Birdsong

  That night the guns began. Stephen was reading a book by candlelight in the hayloft of the barn when he heard them. A howitzer was embedded not far behind and was shaking down the dust of centuries from the rafters.

  The bombardment was not much to begin with; it was like a clearing of the throat, but the echoes went on and on over the soft downland, on a ringing bass note. When the echo was starting to become so deep it was no longer audible, another low boom could be made out in the continuous murmur of sound, then another, so that the walls of the barn began to tremble. Stephen could feel the vibrations run through the wooden floor of the loft. He pictured the gunners beginning to warm to their task, stripping off their shirts in the deep-dug emplacements, pressing the protective wax deeper into their ears. He was awed by the sound the guns were making; so many of them in rolling sequence on a line of sixteen miles, the heaviest providing the continuous rumble like a sustained roll of timpani, and the lighter adding unpredictable pattern and emphasis. Within an hour the whole line was pouring out shells, filling the night sky with a dense traffic of metal. The noise was like thunder breaking in uninterrupted waves.

  There was some consolation to be taken from the evident power of the bombardment, though none at all from the scale of the conflict it portended. Stephen felt that the odds had been dramatically increased; there seemed to be no question any longer of escape or compromise; it was only a matter of hope, that his own side should prove stronger than the enemy.

  They stayed in Colincamps for two more days before moving off toward the front line.

  “Won’t be long now, sir,” said Byrne, grinding out his cigarette and taking his place next to Hunt. “I never thought you’d be with us when you went down in that tunnel.”

  “Nor me neither,” said Hunt. “I wish we’d all bloody well stayed underground.”

  Stephen smiled. “You didn’t much like it at the time. Never mind. This’ll be different. Get Studd and Barnes over here, will you? Leslie, you’ve had two days to clean your rifle. Don’t do it when you’re just about to start marching.”

  The platoon fell in under the eye of CSM Price, who strutted from one edge of the ragged square to the other before taking instructions from Captain Gray. Price was the only man who seemed to know which cart track would take them to the right place and which long defile would ultimately bring them to their appointed position in the frontline trench. The countryside was shaking beneath their feet as the bombardment entered its third day.

  The company had a nervous joie de vivre as it set off on the prepared road toward Auchonvillers. The traffic of ammunition and supplies was so heavy that the men were obliged to take a farm track across the fields.

  Stephen felt his skin and nose begin to itch with the dust and seed that were blowing from the crops and hedgerows. Beneath their laden packs the men began to sweat, and the smell of them rose on the warm summer air. They sang marching songs with banal, repeated words of home. Stephen looked down at the ridge of grass along the centre of the track where the cartwheels had not pressed. He thought of the generations of farmers who had worked their way along it on such clear summer days.

  As they rounded a corner, he saw two dozen men, naked to the waist, digging a hole thirty yards square at the side of the path. For a moment he was baffled. It seemed to have no agricultural purpose; there was no more planting or ploughing to be done. Then he realized what it was. They were digging a mass grave. He thought of shouting an order to the men to about turn or at least to avert their eyes, but they were almost on it, and some of them had already seen their burial place. The songs died on their lips and the air was reclaimed by the birds.

  They moved in silence, back on to the prepared road and down into Auchonvillers. Everything had changed in readiness for battle. The café where he had had lunch with the Azaires had been converted into a temporary hospital. On the main street of the village, flanked by piles of hay and carts full of animal feed, Colonel Barclay was sitting on a bay horse with shiny, barrelled flanks. As the companies formed a square and stood in silence, gazing at him, he coughed and told them what they had guessed, but had not until then officially known. He looked like a character from comic opera with his attempted grandeur and indolently snorting horse.

  “You are going to attack. I know you’ll be relieved to hear it because that’s what you’ve come for. You are going to fight and you are going to win. You are going to inflict such a defeat on the enemy that he will never recover. You can hear the artillery going to work on his defences. The bombardment will stop tomorrow and you will attack. The enemy will be utterly demoralized. His defences have been shattered, his wire is cut, his dugouts are obliterated. I confidently expect that only a handful of shots will be fired at you. The enemy will be relieved to see someone to whom he can surrender.”

  He overcame an initial nervousness that made him bark. His enthusiasm and simple belief in what he said was communicated to the men. Some of the younger ones began to shed tears.

  “However, I have to warn you that you must be extremely careful about accepting any such surrender. My instructions from the chief of the General Staff are that it lies with the enemy to prove his intention to surrender beyond possibility of misunderstanding. If you have any doubts, then I think you know what to do. The bayonet remains in my view an extremely effective weapon.

  “I need hardly remind you of the glorious history of this regiment. We acquired our nickname, the Goats, in the Peninsular War, when we proved our worth in rocky terrain. We did not retreat; and the Duke of Wellington himself commended our bravery. I can say to you no more than this: that you must honour the memory of those men who bore the colours before you. In your conduct in battle you must be worthy of the great deeds of this regiment’s history. You must strive to win for your families, for your king and your country. I believe you will do so. I believe we shall take dinner in Bapaume. God bless you all.”

  An outbreak of cheering was instantly quelled by the military police, who began to shout a list of instructions to each company. The strictest discipline would be enforced. Any man shirking his duty would be shot on the spot. There would be no questions in the heat of battle. As the men’s enthusiasm faltered, the police concluded with a list of men who had been executed for cowardice. “Kennedy, Richard, desertion in the face of the enemy, executed; Masters, Paul, disobeying an order, executed …”

  Stephen turned his head from the sound of the list, looking at the baffled, fear-filled faces of Hunt, Leslie, and Barnes. Tipper, the boy who had been carried screaming from the trench, had been brought back just in time, with the same vacant expression. Even Byrne’s long, sanguine features had gone pale. Many of the men had the look of questioning boys, torn between excitement and a desire to be back with their mothers. Stephen closed his ears to the sound.

  “Simpson, William, desertion, executed …”

  When they left the village of Auchonvillers. Stephen’s mind flickered back to that hot day by the river with the Azaire family. They had encountered other families who came from as far away as Paris for the famous fishing in the Ancre. Perhaps tomorrow he would finally taste “English” teas in the patisserie at Thiepval.

  He thought of Isabelle’s open, loving face; he thought of the pulse of her, that concealed rhythm of her desire that expressed her strange humanity. He remembered Lisette’s flushed, flirtatious look and the way she had taken his hand and placed it on her body. That day of charged emotion seemed as unreal and bizarre as the afternoon that was now taking them across the field to the reserve trenches.

  As Stephen listened to the sound of men beginning to move off, he looked down at his feet, where the boots beneath the regulation puttees were taking him forward. At that moment, as they left the village and its trappings of normality, time seemed to stall and collapse. The next three days passed in the closing of an eye; yet the images retained a fearful static quality that stayed in the mind until death.

  On the way up they were given wire cutters.
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  “I thought the guns would cut the wire,” said Byrne. “Two gas masks? Why two?”

  Tipper was smiling madly while Price attached a tin triangle to his back. “So the observers at the rear can see you, young man,” said Price. The air overhead was solid metal, the ground trembling with the bombardment.

  There were new images, even for experienced men. The reserve and communications trenches like railway carriages in the rush hour, and only Price’s barked instructions keeping some thread of order. Harrington’s platoon on a wrong turning, heading in the direction of Serre. B Company, under Lucas, completely lost. The sweat of moving packs of eighty pounds through the crush of bewildered, nervous men. A sudden summer storm coming in from Poziéres, drenching the German lines then drifting west and turning the earth to mud beneath the press of British feet. All of these things happening at once.

  There was Michael Weir standing on raised ground, gazing toward Hawthorn Ridge. Stephen pulled himself out of the trench and went to him. Weir’s face was lit by a strange excitement. “There’s going to be a bang there the size of which will make you gasp,” he said. “We’ve just laid the fuses. Firebrace is underground burying the cable.”

  Stephen had a moment of lucidity. “What will you do tomorrow? Where will you be?” His voice was puzzled, concerned.

  “Watching from a safe distance.” Weir laughed. “Our work is done. A few of my men have volunteered to be stretcher-bearers if manpower gets short. We’re hoping to join you for a hot dinner. Don’t the German lines look beautiful?”

  Stephen saw yellow gorse and weed along the long-established lines, with white chalk marks across the hills where the main defences were dug. A towering red mist hung over them where the brick of the villages was pulverized by the bombardment. Cones of shrapnel exploded with white and yellow light. A faint rainbow was coming up above them as the sun began to press back the storm clouds.

  Weir grinned. “Happy?”

  Stephen nodded. “Oh yes.”

  He rejoined the flow of men through the trench. He thought: this thing has its own momentum now; I am being borne away by it. “Poor Fritz,” said a voice. “He must be mad by now under those guns.”

  Hunt was at his side, panting beneath his pack. A small wooden cage was attached to it. It contained two pigeons. Stephen looked at their blank, marbled eyes.

  There was just the night to negotiate, then it would begin. They were in position. Somehow Price had found their place, and Corporal Petrossian with his mania for detail had got the platoon lined up correctly. The trench was a good one. “Best parados I’ve seen,” said Petrossian. “And at last a front with full wooden revetting.”

  “Look, it’s the reserve padre!”

  Horrocks in white cassock over khaki trousers, bald head gleaming, was standing with bands and prayer book on raised ground like a useless earthbound bird; the real and only padre, but known as the reserve because he never ventured beyond the back lines. Some jittering movement among the men, nonbelievers finding faith in fear. A shameful flock formed round the padre.

  Stephen Wraysford joined them. He saw the still-earth-grimed face of Jack Firebrace. Arthur Shaw, a big solemn man beside him.

  His own men, those who would attack in the morning, knelt on the earth, faces hidden behind one hand, in an agonizing tunnel of their own, a darkness where there was no time but where they tried to look on death. The padre’s words were hard to distinguish against the bombardment.

  Stephen found something more than humility, a feeling of complete inconsequence. He pressed his hand against his face, particles of flesh, pathetic Lincolnshire boy. He felt no fear for his blood and muscle and bone, but the size of what had begun, the number of them now beneath the terrible crashing of the sky, was starting to pull at the moorings of his self-control.

  He found the word Jesus in his mouth. He said it again and again beneath his breath. It was part prayer, part profanity. Jesus, Jesus … This was the worst; nothing had been like this.

  The wafer was in his mouth and the sweet wine, but he wanted more. Communion was over, but some men could not stand up again. They stayed kneeling. Having communed with their beginnings, they wanted to die where they were without enduring the day ahead of them.

  Stephen returned to the trench to find the men in disarray.

  “It’s been postponed for two days,” said Byrne. “It’s too wet.”

  Stephen closed his eyes. Jesus. Jesus. He had been ready to go.

  Gray’s face was a line of whipped anxiety. They went together to a small hill made by the excavation of earth from a tunnel.

  “Let us be calm,” said Gray. Stephen could see how hard he was finding it. “Let me recap the plan. The artillery lays down a protective barrage in front of you. You advance at walking pace behind the barrage. When it lifts, you take your objectives, then wait for it to begin again. It provides protection for you all the way. The German wire is already cut and many of their guns destroyed. Casualties will be ten per cent.”

  Stephen smiled at him. “Do you think so?”

  Gray breathed in deeply. “I am giving you our orders. We are on the flank of the main attack. Our battalion is to be flexible. We are in the midst of great fighting units. The Ulsters, the Twenty-ninth Division—the Incomparables, fresh from Gallipoli.”

  “Fresh?” said Stephen.

  Gray looked at him. “If I die, Wraysford, and you are still alive, I want you to take charge of the company.”

  “Me? Why not Harrington?”

  “Because you are a mad, cold-hearted devil and that is what we are going to need.”

  The light was going down, and Gray raised his binoculars to his face for perhaps the twentieth time that day. He passed them to Stephen. “Theres a banner over there above the enemy frontline trench. Can you see what it says?”

  Stephen looked. There was a huge placard. “Yes. It says ‘Welcome to the Twenty-ninth Division.’ ” He felt sick.

  Gray shook his head. “The wire isn’t cut, you know. I don’t want you to tell your men, but I’ve been up and down with these things and I can assure you that for stretches of hundreds of yards there is no shell damage at all. The shells have just not gone off.”

  “I thought it was cut from here to Dar es Salaam.”

  “It’s a staff cockup. Haig, Rawlinson, the lot. Don’t tell your men, Wraysford. Don’t tell them, just pray for them.”

  Gray held his head in his hands. His wisdom and his shelves full of books were no good to him here, Stephen thought.

  ———

  In their forty-eight hours of unwanted reprieve the men had more time to ready themselves.

  The first rifle fire came with a falsetto crack. Barnes had shot himself through the palate.

  At nightfall they wrote letters.

  Michael Weir wrote:

  Dear Mother and Father,

  We are going to attack. We have been making preparations for some days underground. My own unit has been involved and we have now done our bit. Some of the men have volunteered to help as stretcher-bearers on the day. Morale is very high. We expect that this push will end the war. It is unlikely that many of the enemy will have survived our bombardment.

  Thank you for the cake and the strawberries. I’m glad the garden is such a joy to you. We certainly all enjoyed the fruit. I think often of you both and of our quiet life at home, but I ask you not to worry about me. May your prayers be with the men who will go over the top. Thank you for the soap, Mother, which I assure you was put to good use. I was pleased that your evening with the Parsons was such a success. Please pass on my sympathy to Mr. and Mrs. Stanton. I have only just heard about their son.

  I am sure I paid the account at the tailor’s when I was on leave, but do settle it on my behalf if I am mistaken and I will repay you on my next leave. Don’t worry about me, please. It is warm enough here. A little too warm if anything—so there is nothing further I need, no more socks or pullovers.

  From your son, Michael.


  Tipper wrote:

  Dear Mum and Dad,

  They sent me back to join my pals and I am so proud to be back with them. It’s a terrific show with all the bands and the men from other units. Our guns are putting on a display like Firework Night. We are going to attack and we can’t wait to let Fritz have it! The General says we don’t expect no resistance at all because our guns have finished them off. We were meant to go over yesterday, but the weather was not so good.

  The waiting is awful hard. Some of the chaps are a bit downhearted. That fellow Byrne I told you about, he come up and told me not to worry. I’m pleased to hear Fred Campbell has kept safe so far. Good show.

  Well, my dear Mum and Dad, that’s all I’ve got to say to you. Tomorrow we will know if we will be seeing each other again one day. Don’t worry about me. I am not frightened of what is waiting for me. When I was a little lad you were very good to me and I won’t let you down. Please write to me again, I do like so much to hear the news from home. Please send me a couple of views of St. Albans. Give my love to Kitty. You have been the dearest Mum and Dad to me.

  From your Son, John.

  Stephen choked when he read the letter and sealed the envelope. He thought of Gray’s face and its experienced foreboding. He felt a terrible anger coming over him. He tore a page from his notebook and wrote:

  Dear Isabelle,

  I am sending this to you at the house in Amiens where it will probably be destroyed, but I am writing to you because I have no one else to write to. I am sitting beneath a tree near the village of Auchonvillers, where we once came to spend a day.

  Like hundreds of thousands of British soldiers in these fields I am trying to contemplate my death. I write to you to say that you are the only person I have ever loved.

  This letter will probably never find you, but I wanted to tell someone what it feels like to be sitting on this grass, on this Friday in June, feeling the lice crawl against my skin, my stomach filled with hot stew and tea, perhaps the last food I will eat, and hearing the guns above me crying out to heaven.