The Wars Read online

  Robert swallowed his alarm at having been so blind as to come out onto the dike in the first place. There would be lots of time to think about that. Now, the thing was how to get off. Three men and seven horses.

  Levitt gave the bugle back to Poole and thanked him for it. ‘I was glad of it out there,’ he said; ‘because it occurred to me—if any Germans were listening they wouldn’t fire at a man with a bugle!’ He laughed nervously. ‘Anyone could be blowing a bugle.’

  Poole said: ‘You needn’t worry about the Germans here, sir. They’re a long ways off yet. At least as much as two miles or more.’

  Levitt said: ‘Oh.’ He seemed somehow demoralized by this news. Perhaps he thought you weren’t in the war unless the enemy could shoot you. In this he was much like everyone else who’d just arrived. You weren’t a real soldier unless you were in jeopardy.

  4 Robert was in the vanguard. He stayed on the horse, knowing the horse’s footing would be surer, more sensitive than his own. His father had taught him always to trust the horse’s judgement above his own when it came to path-finding.

  The breeze had become a wind. The fog began to lift in places. The shape of the dike was perceptible—wide as a road; but the ditches weren’t ditches at all. To the right there was a river, or canal and to the left there must be fields, though these were still unseen. The dike had in fact been often used as a road—and was rutted and torn by cartwheels.

  One of the birds flew up and cut across Robert’s path. The horse shied. Robert fought to control him. ‘There, there, there,’ he said. ‘Soo, soo, soo.’ The horse turned sideways—this side then the other. Any way but forward. Robert reined him in.

  He crouched in the saddle: squinting. The horse would not go on.

  ‘All right,’ Robert said aloud. ‘If you won’t, then I must.’

  He got down and soothed the horse by rubbing its muzzle. Then he left it standing there and struck out into the fog alone. Poole gave a shout and Robert shouted back that they should stay by his horse until he’d found the break. Once, looking over his shoulder he saw them all gathered there—the horses and Poole and Levitt and then the curtain was pulled again and they were gone.

  He paused and listened. Surely he would hear something. A river-sound or a waterfall.

  Faraway there was a booming noise.

  Guns.

  5.9s.

  They should have been behind him, but these were in front and slightly to the right. How had he got so turned around?

  He tested the ground with his heel. Still only mud and slush—the slush like glass that was splintered and mashed. The fog had begun to thicken again. It was full of shapes that waved their arms. Then Robert did hear something. Water. A smooth, deep sound like a sluiceway. The sound was his undoing. He stepped towards it expectantly. Suddenly, his right foot went down. All the way down to the knee through the earth.

  Dear Jesus—he was going to drown. He went in all the way to his waist.

  He fell back onto his shoulders. All he had to hold with was his elbows. These he ground into the clay like brakes. The slide took him forward so his legs were as much in front of him as below. Don’t, he kept thinking; don’t.

  His hands were useless to him. If he was going to use them he would have to relax his elbows and he would only slip further in. He lay with his head back. The mud pressed down on his thighs. His neck was raw against his collar. He choked.

  Many people die without a sound—because their brains are shouting and it seems they’ve called for help and they haven’t. Robert kept thinking—why doesn’t someone come? But no one did. He’d told them not to. The only sound he made was the o in don’t and this got locked in his throat.

  He pushed. He tried to force his pelvis forward and up. The muscles in his stomach made a knot. If he could only lift the weight. The mud spread wider over his thighs. It began to make a sucking noise at the back of his legs. The fog came down like a muffler over his face. One way or another—he would suffocate and drown. He began to push again and to lift—thrusting his pelvis upward harder and harder—faster and faster against the mud. His hat fell off. The wind and the fog were dabbling in his hair. The back of his head went all the way down and into the slush. In and out in and out in and out. With his buttocks clenched and his knees…He began to realize his knees were spreading wider and wider and his groin began to shudder. Warm. He was going to be saved. He was going to save himself. He sat up. His boots were still being held. But his thighs were free. He could see his knees. He began to pull at his legs with his hands. Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. He leaned forward. He tried to pull at his breeches. His gloves were filled with mud and nothing would hold to them. He tore them off and locked his hands behind his right knee. Then he began to rock. His fingernails gouged his palms. He rocked from side to side and back to front. His leg began to move. Then he locked his hands beneath his left knee and rocked from back to front again. Both legs slid further out till only the ankles were held and his knees touched his chin. He fell back all the way and lay on his side. He reached above his head and shoved his hands down hard through the mud until he could curl his fingers deep in the earth. He pulled himself forward with his legs like twisted ropes and then he gave a violent, sudden spasm and flopped face down in the slush. He was free. In a foot of water.

  He could hear himself breathing. Whimpering. He closed his eyes. I don’t want to drown, he thought. Please don’t drown. He pushed himself up with his head hanging down.

  His breathing died away.

  He knelt with both hands fisted on his knees. He listened. Something was near him. He could feel it.

  He opened his eyes and turned his head to one side.

  Through the fog he saw a man like himself—in uniform and greatcoat—lying down on his side. His back was to Robert. He was moving—or trying to move. Certainly something about him was in motion. Slap—slap—slap: like the raft at Jackson’s Point.

  Robert rubbed his eyes.

  At once they began to smart and in seconds they were burning. The chlorine in the mud. Robert was blinded. He began to feel in his pockets for a handkerchief. There were noises be could not identify. Movement. What? What was it? Had the man got up?

  Robert desperately tried to see but his eyes wouldn’t open. They were flooded with burning tears and his lids wouldn’t lift. He caught a fleeting glimpse of something moving in the air.

  A hand fell on his shoulder.

  Robert yelled and grabbed at it. Bones and claws. It drew away. Robert shuddered. Birds.

  Poole called: ‘Sir? Lieutenant Ross?’

  Robert said: ‘It’s all right.’ Then he realized he hadn’t even raised his voice, so he called out: ‘It’s all right. You can come forward now.’ He tied the handkerchief around his eyes and sat back—waiting. Crows. They’d been crows all along—with wings as long as arms.

  When Poole and Levitt reached him with the horses, Poole got Robert to his feet and Robert said to him: ‘There’s a man just there. He’s dead I think.’

  Poole said: ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Can we help?’ said Robert. ‘Should he be buried?’

  ‘No,’ said Poole. ‘We’d best keep going.’ He took Robert’s arm.

  From the gap, when Robert’s eyes had cleared, he cast a single look back to where the man had been. He saw that the whole field was filled with floating shapes. The only sounds were the sounds of feeding and of wings. And of rafts.

  5 Robert went first—on horseback.

  The gap in the dike had widened to almost thirty feet. The river washed through but by now the water levels were almost equal on both sides so the pull of the current was not too strong. Still, the horse had to swim for it. The breach was over nine feet deep. Robert took his boots out of the stirrups. He lay along the horse’s neck and held onto its mane with one hand. In his other hand he held the lead line to three horses who came through the river behind him. He could feel the surge of the water against his legs as the horse’s flank was tur
ned by the current—but cold as it was, Robert was glad of it. The water was washing him free of the mud.

  On the far side he could see that the men and the wagons and the rest of the convoy were drawn up near fires and he just kept thinking: warm, I’m going to be warm. The hardest part was not to swim himself—but to let the horse do the swimming. It was an odd sensation, being drawn through the water, almost submerged with his clothes flowing back and his knees pressed hard against the horse and the stirrups banging against his ankles. Pegasus. When he got to the other bank, Robert fell off the horse and the horse went suddenly up the incline without him. He was glad he’d had the sense to take his feet from the stirrups. Otherwise—he’d have been dragged. Several pairs of hands reached down and drew him to the top. The next thing he knew, he was naked and wrapped in a blanket and seated by a fire.

  ‘Break out the rum,’ he said.

  Poole, who was also naked and wrapped in a blanket, played a tune on the bugle and everybody sang: ‘We’re here because we’re here.’ They stayed all night in the middle of the road and sometime after they slept it snowed. In the morning, Robert did not look back towards the field where he’d nearly been drowned. The long meandering line of horses and wagons stretched ahead of him, black and sharp against the snow. When he gave the command to move, he rode up past them all with his eyes on the muddy road. Above them, the sky was breached by a wavering arm of wings. The crows were following.

  6 The front, after all, was rather commonplace. Two long parallel lines of trenches, each with its separate network of communications ‘ditches’—a great many ruined farmhouses and some villages. The situation had been more or less stable for almost a year. The Second Battle of Ypres had taken place in April of 1915 and from that time forward till the end of the war the city would remain in Allied hands. It was here that most of the Canadian troops were deployed. Their objectives were the towns and villages, ridges and woods for roughly ten miles either side of them. That was the larger picture. In terms of individual men and companies, their worlds could be limited to quarter-miles. In Robert’s case, the furthest extent of his world was the four miles back to Bailleul.

  There were five junior officers attached to the ammunition column (Levitt being the newest) and they spent their time between convoy duty and working the batteries; two weeks with the batteries and a week on convoys. Presently, Robert and a man called Roots had charge of the convoys. (There was a Scotsman in the ranks who took great delight in this combination of names and he would roll out ‘Rrrrrroots ’n’ Rrrrrross!’ to everyone’s amusement. ‘Rrrrrroots ’n’ Rrrrross is rrrrriding’ he would say. Or ‘Rrrrroots is rrrright ’n’ Rrrrross is wrrrrong!’) Each man had charge of a Section—seventy-five men and ninety-five horses. Every second morning one of them had to get up at 5.45 to take a ride out for exercise, though sometimes these rides were combined with work duty. Bricks and sandbags and hay and straw had to be moved about or wheels and parts taken up to the guns. Every morning they cleaned the stable. When there was a ‘show’ on, there would be a time alert and the columns would form to transport the ammunition. The size of the order would depend on how long the guns were required to fire. If they were to fire, for instance, for two hours—you knew that was important. Half-an-hour’s firing was a mere gesture: nuisance firing it was called.

  Sometimes, the air would be full of aeroplanes. Then the anti-aircraft guns would open fire. These were called Archies—but Robert had nothing to do with them. He was fascinated, though, by the planes. Sometimes the Huns would pass right over the farm where the billets and the depot were and once or twice they dropped bombs, though they did no damage. There was far more danger from shelling. But Robert thought it was absolutely wonderful, the way the little planes would sail through hundreds of rounds of anti-aircraft fire without being touched.

  The day it snowed was the 21st of February. That was the same day the Germans opened their great offensive on the Meuse against Verdun, where their objective was to create a ‘zone of death.’ (They succeeded. By August half a million men were dead.) Two million shells were fired that first day at the rate of 100,000 rounds per hour. The bombardment lasted for twelve hours. That same day, word came down the line that the Huns were also making a gas attack at the Ypres Salient. The gas drifted down in Robert’s direction—but this was a distance of five miles, south-west—so all they got was the taste of it on snowflakes.

  7 The 21st was a Monday; Robert’s week of convoy duty was over on the 26th. On the 27th—a high blue, cloudless Sunday—he and Levitt went to take over the guns at the 18th Battery. Specifically, Robert had charge of the mortars. This was Levitt’s ‘maiden voyage’ as they said. The light was so good they were able to see some very interesting sights behind the German lines from the Observation Post. Robert was proud to be able to show Levitt just how real the enemy was. It made being up there important, somehow, if you could look out and say: ‘Do you see that man right there with the blue scarf round his neck…?’ and then describe how you had seen him before on a previous occasion. It gave the war some meaning if you knew that the men who took your fire (and returned it) wore blue scarves or had grey mittens like your own.

  There were only two subalterns per battery, so Robert and Levitt were on their own as far as running things went. One section stayed in the trenches with the mortars for a week and was then relieved by the other section. They lived in dugouts.

  The past week there had been almost continuous scrapping in their region, so when Robert and Levitt came down from the O.P. to make their way to quarters, they discovered there was practically nothing left of the trenches. Most of the troops they passed on their way had already been in for sixteen days and were absolutely peppered out. Several men were asleep on the fire steps—leaning back with their mouths open and their rifles stuck up between their legs.

  They also passed a German who had lain out in No Man’s Land for four days without food. He was staring at the sky—lying on a stretcher. There was a party, too, of about twenty-five or thirty German prisoners who had deserted and come over that morning. The problem was that most of the dugouts in this section of the trench had been destroyed—so there was nowhere to sit or lie down except in the mud. Almost everywhere the fire step remained, it was utilized by sleepers. Hardly anyone was moving. The Germans stood in a sullen row and turned their backs as Robert and Levitt passed.

  Since there was practically nothing left of the parapet, Robert and Levitt had to walk the next hundred yards or so in full view of the enemy. Not a single shot was fired and Robert said: ‘We can thank our lucky stars the Germans must be just as badly off as our poor chaps—or worse, if they’re deserting. Otherwise—we’d be sniped every second step of the way…’ ‘Do you think we could walk a little faster?’ said Levitt. ‘No,’ said Robert. ‘That’s the quickest way to get shot. Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘Watch this.’

  Robert stopped walking and turned and waved at the German lines. Nothing happened. He waved again. Still nothing. He called out: ‘Hallo there!’ Still nothing. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Watch this.’ He ran. At once there was a shot. Robert fell.

  After a moment—he looked up out of the mud. ‘Come on,’ he said with a grin. ‘But take your time.’

  Levitt walked.

  Miraculously—their dugout was there. So were both Devlin and Bonnycastle, the men they were relieving.

  Levitt was introduced. He swung down the bag he’d been carrying on his back and it bumped dangerously near the door.

  ‘Don’t hit the door! Don’t hit the door!’ Devlin cried. ‘Great God—don’t hit the door!’ He was a tall, frail man with a drooping moustache and a slightly receding hairline, despite the fact he was only twenty-seven. He tended to carry his head thrown back, which gave him at first glance a superior look that might have indicated snobbishness or grandeur. But Devlin was possessed of neither of these traits. Anything but. He was gentle as a lamb and wanted to own a shop and sell antiques.

  Levitt won
dered what made the door so special that he shouldn’t hit it. After all—a door should bear striking from time to time. But not this one. As soon as he looked he could see why it was precious. It contained a panel of stained glass.

  ‘What an extraordinary piece of work,’ he said. ‘Where on earth did you get it?’

  ‘I collect it,’ said Devlin. ‘I got this off a house in St Eloi.’

  He then showed Levitt three or four other pieces that he kept wrapped in burlap. These were fragments from a church and they depicted the Flight into Egypt—(the head of the donkey and the head of the Virgin)—Christ Walking on the Water—(His feet and the hem of His gown)—and the Martyrdom of St Marinus, the Roman soldier who was denounced as a Christian and put to death by his fellows. This fragment showed his sword and helmet—laid at his bloodied feet.

  ‘All very interesting,’ said Levitt, with his hands behind his back. He turned to look again at the door.

  The glass, in spite of the fact that it came from a house, as Devlin had said, nonetheless depicted a saint—or at least someone holy enough to warrant a halo. The figure—of a bearded man—was stripped to the waist and wore a leather apron. He was working at a forge and held a gigantic ‘butterfly’ in a pair of tongs. The butterfly was rather grotesque and one had to assume that it was such. It was shown as having just been recovered from the flames, in a white hot state.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Levitt asked.

  ‘That’s St Eloi himself,’ said Devlin. ‘You see—he’s the patron saint of smiths and metalworkers and I find the whole piece rather attractive. Don’t you?’

  ‘Very much so,’ Levitt lied. He thought it was the ugliest piece of glass he’d ever seen. Looking around the dugout—which seemed an inordinately civilized place—he noted there was also a kneeling angel made of plaster and a pair of plaster sheep, no doubt from a crèche. ‘Are you religious?’ he asked Devlin point blank.