BAGGER LED THE boys back to their dugout, where the three men they’d left sleeping now sat around their makeshift table, drinking tea, smoking, and playing cards.
“’Bout time you got back, Bagger,” said a large man. He had long auburn sideburns, a scattering of teeth, and no neck. His voice grated through his throat like a spade against gravel. “Where’s Max?”
“He’s running messages,” Bagger replied.
“Command better not wear him out. We need him well rested for later.”
“Don’t you worry about Max. He’ll be ready.”
“He better be.” The large man motioned to the empty chair beside him. “We’re getting ready to play pontoon. You in?”
“No chance, Mole. You chaps took all my earnings last time we played. I’ve got nothin’ to wager.”
George stepped forward. “I do.” He reached in his pocket and threw a couple of shillings into the small pile on the table, eager for a bit of card-playing to relax—and to relieve these fellows of their money.
“Who are these lads?” asked a slip of a man with watery eyes magnified by lenses twice the width of George’s thumb.
Bagger motioned to the boys. “Say hello to our new attached infantry, Bats. Hellfire Jack thinks we need a few more beasts of burden.” He glanced back at Frederick. “Though I don’t think Eton here’s seen much burden in his life.”
Frederick’s nostrils flared with indignation, but he kept quiet.
“These boys will be hauling clay and timber and shadowing us while they learn the ropes,” Bagger continued.
Mole pushed back from the table. “Beasts of burden? More like babes of burden.” He circled the boys in slow, disapproving steps before stopping in front of Thomas. “How old are you, lad?”
“Eighteen.”
Mole leaned down so he was eye to eye with Thomas. When Thomas didn’t step back or look away, he smiled with the same crooked grin, sparse teeth, and glint in his eyes as the jack-o’-lanterns Thomas and James used to carve from turnips and potatoes to scare their little sisters. “Eighteen what? Months?”
“Let ’im be, Mole,” Bagger said, waving him back to the table. “If Hellfire Jack’s not questioning his age, neither are we. Besides, we need all the help we can get. I was in a meeting at the command center with Major-General Harington and the other crew leaders before picking up these lads. Jones’s crew is almost finished with the Kruisstraat Four chamber, which leaves only Banning’s crew working on the Ontario Farm gallery and us.”
“If Jones’s crew is almost done, why doesn’t command send us their tunnelers?” Bats asked as he shuffled the cards.
“They’re being sent to Vimy along with most of the hundred and seventy-fifth to help the French with dugouts for the Second Army.”
Bats passed Mole the deck. “So we’re to finish two galleries and chambers while Banning’s crew just has one to dig?”
“Major-General Harington ordered that we abandon the Wytschaete Wood chamber, so we’re down to one.”
Mole slammed a hand on the table, causing Charlie to jump back. “What? Why?”
“There’s not enough time to finish both,” Bagger explained. “He wants us to focus on finishing the gallery and chamber at Maedelstede Farm. It’s a race to the finish line, chaps, and we’re currently losing.”
“Not exactly a fair race when our gallery has to be almost one hundred and ten yards longer than Banning’s,” Mole grumbled, “especially if they’re sending us children to help.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Bagger said. “Harington commanded that all twenty-four chambers be completed and ready by June, so we’re accepting any extra hands he sends our way.” He tossed a fleeting glance at Thomas. “Even if they are small.”
Thomas tucked his hands in his trouser pockets.
“What happens in June?” George asked, retrieving his two shillings and snatching an extra while the men weren’t looking.
“Nothing you need to know about now,” Bagger said. “You just concern yourselves with packing bags with clay, hauling the spoil up top, and keeping your mouths shut.”
“What are we digging all these tunnels and chambers for anyway?” Frederick asked. “Coal?”
The men laughed.
“Coal?” Mole said. “Under no-man’s-land? No. We’re the Allies’ first line of defense and offense.”
“It was my understanding the infantry was the army’s first line of defense and offense in the war,” Frederick said.
Bagger shook his head. “Eton, we could fill a million graves with what boarding-school soldiers think they know about this war.”
Mole sat back and smiled.
“But for now,” Bagger added, “all you need to know is that down here, you follow my orders and obey my rules.” He ticked them off on his beefy fingers. “No talking in the lower galleries. Between shifts, sleep is not optional. Tired tunnelers make mistakes, and down here, mistakes cost lives. In the dugout, no cheating at cards or stealing.” He gave George a hard look and held out his hand. A blush tinted George’s freckled cheeks as he fished the extra shilling from his pocket and dropped it into Bagger’s open palm. The crew leader tossed the coin onto the pile on the table. “And lastly, you can go in the reserve and support trenches, but stay away from the front-line trenches. There’s a reason we had spots to fill on our crew, and it’s not because the lads before you were promoted.”
The smirk that had remained on Mole’s face as Bagger lectured the boys disappeared at the mention of their former crew members.
“Follow my rules, and we’ll get along fine,” Bagger said. “Break them, and I’ll have you transferred from my crew and Ypres Salient. You’ll be digging trenches in France before you can utter ‘I’m sorry.’” He leaned forward. “Have I made myself clear?”
The boys nodded.
“Now that that’s settled, what do you lads bring to our merry crew?” asked the fourth clay kicker, a short stump of a man with more hair coating his knuckles and arms and sprouting from under his shirt collar than on his head. He held a pipe firmly between his teeth. Only his lips moved when he spoke. “Any of you have mining experience?”
“I do,” Thomas said.
“What kind?” the man asked.
“Coal. In Dover.”
Smoke streamed from the man’s nostrils as he scrutinized Thomas. “I worked the coalfields in South Wales. Thirty-five years. Any work with explosives, Dover?”
Remembering Thomas’s lie to the recruiter at Trafalgar Square, George smiled. “He’s got loads of experience, right, Tommy?”
Thomas’s face flushed scarlet. “I used to watch my dad and brother set the explosives.”
The man with the pipe nodded. “Dover can work with me.”
“Leave it to Boomer to grab the only recruit with any experience underground,” Mole said, dealing out two cards to the other men. He motioned to George. “How about you, Shillings? What experience do you bring our fine crew?”
George took a seat in the only empty chair around the table. “I’ve done a bit of everything. You name it: dockworker, chimney sweep, army recruiter.” He shot a quick wink at Thomas before turning his attention back to the men at the table. “I’ve seen and done it all.”
“Not yet, you haven’t,” Bagger said, pulling him out of the chair by his ear. “But you will. Shillings is with me bagging spoil. How about you, Bats? Which one of these fine British soldiers do you want shadowing you? Eton or—” Bagger craned his neck around Thomas to find Charlie, standing as far away from the men as the cramped dugout allowed. “What’s your name, lad?”
Charlie stared at his stockinged feet. “Charlie.”
“What’d he say?” Mole asked.
“Charlie,” George answered, “but we call him Mouse.”
“Not all of us,” Frederick corrected under his breath.
“And what special skills do you bring our crew, Eton?” Bagger asked.
George reclined on one of the lower bunks. “I believe Eton’s special skill is complaining.”
“I’ll have you know,” Frederick said with a huff, “I have a great many abilities that will no doubt prove far more beneficial to this crew than anything you could offer.”
As Frederick began listing his numerous, invaluable skills, Bats took off his glasses and massaged the deep impressions on either side of his nose. “I’ll take Mouse,” he said in a slow, measured voice. “I don’t need anyone talking while I’m trying to work.”
“Bats is our ears in the tunnel,” Bagger told Charlie. “When you’re not hauling spoil with the others, you’ll be helping him listen for the enemy.”
“And with those ears,” Mole said with a laugh, “Mouse can help you monitor the movement of every Fritz in Berlin.”
Charlie ducked back behind Thomas and tugged his hair down over his ears.
Frederick saluted Mole. “I guess that means I’m with you, sir.”
“Sorry, Eton,” Mole said, lighting a new cigarette, “but those spindly legs of yours couldn’t push through a wall of wet sand, much less a tunnel face of packed blue clay.”
George snorted.
Frederick tried to ignore him by keeping his attention glued on the large clay kicker, but the flare of his pinched nostrils told George he was getting to the snooty, eager soldier, so George laughed harder.
“Then who am I working with?” Frederick asked.
Boomer slapped him on the back, knocking the helmet from his head. “Eton, you get to work with the most important member of our crew.”
“Who might that be?” Frederick asked, bending down to fetch his helmet.
Boomer walked over to a corner of the room, retrieved the birdcage from its post, and handed it to Frederick. “Meet your partner. Feathers.”
After the men finished their card game and fed the boys a cold meal of bully beef, a tinned corned beef, and K-Brot, a bread sometimes made of such things as dried potatoes, oats, barley, and pulverized straw, Bagger and the other men exited the dugout, leaving the boys with one order—get some rest before their first shift. Thomas hoped the other boys would go to sleep right away so he could start his search for James, but as exhausted as everyone was, no one appeared eager to close their eyes and sleep underground for the first time.
George, lying on the wire bunk above Thomas, regaled his captive audience with stories about life on the streets of London, occasionally asking Charlie to verify his description of London’s seedy underbelly. Every time his voice would start to quiet and the silences between his words stretched long, Thomas hoped he was finally falling asleep, but then George’s head would pop out over the edge of his bunk, his red hair dangling in messy curls like a mane of fire, and he’d begin his next tale.
Seated on the bottom bunk across the dugout, Frederick seemed to grit his teeth against George’s ramblings and scribbled furiously with a fancy fountain pen in the notebook from his kit bag.
Charlie sat in the bunk above Frederick, sketching pictures of Feathers with the nub of a pencil. As he drew, he fed the canary pieces of the bread he’d tucked in his pocket during dinner through the bars of the cage on a shelf in the dugout’s corner. He didn’t speak, but nodded in agreement any time George asked, “Ain’t that right, Mouse?”
After an hour, George’s story about running messages for some man named Grugar trailed off until the only sounds coming from above Thomas’s bunk were stuttered snores.
“I thought he’d never shut up,” Frederick mumbled, taking his glasses and setting them on the top corner of his bunk. Tucking his book and pen under the coat he’d rolled as a pillow, he adjusted the scratchy wool army blanket from his bag and turned toward the wall.
Thomas peeked up at Charlie’s bunk. He couldn’t see Mouse’s face, but the shy boy lay still, his fingers resting against Feathers’s cage. Thomas listened for the slow, steady breaths of deep sleep before slipping off his bunk, grabbing his boots, and tiptoeing out of the dugout.
Muted light glowed at the entrance to the tunnel. Before ascending the incline, Thomas wedged his stockinged feet into his boots and pulled a photograph from his pocket. The edges were soft with wear, and the image yellowed with time. Six faces stared back at him. His mum, her hair pulled back in a tight bun, sat in a chair holding his twin sisters, Charlotte and Letitia, in her lap. Behind the chair stood his dad, a hand resting on his wife’s shoulder. Thomas and James stood on either side of their mum and sisters. Thomas ran his thumb around the creases lining the edges of the photograph, imprints of the frame that had protected it for the last four years, a frame that now stood empty in his parents’ bedroom.
Mum had kept the framed photograph on her nightstand next to a candle that she lit every night for James before saying her rosary. The frame held the only photograph of their family. It was Mum’s most cherished possession, the first thing her eyes sought out when they fluttered open each morning and the last image they held before they drifted closed at night. Like Thomas’s St. Joseph medal, the photograph kept Mum connected to James. It was her lifeline when grief threatened to drown her, and Thomas had severed it and left home, abandoning her to face the crushing waves alone.
For the thousandth time since he’d snuck into his parents’ room on the morning he’d run away to London, Thomas questioned his decision to take the photograph. He knew it was a sin to steal, especially something worth so much to his mum, but staring at James’s face, he knew he’d had no choice. His parents’ letters to the army begging for any information on James had gone unanswered for four months. Thomas had to leave Dover to find James. He would question every infantryman on the Western Front if he had to, and Mum’s photograph would help. There would be plenty of time for apologizing after he brought his brother home.
Tucking the photograph carefully back in his pocket, he exited the tunnels. The midday sky, heavy with clouds, provided little more light than the lanterns in the tunnels as Thomas made his way into the support trenches. No-man’s-land lay quiet between the Allied and Central Powers, but Thomas knew lack of artillery fire didn’t mean the enemy wasn’t watching. He looked down the communication trench that led from the support trenches to the front-line trenches, but, remembering Bagger’s rules and the consequences for breaking them, he kept his head down and scrambled along the communication trench in the opposite direction toward the reserve trenches. Thomas couldn’t afford to be transferred from Ypres, not until he found James.
He searched the reserve trenches for any soldier who was awake, but every infantryman he passed was taking advantage of the brief reprieve from artillery fire. Some lay curled up in muddy dugouts. Others slept sitting upright, leaning against sandbags and one another, steel helmets strapped to their heads, weapons within reach. Thomas crept past, studying as many faces as he could. He knew how desperately they must need the rest and he didn’t want to risk startling an armed soldier.
After forty minutes of searching, he realized if he didn’t head back to the crew’s dugout soon, Bagger and the other men would return to find him missing. The clay kicker had been very clear about his expectations. The new recruits were to get as much sleep as possible, so they’d be rested and alert for their first shift. Not wanting to anger Bagger, Thomas made his way back to the communication trench that led to the support trenches and tunnel entrance. When he reached the last stretch of trench before the tunnel opening, he decided he couldn’t leave with no information about his brother, so he cut left instead of right. He stopped by a sleeping soldier and cleared his throat. The man didn’t stir. Thomas stepped closer and coughed, but the soldier remained motionless.
Thomas coughed louder.
Nothing. Not a twitch of his eyelids, no annoyed groan.
If it weren’t for the shallow rise and fall of the soldier’s chest, Thomas would have thought him dead. Thomas shook his head. No amount of coughing was going to wake a soldier who was used to sleeping through artillery fire. Disappointed, he had turned to leave when he heard voices and laughter in the distance. He glanced toward the tunnel entrance and then reached up and grabbed hold of his medals. “Just five more minutes,” he whispered to himself.
The voices led him down another section of the support trench that zigged and then zagged its way farther from the tunnel entrance, where a cluster of soldiers gathered. Their backs to Thomas, they taunted one another and placed bets on two pairs of soldiers working at the far end of the trench. As Thomas drew closer, he recognized the voices of his crew among the infantrymen.
“Bagger and Max have it this time,” Boomer boasted.
“You tunnel rats are crazy,” an infantryman with a hard, square jaw said as he stubbed out a cigarette on the duckboards.
“Get it right, Harry,” Mole said. “We’re sewer rats.”
Harry laughed. “Digging beneath the streets of Manchester, you may have been sewer rats, Mole, but out here, you’re tunnel rats. Not that it matters. Either way, you’re losers. Johnny and Dan are undefeated.”
“Double or nothing, they lose today,” Mole challenged.
“You’re on,” Harry said, and the men shook hands.
“Count me in with Mole,” Boomer said, tossing five shillings into the waiting hands of an infantryman with a steep forehead and weak chin.
“Anyone else?” the infantryman asked.
Thomas looked for Bats, but the clay kicker’s listener was not among the cluster of men.
A few more soldiers tossed coins to the infantryman, all placing their bets on Johnny and Dan for the win. Thomas inched closer to see what game the men were playing and to catch a glimpse of Bagger’s partner, Max, the crew member who Bagger had said was running messages two hours earlier.
Bagger stood with his back to the others, yelling to his partner hidden beyond the corner at the far end of the trench. “Come on, Max! We got this! Just one more!”
“Shut up, Bagger,” an older infantryman crouched on the floor of the trench warned. “You’re gonna scare ’em off.”
“What’s wrong, Johnny?” Boomer called out. “You afraid of losing?”
Johnny motioned to a soldier at his side. “Give me another piece, Dan.” His partner, a husky infantryman, not much older than George, handed him a hunk of bread. Johnny speared the bread on his rifle’s bayonet, laid the weapon flat on the ground, and slowly backed up. “You tunnel rats haven’t beat us yet.”
“First time for everything,” Bagger said, turning his attention back to his partner working around the corner.
Thomas was so engrossed in the strange competition between the tunnelers and the infantrymen, he didn’t notice the creak of footfalls on the duckboards behind him. Then a hand grabbed his shoulder, and a slow, measured voice asked, “Just what do you think you’re doing out here, Dover?”