“No one quite expected the efforts to bog down like this,” said Hugh. The battle lines, so fluid in the autumn, had gradually become fixed all over Flanders and northern France, and over the winter the armies had dug increasingly elaborate networks of trenches. It was a slow, grinding way to fight, and Hugh’s hospital received a steady flow of the injured, not just from large offensives but from the snipers and shelling that made every day some middle ring of Hell.
“It’s a new way of waging war, that’s for sure,” said Wheaton. “I had to explain to the Colonel that it is not unsportsmanlike to use the machine guns and barbed wire.” He grinned again and rubbed his cropped hair impatiently. “Funny thing, when so many are worried about their husbands and sons, that I’m out here worrying about my father,” he added.
“Quite the HQ you have here,” said Hugh, looking around the dark barn, with its cavernous rafters, mud floor, and canvas tarpaulins screening a few stalls in the rear. There were piles of tables and folding chairs to one side and a heap of bunting waiting to be hung for the festivities. Two soldiers worked a large wooden box radio in one corner, and the smell of cooking came from a tented area beyond a side door. “Where do you keep the regimental silver?” he asked.
“Silver and full dinner service is coming up from the coast by cart today,” said Wheaton, consulting some large plans spread on the trestles. “Real meat is hanging in a cellar. Soup is in cans. The cooks are making some new dessert with surplus Christmas puddings, and we have champagne in the icehouse.”
“So much planning,” said Hugh. “One wishes such detail went into our offensives.”
“An army marches on its stomach, and the senior officers like to be well fed,” said Wheaton. “This could mean another promotion if all goes well.”
“I hear young Snout—Dickie Sidley—has been helping you?” said Hugh. “Good of you to keep the boy back from the front line.”
“Scrappy sort of lad and a real nose for foraging,” said Wheaton. “Sorry to say he got badly shelled last week.”
“Is he all right?” asked Hugh with alarm. He imagined the thin boy bloody and lifeless.
“He’s fine, but his bloody dog ran off after the blast, and the boy keeps wandering off looking for it,” said Wheaton. “I’ve been trying to make excuses for him, but any more and he’ll get himself shot as a deserter.”
“May I take a look at him?” asked Hugh. “We’ve been getting a lot of shelling victims who seem disoriented. I’m trying to document their symptoms.”
“I sent him up to your cousin in the trenches,” said Wheaton.
“But he’s just a boy,” said Hugh, with horror.
“Exactly,” said Wheaton. “I wasn’t joking about the deserting. I thought the boy would be safer with Daniel. Less chance to wander off in a small trench.”
“I’d like to go forward and see them,” said Hugh. “Can it be arranged?”
“They’ll be down tomorrow,” said Wheaton. “Perhaps you haven’t heard, but Lord North has been made the new brigadier of this command.”
“You can’t be serious?” said Hugh. “Craigmore’s father? The man’s an ass.”
“He’s coming to dinner with our regiment tomorrow, and there will be a full-dress drill and parade before the dinner,” said Harry. “You are invited, if you’re staying?”
“Thank you, I’d be delighted,” said Hugh. “But I really would like to go up and see the conditions for myself. I’m sort of on an inspection tour.”
“Bloody unusual request,” said Wheaton. “Most are asking to go the other direction. But be my guest. I’ll have someone lead you up as soon as the evening bombardment is over.”
“Bombardment?” asked Hugh.
“Regular as clockwork, first thing in the morning and right after teatime,” said Wheaton. “We pound each other to pieces for an hour or two, and then the rest of the day we wash our socks and play draughts.”
—
The walk up the lines was dark and treacherous. The smell of smoke and gunpowder hung in the mist, and fires burned in shell holes all along the low ridge where the sandbagged front fire trenches faced the German lines in the valley beyond. Long dark slashes in the earth showed the communications trenches zigzagging back towards the rear, where troops on duty might snatch a few hours of sleep in rotation. Further back more platoons were bivouacked in reserve in whatever shelter they could find. As Hugh was led up, parties carrying water barrels and food jogged up ahead, and several teams of stretcher bearers came down carrying the injured and dead from the evening’s action.
Hugh found Daniel settled in a stone hut, half built into the hill and providing stout cover from stray shells. His men were camped below the stone wall of a pasture and had fashioned shelter from blasted tree limbs and canvas sheets. Small fires were banked to boil water for tea, and as Hugh stood in the doorway of the hut, he felt the strange domesticity amid a hellish landscape. The door of the hut was covered with an old sheet. Hugh gave a loud cough, and a voice invited him to come in.
Daniel was reclining on a folding cot, reading a book by candlelight. A small fire burned in a stone hearth, and a pot of soup simmered. In a corner of the hut, the boy Snout lay asleep on a pile of straw, covered by a rough blanket. A second cot was empty. A couple of small watercolor sketches tacked to the wall, and a bedding roll, suggested that a second officer shared the cramped quarters.
“I must be dreaming,” said Daniel. “My cousin Hugh on a rambling holiday through France?”
“Just passing by coincidence,” said Hugh. “Smelled the soup.”
“It is mulligatawny,” said Daniel.
“I heard as much,” said Hugh. In a moment, Daniel was on his feet and he and Hugh embraced. It occurred to Hugh that in all the long years of affection, they had never hugged each other, or so much as slapped each other on the back, and he thought it sad and strange that it would take a war to wipe away the cold formalities of life.
“War makes our needs so much smaller,” said Daniel. “In ordinary life, I never understood how much pleasure it gives me to see you.”
“You are too kind,” said Hugh. “Have you heard from home?”
“Aunt Agatha has sent me many letters, Hugh,” he said. “And I am trying to find the forgiveness within me to write back, but I have only burned many drafts.”
“I brought all my letters to show you,” said Hugh, taking a small oilskin package from his coat. He was disappointed in his cousin’s stubbornness, but the evening was too precious to start an argument. “Is that cot free for the night?”
“Yes,” said Daniel. He hesitated and then added, “My old pal Worthington, from the Rifles, drilled through the head by a sniper two days ago. I must send his paintings to his wife.” Hugh did not know what to say, and Daniel jabbed a smoking log further into the fire.
“How is the boy?” asked Hugh at last, nodding to the sleeping Snout.
“All a bit too much for him, what with the shell destroying his cart and the dog running off,” said Daniel. “No injuries we can see, but he is definitely a bit off his head. I’m trying to get him sent home, but it’s not so easy, even though a fool can see he’s not nineteen.”
“Does he fall asleep at strange times?” asked Hugh. “Only we’ve been seeing cases of this sort of neurasthenia.”
“Hard to wake him up too,” said Daniel. “You know there’s something off when a boy sleeps through the smell of a fried breakfast.”
They drank soup, and a batman brought in a hunk of strong cheese and a fresh baguette. Where there might still be a local bakery producing bread, Hugh could not imagine, but the baguette tasted of peacetime.
“Something about fresh bread in this place makes you want to cry, doesn’t it?” asked Daniel. He offered a flask, and Hugh took a sip of strong rum. “I’ve been trying to explain in a poem, but I’m miles from capturing it; something about sun-warmed squares and girls giggling in other languages and friends walking through summer landscapes with a backpack and no responsibility…blah, blah.”
“Most of the hospital bread is mealy and tastes of the tin it came in,” said Hugh. “Plenty of sustenance in the British army, but not a lot of taste.”
After their simple meal, Daniel offered Hugh a spare pipe from Worthington’s bedroll and the two cousins smoked and tended the small fire.