William Boyd - The New Confessions

We stood to at half past four, an hour before dawn. Our objectives were the two ruined farms. D Company was going for the right-hand one, along with the bantams on our right flank. We were to capture the farm, secure it and repel and counterattack until the second wave passed us. All night the ridge had been pounded by our guns. As we lined up in the fire trench the bombardment was still going on. Louise passed among us, white-faced and muttering what I suppose were words of encouragement. I could not hear him above the noise of the shells. Beside me stood Pawsey. On the other side was Somerville-Start. He held a ladder; so did I. I was as ready as I would ever be.

But I had forgotten about the rum. The quartermaster sergeant passed among us, pouring out the tots from the big ceramic bottle. The rum looked black, evil, thick as molasses. I drank my allocation — half a wineglass, I suppose — in two gulps, and I was seriously drunk within a minute. I saw Pawsey vomit his issue and lean gagging against the trench wall. Somerville-Start’s face wore a kind of fixed, zealous grimace — he was breathing fiercely through his nose, both hands on his ladder.

Then everyone urinated. I suppose an order must have been given. The trench filled with vinegary urine steam. I was giddy. I felt the trench had acquired a steep, dipping gradient to the left, down which I might at any moment slide. I held on to my ladder, and adjusted the weight of my sack of bombs. I never heard the whistle go, but suddenly I saw people begin to climb their ladders. Somerville-Start and I set off simultaneously.

I do not remember my first unprotected view of no-man’s-land — that initial astonishing second — because Somerville-Start got shot in the mouth. The moment his face cleared the parapet I saw his teeth shatter as they were hit by the bullet, and a plume of blood, like a ponytail, issued from the nape of his neck. Several teeth, or teeth fragments, hit me in the face, stinging me like thrown gravel, and one piece cut me badly above my right eye. My eye filled with warm blood and I blundered over the sandbags blindly, wiping my eye with my sleeve. I sensed Pawsey going by me. My vision cleared and I saw him running off in the direction of the ridge. There was no sign of the ridge itself — the creeping barrage some fifty yards in front of us obscured everything.

“Think!” I said out loud. I crouched down and scampered forward, almost on all fours, like a baboon.

“ Stand up, that man! ” somebody bellowed.

I ignored him.

We were now, I realized, being shelled in our turn, and I suppose there must have been machine-gun fire from somewhere because I saw some bantams on my right gently falling over. I scrabbled after the creeping barrage, dragging my rifle on the ground. As far as I was concerned the world was still canted over towards the left and I kept falling over heavily on my left side, bruising my left knee. I moved like some demented cripple.

Then a shell exploded near me and the blast of air snatched my rifle from my grasp and whipped my helmet from my head. Warm earth hit my face and I felt the weal of the chin strap hot on my throat I was stunned immobile for some seconds. Then, crablike, I scuttled into the fuming crater.

Kite was already there, on his back, wounded. He held up the stump of his right arm, fringed like a brush, not bleeding but clotted with earth.

“Somebody’s gone and shot my bloody arm off!” he shouted.

I blinked. I screwed up my eyes to adjust focus.

“Damn nuisance,” Kite said. He seemed wholly unperturbed.

I wondered if I should help him.

“D’you want a hand?” I yelled, in all innocence.

“Very funny, Todd,” he said petulantly. “Hardly the time or place.” He began to move. “I can make it on my own.” He crawled back towards our lines.

I looked round. I could not see a soul. The din was so general it seemed quite normal, like the factory floor of an iron foundry.… I still had my sack of bombs. I wondered where I should throw them. I slithered forward, past some small dead bantams. I saw what looked like a horrifically mangled side of beef, flayed by a maniac butcher with an ax. The melancholy of anatomy. At the top there was an ear, some hair and part of a cheek. At the bottom, a bare knee with a smudge of dirt on it.

I crawled on until I reached some tangled wire. The German line? I glanced back. I could make out nothing. I turned: was that the farmhouse up ahead? It should have been easy for me to determine — we were meant to run uphill, after all — but my dipping, left-biased world had made me immune to gradients. I had the disarming impression, all at once, that I was in fact moving parallel to our front line. So I turned, with some difficulty, right, leaning into the slope, and felt I was falling. I immediately ran across Pawsey and Louise. Pawsey was shot through the chest. He had dry cherry foam on his lips. He was trying to speak but only pink bubbles formed and popped in his mouth. Louise, I guessed, had gone to help him and — so it seemed — had been caught by a concentrated burst of machine-gun fire in the throat, which was badly torn. He was quite dead. One bullet had taken off his nose with the neatness of a razor.

I looked up. The barrage had lifted. I could now hear the dreary clatter of machine-gun fire. I saw bantams running back to our lines. More bubbles popped between Pawsey’s lips. I grabbed him under the arms and began to drag him back to safety. I had not gone ten yards when he died. There is an unmistakable limpness about a dead person that no living being can imitate. Instinct tells you when it has arrived. But I needed no instinct, remember: I had dragged dead men from the surf at Coxyde-Bains. Poor Pawsey felt the same.

I laid him down. There was no point in dragging back a dead man. Heavy firing was coming from further up the line, and a few shells were now bursting on the ridge, more an acknowledgment of the attack’s failure than an attempt to silence the German guns. My section of no-man’s-land was now strangely quiet. All the same I zigzagged back to the lines, moving carefully from shell hole to shell hole. In one particularly large hole I saw a couple of bantams searching corpses for loot. I passed by on the other side.

I was helped into the trench by men I did not recognize. This must be the second wave of the attack, I guessed, whose presence had not been required. I was passed down the line into the support trenches. Eventually I found my bits and pieces and sat down. I felt terrible. My brain was tender and bruised. I was nauseous. My mouth was dry and rank. My legs were visibly shaking and my joints ached. So this is battle fatigue, I thought. I know now I was suffering from a massive hangover. My first.

After a while I managed to light a cigarette. I put my trench cap on and waited for the others. Then I began to remember, piecemeal. Kite, with no hand. Louise and Pawsey, dead.…

A corporal from another platoon came over. He looked very tired.

“Any sign of Lieutenant McNiece?”

I told him about Louise. And Kite and Pawsey. I wondered if the others were all right.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t find a soul from my platoon.”

“You haven’t seen any of my lot, have you?”

“I saw someone … well, explode . Must have been a bomber. Whole sack of bombs went up. Took about five chaps with him.”

“Good God!”

“Are you all right?” he asked. “You’ve got blood all over your face.”

“Just a scratch,” I said reflexively, followed by a warm spurt of pride at my nonchalance. I put my hand up to my forehead. I felt a curious lump embedded above my eyebrow. It moved. I plucked it out with a wince. It was a tooth. One of Somerville-Start’s incisors. I still have the scar.