William Boyd - The New Confessions

“Here’s the British Army,” my man says, introducing me. “Better late than never.”

“Hello, hello,” says another. “Feeling peckish, I’ll warrant.”

“You people,” I say, unable to control the tremble in my voice, “you people have just run over my friend.”

“No chance,” says one. “Not us, mate.”

“A wounded man,” I say slowly. “You crushed his legs with your tracks.”

“No, no,” says the urinator. “I’d have known. I’m the driver, see. You didn’t spot no one, did yah?” he asks another.

“Nah. Couldn’t have been us, old son. We don’t make that sort of mistake. We run over Huns. Not our lads.”

“His legs are flattened!”

“Ow … nasty. Probably a shell, though. Do funny things, those shells.”

“Damn right. I saw this man once. Dead. Flat as a pancake. Could have rolled him up like a carpet.”

“Bound to be a shell, yeah.”

“ Bastards! I’m going to report you. Bloody bastards!”

“Steady on, sunshine. George told you he didn’t run over no one.”

“And I should know as I’m the bloody driver, Jock.”

“Yeah, and watch who you’re calling names, you Scottish berk.”

I leave them to their ham and Johnny Walker and run back. I see that, as the driver told me, there is no German trench line here. Just mangled wire and ruined blockhouses. Somehow we have come through a temporary gap in their defenses. Where I left Teague at the edge of the so-called wood is a small group of men from the Durham Light Infantry, black, exhausted, making some attempt to dig in. They tell me Teague has been carried back, still alive but in a bad way. I ask them if they have seen the Grampians. No one knows.

Shells begin to explode again in the wood. Large pieces of tree trunk are hurled tumbling into the air. A counterattack. I go back with a runner from the Durhams. He points me in the right direction and we separate. I come over the lip of a small rise and I see the undulating mess of no-man’s-land in front of me and — just distinguishable — the thin humped sprawl of the British trench line with its scribble of barbed wire three or four hundred yards away. I recognize nothing. I pause for a second. We must be in some kind of lull. The crash and rumble of guns continues and a ridge a mile away is being pelted with barrage after barrage. This strip of sodden clogged acres on either side of me is full of little figures crawling, hopping, shambling, being carried. Four-man teams of stretcher-bearers search the rims of foul mud pools for wounded. The sun still shines through gaps in the clouds and warms my back and shoulders. I sit down for a minute. Fifty yards away an officer limp-hops back to the lines, using a rifle as a stick. He pays me no attention.

I set off again, sticking to rough plowed-field mud and avoiding the stuff that looks like runny porridge. I make slow progress. I pass a confetti of discarded equipment, a group of about twenty bloodless dead men, people huddling miserably in shell craters waiting for stretchers. I have lost sight of our trenches now. The view changes entirely in a ten-yard journey. I come across a well-organized machine-gun pit, ammunition boxes stacked tidily, a taut tarpaulin shelter against possible rain. The men in it are alert, ready to repel a counterattack. They look surprised to see me. I trudge past.

“Hoy!” the officer, a lieutenant, shouts. “Where are you from?”

“German line.”

“Is it far away?”

“I should say so.”

“Drat! All right you men, pack up. Sorry chaps, wrong place.”

I leave them to dismantle their neat pit and slither down the crumbled sides of a gully. A sunken track or road, pounded out of recognition. I clamber up the other side and get a brief view of our line again. Two hundred yards to go.

“Hey, you! Help! Over here!”

It is a man, up to his armpits in a mud pool at the bottom of a large, deep shell crater. If he had not shouted I would never have spotted him. His face is covered with dark-red blood.

“You English? I can’t see very well.” He has a strong Ulster accent.

“I’m Scottish, actually … but it doesn’t matter.”

“Get me out of here, pal, will you? I’m going down.” Doyn , he pronounces it.

“Right you are.”

I slither carefully down the slope of the crater. The man is about eight feet away. I sink in up to my ankles. The mud is thick, like fudge. I hold out my rifle. He stretches for it. There is still a two-foot gap.

“I’m missing a fuckin’ leg here, an’ all. Blown up right into this fuckin’ bog.”

“I can’t reach you. I’m sorry.”

“Sweet Jesus Christ.… Wade out a bit, pal. I’m going down.”

“I’ll sink too.”

I can see he is going down. The muddy water is up to his neck. He makes little fluttering movements with his fingers — as though his hands were wings and he could fly out.

“God God God.… Well, put me out of me misery, pal, will you do that? I don’t want to droyne in this shite.”

“ I can’t do that! ”

“Sure I’d do the fuckin’ same for you!”

He stretches his chin clear of the viscid surface. I make a final futile stretch. I am up to my knees. He grabs. There is still an insurmountable eighteen inches.

“Come on. Do us a favor.”

Suddenly, it seems the most reasonable request in the world. I put myself in his place. I would make the same plea. Of course.

“Look the other way,” I say.

He turns his head and I take aim. My fatigue makes my rifle sway. I fire. And miss. A gout of mud is thrown up behind his head.

“ For God’s sake! ” he screams, his composure all gone.

“I’m sorry.” I pull the trigger again and my rifle jams.

“I’ll get another,” I shout. I claw my way up the bank. I run here and there looking for a corpse with a rifle. At one moment I run back to the crater to check on my Ulsterman. But he has gone.

I shut my eyes and rub my face. I feel stupid and empty with tiredness. My back is sore, my leg mysteriously bruised. I trudge back towards the line of trenches. My shock and outrage steadily die as I slip and slither home.

I arrive at the British line and am directed to my sector. I seem to have wandered a mile over to the right. I try not to think about Teague or the man in the pool. I hum my tune, blotting out the images as I shuffle with the wounded along duckboards through communication trenches: “… whiter than the snow … wash your dirty daughter … whiter than the snow, Holy Joe. ”

I find the bantams two hours later. It is midday. They sit on the banks of a sunken lane behind the Ypres-Comines canal, silent, morose, exhausted. We are all black, filthy, pasted with drying mud. I sit down, rest my arms on my knees and my head on my arms. A light drizzle falls and it gets cold. I hear short exchanges of conversation. The bantams had a good day. One lot killed forty prisoners. It is their special pride that they kill everyone: the potent fury of small angry men. Tanqueray walks up and down checking who is missing. There is no sign of MacKanness. Stampe is alive and in a field hospital. Tanqueray rebukes me wrathfully and at length for losing my rifle. I hear his iron voice and a horrible fear invades me. Now Teague has gone and I am alone with the bantams. I do not have the strength to cope with them anymore. I know then that I have to run away.

I look up and offer my grimy face to the soft rain. I have had enough.

“ Johnny? Good God, is that you, Johnny?”

I look round.

Standing there, tall, neat, in a staff captain’s uniform, is Donald Verulam.

VILLA LUXE, June 2, 1972

My God. The bantams. I used to have nightmares about them for years. Every time I went back to Scotland I was in a state of fearful suspense that I might run into my ex-comrades. Especially Tanqueray. I would go into pubs and have a good look round before I ordered a drink. I don’t know if he survived the war, but those bantams had a tenacious hold on life that was quite inhuman — given our species’ particular vulnerability. They were more like some sort of insect — silver lice or cockroaches, small tough well-armored beetles.