Once the shelling has gone quiet, we make our way out and survey the damage. I’m surprised to see that very little looks different than it did before. There is the same mud and puddles and torn-up wagons and piles of bricks. The only real difference is the bitter smell of cordite and the sweeter smell of blood that is as rich in the air as if we’d just butchered a large moose. We do what we can to help the wounded, and it is not long before stretcher-bearers appear to cart off the dead, and the living who can no longer walk.
After dark an officer appears and tells McCaan to move the platoon farther to the west along a narrow winding dirt track. I can tell McCaan doesn’t like the order. Lieutenant Breech is off to a briefing and has left McCaan in charge with the order to get the platoon to someplace in the darkness. Breech and some others will be there waiting. McCaan’s too smart to complain to the officer but his stiff body says how he feels as he listens to the little man with the moustache wave his thin cane toward where the last light fell, squeaking in a high voice what sound like complicated directions. “Tonight then, sir?” is all I hear McCaan say, and Elijah and me, we give each other knowing looks. A long march still ahead. This Belgium is far more confusing than I ever imagined. Nobody seems to know where to find this Saint-Eloi.
“How many miles from the front line do you think we are?” Elijah asks in Cree.
“Maybe three or four still,” I say. “Hard to tell. I don’t understand yet the sound of the big guns.”
One time when we were little more than boys, we were out following moose tracks in the deep snow and got lost from one another. When dark was close and I was beginning to worry that I’d be out alone in the cold all night, I aimed my rifle at a tree two hundred yards in the distance toward where I could best figure Elijah
had headed. I fired it and listened carefully for a couple of minutes until the thin pop of a rifle answering far away came back. In this way we located one another and at the same time learned the sound of the rifle and how to track it through distance and time. To simply aim a rifle in the air when lost in the bush will not help. The sound travels up and around and seems to come from everywhere. Focus on the sound. I listen carefully now for the sounds of the big and little guns. I try to learn them.
McCaan grumbles to himself and then, after the little officer has disappeared, shouts out for us to shoulder our packs. “Tiny fucker wants us to march into dangerous land after dark knowing full well we have no goddamn idea where we are. Like fucking virgins into the mouth of a lion!” I like it when McCaan swears. His voice almost sounds like it is singing.
Night swallows us. The flash of big guns comes from what seems to be all sides. We are lost. The road we’ve been sent on has become smaller and smaller until now it is nothing more than a dirt path cutting through little ponds of stinking water. We follow the man in front and try not to lose him. To lose the one in front means to be lost in this swamp that we walk through, water and the sound of night animals feeding on all sides, thick mud sucking at boots, threatening to pull them from the soldiers’ feet with each step. I wonder if my moccasins in my pack would be a better choice right now. This mud is not all that different from the mud of the Moose River.
Tonight’s the kind of night to just sit under and wait for it to end. But we can’t do that with enemy patrols that might be anywhere near. For all I know the platoon has slipped behind the enemy and is in his country. When I think this I feel a little ball of panic in my stomach, and the sound of wings of large birds in the swamp rustling and pecking and feeding is suddenly the sound of the green-skinned Hun sliding through the mud on their bellies, slipping closer,
scratching their way, the points of their helmets ready to impale me in the back.
“We’re lost,” I whisper in Cree to Elijah.
Elijah doesn’t answer. Black wings suddenly beat up all around us, the tips touching my head, and Fat screams out, “I fell. Help me!” Men scramble and they follow his voice and with a tremendous tug he is freed from the sucking water beside the little track that we perch on. In Fat’s hand he holds a human arm, I can see in the faint light, and when Fat realizes what he has pulled from the mud below him he begins to scream, until McCaan walks over and the sound of a loud slap rings out in the thick fog and stink of the night.
McCaan whispers out to all of us to regain our wits, that this is our first true test as soldiers and that for all we know we may be in enemy territory and that from this moment on our lives hang in the balance. “You are acting like rabbits,” he says. “It is time to act like wolves,” and these are the perfect words. I can almost hear the backs of the men around me stiffen and the hairs on their necks bristle and it is exactly this, to be the hunter and not the hunted, that will keep me alive. This law is the same law as in the bush. Turn fear and panic into the sharp blade of survival.
We tread along more slowly now, listening to the noise around us, watching for the flash of big guns in the distance, trying to judge who and how far away they are. My eyes have adjusted to what little light there is. The horizon glows like there will soon be a sun but as best I can tell, the glow is in the north. Fat’s breathing is the only sound that echoes when we stop and listen. Like a horse’s breathing, I think, lungs as big as a horse’s, but a horse with a cold. He coughs and sputters and whines till McCaan tells him to shut his bloody trap.
When we are very still, the sound of clinking metal and maybe voices travels through the thickness of the fog that has crawled to chest level all around. The fog is so thick that when we drop down we disappear completely as if into water. McCaan whispers something
and the whisper travels from man to man until it reaches us. He wants Elijah and me to come to him. We crawl over and he says, “Leave your packs here, boys. I want you to advance slow and silent like I know you can and figure out for me whether that is friend or foe over that little ridge.”
We nod and slip our packs from our shoulders and I see Elijah slips his coat off too, so I do as well. I pick up my rifle and check the action and snap off the safety with my thumb. Elijah slips into the fog and I follow quick so as not to lose him. I listen for Elijah’s quiet step and dip blindly into the fog, surfacing every little while by standing straight up to get my bearings before slipping back down again. I count off two hundred paces and I’ve lost Elijah, but know that he will be cutting to the left and will expect me to go a little to the right, just like we do when tracking moose. The ridge is a hump in the distance, only maybe one hundred and fifty paces ahead. Suddenly I hear the low warbling whistle of Elijah and answer it with my own. We both advance slow. I wish now I was wearing my moccasins and not these heavy boots.
Near the base of the ridge I pause and listen again. It is not a ridge at all but the lip of a large shell crater. Laughter is clear now and so is the clinking of metal cups. I see the dim flicker of a small fire. Whoever it is thinks he cannot be seen or heard in the fog and in the hole, but he is very wrong.
A voice rises up. The voice isn’t English. I lie closer to the ground and strain my ears. If they have a sentry, he might be coming this way or might have his rifle pointed at me right now. I roll into the thicker fog and head left toward where I know Elijah will be. “It is not English they are speaking,” I whisper in Cree when we are side by side and have retreated a safe distance into the fog.
Elijah nods. “I think it is the Belgian tongue,” he answers. “What colour are the Belgian uniforms?”
“I saw one yesterday on a dead soldier that was lighter than the French’s,” I answer.
“We’ll have to go up the ridge and see.”
We crawl back into the mist and when we reach the lip I signal for Elijah to go first while I cover. Elijah crawls up and peers over the edge, then signals for me to follow. I crawl to Elijah and peer down to where four men sit around a small fire with cups in their hands, as if they are a thousand miles from battle. Two have long moustaches that droop over their mouths. One is old and another looks no older than twelve winters. They wear a dark grey uniform, and round helmets with a ridge along the top sit by their feet.
Elijah suddenly stands up and walks down to them, rifle at his side but still ready to fire if need be.
“Hello!” he says loudly when he is in their midst. The men jump and two of them fall off their seats. “I am Canadian! Hello!”The men, once they’ve gotten over the shock, relax a little. Strange guttural words pour out of the mouth of one. Elijah just nods and smiles and repeats, “Yes! Yes! I do not understand! I am Cree Canadian!”
I stand up and click the safety back on my rifle and join Elijah. Once again the men in the crater look startled and I just nod and smile and take an offered cup. The cup’s half full with wine and it tastes bitter in my mouth but I like the warmth and listen as Elijah asks them, “Where are the Canadians?”Two of the soldiers point and respond in English worse than mine that they are to the west of here, very close.
Elijah tells me as we make our way back to the company in the fog that best he could figure, the Canadians are only half a mile away.
Elijah reports to McCaan, who looks very relieved, orders the troops to pick up their packs and tells Elijah and me to lead them in the right direction. Thinking back on my first test I’m very proud of myself as we move silent and straight through the muck and find our battalion.
Just a short walk from there and we are encamped in the cover of woods, and I’m surprised by the size of the battalion and how well it
conceals itself. It was not until we were right upon them that we realized we’d found the group. Sentries called out and McCaan answered and we were taken in among the others. No fires are allowed so close to the front, and in the darkness I begin to make out forms of tents and men lying on the ground in blankets or sitting in small groups talking quietly to one another. They ignore us like we are ghosts floating by, and in the darkness with the shadows thrown across their faces and the long stare of eyes in cigarette glow I realize that these are the veterans of the last year’s horrible fighting, that it’s these men who are the walking ghosts. My first small trial is suddenly nothing in their eyes or in my own.
McCaan asks where the canteen is and we are directed to a large kitchen wagon. Inside, the smell of cooked food makes me realize I’ve not eaten in a long time. We pull out our bowls and fill them with stew that is burnt but tastes as good as fresh game right now. I clean my bowl with a chunk of stale bread that moistens a little with the dipping, and as soon as I finish my last bite the exhaustion falls across me and all I want is to find a place to stretch out and roll up in my blanket.
Our platoon keeps its distance from the others, the ones who have just been relieved from days on the front lines. My group is not a part of them, I realize, as I lie on my back on the hard ground of the woods. I stare up into the night sky and just as I drift off to sleep I can see exactly where I am clearly etched on the blackness broken by skeleton trees above me. This is where my life has led me. It’s as clear as if I’ve been walking a well-marked trail that leads from the rivers of my north home across the country they call Canada, the ocean parting before me like that old Bible story nuns forced upon me as a child, ending right here in this strange place where all the world’s trouble explodes.
I’m up the next morning before first light and reveille. A few men sit in a loose circle, blankets over their shoulders, talking quietly,
smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. After a while one waves me over. I sit with them but they do not talk to me directly or ask my name. I can follow most of what they are saying. They talk of lost friends, of a winter battle where many died, of successful trench raids on the Germans. Bad fighting at Saint-Eloi through March and April, but now all’s quiet there. None of them talk of home or what was left behind.
Finally, one of them asks me where I come from.
“Near Moose Factory,” I answer, and the man knows where that is.
“So you’re an Indian, then?” he asks. I nod. “You’re pretty short for an Indian, ain’t ya?” The others laugh. “All the Indians around from where I come from are taller than you. But I guess that’s the way the prairies grow’em.”
“Your battalion’s just arrived, hasn’t it?” the second one asks. I nod. “They’ll be sending you up to the front lines today then, I reckon.”
“We lost a lot of men last month,” the first one says. “Fritz’s getting more accurate with the big guns. With that kind of aim they don’t need no offensive. They’ll just blow us to kingdom come and that’ll be the end of it.”
The second man speaks up again, says, “A fella like you had better learn quick to keep his head down. Hun snipers are deadly accurate. There’s one about, whose signature is shooting a man through the neck. How many has he got now, Smithy?”
The one named Smithy hasn’t said a word till now. “At least a few dozen,” he answers. “That I know of, anyways.”
“Smithy here’s a sniper himself—ain’t ya, Smithy,” the first one says.
Smithy doesn’t answer, doesn’t look like he even heard the comment. I look at his rifle lying down beside him, at the notches cut into the stock of it.
“Smithy’s gotten thirty-three confirmed kills, and many more unconfirmed,” the second one adds quickly. “Most in our regiment. Most of any Canadian. Or Brit for that matter.”
Smithy shakes his head and looks away. He is small and skinny. He’s going bald. He looks like a Hudson’s Bay Company man I know back in Moose Factory who teaches Sunday school to the children who live on the reserve and not in the bush, the homeguard children. “That ain’t true atall,” Smithy mumbles. “There’s another Indian feller goes by the name Peggy. Ojibwe, I think.” He looks over at me. “He’s got close to a hundred kills but no officer wants to give him credit since he likes working alone.” Smithy suddenly stops talking and looks embarrassed that he’s said so much. “Peggy’s salt of the earth,” he adds as an afterthought. “Every Canadian enlisted man knows he ain’t no liar.”