June 30th, 1916. 1.30am
Jack Lamble trudged along the trench, sodden mud sucking at his boots with every painful step. He dreaded what he would find when he took them off – if he ever did.
‘Where are the Eighth Devons?’ he asked a sentry who leant against the earth wall, raindrops tapping on his helmet.
The man tilted his head in the direction Jack had been going. Jack staggered on. He passed men at every zig-zag of the trench. Some shivered on firesteps, gazing into no-man’s land. Others busied themselves with the night’s duties. A few slumped in dugouts, still as corpses. They might have been corpses, for all Jack knew. He shuddered and kept moving.
He had been sent back to battalion HQ – some eight hundred yards and more than two hours each way across the shattered landscape – with a message, and he would be expected back. The note had almost certainly been a list of dead and wounded. It had been mercifully slim, almost weightless, but heavier lists were coming. Much heavier, he supposed, and littered with names he knew. People he knew. Perhaps: ‘Private Jack Lamble, Eighth Devons.’
He crushed the thought and carried on, going as fast as he could without risking a face-first fall into the suffocating ooze. He passed two men stuck in the slime, with comrades on pallets and duck boards trying to pull them out.
As Jack approached another stock-still figure, the glowing tip of a cigarette revealed that this man, at least, was alive.
‘Where are the Eighth Devons?’ Jack asked.
‘We’re it.’
‘Thank God,’ said Jack.
A deep thud sounded – an artillery shell set loose from the depths of a cold metal barrel.
‘God?’ said the sentry, as if recalling a half-forgotten school friend. ‘I’d save your thanks until the morning.’
The shell, it turned out, was British – slung across the valley at the German lines near the village of Mametz. A far-off explosion rattled the ground.
‘Overshot,’ said the sentry.
Jack nodded, knowing he was right. As he walked on, he heard two more thuds and blasts, nearer this time. The soaking sky flashed a faint, sickly yellow. Jack glimpsed three faces to his left – including one that stopped him dead.
‘Little Jack Lamble?’
The voice jabbed like a hot needle. Jack gripped his rifle strap but said nothing. His mind had somersaulted back across the Channel, to a spring day only a few months earlier, when this face had scorched itself into his memory. He had ducked through the door of the Globe Inn in Frogmore, aching from a day’s farm labour. Almost tasting the ale before it touched his lips, he had laughed to find a couple blocking his way, their faces pressed together. But as he tried to step around them, he saw Joy, his fiancée. And he saw Alan Broad.
Now, as if hell’s demons took a personal interest in Jack, here stood Broad again: tall, square shouldered, face hard as metal – a man who made Jack look like a boy. Much had happened to Jack since that day in the pub, not least some rudimentary training in how to kill people, but once again he was stunned, wrong-footed – anger and shame bringing his brain to a halt.
‘Moving along, boy,’ said Broad.
Jack went, stumbling, unable to find a word or action to cover the hatred boiling in his heart.
‘Stand-to.’
‘Stand-to.’
‘Stand-to-arms.’
The shout came down the trench in a dozen voices, sergeants of all stripes calling men to duty. With a jolt, Jack realised he had been asleep. To his great relief, the call had come before an NCO – or, worse, some young officer – had spotted him sleeping. He straightened his helmet and felt a hundred pains in every corner of his body. Morning was coming – time for the daily routine of preparing for a pre-dawn attack. But the Germans would not come, Jack knew. The crash of British artillery continued – unseen guns firing unseen shells at unseen Germans. They might even hit a few. Or not. At least the rain has stopped, Jack thought, inhaling what passed for air in the trenches.
Half an hour later, a man brought the rum ration. In another half hour, full daylight had come and the stand-to ended. Jack cleaned his boots – not daring to remove his socks – then hung the boots upside down on sticks poked into the mud, hoping they would dry a little. He did the same with his overcoat. It had rained for a day and a half, and he wanted to use the good weather to full advantage. At seven, he put his boots back on and set off for breakfast.
‘That’s him,’ said a voice, as Jack stood in the queue.
Broad was a few places ahead, pointing at Jack as two other men grinned. Jack tensed. As he took his breakfast – weak tea, stale bread and the faintest hint of bacon – he felt the whole trench watching him. He kept his eyes down, an icy prickle of sweat breaking out on his skin. He could fight, but what good would it do? Broad was twice his size, tanned arms like oak branches. Anyway, the artillery had been blasting for days, and no one had been sent out to repair barbed wire at night, so everyone expected a push soon. Maybe Broad would take a bullet. Jack almost smiled at the thought.
Then he was face-down, his breakfast scattered in the mud. Laughter broke out all around. As Jack struggled up, he saw Broad behind him, leering.
‘Bastard,’ Jack growled, and launched himself at Broad.
The fight had barely started when a voice barked ‘stop’. Jack dragged himself back, and looked up to see Broad’s fist frozen in mid-air, ready to clang down like a blacksmith’s hammer.
‘You two,’ said a scarlet-faced sergeant. ‘On watch. Six hours. Now.’
Two hours later, as most of the Devons tidied the trench, dried their clothes or tried to sleep, Jack and Broad stood in bitter silence, shoulder-to-shoulder on a narrow firestep, rifles aimed through a slit into no-man’s-land. Smoke from the shells and steam from the warming ground drifted aimlessly about, so Jack could barely see beyond bayonet range. Words kept drifting up in his mind, like shapes in murky water, but none escaped. What could he say to this man, who – if he lived – would go home to Joy, while Jack lived without her?
‘Why did you do it?’ he said at last, surprising himself.
‘What?’
‘You know what.’
‘Take your girl? Because I could. Because she needed a man.’
‘We were engaged. Doesn’t that mean…’
‘So you weren’t married?’ Broad interrupted.
Huge guns thudded again behind the lines. Explosions tore the ground somewhere in front. Jack wondered if anyone had been unlucky enough to be standing, sitting, kneeling, sleeping right where the shells landed; lives blown out like a candle. He wondered if some German soldier would carry a list back to HQ, each name to become a letter or telegram or solemn messenger on a doorstep somewhere back in Germany. He wondered which British soldiers might die today, and whether he would carry the list again. Maybe Broad would be on it. The thought gave him a rush of savage joy, like biting into dripping meat cooked on a campfire. A lurch of shame followed on the instant, but he stubbornly held that list in his mind – the list blandly confirming Broad’s death.
‘Bastard,’ Jack said, lips twisting in smile and scowl as he spat the words.
Broad did not reply. He stood to Jack’s right and, both men being right-handed, had his back to Jack as they held their guns at the ready. Jack noticed veins and muscles contract in the big man’s neck.
‘So you just took her?’ Jack persisted.
More shells exploded. Broad said nothing.
‘Tell me,’ Jack said, prodding Broad’s shoulder with two fingers.
‘Will you shut up, you little rat?’ Broad glanced Jack’s way then looked along his gun once more.
‘No. I’ll stick you with a bayonet before I let you ignore…’
An enormous blast shook the world. A shell had fallen short and landed only a hundred yards ahead. Jack flinched. Broad lurched violently, almost dropping his rifle. He recovered himself quickly, forcing the gun back into position as if wrenching it from an invisible grip.
Jack gave a bark of laughter. ‘Scared, are you? Big man frightened by a little bomb?’
‘Shut up,’ Broad said through clenched teeth.
Shells kept falling as noon passed and the afternoon wore on. Six hours had passed, but no one arrived to relieve them – and Jack wasn’t fool enough to leave his post. As the seconds shuffled by, Jack found himself watching Broad. Was he ill? He was certainly sweating, drops leaving lines on his grimy skin. His muscles and veins stood up more than ever, like taut ropes beneath a wind-whipped sail. After another huge blast, Broad started shaking, the faintest tremor Jack would not have noticed from further away.
They kept to their posts as other men went for tea at six. When the men returned, one brought tea and rock-solid biscuits for Jack and Broad, but no news of when they might stand down. Broad dropped his tea. Jack snorted, and the man who had brought it shrugged and left. Jack had long finished his cup when ‘stand-to’ echoed along the line once more, and the Devons took their posts for dusk.
The Germans did not come.
At last, the angry sergeant came and told Jack and Broad to stand down.
‘You’re lucky,’ the sergeant said. ‘One word out of either of you and I’ll put you in no man’s land for the night.’
They climbed down from the firestep in silence, and collapsed on to a pallet that lay at an angle in a partial dugout – the closest thing they would find to a bed. As they tried to rest, the artillery blasted ever harder, shells crashing almost continuously. Broad lay with his arms at his sides, staring up at the deep-blue dusk. Eyes wide but somehow blank, he seemed to see some horror invisible to Jack. To his surprise, an unwanted flutter of sympathy awoke in Jack.
‘You alright?’
Broad said nothing. He just kept staring at the sky.
The artillery raged like punches to the skull all night, and at each call of ‘stand-to’ Jack and Broad took the firestep together – then afterwards slumped back to the pallet, enemies side-by-side on duty and at rest. Broad shook in earnest now, teeth chattering despite the mild night.
‘Cigarette?’ Jack said. A half-box of Woodbines was all he owned, but he wanted to smoke and – despite everything – it seemed wrong not to offer.
‘Please,’ Broad said.
Jack held one out. Broad extended a hand, shaking wildly now. Seeing it was hopeless, Jack raised the cigarette to the man’s mouth. Broad nodded as Jack lit it, then leaned back against the boards. They smoked in silence for a minute.
‘What happened to you?’ Jack said.
Broad took a long drag. ‘Let’s just smoke.’
‘Alright.’
Neither man spoke until the pre-dawn shout of ‘stand-to’.
The shelling had stopped. The sun edged uncertainly into clear skies, revealing fine mist in the valley. It could almost have been beautiful, but for the craters – and the knowledge that thousands of men skulked like rats beneath the surface. Barely a sound could be heard. Jack supposed men on both sides suspected what he did – that the time had come.
The anger had drained from him, he realised, to be replaced with something odd – a shape in his chest that did not quite fit. He felt the hot touch of tears, but drew them back at once. Looking along the trench, he saw two officers approaching, sergeants in their wake. At the same moment, a slow breath told him Broad was asleep.
‘Wake up, you fool.’ Jack jabbed him with an elbow.
Broad jerked and turned bloodshot eyes on Jack. ‘What…?’ Then he saw the officers. When they were gone, he mumbled: ‘Thanks, Lamble.’
Jack nodded. He might feel sorry for the man, but he was no friend.
The rum ration came as the sun climbed. This combined warmth revived Jack’s spirits a little. Broad also seemed slightly better. His hand was steady enough to drink.
‘Sorry.’
At first, Jack was not sure where the sound had come from. Broad’s lips had barely moved.
‘What?’
‘I’m sorry.’ Broad screwed up his eyes as fresh shivers convulsed him.
Jack was about to speak when a series of thuds sounded, followed by a rising drumroll of explosions. Broad pressed his face into the sandbag at the trench-top, eyes shut tight as fists. The fire intensified, the valley before them tossing like an angry sea. Unable to make himself heard, Jack put a hand on Broad’s shoulder. A faint tremor shook the larger man. He was crying.
‘It’s alright,’ Jack said, but his voice was lost beneath the guns. When the artillery stopped, he knew, the Somme offensive would begin at last. Closing his own eyes, he cleared his heart of the unworthy wish that Broad should die. He hoped the man would live, that he would too, so they could take their bitter feud back to the green fields of Devon where it belonged.
This story was a runner-up in the Blue Poppy Publishing short story competition 2022. It was published in the resulting anthology, The Cream of Devon.