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‘He had no idea, none at all … Look I’ll give him time to get over all this. Explain it. I’d better not see you again. I won’t if it means upsetting Alan.’
‘What is that about brothers? You are or you aren’t?’
Tom explained briefly, ending by saying ‘Guy’s his blood brother, I’m his real brother. He knows that. In solemn truth, he knows that.’
‘And will it be all right?’
Tom nodded, kicking his bare feet out on the unvarnished floorboards. He was annoyed with himself for his stupidity, but he was furious with Guy for provoking things. Anger boiled inside him, hot and dangerous.
‘Well? It will be all right?’
Tom sighed heavily. ‘Yes. It’ll be all right.’
And once again, he was wrong, dead wrong.
It was getting to be a habit.
27 (#ulink_2ad933a3-65db-5e09-8e49-8890d2c1a761)
It was the following day: 19 August.
Tom was back in the support trenches when the fighting resumed. He was making a report to brigade staff, short of sleep, and stained with sweat, blood and dirt. The sound of fighting ended the brief conference. Tom excused himself, received a brusque, ‘Carry on then, Creeley,’ and raced on up the line.
It was an evil day. It felt like the first cold day of autumn, with enough rain to have soaked everything and given the air a biting edge. A wicked little breeze carried the smoke of guns over the battlefield, until everything was seen through the greenish, cordite-smelling glow. The wet chalk was slippery and unreliable. The way ran uphill and the trench bottom had become a gutter for rainwater, mud, rats, and blood.
Tom made his way up the trench, fast but with care. He passed two men digging it out, trying to repair a collapsed parapet, and another man who was heaving a Lewis gun into place at the bottom end. Tom charged on past, and, going too fast round a corner, clattered into none other than Guy, who’d been running fast in the other direction.
It was an extraordinary coincidence: not that they should meet, but that they should meet in a trench. Guy, as a staff officer, hardly ever entered a front-line position, still less during a time of heavy combat. But, Tom remembered, the divisional telephone exchange had been completely smashed during earlier shelling, and he supposed the divisional staff must have been desperate to obtain a reliable picture of action on the ground.
Both Private Hemplethwaite, in charge of the Lewis gun, and Privates Jones and Carragher, who were then shovelling out the fallen trench, saw what happened next. The two officers had a blazing argument. The older officer was trying to push past and the younger man was physically restraining him, pushing and throwing him back against the wall of the trench. The noise of the shelling was too loud to catch any words, but it was clear that they were shouting at each other.
The younger man began hitting the other. Hard, forceful slaps, which the other man defended himself against by putting his arms to his face. The older man kept trying to get past. The older man didn’t once offer any violence at all to the younger.
Then it happened.
All three men were absolutely unanimous on the fact. The younger man drew his revolver. He pointed it at the other man’s head. The older man drew back, making a gesture of surrender. The younger man was still shouting. He seemed extraordinarily angry. The noise of battle continued to drown the sounds. Then the younger man lowered his gun until it was pointing at the other’s groin, or thereabouts. There was a shot. The shot was perfectly deliberate and at close range. A bloody rosette leaped into the khaki flannels. The older man jumped backwards as the bullet tore into his thigh. The younger man, a lieutenant, holstered his revolver, took one last furious look at the other and tore onwards up the line. Dark blood began to soak down the older man’s leg.
And that was it.
Tom raced away up the trench. Guy came staggering down, his face white as a sheet, incoherent with shock, anger, and fear.
28 (#ulink_25a8867e-a81a-5a72-a89a-c72eda737a46)
The fighting remained fierce until nightfall.
On a few bloodstained acres, too many men lay dead or dying. The air was heavy with the weight of shells and bullets. For the first time since coming to France, Tom found himself longing for the bullet wound that would send him home to England, away from the fighting.
Night came.
Tom posted sentries, praying that the Germans were as exhausted as their opponents. He desperately wanted whisky, but was pleased not to have any. This night of all nights, he’d be too likely to get drunk, when the last thing he needed was a muzzy head.
He was furious with Guy.
Furious. Far from relieving his feelings, the incident in the trenches had simply added to his fury. He’d shot Guy and hadn’t even killed him. Tom’s anger remained hopelessly unsatisfied, but his action had now put him into a position where Guy could, and quite likely would, have Tom court-martialled. There was only one sentence for firing on a superior officer and that was death. Tom knew that there were witnesses and he certainly wouldn’t be able to rely on their discretion. Perhaps Tom’s outstanding war record would make a difference, but Guy was a major and so often these things depended on rank …
Again and again that night, Tom relived the incident. He never once regretted firing on Guy, but his fingers curled round the butt of his revolver and he imagined a hundred times the same incident with a different outcome: Guy struck not in the thigh, but in the chest; Guy not harmlessly wounded, but killed outright.
Tom stayed on duty for the first sentry shift. So much had happened, he needed time to think. Somewhere in the afternoon’s fighting, he had crushed his pack of cigarettes, but he carefully extricated a couple of the flattened paper tubes and delicately reconstructed them into something smokable. He lit up, throat aching for the taste of warm tobacco.
‘Mr Creeley?’
‘Yes?’
By the brief flare of his match, Tom could see a man’s face – silver-haired but young, grey moustache beneath youthful blue eyes.
‘Captain Morgan. Just sent across from the Warwickshires to give you lads support.’
The two men shook hands and Tom handed over the last of his battered cigarettes, lighting it before passing it across.
‘Support?’ said Tom, mumbling through his cigarette. ‘God knows we need it.’
‘Look here. I’ve got some rather rotten news. I’d best spill it. The brigadier wants to sweep the Boche off the salient for good. His idea is, if we can storm their machine-gun posts, we can dare to risk a general assault.’
‘The brigadier is a murderous bloody-minded lunatic’
Captain Morgan laughed, embarrassed at Tom’s bluntness, but hardly denying the charge. ‘Your name came up,’ he said.
‘Came up to do what?’
The captain grimaced. ‘The guns.’
‘To storm their machine guns?’
‘Yes. I think it’s a damn fool idea myself, but the brigadier seems blessedly keen on it.’
‘It’s lunatic.’
‘I’m terribly sorry, old fellow – bearer of bad tidings and all that. The brigadier wanted you to take a dozen men. Use your own initiative on how to proceed, then get started at once. I’ll follow with a full company to support you the moment you’ve put a stop to those guns.’
Morgan handed over a packet containing written orders that confirmed his summary. Tom read the papers, then tossed them away.
‘My initiative? My initiative tells me that the brigadier’s lost his bloody marbles.’
The captain swallowed. Even to a newcomer, it was fairly clear that the brigadier’s orders were virtually impossible to fulfil.
‘I can’t say I don’t feel for you, old man. I’d have put my own name forward, except that I really don’t know the ground here. I must say, I thought the chap who put your name forward was a bit of a bounder. It’s not really the sort of thing that one fellow volunteers another fellow for.’
‘Who put my name forward?’
Captain Morgan paused. He had said more than he should and was kicking himself for it. ‘Look, I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s really not my –’
‘But you did. Who was it?’
Captain Morgan paused again, taking a long drag on his cigarette. He burned the tobacco down half an inch, then dropped the butt fizzing into the mud. ‘All right, old man. I wouldn’t normally say, but given the circs and everything … It was a chap called Montague. Mr Montague. I didn’t get the first name.’
‘Mister Montague?’ Tom was horrified. ‘A subaltern, my age?’
‘Yes. What? You have a lot of Montagues, do you?’
‘Not a major? We have a lieutenant and a major Which one?’
‘Lieutenant, old man. One star on his shoulder, that’s all. Positive sighting and all that. Definitely lieutenant.’
‘His leg? Was he wounded in the leg at all? A bad flesh wound, very recent? This afternoon?’
‘He was sitting down, old boy. I didn’t see his leg. But wouldn’t he be in hospital with a wound like that? He wouldn’t be sitting around with the brig, I don’t suppose.’
‘No. I suppose he wouldn’t.’ Tom was more shocked than he could give words to. There were two German machine-gun posts. One of them had been dug into the site of a deep shellhole, built up with sandbags and well wired all round. The other was one of the German gun posts that had survived pretty much undisturbed all through the fighting. The post had been built of poured concrete, ten feet thick and laced through with railway ties and steel bars. Attacking the posts was a short walk to suicide, nothing less. And Alan had wanted it. More even than the probability of his impending death – a fact which Tom treated as certain – what shocked him was that Alan wanted it.
Captain Morgan looked at Tom with a depth of feeling in his eyes. Beyond the makeshift parapet, some two hundred yards away the white concrete gun post shone pale in the moonlight. ‘I’m terribly sorry, old man. I do wish you the very best of British luck.’
‘Thank you.’
‘There’s nothing I can do, is there? Nothing you need?’
Tom shook his head. ‘Just … Look, for reasons I can’t explain, it matters to me very much indeed – more than I can possibly say – who suggested my name this afternoon. You’re perfectly sure it was a Lieutenant Montague?’
Pause.
In the distance a couple of shells boomed, and there was an answering snap of rifles.
‘Look, I was at Sandhurst four years ago, made captain last year. I know when to salute the pips and when to look for a salute myself. I’m absolutely positive, old man. I’m sorry.’
Tom nodded.
Another handshake. ‘I’d best leave you to it, then.’ Morgan began to walk away. A Very light shot up into the sky, and hung there, slowly dropping. The gloomy trench filled with its glow.
‘Excuse me, Captain,’ called Tom.
‘Yes?’ Morgan turned.
Tom held out his crumpled cigarette packet. ‘I’ve managed to crush these. You don’t have any by chance?’
Morgan felt in his tunic pocket. He had a packet of Woodbines intact and just slightly damp from a shower of rain earlier. ‘Take these, old man. You’re welcome.’
29 (#ulink_6debd770-48b5-5e52-b120-49a76221e455)
We’re the boys of the New Arm-ee.
We cannot fight,
We cannot shoot,
What bloody use are we?
But when we get to Berlin
The Kaiser he will say,
Hoch, hoch, mein Gott!
What a bloody fine lot
Are the boys from the New Arm-ee.
The song in one of its many versions drifted from the slimy dugout steps like the smell of something pleasant. The dugout was one of those captured from the Germans. It was well-built and, as far as these things ever were, comfortable. After a short pause, the song changed to something more melancholy.
Tom swallowed hard. Faced directly with the fact of his imminent death, his long-held attitude of carelessness began to desert him. He didn’t want to die. He was desperately keen to live. Perhaps he’d live through the night only to find himself court-martialled in the morning. But he didn’t care. He wanted to survive this night. After that, he’d take his chances.
And yet his death wasn’t the worst of it. Alan was. Of all people on earth, Alan Montague had put his name forward for the mission at hand. Tom knew he should never have slept with Lisette, yet Alan’s response was so coldly murderous. It was the worst side of Alan, multiplied and exaggerated. This was Alan the nobleman’s son, snobbish, self-righteous and detestable.
Tom felt like a stranger in a strange land.
He walked down the dugout steps. There were thirty men crammed down there, exhausted from the day’s fighting. Of the thirty, only three or four had had the energy to sing, and then only because there wasn’t enough space in the dugout for everyone to lie or even sit.
The men saw the look on Tom’s face, and they fell silent, immediately apprehensive. Those who were awake shook the ones who weren’t. The dugout came to life and the men stood leaning against the oozing walls or sat on rough wooden benches or on the ground. Light came from a pair of German acetylene lamps, which filled the dugout with their thick petrol fumes. The air was utterly foul, but homely. A couple of rats sat chewing something in the corner.
‘Raise your right hands, boys … Your right hand, Thompson, not both of them.’
The men silently obeyed.
‘Now lower your hands if you have nippers, any children at all.’
Sixteen hands remained aloft.
‘Put them down if you have a wife … I said a wife, Appleby, not a girl you screw when you’re in the mood.’
Ten hands plus Appleby: eleven.
Tom nodded. ‘You men come here, the rest of you carry on.’ There was complete silence, except for a low muttering as men clambered over each other to exchange positions. (‘Sorry mate’, ‘Careful, that’s my fucking hand you’re treading on’, ‘I’d’ve married the old cow, if I’d known’ …) Eventually the eleven men found their way to Tom – or eleven boys, to be more accurate, since their average age must have been under twenty-one. Tom’s orders required him to take a dozen men, but he’d disobey. A troop of fifty men couldn’t take the guns, and he’d be damned if he’d have more blood on his hands than he absolutely had to. Tom took eleven matches from the box in his breast pocket and broke the heads off two of them. He jumbled the sticks and poked the ends out between his thumb and hand.
‘Each man take a match.’
The men obeyed, and two ended up with the broken-headed sticks: one sandy-haired, stout but strong, and with a confident look to him; the other was a typical inner-city recruit, poorly fed, short – hardly even five foot four – with a long, pale face. Tom didn’t recognise them. Because of the casualties it had suffered so far, the company had been strengthened with other men of the battalion, men Tom didn’t yet know.
‘Sorry, lads, I haven’t got to know your names yet.’
‘Stimson, sir,’ said the sandy-haired lad.
