“No need for that,” Elijah says as cheerily as he can. “Hardly hurts, hardly hurts.”
Driscoll hands him a small vial of tablets. “If it gets too much, pop one of these in your mouth and let it dissolve under your tongue. It’s morphine.” He winks at Elijah. “Just don’t take any before a patrol.”
Elijah begins to walk away.
“Corporal,” Driscoll calls out before he’s made it too far. Elijah turns back. “You’re looking rather anemic. Are you eating properly?”
“Just fine, sir.” Elijah walks away, limping and whistling.
W
E ARE ORDERED TO GO
over the top near a town called Lens. Our battalion crouches, backs to the mud wall, faces between knees. Shells scream and slam into the enemy trenches nearby and my body vibrates with the earth. I look over to Elijah beside me. He smiles.
Later, he tells me that he hums to himself a song that’s become popular with the soldiers. He can’t hear what he hums over the noise, just feels the vibration of the song in his chest. Everything shakes so badly he wonders how it is that the world keeps from falling apart. The soldiers around him squat too, wait for the barrage to end before they pour over the top. They keep their eyes squeezed shut, hands by their faces for protection. Elijah looks at those beside him, at me, at Graves, at Fat, at McCaan, at all the newer ones, wonders who he won’t see after today. The barrage reaches a crescendo. All that exists in the universe is noise, he thinks. The thought makes him begin to laugh.
And then all goes still. His ears hum an electric buzz and he can hear his own breathing deep inside him. There are places in the world, far off, where men are not about to do what Elijah and the others tense and wait to do. Elijah imagines men at this very moment still sleeping in their beds beside their wives. He imagines Indian hunters rising with the dawn to track through the forest. Although the silence only lasts for a few seconds, Elijah imagines it goes on for hours, his mind ticking like a pocket watch, the medicine in his veins illuminating the true meaning of all of this, moments before it will change so completely for so many.
A shrill whistle breaks the quiet. It sounds like the lone call of some crazed bird, makes Elijah’s stomach drop. Breech begins screaming, giving the order. Elijah’s waited all night for this, made sure to inject enough medicine into his bruised body to keep him calm without putting him to sleep. We’ve drunk our rum. Now we climb over the parapet screaming. Immediately the machine guns start rattling and men on both sides are falling. Fat struggles to climb over, and Elijah and I turn back and pull him up with as much strength as we can muster. Fat’s trip to Blighty wasn’t long enough. He lies there like an invalid, trying to catch his breath, and so Elijah and I turn to begin the advance. It rains metal, bullets ripping the ground and the sandbags right beside us.
When we begin the short run to the Boche line, Elijah and I find ourselves behind a thin row of soldiers who have taken the lead, but many of them kneel and lie, or are thrown down by the machine guns, and soon it is only Elijah and me, it seems, running headlong to the barbed wire. We hear the
boom
and feel the thunk of mortars crashing all around. Tossing ourselves in front of the German wire we wait for the sappers with their Bangalore torpedoes to come up from behind. Only one arrives and he slips in beside, slides the tube into the wire, lights the fuse, then orders us to roll away and cover our heads. We do as we’re told and the tube blows a nice wide swath
through the wire. I roll first, Elijah follows, and we crawl fast as we can through the hole, a machine gun now trained on us and the bullets whistling just over our heads and exploding into the earth and creating showers of dirt.
Once through the wire both Elijah and I set our grenades and lob them into the area that holds the machine-gunner. Elijah carries an automatic rifle that McCaan gave him to use today. He carries his sniper rifle strapped snugly on his back, and he trains his machine gun on the smoke and dust in the place where it seems that most of the firing has come from. The gun is heavy and kicks hard in his hands as he sprays the nest. The nest goes quiet. We advance quick, bent over double, and jump into the advance trench, ready to begin shooting at close range.
The place is blasted. Two Boche lie slumped over the gun and others are scattered about in deformed poses, legs and arms bent at strange angles. One is still alive, moaning and cursing. Elijah walks over to him and empties the rest of the magazine into his chest. He reloads and drags what barbed wire he can into the trench, twenty yards on either side of us, while I keep watch. It will slow down any counterattacking Hun if they decide to retake this section.
I wonder where the rest of the enemy are, but then realize that this is just one small advance trench of many that surround the ruins of coal-mining villages that we’ve been ordered to overrun. We sit tight and wait for any of the others that might make it to us. Soon other soldiers begin trickling in, McCaan, Graves, Grey Eyes. I’m happy to see Corporal Thompson slide into the trench with us. He’s back from Blighty and looks thin and paler. Finally, Lieutenant Breech makes it in and immediately begins to bark out directions.
Heavy fighting continues in all the little trenches around us. Chaos. The trenches are like spiderwebs, shooting out in all directions, some leading nowhere, others leading into the heart of the villages thick with Boche infantry and snipers and bombers and
machine-gunners. We must find our way in and take over these places. In doing this, we will control the place named Hill 70 and will, for once, be the ones staring down at the Hun, with a bird’s-eye view of the city called Lens. But first we must go foot by foot through these trenches that wind through the rubble of this village and kill every enemy we can find.
“Bird, Whiskeyjack, you go forward with Thompson and get a feel for what’s ahead of us,” Breech says. “I want you back within a half-hour to report directly to me. ”
We check our weapons and begin making our way down the trench at a crouch. From what I can see, the trench leads pretty much straight into the smoking rubble of the village. The trench gets deeper as we advance, winding along so that every ten or twenty yards a new stretch of dirt walls opens before us. We can see by the ruined brick on either side that we are at the village’s border. A sharp traverse in the trench appears ahead. We pause by it and Thompson takes out a small mirror, carefully holds it so that he can peer around the corner. He hands Elijah the mirror, whispers that there is the ruin of a church that he’s sure will contain a sniper or machine gun. If we try to advance further we’ll be walking straight into view for more than thirty yards.
Elijah peers at the mirror and sees the layout. With the sun higher now and behind us, we will make perfect silhouettes if we go forward. Elijah notes a dugout in the wall ten yards down the trench, one that he can make safely, he says. We squat on our haunches to work out this problem.
“I can make it to cover ten yards down,” Elijah says to Thompson. “That will draw the fire of any sniper who might be there. It will be up to you two to see where he’s firing from. ”
“You’re assuming there will only be one,”Thompson answers.
“One, two, three, what’s the difference?” Elijah answers. “Just make sure you get their position. Put X in that spot there where he
has a clear view of the church. ” Elijah points to a brick pile that juts out from the trench corner, with a hole through it that creates a natural loophole, a place where I can lie down behind and fire from, without exposing any more than my rifle barrel and scope. I like this idea. I get down and carefully settle myself into place, aligning my rifle so that I have a view of the church. I scan along it. I’m ready.
Thompson stands above me, puts his mirror into position.
With his rifle in his right hand, Elijah takes a breath and then walks out and around the corner. He does not run, but goes as slowly as his body will allow him. Thompson whispers loudly through clenched teeth, “Move!” but Elijah wants to make sure anyone in the church can see him. When he is five yards down the trench a rifle cracks out just as he jumps to the side. A bullet crashes into the mud wall where he’d been standing. He walks forward again and then jumps backwards just before the rifle fires a second time, another bullet whistling by very close. He then walks directly to the dugout and slips behind it as a bullet punches into the wall. Elijah looks back at where he came from and I can tell he sees Thompson reflected in his mirror, shaking his head at Elijah.
“Did you get a look at where the sniper is?” Elijah calls back.
“There are two,” I answer in Cree. “One is shooting from the ground level, the other from that higher place where the bell is. ”
“Well, shoot them,” Elijah says.
Maybe he thinks this is a sure way to get me out of the funk I’d been in since my trip to see Lisette. And it is great fun for Elijah too, I can tell. From where he is he can watch me quite clearly. I lie still, breathe calmly, peer through my scope. I know that Elijah thinks that it makes more sense to shoot the man on the ground first. The one higher up has a much more difficult time of escaping if he feels pinned in his perch.
My Mauser cracks the silence and Thompson whistles out, “Good shot!” I reload quickly as a bullet tears into the brick close to my
head. The other sniper has spotted me. I fire almost simultaneously, my finger jerking the trigger. It is not the shot I’d intended. The bell gongs out hollowly.
Elijah laughs. “Shoot again, quick!” he calls out.
I reload just as the sniper answers my shot. Dust rises up by my ear. I swear, steady myself. I sense Elijah watching me take a breath in, then letting it half out. I fire.
“Got him!” Thompson calls out, as the sound of a rifle clattering to the bricks below echoes down the trench.
Beyond the church ruins, artillery fire begins, and a lot of rifle fire from the trenches on either side of us. We make our way to the church and see that the wreck of the steeple where the dead sniper lies is high enough to offer a good view of the surrounding area. Elijah tells Thompson and me that he’s going up.
“A half-hour has passed,” Thompson says. “Breech will want us back. ”
“Better to secure the high ground,” Elijah says. “It won’t take long. ”
He has to make it across a pile of loose brick that is wide open to anyone on either side. I cover the church in the event that there might still be Boche waiting there, and Thompson has the impossible job of covering everything else. Without wasting time, Elijah stumbles his way up the mound. Rifle and machine-gun fire clatters and pings off the bricks. Elijah dives into the broken doorway of the church.
The next part of the story Elijah tells me afterwards. He makes his way into the little church, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He knows now that this is a hot area, but he’s got that good feeling, the one that is like a shroud around him. Nothing will go wrong right now.
The roof has been blown mostly off. The steeple is close to collapse. Elijah makes his way up the rickety stairs and reaches the top. The dead sniper lies on the floor face down, like he is napping.
A penny-sized hole in the back of his head leaks out blood and grey brain. Elijah waves to Thompson and me, then turns him over. His eyes are still open. They are very blue but beginning to cloud up. Like a pickerel’s eyes, Elijah thinks. The dead one is young, with not much experience. A hole no bigger than a small shirt button oozes in the centre of his forehead a couple of inches below his thick hair. A wonderful shot. Elijah sometimes forgets how good I really am. How ironic, he thinks, this Hun killed by a weapon from his own country! If Elijah or I ever were to be captured, there would be no pity for us.
A new wave of small arms fire erupts on either side of Elijah. He peers through a hole blown into the side of the wall and indeed this perch offers a good view. He can see much of the way down the trench from where we just came, and in the distance he sees the plain on the outskirts of town and a number of Canadian soldiers moving along it. He makes his way to the other side of the steeple and cautiously raises his head above a small window ledge. Fallen walls and rubble block much of the view, but he can make out trench lines running through the village that are definitely not in Canadian hands, yet appear abandoned. He still must figure out where all of the fire he attracted has come from.
Leaning back in our direction, he calls out to me in Cree. He does not want to risk a Fritz soldier hearing who knows English. “Tell Thompson he and I will hold our positions while you go back and bring the company forward to us. But be quick. If Fritz decides he wants this church back, he will take it fast. ”
After a minute, Thompson shouts back, “All right,” and I head back to retrieve our section.
Elijah settles in with his automatic rifle and begins trying to figure out where the enemy is hiding. A lot of rifle fire echoes about, but not as close as what was aimed at him.
“Do you see anything?” Elijah shouts to Thompson. Before he can answer, a spray of machine-gun fire rakes the wall that Elijah
crouches against, vibrating it. They know exactly where he is. He considers making his way out of the steeple to better cover below, but if he does that, he’ll lose his sight advantage. At least now he knows roughly where the Fritz are. They are to the south and east just a little way. That is the only direction from which the machine-gunner could fire and hit the wall at his back. He wishes he had Thompson’s mirror so he could get a good look without exposing his head to them.
“I can guess their location but can’t see a damn thing,”Thompson shouts out to Elijah. “Let’s just hold tight and wait for the others. ”
A tense half-hour passes and Elijah’s very surprised that Fritz does not attempt to take back the church. The fighting has moved further into the village, and he assumes that Fritz is in a controlled retreat. He decides to risk peeking over the ledge. Slowly, he raises his head. The sun is bright and hot now, at its apex. If a sniper’s waiting, he has a clean shot at Elijah.