Pat Kelleher - Black Hand Gang

“One of these days,” said Porgy, spitting on his palms and gripping his shovel before starting to fill another sandbag. “Burial party? I know it’s a bad lot but—”

“It’s worse than you think,” said Atkins. “Don’t tell me you can’t smell it?”

“Thought that were Gutsy’s feet,” said Lucky.

“Oi!” warned Gutsy from where he was leaning against the side of the trench taking a slug from his water canteen.

Ginger, who was on watch, sat on an old ammo box, his eyes nervously darting around the unfamiliar landscape.

“I hope you’re keeping your eyes peeled, Ginger. I don’t want to become a devil dog’s dinner,” griped Half Pint.

“Uh huh!” he said, nodding his head.

“He seems to have calmed down a bit in the last few days,” said Atkins to Gazette.

But Gazette wasn’t listening. At least, not to him.

“Shh!” he said, holding up a hand.

“I wish you’d stop doing that!” said Atkins.

Gazette silenced him with a scowl.

There came a low soft roar like the roll of distant thunder.

“Take cover!” yelled Ginger, leaping down into the trench. The roar continued building. It wasn’t a shell or thunder, it was an earth tremor.

The walls of the trenches began to vibrate, sandbags jittering over the edge.

“Get out, get out!” Atkins yelled as Porgy thrust his hand down from the lip. Atkins shoved Ginger towards him. Porgy grabbed his hand and yanked him up. Atkins scrambled up using an old scaling ladder. The wall collapsed, sliding down into the trench and undoing several hours of hard work before the tremors subsided. Muted yells arose from all around as men scrambled out of the trenches onto the open ground above. A more plaintive and urgent, if unintelligible cry issued from nearby.

“Someone’s trapped,” said Pot Shot. They slipped back down into the trench and worked their way along until they came to the junction that led to the latrines.

Ketch had been doing his business, sat over the hole in the plank across the pit. When the tremors hit, the plank must have juddered loose because there was Ketch, khaki pants round his ankles, in the slurry pit of excrement below. Buckets of urine had also fallen over, drenching him in their pungent contents.

“Get me out!” he screamed through the filth.

The section looked at each other, smirks breaking out on their faces as their corporal struggled to right himself. No one was willing to go near the collapsed latrines and risk a similar ducking themselves.

Atkins looked around the collapsed trench. Seeing Ketch’s rifle, he picked it up and, checking that the lock was on, held the butt as he thrust the barrel towards Ketch.

“Grab hold!

But the corporal’s hands were slick with sewage and, as he pulled himself out, he slipped back with a splash causing the section to double up in raucous laughter.

Atkins persisted though and Ketch was able to loop his arm through the rifle’s shoulder strap as he pulled him out, almost losing his own footing in the process.

Ketch lay panting on the floor of the trench coughing and spluttering, his sodden trousers round his ankles. Atkins slit open a sandbag with his bayonet and passed it to Ketch who snatched it from his hand ungratefully and began to wipe the excreta off his face.

“You!” he spat. “You did this!”

“Corporal?”

“You were told to put this latrine right. You and Evans. Did you think it would be a big joke? A big laugh? Well you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face one day, Atkins. You mark my words. You’ll get what’s coming to you.” He got to his feet and advanced towards them. They backed off, unwilling to be smeared by the malodorous mud.

“It was the earth tremor!” said Atkins. “You must have felt it, we all did.”

Ketch opened his mouth to say something, stopped, gagged and wretched. The section’s delight turned to disgust. They backed away from him out of the trench, hearing another heave as vomit splattered wetly on the trench floor.

STILL SNORTING AND guffawing over Ketch’s misfortune they got back to the section of trench they had been rebuilding and found Ginger billing and cooing. In his arms he held his tunic inside out and crumpled like a nest. They could hear something snuffling about inside it.

“Look, Only!” said Ginger thrusting his hands out towards Atkins, inviting him to examine the jacket’s contents.

“Oh god, don’t say Haig’s back!” muttered Gazette.

Atkins peered over cautiously, not knowing what to expect, half anticipating something to leap out of the bundled cloth and bite him. He caught a flash of yellow fur and saw a long nose sniffling about in the makeshift khaki nest.

“What the hell is that? Ginger, what on earth have you found this time?”

“His name’s Gordon,” he replied beaming. He moved his hand under the tunic to open it out, revealing a small rat-sized creature with short yellowish fur, small black beady eyes and a long tubular snout. It didn’t seem to have jaws or teeth. It snuffled eagerly around in the jacket, completely uninterested in the soldiers now gathering around it. “I found it,” said Ginger. “He was just sort of wondering around, like he was lost… like us.”

“Fuck’s sake, Ginger, everything we’ve come across so far has tried to kill us or eat us or both. You’ve got no idea what this thing is!” said Gutsy.

Mercy did. He knew what it was straight away. It was an opportunity.

“No, no,” he said. “Steady on, lads. I think Ginger is onto something. Look.”

They looked. Then they looked puzzled.

“All I see is some blonde rodent with a furry trunk,” said Porgy.

“At what it’s doin’, smart-arse!”

Atkins looked again. It seemed to be excitedly running its snout along the seams of the jacket. A small long red tongue flickered out. “It’s chatting,” he said. “Bloody ’ell. It’s eating the lice!”

As they watched, the otherworldly rodent pushed its snout into and along the seams, sucking up eggs and lice alike with great relish.

“We could clean up with this, fellas. This is the proverbial golden goose. No more feeling hitchy-koo. They’ll pay through the nose to have their regulations cleaned of chatts. Gawd love us, any of us would! Gordon, here, is what you might call a Hitchy-kootioner.”

There was a chorus of nods.

“Me next!” said Porgy hopping to pull off his boot before carefully pulling off his woollen sock and dangling it in front of Gordon. “Here, boy. Here,” Gordon lifted its head and sniffed tentatively at the warm, damp, writhing sock. Porgy dropped the stinking sock into the coat. Immediately Gordon thrust its snout into it.

“And what good is all that money going to do out here?” said Pot Shot. “Where can you spend it?”

“Jeez, steady on, Pot Shot, can’t a man have a dream? I’ll save it and spend it when I get back.”

Gordon was now totally enclosed by the sock, although from the snuffling and snorts that were issuing from it, it didn’t seem to mind.

Already Atkins and the others were thinking of the booming business ahead; five hundred lice ridden, lousy men at thruppence a head? Gordon was going to make a killing for them.

GRANTHAM HAD TAKEN to pacing about his new HQ, trying to avoid the vista outside, as if by ignoring it it would go away. He couldn’t cope with it. There was no section about this in the Field Manual or the Standing Orders. Without them he didn’t know what to do.

The man was fast becoming a liability. He commissioned innumerable reports, seeking to bury the stark horror of their situation under a mountain of minutiae, so Everson found himself mired in endless company meetings.

“Trench repairs are well under way,” Everson reported. “The backfilling, blocking and fortification of the open trench ends will be complete soon. Nothing should be able to enfilade or flank us then. Second Lieutenant Baxter of the Machine Gun section is constructing new emplacements for his guns. We’ve also set up a trench mortar in the old farmhouse. However if we want to repair the trenches properly then we’re going to need more wood. At the moment we’re down to cannibalising duckboards for revetments.”