Pat Kelleher - Black Hand Gang

Atkins stood in his bay with Gazette and Ginger. Porgy, Gutsy and Mercy manned the bay to their left. Beyond them were Captain Grantham, 1 Platoon and a flanking Vickers machine gun post. To their right was a second machine gun emplacement and the remains of 3 and 4 Platoons, under Lieutenant Jeffries. Atkins didn’t envy Pot Shot, Lucky and Half Pint. They’d drawn the short straw and were twenty yards further out in the forward observation post in No Man’s Land.

“Psst!” It was Ginger. Atkins tried to ignore him. “Psst!”

“What?” Atkins flicked his eyes from his rifle barrel. Ginger grinned at him and lowered his eyes towards his own tunic. Atkins followed the glance. There, peeking out the top of Ginger’s shirt, was Haig, his pet rat. Ginger looked absurdly pleased with himself and started making chtching noises into his chest.

“Bloody hell, Ginger,” Atkins rolled his eyes, a smile flickering at the edge of his lips as he returned to his vigil. Hunkered in the distance the nearby forest seemed as impenetrable as the old Hun line. The noises emanating from it changed as the sun sank, becoming wilder and more guttural as if the night signalled the onset of some feral reverie. He shivered involuntarily. The howls and chatterings played on his nerves more keenly than the never-ending drum roll of artillery barrages ever had. By comparison the abrupt ferocity of Whizz-Bangs, Jack Johnsons and Woolly Bears were as comforting as a home-fire.

More unsettling though was the evening breeze. He was so used to the smell of gangrene and feet, of shell hole mud and corpse liquor, of cordite and overflowing latrines, that the eddies of warm, damp wind caught him by surprise, bringing with them, as they did, brief intoxicating respites to his deadened senses. Tied as he was to his post, fleeting siren zephyrs of air laden with captivating scents danced lightly around him, allowing him snatches of exotic perfumes or heady animal musks; the ephemeral aromas tempting and teasing, offering a world beyond imagination.

There, that note. He closed his eyes and inhaled gently, afraid the scent would evaporate before he could savour it, it was like… like Lily of the Valley — Flora, that last night. They’d been to see the latest Charlie Chaplin at the Broughtonthwaite Alhambra. She was laughing. The cobbles — the cobbles were slick with rain, the faint smell of hops from Everson’s Brewery hung in the night air. Her foot slipped on the greasy sets as they crossed the road and she’d linked her arm through his to steady herself. She chattered on about Old Mother Murphy, young Jessie in the end terrace and Mr Wethering at Mafeking Street School but he didn’t hear her.

He’d known Flora forever. They’d sparked clogs and scabbed knees together as nippers in the same back alleys. They’d lived two streets apart their whole lives but she’d never really looked at him that way until he’d got the khaki on.

“You look ever so handsome in your uniform, Thomas.”

“Get away!” he said, dismissively, then: “Really? Well, it’s a bit on the large side and these trousers don’t half itch, but if you ask the Company Quart—”

“Sssh.” She put a finger to his lips.

She was so close he could smell her hair, the scent of her perfume — Lily of the Valley — the brief scent vanished and the familiar fug of war and corruption closed about him once more.

Raucous cries rang overhead as furred creatures with long necks, leathery wings and hooked beaks flocked into the sky from somewhere in the hills, congregating over the muddy sea of the battlefield. They dived and banked with rasping calls, like gulls in the wake of a fishing trawler, tempted by the human harvest of No Man’s Land.

From somewhere down the line a couple of shots went off into the flock followed by the sharp, scolding bark of an NCO. The shooting ceased.

Atkins shifted his body uneasily against the wooden planking of the revetment and wiped his sweat-slick hands on his thighs before repositioning the stock of his rifle more snugly against his shoulder. He looked out again across the landscape of mud and wire towards the forest. He hated this time of day; as the light failed, shifting shadows played tricks on the eyes. It seemed to him that whatever gloom slunk sullenly in the forest was now flowing sinuously from it.

“What else is out there, d’y reckon?” he wondered. “I’m hoping for wild women myself.”

“Don’t know, but a target’s a target,” replied Gazette, his eye never leaving his rifle’s sight. It was clear he had his ‘business’ head on. “It’s either alive or dead.”

“Yeah, either way, Porgy’d probably make a pass at it, eh?”

Gazette didn’t reply.

“Never thought I’d miss Fritz,” said Atkins. “At least with ’im you knew what to expect; the odd Minniewerfer or Five Nine. You knew where you were.”

“Reckon you’ll have cause to be even more nostalgic by the time the night’s out,” said Gazette. That was Gazette — a real barrel of laughs, but you didn’t have him round for his sparkling repartee. He was the sharpest shooter in the platoon, so you forgave him the odd lapse in manners.

Ginger was no company at all, either. He whimpered and patted absent-mindedly at his tunic. The squeaking from inside it grew more frantic and agitated. As Ginger fumbled to catch his wretched rat his rifle slipped from his grasp. It landed heavily, butt first, on the duckboards. Atkins flinched but it didn’t go off.

“Fuck’s sake, pick your gun up y’daft sod. If Ketch catches you, that’s ‘casting away your arms in the presence of the enemy’,” Gazette hissed, his eyes never leaving the darkening landscape.

Ginger ignored them and carried on wittering and cooing to Haig.

“Shhh. Ginger. Button it!” Atkins’ brow creased, he cocked his head. “Gazette, you hear that?”

From out in the mud came a desperate scrabbling sound, like a drowning soldier trying to claw his way out of a slurry-filled shell hole.

“Just some poor injured sod out in No Man’s Land. Usually is. That or one of them hell hounds from this afternoon caught on the wire. Either way, be dead by morning.”

A scream went up from the forward observation post but it was stifled, drowned out by thousands of shrieking squeaks and the splatter of countless feet. In the fading light the mud itself seemed to ripple like a mirage. But it was no illusion.

From further up the line, the sound of surprised yelps, the discharge of rifles, spattered bursts of machine gun fire leapt from bay to bay towards them.

Alert, Gazette altered his stance almost imperceptibly, shifting his centre of gravity, bracing to absorb the anticipated kick of his Enfield.

“What is it?” Atkins asked.

Gazette just shrugged. He either didn’t know, or didn’t care.

Ginger shuffled about on the firestep as Haig skittered around inside his clothes, squealing, while his arms flailed and contorted trying to reach his ersatz pet. He pirouetted clumsily. Atkins tried to grab his webbing but Ginger tumbled from the firestep, falling awkwardly and cracking his head on the sodden duckboards, writhing and screaming as the rat seemed to bite and claw at him inside his clothing.

“Jesus! Shut him up!” snapped Gazette.

Atkins jumped down and clamped his hand over Ginger’s mouth.

“Keep quiet, you silly sod. You’ll end up getting us all killed if not up on a bloody charge!” Atkins was astride his chest now, a hand clamped over his mouth, trying to keep eye contact with the thrashing soldier, to calm him somehow, all the while trying to undo his tunic and shirt buttons one handed in order to free the damned rat.

“Ginger, calm down, mate. Stop it! It’s me, Only.”

Ginger’s eyes bulged and he tried to scream, but it was muffled by Atkins’ hand. Ginger sank his teeth into the skin between the thumb and forefinger.