I don’t remember much after gaining their trench and the hand-to-hand fighting. My mind cracked after Gilberto was killed in front of me, broke further when the big man began strangling me. I am told I stood after McCaan shot the man in the head and that I continued on with the others, helping to secure the first trench, then offering cover fire when we stormed the secondary trench and eventually the reserve trench. Elijah found me slumped over a parapet and was sure I was dead. The way Elijah tells it to me, when he turned me over I opened my eyes to Elijah and told him I’d been talking to my mad aunt, to you, Niska. Elijah picked me up then, strung my rifle over his shoulder along with his own and carried me all the way back to our morning trench, where I slept under Elijah’s careful eye for thirty-six hours.
And now it is spring and we are here on top of Vimy Ridge rather than below it. The snow and blowing wind that came to us that morning has left, and I wonder if it wasn’t sent by you to help us, Niska. A warm day arrives, the first in a long time, and the sun comes out. We take off our shirts and lie by a small river that runs close by. The braver ones swim in the ice water. I sit with Elijah and Grey Eyes and Graves, and Fat just back from Blighty. We are the only original privates left, and all of us look up at the observation balloons that try to keep track of what Fritz is up to. The others’ chests are as white as fish bellies, and even Elijah’s and mine seem paler than I ever remember them being. Nobody talks of Gilberto. He is gone now. To invite his memory will only invite sadness, and sadness can collect
here as quick as rain in trenches, until it drowns everything. Elijah speaks of writing Gilberto’s wife and children a letter describing his bravery and kindness, but I don’t know if he ever will.
Someone points up to the sky and in the distance we hear the drone of an aeroplane. We all strain to see which direction it comes from, ready to bound away for cover if he comes in to strafe us. “There it is!” Graves shouts, and I see the flash of sun on its propeller as it pops out from a cloud and aims itself at one of the balloons. Its machine gun is just a
tick tick tick
in the distance and we watch mesmerized as the observation balloon it heads toward pops into flames, the basket and men in it plummeting to earth. The plane turns and heads for another balloon, and it too erupts into flames, the men in it specks tumbling to the ground. Again the plane turns and this time begins firing at a third balloon. This one, rather than becoming a candle flame in the distance, simply goes limp, the air in it gone so that it spins lazily down. Some of the Canadians cheer as two more planes appear on the horizon, ours by the way they speed toward the other. The three planes swoop and fire, chase one another in circles and dives until an orange flame and thick black smoke erupts from the German plane and it falls to earth, disappearing behind the rise of Vimy Ridge.
“I would give my left arm to fly in one of those aeroplanes,” Elijah says to the others.
I can’t imagine anything more frightening. Elijah begins to speak softly, so that the others around him must lean toward him. Everyone, it seems, wants to hear what he says as he begins to recount the events of that morning on the ridge in no man’s land, and my English and my ears today are good enough to understand most of it. I must strain to hear Elijah, though, even though I lie close to him. I live in a world now where my head feels permanently stuffed with cotton.
Elijah talks of sneaking out in the pre-dawn darkness, slipping into a Hun listening post and slitting their throats. I notice that he has left
out how he cut the hair from their heads. I also notice that he doesn’t speak with his Englishman’s accent much now that he has discovered the morphine. He tells of how the creeping barrage nearly caused him to soil his pants, how the shells landed so close he could taste the Canadian-made metal in his mouth, how he cursed his own artillery for being so accurate. The men around him laugh. He talks of hearing the chatter of their machine guns before he could see them through the snow and explosions, how he took out at least three nests from a distance and countless soldiers who were foolish enough to have their heads above their parapets. He stood and ran with the others, shooting from the hip, too close to use his scope, and joined the rest of the men around him in bayoneting the frightened Hun until the survivors ran from their trenches and down toward the Douai Plain, Elijah carefully and casually picking them off as they ran. It is as if I was not even there, as if I did not do as much as him in the attack.
One soldier pipes up and claims he witnessed Elijah hit a retreating Hun from at least five hundred yards away, says he’s never seen anything like it in his life and probably never will again.
“Until the next time you are with me in a similar situation,” Elijah answers him.
They all laugh.
I look around and realize that I know very few of the men by name any more. So many have come and gone that I’ve lost track. Amazingly, Elijah seems to know all of them, acts as if he has known them for years. One of the new ones asks if it is true that Elijah was mentioned in dispatches that day. He nods.
“He’ll probably get a bar added to the MM they promised him,” another says. “You’re the pride of the company.”
Elijah’s eyes glow with the medicine in his veins. He has not mentioned me once.
We watch as a small duck flies along the stream, looking for a place to land. It skitters onto the water and floats with the current,
maybe one hundred yards away. The soldier who’s been praising Elijah says, “That would be something nice to eat for supper,” looking to the others for a reaction. I can see that the duck’s a fish eater and know its meat will be greasy and stinky. “I’ll bet Whiskeyjack could hit it from here.”The others around us laugh and agree. Elijah picks up his rifle, checks the action and slides a round into the chamber. He sits with his knees up and rests the rifle on one. We all go silent, watch for what will happen.
His shot cracks out and the water a foot ahead of the duck sprays up, sending the animal into a panicked flight. I watch as it lifts up high, then circles, looking for another place on the water to land. The men laugh and say, “Nice shot,” anyway. The duck comes back in and lands not far from its original place.
I pick up my rifle and slip in a round, then take careful aim through my scope. With half a breath released, I pull the trigger and my rifle barks. The duck’s feathers spray up, then slowly float back onto the water, landing on the surface and around the ripped carcass. The men around us stare at me as I stand up and walk away. Me, I won’t let them forget who I am.
Two months pass and all I want is home. I’m sick with wanting to be back there now that summer has arrived here and small red flowers bloom in the most unexpected places on the front, around dead soldiers and their rifles, a feeble attempt to cover up the horror before the flowers are pounded into black slime by artillery. If I cannot be back home, I will be with Lisette, even if for just a night. Every day I plan how to do it, and in its small way this takes my mind off the desire to be home.
It seems that none of the generals around here know exactly what to do. No one had expected the Canadians to take Vimy Ridge and there was no follow-up plan. Command has us going up through the caves and tunnels of Vimy to spend our time on the front line, then we are moved to the support line, and then to the reserve line. It
seems to me that everything these
wemistikoshiw
do is in threes. They are obsessed by that number. The front line, the support line and the reserve line is just the beginning of it. Their work parties are split into groups of three, and they are ordered to count off accordingly. Soldier one is sentry while soldier two and soldier three work. They’ve even divided their army into three sections, the infantry, the artillery and the cavalry. And these three sections are put through the same three rituals of training, then combat, then recovery.
This whole love for that number has trickled down from the ones who give the orders to the ones who take them. As soon as we are moved from the lines for rest, we follow the same pattern. Food, then rest, then women. We even die in threes. I have watched countless times how a soldier dies. He is a man before the bullet strikes, but when he is hit and the pain crashes into his body and he realizes that he has only moments left on this earth, he becomes a desperate animal. Finally, inescapably, he becomes a corpse. Sometimes I attend the prayers that the
wemistikoshiw
meet for and in these prayers they invoke their three
manitous
, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Maybe for this reason the
wemistikoshiw
do so much in threes.
But it does not stop there. I too have begun to see the world in threes. It was Elijah who taught me when sniping at night to look for the flare of the match in the Hun’s trench. He showed me how to focus in on the match and to fire after slowly counting to three. The first soldier strikes the match to light his cigarette, and that is what we spot from our position. He then offers the match to his friend’s cigarette, and that is when the sniper sights in on the flame with his rifle. When that soldier offers his match to his third friend, the sniper is given enough time to fire before that unlucky third soldier inhales the smoke.
I lie deep in the trench when the day is calm and think about how the world of the soldier consists of staring up at the sky, crawling upon the earth at night and living beneath it during the day. In the
dark of night I think that my life has been divided into three for me by these
wemistikoshiw
. There was my life before them and their army, there is my life in their army, and, if I live, there will be my life after I have left it and returned home. They must have some magic in their number of three. I know that you, Niska, taught me that we will all someday walk the three-day road, and now I’m left wondering what connection there might be between their world and mine. I need to find out if we share something, some magic. Maybe it will help me get through all this.
Elijah and I spend most of our time on the front line patrolling the Douai Plain, sniping and scouting. He is able to settle comfortably into his madness when I am around and does not have to put on his Englishman’s mask to cover it up. He carries his scalps with him and has dried them out to prevent rot and strung them together. I don’t know how many he has. He talks to me late at night in whispers as we keep watch for movement on the plain or patrol the vast cave and tunnel complexes that not so long ago housed the enemy. “The French will respect me,” he says, eyes glowing. “I am better than Peggy. He cannot take a scalp. He cannot do what I do.”
I must listen to him carefully to hear what he says. My ears go deaf for a time, but usually it does not last long and then I can hear a little again.
We’ve found plenty of Fritz’s gear in his old trenches. Lots of mess kits and helmets and articles of clothing and photos of smiling women and children, candles and boots and bullets, plenty of Mauser bullets for my rifle. We’ve found a couple of Mausers too, but none of them seem to suit Elijah, and none of them have the fine German scope that mine has. Elijah still tries to talk me out of it. It is like a game to him, but behind his friendly smile burns an obsession that is frightening. I fear many things in this place. But I do not want to fear my friend.
The craziest thing we have found was in a bunker thirty or forty feet below the earth. Behind a red velvet curtain are comfortable
couches and chairs and candles everywhere and even electric lighting. And in the middle of the room is a grand piano. Elijah and I found someone who can play it, and this place soon became the officers’ mess and we are not allowed to go there any more.
By mid-summer word trickles out that our section will be moving to another area, which means that we will soon be sent into another offensive. I am sick of this. I don’t want to fight any more. Something needles me, is trying to tell me that the worst is still to come. But I can’t imagine much worse than what I’ve been through. It is in mid-July, our last night at the front before we are to be sent back for rest, that I make up my mind. I will walk if I have to and see Lisette one more time. We have at least a few days’ rest, and besides, no one ever seems to notice that I’m around.
Luck is with me on the first evening behind the line. We are bivouacked near a road and lorries carry wounded heading north. I listen carefully to the drivers talk, and through the tinny echo in my head realize that they are heading to a place only a few miles from where Lisette lives.
I grab a roll of gauze after evening roll call and make my way toward the convoy. Sitting with my rifle and pack close by me, I cut a small length across my arm with my bayonet, then dip the gauze into it, absorbing the red. The lorries begin to roll away, and I look around but no one seems to be paying attention. I walk to the lorries as they crawl toward the main road, and at the last possible second as they are gaining speed I jump onto the back of the last one and crawl between the canvas covers. I peer out to see if anyone has seen me, but the men in my company lie on their backs or sit and talk casually with one another.
As I begin to close the flaps, I spot Elijah. He stands on the road, staring at me, a quizzical expression on his face. He looks like a boy left out of the game. I wave to him, then settle back into the darkness of the truck, wrapping the gauze about my head so that I will appear wounded in the event that I’m discovered. A strange, good
feeling washes over me now that I have broken away from him, now that I am the one doing and not the one left behind. The men all around me are crammed on stretchers or sitting slumped against the truck’s wall. They moan and babble and occasionally shout, but worst of all is the stench. Tinny and sharp with a hint of rot. It is the smell of desperation, the stink of the dying.
I stick my head out of the back of the lorry. Even the choking dust kicked up by the tires is better than the reek inside. I breathe through a handkerchief and as night falls I stare out at the glow on the horizon and the flash of the big guns to the south where the war rages in earnest. The lorry’s exhaust reminds me of the smell of that city called Toronto. I think back to those last few days of freedom before Elijah and I joined the army.