Canal Wood, east of Epéhy, Somme, August 1917
IT HIT JUST TO THE REAR. EARTH LEAPT UP AND SHOWERED OVER them. Harry leant against the wall of the jumping-off trench and listened to it all falling down.
“Two minutes,” said Captain Wear. He peered at the luminous face of his wristwatch.
It was all that Harry could see, the glow of the watch hands and then flashing in the sky. They hadn’t expected the incoming shelling. There had been no preliminary wire-cutting, Captain Wear had been telling them ten minutes earlier, as they didn’t want to give any indication of a planned raid. Did this bombardment signify that they knew anyway?
“Official report is that the wire is thin. The barrage is going to roll forward and we just follow it through. All right? The wire isn’t going to be an issue.”
“I do have a bit of a personal issue with getting strafed,” said Pembridge under his breath.
“At least there’s no moon.”
“This war has made me hate the moon,” said Jones, “its dozy great silvery beams. Big silvery-beamed bastard.”
Harry felt the earth jolt. “How long?”
“Thirty seconds.”
“. . . Loving Jesus, gentle lamb, in thy gracious hands I am . . .” Nicholson’s voice quavered as he worked through the rhymes of a childhood prayer.
“Jesus, I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
Another explosion hit just behind. Harry pushed his fingers into the earth. He could hear the rapid whistle of Nicholson’s breath to his left.
“You know the routine, right?” said Corporal Wright. “In and out. Get an identity if you can, but really this is just a diversion. Is that understood?”
“Have these, Blythe,” said Lieutenant Redmond. Harry felt a pair of wire cutters—the weight and the cold of the metal—placed in his hand. They had blackened their faces and he could just see the here-and-there glimmer of the whites of the lieutenant’s eyes.
“But I thought—”
“Just take them.”
With another lurch of the earth, Harry felt Redmond’s hand momentarily grip his shoulder. He tasted blood in his mouth and realized that he had bitten his lip.
“All right, lads. Keep low. Keep quiet.”
He saw Captain Wear’s profile as he clambered over. Harry heard his own heart racing.
The land sloped down toward the canal, which was a ribbon of light. Between here and the canal was just clotted darkness, dense and entirely quiet now.
They slid out on their bellies. He could smell the wet grass. There was dampness and roots under his hands. He pushed his fingers into the soft cold.
“Straight forwards,” hissed Redmond’s whisper.
Harry felt a stone push against his rib cage. His fingers pulled back from the shock of something sharp.
“Where’s that barrage?” asked Pembridge.
It started before the end of his question. Suddenly the valley below was all alight. Harry felt the earth beneath him quake as the light leapt. Like white paint thrown at a black canvas, it splattered and stretched. Smoke billowed into the sky and the valley below was full of a flickering phosphorescence that looked almost supernatural. It was completely contrary to instinct, it was an anathema, it was absurd, to crawl toward this rending light, but, to left and to right, they were scuttling, creeping, running forward. His fast breath and startled eyes told him that this was madness, but Harry’s feet were on the slope of the hill and now dashing down.
The barrage boomed across again, beyond their wire now. The sky seemed to churn with it. The star shells stretched, white trajectories sliding back into the black. It looked like it was burning beyond. The canal was now lost in smoke. He could see the posts and the wire silhouetted against the white.
The ordered silence was forgotten now as they stumbled down the slope. Harry couldn’t see the men around him, but he could hear their ragged breath, their oaths and prayers. There was a roar rising from their feet and from their mouths. He staggered in the soft, unseen earth, but they were pushing on as one and plunging toward the enemy wire.
The barrage came down again. Louder now. Throwing him off his feet. The earth kicked up under him and white light ripped across. It looked like the sky was tearing ahead. Fragments screeched through the air. He could feel the heat of it, the searing wind on his face, the smell of hot metal. Particles of earth flew up, seeming to fluoresce as they fell.
“It’s gone forward too fast,” said a voice that was almost a yelp in the black. When Harry looked back, all that he could see was an echo of the shape of a starburst, like the bright light had burnt itself onto his retina. His eyes ached.
It looked like a fairy thing ahead, the glitter and intricacy of it, like some web spun from mischief to catch mortals. It looked like that only for an instant. They were plunging toward the wire. It slid into focus now, the pickets and the web in between, all too real and thick and intact. The sky lit again and Harry looked forward into the belts of wire. He heard the blood pump through his head with a roaring beat. He felt his body accelerate, his rhythms run awry, as if his body were betraying him. He was suddenly vulnerable within himself and he gasped, full of fear as he fell.
“Keep down!” a warning voice bellowed as rifle bullets zipped toward them; they left behind lines of hanging light that cut through the wire. Lots of them were cutting through the wire now.
“How are we supposed to . . . ?”
“For fuck’s sake!”
Harry heard teeth chattering, a fragment of prayer, and a metallic clatter that came to him through his fingers as much as his ears. Their hands were on the wire, pulling, clambering, clawing at it. Cutters were working, rifles trying to push it down. To his left a figure leapt forward, running at it, plunging and then convulsing.
A shell hit just behind. Theirs now. It sent them all rearing up and thrown onto the tangled trap. Harry’s clippers were working. The wire tore at him as he cut. Its barbs were yanking at his sleeves and scratching at his wrists. He could see that his hands were sticky. He pulled the wire apart, inched forward, and began again.
“In and out, eh?” a humorless voice to his side asked with a laugh.
Shells were landing behind again and he found himself facedown in the wire. It was stuck in his puttees and his tunic and his sleeves now. He felt like a fly in a spider’s web. It pulled and cut against him when he tried to move. The white arcs of bullets fizzed through the darkness. In the shell light he stared at the clippers in his hand. How could he ever cut his way out of this?
The last thing he saw, as the earth plunged up, was Pembridge’s face at his side. There were tears on his cheeks. Then it was all convulsing up underneath him, like the wire had an energy of its own, the brambles and the pickets lashing and writhing. He heard the wire whip and felt it rush all around him. His legs were wet and the whistling light rushed to white.