Birdsong (28 page)

"I thought it was cut from here to Dar es Salaam."

"It's a staff cockup. Haig, Rawlinson, the lot. Don't tell your men, Wraysford. Don't tell them, just pray for them."

Gray held his head in his hands. His wisdom and his shelves full of books were no good to him here, Stephen thought.

In their forty-eight hours of unwanted reprieve the men had more time to ready themselves.

The first rifle fire came with a falsetto crack. Barnes had shot himself through the palate.

At nightfall they wrote letters.

Michael Weir wrote:

Dear Mother and Father,

We are going to attack. We have been making preparations for some days underground. My own unit has been involved and we have now done our bit. Some of the men have volunteered to help as stretcher-bearers on the day. Morale is very high. We expect that this push will end the war. It is unlikely that many of the enemy will have survived our bombardment.

Thank you for the cake and the strawberries. I'm glad the garden is such a joy to you. We certainly all enjoyed the fruit. I think often of you both and of our quiet life at home, but I ask you not to worry about me. May your prayers be with the men who will go over the top. Thank you for the soap, Mother, which I assure you was put to good use. I was pleased that your evening with the Parsons was such a success. Please pass on my sympathy to Mr. and Mrs. Stanton. I have only just heard about their son.

I am sure I paid the account at the tailor's when I was on leave, but do settle it on my behalf if I am mistaken and I will repay you on my next leave. Don't worry about me, please. It is warm enough here. A little too warm if anything--so there is nothing further I need, no more socks or pullovers.

From your son, Michael.

Tipper wrote:

Dear Mum and Dad,

They sent me back to join my pals and I am so proud to be back with them. It's a terrific show with all the bands and the men from other units. Our guns are putting on a display like Firework Night. We are going to attack and we can't wait to let Fritz have it! The General says we don't expect no resistance at all because our guns have finished them off. We were meant to go over yesterday, but the weather was not so good.

The waiting is awful hard. Some of the chaps are a bit downhearted. That fellow Byrne I told you about, he come up and told me not to worry. I'm pleased to hear Fred Campbell has kept safe so far. Good show.

Well, my dear Mum and Dad, that's all I've got to say to you. Tomorrow we will know if we will be seeing each other again one day. Don't worry about me. I am not frightened of what is waiting for me. When I was a little lad you were very good to me and I won't let you down. Please write to me again, I do like so much to hear the news from home. Please send me a couple of views of St. Albans. Give my love to Kitty. You have been the dearest Mum and Dad to me.

From your Son, John.

Stephen choked when he read the letter and sealed the envelope. He thought of Gray's face and its experienced foreboding. He felt a terrible anger coming over him. He tore a page from his notebook and wrote: Dear Isabelle, I am sending this to you at the house in Amiens where it will probably be destroyed, but I am writing to you because I have no one else to write to. I am sitting beneath a tree near the village of Auchonvillers, where we once came to spend a day.

Like hundreds of thousands of British soldiers in these fields I am trying to contemplate my death. I write to you to say that you are the only person I have ever loved.

This letter will probably never find you, but I wanted to tell someone what it feels like to be sitting on this grass, on this Friday in June, feeling the lice crawl against my skin, my stomach filled with hot stew and tea, perhaps the last food I will eat, and hearing the guns above me crying out to heaven.

Some crime against nature is about to be committed. I feel it in my veins. These men and boys are grocers and clerks, gardeners and fathers--fathers of small children. A country cannot bear to lose them.

I am frightened of dying. I have seen what shells can do. I am scared of lying wounded all day in a shellhole. Isabelle, I am terribly frightened I shall die alone with no one to touch me. But I have to show an example.

I have to go over first in the morning. Be with me, Isabelle, be with me in spirit. Help me to lead them into what awaits us.

With my love always, Stephen.

Jack Firebrace wrote:

Dear Margaret,

Thank you for your letter. My words cannot say how sad I am. He was our boy, he was the light of our life.

But dear Margaret we must be strong. I worry about you so much, what it must be like for you. There are things here to take my mind off it all right. I believe it was God's will. We would have kept him, but God knew best. Do you remember how he used to chase the dandelion seed down by the canal and the funny words he had for things he couldn't say when he was a baby?

I think about these things all the time and God is merciful. He has given back to me memories of him when he was a little boy, lots of little things have come back to me. I think about them when I lie down at night and they are a comfort to me. I imagine he is in my arms.

His life was a blessing to us, it was a gift from God. It was the best gift we could have had. We must be thankful.

Tomorrow the men are going to attack and I think we will win a big victory. Soon the war will be over and I will be home again to look after you. With love from your husband, Jack.

Byrne, who was not, like the other men, a regular correspondent, found a small piece of paper on which to write to his brother. He wrote very neatly in blue ink.

Dear Ted,

These are a special few lines for you in case we don't meet again. We are going to attack tomorrow, everything is absolutely thumbs-up merry and bright and trusting to the best of luck.

I ask you to remember me to my very many, very dear friends.

Please give my fondest love to Ma, to Tom and Daisy and the babies. Here's hoping it is au revoir and not good-bye.

Your loving brother, Albert.

When he had finished he could not bring himself to seal the envelope. He took the letter out again and wrote diagonally across the bottom: "Cheer-oh, Ted, don't worry about me, I'm OK."

Eight hours before the revised time of attack the guns went quiet, preserving shells for the morning.

It was nighttime, but no man slept. Tipper gazed with incredulity at Leslie and Studd. No magic or superstition could get him out now. His last chance had gone. He had only to hold himself together until dawn.

Stephen looked deep into Byrne's face beside him. When Byrne looked back, Stephen could not meet his gaze. Byrne had guessed.

He went to Hunt, who was kneeling on the trench floor, praying. He touched his shoulder, then laid his hand on his head. He came to Tipper and punched him on the shoulder, then shook his hand vigorously.

Smith and Petrossian, the corporals, were checking kit, pushing among the reluctant men.

Brennan was sitting alone, smoking. "I was thinking of Douglas," he said. Stephen nodded. Brennan began to sing an Irish song.

He saw Byrne reach out his arm and gather Tipper to his chest. "Not long to go now, not long to go."

Toward four, the lowest time of the night, there was a mortal quiet along the line. No one spoke. There was for once no sound of birds.

There was at last a little light over the raised ground and mist down by the river. It began to rain.

Gray, urgent, sour-breathed at the head of the communication trench. "The attack will be at seven-thirty."

The platoon commanders were stricken, disbelieving. "In daylight? In _daylight"?" _The men's faces, cowed and haunted when they were told. Breakfast came with tea in petrol cans. Hunt's earnest features bent over bacon on a tiny stove.

Stephen felt the acid of a sleepless night run from his stomach to his tongue. Then came the rum, and talk began again. Men drank greedily. Some of the younger boys staggered and laughed. German artillery fire, which had been sporadic, began to build, to the surprise of the men who had been told that the German guns had been destroyed.

The British reply started up. At last the men were close enough to see what it did and were cheered by it. Studd and Leslie, breathing rum, waved their arms in the air and shouted. They could see the earth ripped up in fountains in front of the German trenches.

The noise overhead began to intensify. Seven-fifteen. They were almost there. Stephen on his knees, some men taking photographs from their pockets, kissing the faces of their wives and children. Hunt telling foul jokes, Petrossian clasping a silver cross.

The bombardment reached its peak. The air overhead was packed solid with noise that did not move. It was as though waves were piling up in the air but would not break. It was like no sound on earth. Jesus, said Stephen, Jesus, Jesus. The mine went up on the ridge, a great leaping core of compacted soil, the earth eviscerated. Flames rose to more than a hundred feet. It was too big, Stephen thought. The scale appalled him. Shock waves from the explosion ran through the trench. Brennan was pitched forward off the firestep and broke his leg. We must go now, thought Stephen. No word came. Byrne looked questioningly at him. Stephen shook his head. Still ten minutes.

German fire began at once. The lip of the British trench leapt and spat soil where the machine guns raked it. Stephen ducked. Men shouting.

"Not yet." Stephen screaming. The air above the trench now solid. The second hand of his watch in slow motion. Twenty-nine past. The whistle in his mouth. His foot on the ladder. He swallowed hard and blew.

He clambered out and looked around him. It was for a moment completely quiet as the bombardment ended and the German guns also stopped. Skylarks wheeled and sang high in the cloudless sky. He felt alone, as though he had stumbled on this fresh world at the instant of its creation.

Then the artillery began to lay down the first barrage and the German machine guns resumed. To his left Stephen saw men trying to emerge from the trench but being smashed by bullets before they could stand. The gaps in the wire became jammed with bodies. Behind him the men were coming up. He saw Gray run along the top of the trench, shouting encouragement.

He walked hesitatingly forward, his skin tensed for the feeling of metal tearing flesh. He turned his body sideways, tenderly, to protect his eyes. He was hunched like an old woman in the cocoon of tearing noise.

Byrne was walking beside him at the slow pace required by their orders. Stephen glanced to his right. He could see a long, wavering line of khaki, primitive dolls progressing in tense deliberate steps, going down with a silent flap of arms, replaced, falling, continuing as though walking into a gale. He tried to catch Byrne's eye but failed. The sound of machine guns was varied by the crack of snipers and the roar of the barrage ahead of them.

He saw Hunt fall to his right. Studd bent to help him and Stephen saw his head opening up bright red under machine-gun bullets as his helmet fell away. His feet pressed onward gingerly over the broken ground. After twenty or thirty yards there came a feeling that he was floating above his body, that it had taken an automatic life of its own over which he had no power. It was as though he had become detached, in a dream, from the metal air through which his flesh was walking. In this trance there was a kind of relief, something close to hilarity. Ten yards ahead and to the right was Colonel Barclay. He was carrying a sword.

Stephen went down. Some force had blown him. He was in a dip in the ground with a bleeding man, shivering. The barrage was too far ahead. Now the German guns were placing a curtain of their own. Shrapnel was blasting its jagged cones through any air space not filled by the machine guns.

All that metal will not find room enough, Stephen thought. It must crash and strike sparks above them. The man with him was screaming inaudibly. Stephen wrapped his dressing round the man's leg, then looked at himself. There was no wound. He crawled to the rim of the shellhole. There were others ahead of him. He stood up and began to walk again.

Perhaps with them he would be safer. He felt nothing as he crossed the pitted land on which humps of khaki lay every few yards. The load on his back was heavy. He looked behind and saw a second line walking into the barrage in no-man's-land. They were hurled up like waves breaking backward into the sea. Bodies were starting to pile and clog the progress.

There was a man beside him missing part of his face, but walking in the same dreamlike state, his rifle pressing forward. His nose dangled and Stephen could see his teeth through the missing cheek. The noise was unlike anything he had heard before. It lay against his skin, shaking his bones. Remembering his order not to stop for those behind him, he pressed slowly on, and as the smoke lifted in front of him he saw the German wire.

It had not been cut. Men were running up and down it in turmoil, looking for a way through. They were caught in the coils, where they brought down torrents of machine-gun fire. Their bodies jerked up and down, twisting and jumping. Still they tried. Two men were clipping vainly with their cutters among the corpses, their movement bringing the sharp disdainful fire of a sniper. They lay still. Thirty yards to his right there was a gap. He ran toward it, knowing it would be the focus of machine-gun fire from several directions. He breathed in as he reached it, clenching for his death.

His body passed through clean air and he began to laugh as he ran and ran then rolled down into a trench, bumping his heavy pack on top of him. There was no one there.

Alive, he thought, dear God, I am alive. The war lifted from him. It is just a piece of field beneath a French heaven, he thought. There are trees beyond the noise, and down in the valley is the fish-filled river. He was aware of a thirst that was flaying his throat, and he took his water bottle. The warm, shaken fluid ran down inside and made him close his eyes in ecstasy.

There was no one in the trench. He moved along the duckboards. It was beautifully made, with high parapets, revetting as neat as Sussex weatherboards, and tidy entrances to deep dugouts. He looked back toward the British line, each foot of which was pathetically exposed to fire from this superior position. Through the smoke of the German barrage he could see the scruffy line still straggling on, driven by some slow, clockwork purpose into the murder of the guns. The trench was dogtoothed after twenty yards or so. He could not see what lay beyond. He crept up and threw a grenade over the traverse, then ducked down. No answering fire came. He stood up and the lip of the trench spat earth in his eyes where a machine gun was firing from the second line. Stephen presumed that most of the men who had begun the attack with him were dead. The second wave had not reached this far and perhaps never would. He reasoned that he should try to retreat and join a later attack, but his orders were to press on past Beaumont-Hamel as far as Beaucourt, on the river. The soldier's motto, Price had told the men: when in doubt go forward.