Pat Kelleher: Black Hand Gang

“All right, lads?” he yawned.

That helped ease the queasy feeling in Atkins’ stomach. Gazette was the best sharp shooter in the platoon. If anyone was going to have your back on a Black Hand job you’d want it to be him.

There was a pile of equipment on the firestep by his feet.

“Right,” said Hobson, “take these.” He handed out pistols; Webley revolvers, usually reserved for officers but more practical in situations, such as this, that called for stealth. They each had their own bayonet and there were two sets of long-armed wirecutters. Atkins and Porgy got those. Hobson also gave them each a grey military issue blanket that he instructed them to wear across their backs in the manner of a cloak.

“It’ll help disguise your outline against German flares. If a flare goes up, don’t move. You’ll want to throw yourself on the ground but don’t, they’ll spot the movement and you’re a goner. If you freeze you could be tree stump, a shadow or a body on the wire,” he told them. “We’re goin’out to cut the German wire in preparation for tomorrow. So we make sure we do the job properly or it’ll be us and our mates paying the price if we don’t. We also want to take a shufti and make sure Fritz isn’t planning any nasty surprises. Don’t worry, I’ll have you all back in time for the big show.”

“Thanks, Sar’nt. You’re a real pal,” said Gutsy.

“Time for a fag, Sar’nt?” asked Hopkiss, trying to delay the inevitable.

“No. Follow me. Stick to me like glue. No one talks but me. Make sure you stay within an arm’s length of the next fellow. If you get lost make your way back here. And make sure you dozy ha’porths don’t forget the password: Hampstead.”

Atkins checked his bayonet in its sheath. He checked the chambers of the Webley revolver. They were full. The pistol had a loop fastened to the handle, which he slipped round his wrist.

There being no sally port available, Hobson put a ladder up against the revetment and was about to step on the bottom rung when another flare went up. He stopped, waited for the flare to die out, before rolling over the sandbag parapet with practised ease. His arm appeared back over the bags signalling the next man up. Porgy was already on the ladder and climbing. Gutsy stepped on below him and began his climb. It was Atkins’ turn next. As he stepped on the bottom rung, he felt a hand pat his thigh.

“Good luck, mate,” said Gazette. Aktins smiled weakly. He could feel his heart lifting him fractionally from the ladder with every beat as he lay against the rungs. He hadn’t felt a funk like this since that last night with Flora.

“Cheers. I’ll be back for breakfast.”

Another flare.

Above him, Gutsy froze, waiting for the light to die. Atkins looked up. All he could see was Gutsy’s big khaki-covered arse eclipsing everything. Blood let one rip and looked down between his legs, grinning.

“Fuck’s sakes, Gutsy!” hissed Gazette. “At least with the yellow cross we get a warning. Where’s me bloody gas helmet?”

A hiss rasped from over the parapet. “Get a move on, you two!”

Puffing, Gutsy rolled over the sandbags with as much grace as a carcass in his old butcher’s shop.

Atkins reached the top of the ladder. The nightscape before him never failed to chill him to the core. No Man’s Land. It was a contradiction in terms. You were never alone in No Man’s Land. During the day it was quiet, with generally nothing but the odd buzz of a sniper’s bullet cutting low over the ground or the crump of a Minniewerfer to disturb it. At night, though, it became a hive of activity; parties out repairing wire, laying new wire, digging saps, running reconnaissance, conducting trench raids. Both sides knew it. It was the most dangerous of times to be out and never dark for long, as flares burst in the air, momentarily illuminating bleak Futurist landscapes that left hellish after-images in the mind’s eye.

He saw Hobson and Porgy about four or five yards ahead, crawling along on their bellies. Gutsy was to his left. Atkins crawled forward using his elbows and knees. The mud was cold and slimy and within a minute his entire front, from chin to toes, was soaked. He and Gutsy made their way to where Sergeant Hobson and Porgy were waiting. About twenty yards ahead, they could make out the vague unearthly shapes of their own wire entanglements. Sergeant Hobson indicated a piece of soiled, white tape in the mud that led them to the gap in their own wire.

Now they truly were in No Man’s Land.

They crawled on, their progress achingly slow. Every time a flare bloomed in the sky, they would press themselves into the mud. It took them nearly an hour to crawl through the blasted landscape — peppered as it was with shell holes — up the gently inclining slope towards Harcourt Wood. About them Atkins could hear the foraging corpse rats feasting on the bodies of the fallen. They reached the German wire, some thirty yards short of a low stone wall that bordered the wood. There was a muffled shout, some distance over to the left and a brief spatter of machine gun fire, then nothing.

More waiting.

Hobson gestured to the left and rolled with a barely perceptible splash into a shallow shell hole just short of the wire. The others followed. Atkins slithered over the shallow lip to join them and found himself in a pool of water. Hobson beckoned them closer with a finger. They gathered their heads together while Hobson spoke in a low, slow voice.

“Wirecutters get ahead. Blood and I will cover you. If it all goes off, get back here sharpish. Got it? Just don’t take all night about it.”

Atkins nodded. As they crawled out of the shell hole toward the wire, Hobson and Gutsy took up their positions on the lip of the crater, pistols cocked and ready.

Atkins looked at Porgy as they reached the entanglement. Porgy crawled forward with his cutters, slipped the blades around the wire and snipped. There was a sharp tink and a dull tinny twang recoiled along the wire. Atkins froze until long after the sound died away, expecting a burst of machine gun fire to cut them down at any moment. But nothing happened. Porgy cut again.

Atkins gripped the wire between his own cutter blades and snipped, and snipped again. It took nearly an hour to cut though the entanglement, working his way along on his back under the thicket of Jerry wire until his arms ached and his muscles burned, but eventually it was done. A section of wire five or six yards across had been freed from its mooring.

They made their way back to the shell hole.

“All present and correct?” whispered Hobson. “Good. Let’s be off home shall we?”

As they began the slow crawl back towards their own lines, something gave way under Atkins’ palm and his left arm sank up to his elbow in the thick mud. A bubble formed on the surface and popped, releasing a cloying, sickly stench. His hand had gone through a corpse’s gas-distended stomach. Disturbed, several corpulent rats squeaked indignantly and darted off. He heaved, retching up several lumps of army stew and pulled his hand out of the mud. In an attempt to put some distance, any distance, between him and the corpse, he planted a knee down only to feel a crack of bones somewhere just below the surface of the slime. A red flare went up bathing everything in a hellish glow. Atkins looked down with horror to see the decomposing face of a French soldier lit by the lurid light, making shadows dance in the empty sockets of its eyes.

A burst of machine gun fire zipped over their heads. Hobson quickly indicated to a large Minnie crater with a flick of his hand. They headed for it, rolling down into the relative shelter of its shadow.

Unable to stop himself, Atkins slipped helplessly down the slick wet sides into the slurry-filled basin at the bottom, before coming up against wet muddy cloth. Fearing another corpse, he looked about wildly and met the gaze of a German soldier staring back with the same intensity of fear and surprise. They’d stumbled on a German patrol sheltering in the same shell-hole.