Sam Wetherall sat on the fire-step in the sun, a packet of Woodbines in his hand. It was nearly five o’clock. He was smiling, but the sharp, warm light picked out the crusted mud along the line of his jaw, and the deep weariness around his eyes.
“There was Barshey Gee sitting there cleaning his rifle,” he said wryly, “and holding this long philosophical discussion with the German captain, all very reasonable and patient, explaining to him how he was wrong. Apparently he’d been doing it for days. The German was lying with his head and shoulders sticking out of the ground about a foot below the top of the parapet.”
“Days?” Joseph stared at him in horror.
Sam shrugged, grinning. “Oh, he was dead! No one had dared to climb over the top to dislodge him.” He raised his eyebrows. “Which brings to mind, Jerry’s awfully quiet this afternoon. Wonder what he’s up to?” He cocked his head a little sideways, listening.
“It’s been quiet for a while.” Joseph realized he had heard no sniper fire for more than an hour. That was not unusual when there was a Saxon or South German regiment opposite them. They, like some of the English regiments, were inclined to live and let live. However there were others who were far more belligerent, and there had recently been a change on the German side, so this was unexpected.
Sam stood up, bending his head to keep it low, and moving over to Whoopy Teversham, standing on sentry duty. “What can you see?” he asked.
Whoopy was concentrating on the periscope in his hands and did not look away. “Not much, sir. Word is this lot’s pretty tough. Oi ’aven’t seen a thing. Could be all asleep, from anything Oi can tell.”
Sam took the periscope from him and stared through it, his shoulders hunched and tense. Slowly he swiveled it around to look right along their own lines, then across no-man’s-land again. He gave it back to Whoopy and stepped down onto the duckboards. “Wind’s changed,” he said with a shrug. “Blowing our way.”
“I know that,” Joseph answered ruefully. “Smells different.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “You can tell one lot of dead men from another?”
“Of course I can,” Joseph replied. “You don’t have to carry a rifle to have a nose. And the latrines are behind us, not in front.”
“The subtlety of it,” Sam expressed mock admiration.
“Oi can’t see the trenches!” Whoopy interrupted sharply, his voice touched with alarm. “There’s a sort of cloud! Only it’s on the ground, and Oi think it’s coming this way. Bit to the north of us, up Poelkapelle.”
“What do you mean?” Sam demanded, his voice edgy. “What sort of cloud?”
“Greenish-white,” Whoopy replied. “It’s koind of drifting over no-man’s-land. Maybe it’s camouflage, hoiding a raiding party?” Now there was alarm in his voice as well, high-pitched and urgent. He swung around the butt of his rifle to clang on an empty shell case, and at the same minute gongs sounded along the trench to the north and west.
Men scrambled to their feet, seizing weapons, preparing for a wave of enemy troops over the top. Joseph saw Plugger Arnold with his odd boots, and Tucky Nunn. Then there was silence, a long breathless waiting.
Joseph stood as well, crouching a little, back to the wall. An afternoon raid was unusual, but he knew what to expect. There would be a shout of warning, shots, shellfire, wounded men, some dead. He would be there to help carry those they might save. Trying to maneuver a stretcher in the short, narrow lengths of duckboard, around the jagged corners was ghastly. But they had been built precisely so an enemy could not get a long range of fire and decimate a score of men in one raking barrage. It was worth the sacrifice. Most of them they would carry on their backs.
No one moved. Not a duckboard tilted or a foot squelched.
Then he heard it—not a fusillade, but gasping, a cry strangled in the throat, gagging.
Sam swiveled round, his face ashen. “God Almighty!” he said, his voice choking. “It’s gas! Run!”
Joseph froze. He did not understand. How could any soldier, let alone Sam, give the order to run?
Then Sam’s shoulder hit him hard in the chest and almost knocked him off his feet. He bent to a crouch, more by instinct than thought.
“Get up!” Sam shouted at him. There were other noises now, yells of rage, terror, half words cut off in the middle, the terrible sounds of men retching and choking, and beyond them the rising barrage of gunfire.
“Get up!” Sam shouted again. “The gas sinks! It’s on the ground.”
“We’ve got to help!” Joseph protested, swiveling around and pushing against Sam’s weight. “We can’t leave them!”
“We can’t help anyone if we’re dead.” Sam yanked him along by one arm. “In the supply trenches we’ll have a moment.”
Joseph did not understand him, but at least Sam seemed to have some idea what to do. Gas? Poison in the air? He stumbled to the next corner, and the next, bumping into the uprights, lurching left and right. He could already taste something acrid in the air. His eyes were watering. Men were stumbling everywhere. The shelling was getting louder. It must be closer. Any minute German soldiers would appear—towering over the parapet, shooting them like trapped animals.
He reached the supply trench and ran along it, his feet slipping on the wet boards, splashing mud, until Sam hit him from behind and sent him flying. He found himself on his hands and knees, rats scattering ahead of him.
“Take your scarf or handkerchief—anything, and piss on it!” Sam ordered. “Then tie it over your nose and mouth.”
Joseph could not believe it.
“Do it!” Sam’s voice exploded, high-pitched, close to panic. “For God’s sake, Joe! Do it! It absorbs the gas, or at least the worst of it!” He suited the action to the word himself, tying the wet cloth around his face like a mask. “There’s no time to look for stretchers, and there’ll never be enough anyway.”
Joseph obeyed, feeling sick, frightened, and absurd, but he was too accustomed to the smells, the physical indignity of trench life to be revolted. He followed blindly after Sam as they turned and made their way forward again, and down the slight incline. At the first opening they fell over the body of a soldier lying on his back, dead hands clawing at his throat, his face twisted in agony. There was froth and bloody vomit on his lips. It was Roby Sutter, one of Tucky’s cousins. He had been nineteen. Joseph had bought cheese from his father’s farm.
Ahead of him Sam was still moving, bent forward, head just below the parapet. The gunfire was heavier, and there were more shells. Earth and clay exploded up in huge gouts, shooting sideways, fan-shaped. The gas was drifting. He could see its dirty, green-white swathes in the air. If there was a raiding party coming over it would be any moment now. Sam turned raising his arms, swinging them round to indicate forward.
They found two more men still alive, one wounded in the shoulder, propped up against the trench wall. Blood was streaming down his chest and arm, but he was breathing quite well. The other was unconscious, his face already gray. Joseph bent to the wounded man just as there was another burst of shell fire, this time closer to them. The dirt rained down within a few yards.
“I’m going to get you back,” Joseph said firmly. “But I’ll have to carry you. I’m sorry if I hurt you.” He had no idea if the man heard him or not. As carefully as he could, he eased him over his shoulder and straightened his back, not upright—in case he offered a target where the forward side of the trench had collapsed inward—but bent, as if heaving coal.
He heard Sam go onward, leaving the gassed man where he was.
About a hundred yards later, just as Joseph felt as though his spine was breaking, he met more troops coming in. Their faces were pale, frightened, their eyes wide. Immediately behind them were the stretcher- bearers.
He gave the stretcher-bearers his man—still bleeding, but alive—then turned and went back the way he had come. It was worse. More gas was drifting across the mud and craters between the lines. It was patchy, like a real fog, here and there in whorls torn rugged by the wind, leaving the dead trees poking up like gravestones above a drowned world. It lay like a pall, following the low ground until trenches that had been shelters became graves, bodies piled grotesquely, suffocated in their own blood and fluids.
The shelling went on, the noise deafening, shrapnel everywhere. Joseph found more men alive, struggling and wounded. He helped where he could, keeping the urinated scarf over his nose and mouth, tying it so it would not fall off while he used his hands. He lost count of the men he lifted, struggling to keep his balance in the mud, and
