words.
Joseph passed an officers’ dugout, its entrance down steep steps. It was narrow as a tomb, but at least it was safe from sniper fire, and in the winter as warm as anyone could be in the frozen earth. He emerged from the confining walls of the trench into Zoave Wood. Most of the trees here were blasted or burned, but a few still had leaves. Beneath them the earth that normally was covered with undergrowth was trampled flat. The front line passed right through what was left of the wood.
He stood close to the trunk of the nearest tree and felt its rough bark against his back. If Snowy was here in these few acres behind the line it was just a matter of walking quietly, crisscrossing it like a gamekeeper looking for a poacher. Except that Snowy would probably be motionless in his grief, alone, growing cold even in this summer night because he was exhausted not in body but in heart. Perhaps he was consumed by that terrible, inexplicable guilt that survivors feel when for no reason at all they live on after those they loved have died.
Joseph started to walk, placing his feet softly on the bare ground. The wind stirred in the few remaining leaves, and shadows flickered, but he could hear nothing else above the noise of the guns. It was a warm night and the stench of the dead mixed with that of the latrines was thick in his throat, although these days he hardly noticed it. It was there all the time. You had to get right away from the lines, into one of the towns, perhaps in an estaminet, and smell cheese and wine and sweat before you lost it. Fortunately there was opportunity for this in places like Poperinghe or Armentieres and the small villages within a few miles.
Something moved to his right. It must be a soldier. There were no animals left, and even birds would not come this close to the lines. He turned toward the figure and walked zigzag from tree to tree. It was a while before he saw the movement again. It was not Snowy. The man was too tall.
The sky was completely dark now, the only light emanating from gun flashes and star flares. They made the trees black and filled the spaces between with jagged shadows as the rising wind swayed them to and fro. The summer heat could not last. Soon there would be rain, maybe a thunderstorm. It would clear the air.
He almost stumbled on them: five men sitting in a slight hollow, facing each other and talking, all of them dragging on cigarettes, the brief glow marking their positions and momentarily showing a cheek or the outline of a nose and brow. At first he could not hear the words, but at least one of the low, emotion-charged voices was familiar: It was Edgar Morel, one of his own students from Cambridge days.
Joseph dropped down to his hands and knees to be less obvious, and crept forward soundlessly, keeping his movement steady so he didn’t catch anyone’s eye.
Morel drew on his cigarette again. The burning tobacco glowed red, showing his gaunt features and wide, dark eyes. He was speaking urgently and the anger in him was clear in the rigid lines of his shoulders and chest as he leaned forward. His captain’s insignia gleamed for a moment, then the darkness returned and the smoke he blew out was almost invisible. Joseph could smell it more than see it.
“They’re going to send us over the top again, toward Passchendaele,” Morel said harshly. “Thousands of us —not just us but Canadians, French, and Aussies, too. It’s all just as bloody hopeless as it’s always been. Jerry’ll pick us off by the hundreds. It’ll wipe us out. There’s almost nothing left of us already.”
“They’re all barking mad!” Geddes said bitterly. He was a lance corporal with a long, thin face. The hand holding his cigarette was shaking. It could have been nerves, or shell shock.
Somebody else lit another and passed it across. The man who took it thanked him and took a long drag, then coughed. Joseph stiffened, his stomach knotting. It was Snowy Nunn. He could not see the white blond hair under his helmet, but he recognized his voice.
“They’ve bin saying all summer that we’re going,” the fourth man said wearily. “Can’t make up their bloody minds. But when did they ever know their arse from their elbow anyhow?”
“The twenty-first of March, loike clockwork,” Snowy said quietly. “First day of spring, an’ over we go. They must think Jerry doesn’t have a calendar or something.” He took in a deep, rasping breath, his eyes filled with tears. “What for? What’s the point?” He stopped, his voice choking off.
The man next to him reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.
“The question is, what are we going to do about it?” Morel looked from one to the other of them, his expression unreadable in the darkness, except for his mouth, an angry line in the glow of his cigarette. “Are you willing to be driven over the top to get slaughtered for no bloody reason? The French aren’t, God help them.”
There was a bark of laughter. “You reckon it’s better to be tried and shot by your own? You’re just as dead, and your family’s got to live with the shame.”
“It’s show,” Morel argued. “The French aren’t going to shoot more than a dozen or two. But that isn’t the point.” He leaned forward, his body no more than a deeper shadow in the gloom. He spoke with intense earnestness. “Jerry’s a hell of a lot better prepared for us than we thought.”
“How d’you know that?” Geddes demanded. “What makes you God Almighty? Not that I’ve got any time for generals, or anybody else who thinks he’s better than his neighbor ’cos he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”
“Because I was questioning a prisoner a couple of days ago,” Morel answered sharply. “The Germans know we’re coming.”
“I forgot you speak bloody kraut,” Geddes said angrily. “Is that what you went to Cambridge for?”
A voice in the darkness told him to shut up.
“The point is, I do,” Morel answered.
“The point is, did you tell anyone?” one of the others asked. “Like Penhaligon, for example.”
“Of course I did!” Morel spat. “And he passed it on up. But they don’t want to know. Most of us are going to die anyway,” he went on urgently. “I’d rather go for a cause I believe in than be sent over the top because some damn fool general can’t think of anything except the same futile slaughter, year after year, no matter what the intelligence tells him. We’re no closer to winning than we were in 1914. I’m not sure that the Germans are our real enemies. Are you? You’ve fought opposite them for the last three years, captured some of them. I’m not the only one who’s talked to them. Our sappers have been in tunnels so close under their lines they can hear them talking at night. What about? Killing us? No, they aren’t! Ask any of the sappers, they’ll tell you they talk about their homes, their families, what they want to do after the war, if they live through it. They talk about friends, who’s been killed or wounded, how hungry they are, how cold, how damn wet! They make rotten jokes just like ours. And they sing, mostly sad songs.”
No one argued.
“I don’t hate them,” Morel went on. “If I had the choice, I’d let them all go back to the towns and villages where they belong. I hate the bastards that sent them. What if we copied the French, and told the generals to fight their own bloody war!”
There was a stunned silence.
“You can’t do that,” Snowy said at last. “It’s mutiny.”
“Afraid of being shot?” Geddes asked sarcastically. “Then you’re in the wrong place, son. An’ you know that as well as I do.”
Snowy did not answer. He sat without moving, his head bent.
“I’ll fight for what I believe in,” Morel went on. “It isn’t this senseless death. The land stinks of it! The best men of our generation are sacrificed for nothing! The generals commanding this farce haven’t any more idea of what they’re doing than their poor bloody horses have! Somebody’s got to stop it while there’s still anyone alive to care.”
Joseph was sick at heart, and his legs were cramped where he was crouching to the earth. He had felt the anger in the men for months, the growing helplessness since last summer, but still he had not expected anything so overt, not from a man like Morel. He had known him since 1913 when Joseph had first come back home to Cambridge after his wife’s death. The loss of Eleanor had left him too crippled in faith to lead a parish anymore. He had retreated into teaching. The theory in academic study of biblical languages was so much easier than trying to face the crises of love and faith, doubt, loss and disillusion that were part of the practice of religion.
He moved his leg, kneading the muscle to get rid of the pain. He should have realized that if anyone finally rebelled against the slaughter it would be Morel. Joseph’s job had been to try to teach eager, intelligent young men such as he to think for themselves! University was only partly about acquiring knowledge. Mostly it was about learning how to use the mind, refine the processes of thought.
He felt the steel against his cheek, cold as ice. He froze. Somehow the Germans had gotten a raiding party through the lines. Then he realized that if that were true, the men smoking a few yards from him would have been
