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 )
words: 1836
total words: 19,454
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.
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 )
words: 1836
total words: 19,454
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.