The Somme Stations

months of pioneering? It does seem to be rather dirty work, doesn’t it?’

I couldn’t settle on any subject to think about. If I thought of the wife and children I became choky. If I thought of the pubs of York, I became likewise (which was rather shaming). I thought of the dozen or so dead men I had so far seen in six months of repairing trenches. They had all been different colours: one completely white; one blue; one brown, which was the dried blood that had formed into a mask on his face. But none had looked as dead, and as unjustly dead, as William Harvey.

I did get off into a sort of kip eventually, and woke to find the church filled with light and the sound of shells of all calibres being set off, a sound not only deafening but also confusing, and almost amusing, as when a match is dropped into a box of fireworks. As I set off to the latrines, one of the mines we’d all been warned of went up. This was the Royal Engineers, not content with the noise of the shelling, trying for the biggest bang ever heard on earth. Everything shook: the bright blue sky, the stones of the upper part of the quarry; the latrine tent, and Bernie Dawson, who was entering it at the same time as me.

‘To think it’s Saturday morning,’ he said.

It was a beautiful one at that.

The incredible racket continued as I breakfasted in the church on a tin of Maconochie steak and kidney, hard biscuits and tea with rum in it – a lot of rum. Then Oamer came round with a jar of the stuff, offering extras. I took some. I noticed that Dawson did not. They ought to give him a pint of John Smith’s bitter. He’d tear into the Hun after that all right. In the latrine, I’d noticed a sinister smell, which I put down to the chemicals used in the long ditch beneath the shitting planks. But the smell was now in the church.

‘It’s gas,’ Dawson said. ‘But don’t worry, it’s ours.’

Oamer told us, ‘It’s dispersing, Jim. That’s official.’

There was a lot of chatter in the ruined church – relief that the day had finally come, even if we weren’t going forward quite yet. The men were clustered around their NCOs, dependent on them now for a word of guidance or encouragement even if they couldn’t stand the sight of them in normal times. Everybody was on the look-out for someone who had faith in the plan, or had any proper idea what it was. I pictured the men going over the top at that moment, and in a way I’d rather have been with them than dangling about waiting.

Officers would come and go from the cottages, speaking in low voices to the NCOs. Not having anything to read (except The Count of Monte Cristo), I wandered out of the church. I couldn’t see the front, just fields separated by low ridges like railway embankments, but of course I could hear it: a noise like a giant gorilla rattling the bars of its giant cage while a million women screamed. I sat down, and a voice called over, ‘You’re sitting in a graveyard.’

It was Oliver Butler. Oamer was at that point crossing between us, going from the officers’ mess into the church, and carrying a sheet of paper, which meant an order for us. He said, ‘I’m sure the irony is not lost on him.’

But it was. I hadn’t realised.

The twins were standing at the church door, and Oamer, on his way in, turned to them, saying, ‘Ready to go lads?’

They stared at him, and when he’d gone into the church, Andy turned to his brother, saying, ‘Ready to go, Roy-boy?’ which Roy took as a playful insult, so he pitched away the fag he had on the go, and they fell into one of their sparring bouts. Two minutes later, every man was called into the church, and the announcement was made. We were going forward at last.

We trooped into the communication trench, joining a flow of men. Every few seconds, the flow was interrupted and we stepped aside to let Royal Army Medical Corps and their stretcher cases come past. You’d hear the screaming and groaning before you saw the man, and you’d wonder what it would signify. But I tried not to look at the ones being carried since, very often, important parts of them would be missing.

I carried my rifle with fixed bayonet, two hundred and fifty rounds of ammunition, pick, shovel, haversack. This was battle order; it was meant to be light but was not. I was far too hot. About half the men moving forward carried bombs in addition, and you’d look at them thinking: is that bugger going to trip over and blow us all up? Whenever the communication trench came to a junction, there’d be signs, letters of all different sizes – like children’s writing – daubed in black paint on planks: ‘Moorside… Bank Top… Park Terrace’. These must be streets in the home town of whoever’d made these trenches. By the sounds of it, they were from a Northern town. But some were in French. One said ‘Arret’, and Oamer, leading the way, pointed to it, saying, ‘Don’t, on any account.’

At every junction, more men came in, and I tried to think who they might be. We were in with the 32nd Division, alongside two regular battalions – at least one was Scots, I couldn’t recall its name – and half a dozen others from the New Army like ourselves. The Salford Pals – that was one lot. But how did you know a Salford man by looking at him? I had now lost touch with Oamer, but relied on being re-united with him in the front trench.

When I reached the final junction, a subaltern stood there silently (because nobody could be heard without screaming) directing the flow. He was like a human signal post: as each man approached, his left arm or his right would go up. I was sent to his left, and I wondered how he knew where I was supposed to be going. We’d never clapped eyes on each other before. But I found Oamer and our digging team directly. They stood at the entrance to the sap, which was a ditch connecting with the upper part of the trench. You’d scramble up an earth mound to get into it. The twins were there, shovels ready, eager to get going. Scholes was looking not so eager, and I noticed he was mumbling to himself as Quinn addressed an RE man.

‘So to recap,’ Quinn was saying, ‘the sap is literally stuffed with dead bodies?’

The RE man nodded. ‘’Fraid so.’

‘Mmm…’ said Quinn. ‘And what about further along?’

‘More of the same,’ said the RE man.

‘What? More dead bodies?’

‘And a shell’s done for the final part.’

So the sap had become a grave many times over. I supposed dying men had rolled into it for cover. This didn’t affect the twins. They wanted to be in there a digging, and Quinn nodded at Oamer, who took them aside and talked to them very softly, which they seemed to be able to hear and understand in spite of the stream of din overhead. They were to clear a way through the sap as best they could, make good the end of it, and then extend it if possible.

I had become aware, as this little conference took place, of the short ladders in the trench making a claim on my attention. Where had they all come from?

The twins had scrambled off into the sap. Quinn turned to the rest of us.

‘Now I’m afraid there’s been a change of plan,’ he said, straining to be heard over the high screaming of some eighteen-pounders that our side happened to be sending over just then, ‘Owing to unforeseen circumstances…’ Quinn was saying.

Behind him, the RE bloke was grinning. He was another captain. He carried no gun. None of the RE blokes did, just as though the war, to them, was not about death but just about building things, making loud bangs and generally having a ripping time of it. Quinn was still talking but I couldn’t hear a bloody word because of some deep-booming Howitzers that were having their say. I knew that it would end in us going up the ladders though, and so it proved. When Quinn had done, the RE man summarised the orders in a brighter sort of voice that I could hear. Indicating the sap, he said, ‘Rather congested in there lads, so you’ll push on towards the end of it in the open.’

He meant in the dog’s leap – in no man’s land.

‘… There you’ll rendezvous with the two queer chaps…’

If this man did have any nerves in his body, which he appeared not to, then the glare that Oliver Butler was sending his way might have found them out. But he wasn’t looking in that direction.

‘… You’ll sap forwards by digging between shell holes. That make sense?’

It made sense in that I understood it, but not in any other way.

‘Good luck!’ he said, and he indicated the ladders. Any one of them, it seemed, would do just as well as any other.

Quinn, in fact, was already halfway up one of them, and he was the first over, going into that great storm with just a revolver in his hand. Oamer went directly after him, his big behind squeezing with difficulty through the gap in