White Feathers (18 page)

They were greeted by a red-eyed sergeant who introduced himself as Blakely.

‘Welcome, lads. You can bivvy in here,’ he said tersely as he flipped back a heavy curtain of mud-plastered sacking.

Inside was a small, dim, low-ceilinged cave smelling of dirty humans and reinforced with pit props and sand bags piled near the entranceway. A biscuit box and an upturned bucket served as furniture, and two bodies lay huddled on the floor.

‘The rest are next door,’ said Blakely, ‘and all asleep by now, most likely. We’ve just come in.’ He yawned hugely himself.

One of the bodies sat up, peered blearily at the newcomers and queried, ‘These the reinforcements, Sarge?’

Blakely nodded. ‘Settle them in, eh, Owen? I’m off to talk to Ross,’ he said, and was gone.

‘Sit down,’ invited the man. His narrow face showed several days’ growth and even in the gloom his skin had a pale, unhealthy sheen. Ian, Trevor and Fluffy squatted down as he introduced himself. ‘Morgan, Owen Morgan. Welcome to our lovely abode. That’s
Toby,’ he said, pointing at the other body curled on its side in a foetal position, snoring gently.

They all looked.

‘What’s that thing he’s cuddling?’ Trevor asked curiously.

‘A fox cub.’

‘Eh? A real one?’

Owen nodded. ‘Found it a couple of days ago wandering around outside and he’s taken a bit of a shine to it.’

They bent over Toby’s prostrate form and gazed interestedly at the creature nestled in the crook of his elbow. It had curled itself into a compact ball, its bushy tail folded over its nose, and was sleeping fitfully.

‘And it’s a baby one?’ Ian asked, fascinated. He’d never seen a fox before.

Owen nodded again. ‘Well, a few months old, probably. Broken leg, though. I can’t see it lasting. It’s too young to be without its mother, I suspect. A bit like Toby, really.’

‘Why? How old’s Toby?’ asked Trevor.

‘Just sixteen. Lied about his age.’

‘Jesus, that
is
young.’

‘Yes, and the poor little bugger’s not coping too well, either. We think it’s shell shock. And we should know,’ Owen added wryly. ‘That’s where the sarge has gone now, to talk to Lieutenant Ross about it. We’re trying to get him sent home but you know how bloody useless army bureaucracy is.’

Ian felt uncomfortable discussing someone as if he were out of earshot, which Toby clearly wasn’t. ‘Can’t he hear us?’

‘I doubt it. He sleeps like the dead. We used to wake him up just to make sure he was still breathing, but then it occurred to us that sleep’s probably his way of blocking everything out, his buffer if you like, that and that little animal of his. I hope to God it survives.’

‘Can’t he be sent back to the rear or something?’ asked Fluffy.

‘The MO’s a bastard and says there’s nothing wrong with him. And his papers say he’s eighteen, so therefore the esteemed doctor doesn’t believe there’s a problem. I’d like to strangle the prick, myself.’

Ian sat down again. ‘How long have you been here?’

‘Three months, but we’ve had a couple of trips back to Estaires for a decent sleep and a bath. Oh, and we had a little bit of leave.’

Trevor asked, ‘What’s it like? Really?’

‘Leave?’

‘No,
here
,’ Trevor replied impatiently.

Owen rummaged in his shirt pocket, withdrew a bent, thinly rolled cigarette and lit it. ‘Put it like this — I was a schoolteacher back home, and I sincerely wish I’d stayed there being one.’ He spat out a shred of tobacco. ‘It’s not what I thought it would be, and I don’t mind admitting that at all. Ask most of the lads — they’ll all say the same if they’re being honest.’ He took in the dugout with a sudden, angry sweep of his arm. ‘There’s no honour or glory in any of this. All we do is sit in a bloody great mud hole getting shelled and shot to buggery. It’s a fucking
joke
, really.’

The others gaped in shocked silence at his vehemence. Even Trevor seemed startled.

Owen shook his head. ‘Christ, I’m sorry, lads. I don’t mean to be such a misery. It wears you down though, you know? It
really
wears you down.’ He pinched out his smoke and put the dog-end back in his pocket for later. ‘But any way, I’m sure this isn’t what the sarge meant by settling you in. You’ll be dossing here when we’re not out, and by out I mean in the listening post out the front there in No-Man’s-Land. Or patrolling or digging. Or scrounging. We sleep and eat as often as we can — usually the grub’s pretty basic but most days there’s enough. You’ll get used to Fritz lobbing shells at us night and day, and he’s got some pretty sharp snipers so be careful where you stick your head. It rains a lot and there’s always
mud so you’d better hurry up and get used to that, too. Mail arrives irregularly, but it does come, and it’s always something to look forward to. Providing you’ve got someone writing to you, of course. But it’s deathly boring a lot of the time.’ He raised his eyebrows hopefully. ‘You don’t happen to have any …’

His monologue was abruptly cut off by a piercing whistle followed by a bone-jarring crump that shook the earth and dislodged a shower of dirt from the ceiling. The newcomers dived for the ground with their hands over their heads.

A long minute passed before they heard Owen say almost apologetically, ‘You can get up now. It probably hit further down.’

They sat up and looked at him sheepishly. He hadn’t moved at all and Toby was still asleep; even the fox hadn’t stirred.

‘As I said, you’ll get used to it,’ Owen reiterated. ‘I was asking if any of you had any books with you? You’ll find blokes here will kill for something to read.’

C
HAPTER
T
EN

I
an settled in fairly quickly, if getting used to living in a muddy hole in the ground could be called settling in. He kept a sharp eye out for James and Thomas but had so far encountered neither, which disappointed him as he had visualised their brotherly reunion often. To his surprise the noise and the smells of the battle field ceased to bother him after a few days, although he suspected he would never get used to the ragged and rotted remains of corpses scattered almost every where. They floated languidly in shell craters, rose slowly and stinkingly up from the mud after every rain, and their tattered skulls stared out at him as he slipped and slid his way between dripping trench walls. But he accepted their presence, as he accepted almost every other aspect of this foreign, unreal existence.

As Owen had warned, the routine of life in the trenches
was
extremely boring, despite the more or less constant shelling, sniping and bombing, and more work was done by the New Zealanders at night than during the day. In daylight hours teams of four or five would crawl out to shell holes in No-Man’s-Land, covering gaps in the wire and listening for German activity, but at night almost everyone set to improving the defences. Sand bags were piled higher and extra barbed wire laid in front of the trenches, gun
emplacements and loopholes were reinforced, and ammunition, water and stores were brought forward. It was only when the daylight routine started that men could rest; those not on listening or sentry duty would gobble down tepid stew and tea brought up from the company cookers in the support lines, then doss down, ignoring the constant stream of traffic passing them in the trenches, and try to sleep.

Physically Ian was fine, which was more than could be said for Fluffy, whose thigh had been shattered by a German bullet on the way back from a listening post two nights ago; he had been evacuated to the rear, ‘Blighty-bound’ already, but not before Trevor informed him he’d been the author of his own fate by not wearing his rabbit-fur hat. But, emotionally, Ian had taken a few knocks: things were simply not the way he had expected them to be.

For a start, he’d assumed there would be an immediate sense of comradeship, similar to but perhaps more intense than he’d experienced in training camp. He’d also thought that, as reinforcements, they would be welcomed by the New Zealanders already at the front with, if not open arms, then at least some appreciation. Since his arrival, however, he’d been constantly and uncomfortably aware of the covert circumspection demonstrated by his section mates: they were never unfriendly, but they kept themselves to themselves. So far, only Owen had openly offered the hand of friendship, and when he talked to reinforcements who had gone to other sections, Ian discovered that their experience had not been dissimilar.

After a week he felt compelled to ask Owen about it.

‘Why are they so standoffish? The rest of the blokes?’ he enquired with studied indifference one morning. It was raining as usual and from the entrance to their dugout he was idly watching assorted waste and rubbish as it bobbed and swirled along the bottom of the trench.

Owen, who was an extremely perceptive man, had been waiting for this question. ‘Don’t take it personally,’ he replied. ‘It’s not you, it’s just the way things work around here.’

Ian said he didn’t understand.

‘No, I expect you don’t,’ Owen replied, ‘and it’s not the sort of thing that gets discussed over the tea billy, either. It’s about mates.’ He said this last word as if the mere act of uttering it would make everything clear to Ian.

‘What about mates?’

Owen got out his tobacco and rolled a smoke. After parking it unlit behind his ear he looked directly at Ian. ‘It’s superstition, it’s fear, and it’s self-protection. What if they’d all rushed up to you like bosom buddies when you’d first arrived and then the following day we went out — a jolly bunch of chaps all in it together — and you got everyone killed?’

Ian was too appalled to respond.

‘They don’t know how well you’ve been trained, and they don’t know how well you’ll stand up. Do you see? And you can wipe that affronted look off your face while you’re at it, because I don’t intend what I’m saying to be in any way an insult. It’s simply the way it is. Everyone knows reinforcements are being rushed through the training camps at home then sent out here still wet behind the ears. It’s not your fault, we know that, but what if you just aren’t up to it? There are plenty who haven’t been. Look at poor young Toby, and he’s not the only one by a long shot. There he was, marching down the main street of Masterton playing soldiers in his lovely new uniform covered in shiny buttons and thinking he’s the bee’s knees and doing his bit for the Empire and all that, and look at him now. He can barely summon the courage to leave the dugout for a bloody pee!’ Owen shook his head in angry bewilderment. ‘I’d strangle his mother and father for letting him sign up if I could be bothered tracking them down when, or if, I get home. Of course,’
he added, ‘he might just have run off and if that’s the case then they’re probably worried sick about him.’

Ian averted his eyes guiltily.

Owen suddenly laughed. ‘I’m going to be doing a lot of strangling before this war’s over, aren’t I? But that’s the first thing, the lads not knowing whether you’re up to it or not. You have to prove yourself, and I think you are, by the way. You’ve the makings of a good soldier. The second thing is that some of them might find they really quite like you, and it’s hard to lose good mates. We might look like a pack of miserable, muddy bastards, but there’s a unity here that you won’t find any where else. It’s never talked about but the blokes’ll do just about anything to preserve both that and their own sanity.’ He leant over and touched Ian briefly on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be all right, you and Trevor. Give it another week or so and it’ll be like you’ve always been here. They’re a decent bunch, really.’

Ian felt considerably more at ease after this conversation, although he felt a fool for having worried about it and not worked it out for himself. He soon found that Owen had spoken the truth: his feelings of being surreptitiously watched faded and were replaced by an awareness that he was indeed being accepted into the section. He’d never had a particular need to be universally liked, but he always had been, so his gradual assimilation had been a foreign and rather uncomfortable experience.

Although he was happy now to let personal relationships with the original members of the section develop in their own time, he went out of his way to befriend Toby. He felt immensely sorry for the boy, as did almost everyone else, and spent much of what little spare time he had trying to jolly him along, or at least occupy his mind until news came of his hoped-for discharge and return home.

Toby was a real liability now and it was tacitly understood that he was excused duties that involved him going any further from the
section’s dugouts than ten yards along the trench in either direction; when the others went out, he remained behind and cleaned the living spaces, tidied gear, cuddled and crooned to his fox, and slept. He seemed content with this arrangement, and it appeared to help his nerves, although everyone agreed that his condition was worsening. Lieutenant Ross had sent him back to the MO again in the deliberately threatening company of Sergeant Blakely, but both had returned, Toby with a note reconfirming his fitness crumpled in one hand, and Blakely with a black look on his already permanently grim face.

It was getting more and more difficult to converse with Toby, as Ian discovered.

‘What’s that on Foxy’s leg?’ he asked one evening, soon after coming in from a long stretch on sentry duty. He was tired and stiff from crouching immobile in a cramped hole for hours on end, and wanted nothing more than to shovel as much food into himself as possible then snatch an hour’s sleep, but he thought it important to chat with Toby first.

‘A splint,’ said the boy proudly. ‘I think it’s helping.’

Ian didn’t. The fox, which had surprised everybody by lasting so long, now appeared to be failing fast. It lay in Toby’s lap panting shallowly, its pale eyes half closed and its russet fur rough and dull despite the boy’s almost constant petting. He had bound a short stick to the animal’s misshapen foreleg with strips of what looked suspiciously like his singlet, and Ian hoped for the fox’s sake that Toby had aligned the bone correctly. It was crapping all over the place now, everything that Toby fed it evidently shooting straight through, but nobody had the heart to tell him to put it outside.