The Somme Stations

I knew it was a sap, and I didn’t really want to follow him, but I wouldn’t funk it; Tinsley, I guessed, felt the same. There was nothing in the sap at all – no sandbags, no duckboards, just two banks of mud about four feet high, and a queer smell coming and going: as if there was some strong cheese lying about somewhere – cheese- gone-wrong. It was mixed with a floating smell of woodsmoke. We’re gone about twenty yards, and my back was killing me from the crouching walk. But just then we were at the end of it, and here was a little cockpit made of sandbags and a tarpaulin.

‘Now you lie down flat on this tarp,’ said Newton, ‘and just have a peek over.’

Tinsley was looking at me, uncertain, but half grinning.

‘Come off it,’ I said to Newton.

‘It’s quite all right,’ he said. ‘They don’t know about this. They’re looking at our trench, not here. Except they’re not even doing that, you see, cause they’ve got a brew on.’

‘They have a fire going,’ said Tinsley.

‘Exactly,’ said Newton. ‘Always do at this time.’

‘They’re not cooking cheese, are they?’ said Tinsley. ‘I mean, sort of toasting it?’

‘What do you think this is?’ said Newton, ‘Wilson’s bloody Tea Rooms?’

I thought that must be some place in Bromley that he knew of. The bloke was getting agitated now, in a way that I didn’t quite like. ‘No,’ he said, ‘that cheese smell is Rogers, and he’s dead. He died yesterday on a raid. He’s about twenty feet over that way, but you don’t want to look at him do you?’

At that instant, he put his head up and down.

‘Big fucking Alleyman in plain view,’ he said, but even though he tried to keep an even tone, he was panting as he spoke. It had taken a lot out of him to put his head up. ‘I don’t know what it is, but when they have a brew on it’s always the same. You can see ’em.’

‘I mean to have a look,’ said Tinsley, and he was eyeing me because he knew I’d object. Perhaps he wanted me to, but I didn’t think so. This test was another one he had to pass if he was ever to make it to the footplate of an express engine. It was a bloody game of dare – that’s what Newton had got us into.

I said, ‘You’ll not.’

I turned to Newton, saying, ‘I’ve to look out for this kid.’

‘What kid?’ said Tinsley. ‘No you haven’t.’

And his head, too, was up and down in an instant.

‘I saw him,’ he said, but I wasn’t sure I believed him, and in the end it was pure curiosity that made me stick my own head up. I saw a line of scribble that was German wire, then a wall of sandbags, a gap in the sandbags and a small moving face in that gap: a Fritz, talking to another Fritz who was out of sight. It was as if they were in a different century over there. I detected a big moustache on the man; his helmet had a spike it in – just as promised in the manuals – and a white band wrapped around it. I thought: he’s a Prussian, not a German, and having ducked down again, I was all for crawling back fast to the trench, since it was properly evening now, and the ‘hate’ would soon be starting. But Newton was saying, ‘Who wants a pot?’

Well, we all had our guns on our backs. That was the thing about being a soldier on active duty. You could shoot anybody at any time. But I didn’t mean to open up with this idiot as officer commanding. He was addressing Tinsley.

‘It’s not many who bag a Fritz on their first day at the front, kid. He’s still there.’ And as Newton lifted his head for a second time, there came a fast whistling, like the sort of whistle a man might give when he’s just had a narrow escape. But Newton hadn’t escaped. The whole side of his face was red – the left side. Tinsley was in shock; he almost laughed, gasping out, ‘Holy smoke!’

It was his ear; I couldn’t account for all of it – part of it was gone. Seeing me move towards him, Newton said, ‘No, don’t touch. It’s all right, just don’t touch it.’

‘Take your tin hat off. It’s your lobe… your ear lobe.’

Well, I was in shock too. His ear lobe had gone, and all I could think was that, however long he lived, he’d never get it back.

‘Field dressing,’ I said, remembering about it just then. But Newton had turned about and was beginning to wriggle fast back along the sap, with blood flowing all down his collar on that side and painting his left shoulder red.

‘It’s quite all right,’ he was saying, ‘it doesn’t hurt in the least.’

When we got back to the trench, Andy and Roy were waiting there, taking a breather; one held a pick, the other a shovel, and for once they were on the sensible side of things. Well, not quite, for they were into their old routine:

‘I’ll bet he’s sore,’ said Roy.

‘As owt,’ said Andy.

It had been a bloody stupid stunt to go along that sap, and we were lucky no other men of the West Kents apart from Newton had seen us do it, but just at that moment, the shout went up of ‘Stand-to!’ and those same West Kents came flooding from both sides into the broken – or half fixed-up – trench. A sergeant – a big, tough- looking customer – was the first one to see the state of Newton’s tunic, and his ear. This bloke was on the point of utterance when Newton spoke up.

‘I’ve copped it, sarn’t,’ he said, ‘just now, just by this stretch here where the bags are down,’ and he indicated a gap in the sandbags. ‘The railway blokes hadn’t got round to fixing that part yet – that right, lads?’ he said.

So it appeared that, having risked three lives in his attempt to show off, he was now blaming us for what had gone wrong, and asking us to back up his lies into the bargain. As the West Kents took up firing positions, the sergeant glared, and Newton repeated, ‘That’s right ain’t it, lads?’

The twins stared at Newton dazed, with perhaps the beginnings of a smile on their faces, while young Tinsley and I also looked dazed at him, but with no hint of a smile in either case. I nodded at the sergeant, and Tinsley, willing to follow my lead in this at least, did the same.

We knocked off at six, when Oamer came for us. His waders were muddy up to the knees. When we converged in the communication trench with the others of our gang, I saw that they all had mud right up to the top of their waders. As we came out of the communication trench, the evening hate started. The mad animals, the screaming women, the flying locomotives all came back. But Oamer, walking in the lead with his pipe on the go and a hurricane lamp swinging in his hand, paid it no mind. That was called leading by example, and I wouldn’t have minded trying it myself. I did think I had it in me, and it would give me a reason to be brave, or to pretend to be.

We were into the thin, grey wood now, along with other broken-down wanderers. They came and went to either side of us, heavy-laden with all kinds of digging kit. They were from our battalion: blokes from ‘D’ Company making for their own billets, seemingly with no NCO of their own at that moment. I recognised a bloke from the York railway offices although I couldn’t have put a name to him. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been eating a sandwich on that patch of grass under the Bar Walls over opposite from those offices. He’d been neat in a good suit, with his grey felt hat by his side. Now, his uniform was invisible beneath mud, so that even when he came close I couldn’t see if he had a stripe. The mud hadn’t affected his brain though. He had all the gen. ‘A’ Company, he told our lot, were working on a road pushing east from somewhere north of Albert. This would connect two other roads that went north-south. ‘B’ Company were ‘doing railway work’, and at this Tinsley’s ears pricked up, and he asked what sort. Well, I couldn’t quite follow the geography of it, but they were building branches off the surviving lines around Albert. These would be standard gauge, but there would be narrow-gauge lines coming off them, and extending nearly to the front line.

‘Three-foot gauge?’ said Tinsley.

‘Two foot,’ said the bloke, and I immediately thought of the comical little railway that carried fruit and vegetables through the York railway nursery at Poppleton.

‘It’s all in aid of the big push that’s coming,’ said the knowledgeable bloke; then he drifted off, half staggering under the weight of mud on him.

‘Two-foot gauge,’ said Tinsley, coming up to me, ‘I’d settle for that. They’ll want drivers and firemen. Have we to put in for it?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘let’s let ’em get it built first.’

But I did fancy the notion.