“You bastard!” Henry cried, having cast open the doors to the Major’s office without warning and stormed into the room. He was filthy from the trench and the tending of the wounded. “What the bloody hell did you think you were doing? Don’t you know you’ve just sent thirty four good men to their deaths?”
Major Pewter looked up nonchalantly from his desk and set down his pen, as if the question had as much importance to him as a query regarding the weather. “Alright Lieutenant,” he said, placing both hands onto the desk, palms down, “pipe down. I could have you shot, Lieutenant, for surrendering your post when you should have been commanding it! You should consider yourself most fortunate.”
“You did that on purpose!”
“Did what exactly?” he asked, the root of a smile on his face.
“Sent my men across to the German front line.”
“Ah, that.” Pewter sat back and swept at the strands of hair. He chuckled. “Did they not achieve their goal?”
“No they did not bloody achieve their goal! There was never any hope of that! There was never enough of them!” Henry stalked to the front of the desk, as Ponting came running to investigate the outburst. “Where was the artillery support? Where was the smoke screen to conceal them? It was the middle of the bloody day, for Christ’s sake!”
Alerted by Henry’s cursing, the sentry stuck his head around the corner of the Major’s door.
“It’s okay, Ponting”, Pewter said to the sentry, “the Lieutenant and I are just having a little chinwag. You can go.”
The sentry nodded, eyeing the Lieutenant suspiciously before returning to his post.
“I suggest,” Pewter began, his cold eyes boring into Henry, “that you calm down a little and remember just who you are talking to.” The Major crossed his legs and picked at a spot on his trousers. “I’m afraid you gave me no choice,” he said, a supercilious smirk coming to his face.
“No choice? They were my men!” Henry cried, tears welling in his eyes.
“Exactly. They were your men. So where exactly were you, Lieutenant?”
“I …”
“You’d vanished. Quite abandoned your men.”
“I was exhausted. I’d not slept for two days.”
“Neither had your men, but they weren’t sleeping. No, they were dying, just like you should have been.”
Rage surged inside Henry. He tore over the desk and wrestled Pewter from his chair, picking him up and dashing him hard against the wall of the room. Henry heard the air gush out of the Major and he raised his fists to batter the winded officer.
“Strike me, Frost,” he hissed, snatching at tight breaths, “and I will see to it that you are strung up as an example to all who cannot control their emotions. This is war, Lieutenant. Death is part of it.” Pewter tore himself from Henry’s grip. Panting, he retreated and crossed his arms, eyebrows raised. “So,” he said, clearing his throat and correcting his tie and jacket, “you were sleeping, were you, Lieutenant?”
“Resting. I needed to rest, once the unit’s diary had been written. Just for an hour, or two.”
“Yes, of course, write the diary and then take to your bed. You didn’t, by any chance, take anyone else to your bed at the same time did you, Lieutenant?”
“I beg your pardon?”
The Major’s face had begun to grow a little crimson in colour, a rouging of the cheeks and across the temples. “Oh come on, Frost! Don’t play dumb with me! I know what you were up to! Sleeping in your bed? That I doubt very much. What do you take me for? A fool? Sleeping?” he said, spitting the words, as if they insulted his mouth. “Fucking more like! Fucking that whore whilst your men were dying!”
Henry threw himself forward again, making another grab for the Major.
“Go on, Lieutenant. Strike me. I’ll have you in front of the firing squad before you have time to let your dick go dry. Don’t you dare question me, you have no authority. You weren’t here. Simple as that. I took command.”
Henry drew back, his chest heaving, his shoulders sagging, his head down but his eyes still fixed fiercely upon the Major, staring at him from under his eyebrows. As Henry did so, Pewter stepped out towards him.
“It’s a disgraceful state of affairs, Frost, you indulging yourself in the middle of battle. I’ve never quite known anything like it. It would be all the more tragic if your men got word. It’s the sort of thing that a junior officer never recovers from. She’s a woman, Frost,” he said, brushing a speck from his sleeve. “Only a woman. She’s not worth any more thought, any more debate on the matter. The Hun, they should be first in our mind. We’ve battled hard to take Fampoux, in no small part due to my own leadership and verve. Already we are the model unit in the eye of the British Expeditionary Force. No one else has achieved our gains since Fritz was held in their big push. I do not intend to lose our gains because of the charms of a woman or her lovestruck beau.”
But Henry had heard enough. Whilst Pewter was finishing, he’d been striding towards the closed doors. He thrust them open and strode out, without another word.
“Where are you going?” Pewter demanded, annoyed his speech had been interrupted by the officer’s insolence.
“Going to my men,” Henry called back over his shoulder. “I might have missed the last party but I don’t intend to miss any more.”
“Very wise, Lieutenant,” the Major called back, sitting on the edge of the desk. “Very wise. Try not to get yourself killed, mind. A well-rested soldier like you is a valuable asset.”
The doors to the hall swung back behind the Lieutenant, slicing a brief snippet of noise from the village outside into the hall, before silence returned again when the door swung back shut.
Henry strode from the hall, tears in his eyes. He stopped, his hands on his hips, and stared down at his feet, shaking his head in confusion and disgust. In that moment he felt anger and revulsion at both himself and the Major. How could he have slept as his men had toiled? How could his commanding officer have sent them to their death in so fickle a manner? He thought of the men, recalling their faces and their names, and drew his hands to the sides of his head, slipping his fingers under his cap and tearing at the strands of hair beneath.
“You alright sir?”
Henry recognised the voice at once as Sergeant Holmes.
“Bill,” replied Henry. “No, not really.”
“I do understand sir. It’s a bastard, isn’t it?”
He stepped over and leant against the wall alongside Henry, looking back to the fields and the front line, the churned brown fields of No Man’s Land and the outline of trees which marked the German front. He coughed and removed his cap, wiping his hair flat.
“It’s like I tell the men sir, if you excuse me, that they’re all bastards in a bastard war and if I ever find the scoundrel responsible for all these bastards, I’ll tie a knot in it for him personally.”
“Bill, please, call me Henry.”
“Very well, Henry.” He coughed again. “Uh, is there anything I can do?”
The young officer turned his head away to face the wall of the building, dragging his cap from his head and leaning himself towards it. He rested his forehead against the rough stonework. “No thanks, Bill. It’s just, just hard to take.”
“Yes, I suppose it is sir, isn’t it sir?” said Holmes, aware of how awkward he felt standing next to him, witnessing his grieving senior officer break down. “Don’t envy you, sir, if I may say so,” he said kindly. “That’s why I’m happy being who I am sir, Henry, I mean. Just me, with no responsibility, just following orders, making sure those bastards in the trenches behave themselves, do as they are told, like, get up when they should, keep down when they should at other times. That’s the thing sir, try not to get too attached. Think of them as poor bastards, and everything seems less … difficult. But they was good lads, those that went forward and didn’t come back. Try not to let it get to you sir.
“After all, that’s the nature of our business, sir, if you don’t mind me saying. We are all tools, sir, is how I look at it, tools of war. Sometimes we’re picked up and used, sometimes we get blunt and need to be fixed. Other times, we get broken and the only good thing for us is to be chucked away. No point in thinking anything more deeply about it than that. We ain’t the craftsman who wields ’em. We’re just the tools. Tools of war, sir. That’s how I look at it, anyway. When you think of it like that, well, it gives a sort of comfort, sir, if you know what I mean?”
Henry nodded, his head still pressed tight to the wall.
“Can you …” Henry began slowly, clearing his throat, “can you give the order to dig in please, Bill?”
“Yes sir.”
“No one is to go forward. There will be no more assaults today.”
“Yes sir, very good sir.”
“Bill,” said Henry, wearily, “please call me Henry.”
“Yes, sir, Henry,” replied Holmes, with a tight smile. “Force of habit, Henry. Are you coming back to the trenches, sir?” he asked, peering over his shoulder to where the trenches lay defended and then back to the Lieutenant, who had now turned his back to the wall and was resting against it, his hands on his knees, as if he was about to vomit.
“Yes, in a bit. I just need to run an errand.”