Page 3 of These Old Lies

2 The Trench Lines

Hébuterne, May 1916 / Charlie

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Charlie yelled as the shell’s impact knocked him—and the row of men beside him—into the cold, slimy mud of the trench walls.

That was no ordinary whizz-bang from the Germans; the explosion’s crack had been almost as violent as its impact. Charlie righted himself and tried to figure out if it was even worth the effort of wiping the mud off his uniform.

“His or ours?” the man to Charlie’s left asked, the cry of the shell still ringing in their ears.

“Hell if I know, and I’m not fool enough to go look,” Charlie answered. Sticking your head above the trench line was a handwritten invitation to one of the German snipers.

Charlie shifted in his soaked boots, trying to take the pressure off his blisters. No matter how many duckboards they put down, it was impossible to spend more than five minutes in the front lines and not have muddy water soak through your boots and socks.

“Captain ordered a double ration of rum,” Sergeant Henderson called down the line, thick SRD jug in hand.

Henderson had only been in the division a few months, but Charlie liked the burly Yorkshireman who was never shy about calling a spade a spade. He’d worked as a tradesman in London before joining up, and Charlie wondered whether their paths would have crossed even without the war.

Henderson also was smart enough to water down the ration with some tea, making the rum both warm and drinkable. As the cups were passed along the line, the low chatter of conversation between the men died down. Charlie could see the mouths of some men moving in silent prayer, the hands of others checking and rechecking their rifles, the eyes of others locked onto small pictures of loved ones.

Charlie didn’t do any of that. He closed his eyes and let his mind drift.

When he’d first shipped out to Flanders, his sergeant had informed the section that “to think was to have already disobeyed.” Charlie had taken the grizzled sergeant's words to heart, although perhaps not the way the man had intended. If to think was to disobey, then Charlie was going to damn well make sure he was thinking whenever he had the chance.

He would think about his life in London before the war. About his family, their little shop filled with laughter and teasing. He invented futures for himself, scoring the winning FA Cup goal for Arsenal, or other such nonsense.

Mostly, though, he liked to think about sex, which was both highly distracting and highly pleasant. Plus, it was extra satisfying to know how horrified the army would be if they could read his mind. Especially given the nature of his recent fantasies, which featured a posh lieutenant and what he could do with his mouth.

The sniffle beside him made Charlie open his eyes. The private to his left, the one who had asked about where the shelling had come from, had long tear tracks streaking down his face.

Charlie knew all too well the fears the lad was facing. He glanced down at his half-finished cup of rum-tea. It was against the rules to share rations, but what would his officers do if he was caught? Send him to the front?

He passed it over. “Have this. Wouldn’t want it to go to waste.”

The man’s eyes went wide, but he threw Charlie’s remaining ration back in one fell swoop. Poor bastard.

Charlie was about to open his mouth to say another word of comfort when he noticed the break in the shelling.

Without needing to be told, the line of men readied themselves for action. Grips shifted, helmets tightened, hands at knives ready to be pulled.

One heartbeat. Two heartbeats. Three heartbeats.

The high-pitched shrill of a metal whistle cut through the silence. The signal to charge.

“Over the top, lads! Over the top!” Henderson yelled as they scrambled up the ladders into No Man’s Land, standing above ground for the first time in over a week.

Charlie could only guess what motivated his fellow soldiers to go against every human instinct and run towards the machine gun fire. Maybe a grand vision of being a hero, a belief in God, or just the numbing effect of rum.

Or, in Charlie’s case, the small glow of a happy daydream.

???

Incredibly, Charlie survived the charge. Survived the whole damn week. And he was likely going to survive another week, because his section’s rotation at the front was done, and he had eight days of relative safety ahead of him. It would still be in the trenches, with the constant rain and the rats, but at least the shellfire wasn’t as loud.

Charlie’s daydreams had kept him pleasantly entertained on the front line, and now he quite firmly wanted—withfirmlybeing the important point here—to move from the world of imagination to action.

He attempted to subtly alter his trousers as he stood at the crossroads of two major trench lines, trying not to look too much like a man with time on his hands.

In the month or so since that they had first drunkenly got off together in an alleyway of some bombed-out village, Ned had become Charlie’s favourite distraction. It was never guaranteed that they would be able to meet up. For one, it was a war and sometimes the Jerrys got in the way. Other times, Ned was doing officious officer things or Charlie was getting called up for some insubordination. And sometimes the morass of men that filled the trenches made any sort of interaction impossible.