The Steady Running of the Hour: A Novel (28 page)

—Do you want to draw the cemetery?

—No, she says. Let’s go home.

5 November 1916

Empress Redoubt

Somme, France

The shrapnel comes from a single 77-millimeter round manufactured by Friedrich Krupp AG at its gun works in Essen. The shell is fired from a Feldkanone 96 n.A. four kilometers behind the German front line, the gun operated by a crew of five men from the Neumärkisches Feldartillerie-Regiment Nr. 54, all of whom are wet from the very inside of their underclothes, their skin dank and clammy. The men have cropped hair beneath their caps. They wear mustaches and the dirt and rain and sweat are strained by the hair of their upper lips.

Gefreiter Otto Bäcker pulls the firing lanyard on the Feldkanone and retreats for cover as the gun recoils and the shell flies westward. Crouching in the mud, Bäcker wonders how long it will be before the ration party arrives with lunch. He has eaten only a fistful of dark bread and salt herring since daybreak, and the herring has made him very thirsty.

The 6.8-kilogram artillery shell travels four kilometers across the German lines at supersonic speed, the faint singing whine of the shell cutting the air preceding the thudding report of the gun. The shell detonates above no-man’s-land at a bursting height of three meters, spewing three
hundred eleven-gram lead balls at low velocity. Ashley Walsingham is facing the detonating shell as he moves toward Patience Trench, advancing at full stride with his pistol drawn. He does not hear it coming.

One of the shrapnel balls pierces Ashley’s throat two inches above his right clavicle, passing between his trachea and his esophagus and starting a substantial hemorrhage. At the same time Ashley’s right thigh is perforated by four shrapnel balls, and though these wounds are not deep, vivid crimson blood begins to gather in pools atop his trouser leg, soaking the khaki fabric in growing blotches. He crumples to the ground, blood coursing from his mouth. The color of the blood seems to Ashley perversely bright. He loses consciousness almost immediately.

Private F. P. Mayhew is only a few yards behind Ashley, his head lowered as the shell explodes. A shrapnel pellet pings off the brim of Mayhew’s steel helmet, sparing his face. Mayhew’s right arm and shoulder are pocked by a few lead balls. He puts his hand to his shoulder, and though his fingers draw blood, the wounds seem superficial. There is little pain.

Mayhew kneels beside Ashley’s body. Half of Ashley’s face is black with sludge and blood is tumbling down his chin. Mayhew hoists Ashley onto his back, pulling an arm and a leg over each of his shoulders. He staggers fifty yards toward a meager shellhole, teetering with the unbalanced load. He can smell urine on Ashley’s trousers and there is a wetness against his neck. When they reach the shellhole Mayhew lowers Ashley to the ground. He looks around. The hole is a shallow cauldron of exploding mud less than three feet deep, its outer borders growing vaguer with each subsequent blast. High-explosive shells whine overhead and crash nearby, machine-gun fire traversing the horizon at an indistinct distance.

Mayhew kneels before Ashley, feeling in the inner skirt of Ashley’s tunic. The field dressing is stitched in. Mayhew cuts the threads with his pocketknife and severs the khaki cover of the dressing wrapper. There are two sterile pads inside, two roller bandages and a tiny glass ampoule of iodine. Mayhew slits open Ashley’s trouser leg. He cracks the crown
from the ampoule and sprinkles the fluid over Ashley’s throat and leg wounds. A few golden drops in a sea of red. He presses the absorbent pads onto each wound, at which Ashley stirs a little in pain, though he does not wake. The dressings soak with blood immediately.

Mayhew lifts Ashley’s head and winds the bandage around his throat, deftly spiraling, then reversing the spirals so the pressure will be uniform upon the pad. He cuts the bandage and secures the final wrap with a safety pin. He repeats the process on Ashley’s upper thigh, then flops onto his stomach, taking a moment to think. Another shell bursts close, tossing a shovelful of debris over his back. He feels something hot on his leg, perhaps a small cut. His ears are ringing.

They are still some distance from the British line and they should wait here until nightfall. Mayhew supposes he ought to dress his own wound. His forearm is slick with blood. It has come down his cuff onto his wrist.

Two hours after nightfall Private Mayhew arrives at the regimental aid post carrying Ashley with the help of a soldier from the Durhams. The two men trudge forward with Ashley strung between their shoulders, his body slouched and lifeless. Often they have to stop to make way for soldiers and stretchers coming down the communication trench.

The two men prop Ashley against a sandbag at the tiny aid post. He slumps down like a rag doll, the crust of dark blood hardened on his chin. The other soldier goes off to find his regiment. The battalion medical officer glances at Ashley and shakes his head.

—I’ve no stretcher bearers left. They’re out in the mud, God knows where. Has he a good pulse?

—I don’t know, sir.

—What’s his name? He’s the one with the funny—

—Mr. Walsingham.

—That’s right.

The medical officer squats beside Ashley and feels for his pulse at the neck.

—Who dressed these wounds?

—I did, sir.

The officer glances back at Mayhew. He directs an RAMC orderly toward Ashley while he moves on to another case, a captain who has lost most of his face to a high-explosive shell. The captain is somehow still living. He had once been a country solicitor in a village called Emmbrook, but now his face is gone and someone has pulled a rubber sheet over him. The medical officer lifts the sheet and looks under it. He lowers the sheet.

Mayhew watches the orderly tend to Ashley. The orderly unbuttons Ashley’s tunic and pulls out his identity disk, a reddish circle of vulcanized asbestos fiber with a length of cord passed through the disk’s eyelet and around Ashley’s neck. The orderly fills out a paper tag containing Ashley’s name, regiment and a description of his wounds. He ties the tag around Ashley’s arm. The orderly looks up at Mayhew.

—What is it?

Mayhew does not answer. Someone has given him a water flask and he drains it and hands it back. Mayhew spits into the mud. He slings his rifle over his shoulder and walks away.

An hour before midnight the battalion colonel and his adjutant visit the aid station. Ashley has been spread out on a dirty stretcher beside the sandbags, his arms and legs akimbo. The captain with the missing face is laid beside him, the sheet still over his head. The colonel hovers over the captain and lifts the sheet. A glimmer of white teeth and eyeballs, the rest pinkish red. The colonel lowers the sheet. The two officers turn to Ashley’s body, the chest distinctly rising and falling in labored breaths. The RAMC orderly is giving a corporal an injection in the leg against septic poisoning.

The colonel addresses the orderly.

—Why is Mr. Walsingham lying here? Are there no bearers to take him?

The corporal is occupied by his syringe and does not look toward the officers. He thinks they are asking about the faceless captain.

—There aren’t nearly enough bearers, sir, the corporal says. Dr. Hall said he hasn’t a chance of surviving the night. We’ve given him a great dose of morphia—

—He’s still breathing.

—That may be, sir, but Dr. Hall gave him a great dose—

—Very well.

The adjutant draws a small notebook and pencil from his pocket. He adds the name Walsingham to his list.

At three in the morning Ashley is finally taken from the regimental aid post. He is not awake to see the four men lift him and carry him away. He is not awake to see that the faceless captain is no longer breathing.

Ashley revives only once in the night. He comes to as they are navigating a choked communication trench in the reserve lines. A wooden cart and a field gun have been swallowed by the mud, blocking the path. The stretcher bearers argue over whether to go left or right. One of the bearers holding the rear of the stretcher is a German prisoner and he becomes involved in the argument. The German is a senior NCO and he considers the English soldiers to be stupid.

—
Links
, the German says.
Links!

—What’s he saying?

—Fritz wants us to go left.

—Fuck him.

It is then that Ashley wakes with a fevered start, his throat and lungs drawing closed as though the strings of a corset are being pulled around his breath. He is suffocating.

Ashley’s eyes come open. For a moment he does not breathe at all. He is seized, halted in one great spasm of airlessness. Above him it is cloudy and there is not even a star to look at, not even a bursting shell or flare, only a vast murky field of black. It seems a pointless end, hardly anything at all. Ashley gasps for air desperately and bubbles of frothing blood come to his mouth. He gurgles, a sound too soft to be heard.

The bearers go right. They hump along at a crawl, their legs
knee-deep in the mud, their footing sinking. The stretcher sways from side to side. It is all they can do to keep it above the mire. Ashley sucks another breath, just barely. The stretcher lopes on, the two bearers in front muttering to each other.