William Boyd - The New Confessions

The delayed shock arrived about an hour later. It was not so much what I had witnessed that overwhelmed me as the retrospective sense of awful peril I had been in. I saw myself running foolishly here and there about the battlefield, somehow avoiding the multitudinous trajectories of thousands of pieces of whizzing hot metal. I was not grateful for my luck. I was horrified, if you like, that I had used up so much. We all have narrow escapes in life, some of which we are entirely unaware. What upset me was the hundreds of thousands of narrow escapes I must have had during my few hectic minutes in no-man’s-land. I was convinced I had overdrawn my balance of good fortune; that whatever haphazard benevolence the impassive universe might hold towards me was all but gone.

We went back into reserve, were given something to eat and then paraded in a field for roll call. D Company’s casualties were dreadful, well over 50 percent, and the bantams had fared little better. Of the bombing section, only Teague and myself were present on parade. Louise was dead; so were Pawsey, Somerville-Start and Bookbinder. It was Bookbinder who had atomized when his sack of bombs exploded, and the blast had accounted for two other bombers dead and one wounded (Lloyd). Also wounded were Kite and, I learned, Druce.

That evening I went down to the field dressing station to have the cut above my eye stitched. The dressing station was a bizarre place dominated by the twin emotions of intense relief and intense pain. It was established in a small quarry some four hundred yards behind the canal. To my surprise the ground was littered with discarded boots, and everywhere was the powerful contrast of filthy blackened men and new, very white bandages. Walking wounded sat in groups waiting to be driven to the field hospital. Rows of stretcher cases lay docilely in the soft evening sun. I had my cut dressed and went in search of Druce. I heard my name called. It was Kite.

He was sitting with a group of amputees and head wounds. A blunt club-shaped bandage covered his stump. He looked dark-eyed and his face was tense. I lit a cigarette and gave it to him. He seemed depressed, not nearly as jaunty as on the battlefield. I told him about our casualties.

“At least you’ll be out of it,” I said.

He looked at his stump. “I’m finding it a bit hard keeping the old famous unconcern going,” he said, his voice shaking. He started to cry. “I just think it’s a bloody shame. I need my hand.” His voice was raised; other men looked round.

“Steady, Noel,” I said, and patted his shoulder. “Here, have some fags.” I stuffed half a dozen into a pocket. “Be back in a second. Have a word with Leo.”

Druce was lying some yards away, a leg bandaged. I told him the appalling news about the section.

“Kite’s a bit shaken up,” I said. “What happened to you?”

“I climbed up the ladder, took a couple of steps and got a piece of shrapnel through my calf muscle. I went down and was dragged back into the trench. Must have been out there for all of five seconds. Never saw a thing.” He paused. “What about you?… I mean, what was it like?”

I thought. “Very strange.” And then, “Horrible.” I told him in more detail about Pawsey and Louise. I tried to express myself better.

“It’s like … nothing or nowhere else.…” I had no vocabulary. “It’s just mad.”

“I’m not sure if I should have thrown the whole sackful down.… I mean, in a dugout, you’d think one or two bombs would be enough. Damn! I should have held on to some. Think what—”

“Suffering Christ, shut up!” I said. We were stacking railway sleepers. During the attack Teague had in fact reached the German line. He had emptied his sack of bombs down a dugout stairwell and thrown in two after them. Apparently he had killed eighteen Germans and had been recommended for a decoration. On the way back to our lines he had sniped at a machine-gun crew and claimed to have hit two of them. He talked about the battle constantly to me. I was deeply bored.

“Where exactly did you get to? You said you got to the wire.…”

“Yes. No.… I think so. I got to some wire. Look, I don’t know. I told you I hadn’t a clue what was going on.”

“ Less fuckin’ natter, more work, youse two English bastards! ”

These words came from Platoon Sergeant Tanqueray, a bantam, supervising our working party. The top of his head reached my armpit. Teague and I had been seconded to a Grampian company in the reforming of the battalion after the attack on Frezenburg Ridge. D Company could barely muster two full-strength platoons, so the rest of us were temporarily attached to the bantams to fill gaps in their ranks. By this stage of the war the bantam battalions had more than their fair share of half-grown lads and degenerates. My kit was pilfered almost daily. Anything precious I kept on my person.

Tanqueray watched us heft the sleepers. He hated Teague and me, as did the rest of his men. He was five feet two inches, just under the army minimum. He was bitter enough as it was, missing out on the chance of a regular battalion by one inch, but having two tall ex-public-school boys in his platoon seemed almost to have deranged him. Tanqueray had a weak chin, a ginger moustache and pink watery eyes. He was a fisherman from Stonehaven and I fancied he still smelled of fish. The fact that I was Scottish also incensed him, paradoxically. He insisted I was English and I was tired of remonstrating. I became a symbol of the dark genetic conspiracy that had contrived to render him small.

“You’re dogshite, Todd,” he used to say to me. “You and all your kind. Dogshite.”

I was not clear what he meant by my “kind” but I did not care. My mood since the day of the attack on the ridge had vacillated between taciturn depression and a brand of fretful neurotic terror that I could barely suppress.

My diary:

Monday. Battalion reserve, Dickebusch. This morning I found three members of my platoon going through my kit. Two ran off. I attacked the third, a man called MacKanness, with a harelip. He is barely five foot but quite strong. I held him down and punched his face. He says he will shoot me during the next attack. Tanqueray reported me to the orderly officer — who happened to be Lieutenant Stampe — who seemed sympathetic but had no alternative. I filled sandbags for two days. These are my fellow countrymen but I have nothing but contempt for them. Teague says you can expect nothing else from the laboring classes .

Since the attack on Frezenburg Ridge we had had one other period — uneventful, as it turned out — in the line. New drafts of recruits had come into the battalion and our rest periods were taken up with reorganization and retraining. Teague and I, perforce, were thrust closer together. We tried to spend as much time as possible with the other members of D Company, but as far as Tanqueray was concerned that was tantamount to fraternizing with the enemy.

After a couple of weeks it was clear that the 13th was being brought up to full strength again and a new D Company beginning to take shape. Some of the original members were recalled from the Grampians, but no movement order came for Teague or me. I began to worry that we had been forgotten. I spoke to Captain Tuck, reminding him of our existence. He said matters were still in a state of disarray, but assured me that when the battalion re-formed Teague and I would be part of its number. Until then, D Company of the 13th Battalion. SOLI was still attached to the Grampians. I should stop worrying and be patient.

We went back up to the front towards the end of August. Guns had been firing for days. It was clear we were about to enter a new phase of the offensive on the Salient. I felt ill with ghastly premonitions. I was so convinced of my impending death that the filthy squalor of the trenches and the sullen hate of my comrades-in-arms seemed mere irritants. But Teague — literally — had the light of battle in his eye. He seemed distant, preoccupied, as if inspired by some visionary impulse. I was baffled at his zeal. I felt meek and terrified; Teague looked forward to the prospect of fighting. I told him of MacKanness’s threat (which was often repeated: “Gonnae get youse, cunt, see’f ah doan’t, right inna fuckin’ spine. Palaryze yu. Die in paaaaayne!” That sort of thing). Teague was untroubled.