The Somme Stations

His brothers were alongside him. As a great jabbering arose amid the stream of din, I glanced back at them. ‘Oh mother,’ they said in unison… Only they were laughing at the same time.

We went first through the centre of Albert. It wasn’t a ghost town because – Tinsley had been right – the ruins were all ram-packed with Frenchers and soldiers. It was as though everyone had decided: All right, the place is wrecked, but let’s pretend it’s not. In what appeared to be the central square of Albert, a lorry rumbled past us with trailer attached. The trailer was full of Tommies, and one of them called out, ‘Just arrived mate? Rather a hot shop, this is.’

And it would be Scholes that he’d spoken to. Scholes was breathing too fast.

‘I’m not good here,’ he said, ‘I’m strained all to pieces.’

I was thinking it would have been well worth jumping in the sea off Spurn to avoid, but I said, ‘It’s not like this all the time, you know’, and as we approached the noise it was changing, the screaming din being replaced by periodic bangs, with sometimes the more continuous noise of a machine gun, like a sort of virtuoso player in an orchestra. All the while, the sky would continually change colour, from a deep blue, to green, to red, and back.

We left Albert behind, guided by Oamer and the battalion billeting officer. This bloke was coming with us rather than any other unit because we would be in the furthest billet, the one nearest the front, and I thought: is this deliberate? Are we being put in harm’s way because, after what happened on Spurn, we’re considered a liability? Were the Brass, or the regimental police, trying to ‘sweat’ us, so that a confession or an accusation might emerge?

We went along rough chalk roads that shone with a moon-like glow in the darkness. Some of the fields were ploughed, as far as I could make out, but others contained upended or broken carts, as though the farmer had suddenly come to his senses and fled the district. There were more of the ponds I’d seen from the train, and I seemed to make out black flying things skimming back and forth across them, like evil sprites or spirits. At one point, I thought, we are now entering a wood, but the wood never came on. We just kept walking through widely spaced, broken trees.

We were still in the wood, if that’s what it was, when the billeting officer came to a halt. He indicated a large building and a small one, the only survivors of a group of ruins. He said, ‘You’re barely a quarter mile from the reserve trenches, so it’s pretty well sniped by the whizzbangs.’

‘Nice,’ said Dawson.

At that moment, I wanted to get my head down, no matter where. I turned towards the main building, and saw in the moonlight a French word, or part of one, painted in a sort of red, fairground lettering. The word was: ‘T- VERNE’. Dawson was looking the same way. ‘There’s an “A” missing,’ he was saying, frowning; then he turned to me with a grin. ‘It’s a pub, mate!’

We went inside and got some hurricane lamps lit. It was a pub, of sorts: there was a bar, with posters of some strange-shaped green bottles behind it (although no actual bottles). The place was filled with a petrol-like smell, and the floor crowded with furniture – couches and cupboards mainly, that had perhaps been rescued from the ruins round about. In one corner was a trapdoor leading down to a cellar. Dawson was all for kipping down there, but the billeting officer, addressing Oamer, said that if a five-nine hit us directly we were done for anyway. There was no food in the place. That would come in the night, we were told, together with our trench kit. Meanwhile we had our water bottles, and Oamer handed out some hard biscuits. He made a sort of cubbyhole for himself behind the bar, and rest of us lay on the floor at crazy angles, one couch and one cupboard apiece.

I was asleep in an instant, and I dreamt of a ghost train. A train made of light, and not running on rails, but flying through the air at a great speed. I woke with a start when the noise of its chuffing became faster than was possible, and I sat up on my couch. The noise was still there. Scholes was staring across at me, mortified. The twins were awake and listening too, both with heads propped on hands. They had two candle stubs burning between them. One said to the other: ‘Heavy shower’s coming.’ Lined against the wall beyond them were picks and shovels, and other bits of kit that had not been there when I’d turned in. I noticed an opened window. All this I saw in less than a second. The shell hit, and the ghost train crashed, leaving a darkness and a ringing in my ear. The concussion had blown out the candles. I heard Oamer’s voice, quite steady from behind the bar: ‘Speculative, I would say. Back to sleep, boys.’

If I did sleep, then I was woken soon after by another noise. Sitting upright, it took me a second to work out what it had been. It was a fart. One of the twins had let one go, and was putting his head under the blanket to sample the smell.

‘It’s quite a stifler,’ he said, making a surprisingly good job of putting on an officer-like voice. I looked at him – I believe it was Roy – and he most unexpectedly met my eye across the dark room, and spoke back: ‘What are you gaumin’ at?’

He looked tough as nails just then, and I thought: this pair spook me no end; I wouldn’t mind if a shell put their lights out before too long. I eyed Roy, who’d gone back to larking with his brother; then came a machine gun rattle. There was no dream about it; the war was still there, a quarter of a mile off. It had introduced itself to us the night before, and now waited for us to pay a call.

An hour later, with bacon, bread and tea inside us, we approached the trenches, Oamer in the lead. He told us that we’d been guarded in the night by sentries from the battalion, but from now on we’d be doing our own sentry- go. Battalion HQ was near a spot called Aveluy. Our billet, the tavern, was near a spot called Meaulte. Captain Quinn was at battalion HQ, looking for a horse. He would be joining us that evening.

‘That’s if we live ’til then,’ Scholes put in.

We walked slowly along the white chalky road in the grey light. It was still far too early in the bloody morning. We walked slowly mainly on account of the waders that came right up to our arses. You’d think we were fishermen except that we carried picks and shovels in place of rods. Our rifles were on our backs. We carried our haversacks and not our packs; we’d also been issued with tin helmets, respirators against gas, and ammunition. We’d put all this kit on in silence, unquestioning. Normality had gone completely out of the window.

Oamer turned about, saying, ‘Voices down, boys. We’re in machine gun range now.’

I thought of the Chief on Station Road, talking to me about how the Germans didn’t bother with rimmed cartridges, which made their machine guns all the more efficient.

‘Everything just keeps getting worse,’ Scholes whispered to me, and he was obviously in a terrible state.

Right on cue, a machine gun rattle started up. But we were beginning a descent…

‘Is this a trench?’ enquired Tinsley.

‘Yes,’ said Oamer, as we all began to walk bent double, ‘that’s why you’re alive.’

It was more like a little valley cut by a beck – a natural formation – but then I saw sandbags on top on either side. The machine gun rattle came again.

‘But where’s the enemy?’ said Tinsley.

‘Don’t be so fucking naive,’ snapped Oliver Butler. ‘This is a communication trench. You’re at right angles to him.’

We intersected first with the reserve trench, then the support trench. The first of these seemed deserted; the second held a few men sitting on shell boxes eating breakfast. I saw a man drinking from a Rowntree’s fruit gum tin, and he gave me – or more likely young Tinsley – a wink as we went past. He must be a Yorkie! But then I recalled that Rowntree’s fruit gums were sold all over Britain, and not just in the city of their making.

I asked Oamer, ‘Who are this lot?’

‘First West Kents,’ he said.

We pressed on along our ditch, and presently intersected with another trench.

‘What’s this one?’ asked Scholes. ‘Is it the front line?’

Well, I knew that trenches came in threes, and we’d already passed the reserve and the support, so the front was all that remained, but Scholes had a look of panic about him, so I said, ‘Seems quiet anyhow’, and there were in fact no guns or artillery to be heard just then.

Oamer was talking to a sergeant. Men were dotted along the fire step of the trench, but this couldn’t have been the morning ‘stand to’ that we’d all heard of, since half of them were sitting down. Oamer, having finished his conflab with the sergeant, sent me, Scholes and the twins one way along the trench. We were to ask for a Corporal Newton who would detail us to our jobs. Oamer and the others went the other way.

We went in the direction indicated, wading through mud, but so far no water. We couldn’t say what was