The Steady Running of the Hour: A Novel (23 page)

Three days ago the Berkshires had launched an attack in this sector, but the Germans repelled them with intense artillery and machine-gun
fire. The Germans had rallied in a counterattack that had ended with desperate hand-to-hand fighting here at Resolve Trench. Since then there have been many wounded stranded in the shattered forest of no-man’s-land, just beyond the British wire. By now most of these had died or been brought in, but there remained one wounded German who had been weeping and raving all the while. He was still alive. He lay less than twenty yards from the British front-line trench.

Ashley was the only man in the company who understood German. He had been listening to the wounded man for three days.

The German passed between periods of lucidity and great delirium. At times he seemed to be dictating a letter to his wife, telling her that he was ready to die. At times he addressed the British directly, describing his wounds in detail, describing the shellhole he lay in, saying that he was running out of water but could survive if only they would bring him in. He explained that he had no quarrel with the English, that they were all brothers in God’s kingdom. Except for the word
Kameraden
, which the German repeated over and again, the British understood none of this.

The men nicknamed the wounded German “Kameraden.” One of the oldest men in the platoon, a soft-spoken postman called Stewart, had actually gone over the top at night to bring in Kameraden, but the Germans had seen him in the moonlight and begun strafing him with machine-gun fire. Stewart crawled back to the trench without ever seeing Kameraden.

Against all expectations Kameraden lived on, moaning all the while. He quoted popular songs or nursery rhymes or folk ballads. But mostly he recited poetry. Kameraden knew prodigious amounts of poetry, and Ashley wondered if he was a schoolmaster or a professor or even a poet himself, though he doubted the last. The German quoted whole long epics he knew by heart, and even the denser men could tell these were poems from the rhythm of the words or the patterns of rhymes. Ashley recognized only a few: Goethe’s “Mignons Gesang,” some verses by Heinrich Heine. One morning at dawn stand-to, Ashley was astonished
to hear what he believed to be a German translation of Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty,” but the man fell into weeping before it was completed.

Late last night as Ashley was on watch, Kameraden’s moaning reached a fevered crescendo. The men sleeping on the trench floor complained of the noise. A few of them yelled at the German to shut up, but this brought out further cries of protest from the other Berkshires along the line.

—Wish the bugger would get it over with.

—Wish you’d get it over with. What if it was you out there, three days bleeding in the mud?

—I’d get it over with.

Ashley told the men to go back to sleep. He found Bradley, the platoon sergeant, and told him he was going into no-man’s-land to see Kameraden.

—It’s hopeless, sir. You can’t save him. The Huns might see you—

—I know, Ashley said. But I can’t stand it any longer.

Ashley pulled a pair of thick toeless stockings over his knees and elbows, then checked the cartridges in his revolver’s cylinder. He traveled north along the trench to get closer to Kameraden, stepping over men sleeping in niches in the wall or wrapped in capes on the muddy trench floor. They groaned in half-sleep and rolled in the mud. Ashley trudged up to the forward sap nearest Kameraden, really only a fortified shellhole holding a sentry and a few flares. The sentry jerked to the side when he saw Ashley, swiveling his rifle and then lowering it.

—Thought you was a German, sir. Can’t hear nothing over that blubbering.

—Certainly not.

—You understand German, don’t you sir? What’s he moaning on about now?

—He wants us to kill him.

Ashley saw the outline of the sentry’s helmet move from side to side as he shook his head. His face was sheathed in blackness.

—He never said that before, did he sir?

—No. I’m going over. Don’t fire unless they open on me, and only then well to the left. Eleven o’clock at the farthest, do you hear? I shan’t be far off.

Ashley rinsed his mouth from his canteen and spat into the mud. He stepped on the crude fire step, peering above the rim of the parapet. It was quiet and he guessed there was little wind, but the shattered trees had no leaves by which to judge.

Ashley climbed over the parapet. On elbows and knees he zigzagged through the British wire into the morass of no-man’s-land. His chin trailed in the mud. It took twenty minutes to go thirty yards. The stench was rich and sweet, decaying corpses and chloride of lime. He ascended the rim of a huge shell crater and floundered over. Inside there was a mound of dead Highland soldiers in muddied kilts and kneesocks. Ashley rested here and studied the terrain. The German was still wailing away, his voice hoarse. The sound was coming from the right.

Ashley crawled farther until the sound was very close. He flopped into another large shellhole. He saw Kameraden’s murky silhouette a few yards away, but Ashley was afraid the German might have a weapon, so he lay in silence waiting. After a few minutes a flare went up over no-man’s-land and the scene was illuminated.

Kameraden was a plump corporal from a Jäger regiment, known as forest hunters and expert riflemen. He was on his back, his tunic soaked with black blood where shrapnel had perforated his chest. His eyes were open but his face was turned up to the sky, watching the flare sink through the darkness. He was holding a water bottle in one hand and clutching his wounds with the other.

Ashley crawled up beside Kameraden and spoke softly in German. At first the man barely seemed to notice, perhaps mistaking him for a hallucination. He breathed in a terrible sucking wheeze. Suddenly the German’s head bolted and turned. He begged for water. He said his canteen was empty and he had already drunk all the water in the shellhole. Ashley took his water bottle from his waist and poured it onto Kameraden’s cracked lips. The liquid ran over his face and stained
beard. Kameraden gulped feverishly, muttering something indecipherable.

Ashley heaved the German onto his back and began carrying him toward the British line, crouching as low as he could. Kameraden whined in pain. He was very heavy. Ashley could feel the man’s blood dripping down his neck into his shirt and it was hard to crouch with the weight of the body upon him. The mud sucked back at every step. Ashley lost his balance and dropped Kameraden. The German moaned as Ashley lifted him again. It took ten minutes just to get out of the crater.

A machine gun burst open on the German side. The British returned a few sharp rifle rounds, then a Lewis gun began rattling to Ashley’s right. He would never get Kameraden all the way to Resolve Trench. He went on forward anyway, the German raving with the pain of movement. It took twenty minutes to reach the shellhole full of dead Highlanders. They went over the lip and Kameraden slipped from Ashley’s grasp and rolled to the bottom. Ashley pulled Kameraden’s face out of the mud and propped him up. The man was in delirium again. He was talking to his wife, the mud trickling down his face. Ashley cursed and drew his revolver.

He stepped back and tried to level his pistol at the German’s bare head. He pulled the trigger but his hand was shaking. The bullet clipped the man’s scalp, tearing off a chunk. He moaned and whimpered, raising his hands above his face as if the soft flesh of his palms were any protection. Ashley moved closer and fired again. The bullet tore through Kameraden’s finger and went into his eye. There was much blood. Kameraden slumped over.

Ashley crouched in the shellhole and watched another flare go up. The German machine gun was traversing the horizon wildly. A few grenades went off in the distance. Ashley bent over the mud and vomited his supper. It had been biscuits and bully anyway, and he was damned sick of biscuits and bully. Ashley spat and drained his canteen with a long drink. He wiped his face on his tunic sleeve.

Ashley waited half an hour until the guns went quiet. He crawled slowly back to the forward sap and tumbled in beside the sentry.

In the dugout Ashley shifts onto his side in his bunk. He takes the letter from his tunic pocket. He knows the words by now, but it pleases him to see the handwriting, the arcing shapes on the page.

1 October 1916

Dearest –

I write from the pebbles of Selsey Beach. Without you London is an empty shell – I have only the Sussex Downs & the seashore to make me whole again. There is a sound here that is not the roar of the ocean, nor any signature of God’s labour – they say it is the thud of guns in France, a hundred miles away – but the distance renders it soothing.

Is it selfish to note that I’ve had no letters from you for three days? Probably the post is to blame, but if you haven’t sent word, please do. My heart keeps vigil in two places – whatever piece of France you lay your head upon at night, and the patch of road between the Post Office and the house.

I have assembled
³
/
₄
of the requested items – but I doubt there remains in all of England such a torch as you describe. The man at the Army & Navy Stores gave me second best, and you shall see the result yourself. I managed the wire-cutters, at least. I go back to London on Saturday to gather a last few surprises & I shall post the parcel then. Beside it every F & M hamper that ever was shall be emerald with envy.

Ashley, I don’t allow myself to miss you. For I am terribly wise & patient & every other fine thing – as you make me over again through your love. Nor do I wait for you – not wanting to count the hours & days we lose apart. The day you left I pulled the stem on my watch and put it in my jewel-box. The hands stand sentry at
half-seven in the morning – the Universe, and I, your modest love, slumber peaceful until your return.

Your Imogen

There is a voice at the dugout’s entrance. Boot heels rap on the steps, descending as Ashley folds the letter away. Jeffries comes in, taking off his gas mask bag and tin hat and hanging them on a huge nail. Jeffries is B Company commander, at twenty-six the oldest officer in the company. His blond mustache is so fair as to be nearly invisible. The other officers joke that he is a German agent.

Jeffries sets his revolver on the table and calls to Ashley.

—Spymaster? You awake?

—I am now.

—Your eyes were open.

—I sleep with them open, Ashley says. I close them only when I’m awake.

Jeffries snorts derisively. —Got any rats today?

—They’re about, but I’ve not been hunting. May have heard one a moment ago.

Jeffries eyes the muddy floor with faint interest. He sits down before the table on an upturned crate.

—Heard about you and Kameraden. Awfully decent of you to go over.

—Ought not to have.

Ashley tosses the overcoat from his body. He rises from the bunk.

—Three days, Ashley says, he’s been moaning about his wife. Telling her how he’ll kiss her, what presents he’ll bring to her and the children. He spoke to us too, you know, telling us how he’d been to London once and saw Buckingham Palace. One night he even spoke to God. Think it was God, at any rate. Said he’d done his best, but he hadn’t done enough. He swore he’d never killed a man, had only wounded a few.

—Is that so? I always thought he was reciting poetry—

—It was poetry, much of the time. Love poems. I think they were to his wife.

Jeffries nods. He takes out a leather tobacco pouch and a small meerschaum pipe. He packs the bowl and lights it with a long match.

—Then last night, Ashley continues, he starts begging for us to kill him. Says he knows one of us speaks German. One of us is a kind man who will come over and send him west. I felt he was speaking to me.

—The spymaster grown sentimental over the Hun? I don’t believe it.

Ashley sits down at the table. He yawns and rubs his eyes.

—So I went over last night. Found him awake but done for. His guts a puddle of blood. He’d lived off the water in the shellhole for three days, though it was brimming with corpses. He could speak at first. I gave him a drink from my bottle. Then I tried to carry him. We didn’t get far. I shot him in the next shellhole. Missed the first time, took off part of his head. It felt like pure bloody murder.

—Don’t be absurd. Decent of you to go over at all.

—Possibly. Yet there was something else about it. At Crécy—

There is a faint shuffling on the other side of the table and both soldiers jump to their feet. On the dirt floor a rat licks a half-empty can of Maconochie that has been left as bait. Jeffries grabs his revolver from the table and fires twice. The shots from the large-caliber Webley ring loud in the dugout, the dirt geysering up as the bullets strike. The rat bolts along the wall into the darkness. Both men sit down.

—I say, those buggers are improving.

—Natural selection, I suppose, Ashley remarks. We killed the slow ones and only the quick ones are breeding now. We ought to stud them. We could race them at Epsom Downs.