“That,” said Tulliver, “is the very question. Well, Padre, any answers?”
The Padre opened and closed his mouth several times before giving up and reluctantly shaking his head.
A strange cry startled them. Above, flocks of things that were not birds were beginning to swirl and wheel above the mud. Up ahead, they could hear the marshalling shouts and barks of NCOs giving orders.
“We’d best hurry. Watch your step, ladies,” cautioned Tulliver as he led them across the mud and down into the nearest communication trench. He’d only ever once before had a trip up to the front lines, when visiting an artillery battery.
“That smell!” said Edith, faltering as she looked round for the source while Sister Fenton dragged her on like a tardy child.
“I know,” said Tulliver, shaking his head. “Sweaty feet, unwashed men, cordite, army stew. If nothing else they should act as effective smelling salts, eh, Abbott?”
As they worked their way up the trench the party attracted cat calls and whistles from weary, mud-soaked and bewildered men. Tulliver turned back to check on his charges. Sister Fenton strode purposefully on, doing her best to ignore them, while Edith seemed to have recovered enough to smile coquettishly as she was pulled along in her wake. Abbott strode confidently behind. She looked longingly at a private drawing on a fag. “Aw, go on, duck, give us a Wood, I’m gasping!” she said as she passed.
The soldier leered at her. “Come ’ere, and I’ll give you—” he began, before catching the eye of the Padre bringing up the rear. Flustered, he fished around in his tunic pocket producing two battered but serviceable Woodbines and offered them to her. “—I’ll give you a couple,” he stuttered apologetically, smiling awkwardly as his mates jeered and jostled him.
Abbott took them from his hand. “Ta, ever so, ducks,” she called gaily as the Padre impatiently herded her away.
One man flung himself desperately at the Chaplain.
“Padre? What’s happened. Where are we? We thought we was in heaven, like, but them devil dogs attacked so it can’t be, can it? Is God punishing us? Tell us Padre, tell us!”
“I — I don’t know, my son” answered the Padre as he pulled away from the distraught soldier.
Further along, the revetments leaned drunkenly, their sandbags askew. In places they threatened to topple over completely. In others they had collapsed and they had to scramble over the mounds of spoil. When they reached C Company HQ they found a captain sat in the remains of the trench with his head in his hands. There was a bustle of activity around him as men worked stoically shifting sandbags and timbers, using shovels, picks and buckets to excavate the dirt where the C Company HQ sign lay half buried.
“Captain Grantham!” said Padre Rand, kneeling down by him. “What happened? Is the Major all right?”
Grantham lifted his head from his hands. His face was streaked with dirt and tears.
The Padre took him aside. “For God’s sake, compose yourself, Captain. Not in front of the ranks. Remember you’re an officer! Pull yourself together.”
Grantham made an effort to regain his composure as he stood. He brushed the drying mud and soil from his tunic, cleared his throat and straightened his collar and tie.
“Can we help?” asked Sister Fenton, stepping forward.
“Eh?” The Captain looked at the women nonplussed.
“The nurses I reported on last night, Grantham,” said the Padre.
“Ah. Right. Yes, well there’s nothing they can do here,” said Grantham waving away Sister Fenton’s ministrations. “But I’m sure the MO can put them to work.” He gestured to the pile. “The Major’s dead, buried under that lot. I barely got out myself. There was a sudden jolt and the whole place just collapsed around us. There’s the CSM, the orderlies and the signal chappie down there, too,” he said earnestly. “And reports of other dugout collapses. I sent a runner to Battalion but he says it’s gone. How can it not be there? And then there were those damn wolf things. I don’t know what’s happening.”
“This man might be able to shed some light on it all,” said the Padre, introducing the Flying Officer.
“Lieutenant Tulliver,” said Tulliver, extending a hand.
Grantham took it. “Well I certainly hope you can. This is a right bloody shambles. The men are getting windy. It felt like a bloody earth tremor.”
“A bit more than that.”
“A mine explosion?”
“If it was it’s blown us to God knows where,” said Tulliver, looking up at the mountains on either side as he pulled his trench maps from inside his double-breasted tunic. He took a stub of pencil from his pocket and, after studying the map for a few moments, drew a rough circle on the paper around a section of trenches and No Man’s Land. “As far as I can tell, sir, this area is all I could see from the air. It’s as if someone had taken a giant pair of scissors, cut it out and dropped it down somewhere else entirely.”
“Scissors? Talk sense man!” snapped Grantham.
“From what I could see from the air, sir,” said Tulliver, “this circle of mud is all that is left of the Somme.”
THE TANK RUMBLED and squealed its way implacably toward the trench and then stopped. Atkins could see where the beasts had clawed away at the trench paint — camouflage cover and the wire netting gable was torn and hanging off. By the time the engine had puttered and died Atkins and some of the others were out of the trenches and walking towards this new wonder machine. Its guns slowly lowered, as if bowing in obeisance or exhaustion. There were metallic clangs and bangs as a door, barely more than two feet tall, opened in the rear of the gun sponson and there clambered, from the pit of the armoured machine, one small man and then another. They were wearing oiled-stained khaki overalls covered with small burn holes and tight fitting leather helmets with leather masks across the upper halves of their faces, their eyeholes merely thin slits. From the bottom of the masks hung chain mail drapes that covered the rest of their face. They looked as if they’d stepped from the Devil’s own chariot. Two more climbed out of a hatch on the top of the motorised mammoth and walked down the back of the now motionless track that encompassed the entire side of the tank.
“Bloody gas! Now I’m going to have to strip everything down and clean it to stop the damn corrosion.”
“Jesus my head’s banging!”
Atkins had never seen a more otherworldly group of men. They would have looked fierce and impressive, almost like some primitive tribal warriors, if two of them hadn’t then fallen to their knees and started vomiting warm beige splatters into the mud, coughing and retching worse than a retired coal miner.
“Bloody hell!” said Porgy.
The little bantam bloke pulled off his helmet and mask to reveal a pale face covered with flaky, livid red patches. He took a swing with his foot, savagely kicking the body of a dead creature.
“That’s for scratching Ivanhoe, you ugly mutt,” he said, punctuating his invective with further kicks.
The lanky Tank Commander strode over and made a curt introduction. “Lieutenant Mathers. Who’s in charge here?”
“That’ll be Captain Grantham, sir,” said Sergeant Hobson. “I’ll get someone to take you to Company HQ.”
Atkins turned his attention back to the others who were talking to the tank crew.
“Well if this ain’t the Somme it’s not my fault,” the bantam tank driver was saying. “My map reading were bloody perfect!”
“Then where on earth are we?”
“Earth?” spat the bantam figure scathingly. “This ain’t like no place on earth I’ve ever seen!”