‘Major?’ He felt a tap on his shoulder. Slattery was handing him a heavy pair of binoculars and pointing to the east. ‘The front is that way.’ The major took the glasses, turned to face east, and pressed them to his eyes, his head swimming as a blurred world leaped closer. He adjusted the focus with the central ring. Through the binoculars, humanity was no longer a succession of indistinct blobs. He could see a farmer quite clearly, one foot on a gate, smoking a pipe contentedly as he watched a sow suckling her piglets; a few hundred yards away, a cluster of soldiers were brewing up tea in a three-sided farmhouse, and in a field, several cavalrymen were brushing their horses, the post-gallop steam rising from the animals’ backs clearly visible. A young girl, white blouse, long woollen skirt, her hair tied with a yellow scarf, moved among a flock of belligerent geese, scattering feed, lashing out with a lazy foot at those who got in her way.
There was a field kitchen, the cooks ladling out food to grimy-looking Tommies and, nearby, outside a bell tent, two officers bracketing a rickety table, a breakfast of eggs and thick, crusty bread laid out between them. They smoked and chatted and supped from tin mugs of tea. One of the pair threw back his head in laughter at a remark, almost losing his seating as a chair leg sank into the soil, causing the other much mirth. Boys, he could see now as they joshed each other. Twenty if they were a day. Some hundred yards to the right of them, yet another alien feature: a cluster of wooden crosses, the bodies of the fallen waiting for the time when they could be exhumed and transported to a more permanent resting place. A solitary figure stood in front of one of them, head bowed, possibly in prayer, his steel helmet in his hands. The major moved his prying eyes on, feeling like an intruder on private grief.
Each and every subject his magnified gaze fell upon was acting as if they were a long, long way from any conflict. Just how close they were in reality was soon apparent as they continued their ascent. Foot by foot, yard by yard, the war was heaving into view.
‘As we are a training unit we are a little further back than an operational company, so our perspective isn’t quite as good, sir. But look to your left. North. That’s the Ypres Salient, a bulge into the Germans’ territory. See the rise of hills? German positions. Poor blighters underneath that don’t half take it. Those few shards sticking up? Used to be villages. See the artillery emplacements? They’re ours, of course. Now look straight ahead. Believe you me, Major, this is the only way you can make sense of what’s down there. Once you are in the trenches, you keep your head down and the world shrinks. Don’t worry, we are too far away for any small-arms fire to cause us any bother and any artilleryman who could hit us would deserve every medal the Germans have. Start nearest to us. See those farmhouses, sir? Not a roof between them? Billets for the men either on their way up the line or down it or just having a few days’ respite. Right, move forward, follow one of the new roads. You should be able to see some dark lines? Running north to south? That’s left to right, see? Got them? Reserve trenches. You’ll find you can’t keep men constantly right at the sharp end, they have to be rotated. Now branching off from those – steady, wind’s shifting a little,
Florrie
’s just righting herself again – branching off from those are the communication trenches that go towards the forward trenches. They zigzag, right? Most trenches do, you’ll find. If not zigzagged, then they are castellated, like battlements. It means there is no clear line of fire for any interloper and that shell blasts won’t funnel down them for miles. The traverses, that’s the correct term for non-linear trenches, they contain the shockwave, you see. They learned that the hard way. The next row running left to right, that’s the support trenches, one back from the front line. That’s probably where you’ll find your lot. The Regimental Aid Posts. Then, more communication lines run to the main fire trench system. The front line proper. See the parapets and the sandbags? And beyond that, the wire and the anti-cavalry obstacles? And then . . .’
‘No man’s land,’ the major said, the first sight of it drying his mouth.
They were high enough now that the major could see a similar pattern repeated on the German side – obstacles, wire, trenches, lazily zigzagging communications lines, and yet more trenches. It was almost a mirror image. But it was the gap between the two opposing armies that caught and held his attention. It went on as far north and as far south as his powerful glasses could see. In some places it was a black strip of featureless mud, unless you counted shell holes and rusty wire as features, in other sections a few benighted trees and shrubs were clinging on for dear life.
He was surprised to find this death strip was not a consistent size. He supposed that the two sides had not dug their trenches according to any blueprint, but simply where it was expedient to do so as the war ground to a stalemate in late 1914. Therefore, this contested band separating the Allies and the Germans randomly swelled and shrank in width, as the two front lines grew closer together or retreated away from each other.
No man’s land was like a wayward river, an apparently permanent fixture of the European landscape, snaking over seven hundred miles, from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border. Except the only thing that flowed in this waterway and burst from its banks to inundate the surrounding countryside was human misery and suffering. He was, he realized, looking straight at the belly of the beast that was sending the Empire’s young men home in pieces, or consigning them to an eternity in the soil of France or Belgium. Here be Dragons, indeed.
Now he could see the method in the Deputy Director’s kite balloon madness. It was to give the uninitiated a taste of what was to come, to bring home the enormity of the task facing anyone who thought they could make a difference to the course of a war being fought on an unimaginable scale. To dent the resolve of an old doctor, a veteran of a different kind of war, a persistent nuisance who should, perhaps, be contemplating his retirement rather than insisting there were new ways available to save the lives being snuffed out on those plains below.
There came the boom of an artillery piece, and, closer, the manic chatter of a machine gun. A plume of dirty smoke rose from the north and wood pigeons clattered from the trees beneath them. It appeared breakfast was over. And so was this jaunt. He lowered the binoculars.
‘Excuse me,’ said the major as he reached across, past Slattery, and yanked at the slow-bleed valve.
Florrie
gave a hiss and whistle of protest and the major felt his insides lift as she checked her rise and began to sink.
Slattery looked puzzled. ‘I haven’t finished, sir. There’s a lot more—’
‘Apologies, Lieutenant, but I’ve seen enough for one day,’ said Major John Hamish Watson of the Royal Army Medical Corps. ‘And I’ve got work to do.’
It was daylight by the time they had managed to find a bed or a corner for all the new arrivals and make sure their immediate concerns were dealt with. The medical staff never knew what time the trains would arrive at Bailleul hospital, even though it was less than a dozen miles from the front. An hour’s notice, if they were lucky. Ten minutes sometimes. This one came in at close to two in the morning with a half-hour’s warning and two hundred wounded. By the time they reached this stage of the medical evacuation chain, a conventional fixed hospital, the soldiers should have received good basic care and surgery where required, but sometimes the mobile medical units close to the front were overwhelmed and the wounded were simply shunted down the line with minimum intervention.
That had clearly been the case here, as there were still boots to be cut off feet that hadn’t been out of them for weeks, primitive field dressings to be changed, wounds to be irrigated, limbs to be amputated. And lice to be avoided. Which was nearly impossible. You even ran a risk of infestation if you handled the severed limbs – the greybacks seemed happy to wait their chance to jump ship from excised to living flesh.
Mrs Georgina Gregson had dumped the stiff calico over-dress they wore on top of their uniforms for dealing with lousy new arrivals – tight at the neck and tied at the sleeves – at the laundry. She was too exhausted to eat, however, and, after picking up a jug of hot water, had gone straight back to the tiny room she shared with Alice Pippery.
Her roommate was already in bed; the ill-fitting curtains meant she could make out her barrow-like shape beneath the blankets. She closed the door as softly as she could and began to undress. Two cot-beds, two lockers, one shared wardrobe, a mirror, a stool and, in the corner, a tiny and temperamental stove. She knew the position of everything in the room by heart, so undoing laces, rolling down stockings and pulling off her uniform and hanging it up in the half-light was easy.
She had just smoothed out her cape on its hanger when she heard a squeak. Mice, was her first thought. They infested the lower floors of the hospital. They weren’t as disgusting as the rats that sometimes ventured into the tented quarters, perhaps, but they would chew through anything in search of even a morsel of food. Many a nurse had found her camisole or knickers shredded because of a carelessly stored biscuit or chocolate.
There it was again.
It wasn’t a mouse. It was Alice.
Mrs Gregson moved over to the cot and laid a hand on the blankets. They were vibrating with a familiar rhythm. She came across it on a daily basis, but especially on the night shift. The men in her charge were past caring about any shame at showing any such weakness.
Miss Pippery was crying.
‘Alice?’ She threw back the blankets and squeezed herself in beside her. Alice shifted in the bed, spinning around and sliding her arms around Mrs Gregson. She responded in kind, careful not to squeeze too hard. She always felt it wouldn’t be difficult to crush Alice with one strong hug. She could feel her friend’s heart beating against her chest through her nightgown, as fast as a frightened rodent’s. Alice’s cross was digging into her collarbone, so she moved it to one side.
‘What is it, Alice?’
No reply. Just a long, ululating sob. They all had days like this. Days where you felt the dark waters of despair close over your head. The only surprise was that there weren’t more of them. She stroked Alice’s hair. It was straw-like to the touch. She ran a finger through her own red curls. Worse. Before the next shift, she decided she would take them both down to the bathhouse and bully, cajole and demand enough hot water to scrub them both and check they were free of any infestation.
‘Alice? What’s wrong, dear?’
‘Matron said I had to go on the cookery – ’ the sentence was punctuated by a catch in the throat – ‘roster. I can’t cook. You know that, George.’
‘I do. People still talk about your porridge pot.’
It was difficult to tell whether her response was another sob or a stifled giggle. It was true that Miss Alice Pippery had once made the worst porridge since Goldilocks picked up a ladle, but stirring a great vat of the stuff on a Soyer stove, without it sticking, was no easy task.
‘What did Matron say?’
‘That “can’t” shouldn’t be in a VAD’s vocabulary.’
They were both members of the Red Cross’s Voluntary Aid Detachment, which put them on the lowest rung of the nursing ladder. In fact, sometimes they weren’t even allowed to touch the ladder at all.
‘Remember that first hill climb? At Outersley? On your brother’s motor cycle?’
She felt Alice nod against her shoulder.
‘When you looked up that hill, saw how steep and muddy it was, what did you say?’
A mumble.
‘What was that?’
‘I can’t do it.’
‘And where did you come?’
‘Third.’
‘Third,’ Mrs Gregson said triumphantly. ‘And where did I come?’
‘Fifth.’
‘Fifth.’
‘But that was only because you put rocks over my rear wheels because I didn’t have the weight to get any traction, wasn’t it?’
Mrs Gregson laughed at the memory of the subterfuge. ‘Tactics.’
‘And then they disqualified me.’ Alice punched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘And my parents said you were a cheat.’
‘And a liar,’ she added proudly. ‘And I think “a malign influence” was mentioned.’
They lay in silence, still intertwined, considering this.
‘I never thought that, George, ever, even when we broke down in the Lake District and I almost caught pneumonia. If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be here.’
‘What, lying cold and dirty in a bed, scratching at your lice sores, not having slept properly for months, a lowly VAD who is about to start peeling potatoes as her contribution to the war effort? I hope you remember me in your prayers.’
‘I do, George,’ she said solemnly. ‘Of course I do.’
She had been teasing. She had momentarily forgotten that for Alice, levity and religion could never happily co-exist.
‘Do you miss him? Mr Gregson?’ Alice asked at last, her voice tremulous as she picked her words carefully. ‘At times like this?’
Mrs Gregson raised herself up on one elbow. ‘What really happened today, Alice? This isn’t about cooking, is it? Or how warm Mr Gregson used to make my bed. Come on, something breaks our hearts every day. I lost one I was fond of the other week. Private Hornby. Lancashire lad with an accent thicker than your porridge. He was fine when I went off shift, when I came back . . .’ She let it tail off. She didn’t want to recall too vividly the state the boy had been in.
‘Mine asked me to let him die,’ said Alice, then caught herself. Mrs Gregson felt her stiffen. ‘No, that’s not right. He asked me to kill him. Not in so many words, but that’s what he meant.’
She had heard of that before. A frightened lad, maimed beyond recognition, perhaps, or knowing he was going to die no matter what the doctors tried. Even heard tell there were some nurses who had acceded to the request. ‘And what did you say, Alice?’
The door opened with a loud squeal from the hinges and a hand reached in to turn on the light switch. The single, unshaded bulb flickered into reluctant light.