The Somme Stations

‘This hole,’ said Dawson, ‘it’s too fucking small.’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘When you want a big shell to have landed, it fucking hasn’t. How many Woodies have you got left?’

‘One.’

‘I’ve two.’

After a short while, in which we watched two Scotsmen (well, they wore kilts) fall to the cracks of rifle bullets a little way off, Dawson said, ‘I have a plan.’

‘Let’s hear it then,’ I said, my mouth distorted by being pressed so hard against the ground.

‘We share one Woodbine now, and have one apiece later on.’

‘Later on,’ I said, ‘I like that.’

‘Gives us something to look forward to,’ said Dawson.

He lit a cigarette sideways, drew on it twice, and passed it over to me. The smoke gave me courage, and I lifted my head and looked over the edge of the hole.

I saw a man upright about thirty yards off to the left: Scholes. I called out to him to get down, at which Dawson twisted about so as to look in the same direction. Scholes looked back our way, but only as if we were an annoying distraction from some other business. He re-fixed his gaze towards the enemy lines. At the sound of a bullet crack, he closed his eyes, as though he’d seen all he wanted to, and then the shell that I believed he had been in search of met him. I watched the smoke clear. It took its time, but I knew from the start that Scholes would not emerge from it. I thought of his hunt for the owl carrier on York station; he had not found him, and he’d been fighting a losing battle ever since. Scholes had missed his way, ought to have been a musician, and would have been if he’d been born into the right class. Dawson turned back towards me.

‘It’s a shame about him,’ he said at length, ‘but he’d have ended in a mental home the way he was going.’

There was nothing for it but to start digging, and we began by scraping at the earth with our boots, then running the blades of our shovels over the surface of the clay so as to get it down bit by bit. After half an hour, we might have been two inches further down. We lay flat as before, facing one another.

‘It’s a dead loss,’ I said, ‘the ground’s baked hard.’

Dawson was removing his Woodbine packet from his tunic pocket, or trying to. He was having difficulty extracting it, so he rolled onto his back.

‘Watch it,’ I said.

He’d fished out the packet and was holding it just above his chest. There came a whistling sound – as a man might make when he sees a good-looking woman – and the packet was somersaulting in the air, knocked by the flying bullet. It landed beyond the hole, and bounced away.

‘Reduce your smoking bill by about half,’ said Dawson. It was the slogan on a poster that had been near the ticket office in York station for years. I lit my own Woodbine by the sideways method, and we shared that one.

‘We’re for it,’ said Dawson.

We were in a fix, no question. We couldn’t dig without standing, and we couldn’t stand without being shot. I was all-in, and this tiredness took the edge off my fear. It was hopeless to try to avoid death in a place like this. It would be a matter of hoping for special treatment from God, and no man has a right to expect that. I tilted my head up slightly, and looked back towards the sap we’d lately vacated, which came and went according to the swirling of the smoke. Just then I could see it fairly clearly and there was movement over there. The twins were emerging. They faced our hole, and they came running, holding their rifles as though on a bayonet charge, and – I swear – laughing, with their spades (or ‘blades’) flapping behind them and tangled up anyhow in their webbing. They must have been sent by Quinn. A whizzbang came down close as they approached, and the twins landed in our hole together with the dirt blown from it, both shouting at exactly the same time, ‘Heavy shower!’ Not that they looked at either of us; they just unhitched their shovels and dug. We all dug, and we had four foot of earth in front of us in next to no time, three of those four feet having been created by the twins. Even on their knees they dug with a proper swing to their shovels; the clay seemed to cause them no trouble, probably on account of the sharpness of their blades. Every so often they would stop and take a belt of water – until their bottles ran out – or they’d observe the landing of a nearby shell, and make some remark while facing the German lines such as ‘Are you trying to wake a dead ’orse?’ always as though this was a terrific lark.

Even so, I ought to have thanked them for pitching in, and I daresay Dawson felt the same, only they would not look at us, so we had no opportunity. Now we only had to connect back to the sap. I risked another look at it. I thought I saw Quinn’s head, looking over. Oliver Butler was there behind him, and Tinsley. But I couldn’t see Oamer. As I looked on, Tinsley rose, came out the sap, and started charging. He was coming our way. I watched him, roaring at him to come on even though he was already going full tilt. He seemed to start his leap about twenty feet short of our hole.

‘What are you lot doing?’ he said, when he’d landed.

‘Playing fucking sardines,’ said Dawson.

‘Message from the Staff,’ Tinsley said, and he was breathless, so that he gave the message as it might appear on a telegram, ‘… no hope of taking Thiepval… Their front trenches and wire all intact… our digging useless… hang on here for now… return to own lines… under cover darkness.’

When he’d got his breath back, he gave more news.

‘Oamer’s copped it. He’s all right though. He was on the edge of the hole, letting fly with his rifle… Been at it all afternoon… And he was just reloading when a piece of shell case took the top off his middle finger. He was cool as you like about it. He just said, “Now that’s rather singular.” Quinn sent him back to our lines.’

‘What’s Oliver Butler up to?’

‘He’s been taking a few pots as well, and he’s turned telephonist. Very proud, he is, of being able to wind that little handle.’

‘Did you bring any water, son?’ asked Dawson.

‘Oh,’ said Tinsley. ‘Quinn told me to bring some over, but I forgot.’

‘No bother,’ said Dawson. ‘We can last out until dark.’

‘He said I should bring a packet of cigarettes, but I forgot that ’n’ all.’

Dawson scowled at the kid from behind his back.

‘Well, cigarettes are detrimental to health,’ I said.

After a while, Tinsley perked up again, saying, ‘You know… the 14th Northumberlands went over kicking a football!’

Well, that was the ‘pals’ for you. I thought of Thackeray’s words: Was this a war or a social outing?

‘… About half of them have copped it,’ the kid added.

The sun was fading now. I thought: what a waste of a beautiful day. I couldn’t stop calling to mind the image of Scholes on the look-out for a shell to take him away, or had it been a rifle bullet that had got him first? Had he done for young Harvey on Spurn Point and then hidden the bike, only to pretend to find it later? Perhaps he thought, with Sergeant Major Thackeray on the case, that there was no point in surviving the war? I figured again the moment of his death.

He had closed his eyes at the sound of a near bullet.

… Wait a bit. Had he been shot from the rear, a moment before being shelled?

‘Railway topics?’ Tinsley suddenly said.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Go on then.’

‘When you were on the engines, Jim, how often would the boiler plates be scraped clean? As a general rule, I mean?’

‘Can’t recall,’ I said.

‘Can’t recall?’ he said, and he looked so downhearted that I said, ‘But look here. Tell me about your man, Tom Shaw. Have you been on a run with him?’

‘I have that,’ said Tinsley, and a shell came, and we all pressed down that bit lower. ‘I was third man with him on a run to Leeds – him and his regular fireman, Percy Aspinall. Lovely sunny day it was, just like… Well, not like this exactly… Coming out of the south shed with dampers shut, jet off, and the firehole door wide open… gauge showing 175lbs… That was one of the best moments in my life so far. I got down when we came to our train, and Tom Shaw let me couple on and tighten up the shackle. I called up to him “Blow up!” and he