The trench was not so deep now and they kept their heads low, only Tim forgot and a bullet tore into his throat. Harry caught him as he sagged and his blood spurted on to the man in front and all over Harry’s hand and face. He wanted to rub it from him, this wet sticky mess, and then run and run but instead he called Bob and they put the gurgling boy on a stretcher and returned over and under the wires, round the sump pits, ignoring the frogs and mice until they reached the dressing station where they left Timmy, but he was dead and it was only then that Harry began to shake.
The rain was falling on the canvas of the Red Cross tent as Harry at last washed off the blood, watching as stained water filled the enamel bowl. He lifted his head to the drizzle which was now falling, and it was welcome on his face. He lifted it to the noise which he now knew never stopped. Dear God, what had he come to, what had they all come to? The rain was soaking his clothes now but he did not feel cold as they returned to the trench. They passed men huddled over a brazier and their clothes were steaming in its heat. The coals glowed through the holes and he thought of hot chestnuts and London with its theatres, its restaurants, its noise of trams and cars and horses, not this thump and thud of guns.
The walk back along the trenches seemed longer now without the other men and their boots sounded hollow on the mud-stained boards. He and Bob did not speak and Harry looked up at the sky and wished he could talk in the open, away from the smell of wet earth, excrement and blood, away from the blinkered trench. A fatigue party approached carrying bundles of sandbags and lengths of timber and Harry put out his arm pressing Bob against the side of the trench. Wet earth fell down his neck. As the party passed the rifle of one caught Harry’s cheek and the blow knocked his head to one side; blood trickled to his chin.
‘Serve you right, you bloody conchie,’ the sergeant said, and Harry felt cold but returned the man’s stare. He had a moustache like the father who had disowned him.
‘Yellow, that’s what you are,’ hissed another, his face too close, his teeth rotten like the trees.
Harry did not look at Bob nor Bob at him. They waited until the party had passed and then moved forward, quickly now because their own platoon no longer said that to them any more. Harry knew that Bob’s family did not speak to him because he was a non-combatant, that his father had thrown his clothes out in the street but he knew nothing else. One did not ask other conchies about the paths they had taken, the blows they had received.
As autumn turned to winter the rain continued and they were never dry and this was noticed more by the officers because they had only known comfort and ease. Sometimes the frost cracked on their khaki as they moved and Harry’s hands could not feel the stretcher as they carried those wounded by sniper fire. The battalion frontage was 500 yards long and casualties were many, usually head injuries. The men froze and longed for a ‘push’ which might give them a ‘blighty’, a wound that would be their ticket home, though it would more likely bring them death as it had done to the soldiers at Neuve Chapelle in March, to the 50,000 French at Champagne in February, to the 60,000 dead at St Mihiel, the 120,000 at Arras in May, the thousands and thousands and thousands at Ypres in April and May, at Loos in November. And on and on and on it went and there was no advance, no victory, no sense to any of it, just the slaughter.
It was a crisp cold night when their sergeant forgot to duck below a wire as he followed Harry down the trench on Christmas Eve, and a sniper took off the top of his head. Harry barely noticed the blood which splashed his face. There had been too much of it.
‘Stretcher-bearer,’ he called and Bob came and together they took him back past working parties who were filling sandbags with earth, piling them up like bricks, headers and stretchers alternating. As Harry passed he heard the thud of the spades as they patted the bags flat. He was sorry the sergeant was dead, they had shared cigarettes together and joked about the weather; but slowly he was learning not to like people too much for in time they died and he was too tired anyway.
Sentries stood on the fire-steps, stamping their feet and blowing on their hands. It was only the new men now who ground out the word ‘coward’ into their faces for the others had been through two pushes with them and had seen Harry ease out over the top and bring back the men long before dusk because he could not bear to hear their cries.
Bob slipped on the duckboards and the sergeant’s arm flopped nearly to the ground but he was dead and so it did not matter. The dressing station was full as always and Harry wiped his mouth and leant against a lorry with mud-covered wheels while Bob talked to the doctor. Dusk was drawing near but the ground still shook as shells plunged to the ground as they did each day. He lifted his head and enjoyed the air, the sky, the horizon but knew that in a moment he must return to the claustrophobia of the trench network.
The water was high as they eased around the sump holes and up and over the wires, flattening against the sides as a platoon passed followed by their captain who stopped in front of Harry, his bulk blanking out what little light there was. The rain and the noise had restricted Harry’s senses to the inside of his head; it was where he preferred to stay these days and so, for a moment, he did not recognise the officer but stood to attention, dragging his eyes back to the present and then he saw the face as well as the uniform.
‘I knew you were here,’ Frank said. Harry did not move but he looked at the man he had last seen in South Africa. There was the familiar smile now as he said, ‘Breaking rules again, eh? Yellow as a hottentot, you are. I’ll be watching for you, Harry, but the war will get you, I won’t have to.’
He slapped his swagger-stick in his hand and laughed before he pushed Harry against the sodden side and walked on past. Harry did not look at Bob but pushed on, quickly now, wanting to leave that voice far behind and the guilt stirred. He should not have left, he should have stayed with Baralong and changed the structure which people like Frank had created and for once he was glad of the guns which reached a crescendo and blotted out his own thoughts.
That week he used his two days’ leave to travel to the South African native contingent which the new sergeant had said was stationed up the line. None knew of his Baralong though and they shouldered their spades and looked strangely at the white man who wanted to speak to one of their own.
The sergeant told Harry on his return that the natives were not allowed to bear arms. They were there only for fatigue duties. Were the whites afraid that they would learn too much about slaughter, Harry wondered, as he drew on his cigarette that night. He had just begun to smoke again and it was not the noise or the stench but Frank.
In June when frost was only a memory they were moved along the line and a machine-gunner removed his boot and sock and pulled the trigger of his rifle with his toe. The muzzle was in his mouth and Harry and Bob carried him back as they had done for so many and Harry wondered why the young machine-gunner had not seen the meadow blooming between the two front lines and the deep blue cornflowers that were the colour of Esther’s eyes blowing in the breeze? Had he not seen the red poppies glowing amongst the long green grass? Did he not know that pleasure could be gained by the smallest of things, that sanity could be retained by a skylark’s song? Perhaps though he had not been able to forget that the shell-holes were still there beneath the meadow’s beauty and it was not the dew but barbed wire glinting in the fresh new sun.
At the end of June Harry looked from a safe vantage point at the village behind the German lines, opposite their new emplacement. It was built of red brick and lay beside a pithead and two small slag-heaps. He thought of Penhallon and the primroses, the hedges and the pain he would feel if he saw them churned up by guns and gas. No wonder the old women in the villages wrung their hands and wept. Could war continue with the spring, he wondered. Could this fresh beauty that he was looking at now be turned to mud and blood like the rest of the line? He knew it could for a push had begun two days ago further down the line and it would be their turn tomorrow but now it was mail call and he took th
e letter which Hannah had sent and as the day ended and dusk was falling he leant against the trench and read the words from home.
Dearest Harry,
We are all well here. There is still a great deal of work to do of course and I am trying to sort out the pensions which are still delayed. The women need them so badly but I will not go on too much about that. Joe and I have adopted Naomi, Kate and Annie, all from separate families, all of whom we love. I feel less alone and so do they, I think.
The lime tree is so fresh in the garden and young Matthew helps me with the planting of new seeds. He is growing well but his mother is very sick. She has been working in the munitions factory since the shell crisis at Neuve Chapelle.
At least women are proving that they are the equal of men and even Asquith has said that he does not see how we can be refused the vote when the next reform is enacted. But don’t hold your breath, Harry, and I can’t help feeling that this war is too high a price to pay.
Joe writes regularly but the letters get held up and so come in batches after a long empty period. Frances is better now; she is less tired because more of the women are able to take over in the sick-rooms.
How are you, Harry? Do write a little more often since I worry so much. Penbrin is waiting for you.
Try to believe that you did all you could in South Africa. One man cannot change a whole system and you showed that black and white are equal. It is not your fault that no one was watching.
With my love,
Hannah.
PS Arthur was killed last month. Esther is expecting a child.
Harry read those last words again and again. He still loved Esther, she still filled his thoughts each night when he could not sleep. He could feel no sadness for Arthur’s death only hope that perhaps now Esther might consider him again. He would write to her when the big push was over.
He looked over at the dim scene, at the observer balloons which hung motionless and he wondered how long Joe would survive. A plane had fallen from the sky yesterday and the pilot had plummeted with it. The War Office would not allow parachutes because they were too heavy. The Germans carried them.
And why no children of their own? How strange, just all these waifs and strays. Was it too hard for Hannah to forget their mother, he wondered. He would write soon and ask her, life was too short to let fear ruin it. He heard the sound of footsteps now and pushed the letter into his pocket.
‘Get some sleep now, Watson,’ his sergeant said. ‘Busy day tomorrow.’
He smiled but there was no humour in his eyes because they both remembered the last two pushes. The others would not though because they were replacements for the dead of that battle. Even Bob was dead, killed by a sniper’s bullet.
Harry nodded and moved along in the dark to the dug-out, feeling for the steps with his feet, holding his hands in front of his face. He felt the Wilson canvas which was hung across the passage and pushed it to one side but it fell back and rasped across his cheek, then a piece of torn blanket brushed into his face as he pushed on past, into the dug-out.
He struck a match and lit a cigarette once the glow could not be seen from outside. The air was fetid and he lit the candle which was already stuck by its own grease on to the lid of a tobacco tin. The flame wavered as the barrage, which always preceded a push, began. In the dim light he saw that Ted, Bob’s replacement, was already asleep, rolled up in the blanket on the floor. He took out the letter again and reread it, holding the paper to the light. Would she take him back, he wondered? He took a pencil from his pocket, it was merely a stub and he wrote out a short letter. He could not wait until the guns and the push were tired and spent.
Dear Esther,
I still love you so much. Can you look more kindly on me now?
Yours,
Harry.
And one to Hannah telling her that this month the cornflowers had been vivid and the poppies too and that there was hope in him again. And that perhaps somehow he should have made the Franks of South Africa see.
He placed them both in the silver cigarette case which his father had given him. He seldom thought of the man now, not after his brute strength had fought against him as he tried to reach Hannah. He did not wish to think of him for if he did he had to face the thought of what his father had done.
Harry opened his hands, looking at the calluses which now marked his fingers, his palms. His shoulders no longer ached so much from the weight of the stretchers but his wound still pulled as he edged along the trenches, his back straining to take the weight of countless men. He had taken three cigarettes from his case and he lit one now, looking at Ted, wondering how he could sleep when they both knew what tomorrow would bring to others and what it might bring to them.
He drew in the vapour and then exhaled, watching the smoke drift up until it dispersed beyond the range of the candle’s glow. There had been so many candles at Arthur’s parties, flickering and illuminating even the very highest corner. How he and Esther had danced, her eyes so full of life, her lips so close to his. How they had laughed and clung close to one another and waved to Arthur and Hannah as they sipped champagne and listened to the orchestra. But he had never known her body and now he ached to do so and perhaps, one day, he might. He smiled and breathed in the taste of the cigarette, savouring its flavour.
He looked round the dug-out. The guns were pounding harder now and he shook his head. It was a different sound now, wasn’t it, Arthur, but perhaps you no longer hear it where you are, my old friend; though the men say the ghosts do not go, will not go until this crazy war is ended.
He held the old table as a whizz-bang landed short and dirt fell from the ceiling. The blanket hanging this side of the canvas billowed and he looked at his hands which had begun to shake as they always did the night before the push.
The Germans were sending their shells over now and the bangs merged into one endless assault. Harry did not sleep but lit the second of his cigarettes at two in the morning and allowed himself to think of Penbrin and the roses; full-headed and heavy with scent, of the children who played with soft-coated guinea-pigs. At four in the morning he lit the third of his cigarettes and thought now of the girl who had stroked guinea-pigs when they were young, of the rope which he had swung for her, of the Penhallon rock-fall and her face as she had watched him emerge safely, her eyes as she had held his hand and then kissed it.
At five, when the gas was discharged he thought of Baralong guessing correctly in the dark long stope, felt his arm pushing him to safety, saw him saying goodbye at the Cape Town docks and then he thought of Esther and the ring on her finger, her blonde hair, her blue eyes and he felt almost young again.
Ted woke as dawn came and as he groaned and ran his hand over his chin Harry moved out. An observation balloon, sausage-shaped, hung swaying in the air.
‘Come on, Joe, shoot the bloody thing down,’ he groaned, seeing the smoke of anti-aircraft shells exploding near the aeroplanes which darted like silverfish above and below it.
‘Cushy job,’ Ted said as he came up the steps and stood beside Harry.
Harry shook his head. He knew the wastage rate. The lice were itching again but he did not scratch, he was too used to them. He rubbed his chin and wished he could shave; that was all. If only he had the time and the hot water, he would love a shave.
Rain was falling but it was not cold. He moved now, towards the rest of the platoon but slipped on the duckboard and felt Ted’s arm as he caught him.
‘You could drown in that,’ Ted said. ‘The mud’s as thick as the sergeant’s head under that water.’
Harry looked at his watch – five-forty. The bombardment that always followed the gas would begin now and so it did, shaking the earth and filling their heads with noise. Neither spoke as they walked and slipped and kept their heads low until they reached the fire-step. Would the poppies still be standing, would the cornflowers survive the day?
The ground shuddered and a machine-gun rattled. A private stumbled on the duckboard
and swore and Harry was glad to hear a human voice above the noise of the guns. A sergeant motioned the private into the fire-bay. A sniper had their range and as Harry looked a bullet thudded past, scoring his neck. He ducked and the graze stung but before he had been forced down he had been able to see that the wire was cut, ready for the division to go over the top.
Shells were passing over. One landed very short and earth dropped on to his helmet, his shoulders. Ted swore and dropped his stretcher. He was only twenty and frightened and Harry touched his shoulder but the lad shrugged him off, flushing and ashamed. The trench smelt of mud and sweat and Harry took out his jackknife and scraped at his trousers, removing the red wet earth. Krupp high-angle howitzer shells tore into the earth close to them and now the air was thick and choking with its fumes. He could not stand the waiting.
He looked along the trench at the men who were drinking a tot of rum, smoking a cigarette. Some talked, some just stood, leaning back on the trench wall. How could they stand it, those men who went over the top in the first wave? Why did they not break ranks and run? Perhaps they were too tired, too numbed by the great machine of war. He looked at their faces and though they were new and young they had the same deep lines as he and the sergeant and hands that shook.
Runners were passing through the centre of the trench, not pausing if men were slow to move but pushing them to one side, cursing and shouting. Their sergeant came from the captain’s dug-out to warn them, the corporals took their places at the ladders and when the whistle blew they climbed up and over the top and one by one the others followed, some with their cigarettes still in their mouths, some throwing them, arching through the air to hiss into the water.
He and Ted remained in the empty trench but the cries and rattle of guns filled it almost before the men had gone and Harry climbed the ladder because he could not wait for dusk but fear dried his mouth as it always did and his legs shook. Shells were landing and machine-guns were tearing at the men, some of whom were past the wire now and then he heard,
A Time for Courage Page 42
