The soldier’s accent was perfect.
‘Advance.’
As the soldier stepped closer, he saw Corporal Swain wasn’t from 244 Siege Battery or Battalion HQ. And it seemed the corporal’s form was the only moving thing in an unmoving world.
‘Are you a messenger?’
‘You could call me that.’
The soldier rested his rifle against the hedgerow and sat down. He kicked thick mud from his boots. Edward saw splatters of fresh mud on the soldier’s uniform.
‘Terrible slog getting here. Cup of tea would go down very well, especially as it’s quiet, yeah?’
Again, Edward could only think how oddly the soldier was behaving, insubordinately even. As if the battle was truly over and there was no need for protocol in addressing an officer as sir, even if the officer was only a second lieutenant.
‘Is it over, is the assault over?’
‘No, bit of a lull where we are, that’s all.’
‘Yes, a lull. I was going to note it …’
‘… just before I arrived.’
‘Yes.’
The soldier removed his helmet and laid it on the ground. He wiped sweat and grime from his brow.
‘I’m sure you must be a little confused, lieutenant.’
‘It’s the quiet, the look of things. I’m not sure what to do.’
‘Nothing to do. Just takes some getting used to.’
… just takes some getting used to …
Yes, of course. Only been in the army twenty-one months, only been in France since February. Seen some action at the front, had a few close scrapes with enemy shells but come through them just fine. Mostly spending time at HQ plotting maps or censoring the boys’ letters home. Did see a few planes fall from the sky. Saw one dead German soldier under a bridge, sitting as if hiding from the rain. Perhaps this is what war was genuinely like, he thought, moments of unrestful quiet between seconds of terrible fear. Perhaps it explained the soldier’s casual manner. Corporal … Corporal Swain, yes, that was it … had the look of a man too old for his years, someone who had seen all there was to see in war.
Edward noticed a hand-written scrawl inside the soldier’s helmet: ‘And men, being destroyed, cried out.’ It read as verse.
‘The words in your helmet, are they from a poem?’
‘From a lesser known book of the Bible, I’m told. It’s the motto of my company.’
‘I’m afraid I’m not a religious man.’
‘That’s all right, lieutenant, neither am I.’
Edward looked over the soldier’s uniform. No insignia on the collar or sleeves. Nothing to identify a battalion or brigade. And under the soldier’s box respirator, tucked in the belt, Edward saw a mud-stained knife. A deadly-looking thing, like the knives of the Gurkha Regiment.
‘Not to worry, lieutenant, I’m not a spy sent to kill the forward observers.’
‘I wasn’t thinking—’
‘Of course you are. You were ordered to keep a sharp eye out for them.’
Edward realized it was what he was thinking. And he wondered why it had taken so long to think it.
‘It was your manner. The way you walked through no man’s land.’
‘There’s nothing to fear for the moment. I managed to kill what fear there was in this sector.’
But Edward began to wonder.
‘What is your company and battalion, soldier?’
‘What’s left of it, you mean. Lost half the company at Deville Wood.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No need, it’s our job. My company isn’t attached to any battalion. At Deville Wood we were with the South Africans. Here we started with the Canadians, now we’re with Brits. We’re more the sneaky-beaky type. We do our work quietly.’
‘With knives.’
‘Yes.’
‘You are an assassin.’
The soldier smiled.
‘I’ve been called worse.’
‘Why are you here now?’
‘Told you, I was ordered to find you.’
‘To what purpose?’
‘To protect you.’
‘Who would give such an order?’
‘Comes to orders I’m no different than you. No idea where they come from, no choice in carrying them out. But from what I gather, there’s a soldier on the German side who wanted you dead.’
‘The entire German Army wants me dead, and you, all of us. Why should I fear one soldier more than the rest?’
‘This soldier is different, lieutenant, he’s a devourer of souls. And he’s not the only one in this place, there are thousands of them. Out on the battlefield, while we rest in the quiet, soldiers from both sides of the line are being served up for slaughter. Never mind the civilians caught in the middle. Thirteen million dead so far in this bloody war to end all bloody wars. The more slaughter is mechanized, the more the enemy breeds. And in this bloody place, the enemy has become very good at slaughter.’
Edward looked into the eyes of the soldier, almost hypnotized by them. The soldier was mad. Edward heard of such things happening in the trenches. The choking terror, the never-ending death strangling all sanity from the mind. He looked at the soldier’s knife and uniform again and felt his own fear bite. What he’d thought were splashes of mud were stains of blackened blood.
‘No, lieutenant, odd as you find me, I’m not mad. You must believe what I tell you. I’m on your side, I’ve come with a message.’
‘What message?’
The soldier’s eyes drifted to another place.
‘No traveller has rest more blest
Than this moment brief between
Two lives, when the night’s first lights
And shades hide what has never been,
Things goodlier, lovelier, dearer, than will be or have ever been.’
Edward saw himself two years earlier. In England, at his writing desk, struggling with the words. His wife sitting at the hearth nearby, reading Keats.
‘I don’t understand, those are my words. I remember when I wrote them.’
‘Yes, I know all your poems.’
‘My poems haven’t been published but for a few and I—’
‘—published them under the name Edward Eastaway because you didn’t wish to trade on your name as a writer of prose. But in truth it was because you were afraid they might not be well received. You feared you might be dragged again into that slough of despond you dreaded your entire life.’
He stared at the soldier who knew the deepest truths of Edward Thomas.
‘How can you know such things?’
‘The same way I know you couldn’t remember your name till I called to you. The same way I know why it’s all gone quiet and nothing in this place appears to move. The same way I know the words you were trying to remember just before I arrived, the lines you wrote on the last pages of your diary. The same way I know you nearly died in this place yesterday, but I wasn’t ordered to find you because it wasn’t your time.’
Edward saw himself on the hill.
Yesterday, Easter Sunday.
Bright sun, a warm day.
Positions taking sporadic fire from German guns.
Setting the battery, arranging
matériel
for the assault. Village of Achicourt, less than a mile up the line, shelled heavily at midday. Lulls of silence and noticing the return of birds and herbs and flowers to the nightmarish landscape after the snow and the cold rain of winter. In the afternoon, planting pickets at zero line and walking to the forward observation post, guiding three rounds to find the range of the German guns.
He heard the growl of an incoming shell.
He saw himself falling to the ground, covering his head and closing his eyes. Feeling the shell plough into the earth, knowing the blast would rip his flesh to shreds … Nothing happened. He uncovered his eyes to see the tail of a German shell poke from the ground like a silly thing. A dud, a great walloping dud of a Boche shell.
That evening in the officers’ mess, when he was named to man the same forward observation post for the coming assault, there was a huge laugh. They slapped him on his back and offered their congratulations. He remembered someone joking, ‘A fellow as lucky as he would be safe wherever he went.’
And once more he saw himself atop this hill in the hour before the dawn of Easter Monday, 1917. Behind the hedgerow, binoculars at his eyes, searching for the flash of return fire from across no man’s land.
There was a sound, a furious and rushing sound.
…
incoming
…
Then all was quiet.
Nothing moved.
‘Have I … have I died?’
‘You’ve taken your last breath, lieutenant, and you’re beginning to forget this life. You’re trying to remember things so you can hang on. You’re fighting so very hard to hang on, but this life is over for you. You need to let it go, that’s why I’m here.’
Edward saw himself on the ground. No wounds or blood, no mark of death.
‘Perhaps I was only knocked unconscious and this is no more than a dream.’
The soldier nodded towards a crater of newly churned earth.
‘A stray shell landed there at seven thirty-six and twelve seconds. The blast sent a shockwave through your body. It caused an embolism in your pulmonary artery, the embolism travelled to your heart and stopped it cold.’
‘I never heard of such a thing.’
‘Nor has anyone else in this place, not yet. They’ll have a name for it soon enough, I’m sure. Rather surprising the ways men are inspired to kill each other without even trying, don’t you think?’
Edward did not know what to think.
He saw his pocket watch.
Holding at the very moment, seven thirty-six and twelve seconds.
‘It seems to have stopped my watch as well.’
The soldier lifted his helmet from the ground and set it atop his head with a tap.
‘Actually, that would be me.’
‘Sorry?’
The soldier touched the hilt of his bloodied knife.
‘I sealed off this bit of the battlefield from the rest of the devourers, I needed time to slaughter the one who was after you. Son of a bitch had an entire squad with him. Anyways, in here it’s still seven thirty-six and twelve seconds. Out there, the day has come and gone.’
Edward stared at the soldier, whose eyes were becoming all the more hypnotic.
‘How strange it is that I should believe you.’
‘Yes, well, people live their lives wondering what happens when they die. Always a jolt to find what happens isn’t quite what the prophets foretold. Like I said, it takes some getting used to, the dying I mean.’
… some getting used to … the dying …
‘Will I be left to rot, like the German soldier under the bridge?’
‘KIA in this sector are being buried in a farmer’s field near Agny. Your men will come searching for you soon. They’ll find your body and carry it down the hill to be buried with the rest of the dead. What’s left of my company is there, watching. They have orders to take care of your body when it arrives. In time, it’ll be laid to rest.’
‘In time?’
‘Yes, lieutenant, in time.’
‘I don’t understand, really I don’t. And strangely enough, I don’t seem to mind.’
‘Because you no longer need this mortal coil to exist, you’re ready to let go of it.’
‘But something holds me, something dear to me.’
‘You need to forget even the things most dear and let go.’
… the things most dear … let go …
Edward saw familiar faces now fading from his eyes.
They felt very dear to him, and he remembered.
‘Yes, I know them. My wife, my children. What will they do when I am gone?’
‘Sorry, lieutenant, no one in this place can read the future, not even the prophets. All I can tell you is their lives will go on, for better or worse.’
All are behind, the kind
And the unkind too …
‘But their names, I cannot remember their names even.’
‘Remembrance is for the living, lieutenant, not the dead.’
… no more
Tonight than a dream …
‘Tell me, please, tell me their names.’
‘I can’t. I can’t interfere in the manner of your death.’
The dark-lit stream has drowned the Future and the Past.
‘How cruel you are.’
‘Yes, I’m sure it feels that way. Then again, I’m not a poet.’
How weak and little is the light …
‘Was I a poet? I cannot remember myself.’
‘Yes, lieutenant, you were a poet who was deeply loved.’