by Dan Simmons
They used gas. I suppose if I were Jerry, I would have chosen gas as well. It makes things difficult for us with very little effort on Jerry’s part. Yesterday it was just tear gas, but in sufficient quantities that we all had to don goggles or gas masks. The sight was quite absurd—literally thousands of lorries, buses, messengers on bicycles and motorbikes, long lines of ambulances, artillery caissons, horse-drawn wagons, even a detachment of cavalry—all mixed in with thousands of marching men in a cloud of white dust that rose a thousand feet in the air and mixed with tear gas so thick that the valley was absolutely drenched in it. Some of the lorry and wagon drivers had no masks—evidently they were not considered combatants and had been issued none—and the image of them trying to drive their vehicles or teams of horses with tears streaming down their faces, mucus literally dripping from their chins, was beyond absurdity.
The number of dead horses lining the roads up Sausage Valley is absolutely staggering. It is as if someone had decided to pave the roadsides with rotting horseflesh. It is not uncommon to see the remains of two or three horses mingled so that one cannot tell which spill of intestines belongs to which carcass. And everywhere the occluded, staring eyes, so much more reproachful, I think, than the gaze of our human dead. The flies are everywhere, of course, as well as the stink. Many of us who have been this way before brought perfume purchased in Amiens so as to hide the stink of decay that sets into our skin and uniforms, but that is a losing proposition. Better to ignore it. Meanwhile, the snarl of traffic, shouts of drivers, the sobbing and slobbering of men and horses caught without masks, the muffled curses of sergeants—all viewed and heard distantly through our clumsy masks.
One old lorry driver I talked to while the Brigade was waiting an hour for the snarl ahead to lessen told me not to trust the awkward mass of mica and canvas with its clumsy nosepiece tube with which the army has issued us. Through that abomination, I asked him what he was using. It looked like an old rag but appeared to be doing the trick.
“Piss on one of me socks,” he said. He held it up to show me that he was not jesting. “Works better than that bloody froggy headpiece you’re peering out of. Want to give it a try?”
I restrained my eagerness.
The Anzacs {Ed. note—Australian and New Zealand troops} made up the bulk of the traffic both toward and away from the Front yesterday. Evidently their attack that began sometime after 1 A.M. on Sunday morning is still going on in bloody stages. At least the idiots at Headquarters have learned not to send men over the top in daylight. Little good the darkness seems to have done the Scots and Anzacs who have been fighting for Pozieres and the little copses of woods around it: the ambulances are full and there are dozens of burial centres working overtime just back of the trenches.
It seems my lot always to come to war in the command of burial parties. While the 14th is to stay in reserve behind the Australians, our first order of business is to put our lads to work burying Australians. It is dirty work, but at least the bodies have not been out on the wire for a week or more.
The shelling is very fierce. I was pleased to find that our reserve trenches were on the Front just a few days ago, so the dugouts are deep and the facilities well prepared. I am sharing a dugout that must be twenty feet below ground level with two other lieutenants named Malcolm and Sudbridge. Captain Brown is just down the trench a bit and his dugout is even deeper than ours.
We have bunks in ours, shelves, a rotty strip of burlap to keep the light in and the gas out, and even a table at which to sit and play cards. The whole place is lit by two hurricane lamps and the effect is rather cozy. It is much cooler than the cauldron of mid-summer dust and heat above.
An hour or two ago Lieutenant Malcolm suggested that we level the ground under the table, which seemed a good idea since the platform was a bit wobbly. Young Malcolm and Sudbridge had set to with a will, digging out clay to make a nice flat area under each leg, when suddenly Malcolm scraped away the last layer of lime above some rotting blue cloth, “It looks like some Frog soldier lost his tunic,” Malcolm said naïvely, still digging.
The smell filled the dugout a second before the remnants of the hand and arm were exposed.
I went for a walk to smoke my pipe and confer with Captain Brown. When I returned sometime later, the dirt had been filled back in and the boys were playing cards on the wobbly table.
I had chosen an upper bunk on the silly assumption that it would be more difficult for the rats to reach me up here—I hate the thought of those huge, sleek buggers crawling across my face in the dark—but a few minutes ago I noticed that the reinforcing timber above me seemed to be shimmering slightly, as if the surface of the wood were moving. I raised a lantern to the timber and found that it was literally crawling with lice. For half an hour after I turned out the light, I could feel the things falling on my chest and cheeks. Unable to sleep, I came out here to the firestep to write this by the light of the bombardment.
The Lady has not come. I would say that this place is not worthy of her, but I know that is not the reason. I have faith that I will see her again though.
Though we are in the reserve trenches, we are still within direct view and rifle shot of the German lines outside of Pozieres. Bullets strike the sandbags above my head with a familiar sound.
I can feel the lice seeking the warm folds and pleats of my almost-new uniform. I know from experience that I will try to find and crush them for several days, then give it up and live with the constant crawling on my flesh.
It is time now to go back in to my bunk to sleep. I have my first inspection tour of the platoon in the trenches in three hours.
Friday, 28 July, 8.00 A.M.—
The Colonel called me back to his elaborate dugout yesterday and demanded to know why I had requested transfer to the 14th Division. I admitted that I had not—that I had wanted to join the 34th to be with some of my school chums. The Colonel, a dyspeptic, pale little man, slammed down some flimsies and muttered an oath. It seems that Headquarters had got wind of a screw-up—my papers should have specified the 34th after all—and now everyone had their bowels in an uproar over some clerk’s error.
“Well, what the hell do you propose we do about this, O’Rourke?” growled the Colonel, despite the fact that my name was quite plainly printed on the various forms in front of him.
I was at a loss. It seemed inconceivable to me that in the midst of all this carnage—my men had been burying Australians, Scots, and New Zealanders all week—anyone would give a tinker’s damn about one junior lieutenant posted to the wrong division.
“We can’t send you to the 34th,” grumbled the Colonel. “They don’t have any paperwork on you and are busy rebuilding. And we bloody well can’t keep you here if Headquarters keeps sending up rockets.”
I nodded and wished that the whole thing would just be dropped. I had begun to get to know the other subalterns—Malcolm and Sudbridge particularly—and had struck up an actual friendship with Captain Brown and several of the sergeants.
“Here, sign this,” said the Colonel, sliding papers toward me across a battered table.
I looked at the forms. “A request to transfer back to The Rifle Brigade, Sir?” I said. It already seemed like an age since I had seen the few survivors of my old Brigade march out of Albert.
The Colonel had turned back to more important papers. “Yes, yes,” he said, waving at me over his shoulder to sign. “You’ll stay here until we can get a replacement, but that shouldn’t be more than a week or two. Let’s just send you back to where you belong, eh, O’Rourke?”
“Lieutenant Rooke, Sir,” I said, but the brown-toothed little homunculus was paying no attention to me. I signed the papers and left.
It is only now, some hours later, that I think about what this might mean. Yesterday I heard from Sergeant Rowlands, and he mentioned in his note that the reserve trenches near Calonne were quite as cushy as the survivors of the Brigade had hoped. They had every wish to sit out the rest of the war there. I
f my transfer comes through…
This way lies madness. I have too much faith in the God of Irony to believe that anything as simple as another transfer will save me.
9.00 P.M., the same day—
A hot, sticky night. The sky over No Man’s Land is the color of boiled lemons. Everyone here is moving slowly, desultory with the heat, almost wishing back the heavy rains that have plagued us all summer here along the Somme. Even the dugouts are too stuffy so men take their sleep shifts fully clothed, lying full length on duckboards, a sandbag for a pillow. Luckily for us, it seems that even the German snipers are too enervated to ply their trade with much enthusiasm.
Word is that the Australians tried once again to take the windmill that has been such a sticking point near Pozieres. All we see are the hundreds and hundreds of wounded men trying to get back to dressing stations. Some are on stretchers. Some are being helped along by their friends. Others stagger along by themselves until someone gives them a hand or they simply collapse in one of the trenches or supply roads.
This afternoon I was coming back with Sergeant Ackroyd and two privates from a detail down in Sausage Valley when I happened to glance aside at a line of British bodies lying alongside the trail. What caught my eye was that all seven of the men were wearing kilts. This was no surprise since the Royal Scots Brigade of the 51st Division had been taking heavy losses for two weeks. These bodies had been covered with tarps and each foot was tagged with the yellow card which meant that the burial detail would return later, but I noticed that one of the tarps had been pushed aside. The man lying under it had red hair and looked to be an officer. A large cat was lying on the man’s tartan chest and was quite happily eating his face.
I stopped and shouted. The cat ignored me. One of the privates threw a rock. It struck the body but the cat did not look up. I nodded to Sergeant Ackroyd who ordered the two men to chase the cat away.
The result was quite surprising. The cat did not deign to lift its face from its meal until the two men were quite close. Then, as they shouted and waved their arms, the overfed beast leaped at them, spitting and clawing. The Irish Private—O’Branagan I think his name is—had bent down to shoo the cat away and lurched back with bloody clawmarks across his face.
The cat ran into the basement of a cottage tumbled by shell fire, and the Private hesitated. He had unslung his rifle and was holding it in the proper attitude for defense against bayonet attack.
“Oh bloody hell,” muttered the Sergeant and he and I went forward and descended into the basement. It was obvious that unless we did something about the cat, it would return to its meal as soon as we had departed.
The basement was a mass of tumbled stones, charred beams, and shadowy recesses. We had to advance through the catacombs in a sort of half-crouch. What little light that made its way through the rafters, beams, and charred floorboards above was weak indeed. The Sergeant had borrowed the frightened Private’s rifle; I considered taking my pistol out of its holster, but contented myself with holding my cane a bit higher. The whole thing had become laughable.
A shifting of loose rocks in the deepest regions of the sloping basement caused the Sergeant and me to turn. There was a sort of root cellar beneath the cellar. I would have given a quid at that moment to have been carrying a hand torch. I am afraid that I hesitated a second too long at the sepulchral opening to that lower circle of darkness, for the Sergeant said in a hearty voice, “Here, Sir, let me go first. I’ve always had crackerjack vision in the dark.”
I let the burly NCO squeeze pass and crouched to see what I could see. I had the distinct image of him bayoneting that ghoulish monster and something about the thought of the blade sliding into soft fur brought back the memory of wet wool and made me a bit queasy.
Suddenly I heard the Sergeant whisper “Mother of Christ,” and he stopped on the middle of six stone steps leading into the deeper cellar. I did take my pistol out then, and stepped down to stand next to him.
It took a minute for my eyes to adapt to the very dim light. There were three human bodies in there, perhaps four. They had been there long enough and the cellar was cool enough that the stench was not much greater than the constant background scent of decay this close to the Front. I could see now from the bits of rotting cloth and remaining blonde hair that it looked like a mother had brought her two toddlers and a very small baby down to escape the shelling. But the shelling had found them. That or poison gas.
But it was not the human remains that had brought the Sergeant up short and which now caused me to grip my cane and pistol with renewed strength. The five kittens—although they were too large, too fat, to be called kittens—raised their faces from their nibbling. They were inside the mother and the larger of the children. Nothing was left of the baby except yellowed lace and white bones.
The Sergeant let out a cry then and rushed forward with his bayoneted rifle. The kittens scattered—the backs of the corpses were as obviously hollow as the front—and before he could reach any of them, the animals were in the tumble of blackened timbers where we could not follow.
I happened to look up then at the tangle of beams above us and a larger set of yellow eyes was watching us with what I perceived as demonic interest. At that moment the cat and kittens began to yowl—or so I tell myself now—and the sound rose in volume until the Sergeant and I could only stand with our heads swiveling, not believing the intensity of the noise.
I had heard this chorus before. In No Man’s Land. And I had been part of it.
“Come on,” I said to the Sergeant. We returned to the surface and stood guard over the ruins until O’Branagan returned with two canvas bags of heavy Mills grenades, three wine bottles, and the jerry can of petrol I had ordered him to scrounge or steal.
The grenades threw up a huge pall of dust and rock chips. The Sergeant and I made sure that we had lobbed at least one bomb into every recess we could find there. O’Branagan had filled the bottles, we used bits of an old shirt from the other Private’s pack for fuses, and then I lit each wick with my trench lighter. The explosions were impressive enough, but the fire was even more so. I noticed that the Sergeant had kept the Private’s rifle and watched carefully while the ruins burned and the already-blackened timbers fell into the smoldering pit.
Nothing emerged either before or after the fire.
A platoon of the 6th Victoria Brigade were plodding toward the Front as we finished our work, and I noticed the strange looks they gave us.
Just minutes ago I was riding my bicycle back that way in the dusk to carry a message to Headquarters when I glanced up to see the smoke still rising. The tarp was intact across the Scot’s body, just as it had been when we set it back in place. But it seemed that the canvas over the face was rucked too high, and moving slightly.
I told myself that it was a trick of the failing light and pedaled on.
Tuesday, 1 August, 2.30 A.M.—
Writing this on the firestep outside Captain Brown’s dugout. The bombardment is heavy enough that I can see the page to move my pencil.
I have come to understand that Death is a jealous suitor.
I think of the women waiting at home—mothers, sisters, lovers, wives—and of the proprietary way they speak of us—of the dead and doomed to die. It is an arrogant conceit on their part to think that they can hold the memory of us like ashes and bones in an urn.
Even our memory is being devoured here.
When you see the millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go…
Then, scanning all the o’ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore.
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.10
{Ed. note—In the last line here, Rooke has crossed out “hers” and substituted the “his” we know from his published poem.}
God Almighty, I love life. Even this vile place, where the trees are shattered stubs
and where nothing grows but craters, even the sights, scents, sounds, and stirrings of this place are preferable to the unchanging nothingness of the Great Darkness.
As much as I love nature, music, exercise, riding to hounds, spring mornings, autumn evenings…as much as I love these things and bring them to mind when I think life… I love women more.
I was just fifteen when I took my fifteen-year-old second-cousin on a walk down in the Weald to the hop-farm there with its unusual line of white-cowled hop-kilns. Twenty tall hop-kilns, rising above the barns like the imagined Alps above equally imagined alpine chalets, the tops of the kilns tipped white like the apex of the icing-cone Mr. Leeds used at the bakery to put writing on the celebration cakes.
Her name was Evelyn, my second-cousin, and we walked into the edge of the forest near the hop-farm quite innocently. The trail there was little used, but a quicker return to our house above the Weald. I remember the heat of that day, much like the recent hot days here on the Somme but nothing at all like them as well. The air was still that day, but leaf-dappled and alive to the hop of insects in the tall grass, birds in the upper tiers of the forest, and the scrabble of squirrels and unseen wild things behind and within the hedges.
Evelyn had brought two sweet cakes and we sat to eat them in a sheltered place near the stream that was almost lost in undergrowth. The last time I had seen my cousin she had been dressed in a hand-embroidered kimono frock that was such the rage for children then; today she was dressed in a girlish version of a Gibson Girl outfit: long skirt, a shirt with pale blue stripes and long cuffs the same color as the stripes, a lemon-colored cravat, and a straw boater. Her hair was clasped near the base of her neck, her lashes were long, her blouse was gathered at her thin waist, her cheeks were rather pink—all and all she looked very grown up.
