It’s impossible to hear what is being said over the noise of shelling and gunfire, but I watch, breathing in quick gasps, and I can see that Wells is giving quick instructions to the run of fifteen men in the front line who look at each other for a moment before ascending the ladder and, heads held firmly down, throwing themselves over the sandbags and into no-man’s-land, which is dark and lit up sporadically like a carnival.
Wells pulls a box-periscope down and stares through it, and I study his face, noticing the moments when he sees someone’s been hit, the quick expression of pain that spreads across his features, then he pushes it to one side as the next line steps forward.
Sergeant Clayton is among us now and he stands on the opposite side of the line to Wells and shouts instructions at the troops. I close my eyes for a moment. How long will it be, I wonder, two minutes, three, before I am over the sandbags, too? Is my life to end tonight? I’ve been over before and survived, but tonight… tonight feels different and I don’t know why.
I look in front of me and see a boy trembling. He’s young, untested, a new recruit. I think he arrived the day before yesterday. He turns around and stares at me as if I can help him and I can see that his expression is one of pure terror. He can’t be much younger than me, maybe he’s older, but he looks like a child, a little boy who doesn’t even know what he’s doing here.
“I can’t do it,” he says to me, his Yorkshire voice low and pleading, and I narrow my eyes and force him to focus on them.
“You can,” I tell him.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I can’t.”
More screams from either side of the line and now a body falls from above, almost from the heavens, and lands among us. It’s another of the new recruits, a lad I noticed not five minutes ago with a mop of prematurely grey hair, a bullet hole through his throat seeping blood. The boy in front of me cries out and takes a step back, almost pushing into me, and I shove him forward. I can’t be expected to deal with him, too, when my own life is about to end. It’s not fair.
“Please,” he says, appealing to me as if I have some control over what is happening.
“Shut up,” I say, no longer willing to play mother to him. “Shut the fuck up and step forward, all right? Do your duty.”
He cries and I shove him again and he’s at the base of the ladders now, standing in a row alongside a dozen or so others.
“Next line-up!” screams Sergeant Clayton and the soldiers place their feet nervously on the lowest rung of the ladders, holding their heads low so they do not peep over the top any sooner than they have to. My boy, the one in front of me, does, too, but he makes no move to ascend, keeping his right foot rooted firmly in the mud.
“That man!” screams Clayton, pointing at him. “Up! Up! Up now!”
“I can’t do it!” cries the boy, the tears streaming down his face now, and God help me I’ve had enough, I’ve had enough of all of this, if I am to die, then let it end soon but it can’t happen until my turn is called, so I press my hand beneath his buttocks and push him up the ladder, feeling his weight trying to force itself back against me. “No!” he cries, pleading with me, his body failing him now. “No, please!”
“Up, that man!” shouts Clayton, rushing over to us now. “Sadler, push him up!”
I do it, I don’t even think of the consequences of my actions, but between us Clayton and I push the boy to the top of the ladder and there’s nowhere for him to go now but over and he falls on his belly, the possibility of a return to the trench out of the question. I watch as he slithers forward, his boots disappearing from my eye line, and I turn to Clayton, who is staring at me with insanity in his eyes. We look at each other and I think, Look at what we have just done, and then he returns to the side of the lines as Wells orders the rest of us upward and I don’t hesitate now, I climb the ladder and throw myself over and I stand tall, do not lift my rifle but stare at the chaos around me, and think, Here I am, take me now, why don’t you? Shoot me.
I’m still alive.
The silence is astonishing. Sergeant Clayton addresses forty of us, standing in pathetic lines that look nothing like the neat rows we learned to form in Aldershot. I know only a few of these men; they’re filthy and exhausted, some badly wounded, some half mad. To my surprise Will is present, standing between Wells and Harding, who each grip one of his arms as if there’s a possibility that he might run away. Will has a haunted look and he barely glances up from the ground; only once, and when he does he looks at me but doesn’t seem to recognize me. There are dark circles under his eyes and a raised bruise along his left cheek.
Clayton is shouting at us, telling us how brave we’ve been over the last eight hours, then condemning us as a bunch of frightened mice the next. He was never completely sane, I think, but he’s lost it entirely now. He’s blabbering on about morale and how we’re going to win the war but refers to the Greeks rather than the Germans on more than one occasion and loses his train of thought over and over again. It’s clear that he shouldn’t be here.
I glance over towards Wells, the next most senior man, to see if he’s aware how damaged our sergeant has become, but he’s not paying much attention. It’s not as if he can do anything, anyway. Mutiny is impossible.
“And this man, this man here!” shouts Clayton then, marching over towards Will, who looks up in surprise as if he has barely registered that he is even present in the moment. “This man who refuses to fight this fucking coward what do you think of him men not like you is he taught better taught better than that I know I was the one who taught him makes all sorts of outrageous suggestions then pops his head down on a pillow in his cell while the rest of you brave lads are here to train because it’s only a few weeks before we head off to France to fight and this man this man here he says he’s not in the mood to kill but he was a poacher before or so I heard…”
And on and on and on interminably, none of it making any sense, no sentences, just a sequence of garbled words gathered together and thrown at us while he spits and spews out hatred.
He walks away, then a moment later walks back, pulls off a glove and slaps Will across the face with it. We’re immune to violence, of course, but the action takes each of us a little by surprise. It’s both tame and vicious at the same time.
“I can’t stand a coward,” says Clayton, slapping him again, hard, and Will’s head turns away from the beating. “Can’t stand to eat with one, can’t stand to talk to one, can’t stand to command one.”
Harding looks at Wells as if to ask whether they should intervene but Clayton has stopped now and turns back to the men, pointing at Will.
“This man,” he declares, “refused to fight during this evening’s attack. In light of this, he has been duly court-martialled and found guilty of cowardice. He will be shot tomorrow morning at six o’clock. That is how we punish cowards.”
Will looks up now but doesn’t seem to care. I stare at him, willing him to turn his head in my direction, but he doesn’t. Even now, even at this moment, he won’t allow me.
It’s night-time now, dark, surprisingly quiet. I make my way towards the reverse, where a group of medics are placing casualties on stretchers for transport home. I glance at them for only a few moments and see Attling and Williams, and Robinson with his head split open by a German bullet. On a stretcher next to him lies the body of Milton, the murderer of the German boy, dead now, too. There are only three of us left, Sparks, Will and I.