William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

“How far are their trenches?” he asked.

“Couple of hundred yards away, here. You can’t see them, the ground rises in the middle, ever so slightly.”

Lysander knew this, just as he knew that the shattered masonry was the remains of a family tomb. This was to be his reference point at night.

“What about that ruin?”

“They ran a sap out to it for a listening post but we bombed them out a month ago. They haven’t come back.”

“I want to have a good look at it tonight, Sergeant. Are there drainage ditches?”

“A few. Quite choked and overgrown. See that clump of willows — to the right?”

Lysander swivelled his binoculars. “Yes.”

“That’s the start of the deepest one. Runs across our front then dog-legs into Frenchie’s wire.”

Lysander made some token notes on his map — he had his bearings clearer now — and he had his little torch and his compass. He should be all right.

“What time do you want to go out?” Foley asked. Lysander noticed the pointed absence of ‘sir’, now.

“When it’s darkest. Two o’clock, three o’clock.”

“It’s a very short night. Summer solstice’s just gone.”

“We won’t be out long. I just have to confirm a few details. You’ll be back in half an hour. We’ll be back,” he added quickly.

“Mr Gorlice-Law is coming with us, it seems,” Foley said. “He’s not done any patrolling yet. Captain Dodd thought it might be a nice dry-run for him.”

“No,” Lysander said. “Just you and me, Foley.”

“I’ll look after the little chap, don’t you worry, sir.” He smiled. “Best to keep the captain happy.”

♦

In the afternoon two RFC spotter aeroplanes flew over the trenches and for the first time Lysander heard gunfire from the German lines. Then there was a distant shouting from somewhere in no man’s land. A solitary voice. The men began to laugh among themselves.

“What’s he shouting? Who is it?” Lysander asked Foley.

“He crawls out most afternoons when it’s quiet and abuses us. You could set your watch by him.”

Lysander stood up on the fire-step and listened. Faintly but distinctly from the long grass came the cry of, “Hey, English cunts! Go home, fucking English cunts!”

Lysander thought he could hear laughter from the German lines also.

♦

After the evening ‘stand-to’, he began to feel his nervousness increase again. Once more he silently ran through his instructions, mentally ticked off everything he had to do. Covertly, he checked the two Mills № 5 bombs in his pack and verified, for the twentieth time, that the detonators were in. Gorlice-Law was full of enthusiasm for the patrol, blackening his face and cleaning and loading and reloading his revolver.

“We’re just looking at the ground,” Lysander felt obliged to tell him. “I don’t think it’s worth your while.”

“I only arrived two days ago,” Gorlice-Law said. “I can’t wait.”

“Well, the first sign of trouble and we run for it.”

Dodd made him clean his face and set up the ‘dining table’ — half a door placed on two ammunition boxes — saying, “I don’t intend to sit down to eat with a blackamoor, Lieutenant,” and they were served up a supper of tinned stew and biscuits followed by tinned plum-duff and the rest of Lysander’s whisky. As it grew darker, Foley arrived with the rum ration. It was strong liquor, Lysander thought, with a powerful odour of molasses and thick like cough medicine. He could see that Gorlice-Law was feeling the effects on top of the whisky — he had a glazed expression on his face and it was visibly obvious when he tried to concentrate — eyebrows buckling in a frown, lips pursed, his speech slow and deliberate.

Towards half past two in the morning, Lysander steered him up the trench to join Foley at the jumping-off point. A short wooden ladder was set against the facing wall opposite the gap in the wire. Foley wore a rolled-up Balaclava on his head, a dirty leather jerkin with a webbing belt around it, shorts, sandshoes and extra socks tied round his knees. He had a revolver in his pocket and a whistle on a lanyard round his neck.

“Three blasts and we head for home,” he said, looking at Lysander, askance.

“What is it, Foley?”

“You’re fully dressed, sir. Like you were going on parade.”

“I don’t have any other kit with me.”

Foley had a tin of black candle grease and he painted some stripes on Lysander’s face. He turned to look at Gorlice-Law, who had stripped himself of jacket, webbing and puttees and had thrust his revolver in his belt.

“You do everything I say, now, Mr Gorlice-Law. Understand?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

Foley put up a pink Verey rocket to let the battalion front know that a patrol was going out and they clambered up the ladder and over the sandbags, advancing at a crouch through the wire and on into the engulfing darkness of no man’s land.

♦

It was a moonless night and yet Lysander was still astonished at how quickly he lost his bearings as they crawled through the long grass. After a minute or so he had no idea in which direction he was heading as he followed Foley — with Gorlice-Law bringing up the rear. A white flare went up from the German lines and for a few seconds the world turned brightly monochrome. He had a sudden temptation to stand up and see where he was. They all froze.

“Where’s the ruin?” he hissed at Foley as the glaring light dimmed and fizzled out.

“About fifty yards, diagonal, right.”

“Take us towards it.”

Foley changed course and they crawled on. A few miles north some kind of ‘stunt’ was taking place — star shells and distant artillery, the throat-clearing expectoration of machine-gun fire. Lysander glanced back — nothing was happening in the 2 / 10 thLoyal Manchester Fusiliers’ trenches, however. Black sleeping countryside. Even the precautionary, exploratory rocket-flares seemed to have died down. Everybody keen on a good night’s sleep.

“How far are we now?” Lysander tapped Foley’s ankle.

“Over that little rise and you’re there.”

It was time.

“Stay here,” he said to Foley. “Don’t leave him.”

“No, sir. Don’t go alone. Let me come with you.”

“It’s an order, Foley. Look after the lieutenant.”

Lysander crawled away from them up the slope — just the smallest undulation, but it gave him enough height to see the pale tumbled blocks of stone from the demolished tomb. He looked right for the ravaged elms and thought he saw their darker shape against the night sky. Ruins, elms, drainage ditch — at least he had physical reference points to aim for in the fluid blackness and the whispering grass all around him.

He slithered down the reverse side of the slope towards the ruined tomb. It must have been quite an edifice, he thought, as he drew nearer, some local dignitary who wanted his family name to last. Well, he hadn’t reckoned for –

Lysander froze. He heard a squeaking noise. Rats?…But it was too sustained. Dripping water? Then it stopped. He slipped his torch out of his kitbag and the two Mills bombs. Pull the pin, count to three, throw and move away, smartly. These explosions would be the diversion, the cause of his ‘death’ that would allow him to make the French lines.

The squeaking noise started again. It was very faint. He was up against the first blocks of stone from the crumbled wall. He aimed his torch in the direction he thought the noise was coming from and switched it on for a second. In the brief flare of light he saw two white faces turn and look up from a trench-sap dug deep under the base of the tomb. He saw a man with a black moustache and a very fair young boy’s face and the turning spindle of a roll of telephone wire being unwound — squeaking quietly.