CHAPTER ONE
It was shortly after three in the afternoon. Joseph Reavley
was half asleep in the April sun, his back to the pale clay
wall of the trench, when he heard the angry voices.
"They be moi boots, Tucky Nunn, an' you know that well as
Oi do! Yours be over there wi' holes in 'em!" It was
Plugger Arnold, a seasoned soldier of twenty, big-boned, a
son of the village blacksmith. He had been in Flanders
since the outbreak of war in August. Although he was angry,
he kept his voice low. He knew it carried in the afternoon
stillness when the men snatched the three or four hours of
sleep they could.
The German trenches were only seventy yards away across
this stretch of the Ypres Salient. Anyone foolish enough to
reach a hand up above the parapet would be likely to get it
shot. The snipers seldom needed a second chance. Added to
which, getting yourself injured on purpose was a court-
martial offense.
Tucky Nunn, nineteen and new this far forward, was standing
on the duckboards that floored the trench. They were there
to keep the men's feet above the icy water that sloshed
around, but they seldom worked. The water level was too
high. Every time you thought it was drying out at last, it
rained again.
"Yeah?" Tucky said, his eyebrows raised. "Fit me perfect,
they do. Didn't see your name on 'em. Must 'ave wore off."
He grinned, making no move to bend and unlace the offending
boots and hand them back.
Plugger was sitting half sideways on the fire-step. A few
yards away the sentry was standing with his back to them,
staring through the periscope over the wire and mud of no-
man's-land. He could not afford to lose concentration even
for a moment,regardless of what went on behind him.
"They's moi boots," Plugger said between his
teeth. "Take 'em off yer soddin' feet an' give 'em back to
me, or Oi'll take 'em off yer and give yer to the rats!"
Tucky bounced on the balls of his feet, hunching his
shoulders a little. "You want to try?" he invited.
Doughy Ward crawled out of his dugout, fully dressed, as
they all were: webbing and rifle with bayonet attached. His
fair-skinned face was crumpled with annoyance at being
robbed of any part of his few hours of sleep. He glared at
Joseph. " ‘Thou shalt not steal.' Isn't that right,
Chaplain?"
It was a demand that even here in the mud and the cold,
amid boredom and sporadic violence, Joseph should do his
job and stand for the values of justice that must remain,
or all this would sink into a purposeless hell. Without
right and wrong there was no sanity.
"Oi didn't steal them!" Tucky said angrily. "They
were . . ." He did not finish the sentence because Plugger
hit him, a rolling blow that caught the side of his jaw as
he ducked and struck back.
There was no point in shouting at them, and the sound would
carry. Added to which Joseph did not want to let the whole
trench know that there was a discipline problem. Both men
could end up on a charge, and that was not the way for a
chaplain to resolve anything. He moved forward, careful to
avoid being struck himself, and grasped hold of Tucky,
taking him off balance and knocking him against the
uprights that held the trench wall.
"The Germans are that way!" he said tartly, jerking his
head back toward the parapet and no-man's-land beyond.
Plugger was up on his feet, slithering in the mud on the
duckboards, his socks filthy and sodden. "Good oidea to
send him over the top, Captain, where he belongs! But not
in moi boots!" He was floundering toward them, arms
flailing as if to carry on the fight.
Joseph stepped between them, risking being caught by both,
the worst part of which would be that then a charge would
be unavoidable. "Stop it!" he ordered briskly. "Take the
boots off, Nunn!"
"Thank you, Chaplain," Plugger responded with a smile of
satisfaction.
Tucky stood unmoving, his face set, ignoring the
blood. "They ain't his boots oither!" he said sullenly, his
eyes meeting Joseph's.
A man appeared around the dogleg corner. No stretch of the
trench was more than ten or twelve yards long, to prevent
shellfire taking out a whole platoon of men--or a German
raiding party making it through the wire. They were steep-
sided, shored up against mud slides, and barely wide enough
for two men to pass each other. The man coming was tall and
lean with wide shoulders, and he walked with a certain
elegance, even on the sloping duckboards. His face was
dark, long-nosed, and there was a wry humor in it.
"Early for tea, aren't you?" he asked, his eyes going from
one to another.
Tucky and Plugger reluctantly stood to attention. "Yes,
Major Wetherall," they said almost in unison.
Sam Wetherall glanced down at Plugger's stockinged feet,
his eyebrows raised. "Thinking of creeping up on the cook,
are you? Or making a quick recce over the top first?"
"Soon as Oi get moi boots back from that thievin' sod,
Oi'll put 'em on again," Plugger replied, gesturing toward
Tucky.
"I'd wash them first if I were you," Sam advised with a
smile.
"Oi will," Plugger agreed. "Oi don't want to catch nothin'!"
"I meant your feet," Sam corrected him.
Tucky Nunn roared with laughter, in spite of the bruise
darkening on his jaw where Plugger had caught him.
"Whose boots are they?" Joseph asked, smiling as well.
"Moine!" both men said together.
"Whose boots are they?" Joseph repeated.
There was a moment's silence.
"Oi saw 'em first," Plugger answered.
"You didn't take them," Tucky pointed out. "If you 'ad,
you'd 'ave them now, wouldn't you!"
"Come on, Solomon." Sam looked at Joseph, his mouth pulled
into an ironic twist.
"Right," Joseph said decisively. "Left boot, Nunn. Right
boot, Arnold."
There was considerable grumbling, but Tucky took off the
right boot and passed it over, reaching for one of the worn
boots where Plugger had been sitting.
"Shouldn't have had them off now anyway," Sam said
disapprovingly. "You know better than that. What if Fritz'd
made a sudden attack?"
Plugger's eyebrows shot up, his blue eyes wide open. "At
half past three in the afternoon? It's teatoime in a
minute. They may be soddin' Germans, but they're not
uncivilized. They still got to eat an' sleep, same as us."
"You stick your head up above the parapet, and you'll find
he's nowhere near asleep, I promise you," Sam warned.
Tucky was about to reply when there was a shouting about
twenty yards along the line, and a moment later a young
soldier lurched around the corner, his face white. He
stared at Sam.
"One of your sappers has taken half his hand off!" he said,
his voice high-pitched and jerky.
"Where is he, Charlie?" Joseph said quickly. "We'll get him
to the first-aid post."
Sam was rigid. "Who is it?" He started forward, pushing
ahead of both of them, ignoring the rats scattering in both
directions.
Charlie Gee swiveled and went on his heels. Joseph stopped
to duck into the connecting trench leading back to the
second line, and pick out a first-aid pack in case they
needed more than the field dressing the wounded man should
be carrying himself.
When he caught up with them Sam was bent over, one arm
around a man sitting on the duckboards. The sapper was
rocking back and forth, clutching the stump of his hand to
his chest, scarlet blood streaming from it.
Joseph had lost count of how many wounded and dead he had
seen, but each man's horror was new, and real, and it
looked as if in this case the man might have lost a good
deal of his right hand.
Sam was ashen, his jaw clenched so tight the muscles stood
out like cords. "We have to see it, Corliss!" His voice
shook in spite of everything he could do to steady it. "We
have to stop the bleeding!" He looked at Joseph, his eyes
desperate.
Joseph tore open the dressing and, speaking gently to the
injured man, took his hand and without examining it,
pressed the bandage and the lint over the streaming wound,
then bound it as well as he could. He had very little idea
how many fingers were left.
"Come on, ol' feller," Charlie said, trying to help Corliss
to his feet. "Oi'll get you back to the doc's and they'll
do it for you proper."
Sam climbed to his feet and pulled Joseph aside as Charlie
and Corliss stumbled past.
"Joe, can you go with them?" Sam said urgently. He
swallowed, gulping. "Corliss is in a hell of a state. He's
been on the edge of funking it for days. I've got to find
out what happened, put in a report, but the medics'll ask
him what caused it. . . . Answer for him, will you?" He
stopped, but it was painfully apparent he wanted to say
more.
Suddenly Joseph understood. Sam was terrified the man had
injured himself deliberately. Some men panicked, worn down
by fear, cold, and horror, and put their hands up above the
parapet precisely so a sniper would get them. A hand maimed
was "a Blighty one," and they got sent home. But if it was
self-inflicted, it was considered cowardice in the face of
the enemy. It warranted a court-martial, and possibly even
the death sentence. Corliss's nerves may have snapped. It
happened to men sometimes. Anything could trigger a
reaction: the incessant noise of bombardment, the dirt,
body lice. For some it was waking in the night with rats
crawling over your body--or worse, your face. The horror of
talking one moment to a man you had grown up with, the next
seeing him blown to bits, perhaps armless and legless but
still alive, taking minutes of screaming in agony to die.
It was more than some could take. For others it was the
guilt of knowing that your bullet, or your bayonet, was
doing the same to a German you had never met, but who was
your own age, and essentially just like you. Sometimes they
crept over no-man's-land at night and swapped food.
Occasionally you could even hear them singing. Different
things broke different men. Corliss was a sapper. It could
have been the claustrophobia of crawling inside the tunnels
under the earth, the terror of being buried alive.
"Help him," Sam begged. "I can't go . . . and they won't
believe me anyway."
"Of course." Joseph did not hesitate. He grasped Sam's arm
for an instant, then turned and made his way back over the
duckboards to the opening of the communication trench.
Charlie Gee and Corliss were far enough ahead of him to be
out of sight around one of the numerous dogleg bends. He
hurried, his feet slithering on the wet boards. In some
places chicken wire had been tacked over them to give a
grip, but no one had bothered here. He must catch up with
them before they reached the supply trench and someone else
started asking questions.