The Cartographer of No Man's Land: A Novel

by P. S. Duffy

  There was a catch in the shell fire as the guns angled up, then the signal and the hurtling rush forward. All thought fled. Through choking smoke and contagion, Angus could see men run—upright at first, then hunched under their heavy loads, scuttling and scrambling over the shuddering earth, desperate to keep pace with the covering barrage. They were instantly lost from view in the thick-swirling smoke and snow. And if they let loose a battle cry as they climbed over the parapet, as they ran, blood pumping, hearts pounding, it was ripped from their lungs, packed down, and trampled to death.

  Behind this chaos, shivering in the snow, the 17th stamped their feet on the hardened mud of Happy Holly and hunkered down against the cold—waiting their turn with rising impatience and growing fear. When it finally came, many hours later, their hands and feet were nearly numb. A runner, dodging shell holes, slid into the trench with word that D Company of the 45th had made it to the red line, but had been pinned down near the heights at the northern end of the ridge. The runner’s eyes were wild. His helmet had come off. He heaved, hands on his knees, before managing to choke out that they were all but decimated by machine-gun fire and trench mortar. Unrelenting, sir, he said, sliced the men up something awful. Most of the company officers were dead and their own machine guns clogged with hardened mud. Conlon sent another runner to carry the news to brigade headquarters.

  “The 45th!” Angus shouted at Conlon. “Jesus. We got to get up there!”

  Conlon blew on his hands and raised an eyebrow. “Anxious to get into it, are you?”

  Twenty-five minutes later, word came back that the 17th was to send in support. Most of the ridge was in Canadian hands by that time, but there were remaining pockets of defenders. In places beyond the ridge, the Germans had regrouped. They continued to hold the high point, Hill 145, and had started a counterattack at Givenchy. A and B Companies from the 17th were to proceed southeast up to the second German line, clear out remaining defenders and hold the line. C and D Companies were to leapfrog over them, find the 45th and help them meet their objective if they hadn’t already.

  They got into position. The signal came. And then they were running and dodging through a tangled jungle of protruding wire and hidden shell holes. His platoon made it past a blur of abandoned weapons, mangled bodies and blood-soaked snow up to the second German trench. B Company dove in and spread down its length to check for the enemy. Conlon led C Company on. Machine-gun fire opened up and Angus kept on running as men up ahead and beside him fell. He rolled into a shallow ditch. Two men ran toward him, then turned and ran the other way and were gone. Another stumbled toward Angus, but tripped and fell on a wounded man whose bayonet pierced him through front to back, pinning him there. It was Zwicker, Angus was sure of it. Kearns tried to pull him off.

  A trench mortar shrieked past. When they could, Angus and Kearns elbowed to the next shell hole. Up the slope, Angus made out three Germans in a huddled circle in front of what looked like a pile of hay, their helmets and greatcoats dusted with snow. Angus aimed his revolver as Kearns, right beside him, pulled out a Mills bomb. Before he could throw it, a huge shape, with wings like a prehistoric bird, hurtled by—legs wide apart, kilt flying. Roddy Gordon! Without missing a beat, he charged them, stabbing the first one in the waist with his bayonet. The three tipped over as one. Roddy stepped back. A grenade clinked out of the open hand of one of the soldiers and rolled toward him. He grabbed it, pulled the pin and shouted, “Here’s one for the live ones!” and hurled it up the ridge. He was instantly spun around by a bullet to the chest and crashed facedown atop the dead Germans. The hay burst into flames. Angus crawled out and heaved him over. With words surely lost to Roddy’s ears, he assured him, “You got ’em. You did.” Roddy’s head lolled to the side, eyes open, frothing blood onto Angus’s knees.

  They left him and headed on, and in what seemed like mere minutes, fell, gasping, into another section of ruined enemy trench. Angus slid down over loose rubble to the bottom. His leg was bleeding, but he felt no pain. Men jumped in after him. They’d lost sight of Conlon and of Publicover’s platoon. Above the trench wall a stream of prisoners, carrying the wounded on stretchers, passed by, ghosts in the falling snow, dipping here and there under their awkward loads as if in a parallel universe.

  Angus led his men farther up the ridge, only it wasn’t really up—it was more across and over and sometimes down. The pock-filled ridge was a featureless slope to nowhere, littered with bodies, water-filled holes, and the ground churned in places to slippery muck. A bullet got Eisner through the neck. Two Germans popped up, one after the other, with rifles, and Angus shot them, one after the other, with barely a pause between and waved the men on until his bleeding leg gave out and he rolled into a crater. Above him, the sun attempted to break through the heavy clouds. In the yellow haze, the falling snow took on an iridescence, and he thought of shimmering water and of oars dipping and falling. It took some minutes before he could grasp that his wound had widened and he was losing a lot of blood. One of the men was on it, peeling away the bloodied kilt from the gash in his thigh. It was Wertz. He bound up the wound without a word. Angus sat up. Men raced past in all directions. Keegan asked if they should get him to an aid station. Angus waved him off and asked for a count. “Eight of us here, counting myself,” Keegan said. “Four missing or dead.” He ticked off the names—Zwicker, Eisner, Bremner, Oxner.

  “Zwicker’s dead. Bremner, too,” Angus said. “Died together. Eisner shot in the neck.”

  Katz said that Oxner was definitely dead, shot in the stomach. LaPointe was missing. McNeil swore he’d been wounded and carried off the field. As he said it, LaPointe appeared.

  “Alright—nine. We’ll head out.” Angus winced and pulled a map of their side of the ridge and his compass from his tunic pocket. The glass was shattered. He stared at it and up at Keegan. “Dead reckoning is what we’ll rely on.”

  “Dead reckoning, yes sir,” Keegan said. “Where to?”

  DEAD RECKONING TOOK them on a stuttering, twisted path up and across the broad slope to where the land rose sharply and to a final reckoning. Shells fired somewhere in the distance. The snow around them was blackened with gunpowder and bright with blood. It might have been hours, it might have been minutes, since they’d left Happy Holly. Time’s linear march had ceased. Angus looked at his watch. 5:07 P.M. A corpse lay at his feet, hands clasping a rifle, eyes wide with surprise, mustache crusted white with snow. Above them, a shadow loomed through the mist and took the shape of a concrete pillbox.

  They had entered the world of the dead. Before them and all around, arrayed in grotesque angles of disfigurement, among blackened stumps of trees, lay bodies. Angus peered again through the frosty mist at the pillbox, hulking above them, then cautiously brushed the snow off the man at his feet and saw the badge of the 45th, and on the next man and the next. Every one from the 45th.

  The men fanned out and checked for survivors. Not one was found. Angus stumbled from corpse to corpse, yanking them up to see their faces, until somewhere through his fevered search he saw boots and heard Keegan’s voice. “Sir?” he said. “I believe the battle’s moved on. Should we . . . carry on over the ridge?”

  Angus, holding a private by the collar, realized the man he held was sliced in half. Keegan was staring at the blood dripping steadily on the snow at Angus’s feet. “You may want to rewrap that, sir,” he said. “Should we move on to—”

  Damn it! They couldn’t move on. Did Keegan not understand that? There were more bodies to check. “We’ll check these bodies,” Angus said. He felt himself weaving.

  “For what exactly, sir?”

  “For—never mind! I’ll do the checking.”

  “Yes sir. We can help check if you tell me what we’re—”

  Again, Keegan looked at the blood, dripping.

  Dropping the corpse, Angus left Keegan dumbfounded and tramped off through filthy slush, through shot-off arms and legs, jerking men up and letting them drop. Every face that was not
Ebbin’s filled him with relief. And horror. It was appalling what he was doing, but he kept on in a frenzy until, at the body of a man with no face left, he dropped to his knees.

  He grunted to a stand and they trudged up the icy hill to the concrete bunker where they were greeted by smashed equipment and dead Germans sprawled about. Angus leaned against a wall while Hanson and Ostler stripped a German corpse of his badge and revolver. Souvenirs. Se souvenir. To remember. Angus prayed he’d forget. Kearns kicked one of the corpses. Angus peeled the bandage off his leg and looked at the wound for the first time—a gash about four inches long, still bleeding, but shallow and beginning to close. He rewrapped it, then got the men going. Some talked about how they’d do the Krauts in, retreat or no, they’d make them pay. But when they reached the eastern slope, all talking ceased. Mouths fell open. What lay before them was too fantastical, too unreal to be true.

  Spread out below, all the way to Lille, was the Douai Plain. Tiny towns and church spires dotted the landscape. Straight roads and railways intersected a neatly laid-out patchwork of flat fields. There was a hint of green on grass and in the still-standing woods. It may as well have been the Garden of Eden. Here was not a trace of the withered, ruined, rat-infested hell they’d lived in for months, for years, for all time. Here was a place unscathed by battle—a place of German occupation, yes, but one of railroads and prospering farms, of standing barns and church steeples, and buildings with rooftops. A world of color and shape and form. It took their breath away.

  Only Hanson spoke. “I’ll be damned,” he said.

  For a long moment, no one moved. Then Angus pulled out his binoculars and scanned the plain for the Lens-Arras Road and the villages of Vimy and Petit Vimy to the southeast, La Chaudière to the east, noting their positions. He drew a quick sketch and stuffed it in his pocket.

  “Get the men. We’re moving out. We’ve got to find the rest of the 17th,” he said to Keegan.

  The men slowly gathered their gear. Angus, limping along in the lead, felt their eyes on him and heard their muttered complaints. They joined the streams of soldiers and prisoners, the lost, the wounded, and those who, with heads down, were just doing their jobs. Angus realized unless he got his wound tended, he would not be able to do his.

  He got directions from some stretcher-bearers to the nearest aid post. He ordered his men to help support the walking wounded. When they reached it, weakened by loss of blood and the sight of faces contorted in pain at the entry, Angus thudded onto a crate with a red cross painted on its side. His leg out stiff, he peeled back his kilt and began to unwrap the bloodied bandage again.

  “Here, you! We need those!” a medic said, pointing to the crate. When he saw Angus’s wound, he bent down. Angus waved him off. The medic pulled out scissors and began to cut the bandage. Angus put his head back and saw only lavender sky and desultory snowflakes spinning, each one unique. See, Simon? Cut the edges, fold again, make more cuts. Not too much, now, or you’ll have nothing left. Unfold it, now. See? Simon’s snowflakes filled the sky. “Don’t cut too much,” he said aloud.

  “No sir. Just pressing it now. Cleaning it out.”

  The medic splashed an orange liquid over the wound. Angus sat bolt upright at the flash of pain.

  “Iodine. There. That breathed some life into you. Wound’s not too deep. Just a few stitches, sir, and then I’ll need that crate of bandages.” He disappeared into the timbered entry from which screams sliced the air, and returned with a needle and black thread.

  “This’ll do the trick.” He pinched the wound with thick fingers and made hasty stitches on the ragged flesh, then wrapped it once again.

  “Now, sir, those bandages you’re sitting on, if you will.” He stepped back. Angus stood and tried to open the crate. He slumped against the wall, dizzy, breathless. How was a simple wound doing him in?

  “Lost some blood there,” the medic said. He pulled out a small vial of smelling salts. “Here, sit down. Keep these. Might come in handy. I’ll see to that crate.”

  Angus managed to thank him. The salts jerked him awake. He was parched, and somehow his canteen was missing. A man next to him was gulping water. Where’d he get it? It was all Angus could do not to grab it from him. “Water?” the man said, and passed his canteen over. Angus took a long swallow and held up the canteen—his own. A glance at the man’s cracked lips, his round eye filling with blood beneath a bandage, and Angus passed it back.

  Katz and LaPointe materialized, and with Angus they stepped around the line of wounded men. The pungent smell of blood gave rise to another wave of nausea. Angus ordered Keegan to round up the rest of the men—they’d head over the ridge, he told them. Their progress was slow, for dusk had fallen. Angus had to forge a path through the debris every few yards, then come back and lead the men. He had to concentrate, concentrate. Then he had to wait, wait until every man passed. Count them, each one. And still the men fell into holes and tripped over wire and ordnance and the dead and wounded. They bumped into other soldiers coming and going, many of them lost and without officers. At some point, Angus wasn’t sure when, they were told by a gunnery captain that the 17th had indeed moved on to the other side of the ridge with the 45th.

  Darkness had fallen by the time they reached the crest. They came upon a concrete dugout. The back wall had been blown away so that, like a cave, it was level with the ground. Angus flicked on his torch and flashed it over an overturned desk, four chairs and two empty crates.

  “Cleaned the place out, eh? Bastards,” Kearns said.

  “Or maybe our own took what was worth taking,” Hanson replied.

  Not quite. In the corner the torch lit up the black metal shaft and pearl handle of a Luger pistol, and next to it, a dead German captain, a bullet through his head. Angus put the pistol in a pocket of his greatcoat and handed Keegan the light as he searched the soldier’s pockets. The first thing Angus found was another Luger, still in its holster. He pulled it out. In the man’s jacket he found a packet of letters, which he thumbed through roughly and replaced. He wanted no reminders of the life the man had led. There seemed no point in moving the body, but Angus closed the eyes and rolled it over so it faced away from them. There was no coat to cover the face, which looked neither startled nor stunned, but simply dead. If there had been, they’d have used it for warmth. He herded the men into the dugout. “No point going further in the dark. Too dangerous with all the debris,” he told them, and they slumped down and huddled together against the cold damp wall.

  He instructed those with water in their canteens to share it. “Got something we can eat? Anyone?” he asked. Boudrey’s eyes lit up and he withdrew a chocolate bar from his tunic pocket like the treasure it was. “Got it in a comfort box.” He carefully peeled back the stiff waxed-paper wrapper and broke the bar into its twelve grooved squares, taking so much time that Ostler grabbed it and the chocolate fell to the ground. He lunged for it. Angus stayed his hand and the men waited as Boudrey slowly picked up every piece. There was something reassuring in his deliberate movements. “Don’t close your fist over it, Boudrey! For the love of God, you’ll melt it,” Ostler bleated. Breathing loudly, undisturbed, Boudrey collected every square in his filthy palm, then with a loopy grin dropped them one by one to open hands.

  “Did yourselves proud today, boys,” Angus said. “A moment of silence for Zwicker, Eisner, Oxner, and Bremner. God rest their souls.” He paused and then told them they’d stay there until first light. But the men kept their heads bowed. “Men?” he said. Without looking up, Hanson said, “What about the rest of it, sir? Like you did for Orland?” Angus nodded.

  “I am the resurrection and the life,” Angus said softly. “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. In the midst of life we are in death. Amen.” The men sat back, satisfied. “Now, loosen your boots. In fact, take them off and rub your feet before you put them back on. Get some sleep.” He started rubbing Boudrey’s feet. If he’d had whale oil, he’d have rubbed it on.
If he’d had a blanket, he’d have tucked them in.

  Keegan and Kearns offered to serve as lookouts, and Angus joined them. The pain in his leg flared briefly and then dulled. He felt a wave of nausea, but it passed. Looking out over the ruins of the parados in the gloom, he wondered if a parados became a parapet when the trench changed hands and the Front moved on. A rhythmic ticking started up, like a halyard tapping a mast. The source—a rope, fixed at the top of the trench, stretching the length of a timber to the ground—was tapping in the wind. Angus leaned his hand against it and hung his head and let the rise of the swells take him beyond the sound of distant shells exploding, the light of flares, beyond hunger and fatigue, far beyond and back, until he was awake again, on deck, on watch.

  WHEN FIRST LIGHT came, the wind turned sharp. There was no snow falling, just a gray haze. Angus took out his binoculars and scanned the plain below. Canadian troops were on the move and he hoped the Germans were in retreat. He bent his leg a couple of times—stiff, but much less painful. He thanked God for the medic. He still had the limp, but felt no fever.

  It was then he sensed a presence. Pistol drawn, he inched around a pile of the rubble. A German officer fell to his knees and threw up his hands. It was light enough to see his eyes, but Angus couldn’t read them.

  “Canada,” the man said. Angus had been prepared for “Kamerad,” not “Canada.” The officer said it again, and, in his accent, Angus pictured it as “Kanada,” which helped him keep his distance when the officer clutched his side and moaned. Hands up again quickly, he again said, “Canada.” Then added, “Gooood.” He tried to smile, then collapsed on all fours. He pulled back his greatcoat. His holster was empty.

  Angus took a step closer and the man lunged for him. Angus fired. The officer fell over, a knife in his hand. The Luger fell from Angus’s pocket as he leaned over the man. The German looked at it sadly. “Yours?” Angus said. The man nodded. Angus kicked the gun away. “You could have surrendered, damn it. I’d have taken you in.” The officer managed a smirk at this impossibility, his cheeks now pale. A line of blood, bright against the colorless lips, formed and filled and trickled down the side of his mouth.