Black Diamonds (21 page)

 

DANIEL

My identity tags slip across my chest as we settle in to camp and they've never felt more like cold meat tickets. I'd say I'm expanding my understanding of disgusting again, except I don't think it is possible to understand the scale of this. It's the most horrific shift changeover imaginable as thousands and thousands of Tommies head back from the front. It hasn't been going too well, obviously. They are ripped ragged, covered in mud and blood; a nod, a smile, a wave, got a smoke, tell a joke, dead eyes. The lot of them. There's that many walking wounded they must be turning anyone who's not at least half dead away from the casualty stations. One bloke who stops for a chat says: ‘Me and Johnny here, we're the only ones left in our battalion.' And he laughs. Out of his mind. I don't see a single Tommy officer above a sergeant anywhere among these leftovers. Either they've all been killed or they're off having a port somewhere else after a bad day. Something makes me think it might be the latter. Duncan might be strange, but he wouldn't make himself scarce if we looked like that. And that's the difference between us and them I suppose.

So, now we'll go in with our own infantry, loaded up with enough wire to build a city, to advance on a tiny village. We've been drilled so hard that we're prepared for anything and everything. I can make and throw a jam-tin bomb these days as good as look at you, or any one and any number of the new beaut grenades, and find my rifle under any circumstance, pull it out sideways through a roll of wire if I have to. Of course us engineers are not expected to join in the fun, just set up for the get-together; but it is expected that a bit of that might be inevitable, just to make sure that I don't leave here without doing every last thing I didn't want to. A bit of something worse by the looks of it too. Just when I think I couldn't be more excited than I am right now, Duncan pulls me up wanting a word; very hard one.

‘Watkins is to shift to Transport,' he says, meaning Watkins has had enough of the front; he's not been looking too hardy these past few weeks and Dunc is culling a non-coper. ‘So I want you to take over as sergeant, see how you go.'

If I was a gambler I'd have put money on this.

‘No,' I tell him. I don't want the responsibility of having to account for so many. Don't want to see how I'll go, after my last effort.

‘No is not an answer, Ackerman. That's what you're doing until I tell you otherwise.' And off he goes again.

First day in my new beaut position of authority is the day we set out for the front. I'm at the head of the mob with Duncan, though, once I've given orders to the parties that'll go out doing this and that and everyone's had a good crack. I tell the bastards they can call me sir from now on, just to get another one, while Stratho salutes me with a limp wrist for his.

After orders, there's not a huge amount of difference between a sergeant and a private in the field; it's all the same rubbish. If I thought it appropriate I could shovel slightly less shit, but the main part of the job is giving orders as passed down the line from the brass. And, of course, to keep on with Dunc's favourite: how are we all today, and pull out anyone who's sick or tired or not bearing up, or all three; and I can do that now without even asking for his opinion, just as I can read a map that's no doubt going to be fucking wrong anyway and tell others where to go. Up until a few days ago I was fairly impressed at the difference between the AIF and the BEF that means our lower-order officers are more often than not drawn from the rank and file on the basis of merit, rather than where they went to school or how long they've been around, but the fact of it for me now is not exactly comfortable. The brass is the brass and I don't want to have anything to do with them. I don't want to take responsibility for their actions. It's too hard to take responsibility for my own: I can feel France whacking me, but with the plain knowledge now that I could not have made a worse mistake, and that it's far too late for that sort of clarity.

A very big shell explodes a mile or so ahead up the road, beyond Albert, or what's left of the town. I feel the shudder under my feet. I look up at the ruined cathedral we're passing and there's a statue of the Madonna and Child on top of it hanging right over the street, tipping just below horizontal. She's had enough, obviously. She's holding her baby down to us as if to say:
Please, take him away from here.
She's famous, on both sides: whoever knocks her down will win the war. How sad is that? Others say the opposite; that's even sadder. There are craters everywhere, in the road, across the town, beyond the town and all the way to where we're going. Closer in, well within shelling range and under the buzz of dozens of aeroplanes, the bodies start; those that will stay here because there are too many to retrieve; everyone's a little busy with other things right now. I wish I had a camera so that these men could be seen by everyone everywhere: to stop this. I would want it to be in colour, though, so that you can see their bones against their pink-grey flesh, the colours of their dead eyes that stare every which way. See the trenches, collapsed, sinking back into the earth, taking these men with them. The shapes of the men, some just asleep, some stunned, some still in the moment of screaming. Some don't look like men at all; only charred shapes. And just as many horses; stinking meat everywhere, as far as you can see. I don't think my photograph would make it into the papers somehow. And even if it did, I'm not sure it would make a difference. How could anyone make sense of it? I'm looking right at it and I can't.

I think about fucking off AWL, but that's not likely to make a difference either. Except to make me a proper coward. Welcome to Pozieres, then. A proper Australian assault.

Approximately 0300 hours, well back, in some officer's empty bunker, resting for a tick. I'm in charge of three blokes I've pulled out: two of mine, a corp and a sap, who I've decided will not be making another run of ammunition tonight, and an infantry private who I don't know: he can't speak to tell me anything, and I can't prise his fingers from around his tags. I can appreciate that. He looks about sixteen. Shoved him in here a minute ago after I saw him wandering along the top between the trenches like he'd lost his last sixpence for the train home to Woop Woop. I'm still catching my breath. My blokes are all right, sort of, or will be after a break, though I think the sap is deaf: I practically had to shove him in here, because he either couldn't understand me or wanted an argument. Can't move them out yet, because the end of the world is going on above us and dead and wounded are jammed along the trench outside the entrance now. We'll stay put till … till we don't, and I can palm them off onto someone else and get along to what I should be doing now, which is further back still, with Stratho and Foley, repairing the ammunition supply lines, and hoping I get cholera while I'm at it.

Now a Tommy major sticks his head into the bunker, right in my face, and says, or yells because he has to: ‘Who are you and what are you doing in here?' Like he's caught us having a sly smoko in his office.

‘Ackerman, Sergeant.' It's official now, as official as my lack of a salute, or anything resembling an identifiable uniform at the minute. ‘Engineers. With bewildered. Sir.' If it's any of your business.

Makes no sense to him what an Engineers NCO is doing in here with these head cases, but little of sense is going on. The Australian infantry is advancing, and is getting slaughtered. Advance? Jesus. But we must have pissed off Fritz because the retaliation is screaming:
We're going to bury every last one of you fuckers. Today.

‘Get them out of here,' says Tommy major.

‘That's the idea. Sir.' And who the fuck are you when you're at home?

I realise I've seen him before, a week or so ago, overseeing the tying up of one of his corporals, to a pole behind the lines, to leave him there overnight. Very medieval. Don't know what the corporal had done, probably drunkenness, or maybe he didn't want to push on and had made his opinion clear. It's an unwritten rule in the AIF that we of the lower orders have permission to pervert the course of British justice whenever we see it, so Stratho and I waited till the major and his copper had gone then untied the bloke. Stratho stopped to have a smoke with him, and when he caught up with me later he said the corporal had decided to stay put anyway, untied, sitting by the pole. Can't credit it, can you.

Maybe this major is aware of our attempt at bad influence, because he's eyeballing me. Unbelievable, given the circumstances, but that's what he's doing. I give him some back: go on, have a go for nothing, you little shit. He goes to piss off, but then steps back and yells at me: ‘You lot really are animals.'

That was a bit unnecessary, I think, but I find out why later back in camp.

Half-a-dozen of our blokes herded their twenty or so German prisoners into a deep shell hole during the night and threw Mills bombs in at them; they'd tied them to each other first, so they couldn't run. Mixed responses among us, but I'm revising the issue of my nationality again. Still, I'm not in the infantry.

Dunc is disgusted. ‘That is revenge. That is the ugly Australian. The big man with a small mind. The big country with a two-inch cock.'

He's cleaning his toenails again as he says it, and clipping them, like it was nothing less than expected.

I say: ‘We don't really know what it's like, though. To go over all the time, and to …'

He looks across at me like I've got two heads. ‘I don't know what your politics are, Ackerman, but I can take an easy stab at them, and I'm not averse to breaking rules myself, no stranger to the frustration of wanting to make them too, but self-control should be a given, in every situation for every man beyond the very, very frontline. They had time to think before they acted, and didn't.'

Fair enough.

He adds: ‘You might be interested to know that the instigator was not one of
yours
, but a filthy rich, British-educated grazier's son from Victoria. And he will not be punished. The incident won't be recorded. It didn't happen. Put that in your class-confusion notebook and remember it. The best and the most decent here are
your
lot, those with nothing but everything to prove about themselves. They are the ones the Germans are really afraid of. Because they go hard, they go together and they make a proper job of the bloody impossible. Just don't stop till they're called off. And they do not pretend that this is not barbaric enough.'

He's gone back to his toenails and there's a small splash on his knee. He meant that. Not sure what I think about that.

I want to ask him again why he's here, but it's just not the right time.

Very, very last act of stupidity performed at war. Stratho's been hit in the arse, as he deserves, and he can't move, this side of no man's land, not too far, but Foley couldn't get him back. It's not funny. Apart from the obvious logistical problem of dragging Stratho back to our line in the middle of the end of the world, Foley's got a hole in his shoulder the size of a fist. I tell him to get on and get seen to and I'll get Strath. Somehow.

In the time it's taken for Foley to get back and stumble into me, Stratho has probably bled to death already or too close to bother by the sounds of it: half his backside is missing in action. But I have to. Even if he is dead, I just don't want him to be there. I want him to be taken away so he gets buried somewhere, properly. This is why you should not have mates. I've done fairly well on that score, but Stratho is a special case. Duncan would probably disagree, but he's not here. He's snug in with the brass getting his orders. Good for him. I've just come back from camp, I'm in full uniform, and squeaky clean, hair clipped so close I'll frighten the lice; I should be on my way to the brig's digs to see what can be done to strengthen the roof, to stop it falling in on him every second night; he can wait.

It's quiet now, relatively, the sun is just about setting on this fine, early August evening, and it will be in Fritz's eyes, so there's no time like the present to make a leap over the top, belt up to the wire and find him. I do. He's dead. His mouth is slack like he's fallen asleep pissed. I sit down next to him and watch the sky change from grey to purple as the sun sets behind us. This land between us and them shows no sign of the village that once was: it's the shadow shapes of dead men and wire and machine-gun metal sailing through the air above a kind of desert of dirt full of cracks and holes. It sits on a ridge that they reckon is just about to belong to the Australian infantry. What a victory that'll be. It's hard not to stay here and just look at it. Like I'm not really here.
You big girlie cunt.

But not for long.

Sundown is Fritz fireworks like they are going out of fashion; bang on time. He doesn't like the dark here; flares are up before the sky is barely black. I can't leave Stratho here. So I pick him up. He's not that big, when you're not thinking, and we're off, as a shell lands a polite distance to the left and front of me. Stratho takes the brunt. Good on him. And we're flung back, into a hole. On reflex I put my arm out, like a complete idiot, and feel a sharp twist, snap and crunch as we hit the bottom, a few yards down. It's all going on. Mad. I'll just lie here for a while in the bottom of this hole, with Strath on top of me, and pretend that I didn't just do that.

But not for long.

Fritz is sitting in this hole with me. He looks like that bloke I grabbed the other night. About sixteen, maybe less. He looks like I should look: scared shitless, spragging in the dark. Except I'm a bit elsewhere at the minute. Like when you fall off your bike and clock yourself and you think, how did that happen? Before the fact registers.

I can't stop looking at him, as he's looking at me, and I'm a bit hysterical now. There's a break in the shelling as I wear myself out and fear and pain hit me.