“It’s like staring into fucking hell’s abyss,” Henry heard one of his soldiers mutter darkly, between puffs on his cigarette.
Henry looked across at Sergeant Holmes. “We need to go into the trench, Sergeant,” he said resolutely, recovering enough of his wits to consider their predicament. They couldn’t stay where they were any longer, exposed on the parapet of the German trench. He looked back to the ditch full of of slaughter. “We need to search it.”
He’d never gone over the top before, never raided an enemy’s trench. For the last month Henry’s unit had been told to dig in and hold their position. All he knew was defence. The responsibility of taking the offensive to the enemy terrified him. He swallowed at his dry throat and thought of his schoolmasters, what they would say if they could see him now. “Round up a few groups of men, Sergeant, those willing to go forward. I don’t expect them all to go.”
“Will do sir,” Sergeant Holmes replied, storming along the trench lip and barking orders to the waiting soldiers.
Henry looked about the blackened broken landscape and wished to God for a little more humanity to be found somewhere in the world to put an end to this dreadful conflict. Further up the line, heavy guns pounded and the horizon burned yellow. He looked down at the earth and noticed his right boot stood on a piece of paper. It was a picture of a family drawn by a child, a drawing of a father, mother and two children alongside a dog and a cat, disfigured and partially erased by mud, blood and water. But underneath were written the words, clearly visible in careful and precise German writing, ‘Möge Gott Sie sicher zu halten’ – May God keep you safe.
Those unfortunate men selected to go beyond the German front line found only decimation in the support trenches. Most had refused to climb into the infernal squalor, sitting firmly within No Man’s Land, unwilling to go back, unable to go on, even under the caustic bark of their Sergeant’s threats. Those who had the courage to enter quickly paled and scampered back before they had ventured too far into the complex of twisting high- sided trenches. There was a wickedness which had befallen this place, far greater and more inexplicable than the usual horrors of the war, that even the most sanguine of men felt. Their fear was made all the more terrible by the need to shuffle forward by touch, moon and torchlight alone. A pall hung over the place, blacker than anything created by man’s own invention.
The patrols came back not long after they had headed out, their hands and uniforms crimson from the blood sodden earth, their senses shaken from the scenes within, and no signs of life to report.
“The thing that is puzzling me, sir,” confessed Sergeant Holmes, stepping forward to light Lieutenant Frost’s cigarette, “the thing I cannot understand is, well, where are all the bloody bodies?”
“Good question,” Henry replied, drawing deep on his cigarette. He noticed blood on its paper and quickly withdrew it from his mouth. “I was thinking exactly the same thing.” He corrected the cap on his head, pulling it tight with its peak. “And if our lads did this to Fritz, where the hell have they gone to?”
Standing in the German front trench, they could feel the moisture of freshly spilt blood seep through the leather of their boots. Henry moved his weight uneasily from foot to foot in a vain attempt to stop the oozing into his socks.
The plod of heavy feet in the sodden mud drew the Lieutenant and Sergeant’s attention away down the trench. Henry used the interruption to discard his bloodied cigarette. A squad of Tommies were driving a dishevelled group of German soldiers like cattle ahead of them. The prisoners looked half insane, moaning and crying, clawing at their faces, tearing at their uniforms. They yelped and yelled unfathomable words, as if their minds had been broken, their tongues somehow too fat for their mouths.
“We found these poor buggers,” said a British soldier, peering at them pitifully, “just down the way, in a dugout. They’d blocked up the entrance with stones and mud, sir.”
Another soldier from the squad squeezed himself forward in the narrow trench, eager to be heard, to have his role in their discovery recognised. “There was bits of uniform and all sorts over the opening. I had to put my foot right through it. To make a hole. To peer through. Took some doing. The buggers didn’t want to be found.”
“We found ’em though,” the first Tommy continued, “but they’re all we found of old Fritz,” he added, swallowing and curling the edges of his mouth up disdainfully. “Looks like the rest of them they’ve scarpered, sir, good and proper. That’s if they even got away. We’ve been quite a way in, sir, and there’s nothing but, well, blood and bits all the way.” He went to wipe his eye, but caught sight of his bloodied hand in the flicker of torch light and decided against it.
Henry turned to the muttering, jabbering group of six prisoners, behaving as if maddened by a cruel sickness. He called out to them in German, but they continued their inane babble, seemingly oblivious to anything except their own private torment. Henry spoke again, more strongly this time, commanding one of them, a Corporal, to speak. He took hold of him by the shoulders, turning him sharply.
“Soldier!” he said, trying to shake him into some semblance of consciousness. “Tell me, what has taken place here?”
The soldier waggled his head, his face scrunching up with pain and bitterness. He began to weep, falling forward into Henry’s body and clutching hold of him in a deep embrace.
“Wölfe,” he wept bitterly into Henry’s shoulder. “Wölfe!”
Henry held the soldier to him, the Corporal shuddering and weeping like a wounded child. He could feel the shape of his uniform against his, the weight of his body pressed into him, the smell of earth and blood in his hair. The enemy held on, tightly buried into Henry’s chest. Henry drew his hand to the back of the soldier’s head and pulled him tight to him.
For several moments they stood like that, enemies embraced, until, finally, Henry turned his eyes to Holmes. The Sergeant gave a knowing nod and turned to address the British patrol.
He cleared his throat, almost apologetically at first. “Right then, let’s get these poor buggers out of here.” He stepped forward to usher them along the trench.
“Take them back behind our forward line, Bill,” said Henry, extracting himself from the Corporal to watch the shambling mob stumble past. “I doubt any of our men would fancy bunking down in this trench for the night, do you?”
“Not bloody likely, Lieutenant,” muttered the Sergeant, finding a pathway out of the bloodied killing ditch into No Man’s Land. “Mind you, sir, they is all soft. They could all do with a bit of hardening up, if you ask me.”
“How about you, chaps?” asked Henry to the three nearby soldiers. “Fancy a night in this trench?”
“With all due respect sir,” the nearest soldier replied, “not on your bleedin’ Nelly!”
Henry chuckled grimly. “Go on then, get back to our hole.”
Eagerly they bolted for the lip of the trench.
“Want us to send the word, sir, up the line?” asked one of them, peering back into the trench and the popular officer, “to pull back I mean, sir?”
“Pass it on to any you see, Dawson. I’ll walk along now and order any I find back. I think the Hun has buggered off. There doesn’t seem to be anyone about. Oh, and Dawson,” Henry called, “well done with those prisoners.”
“Not a problem, sir,” replied the young soldier, standing to awkward attention, his chest puffed with pride. He made as if to leave but something held him at the lip of the trench. “Sir, excuse me, sir, for asking but what do you think he meant when he said ‘Wolf’?”
“Dawson, I have no idea.” Henry muttered, looking up into the dirty pitch of the sky. “Seems to me are many strange and terrible things in this war. Whatever demons those poor bastards witnessed, I sincerely hope we never have to face them ourselves.”