“Can you hear something?” Private Dawson asked, standing from the divot he had dug into the trench wall to act as a rest. He craned his ear to the sound. He listened for several moments, those around him looking on with growing trepidation. Suddenly, his face, illuminated by the patchy moonlight, brightened and he said, “There! Can you hear that? What is it? Is that singing?”
All of them gathered in the trench and listened hard. Between the distant thump of shells and the wind rustling the grasses of No Man’s Land, one by one they caught the sound that Dawson had first detected. Singing, “Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles”, drifting like a fog over their lines. It was beautiful and moving and terrible, all at once bringing home the aching honesty and pointlessness of the two enemies’ rivalry. The British soldiers stood in reverent silence, their heads bowed, listening to the harmonic voices sounding like a choir from beyond the grave, so very distant, the voices alien and strange, but bound up with such warmth and humanity.
A little way along the line, a couple of Tommies started singing a retort to the lush, ghostly sound, with china chipped voices and high pitched warbles. “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, and smile, smile, smile.” They sang with faltering gusto, and all along the line, the song was picked up, bit by bit, man by man, until the entire front sang the song back at the Germans, as if a riposte of melody to match the musical foray from the enemy; sung not to spar with them, but to share the moment and the camaraderie, their troubles forgotten when a simple thing like the human voice had the power to overcome distrust and hatred of each other.
Eventually both lines of singing subsided and a cheer went up, first from the German lines and then from the British at the end of this war of melodies, this little battle of songmanship. With that, the cheers and the laughter were promptly extinguished by Sergeants on both sides storming down the trenches demanding silence and diligent focus on the hundreds of yards of No Man’s Land between the rival trenches.
A tense tranquillity once more suffocated the peace of the place. But not for long. All at once, a tumultuous cacophony of explosions broke forth from vast German guns away in the east. Like the thundering birth sounds of some beast unleashing itself from the very bowels of hell, the heavy artillery tore into life, casting their rain of death upon the British hunkered down in their trenches.
Along the British lines, shells fell with wicked rapidity and deadly precision, dirt and dust; flaming iron and mangled flesh, cries and shouts, smoke and cordite cast about the wide front that they had thrown up. Wire and mud was blasted into the sky, showering and whipping those caught beneath as it fell. Everything turned to orange and red as the shells landed, blinding and disorientating with their glare.
There was no hole for Henry within which to hide. His time and dedication spent preparing Sandrine’s house against an unseen and unknown, – and for all he began to suspect, non-existent foe – now seemed a futile exercise, as he clapped his hands to his ears and hunkered down tight to the trench’s floor. Every inch of his body seemed to tremble and shake, every sinew was taut and sense utterly shattered. If he had been able to hear he’d have heard his men roaring near him, clamouring for the barrage to stop, praying for a higher power to help them make it through the carnage and let them live for one night more. Nearby Sergeant Holmes stuck his head between his legs and waited for the end to come, however that might be.
Sandrine had begged Henry not to go. She pleaded with him and had hung onto him like a wife bidding farewell to a husband leaving for war. But he could not abandon his men. The order had been given that all were to man the eastern trench outside the village. And whilst his heart wished not to go forward into the trench, there was never any question that he would not.
There appeared to be no end to the barrage. Even in the cool of the night, German artillerymen stripped to their vests with wiped brows and drenched clothing as they worked rounds into the vast and terrible barrels of their cannons. Such was the fury of the onslaught that the earth shook and tumbled from the walls of the trenches, partially covering Henry as he lay at the base of one of them. He pulled himself clear of the fallen dirt and crouched on his haunches, his fingers in his ears, his head cowed. So it was that he never heard the first sharp bite of rifles being fired, he never saw the enemy when they first appeared.
It was the movement in the trees which first drew the British sentries’ eyes, a wave of grey, lit by the multitude of flares shot high into the darkening sky, spiralling downwards like slowly falling stars. Movement in front of the trees suggested that there was something alive within the wood, some four hundred yards in front of the British lines, away to the right of the main German line. Suddenly the grainy movement of grey condensed and became more precise, crystallising into the muddied blue of uniforms, German uniforms, a vast army of Germans materialising out from the woods and from the spell which had been their rousing song ahead of taking to the battlefield as a legion of death.
Out of the trees they came, beneath the sharp luminescence of British flares, trotting at a slow but steady pace, packed shoulder to shoulder, so tight not even a bullet could pass untouched, an immense river of them, surging with assured and steady pace over the distance of No Man’s Land towards the British lines.
Once out of the shadows of the wood they moved quicker, adopting an odd unnatural gait across the undulating fields of the land, not running but not walking either, an awkward middle speed which both perplexed the British defenders in the trenches, as it did the attackers in the open fields.
All along the British lines roared orders drove men to take to their positions on their trench walls. Sergeant Holmes threw himself alongside Henry and pushed a cartridge into his rifle with trembling fingers.
“Bloody hell, Lieutenant,” he cried, finally fitting the magazine into place. “This is bloody it! This is bloody it!”