‘If the sun rises in the east it’s a sure sign there’ll be stew fer supper,’ Joe Evans remarked as the dixies were carried into the dug-out.
‘Least it’s ‘ot,’ David said, speaking as loudly as he could over the noise of the distant barrage. The dixie might contain the inevitable stew but for once it was actually steaming. ‘Be thankful fer small mercies.’ The night before they’d had cold Maconochie’s soup which had been horribly unappetizing and had lain heavily on their stomachs for hours afterwards.
It was a noisy night because the troops to the south were preparing for an attack on the Menin Road and the preliminary barrage had started up at six o’clock that morning. But they were old campaigners now and took it all with ostentatious calm. They’d been in and out of the trenches for the past three months and had learned to ignore any barrage that wasn’t aimed their way. Their section of the front was relatively quiet, except for the occasional sniper, so they were making the most of it, squatting round the dixie on piles of shell cases or sitting awkwardly on the edge of the funk holes in mud-stained companionship, a candle on an upturned box to provide them with light. Even Clifford was grinning as he came lolloping in from the other end of the trench.
‘What we got?’ he said hopefully.
‘Roast beef an’ Yorkshire pud,’ Evans told him.
Clifford’s face lit up. ‘No!’ he said delightedly, and they all roared with laughter at him.
‘Believe anything, this kid will,’ David said. ‘Whatcher think it is, you daft ha’p’orth?’
‘Ah well,’ Clifford said, resigned to the stew, ‘least it’s ‘ot. An’ anyway we shall all be out of ’ere by tomorrer.’
‘Where d’yer hear that?’ David wanted to know.
‘Officer told me,’ Clifford said, bright with importance. ‘Movin’ out midnight.’
‘Where to?’
‘Down south, ’e said. They got Aussies comin’ in ’ere.’
‘Well, good luck to ’em,’ Evans said.
‘If that’s the case,’ David said, ‘I’d better write to old Chariot an’ tell him to send the sketches.’ Old Chariot kept an estaminet in Wizernes where they were now sent for rest and retraining, and was the most recent of his private postmen. He had quite a collection of sketches waiting to be posted on.
‘An’ that ain’t all,’ Clifford said, spooning stew into his face and chomping happily. ‘We’re gonna get some ’ome leave.’
There was a chorus of voices now. ‘When? D’he tell yer when?’
‘Two, three days. ’E wasn’t quite sure. Two, three days.’
Now that was news. Going home! It was too good to be true. Out of this hellhole and back with Ellen and the kids.
‘Better write to the old woman,’ Evans said, rapturously. ‘Wouldn’t like ter catch ’er on the ’op.’
Soon the dug-out was full of earnest composition and much licking of pencils.
‘Dearest Ellen,’ David wrote, ‘Have just heard we are due for a spot of home leave. I should be with you in a very little while, about a week maybe. I will write again and let you know exactly. I.L.Y. so much. I can’t wait to be with you again. I have so much to tell you. We shall be so happy.’
He was signing his name when the sergeant arrived. ‘Night patrol,’ he said. ‘Rifleman Evans, Rifleman Cheifitz, Corporal Todd, party of six.’
David and Joe Evans growled their disapproval with one voice, ‘Not again!’ They hated night patrols.
‘Last one, you lucky lads,’ the sergeant said cheerfully. ‘You’re on yer way fer a spot a’ Blighty termorrer.’
They gave their letters to Clifford for safe keeping before they handed over their pay books and identity discs to the sergeant. ‘Keep yer eyes open an’ yer ‘eads down,’ he instructed. ‘We’re handin’ over to Aussies at twenty-four hundred hours, so let’s give ’em a good account. They’ll want ter know what the old ‘Un is up to. Could be movin’ south ternight, some of ’em. Wire’s cut for yer.’
The one good thing about a night patrol was that they travelled light, taking a rifle, a water bottle and a first aid pack, but very little else, and leaving behind all the rest of their kit and anything that could identify them or their regiment, just in case they were captured. Even so, it was a nerve-wracking assignment, crawling through the wire into the eerie wastes of no-man’s land, and David hated it more every time he had to do it.
‘Right lads,’ Corporal Todd said. ‘Sooner we’re out, the sooner we’re back.’ And he led his team out of the dug-out, up onto the fire-step and over the sandbags. They followed him as quietly as they could, saying nothing, and were soon easing themselves through the hole in their own barbed wire and crawling into the mist and murk.
It was a moonless night and very dark, so it took a little while for David’s eyes to grow accustomed to the lack of light. The ugly moonscape of no-man’s land was swathed in white smoke from the bombardment, a slow-swirling ghostly drift that quickly obscured the advancing bodies of his friends. Only Evans was still visible, inching darkly along at his side, his eyes gleaming as he turned his head from side to side. For all they knew, David thought uncomfortably, they could be entirely alone out there, with only corpses and abandoned equipment for company, but on the other hand the place could be swarming with Germans and one of them could step out of that fog and be right in front of him, bayonet at the ready, before he even knew he was there. Or behind him. Gevalt! And he strained his ears for the sound of approaching feet or the slither of an approaching body. But all he could hear under the bombardment were occasional muted voices from the trenches behind him. Or was it in front? Sometimes you could find yourself right up at the edge of the German trenches and hear them coughing and talking to one another quite clearly.
The ground was covered with rusting debris, rifles, bayonets, respirators, helmets, shovels, the remains of barbed wire entanglements, and pitted with shell holes, some of them enormous and filled with water like filthy lakes, so it was necessary to watch where he was going to avoid injury. But this constant reminder of the waste and ugliness of war brought new and more terrifying images into his mind.
The dead could still be lying under those discarded greatcoats. Or the ghosts of the dead, wandering endlessly, their cold fingers outstretched. It was easy to see dead fingers reaching out towards him through that awful fog, dead grey-white fingers, like so many he’d seen curled into the mud. And it seemed to him that the night was full of ghosts, screaming and moaning in the air above the Menin Road, or creeping along the uneven ground, too badly wounded to stand, their faces striped with dark blood. He crawled forward in a trance, frozen with fear, his nerves stretched so taut he could feel their tension making the hair rise all over his scalp.
He heard the shell whining towards him seconds before he flung himself face downwards on the ground, and the explosion was so close the earth rose beneath him. He put his hands across the back of his neck and waited for the pain to begin, he was so sure he must have been hit. Something was falling on him, drumming on his helmet and punching his back with small sharp blows. Earth or shrapnel? But there was no pain, and although he could hear shells screaming over his head and a series of explosions somewhere to his left, he began to look around him.
Not far away there was a mound of earth and rubbish that looked as though it might be an abandoned gun emplacement. There were tattered sandbags heaped around the entrance, and broken boards sticking up in the air. They looked very black so it was probably waterlogged, but it could provide cover, and his one thought now was to get below ground. He felt far too exposed out in the open. He stood up cautiously, legs shaking, and was just about to make a run for it when he saw a body lying on the ground a few hundred yards to his right. He knew it hadn’t been there before the shell burst, and he remembered Evans.
He ran to it quickly, crouching low and trying to remember what he’d been taught about first aid. But he couldn’t see anything properly until he was kneeling right beside it. And it was Evans. Or what was left of him. The shell must have exploded just below him. His chest was completely caved in, an ugly mess of congealing blood and the embedded spikes of shrapnel. But worse than that was the horror that had been his face. The lower jaw was gone but blood was still pumping up into the gap where his mouth should have been and streaming down from his nose. Surely he couldn’t still be alive, David thought. God forbid. His eyes were tightly shut, so it was impossible to tell. But as he watched he caught a glimpse of some pale movement just out range of his eyes, and turning his head he saw that his friend’s hands were moving, the fingers clawing the air. He was transfixed with horror. Clawing the air! Dear God, he can’t be alive! He can’t! Then the hands fell back, dark against the black earth, and he knew he ought to find one of them and feel for a pulse, because that was what he’d been taught to do. But it was so dark and he was so clumsy with fear that it took a very long time, and even when his fumbling fingers touched an arm and found a wrist and felt nothing, not the faintest throb or tremor, he couldn’t be sure. And then his gorge rose in his throat and he turned and ran for shelter, weeping aloud with terror and pity. Shells were still screaming overhead but he didn’t hear them. To be alive, like that. Dead like that. Dying like that. It was obscene!
It was a gun emplacement. Not that it mattered now. There weren’t any corpses, and only an inch or two of water. Not that that mattered either. Evans was dead, or dying, and he’d run away like the worst kind of coward. No one could go any lower than that. He sank to his knees in the mud, weeping and choking, and it seemed to him that it was a very long time before he recovered his senses. But eventually his sobbing subsided and he tried to be sensible, telling himself that Evans must have been dead, and that he was certainly insensible, and that even if he’d stayed there with him, he couldn’t have done anything. In the meantime, there were other things to be decided. He couldn’t stay in this hole for ever. He hadn’t the faintest idea where the rest of the patrol had got to, nor what time it was. He glanced at his watch, and was surprised to see that it was still ticking, miraculously, and that the whole incident could only have taken ten minutes or so.
I’ll stay here till I’ve got my breath back, he decided, then I’ll go back. They were dropping flares, the eerie light making the sandbags glitter, so he would stay where he was until they’d died down, because there was no point in providing the Huns with a target. He was feeling much calmer now, but it was an unnatural calm, as if he’d been anaesthetized. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.
And he looked up idly at the dark entrance to the pit, and there was a figure standing on the sandbags. A figure that froze the blood to a shudder in his veins. A figure with a spiked helmet, horribly silhouetted against the flare-reddened sky. Gevalt! A German! He fumbled for his rifle, heart pounding with terror, and the soldier suddenly switched on a torch and swung it blindingly towards him. ‘Don’t shoot!’ he said, in English. ‘I’m not a Jerry.’ Then the light went out, and they were both in total blackness again.
‘I come from Manchester,’ the voice said. ‘Honest! Don’t shoot!’ The accent was unmistakable.
‘Whatcher doing in them clothes, then?’ David said. The total void was clearing and he could just about make out the outline of the man, crouching on the other side of the trench.
‘That’s a long story. You’re a Londoner, intcher?’
‘Yes.’ Surely it was all right to admit that, even if he was a German.
‘Born in ‘Amburg, I was. That’s ‘ow they got me in this lot. Me ol’ man was a sailor. I come to Manchester when I were two. We ’ad two rooms over a shop, Jacob Schwartz, the bakers. ’E were my uncle.’
‘Were you a baker an’ all?’
‘No. Cobbler I were. Boots an’ shoes. I were a dab ‘and at boots.’ He paused for a moment and drew a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket. ‘Fag?’ he offered.
‘We deep enough, d’yer think?’
‘Under the ledge,’ the German suggested. So they crawled under the ledge and lit up. ‘What about you?’
‘What?’ David asked inhaling smoke gratefully.
‘What were you?’
‘Oh, an artist. I drew pictures fer a magazine.’ What a long time ago it all was.
‘Straight up!’
‘You ought to draw pictures of this lot. Show ’em all what it’s like. High time they knew back ’ome, you ask me.’
‘I ’ave. I been drawin’ ever since I first got ’ere.’
‘Good for you, Tommy. You show ’em, eh? They’d stop it if they knew what it were like.’ Their cigarettes made little red circles in the darkness.
‘D’yer think they ought ter stop it?’
‘’Course they should fuckin’ stop it.’
‘You’re the German Army though, aintcher?’
‘German, French, British, what’s the odds? It’s the same for all of us.’
‘How d’you end up with the Germans?’
‘Went back with me old woman, when me dad died. Married a fraulein. Daft, innit?’
It was more than daft, David thought, it was bizarre. Two grown men who were supposed to be enemies sitting in a pool of mud in the middle of the war talking like old friends. And Evans lying out in the darkness …
‘Tell you what,’ the German said, ‘if anyone else were to come down ’ere, we’d better ’ave a plan of campaign. If it’s a Jerry, you’re my prisoner, if it’s a Tommy, I’m yours. What d’you think?’
It seemed eminently sensible. A lie, of course, but a useful one, to keep them both alive.
‘I come over ’ere on night patrol two or three times a week,’ the German said. ‘I feel sort of free out in the open. Me own man, sort a’ thing. Can’t stand it in them bleedin’ trenches.’
‘I can’t be doin’ with night patrol,’ David confessed. ‘I’d rather be in a dug-out.’
‘Takes all sorts.’
He was such an ordinary looking young man, David thought, with a wide formless face and a much broken nose. It was ridiculous to think of killing him, even though he was the enemy. ‘This is daft,’ he said. ‘You an’ me sittin’ here like this. We’re supposed ter be at war.’
‘You ask me,’ the German said, ‘we’d be much better off if we all packed up an’ went home. Leave them fucking generals to fight it out between ’em. All by themselves. There’d soon be an end to it then, don’t you worry.’
David grinned. ‘I reckon that’s the best idea I’ve heard since I come ’ere,’ he said.
It was growing darker and the barrage was dying down. They could hear the rats squealing. ‘Better be gettin’ back,’ the German said. ‘Take my tip an’ nick yourself a German ‘elmet for camouflage. Next Jerry you meet, it mightn’t be me.’
‘We’ll go out together, shall we?’ David said, peering over the top of the sandbags. It was very dark, but it seemed all clear.
‘Run like buggery!’ the German whispered. ‘Good luck, Tommy!’ And he crouched down and crawled rapidly into the mist.
‘Good luck!’ David whispered back, but the man was already too far away to hear him, and anyway there was a shell approaching.
Then the world exploded with an all-enveloping roar and there was red light all around him and he could feel himself flying backwards through the air in a most peculiar slow motion. ‘Ellen!’ he called. The redness pulsed like blood, slowly, slowly, and he was struggling to breathe, his hands in slime, and the roaring went on and on and on, in a reverberating echo, pulling him backwards and downwards.
Then nothing.