The Steady Running of the Hour: A Novel Read online

  —You will stay with the sergeant to consolidate the position. Mayhew will come down with me.

  Mayhew looks at Ashley but says nothing. The men throw bombs down the staircase and wait for the concussion. A series of bangs, smoke and acrid fumes rising from the doorway. Ashley and Mayhew start down the staircase. The walls are lined in concrete and the ceiling is hung with electric bulbs at intervals, but the lights are off. They go down ten feet. The staircase goes on in the darkness. Ashley does not have his torch, so he strikes a match and holds it before him. He sees the steps under him, then farther below the ruined timber where one of their bombs exploded uselessly, scrapping the wooden steps. They walk carefully over the splintered wood, descending fifteen feet. Twenty.

  They enter a room with a wooden floor. Mayhew pushes a metal lever attached to the wall, but the lights do not come on. Ashley finds a candle and lights it. The walls are papered and hung with pictures in wooden frames, colored lithographs of forests and churches. There are the remnants of a table, severed and splintered by the bombs. Broken china plates and shattered glasses. On one wall there is a bookcase filled with four neat rows of books, the spines stamped with gilded Gothic text. Ashley finds a trench map on one of the lower shelves and folds it into his tunic pocket. He walks into the far corner of the room, thrusting the candle before him. A large black shape—an upright piano, twisted ribbons of shrapnel embedded in the glossy wood. Mayhew fingers one of the ebony keys, shaking his head in disbelief.

  —A bloody piano. And us living like rats just across the wire.

  —Must be the battalion headquarters, Ashley says. What’s through that door?

  They go through the narrow corridor into a small kitchen, then an adjoining room with rows of bunks and shelves of supplies and foodstuffs. Mayhew finds a pair of dry socks and cries out in joy. He unties his boots and begins changing his socks. Ashley finds a square lantern-style electric torch and switches it on: a small yellow beam of light. At the end of the room there is another descending staircase. Ashley shines the torch down into the darkness. A rat dashes up the stairs and disappears into the shadows behind him. Mayhew double-knots his boots and stands up.

  —Don’t think we ought to go down there, sir.

  —Naturally we ought to.

  There is dull roar as a howitzer crashes above them, shaking the dugout. Clumps of dirt fall from the ceiling.

  —Hope the men didn’t catch that, Ashley says. Hell of a dugout. Quite deep.

  Mayhew spits onto the floorboards, his thumb rubbing the bolt of his rifle.

  —It’s not the shells that worry me, sir. There’s Huns about—

  Ashley starts down the staircase, the torch hanging from one hand, his pistol in the other. Mayhew follows. There is a strong stench, the sickly bouquet growing as they descend. A rat squeals up the staircase between their feet, then another one, then a dozen, until they are treading on the rats. The staircase opens into another large chamber, this one dirt-floored. Sturdy rafters support the room and there are rows of iron bunks, shadowy figures upon them. A few of the shapes wheeze and reach toward the torchlight.

  —Kamerad! Kamerad!

  Ashley swivels, holding his pistol high.

  —Mayhew, don’t touch them—

  —No intention, sir.

  Ashley’s torchlight darts around the room. The floor is a sea of obese rats scurrying back and forth, their fat pink tails sooted with grime. Empty tin cans and bottles. On the lower bunks, German corpses in their greatcoats, perhaps a week dead, faces blue or green, eyes sunken in black sockets. Some of the dead seem to move. Ashley approaches one of them, the chest throbbing under the greatcoat. Ashley comes closer. Maggots swarm from the neck and crevices of the coat, pulsing the body with a synchronized horror. Ashley jerks back, raising the torch. On the upper bunk a man is muttering in strange German, his head bound with a large bandage blackened with dried blood. He holds his hands over his eyes, blocking the light.

  —What’s he saying? Mayhew says.

  —It’s gibberish, Ashley says. He’s not talking sense. They must have been wounded in the show last week. Probably they couldn’t evacuate them since.

  —It’s awful, sir. I can’t stand the smell—

  —Go upstairs and tell the sergeant it’s secure down here, then come directly down. I want to know if that howitzer caught them. And see if you can find any water.

  Mayhew goes upstairs and Ashley passes along the row of bunks, shining his light. He is halted by a figure raising his hand in bed, beckoning to Ashley. The young man is beardless, his face jaundiced and sickly. His mouth is stained and his eyes are crusted. On the shoulder boards of his tunic there is the single diamond star of an Oberleutnant. He waves Ashley closer.

  —Herr Leutnant.

  Ashley squats beside the bunk and shines his torch at the officer’s face. The German raises his hand to block the light.

  —Too bright, he says in German. We have been in darkness all morning. They cut the electricity when they left. You speak German?

  —Ein Bisschen. Are you the officer in charge here? What regiment are you—the second Marine-Infanterie?

  —Let me see your face better, Herr Leutnant, you look familiar. Or perhaps you are a captain? There are very young captains now—

  Ashley shines the torch on his own face and points it back at the German. The officer smiles faintly.

  —I thought it was you, the German says. We met before, don’t you remember? You were in Berlin before the war. We met at the old Café des Westens, you came with that other foreigner who would speak only French with us, she didn’t like to talk German. Vous parlez français, non?

  —Nonsense, I’ve never been to Berlin. Are you the officer in charge here?

  —I think no one is in charge here, Herr Leutnant. Tell me, what happened to that girl? She wasn’t really French, was she? But she had a camera, she took wonderful photographs. She may have forgotten you, but you can’t forget her—

  Ashley stands up, no longer listening. Private Mayhew clambers back down the stairs, the dark outline of his head peeking from the doorway.

  —The howitzer missed them, sir. But there’s no water.

  Ashley finds a candle amid the refuse on the floor and gives it to the German officer, lighting it with a match from his pocket. He puts the matchbox in the German’s hand. The officer smiles.

  —Don’t worry, Kamerad. They may be gone now, but they’ll be back.

  Ashley and Mayhew climb back to the surface. They find Sergeant Bradley and the men moving sandbags to reverse the defenses, blocking off traverses on each side to prevent flanking attacks. Ashley looks up at Empress Redoubt. It looms in the mist still a hundred yards beyond them, past the second line of German defenses. Sergeant Bradley takes Ashley aside.

  —The Huns took their guns with them. We’ve done what we can, but if they come back in any number—

  —The Border Regiment will be along in relief.

  —They think we’re dead, sir. If they were coming, they’d have come by now.

  —They’ll come all right.

  The German counterattack begins ten minutes later. It starts with a fearsome bombardment of mixed high-explosive and shrapnel shells. The parados comes aflame with shock and light. A huge explosion rocks the nearest fire bay, surging flame and smoke down the trench. Ashley and the sergeant dash around the corner. They find Gregory already dead with much of his head missing, his mouth torn open to reveal a wreck of shattered teeth. Stewart is screaming as blood pours from an enormous gash in his stomach. The sergeant shoves a bandage into the wound, telling Stewart he will be all right, but the blood wells up over the bandage and the sergeant’s hands. Stewart turns white and stops breathing. More shrapnel bursts overhead, wounding Private Reynolds badly in the arm. Ashley wraps the arm quickly, but Reynolds has to abandon his rifle, holding the lifeless right arm with his left hand, his face ashen, small cuts all over his neck.

  Ashley hurries across into the traverse,
looking over the parados with his periscope toward the German reserve lines. The machine guns have opened in orange flashes. He can make out a line of gray figures approaching at an arm’s length apart, the column spanning a huge field of mud. Mayhew stands beside him on the fire step, rapidly firing his rifle.

  —There’s millions, Mayhew murmurs.

  —Only a hundred or so, Ashley says.

  He gives the order to retreat. The four men climb the ladder out of the trench and crawl between the openings in the German wire. They make westward for Patience Trench, a nest of wire and yellow flashing guns in the distance. With a sluggish jog they hobble through the mud, artillery raining upon them. A high-explosive shell bursts nearby in a hurricane of red flame. Ashley is tossed against the ground, his ears ringing as he spits mud and blood from his mouth. He must have bit his tongue. He sees the sergeant, the man’s eyes wide in dazed horror, pulling himself forward by the arms through the muck, the stumps of his legs dragging on the ground, gushing crimson. Mayhew slings his rifle and grabs the sergeant’s arm, pulling him forward. Ashley takes the other arm and they carry the bleeding sergeant to a shellhole, ducking under a heap of black clay. Mayhew is yelling at Ashley, but the ringing is very loud.

  —What?

  —Dead, sir. Sergeant’s dead.

  —Where’s Reynolds?

  —Gone, sir. We should take cover here, wait for nightfall.

  Ashley cannot hear. He catches his breath and points toward Patience Trench. The two men rise and set off. They pass rusted heaps of wire, dud artillery shells planted in the mud. Mayhew points and says something Ashley cannot hear. They go left around an enormous crater, and then descend a short ridge. A trench is in the distance ahead, perhaps the British line. Another shell bursts above them. A rain of pellets. Then a second concussion, a third, mud and smoke and steel everywhere. Ashley falls to the ground, sucking for air. His ears are still ringing.

  A VISIT

  The trenches are the softest of hills now, waist-high mounds of grass threading minute valleys among the sleeping fields. I’m the only one here. I walk on new and shiny planks, ducktracks re-created on the old trench floor. A nylon rope is strung along the side for safety. A red plastic sign is staked in the dirt. PATIENCE TRENCH. DANGER: UNDETONATED EXPLOSIVES.

  I hop over the rope and scale the mounds on all fours, my hands pulling at tufts of damp grass. No-man’s-land. I find a hollow between the tallest of knolls. Lying back against the grass, I read from Ashley’s letters in my notebook.

  Who are these people we fight against? I never see their faces, except those of the dead.

  The sun rises behind them as it sets behind us; theirs is the east & it belongs to them. We own the dawn, as breaking light draws their shadows against the horizon. They own the dusk. We are clad in khaki where they are grey. Their wire is stronger & thicker than ours, their rucksacks of queer dark cowhide, the fur still attached.

  And yet they are men, no different from us, and when we prick them they shall bleed, and have their just revenge. ‘The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.’

  After an hour I come out of the trench, ducking under the rope and walking to the parking lot. At two o’clock Mireille pulls the car up and gets out.

  —How was the coast? I ask.

  —Really windy, so it was hard to draw. But the light was pretty. I have my sketchbook, I thought I might draw something here.

  We walk across a flat field to the cemetery, white headstones arrayed in neat rows of ten. The grass is finely manicured and there are small trees throughout the cemetery.

  —Did all these people die around here?

  —I think so.

  Mireille walks on toward a stone monument on the far end of the cemetery, her sketchbook under her arm. I stay behind reading the headstones.

  5/2819 PRIVATE P. ECCLES

  DURHAM LIGHT INFANTRY

  5 NOVEMBER 1916 AGE 19

  HE ANSWERED THE CALL

  At the end of the cemetery I find Mireille inside the monument, a tall cross surrounded by a circle of white stones.

  —Tristan, I think this is also a grave—

  —It can’t be.

  Mireille crouches in front of one of the white stones.

  —But look at this. It’s like a tombstone, but there’s no name.

  I walk closer to the stone. At the top it says A SOLDIER OF THE GREAT WAR—ROYAL BERKSHIRE REGT. Beneath this is a large white cross and the inscription KNOWN UNTO GOD. Dozens of these headstones are arranged in a circle surrounding the cross. Mireille touches the stone, frowning.

  —Why are they like this? Why don’t they have their own graves like the others?

  I look around the monument, but the only inscription is by the small entrance gate: EAUCOURT CEMETERY. Mireille is still looking at the headstone. She puts her hand to her face.

  —Tristan, what’s under here?

  —I don’t know. I read about some mass graves. Sometimes there were too many, they’d just put them all in a shellhole—

  I walk around the base of the monument. A few of the stones have flowers or red paper remembrance poppies in front of them.

  —But maybe it was a different place, I say. Maybe it wasn’t Eaucourt.

  Mireille stands and looks at the fields around us. She picks up her sketchbook and starts walking back toward the car. I follow after her.

  —Do you want to draw the cemetery?

  —No, she says. Let’s go home.

  5 November 1916

  Empress Redoubt

  Somme, France

  The shrapnel comes from a single 77-millimeter round manufactured by Friedrich Krupp AG at its gun works in Essen. The shell is fired from a Feldkanone 96 n.A. four kilometers behind the German front line, the gun operated by a crew of five men from the Neumärkisches Feldartillerie-Regiment Nr. 54, all of whom are wet from the very inside of their underclothes, their skin dank and clammy. The men have cropped hair beneath their caps. They wear mustaches and the dirt and rain and sweat are strained by the hair of their upper lips.

  Gefreiter Otto Bäcker pulls the firing lanyard on the Feldkanone and retreats for cover as the gun recoils and the shell flies westward. Crouching in the mud, Bäcker wonders how long it will be before the ration party arrives with lunch. He has eaten only a fistful of dark bread and salt herring since daybreak, and the herring has made him very thirsty.

  The 6.8-kilogram artillery shell travels four kilometers across the German lines at supersonic speed, the faint singing whine of the shell cutting the air preceding the thudding report of the gun. The shell detonates above no-man’s-land at a bursting height of three meters, spewing three hundred eleven-gram lead balls at low velocity. Ashley Walsingham is facing the detonating shell as he moves toward Patience Trench, advancing at full stride with his pistol drawn. He does not hear it coming.

  One of the shrapnel balls pierces Ashley’s throat two inches above his right clavicle, passing between his trachea and his esophagus and starting a substantial hemorrhage. At the same time Ashley’s right thigh is perforated by four shrapnel balls, and though these wounds are not deep, vivid crimson blood begins to gather in pools atop his trouser leg, soaking the khaki fabric in growing blotches. He crumples to the ground, blood coursing from his mouth. The color of the blood seems to Ashley perversely bright. He loses consciousness almost immediately.

  Private F. P. Mayhew is only a few yards behind Ashley, his head lowered as the shell explodes. A shrapnel pellet pings off the brim of Mayhew’s steel helmet, sparing his face. Mayhew’s right arm and shoulder are pocked by a few lead balls. He puts his hand to his shoulder, and though his fingers draw blood, the wounds seem superficial. There is little pain.

  Mayhew kneels beside Ashley’s body. Half of Ashley’s face is black with sludge and blood is tumbling down his chin. Mayhew hoists Ashley onto his back, pulling an arm and a leg over each of his shoulders. He staggers fifty yards toward a meager shellho
le, teetering with the unbalanced load. He can smell urine on Ashley’s trousers and there is a wetness against his neck. When they reach the shellhole Mayhew lowers Ashley to the ground. He looks around. The hole is a shallow cauldron of exploding mud less than three feet deep, its outer borders growing vaguer with each subsequent blast. High-explosive shells whine overhead and crash nearby, machine-gun fire traversing the horizon at an indistinct distance.

  Mayhew kneels before Ashley, feeling in the inner skirt of Ashley’s tunic. The field dressing is stitched in. Mayhew cuts the threads with his pocketknife and severs the khaki cover of the dressing wrapper. There are two sterile pads inside, two roller bandages and a tiny glass ampoule of iodine. Mayhew slits open Ashley’s trouser leg. He cracks the crown from the ampoule and sprinkles the fluid over Ashley’s throat and leg wounds. A few golden drops in a sea of red. He presses the absorbent pads onto each wound, at which Ashley stirs a little in pain, though he does not wake. The dressings soak with blood immediately.

  Mayhew lifts Ashley’s head and winds the bandage around his throat, deftly spiraling, then reversing the spirals so the pressure will be uniform upon the pad. He cuts the bandage and secures the final wrap with a safety pin. He repeats the process on Ashley’s upper thigh, then flops onto his stomach, taking a moment to think. Another shell bursts close, tossing a shovelful of debris over his back. He feels something hot on his leg, perhaps a small cut. His ears are ringing.

  They are still some distance from the British line and they should wait here until nightfall. Mayhew supposes he ought to dress his own wound. His forearm is slick with blood. It has come down his cuff onto his wrist.

  Two hours after nightfall Private Mayhew arrives at the regimental aid post carrying Ashley with the help of a soldier from the Durhams. The two men trudge forward with Ashley strung between their shoulders, his body slouched and lifeless. Often they have to stop to make way for soldiers and stretchers coming down the communication trench.