Birdsong (47 page)

A platoon commander called Sibley shouted in his ear. He wanted to know when the reinforcements would arrive.

"There are none. They're not coming," bellowed Stephen.

"Why?" mouthed Sibley.

Stephen said nothing.

An hour later the Germans were back in the trench at the far end and there was hand-to-hand fighting. Shortly afterward, B Company were ordered by their commander to retreat to the enemy frontline trench that they had taken in the morning. As they went up over the parapet they came under fire from German machine guns that had reestablished themselves in the support trench. The noise was making it impossible to think. Stephen was aware of Ellis screaming at him. "We're going down, we're going down!" his lips said silently. Stephen shook his head.

Ellis put his lips to Stephen's ear. "B Company's gone."

"I know. I know." Stephen did not explain. His company's job was to occupy; B Company had been detailed to assault and were entitled to take their own view of when to move. He could not have made Ellis hear, but he wanted to stick to the orders given him by Colonel Gray.

A sergeant with blood-spattered face pushed past them, and was followed by another surge of men who were being squeezed back down the trench from their unprotected right flank. The counterattack was now also coming head-on in an advance from the reserve trench. Two Lewis guns were not able to keep them back. It only needed an attack from the canal end and they would be completely encircled. Stephen rapidly calculated the possibility of a retreat. There were now so many Germans in the trench that they would be able to resume their positions on the parapet and shoot his men in the back as they ran.

Ellis was weeping. "What do we do?" he wailed. "I want to save my men. What do we do?"

In his mind, Stephen saw only one outcome: his company's bodies stacked like sandbags one on another. It was not what he had chosen, but it was all that was left to them.

"What do we do?" Ellis moaned against the noise.

"We hold the line, we hold the fucking line." Stephen's tongue and teeth were visible in the silently screaming cave of his mouth.

In the desperation of trying to save their own lives, the men fought over each yard of trench. Stephen joined them, firing rapidly at the advancing lines of grey. Just before three o'clock he was aware of a Yorkshire voice in his ear and an unfamiliar face. He looked with puzzlement into the man's eyes.

It was a lieutenant from the Duke of Wellington's regiment. He shouted to Stephen that his men had regained control of the far end of the trench. Within another hour they had cleared their way back to the canal. Further reinforcements came up with trench mortars and more machine guns. The German counterattack was temporarily over, and its stragglers withdrew to their reserve position.

Stephen climbed down on to the duckboards and went along to a dugout, where he found a major of the Duke of Wellington's.

"You look all in," the major said cheerfully. "Your orders are to withdraw. We were sent up to cover you. Something went wrong before. Another triumph of planning."

Stephen looked at the man's face. He looked so young, he thought, yet he had performed some kind of miracle.

"And what are you going to do?" he asked.

"Cover your retreat, then get the hell out of it."

Stephen took the man's hand, then went outside.

They got the dead and wounded out first and what was left of the company was back in its own trench by nightfall. Ellis had been killed by machine-gun fire. The small groups of survivors dragged themselves over the mud they had crossed in the morning. They did not ask about the fate of their friends; they were intent only on reaching somewhere they could lie down.

*

Stephen's new job seemed to consist of going over maps and trying to ascertain which battalion was where. He was billeted in a pleasant house in the village, though was occasionally required to spend the night in a dugout in the reserve line. Even this was a great improvement on what he had known.

There was some urgency about the work, since the attack on the Messines Ridge was imminent. Stephen took sardonic pleasure in confirming that Weir's tunnelling company was due for a rest shortly beforehand. Their work would be done and someone else could blow the mines.

The brigade major, a man called Stanforth, reminded him in manner of Colonel Barclay. He had a tendency to shout for no good reason, and he spoke in abbreviated sentences that were supposed to communicate urgency. If anything unforeseen happened he at once showed how much he was in command by issuing forceful and complicated orders, even though the hitch would usually sort itself out unaided.

The day he arrived Stephen had the unpleasant duty of writing to Ellis's mother, who had already been officially informed of her son's death. He chewed the pen in his office for an hour or more before he could begin. It was a summer day, with blackbirds and thrushes at play in the garden of the house.

He made many false starts, in which he tried to describe something of the attack or of the times he had spent with Ellis in the dugout or in Amiens. In the end he wrote only formal words of condolence.

Dear Mrs. Ellis,

I am writing to offer you my deepest sympathy on the loss of your son. As you will have been told, he was lost during an offensive action on the morning of June 2nd. He was killed by enemy machine-gun fire while organizing the defence of a German trench bravely captured by the men under his command. He is buried with Lieutenant Parker and Lieutenant Davies. The grave has been properly marked and the position notified to the Graves Registration Committee.

During the last conversation I had with him he told me he had no fear of death and felt fully equipped for any task he might be called upon to perform. In every circumstance his consideration for the welfare and comfort of his men came first.

His men loved him, and I am expressing not only my own sympathy but theirs too. In dying for what the Empire now seeks to uphold, he was among many who paid a great price. We commit the souls of our brothers who have fallen to the mercy and safekeeping of God.

When he read the letter back to himself, Stephen underlined the word

"every". "In _every _circumstance... " It was true. In a few months Ellis had won the respect of his men because he was not afraid, or, if he was, he did not show it. He had become a good soldier, for all that it had helped him.

Stephen was tired of writing such letters. He noticed how dry and passionless his own style had become. He imagined what effect the letter would have on the distraught widow who opened it. Her only son gone... He did not wish to contemplate it.

*

For the last week before the attack, Jack's company was switched to the deep mines below the Ridge, where they laid tons of ammonal in specially prepared chambers. Two days before the attack itself the work was completed, and Jack emerged exhausted into the sunlight. Evans, Fielding, and Jones came up after him. They stood in the section of the trench at the tunnel head and congratulated one another on their efforts. They were instructed to report to Captain Weir before being officially dismissed, and they made their way along the duckboards toward his dugout.

"There's a rumour of home leave for you, Jack," said Fielding.

"I don't believe it. They'll make us dig to Australia first."

"There's certainly no more digging we can do here," said Evans. "It's a warren under there. I'd be happy just to get back down the line into a nice soft bed with a glass or two of that wine inside me."

"Yes," said Fielding, "and maybe one of those French girls to follow." Jack was beginning to think that the worst of the war might be over for him. He allowed himself to picture the hallway of his house in London with Margaret waiting for him.

Weir came along the boards to meet them. He looked happier than usual. He was wearing boots and a tunic and a soft cap. As he came closer to them, Jack noticed that some of the sandbags on the parapet had not been properly replaced from the day when the infantry had gone over them. He tried to warn Weir that he was not properly covered. Weir climbed on to the firestep to let a ration party go past and a sniper's bullet entered his head above the eye, causing trails of his brain to loop out on to the sandbags of the parados behind him.

His body seemed for a moment unaware of what had happened, as though it would carry on walking. Then it fell like a puppet, its limbs shooting out, and the face smashing unprotected into mud.

Word reached Stephen the next night from an intelligence officer called Mountford. He was in his dugout in the reserve line, where he was acting as liaison between headquarters and the men who would be in the second wave in the morning. Mountford delivered the news briefly. "I believe he was a friend of yours," he said. He could see from Stephen's face that there was little to be gained from staying.

Stephen sat still for a minute. The last time he had seen Weir had been to push him head first on to the floor of the trench. That had been his final gesture. For some minutes he could think of nothing but Weir's hurt, reproachful expression as he picked the mud from his face.

Yet he had loved him. Weir alone had made the war bearable. Weir's terror under the guns had been a conductor for his own fear, and in his innocent character Stephen had been able to mock the qualities he himself had lost. Weir had been braver by far than he was: he had lived with horror, he had known it every day, and by his strange stubbornness he had defeated it. He had not conceded one day of his service; he had died in the line of battle.

Stephen rested his elbows on the rough wooden table. He felt more lonely than ever in his life before. Only Weir had been with him into the edges of reality where he had lived; only Weir had heard the noise of the sky at Thiepval. He lay on the bed, dry-eyed. Soon after three in the morning the mines went up and shook the bed where he lay. "The explosion will be felt in London," Weir had boasted.

The telephone rang, and Stephen went back to the chair at the desk. Throughout the small hours of the morning he relayed messages. By nine o'clock the Second Army was on the ridge. Elation edged the voices he spoke to: something, at last, had gone right. The mines had been colossal and the infantry, using methods copied from the Canadians, had stormed through. Celebration seeped into the wires.

Stephen was relieved at noon. He lay down on the bed and tried to sleep. He could hear the unrelenting bombardment continue on the German lines. He cursed his fortune that he could not go in behind it. Now, to answer Gray's hypothetical question, now he would have taken life without compunction. He envied the men who could fire down on to the hopeless enemy, men with a chance to sink bayonets into unguarded flesh, men with the opportunity to pour machine-gun bullets into those who had killed his friend. Now he would have gone killing with a light heart. He tried to think that victory on the Ridge would bring pleasure or vindication to Weir, but he could not imagine it. He was merely an absence now. Stephen thought of his puzzled, open face, its chalky skin patched red with blood vessels broken up by drink; he thought of his balding skull and shocked eyes that could not contain his innocence. He thought of the pity of the flesh gone back underground without knowledge of another human body.

All that night and the next day he lay unmoving on the bed. He did not speak when Mountford came back to try to rouse him. He turned away the food that was brought to him. He cursed himself for his last act of impatience toward Weir. He hated the selfishness of his feeling, because he felt more sorry for himself than for his dead friend. He could not help it. Like all the others, he had learned to dismiss death from his thoughts; but he could not shake off the loneliness. Now that Weir was gone there was no one who could understand. He tried to make himself cry, but no tears would come to express his desolation or his love for poor mad Weir. On the third day Colonel Gray came to see him.

"Success at last," he said. "Those tunnellers did a wonderful job. Mind if I sit down, Wraysford?"

Stephen was sitting on the edge of the bed. He had made an effort to stand up and salute when Gray came in, but Gray had waved him back. He gestured to the chair at the table.

Gray crossed his legs and lit a pipe. "The Boche didn't know what hit them. I was never a great believer in the sewer rats, giving the enemy little craters to fortify, but even I would be forced to concede that they did their job this time." He carried on talking about the attack for a few minutes, apparently taking no notice of the fact that Stephen did not reply.

"Our chaps were in reserve," he went on. "Not needed. Some of them were a bit disappointed, I do believe." He sucked on the pipe. "Not many, though." Stephen ran his hand back through his unkempt hair. He wondered whether Gray had been sent or whether he had decided of his own accord to visit him.

"Stanforth," said Gray. "He looks like a typical English staff officer, doesn't he? Fat, complacent, ill informed. Forgive me, I have nothing against the English, as you know, Wraysford. The appearance is misleading in his case. He's a very thorough planner. I believe he has saved many lives in this attack."

Stephen nodded. A sense of interest was beginning to penetrate the blankness of his grief; it was like the first, painful sensations of blood returning to a numbed limb.

Gray kept on talking and smoking. "There's a rather delicate matter coming up concerning our noble French allies. They are experiencing difficulties. A certain, how can one put this, reluctance is spreading. The removal of the dashing General Nivelle has helped. Pétain appears a little more thrifty with their lives, but it's alarming. We understand that two-thirds of the army has been concerned in some way, with perhaps one division in five seriously affected."

Stephen was curious to hear what Gray said. The French army had performed better than the British in comparable circumstances and shown formidable resilience. Mutiny seemed unthinkable.

"Stanforth will ask you and Mountford to go with him. This is a completely informal meeting. The French officers concerned are on leave. It's just something that's been arranged by friends."