Bivouac camp, Talus Boisé, Somme, July 1916
EATON IS BACK. ROSE IS RUSHING AROUND LIKE HE’S GOT A WASP UP his arse.”
“Any news?” Harry asked.
Will shook his head. “Not that they’re sharing. They’ve all gone into a huddle. Roberts is screaming down the telephone. Cropper reckons we’re definitely going to get sent up now.”
“Jesus.”
Harry looked across the field. There was a lot of shouting going on, and a lot of quiet surveying of the men doing the shouting. The bombardment had begun at first light. The sky had trembled with it, the sound of artillery signaling the start of the attack. Francis, with W Company, had gone up in the early hours of the morning. Harry had sat with Will and watched the light pitch in the sky. The enemy guns had started too. The brothers had hardly spoken, but had smoked their way through a lot of cigarettes. He had felt Will shivering where their shoulders touched.
Greene and Rose were moving around the field now between the improvised shelters, and groups of men were standing up.
“Everyone on your feet. We’re on the move.”
“Any news of W Company?” Will asked.
“It’s chaos up there. A lot of this artillery is falling short. Nobody seems to know whether to move backwards or forwards.” Second Lieutenant Rose shook his head. “The French attack looks like it’s been a success, though, so we’ve got to push on.”
“No news of casualties, then?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you.” Rose batted away the midges with his swagger stick. “I’m just ordered to get everyone moving.”
“Buggers are biting,” said Will.
THE SKY FLASHED and boomed ahead.
“Retaliatory bombardment,” Wilkinson said with a nod.
“That’s a big word for you.”
“Heaney heard Roberts on the phone, reckons that they all ended up falling back. Brigade says it has to happen, though. Roberts was effing and blinding when he put the phone down.”
There was a pile of packs by the side of the road. Medical Corps men were crouched over them and turning through their contents. Water bottles and items of clothing were littered about. The wind riffled through the pages of an open book. There were spoons and wallets and shaving razors on the ground. Harry saw a photograph of a small blond girl with a dog and then it was gone on the wind.
“What are they doing?” asked Will. His voice sounded outraged on behalf of the owners of the spoons and the shaving razors. “Whose are they?”
“I’m guessing that their owners are beyond caring.”
Will frowned at Wilkinson.
“I’d be glad to give up shaving. There are some advantages to wobbling off this mortal coil.”
They walked on in silence for a while. The trees along the side of the road had lost a lot of their branches. They looked twisted, somehow pressingly tragic, and Harry briefly wished that he could pause and sketch their shapes. There was also a lot of debris—coils of wire, pickets and posts, and stacks of corrugated iron sheets. Stragglers sat by the roadside and watched it all pass by.
“It’s going to get hot today,” said Taylor.
Harry looked up. A plane droned through the overhead blue and plumes of pink smoke rose on the skyline.
“I’m not talking about the weather.”
A truck full of Irish went the other way. Their feet dangled from the back of the truck bed. One of them had got a drum and was beating a rhythm. They didn’t seem to be in the mood for singing, though. A convoy of ambulances followed them, which put anyone off trying to fit a song to the beat.
“Ruddy long way to Tipperary,” said Jones and threw his cigarette away.
They were digging in the field by the brickworks, stripped to shirtsleeves and sweating. The digging men went at their task as if they wished to be finished with it.
“Vegetable patch?” queried Wilkinson. “That’ll be a lovely row of cabbages come Christmas.”
“Give it a rest,” said McCabe.
German prisoners were resting by the crossroads while their guards had paused to smoke and pass water bottles between them. They stared at the traffic on the road. Was this then what the enemy looked like? They looked very small, these men, and very tired. Their ordinariness struck Harry. They looked more exhausted and ragged than monstrous. A pair of brown eyes made direct contact with Harry’s own. The boy had shorn-short blond hair and stripes of mud down his face. He had a very young, slightly unfinished-looking face, as if his features hadn’t quite set yet. The man next to him nudged his arm and the boy turned away.
“Poor bastards.”
The woods to the north were being shelled again. Harry could smell them burning. The blackened tree trunks were stark and sharp and didn’t really look like a woods any longer. It reminded him of something from a ghost story, something macabre and gothic and full of dark meaning.
“We’d know, wouldn’t we?” said Will.
Walking wounded were coming back. Their faces were white with the dust from the road, crusted with sweat. Some of the wounded moved like old men, all lurching concentration. Others quivered and jittered. Harry and his companions stared at their faces, looking for features that they recognized. Will’s hand was on Harry’s arm.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”
A Red Cross flag fluttered from a tree trunk. Behind the ambulances there seemed to be a good deal of frenzied activity going on. Weary-looking men were sitting in silence on the banking. Others had found places to sleep. The whiteness of dressings glared against their bloodied faces.
“How’s the accommodation?” asked Taylor. “Should I have bought a return ticket?”
“Most convivial,” observed Jones.
There was a litter of kit by the side of the road as they went into the trench: helmets and packs and water bottles. Harry saw a leather case that looked like Francis’s camera and then he was scrambling over all the kit. Groundsheets and mess tins and webbing fell away as he stretched. His hands trembled as he grasped. It was a pair of binoculars.
“You that keen for a close-up?” asked Yates. “I think I’d rather look away.”
Harry shook his head as he looked at the pile of once-upon-a-time possessions. He wondered how long it would take to tidy all of this up in the end.
“Like a ruddy church jumble sale,” suggested Wilkinson.
“Only less crochet and chipped cups.”
A gunner by the entrance to a dugout was picking a tune on a banjo. He nodded to them as they passed. They tried to whistle along but their lips were too dry and the effort was given up. The gunner’s melancholy notes followed them down the sunken road.
The ground seemed to lurch as a shell struck ahead. “Is that ours or theirs?”
Will shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“Of course it bloody does!”
There was a flicker in the sky ahead and Harry felt his heart beat faster. Sweat prickled down his back. Francis hadn’t seemed afraid as he’d gone up that morning. He’d got on his businesslike face, as Will called it. He had checked his kit carefully and shaken both their hands. He had looked older in the electric light. Will had tried to hug him, but Francis had shrugged him off and told him not to be soft. “I’ll be back when I’ve ended the war,” he had said.
“Smartly, now,” the shout came back. “Get a shift on.”
“Are we late for our date?” asked Taylor.
“I am all abuzz,” said Will. “My nerves are all tingling and my belly’s full of butterflies.”
The earth walls narrowed and the noise ahead increased. It was a great drone, a deep bass noise that seemed to be coming both from above and from the ground under Harry’s feet. They were going on in single file now. With an explosion ahead Harry found himself thrown against the trench wall. There was grit in his eyes and in his mouth. Though he knew that he was holding the line up, he had to stop for a moment, rub his eyes, and spit it all out. The earth wall trembled behind him.
“Loads of this is our stuff falling short,” Yates shouted behind.
They were moving forward faster now. The bottom of the trench was muddy and Harry found it difficult to keep on his feet. There was a sound like a great rending, an enormous noise, like shipyards and foundries and cathedral bells all pushed together and amplified. The ground quaked with it and he felt it vibrate his bones and drum in his diaphragm. It was like the very earth was being torn apart. Above the bass note there were whistles ahead, almost madly shrill, and a rattle of machine guns. Smoke was rising, white and black, and there was a flashing and an acrid smell. He looked back at Will. Harry saw his brother mouthing words but the noise took them away. His eyes said everything, though.
The line ahead was moving at a pace. “We’re going straight over,” Taylor yelled back. “It’s already started.”
They were coming up to the frontline trench now. It was blown out in lots of places. Harry saw newly churned-up earth, dropped rifles, and slumped men. Men were cowering and screaming and crouched over wounds; some were wild-eyed and others were crying. He looked at all the faces, wanting and not wanting to see Francis. The rhythm of the machine guns was loud. He could see the steps where the men ahead were going over. Rose was at the top of the ladder, his arm beckoning on and then diving away. Shells were falling just behind, the earth erupting. Harry was panting now, the rattle and the screaming roaring in his head. He placed his foot on the ladder and realized he was screaming too. He reached backward and gripped his brother’s hand. Will’s hand was shaking, Harry could feel the pulse in his palm, and then their fingers were pulled apart. His heart was in his throat, his throat clogging, choking with it. He stumbled forward into the smoke.