It was true. Dave had seen hundreds of soldiers travelling towards Ypres. The surrounding area was awash with Allied troops as they were disgorged from trains, trucks, wagons and requisitioned village buses, while others arrived on foot en route to the front-line.
They watched as the third ammunition wagon traversed the road. Halfway along the long hessian wall, a shell made a direct hit. The wagon was speared up and onto its end by the force of the impact. There was no movement from man or animals once the dust settled.
Dave found himself caught up by the forward movement of the men. Soon they were running along the road, heads down, as shells buzzed around them. Spurts of dirt signalled how close they were to death. He tried to keep up with Luther and Thaddeus but instead found himself stationed between Harold and Thorny. Snatches of this new environment sped by; hessian, wrecked wagons, artillery shells, the bloated carcasses of horses and dead soldiers lined the road. A few fortunate men had their last resting place marked by a cross or an upturned rifle stuck into the ground, sometimes with a steel helmet on top.
By late morning they had left the plank road, which veered to the north-west, and were in a newly dug trench. The men were in good spirits. They had cheated death again and the relief showed itself in ribald jokes as they drank water and talked of the engineers and soldiers who had gone before them to cart timber, construct roads and dig trenches. Dave was beyond such idle banter and he noted that Harold too had distanced himself from everyone save Thorny.
‘I don’t like it,’ Harold said. ‘There are fortified farms out there with blockhouses, concrete pillboxes for machine gunners, underground bunkers and barbed wire.’
‘We’ll be right, mate,’ Thorny placated. ‘Besides, you promised me that you’d see me through this bunfight safe and sound, so how about I return the favour?’ The two friends shook hands.
Dave squirrelled back against the trench wall and, tugging off his helmet, turned his skin to the sun. The Allies had been fighting around Ypres since 1915 and they still hadn’t made much of a dent. This was it, he reckoned. Having survived Hellfire Corner, he doubted his luck could hold out forever. They had got in, but would they get out again? Putting pen to paper, he began to write.
I’ve done my best but I think my time is nearly up. Many fine men – mates – have gone before me, so I know that should I not make it home I will be in fine company. I wonder now if I should have accepted Captain Egan’s commission and become a war artist. At least then I would have paid tribute to the gallantry I have been witness to. But then who but those who have seen what we have seen would understand the horrors we have witnessed? If I do make it home to Australia, I will never speak of the war again. No one should know of the hell we have seen.
It’s strange, but I see death as a smudge on the horizon, like a storm hanging out to the west of Sunset Ridge. The smudge grows in size daily like a new world waiting to be discovered yet it remains at bay, waiting, marking time. I sense its presence but I find myself lost in the immensity of an event beyond comprehension. At this very moment I know that none of us sitting in this trench will ever be as strong and as fit and as brave as we are now, and we will never have this moment again. Our mortality makes us fearless yet it takes us to our death.
Dave scanned the words, signed his name and dated it. Now his thoughts were on paper he needed to be rid of them, but he also wanted to share them, to know that one person on earth knew his mind beyond the narrow trench he inhabited. It was not the type of letter a son sent to his mother. From his sketchpad he tore out the drawing of the war dog with the Frenchman’s tags around his neck and, folding it carefully, included it with the letter. Then he addressed it to Corally Shaw.
Crawling on his belly, Dave scrambled like a dung beetle beneath a clouded moon. The last he had seen of Luther and Thaddeus was when they had attacked a German machine gunner in his pillbox minutes earlier. The two brothers had rushed forward under cover from Harold’s Lewis gun, Luther managing to drop a number of grenades through the observation slit in the brick fortification. Dave manoeuvred his way over and between the dying, the dead and the decomposed. A German flare went up illuminating the wrecked landscape and he tumbled into the partially blown-up pillbox. Heart pounding, he listened for others who may also have sought refuge there, carefully slipping his knife free of its scabbard. He could hear ragged breathing. The blade of the knife glinted as the moon escaped the clouds overhead.
‘He’s dead.’
The muffled Australian voice startled him. ‘Harold? Is that you?’ He pulled away a sandbag. Harold squatted in the far corner, Thorny in his arms. Two dead Germans, one with a familiar slice to the neck, confirmed Luther’s part in the action.
‘Holy hell, Harold, I thought you were Fritz. Are you wounded?’
‘My leg’s gone to sleep.’
Dave peered over the shattered wall of the pillbox. ‘We’ll have to make a run for it. Come on, Harold.’
‘I can’t leave Thorny,’ he replied.
‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Dave said gruffly. There was no time to waste.
‘Of course he’s dead. We’re all dead.’
‘Not yet we’re not. Come on,’ Dave implored.
‘You just don’t get it, cobber. It’s just a matter of time. We’re the decoy. Wipe out those bloody Australians, the Pommies are saying, make use of them first. We’re just cannon fodder. Cannon fodder, and they’re calling us murderers back home.’ He held up a pistol, his hand shaking. Dave realised Harold’s nerves had got the better of him.
‘I’ve got this luger. I took it off Fritz, and I’ll use it too, I will. I’ll shoot you first and then Thaddeus and Luther and I’ll do myself last. It’ll save us all from being blown apart, put us back in charge of our own lives. Don’t worry, I’m a good shot. You know I’m a good shot. That’s why I’m a gunner and I’ve killed some men, haven’t I?’
‘Yes, Harold.’ Dave felt his own guts churn as he slowly reached out his hand and gently placed it on the pistol and lowered it. ‘You have.’
‘It’s the only way, Dave.’ He hugged Thorny. ‘He cried, you know. He said he was scared of dying. Can you imagine?’ He smoothed the thumb thickness of Thorny’s eyebrows with a patient finger. ‘I told him he wouldn’t be alone for long, that we’d be with him soon enough, and he smiled, he did. He smiled.’
Dave peered over the wall again. The artillery was still raging; whizz-bangs were skyrocketing overhead. Soldiers were rushing past them, their soldiers. He slid back beside Harold. ‘Our boys are retreating. Like I said, mate, we’ll have to make a run for it.’
Harold grabbed the front of Dave’s tunic. ‘You’re a good shot. I’ve seen you. You could have been a sniper.’
Dave loosened Harold’s grip. ‘Can we talk about this back in the trench?’
‘I want you to kill him. I want you to kill the German that did this to Thorny.’
‘Harold, you’ll never recognise him.’
‘Sure I will. He was young and weedy looking with an egg-shaped skull. I would have got him only that he came from behind after Luther took this position and Thorny flung himself between him and me. He died instead of me and I promised him that he wouldn’t die. You’ve gotta do it, Dave. I can’t hold a pistol anymore. My nerves are shot. I can barely manage the Lewis gun.’
‘Sure,’ Dave agreed, ‘I’ll do it. Now let’s get out of here.’
‘I’m staying for just a bit longer.’ Harold glanced briefly at Thorny before turning glazed eyes on Dave. ‘Now piss off back to the trenches.’ Very slowly he raised the Luger and pointed it at Dave’s chest.
‘Okay,’ Dave agreed. ‘Give me a minute.’ As Harold tucked the pistol into his tunic, David punched him in the face, once, twice. ‘Jeez.’ He shook his hand in pain, Harold was out cold. He reefed Thorny’s identification discs from around his neck and checked his pockets. There was a picture of a young
woman, a baby tucked under each arm, and the sketch Dave had completed of him while they were on furlough. For a second he contemplated the drawing, then he pocketed the few possessions and tried to lift Harold’s arm across his shoulder.
‘Holy frost, not Harold?’ Luther jumped down into the pillbox. His tunic and hands were covered in blood.
‘He’s only knocked out, but Thorny’s gone.’
Thaddeus dived in beside them as machine-gun fire peppered the entrance. ‘N-not the best place for a chinwag, fellas.’ Assessing the situation, he heaved Thorny over his shoulder. Luther draped Harold across Dave’s back and lifted the Lewis gun. ‘Make a run for it. I’ll c-cover you.’
Thaddeus hesitated.
‘Don’t pull rank on me now, brother.’
Luther opened up the Lewis gun on the enemy as his brothers scrambled over the shattered wall. Supporting fire came from his left and right flanks. He backed up carefully, lobbed a grenade for good measure, and then ran like a rabbit, zigzagging across the open field as he followed his brothers back to the trench.
‘How is he?’ Thaddeus squatted beside Luther and Dave. They were in an elbow of the trench with a makeshift piece of canvas slung overhead and empty munitions crates as seats. The rain bowed the canvas above them and Luther stuck a rifle butt against the sagging material, forcing the water to cascade over the sides.
‘He’s got a busted nose,’ Luther said suspiciously. ‘He’s in the d-dug-out.’
Thaddeus took over from Dave, who had been using a hand-pump for the last hour. Their efforts made little dent in the continually accumulating water. ‘Do you want to share anything with us, Dave?’ Thaddeus asked. ‘You don’t really expect us to believe the story you told Captain Egan.’
‘I had to punch him to save him. I couldn’t leave him there.’
Thaddeus rubbed the stubble on his chin. ‘Well, we all have our moments.’
‘What if he remembers what happened?’ Dave asked.
Luther drank down a ration of rum and wiped cracked lips. ‘Duck,’ he grinned.
Within an hour the rain stopped. Captain Egan appeared and delegated sentries to stand watch while work parties were formed to check damage and continue trying to hand-pump the water lying at the bottom of the trench. Harold reappeared with a swollen nose. He stood next to Dave who readied himself in case Harold decided to punch him in retaliation. Surprisingly, it seemed Harold had no memory of the night before, except for Thorny’s death. Spreading his feet, Dave leaned into the sandbags cradling the small sniper hole, the butt of the rifle pushed squarely into his shoulder. The rifle sight scanned twisted barbed wire, the remains of a dray, a dislodged sandbag and the corpse of a German. Sweat dripped down his forehead, blurring his sight.
‘That’s him.’ Harold stood nearby, his eyesight fixed on the mirrors attached to the end of a rod that served as a homemade periscope. ‘See there,’ he snorted through his bloody nose. ‘Directly above stinking Fritz and to the right of that dislodged sandbag. Pale and weedy looking and egg-shaped, that’s the one that killed Thorny.’
Dave directed the rifle sight on the young man’s chest and followed the pale German’s hands as they lit the stub of a cigarette. In the half-light he waited for the soldier to take a few puffs, to linger over the cloying smell of the tobacco, to draw some solace from the wafting smoke.
‘Kill him, Dave.’
‘I can’t do it, Harold. Everyone’s resting, for God’s sake, them and us.’
‘Look at me.’ Harold’s right hand was shaking so badly a cup of water would have been spilt in seconds. ‘I can’t, so you have to. Have you forgotten about what they are doing to our mates? If his sight was aimed squarely at your chest he wouldn’t hesitate. Shoot him.’
The German was looking in their direction. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen. Dave felt he was looking at himself.
‘Do it,’ Harold urged.
A single shot echoed across the wasteland. The German soldier was flung back against the sandbags. The boy hung momentarily in a void of muted grey, his arms outstretched, head arched backwards. The unblemished whiteness of the enemy’s throat slowly slid from view. Dave lowered the rifle.
‘What the hell is going on?’ Captain Egan’s spittle covered his skin. ‘Jesus, man, we’ve been fighting for days and the first sign of reprieve you fire off a stray round.’
An angry voice called out across no-man’s land from the enemy trench. No translation was necessary.
‘We’ll be lucky if we don’t get a whizz-bang on us in retaliation.’ Captain Egan cupped his hands and called out the German word for sorry. ‘Thaddeus, take your brother’s place. Dave, you’re on pre-dawn watch.’
Harold turned to the captain, his nose bulbous and bloody. ‘He killed Thorny.’
‘Jesus,’ Captain Egan repeated before striding off.
Dave couldn’t stop staring at the enemy trench. He could hear the Germanic mutterings of complaint as a shaft of light shone down from dark blue clouds. In that moment craters rose up, spewing forth decomposed and dismembered bodies, barbed wire scrambled after crawling featureless soldiers and the German trench rushed towards him with a violent lurch. Dave backed away.
‘Are you all right, Dave?’ Thaddeus asked, moving to the trench wall.
‘Sure, I’m fine,’ Dave replied, except he knew he wasn’t. He’d had nightmares before, but never hallucinations.
‘Well, you kept Harold happy,’ Luther said, prodding at the contents of a can of bully beef with a knife. ‘And I’m glad you got him.’
Dave sat on an upturned crate next to Harold, who had removed his boots and was massaging his toes.
‘The fighting I can handle, but it’s when we stop.’ Luther chewed hungrily. ‘I can’t bear the waiting, the monotony of it all. I need things to keep happening so I don’t think too much.’
‘Did you hear that?’ Thaddeus said in wonder. ‘You just said a whole sentence, Luther, without stuttering.’ He lifted his rifle and peered over the top of the trench.
Luther swallowed a mouthful of meat. ‘Did I?’
‘Yep. You’ve hardly been stuttering at all, and now,’ Thaddeus grinned, ‘you’re cured.’
Harold examined the sole of his foot. ‘Even my planter’s wart has gone. Must have other things to worry about, eh?’
Luther jabbed at the meat in the tin. ‘Well, something good had to come outta this blasted war.’
‘Thorny had a premonition,’ Harold said quietly. ‘He told me he was going to get knocked and I ignored him. A man shouldn’t ignore it when a mate needs to talk about it. You remember that, Dave. Anyway, you did a good thing, not that we’ll know if that bastard you knocked was the culprit. But I feel better, don’t you, Luther?’
‘The only good Fritz is a dead Fritz.’ Luther’s knife stabbed the air.
‘You said he killed Thorny!’ Dave complained. ‘You said you saw him up close, you said . . . Shit, we’re not here to kill anyone that takes your fancy.’
Dave felt his eyes moisten and he bit his lip until the pain cleared his head. He wasn’t like the others. He couldn’t hate people just because they were Germans. Each side was following orders in a war orchestrated by generals who never came anywhere near the front-line. Dave went into battle because he was told to, like the young men on the other side of the barbed wire. He had nothing against the poor bloody Germans and he figured it was possible that Fritz felt the same. Where Dave stood there was no hate in war, only duty. ‘Steady on, Dave. Now there’s one less of the bastards to kill us,’ Luther argued.
Unscrewing his canteen, Dave took a sip of water. He could sense the others waiting for him to agree, to say something that would make them all equal again, comfortable. ‘No matter how we try to convince ourselves of the righteousness of our actions,’ Dave began, ‘causing a man’s death is no easy thing; at least
it isn’t for me.’
‘Holy Frost, Dave,’ Luther said as he scraped the inside of the tin, ‘you’ll have me thinking I’m back in the schoolroom with Miss Waites if you keep this up.’
Overhead, dark twirling clouds mingled with a creamy whiteness. Dave closed his eyes and imagined the blue-green swirl of the river that ran through the heart of Sunset Ridge. He was riding towards the life force of the property, his mount eager for a gallop in the fresh morning air. There was a rise coming in the waterway, glistening bubbles on the surface signifying a coming flood. His hands gripped the reins and the horse flew over the whorls and curls within the bark of the fallen timber they jumped. Then a figure appeared through the trees. It was Corally Shaw.
‘You better get some sleep, Dave.’ Picking up his rifle, Thaddeus leaned against the sandbags. ‘We don’t want you nodding off before dawn.’
Dawn. Never again would Dave conjure up the wispy pink tendrils that stroked the sky without shuddering at what might appear out of the mist of no-man’s land. Shoving his fingers into his pockets, he touched the last letter received from Corally. In it she spoke of life after the war. He squeezed the well-read letter. ‘You were imagining home, weren’t you?’ Luther asked. ‘I could tell. Tell us what you saw, Dave, and then draw it for us.’
‘Yeah, go on, Dave. Draw us a picture of home,’ Harold enthused.
Dave leaned back against the trench wall, pulling his hat low over his face. Although he tried, the image of Sunset Ridge melted away to be replaced by the many faces of the soldiers sketched since arriving in France. Their features were indistinct and yet they peopled his mind like a small town. Each portrait was attached to a body, a life connected to loved ones and friends and neighbours, and most of them were either dead or wounded. At night, when Dave closed his eyes, the drawings of the lost blew across the battlefield. The images papered a world on fire and just as quickly disintegrated.
Banyan, south-west Queensland, Australia
Sunset Ridge Page 37
