NOTHING IN THIS world had prepared James Alderidge for life in the trenches.
The message came. Replacement troops needed in the trenches. Forming a new section. Get your packs ready, and wait to meet your commanding officer.
They ate, mailed letters home in case they might be their last, said a prayer if they were that sort, and strapped on their seventy pounds of gear. Six new conscripts: James Alderidge, Billy Nutley, Mick Webber, Chad Browning. An Alph Gilchrist and a Vince Rowan. Two returning soldiers: Frank Mason, whom they knew, and Samuel Selkirk, whom they didn’t.
An officer appeared. “Morning, lads,” he said. “I’m Sergeant McKendrick. This section is under my command. You’re the Third Section, First Platoon, D Company, Thirty-Ninth Division.”
3rd, 1st, D, 39th. Stationed outside the town of Gouzeaucourt. James tried to file that where he could remember it.
“Button that top button, soldier,” the sergeant told Billy. “Slovenly dress is punishable.”
He worked his way down the line. “Who taught you to wrap your puttees like that, Private?” The cloth strips wrapped around Chad Browning’s chicken legs drooped. “We’re soldiers, not mummies, for God’s sake.”
This emergency addressed, the sergeant ordered them to open their packs for inspection. They slung them off their backs and opened them. When satisfied, he led them on their march.
They wove through artillery mounds, field kitchens, and wound clearing stations, past live horses and dead horses and trucks and motorcycles. From time to time, in a lazy sort of way, artillery shells sailed over from the German lines and exploded, sending up geysers of dirt.
One landed close enough for them to feel its impact, and a few of the new men screamed.
“That’s nothing,” the sergeant said. “Just a bump. Didn’t even knock you over.” He pointed. “See that black smoke? That’s a Jack Johnson. Like the American prizefighter, you know. Big black chappie. You’ll learn how to spot ’em from the noise they make.”
Soon walls of earth rose around them. As a boy, James had visited grand old country estates, where for a penny you could wander through a garden maze of high hedges. He’d hated them, though they, at least, were made of flowering bushes, and country gardeners never shot trench mortars.
This labyrinth wound on and on. The dark corridors turned at right angles every couple of yards, so you never knew if you were in step with the others unless you ran into them, or they collided with you. The narrow passageways couldn’t fit two people abreast, so they flattened against the wall to let stretcher-bearers pass by.
“What’s the matter, soldier?” Sergeant McKendrick watched James stare at a groaning man on a stretcher with blood seeping through his shirt. “This is a quiet sector. You wait.”
“Try not to look shocked,” Mason told him quietly. “It doesn’t help to look green here.”
James lost all sense of direction. He tried to picture the diagrams he’d seen in training at Étaples. Zigzag front firing lines, then support lines, then reserve lines, all more or less parallel, with communication trenches running between them like filaments in a spider’s web. Behind the reserve trenches, a row of heavy guns, manned by artillery gunners. The little shoots that ran off the front firing line trenches into no-man’s-land to spy on Jerry were called saps. What did it matter what name you called it? A trench by any other name would smell as sweet, right?
These smelled like rotting human flesh, urine, and feces. And cheap cigarettes.
The path opened up to a right turn, revealing a wider trench. It felt less like a passageway and more like a chairless waiting room where grubby men stood in an endless queue to see a dentist. Some soldiers had stretched themselves out on their packs or on sandbags to sleep.
Here Sergeant McKendrick addressed them. “Home sweet home, lads,” he said. “You’ll spend ten days here in reserve, then move up to the support lines. Ten days there, and you’ll move up to the Front. After that, if all goes well, you’ll get a few days’ rest.”
Thirty days in the trenches. Could rest mean leave and seeing Hazel?
“Of course,” added the sergeant, “if the Germans attack, the whole plan goes bugger up.” He looked around. “Well, lads, make yourselves at home. The old-timers here can fill you in. They’re Thirty-Ninth Division, just like you. Second Section. Now, take a load off your feet until lunchtime, and after that we’ll have gas mask training.” And he was gone.
The other soldiers peeled themselves off the trench walls where they’d been leaning and came over to sniff out the new additions to the wolf pack.
“Welcome home, me darlings,” said one, a lanky, wiry fellow. “What’d you bring me?”
Billy, Chad, and Mick eyed one another. James looked at Frank Mason for some hint.
Mason pulled a cigarette tin from his pocket. “Box open.” Billy, Chad, Mick, and James stared. Five or six experienced soldiers, standing by, wasted no time crowding in around Mason and grabbing at his Woodbines, with calls of “Thanks, mate” and “There’s a chum.”
“Box shut.” Mason pocketed the tin. The soldiers who didn’t get any weren’t bitter.
Chad whispered in James’s ear. “Nobody told us we were supposed to bring a bribe.”
“I’m Frank Mason,” Frank told the 2nd Section lads. “What’s it like up there?”
“Pretty quiet,” said a stocky, broad-faced soldier. “Benji Packer. We don’t hear much from Fritz except at stand-down and stand-to, and even then, his heart’s not in it.”
James was puzzled. “But then, what’ve we been hearing all day?”
The 2nd Section men laughed. “What’s your name, kid?”
“James Alderidge,” he said. “From Essex.”
“It’s German artillery,” Packer said. “But that’s just Fritz having a sneeze now and then.”
Another soldier took a drag on his cigarette. “You wait till he really catches cold.”
“Tell you what, though,” said the taller, wiry fellow. “Something’s cooking. I overheard the adjutant talking to Feetham—”
James interrupted. “Feetham?”
Several heads turned his way, as if this were an embarrassing question. “Brigadier General Feetham,” said a heavily freckled soldier. “CO of the Thirty-Ninth.”
Adjutant: a captain and aide to the CO, commanding officer. Brigadier general: head of a brigade, or in this case, a division. So, the adjutant was aide to Brigadier General Feetham.
At least, James was fairly sure that was how it worked.
“The Fifth Army’s line keeps spreading,” said the chap in the know. “They’ve given us too many miles to cover. We’re stretched too thin. Don’t have enough soldiers to defend it. That’s why they hurried you boys into the army and up to the Front.”
Sam Selkirk, who had seen service before, spoke. “What’s on the other side? How many divisions has Jerry got?” Selkirk had a face like a basset hound’s. It was tricky not to stare.
“Who’re you?” asked the wiry 2nd Section chap.
“Sam Selkirk,” said the basset hound.
The other nodded in greeting. “Clive Mooradian. Good to meet you.” He blew smoke into the inside of his coat pocket.
This got Chad Browning curious. “Here, why d’you do that?”
“And you are?”
“Browning. Chad Browning.”
“Well, Private Browning,” said Clive Mooradian, “there’s half a dozen of us here smoking. What d’you think will happen next if we let the smoke rise up, easy as you please?”
Chad scratched his head. “Er . . . I dunno.”
“Fritz’ll know just where we are, won’t he?”
Chad looked like he must be daft. “You telling me Fritz doesn’t know we’re here?”
Second Section thought this was hilarious. “Course he knows we’re in the trenches, dippy. If they can tell by the smoke that a handful of us are lolling here, smoking, here’s what’ll happen. His bombers will lob an egg grenade right into our laps. Or his snipers will train their sights on this spot, waiting for one of us to poke our heads up.” He glanced up at Billy Nutley. “You’d best find a way to get shorter, mate, if you want to make it through the week.”
Billy slumped as best he could. His back would soon hurt like the devil.
Frank Mason blew smoke through his coat. “Mooradian,” he said quietly. “You said you heard the adjutant talking to Feetham. Is that all you heard? About the thinning of the line?”
Clive Mooradian tapped the ash off the end of his cigarette. “No, it ain’t,” he said. He looked around to make sure no officers or NCOs (noncommissioned officers) were near enough to hear them. “Russia’s pulling out of the war, see? They’ve gone communistic over there, and the new government wants to be out of the war before the Germans kill every last starving Cossack.”
“So what?” chirped Chad. “What’s a bunch of Russkies got to do with us?”
Clive gave him a scornful look. “Think, dumb-arse. The Germans and Russians are in peace talks, right? And when they sign an armistice, where d’you think all those German armies from the Eastern Front are gonna go? Back home to kiss Ursula and Hildegard?”
“If they won’t,” said an older man from 2nd Section, waggling his eyebrows, “I will.”
“Go ahead, Casanova,” said Benji. “Tell ol’ Fritz to bring his sisters to the Front for you.”
“Shut up, shut up,” drawled Clive casually. “You’re wrecking my story.”
“They’ll come here,” said James. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it, Mooradian?”
“That’s right, genius.” Mooradian pointed his cigarette at James. “Who’s this bright young lad? Oh. Right. You’re Jimmy. So, Jimmy, how long d’you think the Eastern Front is?”
James shrugged. “I don’t know. A lot longer.”
“You’re not half right. A lot longer. We’ll have double, triple the German soldiers, all their artillery and planes. Facing our thin line of Fifth Army. How long d’you think we’ll last?”
Frank Mason spoke up. “What about the Oise River?” he said. “They said it’s so wet and soupy, it’s a natural defense, so a thinner line’s okay. The Germans can’t cross it easily.”
“Better hope so.” Benji took a drag on his cigarette. “Sounds like betting on a puddle.”
“But the Americans are coming,” Mick Webber said.
“Seen any sign of ’em?” replied Mooradian. “At this rate, they’ll get here in time to toast the Germans’ victory.”
Sam Selkirk, basset hound, shook his head. “It’ll be Wipers all over again.”
Frank Mason, seeing his comrades’ bewilderment, translated. “Ypres. Belgium.”
“What he means,” said Private Mooradian, “is that it’ll be suicide.”