“Sniper,” Cully remarked. “Damn good shots, some o’ those Jerrys. Mind, I suppose he were pretty far forward. Clean way to go, if you’ve got to, eh?”
“Yes,” Joseph agreed. It was. Far better than being gassed, coughing your lungs up, drowning in your own body’s fluids, or being caught on the wire, riddled with bullets, and hanging there perhaps for days till you bled or froze to death. But that was not what was in his mind. Why had none of his own men brought Northrup back? Surely they had seen him fall? But no one had even reported him missing.
“Let’s get him back,” he said grimly.
“Yes, sir,” Cully said obediently.
It was an awkward journey and as the sky cleared and the heat burned through, the ground steamed gently. But the cover it offered was too little. Shots began to ring out, shells and sniper fire starting to miss them too narrowly.
They reached the forward lines, then the parapet, and rolled over into the shelter and filth of the front trench. Hands reached out to help them.
“He’s dead,” Cully said matter-of-factly. “Can’t do nothing for him, not now.”
“The major!” Stan Tidyman said in surprise. “Well Oi never!”
“Now we’ll have to get another one,” Tiddly Wop Andrews remarked. “Can’t be worse than this, though, can he?”
Barshey Gee fished a sixpence out of his pocket and slapped it on the fire step. “Sixpence says it can,” he said with a smile. “Oi’ll be happy to lose.”
The others laughed.
It was Joseph’s duty to report the death to Colonel Hook at the regimental command. Northrup would have to be replaced. Headquarters might send someone, or it might be a field promotion of someone already with them, but he had no time to think about it. Please heaven it would not be Morel. Joseph still did not know what to do about him, how to help or where his first obligation lay. Morel was angry at Northrup’s incompetence and his arrogance at refusing to be helped by a man from the ranks, even when he was right. But he was far from the only experienced man to feel that. And he was grieved at Eardslie’s death. They had been friends for years.
Geddes and Bill Harrison helped Joseph carry Northrup to the table in the first aid post. He would be buried close by, probably tonight. Precious transport had to be kept for the wounded.
He thanked them and Harrison remained behind. “Can I help you, sir? Tidy him up a bit?”
“Thank you,” Joseph said. It was a grim task, but he had done it so often it was almost mechanical now. Such decencies really were for those left alive who would know, a rather pointless exercise in humanity, as if it could make any difference. Northrup was beyond help, and no one else cared. It was a pretense that in the seas of blood each death was somehow important. The whole of the Western Front was strewn with broken bodies; many of them would never be found. He had presided at burials where there was little more to identify than a handful of dog tags.
Still he accepted the offer, and together they straightened his uniform, took off the worst of the mud and washed his face. Northrup looked frightened. There was no resolution or peace in his pinched features.
“Reckon as he saw it coming, don’t you, sir?” Harrison asked with a touch of pity. Perhaps now that Northrup could do no more harm he felt free to treat his weaknesses with humanity.
Joseph looked down at the corpse. He closed the staring eyes. “Yes,” he agreed. “It looks like it.”
“Poor devil,” Harrison said bleakly. “Is there anything else I can do, sir?”
Joseph found his throat dry, his hand trembling a little. “No, thank you. This is just routine. I’ll have to go and tell Colonel Hook, but I’ll make Northrup look a bit better first.”
“Yes, sir.” Harrison saluted and left.
When Joseph was certain he had gone he looked again at Northrup’s face. Even with his eyes closed, the fear was still there, ugly and painfully naked. How long would it be before Harrison realized that Northrup could not possibly have seen the sniper? Any German must have been at least five hundred yards away from where they had found Northrup’s body. Had Northrup simply panicked under fire? Please God that was it!
Please God? Did he think God was listening after all? Joseph had wanted Northrup removed before he killed any more men with his arrogant stupidity, but not this way!
He slid his hand under Northrup’s head and felt the exit wound. The bone was splintered, hair matted with blood and brain. There was no point in trying to wash it off. Simpler to bandage it briefly, decently. Make him look whole.
He took off the tin helmet and washed that clean. He stared at it. There was no scar, no mark on the metal where the bullet had exited. Where was the bullet? Fallen out onto the ground, or inside his clothes?
The answer was obvious but he still resisted it. There must be another explanation.
Deliberately, methodically, he examined the rest of the body. There were no other injuries on him, except for a chafing at the wrists. It was not much more than red marks and a little broken skin, as if he had been firmly tied, but not harshly.
Joseph knew it before he forced himself to accept it. Old memories flooded into his mind of finding another body and bringing it back, and then realizing it was not a casualty of war but murder. That time he had at first assumed a German soldier had held the dead man’s head below the water. This time he knew straightaway it was his own men who had killed Howard Northrup. But now, two years and thousands of deaths later, Joseph would be a great deal more careful what he did about it. The grief of that time, and the guilt of his own part in it, still haunted him. Before he reported this to anyone, he would learn more about Northrup’s incompetence, how serious it was, how many lives it had cost, or had appeared to cost, and whose. He would look further than an instant judgment of what seemed to be justice. He was wiser now, more aware of the complexity behind an apparently simple act. These men lived in circumstances unimaginable to those who had originally written the rules. How could any sane man have conceived of this horror, let alone framed laws to meet its needs?
He reached for a wet rag and was making sure the crowns on Northrup’s epaulettes were clean, when he saw Richard Mason standing in the doorway. His dark face which concealed so much emotion was set in lines of tense expectancy.
“Hello, Mason,” Joseph said with slight surprise. The last article of Mason’s he had read had been sent from Russia. “There’s nothing new here. You could copy what you put last time, just change the casualty figures.”
Mason’s mouth tightened in the barest of smiles. He came farther into the room. “Was he alive when you found him?” he asked.
“No.” Joseph knew in that moment that he would give Mason no information he did not have to. He needed time. He liked Mason personally; they had struggled through the nightmare of Gallipoli together, and then the storm in the English Channel, but Mason was a war correspondent. He would publish the truth of a situation, no matter how hideous, if he believed it served a greater good. Perhaps that was right, but Joseph had already learned how hard it was to judge where a path might lead, and that it was too late to be sorry afterward. Very little was simple.
Mason was looking at him, eyes unwavering. “Sniper?”
“Looks like it,” Joseph said. He knew it was a lie, but he needed to learn more before he committed himself. “Why? Are you going to write an obituary for him?”
Mason smiled this time, but there was no light in it, no humor. “Do you think I should, Reverend? What should I say? Killed in the line of duty, Passchendaele, the eighth of August, 1917. Not exactly individual, is it! I could write that for tens of thousands of men. They’re all unique to those who loved them, someone’s only son, only brother, husband, fiance, friend.” His eyes widened and his voice became harsher. “What should I say about Northrup? That he was an arrogant fool and his men hated him? His death may save the lives of a few poor devils he’d have sent over the top uselessly?”
“If you set yourself up to judge one man, then you need to judge them all,” Joseph replied, this time facing him without flinching. “Do you feel you have the right or the ability to do that, Mason?”
Mason’s mouth turned down in a wry wince. He leaned against the upright of the tent flap and put his hands in his pockets.
“Of course I don’t. That wasn’t really my point. I notice that you question my right to say so, but not that it is true.”
“I question your right to come to that conclusion,” Joseph corrected him. “But I don’t really care what you think, only what you say.”
