“Yes, sir,” Sam said stiffly, his face pale and tight with anxiety. “He’s a good man.” He did not add any details of his service. This was not the time. Swaby understood.
“Don’t worry,” Swaby said calmly. “Straightforward case. We’ll hear it and debate for a few minutes, then send the poor devil home. Wouldn’t have brought it at all if the sergeant hadn’t been pushed into a bit of a corner. Can’t be seen to overlook these things.”
“No, sir.” Sam relaxed only a fraction.
Swaby went up to the front and sat down at the table. The proceedings begun.
Sergeant Watkins gave evidence, looking acutely unhappy, but he told the truth exactly as he saw it, standing to attention and facing forward.
Every accused man was entitled to ask an officer, usually of his own unit, to defend him, and Corliss had chosen Sam. Now Sam stood to question Watkins. He was courteous, even respectful. He knew enough to take great care neither to embarrass the man, nor seem to be condescending to him. Watkins was a career soldier. He would rather be abused than patronized.
Sam did not argue with the facts, he simply allowed Watkins to tell as little as possible, and choose his own words. It was apparent that if he had been allowed to, he would have let the matter go.
“Then why didn’t you, Sergeant Watkins?” Sam said tartly. His face was pale, his eyes glittering with anger, his body stiff. He leaned forward a little and winced, probably as the bandage tightened over the gash on his chest.
“Civilian present, sir!” Watkins said bitterly. “Newspaperman. Couldn’t let them write up that we ’ave no discipline. And ’e’d take it ’igher, sir!”
“I see. Thank you.”
The surgeon looked so tired Joseph was afraid he was going to pass out before he was finished giving his evidence. Even Major Swaby seemed concerned for him.
“Are you all right, Captain Harrison?” he asked gravely.
“Yes, sir,” the surgeon answered, blinking. “I really can’t help you. I know Corliss lost two fingers in the accident, and we had to take a third off later, but I have no idea how it happened. Don’t have time to think about such things, if it doesn’t matter to the treatment. I certainly didn’t ask him, and I’ve no idea if he said anything. People behave differently when they’re in shock, and a lot of pain. There was an accident. That’s all I know.”
The prosecuting officer did his duty reluctantly. He had several of the men from Sam’s command who had been present just before the accident, and those who were there immediately after. He may not have wished to question them, but he clearly had been given no choice.
Joseph sat in wretched unhappiness, aware of Corliss’s misery and his strong sense of guilt, although whether it was because he had unintentionally injured himself, or because he felt he had let his unit down, it was impossible to tell.
The verdict was given within minutes. Surely they would understand that the case was only brought because of Prentice? They could find Corliss not guilty, say it was an accident, whether it was or not.
It was customary that the most junior officer on the panel should give his opinion on sentence first, so he might not be influenced by his seniors.
Everyone waited.
“Lieutenant Bennett?” Swaby asked.
Bennett looked everywhere but at Corliss or Sam. Joseph had seen him fumbling through the handbook, his fingers trembling.
“Lieutenant Bennett?” Swaby repeated.
“I can’t say anything else, sir,” Bennett mumbled. “It’s a capital charge, sir.”
“I know what the charge is, Lieutenant. What is your recommendation for sentence?”
Bennett gulped. “Death, sir.”
Corliss was already sitting. He was considered medically unfit to have to stand. His hand was very heavily bandaged and in a sling. Sam gripped hold of him, supporting him upright.
Swaby let out his breath, then gulped. “Lieutenant MacNeil?” he asked.
MacNeil looked as if he might be sick. “I . . . I have to agree, sir. I . . . I’m not sure that . . . I mean, is there . . .” He tailed off in profound distress.
“Would you prefer to suggest something else, Lieutenant?” Swaby asked.
MacNeil was clearly floundering. “No, sir,” he said hoarsely. “The law . . . the law seems quite clear,” he said, his hand on a well-thumbed red book,
Swaby was ashen. It was not what he had expected, but they had left him no way out. He was too inexperienced in such things himself to know what latitude he had in reversing what his juniors had said, and there was no one to help him. The officers who usually conducted such courts-martial before were either dead or too badly injured to be here.
He gulped again, gagging on his own breath. “M-morale must be maintained. Any man who deliberately inflicts a ‘Blighty one’ on himself in order to return home and escape his responsibilities to his country and his fellow soldiers must be made an example of.”
The room was breathless.
Sam was gray-faced.
Swaby looked like a man in a nightmare from which he could not escape. “Private Edwin Corliss,” he said miserably. “It is the judgment of this court-martial tribunal that you have committed a serious act of cowardice in the field, and for this you should be sentenced to death. Major . . . Wetherall . . .” He gulped again. “Have you anything you wish to say in mitigation of the accused?”
Sam stood up. He looked so ill Joseph was afraid he was going to pass out himself. He half rose as if to help him, then realized the futility of it and sank back. Sam was almost as alone as Corliss.
“Yes, sir,” Sam struggled to find his voice. “I have been Private Corliss’s commanding officer for seven months and have seen him face conditions worse than those faced by the men in the trenches under fire. The saps are unique. It takes a very special kind of man to dig into any earth, and go into the tunnels he makes, but especially this. It’s wet, it’s cold, it’s suffocating, and pretty often we come across dead bodies—sometimes Germans, sometimes our own men, men we’ve known, talked to, shared tea with or a joke. If such a man reaches the end of his concentration, sir, and makes a mistake that takes his hand off, I think he’s more to be pitied than blamed! Especially by a civilian newspaperman, sir, who’s never faced anything more dangerous than his editors’ blue pencil!”
“Thank you, Major Wetherall,” Swaby said quietly. “I shall take your plea for mercy into consideration when I pass our verdict on up the command. It will have to go right to General Haig, of course. All capital cases do. In the meantime, Private Corliss will be kept under arrest, and taken to military prison to await his sentence. This court is dismissed.”
“Jesus wept!” Sam said between his teeth, his voice trembling.
“Actually, He’s probably the one person who would understand.” Joseph had not intended irony; he was sick, stomach clenched with misery as much for Sam as for Corliss, but it came to his lips unbidden.
Sam’s mouth twisted with a terrible, bitter humor. “I suppose He would! He couldn’t get Himself out of it either!” he said with despair, his eyes shadowed and hollow with pain. “I’ll see Prentice in hell!”
CHAPTER
FOUR
“This way, Padre!” Goldstone said urgently.
Joseph had stopped bothering to tell Goldstone—or anyone—that he was Church of England, not Roman Catholic. It did not matter much, and he was happy to answer to anything well meant. “I’m coming,” he replied, slithering in the mud. It was thick and clinging, wet on the surface after the day’s fine rain. The raiding party that Colonel Fyfe had sent over the top earlier in the evening had been expected by the Germans and met with stiff opposition. There had been casualties, and Joseph and Lance Corporal Goldstone were among those who had volunteered to see if they could find anyone wounded and still alive.
“Not much in the way of snipers now,” Goldstone went on, picking his way over a narrow neck of land between craters swimming in water. The occasional star shell showed the nightmare landscape in blacks and grays,
