“Yes. No.… I think so. I got to some wire. Look, I don’t know. I told you I hadn’t a clue what was going on.”
“Less fuckin’ natter, more work, youse two English bastards!”
These words came from Platoon Sergeant Tanqueray, a bantam, supervising our working party. The top of his head reached my armpit. Teague and I had been seconded to a Grampian company in the reforming of the battalion after the attack on Frezenburg Ridge. D Company could barely muster two full-strength platoons, so the rest of us were temporarily attached to the bantams to fill gaps in their ranks. By this stage of the war the bantam battalions had more than their fair share of half-grown lads and degenerates. My kit was pilfered almost daily. Anything precious I kept on my person.
Tanqueray watched us heft the sleepers. He hated Teague and me, as did the rest of his men. He was five feet two inches, just under the army minimum. He was bitter enough as it was, missing out on the chance of a regular battalion by one inch, but having two tall ex-public-school boys in his platoon seemed almost to have deranged him. Tanqueray had a weak chin, a ginger moustache and pink watery eyes. He was a fisherman from Stonehaven and I fancied he still smelled of fish. The fact that I was Scottish also incensed him, paradoxically. He insisted I was English and I was tired of remonstrating. I became a symbol of the dark genetic conspiracy that had contrived to render him small.
“You’re dogshite, Todd,” he used to say to me. “You and all your kind. Dogshite.”
I was not clear what he meant by my “kind” but I did not care. My mood since the day of the attack on the ridge had vacillated between taciturn depression and a brand of fretful neurotic terror that I could barely suppress.
My diary:
Monday. Battalion reserve, Dickebusch. This morning I found three members of my platoon going through my kit. Two ran off. I attacked the third, a man called MacKanness, with a harelip. He is barely five foot but quite strong. I held him down and punched his face. He says he will shoot me during the next attack. Tanqueray reported me to the orderly officer — who happened to be Lieutenant Stampe — who seemed sympathetic but had no alternative. I filled sandbags for two days. These are my fellow countrymen but I have nothing but contempt for them. Teague says you can expect nothing else from the laboring classes.
Since the attack on Frezenburg Ridge we had had one other period — uneventful, as it turned out — in the line. New drafts of recruits had come into the battalion and our rest periods were taken up with reorganization and retraining. Teague and I, perforce, were thrust closer together. We tried to spend as much time as possible with the other members of D Company, but as far as Tanqueray was concerned that was tantamount to fraternizing with the enemy.
After a couple of weeks it was clear that the 13th was being brought up to full strength again and a new D Company beginning to take shape. Some of the original members were recalled from the Grampians, but no movement order came for Teague or me. I began to worry that we had been forgotten. I spoke to Captain Tuck, reminding him of our existence. He said matters were still in a state of disarray, but assured me that when the battalion re-formed Teague and I would be part of its number. Until then, D Company of the 13th Battalion. SOLI was still attached to the Grampians. I should stop worrying and be patient.
We went back up to the front towards the end of August. Guns had been firing for days. It was clear we were about to enter a new phase of the offensive on the Salient. I felt ill with ghastly premonitions. I was so convinced of my impending death that the filthy squalor of the trenches and the sullen hate of my comrades-in-arms seemed mere irritants. But Teague — literally — had the light of battle in his eye. He seemed distant, preoccupied, as if inspired by some visionary impulse. I was baffled at his zeal. I felt meek and terrified; Teague looked forward to the prospect of fighting. I told him of MacKanness’s threat (which was often repeated: “Gonnae get youse, cunt, see’f ah doan’t, right inna fuckin’ spine. Palaryze yu. Die in paaaaayne!” That sort of thing). Teague was untroubled.
“Stick with me, Todd,” he said. “We’ll be all right. Look how we got through Frezenburg — barely a scratch.”
I looked at his square face and his small eyes. He was the second person, after Dagmar, who had assured me I would survive. We were sitting in support lines, the night before the attack.
“I’m going to die,” I said. “I know. Just because I made it once doesn’t mean a thing.”
“You’ll be fine. You’re like me, Todd. We’re special, different.”
I could not think of anyone I was less like, except, perhaps Tanqueray and MacKanness.
“You really think you’re not going to …?” I left the question deliberately unfinished.
“I don’t care. I’m just going to go in there and have the fight of my life.”
I looked away. For some reason Teague’s attitude rather disgusted me. We had eaten well that evening: pea soup, fried corned beef, sardines. In my hand I had a piece of sponge cake covered in jam. I threw it over the parapet for the rats.
August 22, 1917. I stand in the front-line trench waiting for the barrage to lift. Teague is on my right by the ladder. Standing on its bottom step is Lieutenant Stampe, our company commander. Stampe is six months younger than me, just eighteen, a pleasant fair-haired person. Tanqueray refers to him as a “pup.” Tanqueray himself comes down the trench issuing rum. I decline.
“I’ll be watching you, Todd,” he says. “Very closely.” I have a stupid song in my head. I cannot rid myself of the tune.
Whiter than the snow, whiter than the snow,
Wash me in the water
Where you wash your dirty daughter
And I shall be whiter than the snow, Holy Joe.
The catchy tune keeps my mind off other subjects. This time we are to attack some long-ruined château, take the remains of a wood and advance through open country to the crossroads at S—. I have only the vaguest idea of our objectives. In any case, they will mean nothing once the whistle blows. There is no château, no wood, no open country, no crossroads at S—.
Teague turns towards me. Suddenly the barrage lifts for a second or two.
“Here we go, Todd,” he says. A whistle goes somewhere. Stampe puts his own to his mouth and blows fiercely. The pea jams. Silence. He smiles guiltily and climbs up the ladder onto the parapet, waving us up and on. I go up the ladder, sober this time, the world flat and fixed. Ahead a cliff of smoke and explosions mark the German line. I crouch and head off, following the backs of others through the gaps cleared in our wire. Within yards my boots are heavy with a thick rind of mud and clay. I have lost Teague. I keep my head down, watching for mud pools. I walk in as straight a line as possible. Some shells start to burst round us. I skirt an icy lagoon forty feet across. I slip and fall. I look up; Stampe stands ahead.
“All right?” he yells.
I struggle to my feet. He moves on. Twenty yards to my left a British soldier levels his rifle at Stampe and shoots him in the back. Stampe falls. The soldier glances round. MacKanness. I crumple to the ground as if hit. I wait a minute, then (there is no sign of MacKanness) cautiously get up and go and look for Stampe. He is face down in the mud. I pull him up and unplug the dirt from his mouth and nose. He is still alive. Stampe is almost the same height as me. To a bantam all tall men must be indistinguishably high.
“Go on,” Stampe says. He pushes me away.