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smackenzieDear Mum and Dad,
I am still alive although very wet. If I knew France would be this miserable I would have brought a good waterproof coat and better boots. The mud gets into everything, even our rations, and you do not want to know what the tea tastes like.
We have seen action, a lot of it. I have been very lucky to not be hurt, except for some cuts on my legs where I was hit with shrapnel. I say this not so you worry but so you know that your boy is still in one piece. I healed well. I have lost some friends, though, other men in my platoon. It is very hard.
Lt Fiske (my platoon cmdr) was wounded in July but has come back to the battalion, which is some good news. He's a good man. The company cmdr is looking after us too. He calls us his men and I would say he really cares about our welfare. He thinks of himself as one of us, although he is very posh and Public School, but we trust him.
Please send me some good socks and a muffler. It is getting cold and as I said, everything is wet. If you should see Mrs Powell and she should ask after Dickon, tell her he is fine. We are taking care of each other.
Love to Ada and Caro too. I will write them their own letters so they do not have to share.
Tommy
Davies doesn't want to give his parents or his sisters any details about the front or the fighting or how miserable it really is living in a trench. One night he climbed over the parapet and slept on the muddy ground behind the barbed wire, risking shell and mortar and German sniper fire, just because he couldn't stand the thought of sleeping in the flooded trench one more night. The best he can say is that some of the rats have washed away, and the threat of lice isn't as bad.
But he has heard that two men from B Company have already been sent to a base hospital with trench foot because there is no way to keep their feet and socks and boots dry, so their feet swell up inside their boots. In the worst case, a soldier could lose his foot to gangrene and amputation. Captain Bradford keeps telling them to take care to at least change their socks whenever possible, and he understands that the weather makes that difficult but the other option is trench foot and they don't want that.
Which they don't.
It hasn't gotten quite cold enough at night for the risk of frostbite, but Beauchamp, one of the men in his platoon, keeps saying that he can already predict that the winter will be a bad one. But he's only sixteen and like most of them he's lived his whole life in London, so how does he know what the weather will do?
"As long as it stops raining, I don't care," Powell grumbles as they try to shore up one of the trench walls. The weather makes repair work on the trenches a neverending job. Davies has even suggested to Lt Fiske that the army consider bricks rather than sandbags or the wooden revetting that the Germans use. Bricks are stable and solid and more waterproof than sandbags, and he knows how to lay a good strong wall with them.
The problem, Lt Fiske said, was that the mortar needs to be able to dry. As it was drizzling when he said that, his point was well made. And while Davies has occasionally laid bricks in the rain – he lives in London, rain is an inevitability – he wouldn't want to do an entire load-bearing wall in the wet.
Davies' only answer to Powell now is to heave a shovelful of mud up and over the back wall of the trench.
They have been moving back and forth between the support trench and the front line, with the occasional stint in the reserve trench. It seems to Davies that the British army is still trying to take the same few miles it has been trying to take since July, and he can't see the point in it any more. There is a lot of shelling back and forth, as well as mortars and snipers and machine-gun fire. Every time they hear a shell or a mortar overhead, all the men duck and (if they're panicked enough) drop down into the river of the trench floor. Davies only had to do that once, and now he figures if a shell lands on his head, so be it. It's better than lying face-first in the mud and filthy water running through the trench. He isn't even alone in his fatalism.
Despite this, the men stand to without grumbling every dawn and dusk and any time someone thinks there might be an attack by Germans on foot. Davies hasn't heard any murmurs of desertion or rifles "accidentally" going off and "accidentally" shooting someone in the foot. The men of his platoon, all twenty-six of them, take care of each other so that doesn't happen. Lt Fiske is trying to take care of them, and so is Captain Bradford, but when it comes down to the wire, the men who have your back, the men who are most immediately concerned for your mental health, are the privates standing in the rain or shoveling mud for a new trench right next to you.
Now Powell and Davies and the rest of their working party step back from the wall they've been trying to shore up in an attempt to see whether or not it's more stable. Lt Fiske comes around the corner of the line and tells them to get back to work. The next fire bay is in bad shape and a couple of funk holes have already collapsed. Fortunately there was no one in them, but that should give the men an indication of how shaky the walls are.
"They didn't patch me up in Amiens just so I could come back here and watch the trench fall in on itself," he says. "Or on you."
The men collect their equipment and splash off.
"Davies?" Lt Fiske says, gesturing after the rest of the work party.
"Sorry, sir," Davies says. "I still think the army should consider using bricks."
"Imagine being – " Lt Fiske cuts himself off and snaps to a salute. Davies turns around, curious. Captain Bradford has come up behind him. Davies salutes as well.
"Don't let me interrupt," Captain Bradford says pleasantly. Davies would like to know how he has managed such a friendly face and apparently good mood.
"Would the army consider sending us some bricks so we can build a decent trench wall?" Davies asks, too annoyed at the weather and the constant attempts to repair the falling trench walls to bother with propriety and regulations dealing with addressing a superior officer. He can feel Lt Fiske nudge him hard in the back. "Captain. Sir."
Captain Bradford appears to actually consider the possibility.
"It's just that sandbags get waterlogged and split or collapse," Davies goes on. "And mud, well. Mud makes bad building material. I was a bricklayer before the war, Captain. I know how to build a good wall."
"I can mention it to Lt Colonel Berridge," the captain offers. "But brick is much harder to transport than empty sandbags. I wouldn't want to haul it in this mud."
"Are you inspecting the platoon, sir?" Lt Fiske asks.
"Oh, no. Captain Harris already did that. I just want to make sure everyone is doing all right and that the men are wearing their helmets, just in case." There's been a lot of shelling, although not much of it back here, and even in the support trench the men are supposed to be fully kitted-out. They don't need to carry their rifles with them everywhere, but they should still have their weapons fairly close to hand.
Lt Fiske adjusts his helmet, which he had pushed back so he could see better under the rim of it.
"You're with a working party, no?" the captain asks. Davies and Lt Fiske both nod. "Good. I don't want to keep you."
"Thank you, sir," Lt Fiske says, taking the dismissal for what it is and walking off towards the rest of the working party, apparently assuming Davies will follow.
"Mr Davies. You were a bricklayer?"
"I was, Captain. Worked with my stepfather. I want to go back to it after the war." Why is he keeping me? Wasn't I just dismissed?
"I'm sorry, I'm keeping you from your work." He looks genuinely apologetic. "We can discuss the building trades another time." He grins and follows Lt Fiske. And for once, Davies doesn't judge his captain and doesn't wonder at it. He just shakes his head at the reliably weird reactions of his company commander, picks up his trench tool, and starts off towards the next weak point in the trench.
Which is of course when he hears the shell.
He crouches down against the back wall of the trench, hoping the shell will clear it and land on the ground behind him. Instead the shell lands practically on top of him, and the last thing he's fully conscious of is the loud, oddly wet, splatty boom as it hits the ground and explodes, making the trench wall shudder and creak and dislodging mud and sandbags and broken revetting down onto his head.
And the next thing he's conscious of after that is lying on his back on a cot, with someone's hand on his forehead. He must be home ill, and his mum is touching his skin to judge whether or not he has a fever.
It takes a minute but he realizes that the cot is more saggy than his bed at home, and he's wearing trousers rather than pajama bottoms, and the room feels dank and smells like too many bodies in too small a space, and he can hear unmistakably male noises around him.
He opens his eyes and the first thing he sees – how strange – is Captain Bradford, bareheaded and looking a little worried but mostly utterly exhausted.
"Oh good," he says, smiling a relieved-looking smile, "you're awake."
So it wasn't his mum's hand on his forehead, testing his temperature.
"What happened?" Davies croaks, now that it's painfully obvious that he isn't ill at home.
"A shell landed on the trench and caused a landslide. You were a bit buried."
Davies tries to remember. There was a shell, that's right. It came over just as he was going to find the rest of the working party to deal with another section of wall. He'd just been talking about bricklaying.
"We had to dig you out," Captain Bradford continues. His voice has gone quiet so that Davies has to strain to hear him. "I brought you to the first aid post." So they're back in the reserve trench.
"Captain," someone says over Davies' head, "we need to examine him now that he's awake."
"Right, right." Captain Bradford nods, runs his hand through his hair, picks up his hat, and stands. "Let me know. You get some rest, Mr Davies."
"Captain carried you in here on his back," the orderly says, pulling down the blanket covering Davies and feeling his ribs. Now that he's fully conscious, Davies is sore all over. And no wonder – it sounds as if an entire section of trench wall fell on top of him. He remembers feeling the ground shake behind him as the shell hit it, and wondering briefly if the sandbags were going to hold.
He guesses they didn't.
"Yelled at us to do something," the orderly continues. Davies can see his sleeve. He's a corporal. Must be with the Royal Army Medical Corps. "You were covered with mud. We couldn't even tell if you were hurt or not."
"Was I?"
"Not as bad as you'd think, for being dug out of a trench. A lot of bruising, no broken bones." He finishes his inspection and pulls the blanket back up. "Good thing you were wearing your helmet. You're a lucky man, Private Davies."
Davies guesses he is.
words: 2064
total words: 34,049
note: i couldn't talk to my medical consultant (aka dad) before i wrote this, so i have no idea if you can be mostly buried by wet sandbags and bits of wood lattice and oh yeah a lot of mud and dirt and not sustain any broken bones. for the sake of not sending davies home yet we are going to pretend that this is possible.
I am still alive although very wet. If I knew France would be this miserable I would have brought a good waterproof coat and better boots. The mud gets into everything, even our rations, and you do not want to know what the tea tastes like.
We have seen action, a lot of it. I have been very lucky to not be hurt, except for some cuts on my legs where I was hit with shrapnel. I say this not so you worry but so you know that your boy is still in one piece. I healed well. I have lost some friends, though, other men in my platoon. It is very hard.
Lt Fiske (my platoon cmdr) was wounded in July but has come back to the battalion, which is some good news. He's a good man. The company cmdr is looking after us too. He calls us his men and I would say he really cares about our welfare. He thinks of himself as one of us, although he is very posh and Public School, but we trust him.
Please send me some good socks and a muffler. It is getting cold and as I said, everything is wet. If you should see Mrs Powell and she should ask after Dickon, tell her he is fine. We are taking care of each other.
Love to Ada and Caro too. I will write them their own letters so they do not have to share.
Tommy
Davies doesn't want to give his parents or his sisters any details about the front or the fighting or how miserable it really is living in a trench. One night he climbed over the parapet and slept on the muddy ground behind the barbed wire, risking shell and mortar and German sniper fire, just because he couldn't stand the thought of sleeping in the flooded trench one more night. The best he can say is that some of the rats have washed away, and the threat of lice isn't as bad.
But he has heard that two men from B Company have already been sent to a base hospital with trench foot because there is no way to keep their feet and socks and boots dry, so their feet swell up inside their boots. In the worst case, a soldier could lose his foot to gangrene and amputation. Captain Bradford keeps telling them to take care to at least change their socks whenever possible, and he understands that the weather makes that difficult but the other option is trench foot and they don't want that.
Which they don't.
It hasn't gotten quite cold enough at night for the risk of frostbite, but Beauchamp, one of the men in his platoon, keeps saying that he can already predict that the winter will be a bad one. But he's only sixteen and like most of them he's lived his whole life in London, so how does he know what the weather will do?
"As long as it stops raining, I don't care," Powell grumbles as they try to shore up one of the trench walls. The weather makes repair work on the trenches a neverending job. Davies has even suggested to Lt Fiske that the army consider bricks rather than sandbags or the wooden revetting that the Germans use. Bricks are stable and solid and more waterproof than sandbags, and he knows how to lay a good strong wall with them.
The problem, Lt Fiske said, was that the mortar needs to be able to dry. As it was drizzling when he said that, his point was well made. And while Davies has occasionally laid bricks in the rain – he lives in London, rain is an inevitability – he wouldn't want to do an entire load-bearing wall in the wet.
Davies' only answer to Powell now is to heave a shovelful of mud up and over the back wall of the trench.
They have been moving back and forth between the support trench and the front line, with the occasional stint in the reserve trench. It seems to Davies that the British army is still trying to take the same few miles it has been trying to take since July, and he can't see the point in it any more. There is a lot of shelling back and forth, as well as mortars and snipers and machine-gun fire. Every time they hear a shell or a mortar overhead, all the men duck and (if they're panicked enough) drop down into the river of the trench floor. Davies only had to do that once, and now he figures if a shell lands on his head, so be it. It's better than lying face-first in the mud and filthy water running through the trench. He isn't even alone in his fatalism.
Despite this, the men stand to without grumbling every dawn and dusk and any time someone thinks there might be an attack by Germans on foot. Davies hasn't heard any murmurs of desertion or rifles "accidentally" going off and "accidentally" shooting someone in the foot. The men of his platoon, all twenty-six of them, take care of each other so that doesn't happen. Lt Fiske is trying to take care of them, and so is Captain Bradford, but when it comes down to the wire, the men who have your back, the men who are most immediately concerned for your mental health, are the privates standing in the rain or shoveling mud for a new trench right next to you.
Now Powell and Davies and the rest of their working party step back from the wall they've been trying to shore up in an attempt to see whether or not it's more stable. Lt Fiske comes around the corner of the line and tells them to get back to work. The next fire bay is in bad shape and a couple of funk holes have already collapsed. Fortunately there was no one in them, but that should give the men an indication of how shaky the walls are.
"They didn't patch me up in Amiens just so I could come back here and watch the trench fall in on itself," he says. "Or on you."
The men collect their equipment and splash off.
"Davies?" Lt Fiske says, gesturing after the rest of the work party.
"Sorry, sir," Davies says. "I still think the army should consider using bricks."
"Imagine being – " Lt Fiske cuts himself off and snaps to a salute. Davies turns around, curious. Captain Bradford has come up behind him. Davies salutes as well.
"Don't let me interrupt," Captain Bradford says pleasantly. Davies would like to know how he has managed such a friendly face and apparently good mood.
"Would the army consider sending us some bricks so we can build a decent trench wall?" Davies asks, too annoyed at the weather and the constant attempts to repair the falling trench walls to bother with propriety and regulations dealing with addressing a superior officer. He can feel Lt Fiske nudge him hard in the back. "Captain. Sir."
Captain Bradford appears to actually consider the possibility.
"It's just that sandbags get waterlogged and split or collapse," Davies goes on. "And mud, well. Mud makes bad building material. I was a bricklayer before the war, Captain. I know how to build a good wall."
"I can mention it to Lt Colonel Berridge," the captain offers. "But brick is much harder to transport than empty sandbags. I wouldn't want to haul it in this mud."
"Are you inspecting the platoon, sir?" Lt Fiske asks.
"Oh, no. Captain Harris already did that. I just want to make sure everyone is doing all right and that the men are wearing their helmets, just in case." There's been a lot of shelling, although not much of it back here, and even in the support trench the men are supposed to be fully kitted-out. They don't need to carry their rifles with them everywhere, but they should still have their weapons fairly close to hand.
Lt Fiske adjusts his helmet, which he had pushed back so he could see better under the rim of it.
"You're with a working party, no?" the captain asks. Davies and Lt Fiske both nod. "Good. I don't want to keep you."
"Thank you, sir," Lt Fiske says, taking the dismissal for what it is and walking off towards the rest of the working party, apparently assuming Davies will follow.
"Mr Davies. You were a bricklayer?"
"I was, Captain. Worked with my stepfather. I want to go back to it after the war." Why is he keeping me? Wasn't I just dismissed?
"I'm sorry, I'm keeping you from your work." He looks genuinely apologetic. "We can discuss the building trades another time." He grins and follows Lt Fiske. And for once, Davies doesn't judge his captain and doesn't wonder at it. He just shakes his head at the reliably weird reactions of his company commander, picks up his trench tool, and starts off towards the next weak point in the trench.
Which is of course when he hears the shell.
He crouches down against the back wall of the trench, hoping the shell will clear it and land on the ground behind him. Instead the shell lands practically on top of him, and the last thing he's fully conscious of is the loud, oddly wet, splatty boom as it hits the ground and explodes, making the trench wall shudder and creak and dislodging mud and sandbags and broken revetting down onto his head.
And the next thing he's conscious of after that is lying on his back on a cot, with someone's hand on his forehead. He must be home ill, and his mum is touching his skin to judge whether or not he has a fever.
It takes a minute but he realizes that the cot is more saggy than his bed at home, and he's wearing trousers rather than pajama bottoms, and the room feels dank and smells like too many bodies in too small a space, and he can hear unmistakably male noises around him.
He opens his eyes and the first thing he sees – how strange – is Captain Bradford, bareheaded and looking a little worried but mostly utterly exhausted.
"Oh good," he says, smiling a relieved-looking smile, "you're awake."
So it wasn't his mum's hand on his forehead, testing his temperature.
"What happened?" Davies croaks, now that it's painfully obvious that he isn't ill at home.
"A shell landed on the trench and caused a landslide. You were a bit buried."
Davies tries to remember. There was a shell, that's right. It came over just as he was going to find the rest of the working party to deal with another section of wall. He'd just been talking about bricklaying.
"We had to dig you out," Captain Bradford continues. His voice has gone quiet so that Davies has to strain to hear him. "I brought you to the first aid post." So they're back in the reserve trench.
"Captain," someone says over Davies' head, "we need to examine him now that he's awake."
"Right, right." Captain Bradford nods, runs his hand through his hair, picks up his hat, and stands. "Let me know. You get some rest, Mr Davies."
"Captain carried you in here on his back," the orderly says, pulling down the blanket covering Davies and feeling his ribs. Now that he's fully conscious, Davies is sore all over. And no wonder – it sounds as if an entire section of trench wall fell on top of him. He remembers feeling the ground shake behind him as the shell hit it, and wondering briefly if the sandbags were going to hold.
He guesses they didn't.
"Yelled at us to do something," the orderly continues. Davies can see his sleeve. He's a corporal. Must be with the Royal Army Medical Corps. "You were covered with mud. We couldn't even tell if you were hurt or not."
"Was I?"
"Not as bad as you'd think, for being dug out of a trench. A lot of bruising, no broken bones." He finishes his inspection and pulls the blanket back up. "Good thing you were wearing your helmet. You're a lucky man, Private Davies."
Davies guesses he is.
words: 2064
total words: 34,049
note: i couldn't talk to my medical consultant (aka dad) before i wrote this, so i have no idea if you can be mostly buried by wet sandbags and bits of wood lattice and oh yeah a lot of mud and dirt and not sustain any broken bones. for the sake of not sending davies home yet we are going to pretend that this is possible.
