we were gathering, Marrs said, “Why’nt keep that letter, then? Ain’t like he’ll be needing it.”
The envelope makes a warm homey place over my chest. I take it out sometimes, just for the smell. I puzzle over the German. The lavender reminds me of fine ladies with hoop skirts and parasols. The script is flowery. You can touch the fondness there.
When we were finished piling things up, Riddell told us to throw it all away.
“Chuck it?” Marrs asked, and he sounded heartbroken.
“Well, stuff’s rubbish, ain’t it?”
So we dug a hole and packed it with odds and ends of cloth. We nestled the memories inside, and covered everything carefully with earth. Marrs crossed himself. We bowed our heads and Marrs said some Latin: a Pater Noster, he told me, and an Ave Maria thrown in for good measure. Over it we planted a grave marker so the Boche could find it when the war was done.
“It ain’t rubbish,” Marrs said firmly when we were finished; and that was the best blessing of all.
Today was a rest period, but Dunn got a bee up his butt and had us organize a game of football. We were all tired. The Tommies were complaining of the heat. Dewberry had been the Jam-Pot’s best goalie, Dunleavy the best forward. Still, the team played as well as they could. They chased that ball and chased it until Phillips, from 10th Platoon, kicked it over a jagged piece of shell casing and it sprang a leak. Both teams stood looking down at that deflating ball like it was a dying calf or something. It pissed Dunn off, and he stalked away grumbling. When he was gone, both teams sat down right where they were and took off their shirts. They wiped their faces and passed around a canteen. Everybody grumbled about the temperature. I told them about the summer you and me had to sleep in the creek just to keep cool. I told them how the cows died of sun stroke in the pasture and birds fell out of trees. They must be tired of my Texas stories, for they threw dirt clods at me. Despite the have-to football game, a good time was had by all.
Hope all your shits are fine ones. Travis Lee
JULY 8, THE FRONT LINE
Dear Bobby,
The replacements came, and every time a mortar shell falls within earshot the new boys go scurrying for cover. Pickering, serious for once, told them, “Wear your legs out that way,” and the new boys looked at him so horror-struck that Foy and me near pissed ourselves laughing.
We didn’t gain much by our battle, I discovered. The Boche fell back to the same fortifications they had advanced from last year. They’re dug in comfortable now. That’s why Dunn didn’t want to press the attack and Miller did. Well, it’s possible Dunn was right. We were pretty wore out, and might have been easy pickings. But lately the Boche have been sneaking up close. They planted a few Maxim emplacements, and they’re busy starting a new forward trench I do believe. They have them a fine communication trench, for I haven’t got many clear head shots. Sometimes I catch the forward diggers.
We got us a new and obliging rumwallah, but Marrs and Foy and Pickering refuse to bet me anymore. Those new boys of ours, though, have yet to down a whole ration of rum. Riddell is teaching them how to keep their rifles clean; Marrs, the best way to crack lice. I teach them the unfairness of odds-taking. They’re too damned young for this.
For the first time in weeks I dreamed about the cemetery. It scared me, too, for I looked down and saw Smoot in one of those glass-covered graves. Smoot, preserved in a bell jar.
In this dream the rest of the platoon was lost and I needed to find them. They were my resp
onsibility, Bobby. It was me who knew the place. And even though it still holds surprises, I had walked every terrace of that graveyard, had looked into the downturned face of each and every rain-stained cherub. So I ran those paint-chipped steps, calling out the names of the missing. I hurried breathless and anxious through marble winter forests. When I came to the end of the gravel walk, the dark stopped me.
Something was bad there beyond the cypress. Maybe it was our deaths, maybe it was the Boche’s; but the dark was stranger and emptier now, and I couldn’t hear Trantham’s voice anymore.
I ran away, back down the twisting path, calling for Dunleavy and Birdsong, Thweat and Furbush and Highwater. I ran past wilting wreaths and faded ribbons and solitary stone angels kneeling. I rushed, frantic and stumbling, on the painted plastered stair. Below me was a domed marble mausoleum, its rusty iron gate open. And there she stood, a gold and blue breath of mercy: the girl in the calico dress.
When I came to her she put her finger to my lips, sweet and gentle-like, to shush me. “They’re resting,” she said.
I’d found them. They were in the mausoleum, all of the platoon. The place was beautiful, with its fluted, cracked columns. I knew it would be cool and quiet inside, and that the air would smell of lavender. Outside, vines twined the walls and birds hopped and played among the leaves. God, they must have loved sleeping there.
I started to tell her that I wanted to rest, too, maybe just put my head down for a while. But she knew; and she held me, not the way a pretty girl would, but the way Ma always used to do—me small in the fortress of her arms.
And in the dream I knew I was finally free to go, because she’d take care of them for me. It was nice knowing that she’d be there, watching over. The dark’s so damned near that it’s easy to fall in, and so deep that you’d drown. She knows that, too. She knows everything: about Pa outside the wardrobe, about the loudness of shells and the bruising shock of bullets.
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