An End of Poppies

crushing them up into their food. I watch as their wiggly bodies burst clear liquid into the mashed potato under the tines of his stained kit-fork. Some say it tastes better than real butter, but I can't help but think they are kidding themselves. Hendricks says he has been eating them for years. Says they are full of protein and vitamins. I still can't bring myself to eat them; the thought turns my stomach.

  As a treat for Christmas everyone had a mug of watery beer; courtesy of the Divisional Commander apparently. I have never seen him; I don't even know his name or rank. In the past we have been given rum, but no such luck this year. The beer was cloudy, flat and weak but a welcome break from the endless mugs of tasteless dust-filled tea we get.

  There wasn't much to do on Christmas morning, so most of the boys just took the opportunity to lie in their hammocks and sleep or read letters. Of course I read and re-read your letters. In the afternoon the Sergeant-Major decided that us lying about was too much of a good thing, so put us on clean-up duty, so we didn't really get the whole day off. Clean-up duty is mostly a pointless exercise. It involves cleaning boots and uniforms and polishing buttons with spit. Cleaning uniforms that have months and months of well and truly ground-in dirt on them. Cleaning them with a worn out brush when you know that every square inch will be covered in wet clinging clay and mud again the very next day.

  It also involves trying to clean the 'stink pit' of our room. I was given the raggedy useless broom and told to sweep the floor. This is an impossible task as the floor is simply bare earth, so one can't possible sweep it effectively. All that happens is you sweep and spread the dirt back and forth for a while. Still at least I wasn't digging and I didn't get put on latrines like Jones. You should have heard him swearing Esme; he has a mouth full of expletives that you wouldn't believe. It made us all laugh so. So all in all our Christmas day wasn't so bad I suppose.

  New Year's Eve passed for us just like any other day. 1962 came as easily as the ticking of a clock; with more of the simple routine of digging and digging and more digging.

  Every morning the bugle in the access tunnel wakes us with its tinny harsh tone bouncing around the concrete and earth walls of the tunnels. I swear that Private Combes who blows it is tone deaf. Credit to him though, God knows how he manages to wake up every morning in order to blow the bloody thing and wake us. It always startles me so and I awake with a jerking head and a foul-tasting dry mouth.

  Five minutes to dress. Five minutes to wash our faces and visit the latrine and then the porridge line. There are no showers down here. The stale water we use comes in old wooden barrels from top-side. I always try to clean my teeth with my old worn-out toothbrush as we march in straggly single file down the steep tunnels and staircases, to finally climb down the ladders to where we dig. Then it's about five hours of solid, grinding digging until luncheon. We each carry our own shovel strapped against our back-pack; Enfield's slung over the top clunking occasionally on the back of our tin hats. We carry our Enfield rifles down here in case of a tunnel CENSORED and then there may be CENSORED and CENSORED. I have yet to see this happen thankfully but I suppose the Germans must carry weapons in their tunnels.

  The shovel I have inherited is worn away on one side of its blade where my right handed swing has pushed it over and over into God's earth. The soldiers who dug with it before me must have been right handed too. Odd to think of those poor souls toiling in exactly the same fashion as me. Its wooden handle shines like an oiled parquet floor where my hands grip it.

  It also seems odd that I almost enjoy the mindless rhythm of the digging; I go blank sometimes and lose the ache in my shoulders and the small of my back. The meditative rhythm of toil. I wonder if those soldiers who used the shovel before me felt like that too. It connects us, all of us through the years shovelling dirt into carts and wooden wheelbarrows. Dirt to be transported on makeshift wooden rails to other parts of the wall where it is used to fill sandbags or to mix with lime for cement and mortar.

  Sand is becoming harder and harder to come by. I have seen the massive quarries on the beaches between Calais and Boulogne. They are becoming exhausted, or at least that is the rumour.

  Every so often the engineer comes and checks that CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED. I don't even know the CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED; the supports and ever wider gaps in the tunnel. Little breaks now and then for silence as the Corporal does some listening. His ear pressed hard against the dirt wall. Always his left one, so always that side of his face is muddy with ground-in filth and the other side relatively clean. Sapper Jones took to calling him 'Corporal Two-Face' on account of this. Well that and the fact that he pretends to be on the side of us Privates but then goes squealing to the Sergeant-Major anytime something is amiss. Now everyone calls him 'Two-Face' behind his back. Some days Two-Face listens for CENSORED and other days it's CENSORED CENSORED. This can be most disconcerting and CENSORED CENSORED; I, of course, try not to think about it.

  For lunch we are given hunks of stale bread in wax paper which we dip in our tin mugs of steaming tea. If we are lucky there is a lump of hard cheese stuck against the paper or a pickle to liven things up. Fifteen minute break, sometimes half an hour. You can't sit around too long; it is too cold and wet this time of year. It's best to stay standing for as long as you can in a vague attempt to try and keep yourself warm and your uniform dry. The men rock to and fro as they stamp their feet and chew heavily on their bread. Greasy puddles form on the uneven dirt floor of the tunnel, and here, like everywhere down below, there are always the incessant dripping from the ceiling.

  After lunch it's simply back to the digging again, with the occasional break for listening. Sometimes we fall back down the tunnels when there is going to be a blast of CENSORED. When the shouts come the men huddle down; screw their faces and jam their cold hands over their ears, fearful of the impending explosion. It comes with an inevitable enormous crack and rumble which shakes your very soul; a sound so forceful that you can feel it shake your rib cage and your very innards. I feel sure that most of us are deafer than we used to be. Then the shock wave of air and smoke and dust; forced like a speeding rat in a maze down through the tunnels because it has nowhere else to go. We try not to breath so deeply until it subsides and then Two-Face shouts for us to get back to the digging.

  Mostly though there isn't much sound apart from the clunk of spades and snap of picks, and of course the grunts and groans of the men working. Such sound becomes so familiar that one no longer hears it specifically. Sometimes someone will shout out a joke or insult when Two Face or the Sergeant Major are out of earshot. Or they might recall a quick obscenity about one of the French girls of ill-repute they met the last time top-side. Apart from that there isn't much talking; simply quiet resignation.

  Occasionally when the shelling is bad the tunnels shake and dust and dirt fall. A rumbling akin to what I imagine an earthquake might sound like. Again it shakes you through to your ribcage. To your core. You know to hunker down in those moments; trying to bend forward and make an arch with your body in the hope the hope that if there is a cave-in you might trap an airspace between your body and the ground. Falling mud and drips seep coldly down your neck below your leaning helmet. Then the shaking passes and we simply continue digging. Nobody says anything.

  Before Christmas our digging broke through into another tunnel and there was a bit of a panic. There have been tunnels here from the very first years of the war. It is no secret. Mostly though those old tunnels are well above us and are long caved in. It is rare to find an old tunnel this far down, in the rock and dirt. Often we encounter rock or shingle layers that are too difficult to dig with bare shovels so we have to use explosives. It was after one such blast that one of the boys was shovelling the broken rock when the tunnel side collapsed and revealed a tunnel beyond.

  We doused the lights and grabbed our rifles. The Sergeant-Major can seem as if he has no sense of humour or compassion, but I will give him this - what he lacks in humanity he makes up for in bravery
. He took his oil-lamp and his drawn pistol and without a word he clambered as quietly as he could into the gap. We stood waiting, anticipating a fire-fight with some tunnelling Germans, but nothing happened. The Sergeant-Major called that it was safe and a few of us climbed in after him.

  Beyond the hole was just a measly short section of Jerry tunnel. Barely enough room for three men to stoop. Both ends had been caved in, not enough roof supports by the looks of it. There was a solitary dead Hun soldier sat there with his back to the tunnel wall, helmeted head bent forward as if he were sleeping. Poor man must have been there a very long time.

  The Sergeant-Major just said 'leave him' and so we did. No one even picked over his skeleton for souvenirs or his boots or ammo. Once back in our own tunnel the Sergeant-Major took a pick axe, said 'God rest his soul', and hacked at our side of the German tunnel wall. Crashing the pick axe in a frenzy. We simply stood there and watched him. After a while he had smashed through a couple of the wooden roof supports and he jumped back as the tunnel beyond slowly collapsed, finally burying that poor German soldier.

  Afterwards nobody