The length of the day was timed. It came to twenty-two hours. The night sky offered up no clue to their whereabouts, other than it was no sky they recognised. Whatever myths might have drawn its constellations, they were none they knew, so some men began sketching their own; ‘The Pickelhaub’, ‘Charlie Chaplin’, ‘Big Bertha’, ‘Little Willie.’ The brightest star in the night sky was soon named ‘Blighty.’
By day the warm sun began to dry the Somme mud out until it developed a light dry crust that contracted in the heat until it cracked. The decomposing bodies beneath began to rot faster. Foul smelling steams and vapours rose from the flooded shell holes as the fetid liquor within evaporated.
The hell hounds, still drawn by the smell of carcasses, unable to help themselves, slunk forward in ones and twos only to be driven back by sentries’ rifle fire.
2 PLATOON WERE on trench fatigues again, working on the stretch of support trench behind the front line. Meant to house off-duty and support troops it needed to be turned around to work as a front line in order to protect their rear. It was a job they were familiar with. Captured German trenches needed such work doing to them in order to make them defensible; changing parados to parapet, cutting new fire steps and laying new wire. The idea here though was to turn the entrenchment into a circular defensible stronghold. It was still an unnatural feeling to stand in the open on the lip of the trench in the full glare of the sun with nothing to fear but sunburn, but the bright warm sunlight eased their brittle nerves a little.
“Bloody rotten job!” said Mercy, sucking fiercely on the end of a fag as he shoved his entrenching spade into the dirt with his foot, seeking to prise loose another spit-worth of claggy mud.
“I’m sure you’d rather be on burial duty,” said Ketch, walking towards them as they slung the spoil over the top. “It can be arranged.”
Pot Shot put a warning hand on Mercy’s shoulder. Mercy grunted and stubbed the butt of his woodbine out on the damp wall of the trench, grinding it purposefully into the grit, his eyes never leaving Ketch.
“Now put your backs into it! This section of trench is to be finished before dark” he said, before wandering off.
“One of these days,” said Porgy, spitting on his palms and gripping his shovel before starting to fill another sandbag. “Burial party? I know it’s a bad lot but—”
“It’s worse than you think,” said Atkins. “Don’t tell me you can’t smell it?”
“Thought that were Gutsy’s feet,” said Lucky.
“Oi!” warned Gutsy from where he was leaning against the side of the trench taking a slug from his water canteen.
Ginger, who was on watch, sat on an old ammo box, his eyes nervously darting around the unfamiliar landscape.
“I hope you’re keeping your eyes peeled, Ginger. I don’t want to become a devil dog’s dinner,” griped Half Pint.
“Uh huh!” he said, nodding his head.
“He seems to have calmed down a bit in the last few days,” said Atkins to Gazette.
But Gazette wasn’t listening. At least, not to him.
“Shh!” he said, holding up a hand.
“I wish you’d stop doing that!” said Atkins.
Gazette silenced him with a scowl.
There came a low soft roar like the roll of distant thunder.
“Take cover!” yelled Ginger, leaping down into the trench. The roar continued building. It wasn’t a shell or thunder, it was an earth tremor.
The walls of the trenches began to vibrate, sandbags jittering over the edge.
“Get out, get out!” Atkins yelled as Porgy thrust his hand down from the lip. Atkins shoved Ginger towards him. Porgy grabbed his hand and yanked him up. Atkins scrambled up using an old scaling ladder. The wall collapsed, sliding down into the trench and undoing several hours of hard work before the tremors subsided. Muted yells arose from all around as men scrambled out of the trenches onto the open ground above. A more plaintive and urgent, if unintelligible cry issued from nearby.
“Someone’s trapped,” said Pot Shot. They slipped back down into the trench and worked their way along until they came to the junction that led to the latrines.
Ketch had been doing his business, sat over the hole in the plank across the pit. When the tremors hit, the plank must have juddered loose because there was Ketch, khaki pants round his ankles, in the slurry pit of excrement below. Buckets of urine had also fallen over, drenching him in their pungent contents.
“Get me out!” he screamed through the filth.
The section looked at each other, smirks breaking out on their faces as their corporal struggled to right himself. No one was willing to go near the collapsed latrines and risk a similar ducking themselves.
Atkins looked around the collapsed trench. Seeing Ketch’s rifle, he picked it up and, checking that the lock was on, held the butt as he thrust the barrel towards Ketch.
“Grab hold!
But the corporal’s hands were slick with sewage and, as he pulled himself out, he slipped back with a splash causing the section to double up in raucous laughter.
Atkins persisted though and Ketch was able to loop his arm through the rifle’s shoulder strap as he pulled him out, almost losing his own footing in the process.
Ketch lay panting on the floor of the trench coughing and spluttering, his sodden trousers round his ankles. Atkins slit open a sandbag with his bayonet and passed it to Ketch who snatched it from his hand ungratefully and began to wipe the excreta off his face.
“You!” he spat. “You did this!”
“Corporal?”
“You were told to put this latrine right. You and Evans. Did you think it would be a big joke? A big laugh? Well you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face one day, Atkins. You mark my words. You’ll get what’s coming to you.” He got to his feet and advanced towards them. They backed off, unwilling to be smeared by the malodorous mud.
“It was the earth tremor!” said Atkins. “You must have felt it, we all did.”
Ketch opened his mouth to say something, stopped, gagged and wretched. The section’s delight turned to disgust. They backed away from him out of the trench, hearing another heave as vomit splattered wetly on the trench floor.
STILL SNORTING AND guffawing over Ketch’s misfortune they got back to the section of trench they had been rebuilding and found Ginger billing and cooing. In his arms he held his tunic inside out and crumpled like a nest. They could hear something snuffling about inside it.
“Look, Only!” said Ginger thrusting his hands out towards Atkins, inviting him to examine the jacket’s contents.
“Oh god, don’t say Haig’s back!” muttered Gazette.
Atkins peered over cautiously, not knowing what to expect, half anticipating something to leap out of the bundled cloth and bite him. He caught a flash of yellow fur and saw a long nose sniffling about in the makeshift khaki nest.
“What the hell is that? Ginger, what on earth have you found this time?”
“His name’s Gordon,” he replied beaming. He moved his hand under the tunic to open it out, revealing a small rat-sized creature with short yellowish fur, small black beady eyes and a long tubular snout. It didn’t seem to have jaws or teeth. It snuffled eagerly around in the jacket, completely uninterested in the soldiers now gathering around it. “I found it,” said Ginger. “He was just sort of wondering around, like he was lost… like us.”