bradford is kind of like a shepherd here, gathering his stray flock

Someday Bradford will look back at today and realize it was the point at which he learned what he was made of. Someday he might even look back without guilt or embarrassment or disgust or sadness. Someday he might even want to.

He's not so sure about that last point.

He is in fact sure about exactly one thing – now that he's found his battalion, or at least as much of it as remains, he has to fetch the stray men waiting with the 8th Norfolk and bring them up here without anyone getting killed. Lt Colonel Berridge has sent him off with a battalion sergeant, because Bradford didn't want to take Davies back with him, because the man needs a rest. The battalion sergeant is muddy and bloody and looks exhausted, but so does everyone else, and he's uninjured, and the Lt Colonel can spare him for a bit.

( So Bradford leads him back the thousand or so meters to where the 8th Norfolk is holding the trench )

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note: the "useful except kind of not" award for both this installment and the previous one goes to googlemaps for showing me what the area around the actual town of montauban looks like now (lots of fields), but not what it looked like in 1916. a casualty list would include the wounded and missing as well as dead, and i honestly have no idea how many men that would've been for bradford's company after the battle of the somme day 1. "kitchener's army" was what they called the new divisions recruited specifically for the war to supplement the existing professional army.

i don't think i'm doing the battle of the somme justice...

It takes a long time, what with the shelling and the exhausted men and the darkness and the confusion, but after a while he's pretty sure he has as accurate a count as he's going to get right now. He can only add one name, and that's Armstrong. He takes his notes back to battalion HQ to write them up more coherently and to take some comfort from the fact that Cuthbertson has stretched out on one of the beds, or at least as much as he can, and has gone to sleep.

Bradford started out with a hundred and seventy men, all in fighting condition. Tonight, in Montauban Alley, he has a hundred and six.

He needs to lie down. He needs a drink. He knows that in a few hours he'll have to order the men to stand to and wait for a German counterattack. He knows that he'll need someone to (hopefully temporarily) replace Armstrong. He knows he needs direction for the next attack, because he also knows there will be a next attack, because he realizes that even if the 18 Div has achieved its objective – and the 30 Div to the east – that doesn't mean the rest of the army has, and high command will no doubt order them to advance even farther.

( The quartermaster appears in front of him and offers him a flask. )

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total words: 20,814
note: major general ivor maxse was the actual commander of the 18th division during the battle of the somme. (and probably later, but i haven't read that much farther up the timeline.)