‘It is, aye, it is,’ said Joe Kielty. ‘But they’re our rocks. We like them.’
‘It’s wheat,’ said a voice.
‘It’s not wheat anyhow,’ said Joe Kielty, ‘begging your pardon.’
‘Is it beet?’ said another.
‘Would you go and jump with your beet,’ said a Wicklow voice, pleasantly scoffing. And even Willie himself had seen piles of sugar beet on roadsides in September in that Wicklow. ‘That’s in the ground like a turnip.’
‘For the love of God, who cares what it is?’
‘Well, I don’t know, damn me, can you eat it?’ said another.
‘Little specks of yellow shite at the top of these rough stalks? I don’t think so, my lad.’
‘If you can’t eat it, fuck it.’
‘Fuck it yourself,’ said O‘Hara, and they all had the grace to laugh at the worst joke in Flanders. It was as good as a little sermon.
They came then to a place so loud, so bleak, so bare, that human eyes had difficulty in seeing it, in seeing what it was. Technically — that was, according to Captain Sheridan — they were moving up to the captured German lines, and were then to pass through Guillemont itself and get into trenches beyond for the kick-off. But to get across to the first line of trenches they had to cross a field of some twenty acres. This looked to Willie like it had been the very heart of the battle, either this battle or some other battle. The warriors were still there, all killed, every one. It was like a giant quilt of grey and khaki, like the acres had been ploughed vigorously but then sown with the giant seeds of corpses. There was a legion of British soldiers there, mingled astonishingly with the Boche. Grey jacket and khaki jacket, a thousand helmets scattered like mushrooms, a thousand packs mostly still attached to backs like horrible humps, and wounds, and wounds, such as ... Willie moved forward with O‘Hara and Joe Kielty, following after Christy Moran and Captain Sheridan. Captain Sheridan kept banging his stick on his leg and had not even drawn his revolver.
‘Come on, lads,’ he kept saying. ‘We’ll be all right. Come on, come on, lads.’
Death was a muddle of sorts, things thrown in their way to make them stumble and fall. It was hard and hard again to make any path through the humbled souls. The quick rats maybe had had their way with eyes and lips; the sightless sockets peered at the living soldiers, the lipless teeth all seemed to have just cracked some mighty jokes. They were seriously grinning. Hundreds more were face down, and turned on their sides, as if not interested in such awful mirth, showing the gashes where missing arms and legs had been, their breasts torn away, and hundreds and hundreds of floating hands, and legs, and big heavy puddles of guts and offal, all mixed through the loam and sharded vegetation. And as solid as the ruined flesh was the smell, a stench of a million rotted pheasants, that settled on their tongues like a liquid. O‘Hara was just retching as he went, spewing down the front of his tunic, and many others likewise. There was nothing they could do, only follow each other to the other side. In the corner of his eye Willie caught a glimpse of Father Buckley, taking up the rear of the battalion, far back at the edge of the slaughtered troops. He quickly looked away. He didn’t like the way Father Buckley stared about him. Too many souls without prayers to speed them, too many, too many.
They passed through Guillemont two by two and it was a queer thing to think that this was a site of victory. There was nothing there. The sappers were labouring to flatten sections of ground so that the machinery and supplies and trucks could be brought up. There was a long road being strengthened and repaired by about two thousand Chinese. Someone, either their own guns or the Boche, had the range of all these enterprises, and there were myriad bombs falling on everything, like a wild scene in a play without meaning or purpose, only mere spectacle. It had a filthy fascination, to see the coolies digging and hacking as if ignoring their peril. What could they do? The bombs fell among them and there were distant screams and then the ranks of the diggers closed, and on as before. Well, they were fucking heroes, all right, thought Willie Dunne. It was the very picture of strange courage, weird indifference.
When they reached the assigned jumping-off trenches, by some miracle there were vats of steaming stew. How they got up there no one could tell, but they were not complaining. Captain Sheridan shepherded his section into the new trenches, and very beautiful trenches they were, to Willie anyhow. They were the very peak of German workmanship, with revetments properly palisaded and the mud packed back with trimmed branches, and there was even drainage at their feet, the duck boards laid down over concrete and a culvert carrying off water beneath. Willie peeked into a dugout, fifteen steps down, and there was a light burning there, like a further miracle, and he saw the edge of a table and some papers neatly there. There was no sign of the Hun that had lived in these trenches for months and months past, no corpses at all, so someone had been in to clear them. They all shook their heads at the oddness of it all, and gladly tucked into the wonderful stew. The best of lamb it tasted like! Willie was drooling, he couldn’t help it. The juice of the stew was better than water, better than rum even, it slaked and perished the thirst. They felt like kings at the feast.
A dozen worn men in muddy uniforms cupping with sore fingers the rough tins of their food.
Captain Sheridan smiling to himself.
All Christy Moran could offer to this moment of general relief was one incongruous word: ‘Bastards!’
But whom he referred to no one could tell. All of wretched humanity, maybe.
And then they were allowed sleep if they could. Well, on this occasion they slept like hunting dogs. Christy Moran often referred to it later as ‘the Good Kip we had before Guinchy’ .
Captain Sheridan occupied a dugout and wrote sheet after sheet. Health of the men reports, supply-sheet reports, operational replies, assessments, a letter to his wife in Cavan Town, four letters to the families of dead men, a request for the home address of Private Quigley to divisional headquarters, a report on the state of the trench, a request to the quartermaster for provisions and supplies, more soap for the men’s feet in particular.
While he was finishing all this an order came up with a runner that they were to get into position at 0400 hours and follow the bombardment at 0445 hours, their objective being the east of Guinchy village to be reached by 1530 hours if possible on the dot for the purpose of liaison with, et cetera.
‘Of course,’ he muttered to himself. ‘We are not digging in here. What was I thinking? It was that blessed stew.’
By four o‘clock they were indeed wakened and in their positions. The trench was longer than usual and so they had an unusual sense of their own company and some of the other companies of the battalion. It was a sense of numbers that was not unwelcome.
Willie Dunne, like the rest, leaned against the parapet with his gun and his pack. It suddenly occurred to him that this would be the first time he engaged in a proper attack. It was not a mightily entertaining thought. It was still very dark across the lands ahead, although every few minutes went up from the Boche lines a starry shell that lit the ground extravagantly in front. There were a few new lads now, a fella called Johnson, and three lads that seemed to be all from around Gardiner Street in Dublin, whose names Willie hadn’t been able to garner. They looked like kids really. They had come straight into this and it would be their first understanding of the war, and as Willie himself didn’t understand what was going to happen, he pitied them. Yes, he pitied them. What should he feel, he wondered, for himself? By Christ, didn’t the blasted piss thrum in his bladder again; he was nearly bursting. As he leaned against the finely wattled side of the trench, gripping a beautiful German assault ladder, he tried to keep a grip on that bladder, he did. Suddenly the artillery went off in a vast line of explosions somewhere, a distant enough sound, and then very quickly the passage of the big-calibre missiles passing overhead and making tremendous noise about a quarter-mile back across the fields. They must have suspected something coming and were trying to get t
he range of the British guns, hopefully now marshalled on that cleared ground in Guillemont, or somewhere advantageous and efficient. Oh, he prayed now, did Willie Dunne, advantageous and efficient. Good Lord of the advantageous and the efficient, I pray to you, I pray to you, give me courage, oh Lord, let me not die today but return home safely in Your own good time to Gretta, dear Lord, protect me. The noise was beyond the scope of any other noise he had heard. O‘Hara whispered to him between blasts, ’New ordnance, Willie — big stuff, hah?‘ and Willie did not doubt his intuition for a minute. Maybe these were the new mortar bombs they had heard of, the barrels for them as big as sewers, huge ruddy things like armoured beasts unheard of in creation. The piss burst straight out and drenched his trouser legs.
‘You pissy cunt,’ said O‘Hara kindly, and gave him a dig with an elbow.
‘Holy Jesus,’ said Willie Dunne.
Now the Boche guns found good range on what used to be after all their own trench and the ground ahead was given a horrible pulverizing. Surely no man could be expected to leap out there with his own jolly human skin and walk through such a torrent? No, no, it must be their own guns, because the barrage started to go forward along the fields in a wild display, creating suddenly a thousand thousand holes in the muck that would be miserable to walk across.
‘Arra, fuck it,’ said O‘Hara. ’Arra, fuck it.‘
Willie glanced left at Joe Kielty. Joe Kielty looked back at him, serenely, and gave him a friendly wink, and a nod. He wasn’t in the gun detail that day because he had scalded his hand. Such a strange soul was Joe Kielty. He even gave Willie a pat on the back, and then before anyone could do anything else — piss, cry, panic or die — Captain Sheridan gave the company his order, and Christy Moran gave his lads the same like an echo, and up the ladders with them.
Before Willie lay suddenly the open ground. Away to the east was the sunrise, cold, pink and clear. There seemed to be woods everywhere on the horizon, but not a tree near by, only this bare, exploding vista. He gripped his gun in two places and hauled himself forward. Captain Sheridan, in his best Sheridan manner, looked fearless, waving them on with his stick, still not bothering to draw a revolver, shouting something at them that no one could hear. He went on ahead of them about twenty yards, they walked solemnly after him, keeping in line as they had been trained, even the new lads doing fine, despite the shell-holes. Their own barrage was just ahead of the captain, about fifty yards, and they knew they must try to keep after it and not be left behind, because then, by God, they would be out in the open and would find out quick what state of disorder or order the Boche were in. But the barrage ran on ahead of them and ahead of Captain Sheridan and not even a bunch of whippets could have followed it, not even a bunch of whippets.
But they went on unimpeded. The barrage had done wonders for the enemy wire and they found it quite easy to pass through, and suddenly a wonderful feeling rose in Willie’s breast. He suddenly felt fierce and true and young. It was something close to a feeling of love. It was love. He had strength in his legs despite his burden. He could see now as in a dream Joe Kielty on one side and O‘Hara on the other, admirably pushing forward. The whole line was going on, a whole line of Irishmen, he thought, yes, yes, it was magnificent.
Their barrage disappeared into a tumbled copse far ahead and almost immediately machine-guns opened up across the dim way. Captain Sheridan was shot and went down like a statue. Everyone saw it clearly. In one raking stream two of the new boys of Gardiner Street were removed from the line; one was left screaming behind, but no one could stop to help him, it was forbidden. Willie glanced back and saw line after line of his battalion coming after, and dozens and dozens falling under the weird and angry fire. A detail carrying their own machine-gun went down in a bloody heap. Then a splash of dark blood crossed his face, because now there were mortar bombs being dropped among them, and someone had been blown to nothing. Yet at his side still moved, thank God, his blessed companions, Joe Kielty and Pete O‘Hara. Willie hardly knew it, but he was crying, crying strange tears. He moved ever onward. They passed Captain Sheridan still alive, sitting on his bottom like a six-month-old child, looking entirely stunned, his whole left arm full, it looked like, of bullet wounds, and just on his chest there was another hole from which rich red blood was pouring. Mrs Sheridan, Mrs Sheridan, Mrs Sheridan, were the odd words that leaped into Willie’s throat. On, on they went, they walked, they stumbled.
There must have been a measure of chaos in the order of the lines because Willie could hear clearly Christy Moran’s bitter voice caterwauling at people to keep up and close up. Everyone could somehow sense what the machine-guns were doing, as if they were all the one body, and as men fell, they all fell for a moment, fell and rose up again, miraculously pacing. Then it seemed like a second before they reached the ground below the enemy trenches, and Willie saw a bombing party go ahead a little and start lobbing their Mills bombs and there were wild explosions then and maybe by the grace of luck they got the machine-gun but, whatever it was, they were able to keep going and then in another whisper of a second they were at the trench itself and it was like a mad version of training but nonetheless they plunged down into the trench and the first thing Willie felt was a man’s hands at his throat, at his throat like a crazy dream, what was happening to him, and Joe Kielty, gentle Joe Kielty, had a murderous-looking yoke in his hand, a sort of rounded hammer, and he struck at Willie’s assailant, and then he smashed the hammer or whatever it was into another man and there were shots and mayhem and then the Germans came round from the next part of the trench and they had their hands high and they were shouting like monkeys, ‘Kamerad, Kamerad!’ or such like and though the remaining boy from Gardiner Street did fire into them, he realized his mistake and was soon rounding them up into a clump, and what the fuck was happening then Willie didn’t know, but it seemed like a hot, dark, thirsty dream, the whole thing, and he wondered that the heat didn’t dry the piss on his trousers.
Then they were told by Christy Moran to group up and hold the fucking trench because the cunts would be back for a counter-attack in a moment, the fucking bollocking lot of them, the bastards. And he looked very wild, and frightened even, his face as white as the shining moon, thin as a dead man‘s, but oddly enough, when he approached the prisoners, he wasn’t violent towards them, but gentle enough, and told them to sit on their arses and be good.
The thirst in Willie’s throat was beyond all his experience. He lay there panting all day, panting. The counter-attack never came that day anyhow. Nothing came, no water, no food. The captured Germans were led back across to Guillemont. Maybe they were given some supper, Willie thought. What about the buggering Irish?
Were they heroes or eejits or what? Hour after hour he lay panting, they all did. Towards evening another battalion of the 16th came up and relieved them, and they were sent on their merry way, with Christy Moran in charge now, because Sheridan was wounded and the two lieutenants who had been leading the companies beside them were killed.
Wearily, hungrily, thirstily, they slogged back. They passed men they knew and men they didn’t know, all freshly killed along the way. They were like paint marks painted on the fields. Willie could see where the machine-guns had raked in an arc, with a sickle shape of the fallen for their reward. It was a wonder, a wonder that they had not all been killed. He didn’t know how they had come through. He had prayed and prayed to his good God and somehow it had sufficed.
They got back near the other trench and the wicked truth was that Captain Sheridan had died and they were putting him on a stretcher. Willie and the others seemed to be pulled towards that stretcher, they followed it through the labyrinth of the jump-off trenches, and all the way into Guillemont. And as they passed along, other members of their battalion watched them go, and even raised a cheer, for these lads who had come through, with their leader slain. Because the news travelled back fast that Guinchy had been taken, that men of the 16th were walking through Guinchy, although it was only a
stretch of flattened ground with some light white patches where bricks and mortar of houses had been long since pulverized. So they were heroes of Guinchy after a fashion, Willie Dunne and his mates. But they were ghosts in their hearts. They didn’t even look at the men who cheered them, or honoured them, or whatever it was that was happening. Because they knew, because the fellas in question were not there beside them, that at least four men of their platoon were gone, and maybe two-thirds of the company, and maybe half the battalion was dead, and another third terribly wounded. Poor Quigley was gone. The field hospital couldn’t manage the deluge of grief and distress. The world was distressed into a thousand pieces. Captain Sheridan was a lolling corpse. And their heads were all screaming, screaming inside, the heads of those heroes of Guinchy.
PART THREE
Chapter Fifteen
There was a letter waiting for him from his sister Maud, which was unusual, as Maud was no letter-writer so far, though she had sent a few good parcels:
Dublin Castle.
September 1916.
Dear Willie,
I hope you are well I hope this letter finds you. Dolly and Annie and me send our love. But Papa is annoyed at you Willie. Your letter of recent date he says was not good he is angry Willie. What is it you said to him maybe you can write again and put his mind at rest. He says you must not be asking him about Redmond he wants you to write to him Willie. I hope you are well we send our love and please find a flat daisy from Dolly in the folds of this letter she found it in the castle yard. It is as good as heather she says. All for now Willie.
Your fond sister,
Maud.