SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE, NOVEMBER 1917
The deceased Alistair’s dug-out had hardly room enough to turn round, but it did have several sandbags, one of which she used with the help of her trenching tool. The overalls were far too big; nor did she want to put them on over just her underwear, even though she was wearing two pairs of combinations for warmth. She folded her skirt up around her waist instead, fastening it with a belt, then put the overalls over the top.
It was still far too large, even over the bulk of her skirt, bloomers and combinations, but she rolled up the sleeves and the trouser legs and hoped she might have a chance to sew them up properly, then put her coat and helmet back on, then hung her trenching tool, pliers, knife and gas mask from the belt. She wished she could add some Anzac trousers, but newspaper would get too wet to be useful here.
She was about to haul her kitbag with her back to the main dug-out, then realised they might be ordered to leave with little notice and that she’d be moving too quickly to carry it. She quickly partially undressed again and put on her entire stock of underwear, including three pairs of socks, stowed more socks and her extra sanitary rags in her bloomer pockets, then shoved her sewing kit into the coat pockets with the bars of chocolate.
A sudden shell blast made her jump, and a trickle of dirt came through the planks. But the shots she’d heard today had all been large ones, she realised: the kind that came from a distance. This was ‘the front’ only because it was the nearest point to the enemy, who had retreated.
Soon the Allies would take the front to them.
Lieutenant Seabrook stood politely when she came back into the dug-out, even though he was an officer. A folded blanket sat by the Morse code machine, with what she saw with joy was a proper hot cup of tea, with a pannikin of stew next to it.
‘The major said to tell you the water was boiled for the tea,’ said Lieutenant Seabrook. ‘The stew is just p-pork and beans, except no one can find the p-pork, but it’s a dashed sight nicer than bully beef, and I don’t think you’d like army biscuits.’
‘I’ve already eaten too many of them. Though even one is too many. If you run out of shells you might try using them instead.’
‘I don’t think they’d f-fit,’ said Lieutenant Seabrook.
Right, no sense of humour, thought Jean. She sat, gulped down the tea gratefully, then took the piece of paper Lieutenant Seabrook handed her. The message was so short she could probably have worked out the cipher — she supposed it just said this area was now sending and receiving messages, assuming Major Galbraith hadn’t changed his mind again about sending for a replacement. She put on the headphones, adjusted them, and sent it, handing Lieutenant Seabrook back the paper to shred.
‘My, that w-was quick,’ he said as Jean copied down the return letters, which she presumed simply said, Message received, then silence, except for the hiss and splutter from the headphones, slightly more hiss and far more splutter than at Rouen.
She moved one of the headphones from her ear so she could hear what was happening around her as well as any code that might come through, and began to eat her beans, which did indeed have the faintest hint of pork in the gravy.
‘Better than rice,’ she remarked. ‘We seemed to be eating rice all the time at the base at Rouen — that’s where I was before.’
‘Rice is very n-nutritious,’ said Lieutenant Seabrook.
Jean swallowed another mouthful. ‘What were you doing before you joined up?’ She suddenly realised she should have called him ‘sir’, but he seemed so young and so nervous, and he had not objected.
‘I was an accounts clerk in a drapery. This is my first p-posting,’ he admitted. ‘I . . . I’m not good for much, so they have me doing the codes, and inspecting the men every day for trench foot, and making sure they have their weapons at the ready, though I’m sure they all know what to do far better than I do.’
‘You decoded the message quickly,’ she said, to try to make him feel better.
‘Not really. I recognised it,’ he said, confirming her guess at its contents. ‘Um, why don’t you get some sleep? There may not be another message tonight.’
‘The whole night?’ She was used to sending or receiving almost constantly for twelve hours or more at a stretch. But she could sleep, she realised. She would love to sleep. She put the headphones back on more firmly, not just so she’d wake if a message came through, but because it also shut out the noise of explosions, which were distant, certainly, but still close enough to feel their vibrations. She put her head down on the table and slept.
She woke once, for a longish message, wrote it down then dozed again while Lieutenant Seabrook decoded it. She woke as he cautiously touched her shoulder. ‘Major Galbraith dictated a reply,’ he said.
She transmitted it, half asleep, her hands on automatic, copied down a response that was exactly like the first message received, and put her head down again.
The next time she woke it was to find a rat almost nose to nose with her. She started back as the rat looked shocked too, then vanished. Jean sat and realised a large pannikin of tea sat next to her, with another pannikin holding a big hunk of bread, a smaller hunk of cheese, and a piece of cold bacon probably too small for the rat to bother with.
‘Breakfast is served,’ said a voice behind her. She turned to find Major Galbraith watching her with some amusement. ‘I thought you’d scream at the rat.’
‘A gentleman would have shot it with his pistol,’ she said, blinking, and trying not to scratch at things crawling over her back and down her front. Lice, she thought, remembering gossip at Rouen, and nothing she could do about them until there was a place to wash herself thoroughly, and wash her clothes too, every single layer of them.
‘A gentleman decided you wouldn’t want pieces of rat all over your breakfast.’
‘The gentleman was right,’ she said with feeling. ‘Sir,’ she added quickly.
‘No need to say “sir” when we’re alone.’ He sat in the chair Lieutenant Seabrook had used. ‘I don’t suppose you want the morning’s rum ration?’
She smiled and shook her head, then took a long gulp of tea, wonderfully hot and tasting only slightly of petrol.
‘Cigarettes? We get the fortnight’s ration today.’ Major Galbraith was joking — no respectable young woman smoked.
She relaxed a little, and shook her head. ‘Congratulations on your promotions.’
He shrugged. ‘Promotions on the field. An officer died, I acted in his position, and each time it was confirmed. At this rate I might make general by Christmas, except no general would put himself in danger. I told Seabrook to take a couple of hours off. He’s not doing too well out here.’
‘He seems . . . uncertain . . .’
‘He’s only just keeping his panic under control.’ The amusement had gone. ‘I need to make sure it stays under control.’
‘Because you need every man you have?’
‘That too. But mostly because if he panics and tries to run away or refuses to advance I’d have to shoot him, or at the least refer him to a firing squad. I haven’t had to do that to any man yet,’ he added. ‘I’ve been lucky.’
She stared. ‘You’d really shoot him if he was too scared to keep going?’
‘That’s what’s done. If one man runs away, others will follow. If one man cowers and screams, others panic too. He has nightmares,’ Major Galbraith added.
‘How do you know?’
‘Because it’s my job to know.’
‘Send him away from the front then!’
‘I wish I could,’ he said wearily. ‘There’re half a dozen men here who are close to breaking point, shell-shock cases. But the army doesn’t recognise shell shock any more, and that gives me nightmares, too.’
He shut his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. ‘I’m doing what I can to keep him safe, to keep them all safe. Decoding messages with you made him a bit calmer. But I have to follow orders too. Once I’m ordered to advance I have to order the men to advance, no matter what the odds. I gather you know what’s going to happen when we move out?’
‘They told you what I knew in the message?’
‘Just that you had been briefed. No one else here knows what the plan is,’ Major Galbraith added. ‘But there are rumours. They all know something is up.’
‘I know . . . what’s planned,’ she said cautiously. ‘I don’t know when.’
‘Neither do I. Just that it will be soon — in the next few days. I’m praying the plan works, and it’s not just another slaughter. I’m sorry I gave you such a poor welcome. You have enormous courage to have volunteered for this.’
‘I didn’t volunteer,’ she admitted. ‘I was asked. It would have taken more courage to turn it down.’
‘But you could have.’
‘And lived with the knowledge I was needed and failed to do my duty? No, I don’t think I could.’
Major Galbraith simply nodded. She suspected he felt exactly the same. ‘I’m glad you survived the shipwreck. I’d have come to find you afterwards, but the ship that picked us up went directly to France.’
‘A troopship rescued you, not a fishing boat?’
He nodded. ‘After you dived overboard I helped launch a lifeboat — they did get one down, though half the people in it were crushed when it swung against the ship. I ended up diving off too, but the lifeboat picked me up once they got it down and launched, and then a troopship arrived — it had responded to our distress signal — and took us to France. You must have been swimming in the other direction — we were closer to England than France when the U-boat got us.’
‘The man who sent the signal, did he survive?’
‘No,’ said Major Galbraith quietly. ‘I was told he kept transmitting till the ship sank.’
He had been Major Galbraith’s friend. She would ask his name, when this was all over, if they survived it, and where they’d erected his memorial. There would be one, even if his body hadn’t been recovered for a grave. It had been his duty, inescapable, to keep transmitting right until the end, so the survivors would have the best possible chance of rescue as other ships came into range.
‘Your brothers?’ he asked.
‘William was temporarily blinded by gas, but he’s back with his unit. Arthur is . . .’ She grinned. ‘I know exactly where Arthur is, but the censor will never know how.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Secret.’
‘Ah, good girl. And are you sending secret messages to your parents and brothers with pin-holes in the paper, or dots and dashes over the letter i?’
He’d guessed she sent code, but not how: you couldn’t send much more than a word or two with dots and dashes only over every i. ‘There’s been nothing much to send,’ she equivocated. ‘I’ve been at Rouen the whole time till I came here. The censor left in my description of the Seine at twilight, so my parents probably guessed where I was from that.’ William would have described their meeting when he saw Mama and Papa in England, so she hadn’t had to hide that in a letter too.
‘You know how this advance is going to proceed?’ Major Galbraith said slowly.
She supposed he meant the tanks. She nodded.
‘No one else does. None of us here knows when. It might even be today. They wouldn’t send you here unless it was imminent.’ Major Galbraith hesitated, as outside shells throbbed and broke the earth and men. ‘Miss McLain, I probably shouldn’t say this. In fact I know I shouldn’t say it. It is against all regulations and not the conduct of an officer and a gentleman . . .’
What on earth is he going to tell me? she wondered.
‘You are also much younger than I thought you were on the ship. But even so . . .’ He hesitated again, then continued. ‘I admire what you are doing here more than I can say, although that is not why I hope one day we will meet again, under very different circumstances. Somewhere. . . somewhere where we have time, and can talk freely . . .’
And when we have a better chance of surviving the next week, she thought.
He met her eyes. ‘I hope it is a place and time where I can ask you out to afternoon tea, with scones and teacakes and a pianist in the corner perhaps, instead of bringing you a pannikin of cold bacon.’
‘There’s not a pannikin’s worth of bacon in there.’
He gave a faint smile. ‘I gave you my share, and so did Lieutenant Seabrook. Don’t complain. If I ask you to afternoon tea, would you say yes? You can even bring a chaperone if you like. No, don’t answer that,’ he said quickly. ‘That’s why officers and WAACs aren’t supposed to fraternise, so you don’t feel pressured into saying you’ll go out with your commanding officer.’
‘I’m not pressured. I would like to go to afternoon tea. I would especially love to go to afternoon tea if it doesn’t have any rice, beans or bully beef, and has enormous numbers of scones with lots of butter.’ She looked at him shyly over her pannikin. ‘But I would like to simply go for a walk with you, even if no scones are possible.’
‘Instead, we’ll be running through no- man’s-land,’ he said ruefully. ‘Miss McLain . . . Jean . . . I’d also like to say . . .’
She pulled her second headphone closer, then held her hand up. ‘The interference has stopped.’ The hissing from the headphones that had been there all the time had changed to silence.
‘You mean the line is clear?’
‘No. I mean we’ve lost the connection.’
‘Damn. The cable has been broken again. Excuse my language. I’ll have to send a party out with spare cable to find the break and join the broken pieces together again, and in daylight too. We’ve been putting down another cable every night but we still don’t have two complete lines. I’d better go . . .’ He paused. ‘I just wanted to say though, when you dived off the ship . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘They were the best pair of legs I’ve ever seen.’ He smiled at her tiredly and vanished out the curtain.
Alan Galbraith had flirted with her. No, he had been honest with her, even telling her that another officer had nightmares. She was suddenly sure he had made that remark about her legs because a shell could hit this trench at any moment, blowing them up or burying them all. They had very little chance of both surviving — most officers on the front died within a few weeks or months, and he had carefully not told her how many signallers had died under his command, so now all they had to send was a chit of a girl. In war you need to say the words, or they might never be spoken.
I am sixteen, she thought. I’m too young to have a major admire my legs. I’m too young to be in a dug-out, about to advance on the German lines.
But she didn’t feel young. She had been working with far older women for over half a year, working sometimes eighteen-hour shifts without a break, knowing she could not afford to make a mistake with a single letter, with the threat of being bombed any minute, seeing the dying and the maimed at the station every day she was given leave, conditions she was sure her parents had no idea she would face when Papa had said she was twenty-one. She wasn’t sure she’d ever feel young again.
How long would it would take to fix the cable? Five minutes or five hours?
A good linesman might take only five minutes to strip back the sheath that covered the cable, leaving the two wires exposed, then cut back the coverings on both those wires till he could twist their strands together with a new bit of connecting cable, then cover the whole lot again with sticky electrical tape, making sure there was no speck of mud or moisture.
But repairing the break was the easy bit. Finding where it was broken and laying cable between the two broken areas would take much longer. Whoever was doing the job would be exposed to the enemy in broad daylight, in a place the enemy had already successfully bombed.
But this was not a day to have communications lost. Even now the tanks might be beginning to thunder towards them, to push a way clear through the German lines.
At least she would have time to visit the sandbag, and even, possibly, find some water for a wash.