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smackenzie"Bertie," he hisses, waving at Cuthbertson, who is still standing in the trench, probably waiting for him to finish up so they can go play cards. "Come up here and tell me what you see."
Cuthbertson sighs, climbs up onto the step next to Bradford, and takes the periscope. A shell whistles overhead, dropping onto No Man's Land in a cloud of dirt and (Bradford fears) body parts.
"What do you see? Is anyone moving out there?"
"I can't tell," Cuthbertson says. He leans away from the periscope, rubs his eyes, and looks through it again. "No. Nothing's moving."
"Except for the shelling, it's been pretty quiet, sir," the sentry says. Bradford gets a better look at him, now that he can. Tisdale, that's his name. Private. "Haven't seen any Huns."
"I should get back to my company," Cuthbertson says. He pats Bradford on the shoulder and slides off the step. "Make sure everyone is ok. I don't think cards are in the offing. You can always leave notes for me at battalion HQ, though." He grins, tips his helmet at Bradford, and walks off.
Bradford gives the sentry back his periscope. "Carry on, Mr Tisdale. Stay sharp."
Four men went out on the patrol, and eventually two come back – Campbell (limping slightly but otherwise unhurt) and a private (shot through the hand). The other two men, Campbell reports, were caught by snipers in the light from one of the flares.
"They must be dead, Captain," he continues. "But we can't go back for them until this shelling dies down."
As if to punctuate his words, another shell goes whining overhead and falls to the ground behind them, between the front-line and support trenches. Bradford listens for screams, and when he doesn't hear any, concludes that the shell must have missed both trenches. Good.
"Did you learn anything?" he asks Campbell.
"No, sir. Jerry's well dug in."
"Did you get close to the barbed wire?"
"Flares stopped us. I didn't want to go forward until the light faded, but then Potter and Rawlinson were shot, and there was some machine-gun fire, and I figured we'd better come back and report. Simpson here caught a bullet on the way back. Looked like a lot of wire, though, sir. Tough to break through."
"Thank you, Sergeant. Mr Simpson?" Simpson is swaying on his feet. Bradford and Campbell both grab for him as he starts to fall.
"I got you, mate," Campbell tells him. "You're ok."
"Can you take him back to the first aid post?" Bradford asks. The first aid post, the first stop for an injured soldier, is back in the reserve trench, which is a trek when you have to carry an unconscious man. But Craig, the medical officer, is back there, and he can tend to Simpson right away and in theoretically better conditions than they have at the front line. Campbell nods. "If you need assistance, grab someone or yell for a stretcher. And have yourself looked at too. Go."
Campbell goes.
Shelling tonight, Bradford writes in his war diary later. Patrol caught in No Man's Land, Ptes Rawlinson and Potter presumed dead, Pte Simpson shot in hand. He thinks about whether or not to add that a shell landed near enough to a listening post to cause a landslide and half bury some men, but realizes that as it wasn't his company, it isn't his responsibility to report. He's a little embarrassed that he's relieved by that.
The next night he goes out on patrol himself, crawling through the barbed wire on the British side and across the muddy, cratered flat of No Man's Land. With him are Davies, Morehouse, and Tisdale. He got official (and unsurprising) word that afternoon that Simpson was on his way to the base hospital at Amiens, and as soon as he was ready, back to England after that. Completely understandable – it's hard to fire a rifle when you have a big bloody hole through the middle of your hand.
"Ears to the ground, men," he whispers as they head across No Man's Land. Their objective is twofold – figure out what the enemy is up to, and cut some of his barbed wire. The bombardment at the very beginning of this whole offensive, back in July, proved (to the men on the ground at least) that constant shelling of the German wire really doesn't do much. The best way to deal with the meters and meters of tangled barbed wire is to sneak up to it and cut it.
Now they just have to hope they don't attract attention. Bradford doesn't want to go home in pieces, and neither does he want any of his men to either.
They snake forward on their stomachs, around shell craters and corpses, listening hard for the tell-tale whistle of shells or the faint boom of a flare being released or the ratatat of machine guns. Although if they hear the machine guns, it will already be too late for them, and there's no way to hide from a flare.
One explodes off to the left, thankfully just far enough away to leave them in darkness.
"That was close," Bradford hears someone whispering behind him. He knows his men's faces but he hasn't been able to distinguish their voices.
"Shh," someone else hisses.
They're close enough now that they can almost hear the Germans in their own front line. Bradford stops. Morehouse slithers up next to him and holds up his wire cutters. Bradford nods at the tangle of wire, then gestures behind him, indicating that either Davies or Tisdale should slither up as well and help Morehouse out. Tisdale crawls forward and Bradford leaves them to their work.
He taps Davies on the shoulder and points off to the right before slithering in that direction. Better not to bunch the party up in one place. A sniper spits a few shots over their heads, apparently aiming at something not them, and Bradford freezes. He can hear his own breathing. He's pretty sure he can hear Davies breathing as well.
No noise from Tisdale and Morehouse, at least.
He and Davies continue forward along the line of wire until they get to another spot that Bradford deems far enough away from the other two to be safe. He holds the wire while Davies cuts. He doesn't know what time it is or how long they've been out here – time moves differently at the front line, he's discovered – and it's a bit nervewracking to be so close to the German line without much idea if or when one of the enemy is going to poke his head above his own parapet and see two soldiers of the British army cutting his wire.
He listens while Davies cuts, trying to hear any movement down in the German trench and to make sure Morehouse and Tisdale aren't making any noise.
A stifled swear word drifts across the ground. Remember to discipline them both, Bradford tells himself. He can just see Davies shake his head, vaguely disappointed at his friends.
Bradford thinks he can see a faint lightening of the sky along the horizon. It must be getting close to dawn. His own company should be standing to right about now, Campbell will have them in readiness. He and his patrol should get back.
"That's enough," he whispers to Davies. They've cut through a good chunk of wire, although the Germans are so well fortified that they haven't gotten as close to the parapet as Bradford was hoping. "We need to head back."
A flare suddenly lights up No Man's Land halfway back to the British front line, followed by machine guns spitting into the distance not that far away.
The first tangle of barbed wire is simply wire strung along a row of inverted Vs, a screw at the top of each one enabling the legs to fall together for ease of transport. Bradford helps Davies carefully fold together the braces with wire that they've cut free. The barbed wire behind that, closer in to the German parapet, is more like a loose webbing of wire anchored by posts screwed into the ground every few feet. These posts have to be screwed out, a delicate task when there are Germans not that far away who might notice.
Bradford twists a post out of the ground and tries to roll up the cut ends of barbed wire around it, hoping that there are no German sentries standing guard right in front of him. He glances sideways, trying to see Morehouse and Tisdale. The light seems to be growing and he can just make them out, two hunched shapes diligently cutting wire on their way to the German parapet.
Bradford nudges Davies, who has rolled up his wire-and-bracing bundle, and gestures towards the other two. Davies obediently crawls over, awkwardly taking his bundle with him. Bradford finishes what he's doing and follows.
Morehouse is having trouble unscrewing his post from the ground, and Davies has started to help him when Bradford finally reaches them. Tisdale is already on his way back to their own line, with a brace folded together and trailing wire. A shell whines overhead and falls on No Man's Land not too far in front of Tisdale, who stops dead.
"Hurry up," Davies hisses at Morehouse, who swears at him.
"Mr Morehouse," Bradford admonishes.
"It's stuck, sir," Morehouse whispers.
Another shell, now followed by a few shots from a sniper. Tisdale has started moving again. Bradford makes a command decision.
"Leave it," he hisses. "We must go."
They start back across No Man's Land, crawling as fast as they can, both Bradford and Davies trying to bring their pieces of barbed wire entanglements with them. Morehouse is faster than either of them, slithering around Davies and pulling in front. The sky is getting lighter. Bradford just hopes they're aiming for the same spot on the parapet that they left from – he doesn't want a sentry (or anyone at stand to) panicking and shooting at them, and Campbell is stationed at the place they left to prevent just that.
A shell bursts practically on top of them, or at least it feels that way to Bradford. He's momentarily stunned by the noise, so much so that he doesn't even hear the machine guns firing right over their heads until Davies shoves him into a protective shell hole. Bradford rolls into a puddle of cold, dirty water, trailing his barbed wire post behind him. Davies follows.
They lie in the bottom of the crater, listening as shells whistle overhead and the Germans shoot across No Man's Land. In a brief silence, Davies calls "Morehouse! Tisdale!" over the side of the crater.
"Christ!" someone calls back. So one of them is alive. Bradford suspects Morehouse, if only because Tisdale had gotten a head start.
The sky is getting lighter. The Germans won't need to send up any flares in a little while.
Bradford and Davies lie perfectly still, water seeping into their clothes and boots, listening to the German attack. As long as the Germans themselves don't climb out of their trench and stream across No Man's Land towards the British line, Bradford can lie here all day. The sides of the shell crater are just high enough to make him feel mostly protected. But the higher the sun climbs, the less chance he and Davies have of getting back any time soon.
"We have to make a dash for it," he whispers. "Leave the wire." He gestures to the now-soaking wet brace they cut out of the German line. He crawls to the edge of the crater and peeks over, in what he hopes is Morehouse's general direction. "Mr Morehouse!" he calls, as quietly as he can. "Leave your wire and make a run for it! As soon as there's a break in the shooting." He slides back down inside the crater. "And Mr Davies – thank you."
"Captain?" Davies looks confused under all the mud covering his person. The front of his tunic is solid wet dirt from neck to hem. Bradford can't imagine he looks any better.
"For shoving me in here." He grins. Davies wipes mud off his face and tentatively grins back. "Good man. Ready?"
They crouch in the water at the bottom of the crater, waiting. As soon as the shooting stops, they crawl out of the shell crater and dash for their own line, falling on their fronts when they hear another shell. Bradford can't see Morehouse, but at the same time he's afraid to turn his head to look.
Another shell bursts to their left, showering them both with dirt. Davies stumbles. Bradford grabs at his arm. They hear snipers and Davies trips, bringing them both down. Machine guns from their own trenches fire back across the wrecked landscape. Bradford's ears hurt. But he and Davies are still moving. Crawling in the most awkward, uncomfortable way possible, but moving.
Davies reaches the parapet first and slides headfirst over the side. Bradford can see men make way for him as he follows, turning himself around so he goes feet first.
"Where's Mr Morehouse?" he asks the startled looking private in front of him.
"I don't know, sir," the man stammers.
"Mr Davies. Are you ok?" Davies just blinks. "Are you hurt?"
"No, Captain," Davies says.
"Stand to right here." Bradford hops off the step so Davies can take his place. "Afterwards, get some sleep." He heads down the line, looking for Morehouse and Tisdale so he can make a complete report to Berridge.
Tisdale was hit in the back of the leg, but managed to crawl to the safety of the front line. Stretcher bearers are already on their way for him. But Morehouse hasn't come back.
Bradford has a sudden, terrible idea. He climbs onto the step, between two determined-looking privates, and considers the parapet before him. He needs a sentry with a periscope. He needs a ladder.
He needs Cuthbertson to hold him back from doing something stupid.
"Captain!" someone calls, and Bradford turns to see an arm gesturing back at Davies, who is now climbing over the parapet.
Or he needs Cuthbertson and someone even taller and stronger to hold Davies back from doing something stupid.
"Fucking idiot," Bradford swears. "Mr Davies! What the hell are you doing!"
But Davies is over the top and crouching behind the wire, evidently looking for Morehouse. How do you discipline someone for being –
Machine-gun fire rakes across the line, cutting off his thought. Every single man on this stretch of step ducks. Bradford jumps off the step and goes stomping down the line to the closest sentry, splashing and squelching through the mud on the trench floor
"Move," he snaps, taking the periscope and swinging it around so he can see Davies now crawling on his stomach back to No Man's Land and (hopefully) Morehouse.
Bradford considers the parapet again. He can't let Davies go out there alone. He can't leave Morehouse out there either. He has no idea what kind of discipline he's looking at from his own CO.
This isn't disobeying orders, Harry. This is taking care of your men.
A push, a jump, a lot of sliding, and then he's over the top as well.
Sniper fire cracks over his head, followed by the machine guns, as he crawls up to Davies and hisses "You're looking at a serious reprimand, Mr Davies."
"For what?" Davies hisses back. "Rescuing the fallen? You came after me. You'll be disciplined too."
It isn't the way a common soldier is supposed to talk to his company commander, but right now Bradford can't bring himself to care. If they find Morehouse – which isn't likely – he'll worry about it then.
He can hear Cuthbertson in his head, calling him a damn fool. He can only imagine how Campbell will write this up, and what he'll report back to Berridge, and how he'll have to explain himself.
Davies has crawled through the wire. Bradford can hear him calling Morehouse's name. Why didn't he wait until nightfall? Morehouse will be harder to see when it's dark, but so will anyone trying to rescue him.
He scrabbles forward through the mud, calling out to Morehouse as well, creeping up to the edges of shell craters and looking over, trying to ignore the now-visible corpses lying around No Man's Land, the men who didn't have compatriots stupid and reckless and mad enough to go after them.
Davies finds Morehouse in a crater fairly close to the line. His arm and shoulder are a mess and as Davies half drags him out of the crater, Bradford can see that his foot has been shot too.
"Stretcher bearers!" Bradford yells, against his better judgement. The last thing they need is more men up here, but hopefully his voice will carry and a stretcher will be waiting in the trench when they get back to it. He crawls over to Davies and Morehouse to help them, and by the time a head pops up from behind the parapet – disappearing just as quickly as a German sniper takes a shot at him – they've almost gotten back down inside the trench.
There are indeed two stretcher bearers waiting, as well as Campbell and Harris, Bradford's second in command.
"I was about to send word to Colonel Berridge," Harris says. He sounds almost apologetic, but whether that's because he hasn't had a chance to report Bradford, or because he doesn't want to, Bradford can't tell.
"I'll talk to him myself," Bradford says, in an attempt at reassurance. "I need to give him my report from the patrol, anyway."
Berridge takes his patrol report and listens impassively as Bradford explains that both Davies and himself went back out to bring Morehouse in.
"You should have waited until nightfall," Berridge says.
"I know, Colonel. I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize to me." Berridge scribbles on the papers in front of him. "You brought Private Morehouse in?"
"We did."
"And you're unhurt?"
"I am."
"And the other private?"
"Also unhurt." I hope.
"Good. Next time, you might consider waiting for the danger to your person to pass."
"Thank you. Colonel."
"Dismissed. Get some sleep."
Bradford goes back to his company HQ, writes up the night's activity in his war diary, takes off his boots, and lies down on one of the bunkbeds. The mud on his clothes is drying, flaking off in powdery dusty bits, but he can't quite bring himself to go outside and try to beat some of it off. He can faintly hear a shell land on the ground behind the front-line trench, and he remembers what he said to Cuthbertson earlier about not wanting to be caught in a dugout if it's hit by a shell.
Having been out in No Man's Land being shot at, and having to hide in the bottom of a shell crater, and then having to run for it, makes the idea of being shelled in his sleep almost silly. He was almost shelled. He's been almost shelled more than once. He can handle sleeping in a dugout.
Perhaps because of his and Davies' mad dash back into No Man's Land, Bradford is kept in the trench doing simple things until the battalion is back in the reserve trench. He feels an odd closeness to Davies, now that they've been across No Man's Land and back together, and since Davies probably saved his life by unceremoniously pushing him into a shell crater.
And then Davies could have gotten him killed by going after the injured Morehouse, but Bradford can take some of the blame for that himself.
"What were you thinking?" Cuthbertson asks him curiously in battalion HQ. It's the middle of the day and Harris is inspecting the men, and the beds around them are full of napping officers. Battalion HQ is in the best-equipped and most watertight (and rat-free) dugout, so men tend to show up there to sleep.
"I don't think I was," Bradford admits. "I couldn't stand the idea of Morehouse lying in No Man's Land, injured and unable to make it back to the front line. Obviously Davies felt the same way."
"How would I have explained to your mother and your sister that you'd been killed?"
"The same way I'd have to explain it to your lovely wife – I died from an attack of thoughtless stupidity."
"Hmph. Don't do it again."
"Aw, Bertie." Bradford bats his eyelashes at Cuthbertson. "I didn't know you cared so."
If he thought about it, he might be surprised he can joke around. But at the time he was crawling across No Man's Land after Davies, he wasn't thinking about being afraid. He wasn't thinking about what might happen if the Germans got a good enough fix on them to drop a shell on their heads, or if the snipers got a bead on them and shot them both.
Besides, if he couldn't laugh at his own ridiculousness, he'd be struck stupid in sheer terror.
Because there's very little that's terrifying about being in the reserve trench, even so close to the volatile German line, he can take the time to inspect his men and order them down communication trenches to resupply the support and front-line trenches, or to send them around in work parties to shore up unstable trench walls or help dig new ones. He writes home and receives letters in return.
I have been to see a war film called "The Battle of the Somme", Amelia writes him towards the end of August. It is full of stirring scenes of men in action, and guns, and terror. It is a great success in London. Do they show films at the front? Have you seen it? Is that what the war is really like? Mum could only see it once, but I have been twice with Chessie Brady and once with Christabel Fellowes. You won't know Christabel, but her brother was so stirred by the film that he went and volunteered the next day. He's only seventeen, but he couldn't wait. He lied and said he was near twenty. Christabel is worried for him, but very proud.
Who would want to film this? Bradford wonders. And why? When he writes Amelia back he will ask her.
At the end of September they get orders from the divisional commander that they're going to be part of another big push, this time to capture the village of Thiepval and the three major German redoubts near it. There are several divisions involved, the CO tells them. The army couldn't take this position back in July, and the Germans have resisted every effort to take it since. This is a major push.
The night before their advance, Bradford walks up and down the line, as he's gotten used to doing, talking to his men, calming them down, encouraging them, making sure they all have their orders. He remembers when Armstrong told him he was making some of them nervous, but now they all seem glad to see him. He's comforted that they seem comforted. He hasn't felt like he was in over his head since July 1, when they ran for Montauban Alley and he got separated from his own battalion – even his own division – but managed to get himself and a number of stragglers back to the right place in safety. It was as if he knew exactly what to do and where to go. He doesn't always know what he's doing, but he's now confident in his ability to lead.
The British have been shelling the German line for three days, and by now Bradford and his men are heartily sick of the noise of shells going overhead. It's a much different noise than that of shells coming at them, and yet it can wear on the nerves just as much.
"Steady, men," he reminds them. "Rifles up. Listen to your platoon commanders. If you lose sight of them, follow me."
He makes sure his platoon commanders know their orders too.
"How are you holding up, Lt Farrell?"
"All right, sir."
"We need to take the village. I need you to be in control of yourself. Your men need you to be in control of yourself."
"Yes, sir."
"After this, we should get a rest." Bradford doesn't actually know for sure if they will, and in fact he's pretty sure that they won't. But he can't share this with Farrell. Farrell does not need to know that in all likelihood he'll still be stuck in the trenches even after this particular push.
"Thank you, sir."
"Good man."
They go over the top shortly after noon, and the Germans are ready for them.
Bradford will never know how he manages to make it over the parapet and across No Man's Land towards the village without getting shot or shelled. Shells are falling all around him, men are shooting back and forth, his battalion is advancing, and the Germans are firing back from the village's ruined chateau. Men fall, or stumble and keep going. The noise is terrific. Smoke blows across the fields and trenches and through the ruins of the village as the entire brigade advances and the Germans stand their ground.
Bradford expects to hear shouts of "Stretcher bearers!" but of course the stretcher bearers would be hanging back until the fighting dies down a little, or until the battalion advances far enough that they can bring up the rear to collect the grievously wounded.
Part of him knows that he should be paying attention to where his platoon commanders are, and where the other companies are, but he can't spare the concentration. He only knows that he has to lead his men, or as many of them as are still standing, to take this village from the Germans.
After a couple of hours, during which the brigade's advance is slowed by machine guns returning fire from the destroyed chateau, a tank appears and the tide slowly turns. Bradford has never seen a tank in his life, hadn't even thought the British army had such a thing. It's big and lumbering and awkward and vaguely terrifying as it crawls over the ruins of the chateau and cows the Germans, both situationally useful and badly suited for trench warfare.
But all the same, it helps the brigade capture most of the village.
They can't entirely clear the place, and that night they retire to the trench to the north and west of the village, which another brigade took from the Germans that afternoon.
Bradford is almost too tired to walk the line and take count of his men, but he does it. As tired as he is, he needs to. He soothes the wounded and the scared – there are many more of the former than the latter – and learns to his dismay that Farrell has been killed and Campbell shot in the lung and not expected to live. Tisdale, who crawled across No Man's Land not so long ago as part of Bradford's last patrol, was hit by a shell and will probably lose his arm. Davies, quite unexpectedly, has suffered no more than a few shrapnel cuts on his legs, from not being far enough away when a shell landed on No Man's Land as the battalion was advancing. Bradford is reassured that all he needs is some bandages and he'll be fine.
(Bradford is more relieved than he wants to admit – and relieved for reasons he will never share – that Davies is still in one piece.)
Cuthbertson comes to find him in the middle of the night, bearing a dirty-tasting (and lukewarm) cup of tea and some entirely expected news – tomorrow they have to finish clearing the village.
"How are you holding up?" he asks, as Bradford sips the tea and resists the urge to dump it out on the ground. Let the rats drink it, or the souls of the dead.
"I've been better. You?"
"My second in command and three of my platoon commanders are dead. One of them died half an hour ago in a communication trench on his way to a dressing station." Cuthbertson sits down heavily on the step next to Bradford. "I am amazed I wasn't hit. Why are you sitting outside and not safely in company HQ?"
"I should be with my men."
"What do you think Victoria's doing right now?" Cuthbertson leans back against the trench wall and looks up at the sky.
"Sleeping, I would think."
"I'm dying for a cigarette, but it has been suggested to me that I not do anything that would attract the enemy's attention." He snorts. "As if they could see one cigarette down here." He slowly pulls a squashed pack of cigarettes and his silver matchbox from one of the pouches attached to his belt, extricates a cigarette, lights it, and blows a leisurely stream of smoke across the trench. He offers the pack to Bradford, who shakes his head, and goes back to staring at the sky.
Bradford looks up – the strip of sky he can see between the trench walls is dark and sprinkled with stars. It's very pretty, the little bit of it that he can see, but it seems wrong to him that such a lovely, ethereal sky should look down on such destruction.
"'Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant,'" he murmurs.
"Sorry?" Cuthbertson says.
"'They make a desolation and they call it peace.' Tacitus. I studied him at King's."
They're both quiet, listening to the muted sounds of wounded and dying men, and the shells lobbed at them from the Germans still entrenched in the redoubt to the north. They'll have to clear that out tomorrow too.
Bradford is suddenly and acutely exhausted. But if he closes his eyes, he sees the surprised face of a German he caught in a bombed-out house and ran through with his bayonet before he could stop himself. He sees bodies strewn about the ruins of Thiepval village and in No Man's Land and the remains of the chateau. He sees the tank lumbering over downed buildings and dead men. He sees one of Craig's orderlies, dried blood on his cheek and more bodily fluids than Bradford cares to name on his tunic and trousers, explaining hurriedly that Campbell was shot in the lung and as soon as they can, they'll get stretcher bearers to take him back behind the line to a casualty clearing station, but he's not expected to survive.
He sees shells exploding in the middle of an advancing platoon, blowing men in all directions, blowing them apart, knocking one man's helmet sixty feet away.
He sees his men dying.
Tacitus wasn't wrong.
"Harry," Cuthbertson says quietly, putting his hand on Bradford's shoulder. "Find Purcell. He should be in A Company HQ, or battalion HQ. He has a flask of brandy. Drink some of it and go lie down."
"Purcell."
"My quartermaster. A very resourceful man."
"I can't sleep, Bertie. I see them when I close my eyes." He turns to look at Cuthbertson. In the dim light, Cuthbertson looks sympathetic. Bradford is so grateful for his presence that he can't articulate it.
"I'm glad you weren't hurt," Cuthbertson says. "But I don't want to hear that you've been sent home wth neurasthenia or trench madness or whatever they call it."
"You won't, I promise." I can't crack up. I need to be here to look after my men.
"Good." Cuthbertson leans back against the trench again, satisfied. He finishes his cigarette and stubs it out on the step in the space between himself and Bradford. He flicks the butt over the parapet. "Do you remember Wellbridge, the second lieutenant we met on the way to Rouen?" Bradford does. It feels like a lifetime ago. "He was posted to the 53rd Brigade. We could go see him."
"Now?"
"Why not?" Cuthbertson shrugs. Bradford gets the feeling that he's suggesting it just for something to do.
Harris comes by, almost walks past the two of them, stops, and backs up. His tunic is dirty and bloody and incongruously straight and neat.
"Captain Bradford," he says, "I've been told we should have the men stand to. In the morning we're to go back into the village and finish clearing it out."
"The men need to rest," Bradford says.
"I know, sir. But it's Colonel Berridge's orders."
Bradford can feel Cuthbertson sigh next to him. "I'm going back to my company," he says. He pats Bradford on the shoulder again, stands up, and stretches. "As there is no one left in whose capable hands to leave them. We'll finish this mess tomorrow." He nods at Harris and heads back to his men.
Bradford and Harris make their way down the line for stand to. Bradford's heart swells at the sight of his exhausted, wounded men getting to their feet and saluting and hurriedly straightening their uniforms and making sure their helmets are securely on. He salutes them in return and thanks them for all their efforts. He feels an immense love for these men, for their determination and their heart and their solidarity, for the way they charged across No Man's Land and through Thiepval village, watching their friends fall and die and no doubt understanding that they could be next.
He remembers when he met them, some of them in Le Havre, some in Rouen and some in Amiens, and how he looked at them and into their eager, patriotic faces and thought They're boys. Also a lifetime ago. And they aren't boys any longer.
He wants to offer them all a drink and tell them to eat something and to get some sleep and then take a few days leave. He can't.
In the morning the battalion struggles out of the trench and advances through the village and clears out the remaining Germans, taking some prisoner and shooting the rest. Thiepval is now in British hands.
The trenches and redoubts to the north, however, are not, and the Germans continue shelling and shooting from what seem to be very secure positions. Bradford is winged by a bullet which rips open his tunic sleeve near his shoulder and draws blood, but doesn't cause a serious wound. Another comes from the side and he can feel the speed of it as it cuts behind his shoulders barely an inch from the wool of his tunic.
But again, by the end of the day's fighting, he's still in one piece. He bandages his arm himself with his field first aid kit. He'll have to sew the sleeve up when he has more time.
The next day, the third day of the push, they finally break the German line and take the last couple of trenches. Bradford has never felt so worn out and ragged. His men look like the walking dead, even the ones who aren't injured. There are corpses in the trenches that were living, breathing human beings two days ago.
Bradford's soul hurts. His casualties total seventy-three men, common soldiers and officers and NCOs alike. Some of these men are dead. Two are missing. Some are merely wounded and will heal fairly quickly. Some have to be sent to base hospitals far from the front, or back to England. Some are going home for good, because their injuries are too severe to allow for a return to the front.
And some of them, Bradford has no doubt, were alive when they fell but were left to die in No Man's Land because there was no safe time in which to pick them up, and no stretcher bearers to spare in any case.
Three days later the battalion has been moved back to the support trenches, which, despite being well-built formerly-German trenches, are flooding from the heavy rain and falling apart due to all the shelling. Men stand to in the pouring rain, looking stoic and drowned at the same time. They sleep on the step to get out of the water, and more than once Bradford finds men lying on top of the parapet because the bottom of the trench – and all the funk holes and many shallow dugouts – is flooded too deep to sleep in.
Harris and the platoon commanders report that there's some complaining about the weather. Not the shelling, not the rats (which have not all deserted this sinking ship) – the weather. The weather and the food. Company HQ is in a fairly watertight dugout, as befits the officers, and the army has seen fit to feed them better than the common soldier, which isn't difficult, but Bradford can still sympathize with his men. He only has to organize work parties, not do the actual shoring-up of trench walls and repair of wood lattice revetting. He has to stand to with everyone else, but he doesn't have to help carry supplies hither and yon. He has a reasonably dry dugout to repair to when he gets tired or soaked. He doesn't have to find a place to sleep in two feet of water.
But he does have to worry about being shelled and potentially overrun with enemy troops. The Germans stubbornly resist being moved off the ridge to the north, and now that the British army has started attacking the river west of Thiepval, there is a lot of defensive artillery being slung at the 18 Div. Bradford tries to get accurate reports from the platoon commanders about the mental state of his men, but some of them are rattled too, and worn out from the constant fighting and anticipation of battle. He reassures them that they're doing all they can, they're holding up, they're strong.
He's not sure how much of that he believes. But he trusts them, and he trusts his men.
One night a shell hits the trench and kills two men from D Company. Cuthbertson brings Bradford the news, and Bradford opts not to write it in his war diary. He does put it down in his personal diary, though. No one besides him ever has to see that, so he can say what he likes.
He writes short letters home, telling his parents and his sister and the few friends he has still in England that he's alive and wet and somewhere on the front. (He can't tell them exactly where. Berridge trusts the company commanders to self-censor their own letters, but the letters are supposed to be left unsealed just in case he – or another officer – decides to take a look at them.) He reads their letters to him at night by the light of stubby, flickering candles, and he misses London so much it's like a hole in his chest.
"You don't miss London," Cuthbertson informs him one day as they're sitting in battalion HQ. "You just miss anywhere that's not here."
"How do you know what I miss?" Bradford asks.
"Because I know how you feel. I miss the country house, but I don't miss the country house. I hate the country house – it's cold and damp and drafty, even in the height of summer, and Dad lets his dogs sit on all the furniture. Everything smells like dog in that place. But it's not here, so I miss it." He scratches under his hat with the end of his pen. "And Victoria and the children are still there."
"Take off your hat if you're going to scratch," Bradford tells him, unaccountably irritated. He leans across the table and flips Cuthbertson's hat off his head. Cuthbertson just raises a curious eyebrow.
"Calm yourselves," someone says from one of the bunkbeds. Bradford gets up and retrieves the hat from off the floor. He hands it to Cuthbertson.
"Sorry, Bertie. I don't know what's wrong with me."
"I do," Cuthbertson says. "Too much time in the trenches. Not enough sun. We'll all have grown webbed feet by the time this war is over."
And that reminds Bradford to remind his men that whenever possible, they should change their socks and (when the weather clears) dry them out along with their boots, to avoid trench foot. He has yet to see a case of it, and he's glad.
words: 6635
total words: 31,985
note: thanks to the 24-hour nanowrimo write-in and written under the influence of milk tea, cheetos, blond oreos, chocolate chocolate chip cookies, goldfish crackers, and goetze's caramel creams. i made bradford a graduate of king's college, cambridge, mostly because that's where rivers (who treated sigfried sassoon for i guess mental instability) went. and also apparently rupert brooke, war poet. and look, icon! that's bradford. :D
Cuthbertson sighs, climbs up onto the step next to Bradford, and takes the periscope. A shell whistles overhead, dropping onto No Man's Land in a cloud of dirt and (Bradford fears) body parts.
"What do you see? Is anyone moving out there?"
"I can't tell," Cuthbertson says. He leans away from the periscope, rubs his eyes, and looks through it again. "No. Nothing's moving."
"Except for the shelling, it's been pretty quiet, sir," the sentry says. Bradford gets a better look at him, now that he can. Tisdale, that's his name. Private. "Haven't seen any Huns."
"I should get back to my company," Cuthbertson says. He pats Bradford on the shoulder and slides off the step. "Make sure everyone is ok. I don't think cards are in the offing. You can always leave notes for me at battalion HQ, though." He grins, tips his helmet at Bradford, and walks off.
Bradford gives the sentry back his periscope. "Carry on, Mr Tisdale. Stay sharp."
Four men went out on the patrol, and eventually two come back – Campbell (limping slightly but otherwise unhurt) and a private (shot through the hand). The other two men, Campbell reports, were caught by snipers in the light from one of the flares.
"They must be dead, Captain," he continues. "But we can't go back for them until this shelling dies down."
As if to punctuate his words, another shell goes whining overhead and falls to the ground behind them, between the front-line and support trenches. Bradford listens for screams, and when he doesn't hear any, concludes that the shell must have missed both trenches. Good.
"Did you learn anything?" he asks Campbell.
"No, sir. Jerry's well dug in."
"Did you get close to the barbed wire?"
"Flares stopped us. I didn't want to go forward until the light faded, but then Potter and Rawlinson were shot, and there was some machine-gun fire, and I figured we'd better come back and report. Simpson here caught a bullet on the way back. Looked like a lot of wire, though, sir. Tough to break through."
"Thank you, Sergeant. Mr Simpson?" Simpson is swaying on his feet. Bradford and Campbell both grab for him as he starts to fall.
"I got you, mate," Campbell tells him. "You're ok."
"Can you take him back to the first aid post?" Bradford asks. The first aid post, the first stop for an injured soldier, is back in the reserve trench, which is a trek when you have to carry an unconscious man. But Craig, the medical officer, is back there, and he can tend to Simpson right away and in theoretically better conditions than they have at the front line. Campbell nods. "If you need assistance, grab someone or yell for a stretcher. And have yourself looked at too. Go."
Campbell goes.
Shelling tonight, Bradford writes in his war diary later. Patrol caught in No Man's Land, Ptes Rawlinson and Potter presumed dead, Pte Simpson shot in hand. He thinks about whether or not to add that a shell landed near enough to a listening post to cause a landslide and half bury some men, but realizes that as it wasn't his company, it isn't his responsibility to report. He's a little embarrassed that he's relieved by that.
The next night he goes out on patrol himself, crawling through the barbed wire on the British side and across the muddy, cratered flat of No Man's Land. With him are Davies, Morehouse, and Tisdale. He got official (and unsurprising) word that afternoon that Simpson was on his way to the base hospital at Amiens, and as soon as he was ready, back to England after that. Completely understandable – it's hard to fire a rifle when you have a big bloody hole through the middle of your hand.
"Ears to the ground, men," he whispers as they head across No Man's Land. Their objective is twofold – figure out what the enemy is up to, and cut some of his barbed wire. The bombardment at the very beginning of this whole offensive, back in July, proved (to the men on the ground at least) that constant shelling of the German wire really doesn't do much. The best way to deal with the meters and meters of tangled barbed wire is to sneak up to it and cut it.
Now they just have to hope they don't attract attention. Bradford doesn't want to go home in pieces, and neither does he want any of his men to either.
They snake forward on their stomachs, around shell craters and corpses, listening hard for the tell-tale whistle of shells or the faint boom of a flare being released or the ratatat of machine guns. Although if they hear the machine guns, it will already be too late for them, and there's no way to hide from a flare.
One explodes off to the left, thankfully just far enough away to leave them in darkness.
"That was close," Bradford hears someone whispering behind him. He knows his men's faces but he hasn't been able to distinguish their voices.
"Shh," someone else hisses.
They're close enough now that they can almost hear the Germans in their own front line. Bradford stops. Morehouse slithers up next to him and holds up his wire cutters. Bradford nods at the tangle of wire, then gestures behind him, indicating that either Davies or Tisdale should slither up as well and help Morehouse out. Tisdale crawls forward and Bradford leaves them to their work.
He taps Davies on the shoulder and points off to the right before slithering in that direction. Better not to bunch the party up in one place. A sniper spits a few shots over their heads, apparently aiming at something not them, and Bradford freezes. He can hear his own breathing. He's pretty sure he can hear Davies breathing as well.
No noise from Tisdale and Morehouse, at least.
He and Davies continue forward along the line of wire until they get to another spot that Bradford deems far enough away from the other two to be safe. He holds the wire while Davies cuts. He doesn't know what time it is or how long they've been out here – time moves differently at the front line, he's discovered – and it's a bit nervewracking to be so close to the German line without much idea if or when one of the enemy is going to poke his head above his own parapet and see two soldiers of the British army cutting his wire.
He listens while Davies cuts, trying to hear any movement down in the German trench and to make sure Morehouse and Tisdale aren't making any noise.
A stifled swear word drifts across the ground. Remember to discipline them both, Bradford tells himself. He can just see Davies shake his head, vaguely disappointed at his friends.
Bradford thinks he can see a faint lightening of the sky along the horizon. It must be getting close to dawn. His own company should be standing to right about now, Campbell will have them in readiness. He and his patrol should get back.
"That's enough," he whispers to Davies. They've cut through a good chunk of wire, although the Germans are so well fortified that they haven't gotten as close to the parapet as Bradford was hoping. "We need to head back."
A flare suddenly lights up No Man's Land halfway back to the British front line, followed by machine guns spitting into the distance not that far away.
The first tangle of barbed wire is simply wire strung along a row of inverted Vs, a screw at the top of each one enabling the legs to fall together for ease of transport. Bradford helps Davies carefully fold together the braces with wire that they've cut free. The barbed wire behind that, closer in to the German parapet, is more like a loose webbing of wire anchored by posts screwed into the ground every few feet. These posts have to be screwed out, a delicate task when there are Germans not that far away who might notice.
Bradford twists a post out of the ground and tries to roll up the cut ends of barbed wire around it, hoping that there are no German sentries standing guard right in front of him. He glances sideways, trying to see Morehouse and Tisdale. The light seems to be growing and he can just make them out, two hunched shapes diligently cutting wire on their way to the German parapet.
Bradford nudges Davies, who has rolled up his wire-and-bracing bundle, and gestures towards the other two. Davies obediently crawls over, awkwardly taking his bundle with him. Bradford finishes what he's doing and follows.
Morehouse is having trouble unscrewing his post from the ground, and Davies has started to help him when Bradford finally reaches them. Tisdale is already on his way back to their own line, with a brace folded together and trailing wire. A shell whines overhead and falls on No Man's Land not too far in front of Tisdale, who stops dead.
"Hurry up," Davies hisses at Morehouse, who swears at him.
"Mr Morehouse," Bradford admonishes.
"It's stuck, sir," Morehouse whispers.
Another shell, now followed by a few shots from a sniper. Tisdale has started moving again. Bradford makes a command decision.
"Leave it," he hisses. "We must go."
They start back across No Man's Land, crawling as fast as they can, both Bradford and Davies trying to bring their pieces of barbed wire entanglements with them. Morehouse is faster than either of them, slithering around Davies and pulling in front. The sky is getting lighter. Bradford just hopes they're aiming for the same spot on the parapet that they left from – he doesn't want a sentry (or anyone at stand to) panicking and shooting at them, and Campbell is stationed at the place they left to prevent just that.
A shell bursts practically on top of them, or at least it feels that way to Bradford. He's momentarily stunned by the noise, so much so that he doesn't even hear the machine guns firing right over their heads until Davies shoves him into a protective shell hole. Bradford rolls into a puddle of cold, dirty water, trailing his barbed wire post behind him. Davies follows.
They lie in the bottom of the crater, listening as shells whistle overhead and the Germans shoot across No Man's Land. In a brief silence, Davies calls "Morehouse! Tisdale!" over the side of the crater.
"Christ!" someone calls back. So one of them is alive. Bradford suspects Morehouse, if only because Tisdale had gotten a head start.
The sky is getting lighter. The Germans won't need to send up any flares in a little while.
Bradford and Davies lie perfectly still, water seeping into their clothes and boots, listening to the German attack. As long as the Germans themselves don't climb out of their trench and stream across No Man's Land towards the British line, Bradford can lie here all day. The sides of the shell crater are just high enough to make him feel mostly protected. But the higher the sun climbs, the less chance he and Davies have of getting back any time soon.
"We have to make a dash for it," he whispers. "Leave the wire." He gestures to the now-soaking wet brace they cut out of the German line. He crawls to the edge of the crater and peeks over, in what he hopes is Morehouse's general direction. "Mr Morehouse!" he calls, as quietly as he can. "Leave your wire and make a run for it! As soon as there's a break in the shooting." He slides back down inside the crater. "And Mr Davies – thank you."
"Captain?" Davies looks confused under all the mud covering his person. The front of his tunic is solid wet dirt from neck to hem. Bradford can't imagine he looks any better.
"For shoving me in here." He grins. Davies wipes mud off his face and tentatively grins back. "Good man. Ready?"
They crouch in the water at the bottom of the crater, waiting. As soon as the shooting stops, they crawl out of the shell crater and dash for their own line, falling on their fronts when they hear another shell. Bradford can't see Morehouse, but at the same time he's afraid to turn his head to look.
Another shell bursts to their left, showering them both with dirt. Davies stumbles. Bradford grabs at his arm. They hear snipers and Davies trips, bringing them both down. Machine guns from their own trenches fire back across the wrecked landscape. Bradford's ears hurt. But he and Davies are still moving. Crawling in the most awkward, uncomfortable way possible, but moving.
Davies reaches the parapet first and slides headfirst over the side. Bradford can see men make way for him as he follows, turning himself around so he goes feet first.
"Where's Mr Morehouse?" he asks the startled looking private in front of him.
"I don't know, sir," the man stammers.
"Mr Davies. Are you ok?" Davies just blinks. "Are you hurt?"
"No, Captain," Davies says.
"Stand to right here." Bradford hops off the step so Davies can take his place. "Afterwards, get some sleep." He heads down the line, looking for Morehouse and Tisdale so he can make a complete report to Berridge.
Tisdale was hit in the back of the leg, but managed to crawl to the safety of the front line. Stretcher bearers are already on their way for him. But Morehouse hasn't come back.
Bradford has a sudden, terrible idea. He climbs onto the step, between two determined-looking privates, and considers the parapet before him. He needs a sentry with a periscope. He needs a ladder.
He needs Cuthbertson to hold him back from doing something stupid.
"Captain!" someone calls, and Bradford turns to see an arm gesturing back at Davies, who is now climbing over the parapet.
Or he needs Cuthbertson and someone even taller and stronger to hold Davies back from doing something stupid.
"Fucking idiot," Bradford swears. "Mr Davies! What the hell are you doing!"
But Davies is over the top and crouching behind the wire, evidently looking for Morehouse. How do you discipline someone for being –
Machine-gun fire rakes across the line, cutting off his thought. Every single man on this stretch of step ducks. Bradford jumps off the step and goes stomping down the line to the closest sentry, splashing and squelching through the mud on the trench floor
"Move," he snaps, taking the periscope and swinging it around so he can see Davies now crawling on his stomach back to No Man's Land and (hopefully) Morehouse.
Bradford considers the parapet again. He can't let Davies go out there alone. He can't leave Morehouse out there either. He has no idea what kind of discipline he's looking at from his own CO.
This isn't disobeying orders, Harry. This is taking care of your men.
A push, a jump, a lot of sliding, and then he's over the top as well.
Sniper fire cracks over his head, followed by the machine guns, as he crawls up to Davies and hisses "You're looking at a serious reprimand, Mr Davies."
"For what?" Davies hisses back. "Rescuing the fallen? You came after me. You'll be disciplined too."
It isn't the way a common soldier is supposed to talk to his company commander, but right now Bradford can't bring himself to care. If they find Morehouse – which isn't likely – he'll worry about it then.
He can hear Cuthbertson in his head, calling him a damn fool. He can only imagine how Campbell will write this up, and what he'll report back to Berridge, and how he'll have to explain himself.
Davies has crawled through the wire. Bradford can hear him calling Morehouse's name. Why didn't he wait until nightfall? Morehouse will be harder to see when it's dark, but so will anyone trying to rescue him.
He scrabbles forward through the mud, calling out to Morehouse as well, creeping up to the edges of shell craters and looking over, trying to ignore the now-visible corpses lying around No Man's Land, the men who didn't have compatriots stupid and reckless and mad enough to go after them.
Davies finds Morehouse in a crater fairly close to the line. His arm and shoulder are a mess and as Davies half drags him out of the crater, Bradford can see that his foot has been shot too.
"Stretcher bearers!" Bradford yells, against his better judgement. The last thing they need is more men up here, but hopefully his voice will carry and a stretcher will be waiting in the trench when they get back to it. He crawls over to Davies and Morehouse to help them, and by the time a head pops up from behind the parapet – disappearing just as quickly as a German sniper takes a shot at him – they've almost gotten back down inside the trench.
There are indeed two stretcher bearers waiting, as well as Campbell and Harris, Bradford's second in command.
"I was about to send word to Colonel Berridge," Harris says. He sounds almost apologetic, but whether that's because he hasn't had a chance to report Bradford, or because he doesn't want to, Bradford can't tell.
"I'll talk to him myself," Bradford says, in an attempt at reassurance. "I need to give him my report from the patrol, anyway."
Berridge takes his patrol report and listens impassively as Bradford explains that both Davies and himself went back out to bring Morehouse in.
"You should have waited until nightfall," Berridge says.
"I know, Colonel. I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize to me." Berridge scribbles on the papers in front of him. "You brought Private Morehouse in?"
"We did."
"And you're unhurt?"
"I am."
"And the other private?"
"Also unhurt." I hope.
"Good. Next time, you might consider waiting for the danger to your person to pass."
"Thank you. Colonel."
"Dismissed. Get some sleep."
Bradford goes back to his company HQ, writes up the night's activity in his war diary, takes off his boots, and lies down on one of the bunkbeds. The mud on his clothes is drying, flaking off in powdery dusty bits, but he can't quite bring himself to go outside and try to beat some of it off. He can faintly hear a shell land on the ground behind the front-line trench, and he remembers what he said to Cuthbertson earlier about not wanting to be caught in a dugout if it's hit by a shell.
Having been out in No Man's Land being shot at, and having to hide in the bottom of a shell crater, and then having to run for it, makes the idea of being shelled in his sleep almost silly. He was almost shelled. He's been almost shelled more than once. He can handle sleeping in a dugout.
Perhaps because of his and Davies' mad dash back into No Man's Land, Bradford is kept in the trench doing simple things until the battalion is back in the reserve trench. He feels an odd closeness to Davies, now that they've been across No Man's Land and back together, and since Davies probably saved his life by unceremoniously pushing him into a shell crater.
And then Davies could have gotten him killed by going after the injured Morehouse, but Bradford can take some of the blame for that himself.
"What were you thinking?" Cuthbertson asks him curiously in battalion HQ. It's the middle of the day and Harris is inspecting the men, and the beds around them are full of napping officers. Battalion HQ is in the best-equipped and most watertight (and rat-free) dugout, so men tend to show up there to sleep.
"I don't think I was," Bradford admits. "I couldn't stand the idea of Morehouse lying in No Man's Land, injured and unable to make it back to the front line. Obviously Davies felt the same way."
"How would I have explained to your mother and your sister that you'd been killed?"
"The same way I'd have to explain it to your lovely wife – I died from an attack of thoughtless stupidity."
"Hmph. Don't do it again."
"Aw, Bertie." Bradford bats his eyelashes at Cuthbertson. "I didn't know you cared so."
If he thought about it, he might be surprised he can joke around. But at the time he was crawling across No Man's Land after Davies, he wasn't thinking about being afraid. He wasn't thinking about what might happen if the Germans got a good enough fix on them to drop a shell on their heads, or if the snipers got a bead on them and shot them both.
Besides, if he couldn't laugh at his own ridiculousness, he'd be struck stupid in sheer terror.
Because there's very little that's terrifying about being in the reserve trench, even so close to the volatile German line, he can take the time to inspect his men and order them down communication trenches to resupply the support and front-line trenches, or to send them around in work parties to shore up unstable trench walls or help dig new ones. He writes home and receives letters in return.
I have been to see a war film called "The Battle of the Somme", Amelia writes him towards the end of August. It is full of stirring scenes of men in action, and guns, and terror. It is a great success in London. Do they show films at the front? Have you seen it? Is that what the war is really like? Mum could only see it once, but I have been twice with Chessie Brady and once with Christabel Fellowes. You won't know Christabel, but her brother was so stirred by the film that he went and volunteered the next day. He's only seventeen, but he couldn't wait. He lied and said he was near twenty. Christabel is worried for him, but very proud.
Who would want to film this? Bradford wonders. And why? When he writes Amelia back he will ask her.
At the end of September they get orders from the divisional commander that they're going to be part of another big push, this time to capture the village of Thiepval and the three major German redoubts near it. There are several divisions involved, the CO tells them. The army couldn't take this position back in July, and the Germans have resisted every effort to take it since. This is a major push.
The night before their advance, Bradford walks up and down the line, as he's gotten used to doing, talking to his men, calming them down, encouraging them, making sure they all have their orders. He remembers when Armstrong told him he was making some of them nervous, but now they all seem glad to see him. He's comforted that they seem comforted. He hasn't felt like he was in over his head since July 1, when they ran for Montauban Alley and he got separated from his own battalion – even his own division – but managed to get himself and a number of stragglers back to the right place in safety. It was as if he knew exactly what to do and where to go. He doesn't always know what he's doing, but he's now confident in his ability to lead.
The British have been shelling the German line for three days, and by now Bradford and his men are heartily sick of the noise of shells going overhead. It's a much different noise than that of shells coming at them, and yet it can wear on the nerves just as much.
"Steady, men," he reminds them. "Rifles up. Listen to your platoon commanders. If you lose sight of them, follow me."
He makes sure his platoon commanders know their orders too.
"How are you holding up, Lt Farrell?"
"All right, sir."
"We need to take the village. I need you to be in control of yourself. Your men need you to be in control of yourself."
"Yes, sir."
"After this, we should get a rest." Bradford doesn't actually know for sure if they will, and in fact he's pretty sure that they won't. But he can't share this with Farrell. Farrell does not need to know that in all likelihood he'll still be stuck in the trenches even after this particular push.
"Thank you, sir."
"Good man."
They go over the top shortly after noon, and the Germans are ready for them.
Bradford will never know how he manages to make it over the parapet and across No Man's Land towards the village without getting shot or shelled. Shells are falling all around him, men are shooting back and forth, his battalion is advancing, and the Germans are firing back from the village's ruined chateau. Men fall, or stumble and keep going. The noise is terrific. Smoke blows across the fields and trenches and through the ruins of the village as the entire brigade advances and the Germans stand their ground.
Bradford expects to hear shouts of "Stretcher bearers!" but of course the stretcher bearers would be hanging back until the fighting dies down a little, or until the battalion advances far enough that they can bring up the rear to collect the grievously wounded.
Part of him knows that he should be paying attention to where his platoon commanders are, and where the other companies are, but he can't spare the concentration. He only knows that he has to lead his men, or as many of them as are still standing, to take this village from the Germans.
After a couple of hours, during which the brigade's advance is slowed by machine guns returning fire from the destroyed chateau, a tank appears and the tide slowly turns. Bradford has never seen a tank in his life, hadn't even thought the British army had such a thing. It's big and lumbering and awkward and vaguely terrifying as it crawls over the ruins of the chateau and cows the Germans, both situationally useful and badly suited for trench warfare.
But all the same, it helps the brigade capture most of the village.
They can't entirely clear the place, and that night they retire to the trench to the north and west of the village, which another brigade took from the Germans that afternoon.
Bradford is almost too tired to walk the line and take count of his men, but he does it. As tired as he is, he needs to. He soothes the wounded and the scared – there are many more of the former than the latter – and learns to his dismay that Farrell has been killed and Campbell shot in the lung and not expected to live. Tisdale, who crawled across No Man's Land not so long ago as part of Bradford's last patrol, was hit by a shell and will probably lose his arm. Davies, quite unexpectedly, has suffered no more than a few shrapnel cuts on his legs, from not being far enough away when a shell landed on No Man's Land as the battalion was advancing. Bradford is reassured that all he needs is some bandages and he'll be fine.
(Bradford is more relieved than he wants to admit – and relieved for reasons he will never share – that Davies is still in one piece.)
Cuthbertson comes to find him in the middle of the night, bearing a dirty-tasting (and lukewarm) cup of tea and some entirely expected news – tomorrow they have to finish clearing the village.
"How are you holding up?" he asks, as Bradford sips the tea and resists the urge to dump it out on the ground. Let the rats drink it, or the souls of the dead.
"I've been better. You?"
"My second in command and three of my platoon commanders are dead. One of them died half an hour ago in a communication trench on his way to a dressing station." Cuthbertson sits down heavily on the step next to Bradford. "I am amazed I wasn't hit. Why are you sitting outside and not safely in company HQ?"
"I should be with my men."
"What do you think Victoria's doing right now?" Cuthbertson leans back against the trench wall and looks up at the sky.
"Sleeping, I would think."
"I'm dying for a cigarette, but it has been suggested to me that I not do anything that would attract the enemy's attention." He snorts. "As if they could see one cigarette down here." He slowly pulls a squashed pack of cigarettes and his silver matchbox from one of the pouches attached to his belt, extricates a cigarette, lights it, and blows a leisurely stream of smoke across the trench. He offers the pack to Bradford, who shakes his head, and goes back to staring at the sky.
Bradford looks up – the strip of sky he can see between the trench walls is dark and sprinkled with stars. It's very pretty, the little bit of it that he can see, but it seems wrong to him that such a lovely, ethereal sky should look down on such destruction.
"'Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant,'" he murmurs.
"Sorry?" Cuthbertson says.
"'They make a desolation and they call it peace.' Tacitus. I studied him at King's."
They're both quiet, listening to the muted sounds of wounded and dying men, and the shells lobbed at them from the Germans still entrenched in the redoubt to the north. They'll have to clear that out tomorrow too.
Bradford is suddenly and acutely exhausted. But if he closes his eyes, he sees the surprised face of a German he caught in a bombed-out house and ran through with his bayonet before he could stop himself. He sees bodies strewn about the ruins of Thiepval village and in No Man's Land and the remains of the chateau. He sees the tank lumbering over downed buildings and dead men. He sees one of Craig's orderlies, dried blood on his cheek and more bodily fluids than Bradford cares to name on his tunic and trousers, explaining hurriedly that Campbell was shot in the lung and as soon as they can, they'll get stretcher bearers to take him back behind the line to a casualty clearing station, but he's not expected to survive.
He sees shells exploding in the middle of an advancing platoon, blowing men in all directions, blowing them apart, knocking one man's helmet sixty feet away.
He sees his men dying.
Tacitus wasn't wrong.
"Harry," Cuthbertson says quietly, putting his hand on Bradford's shoulder. "Find Purcell. He should be in A Company HQ, or battalion HQ. He has a flask of brandy. Drink some of it and go lie down."
"Purcell."
"My quartermaster. A very resourceful man."
"I can't sleep, Bertie. I see them when I close my eyes." He turns to look at Cuthbertson. In the dim light, Cuthbertson looks sympathetic. Bradford is so grateful for his presence that he can't articulate it.
"I'm glad you weren't hurt," Cuthbertson says. "But I don't want to hear that you've been sent home wth neurasthenia or trench madness or whatever they call it."
"You won't, I promise." I can't crack up. I need to be here to look after my men.
"Good." Cuthbertson leans back against the trench again, satisfied. He finishes his cigarette and stubs it out on the step in the space between himself and Bradford. He flicks the butt over the parapet. "Do you remember Wellbridge, the second lieutenant we met on the way to Rouen?" Bradford does. It feels like a lifetime ago. "He was posted to the 53rd Brigade. We could go see him."
"Now?"
"Why not?" Cuthbertson shrugs. Bradford gets the feeling that he's suggesting it just for something to do.
Harris comes by, almost walks past the two of them, stops, and backs up. His tunic is dirty and bloody and incongruously straight and neat.
"Captain Bradford," he says, "I've been told we should have the men stand to. In the morning we're to go back into the village and finish clearing it out."
"The men need to rest," Bradford says.
"I know, sir. But it's Colonel Berridge's orders."
Bradford can feel Cuthbertson sigh next to him. "I'm going back to my company," he says. He pats Bradford on the shoulder again, stands up, and stretches. "As there is no one left in whose capable hands to leave them. We'll finish this mess tomorrow." He nods at Harris and heads back to his men.
Bradford and Harris make their way down the line for stand to. Bradford's heart swells at the sight of his exhausted, wounded men getting to their feet and saluting and hurriedly straightening their uniforms and making sure their helmets are securely on. He salutes them in return and thanks them for all their efforts. He feels an immense love for these men, for their determination and their heart and their solidarity, for the way they charged across No Man's Land and through Thiepval village, watching their friends fall and die and no doubt understanding that they could be next.
He remembers when he met them, some of them in Le Havre, some in Rouen and some in Amiens, and how he looked at them and into their eager, patriotic faces and thought They're boys. Also a lifetime ago. And they aren't boys any longer.
He wants to offer them all a drink and tell them to eat something and to get some sleep and then take a few days leave. He can't.
In the morning the battalion struggles out of the trench and advances through the village and clears out the remaining Germans, taking some prisoner and shooting the rest. Thiepval is now in British hands.
The trenches and redoubts to the north, however, are not, and the Germans continue shelling and shooting from what seem to be very secure positions. Bradford is winged by a bullet which rips open his tunic sleeve near his shoulder and draws blood, but doesn't cause a serious wound. Another comes from the side and he can feel the speed of it as it cuts behind his shoulders barely an inch from the wool of his tunic.
But again, by the end of the day's fighting, he's still in one piece. He bandages his arm himself with his field first aid kit. He'll have to sew the sleeve up when he has more time.
The next day, the third day of the push, they finally break the German line and take the last couple of trenches. Bradford has never felt so worn out and ragged. His men look like the walking dead, even the ones who aren't injured. There are corpses in the trenches that were living, breathing human beings two days ago.
Bradford's soul hurts. His casualties total seventy-three men, common soldiers and officers and NCOs alike. Some of these men are dead. Two are missing. Some are merely wounded and will heal fairly quickly. Some have to be sent to base hospitals far from the front, or back to England. Some are going home for good, because their injuries are too severe to allow for a return to the front.
And some of them, Bradford has no doubt, were alive when they fell but were left to die in No Man's Land because there was no safe time in which to pick them up, and no stretcher bearers to spare in any case.
Three days later the battalion has been moved back to the support trenches, which, despite being well-built formerly-German trenches, are flooding from the heavy rain and falling apart due to all the shelling. Men stand to in the pouring rain, looking stoic and drowned at the same time. They sleep on the step to get out of the water, and more than once Bradford finds men lying on top of the parapet because the bottom of the trench – and all the funk holes and many shallow dugouts – is flooded too deep to sleep in.
Harris and the platoon commanders report that there's some complaining about the weather. Not the shelling, not the rats (which have not all deserted this sinking ship) – the weather. The weather and the food. Company HQ is in a fairly watertight dugout, as befits the officers, and the army has seen fit to feed them better than the common soldier, which isn't difficult, but Bradford can still sympathize with his men. He only has to organize work parties, not do the actual shoring-up of trench walls and repair of wood lattice revetting. He has to stand to with everyone else, but he doesn't have to help carry supplies hither and yon. He has a reasonably dry dugout to repair to when he gets tired or soaked. He doesn't have to find a place to sleep in two feet of water.
But he does have to worry about being shelled and potentially overrun with enemy troops. The Germans stubbornly resist being moved off the ridge to the north, and now that the British army has started attacking the river west of Thiepval, there is a lot of defensive artillery being slung at the 18 Div. Bradford tries to get accurate reports from the platoon commanders about the mental state of his men, but some of them are rattled too, and worn out from the constant fighting and anticipation of battle. He reassures them that they're doing all they can, they're holding up, they're strong.
He's not sure how much of that he believes. But he trusts them, and he trusts his men.
One night a shell hits the trench and kills two men from D Company. Cuthbertson brings Bradford the news, and Bradford opts not to write it in his war diary. He does put it down in his personal diary, though. No one besides him ever has to see that, so he can say what he likes.
He writes short letters home, telling his parents and his sister and the few friends he has still in England that he's alive and wet and somewhere on the front. (He can't tell them exactly where. Berridge trusts the company commanders to self-censor their own letters, but the letters are supposed to be left unsealed just in case he – or another officer – decides to take a look at them.) He reads their letters to him at night by the light of stubby, flickering candles, and he misses London so much it's like a hole in his chest.
"You don't miss London," Cuthbertson informs him one day as they're sitting in battalion HQ. "You just miss anywhere that's not here."
"How do you know what I miss?" Bradford asks.
"Because I know how you feel. I miss the country house, but I don't miss the country house. I hate the country house – it's cold and damp and drafty, even in the height of summer, and Dad lets his dogs sit on all the furniture. Everything smells like dog in that place. But it's not here, so I miss it." He scratches under his hat with the end of his pen. "And Victoria and the children are still there."
"Take off your hat if you're going to scratch," Bradford tells him, unaccountably irritated. He leans across the table and flips Cuthbertson's hat off his head. Cuthbertson just raises a curious eyebrow.
"Calm yourselves," someone says from one of the bunkbeds. Bradford gets up and retrieves the hat from off the floor. He hands it to Cuthbertson.
"Sorry, Bertie. I don't know what's wrong with me."
"I do," Cuthbertson says. "Too much time in the trenches. Not enough sun. We'll all have grown webbed feet by the time this war is over."
And that reminds Bradford to remind his men that whenever possible, they should change their socks and (when the weather clears) dry them out along with their boots, to avoid trench foot. He has yet to see a case of it, and he's glad.
words: 6635
total words: 31,985
note: thanks to the 24-hour nanowrimo write-in and written under the influence of milk tea, cheetos, blond oreos, chocolate chocolate chip cookies, goldfish crackers, and goetze's caramel creams. i made bradford a graduate of king's college, cambridge, mostly because that's where rivers (who treated sigfried sassoon for i guess mental instability) went. and also apparently rupert brooke, war poet. and look, icon! that's bradford. :D
