Page 8 of These Old Lies
Charlie started to climb the rough wooden ladders against the trench walls. As his foot landed on the last rung, he heard Smythe mutter, “Bugger.”
In the last of the fading daylight was just bright enough to make out the several layers of barbed wire fencing stretched out before them. Charlie’s gaze followed Smythe's, and he had to bite back his own cursing. The trenches were designed to be difficult for the enemy to penetrate, which, unfortunately for them, just as effectively blocked men going out as it did those coming in. Apparently that had not occurred to the brilliant minds at HQ, probably because it would have required them to actually stand in a trench line.
Henderson gestured with hand signals for three of the engineers to shift up to the front of the group and start cutting.
Cutting and sliding through the wires was slow and painful work. One inch in the wrong direction and a man could find himself hopelessly ensnarled. As the night darkness descended, the engineers needed to work increasingly by touch alone, a risky game when you’re trying to remove spirals of barbed wire.
“Ah fuck,” snapped McQueen as he cut his cheek while squeezing through one of the gaps.
Twelve pairs of eyes froze and glared at him. Their lives, and that of the nine other parties already working in the dark, depended on this being acovertaction, with as little talking as possible.
Slowly, hands on rifles, they crept into the night mists of No Man’s Land. The ribbon of devastation between two armies—no trees, no grass, no buildings, only dirt, rock, and the odd shell casing. Nothing to indicate why this strip of land was worth such human sacrifice.
Smythe let out a low whistle and Charlie hit the ground, pulling down the baby-faced engineer beside him. Smythe might be a conniving bastard, but he had a sixth sense for danger like no one Charlie had ever seen.
Sure enough, there was movement near what remained of a clump of trees. Charlie looked frantically over to the engineers. Could they dare hope it was one of their own men? Maybe they had been so delayed that others had started marking out their section of the new trenches for them.
The harsh sounds of German shattered that optimistic thought.
Fuck. Fuck.Fuck.
As Charlie tried to find a position where he was breathing more air than mud, he ran through their options in his mind. Advancing to their designated section was out of the question now. A hasty retreat would normally be the order of the day, except they would have to fight their way through the wires again. It wasn’t just their own lives at stake; they couldn’t risk drawing attention to the dozens of other men trying to work under the cover of darkness. Bugger. Why did they have to hit the only German patrol who couldn’t sleep?
A whimper went out from the engineer beside Charlie, and he pushed down on the man’s back. Fear would not be the reason they were found out.
They had no choice; they would have to spend the rest of the night dodging the Jerrys. Once Henderson had determined there was enough distance between them and the German patrol, he signalled for the party to crawl forward. And so began the worst game of hide-and-seek that Charlie had ever played. The German patrol was frustratingly focused and well-trained. Charlie’s party kept having to balance the risk of getting cornered where they were currently hiding with the risk of drawing attention to themselves by moving.
Their latest hiding place was a set of low stone walls that might have been a house at one point. A few of the men let out sighs of relief when they crept in behind the shards of walls, but Charlie already moved to line up his rifle and get a good line of sight against the fields in front of them. He knew this stretch of No Man’s Land well enough to know that there were no other easy places for them to move to if the German patrols got any closer. Henderson hadn’t really had any other choice but to bring them here, though they were fish in a barrel.
Fish that were about to get shot, because the German patrol was headed their way.
Charlie turned his head to see that Henderson, Smythe, and the others readied their rifles, faces grim. They could only hope that the skirmish wouldn’t be so noticeable as to put the lives of the other cover parties at risk. Charlie’s hands were slick with sweat. He had never been good at waiting. It was a family joke, how Charlie always ate the pie when it was still too hot from the oven, or moved a hat before the glue had set, or raced to open his Christmas presents before anyone else was awake. He had nearly died his first week out in Flanders, going over the top before the order had been given.
The desire to fire his gun was so strong that when a bullet whistled by and hit the stones near the Germans’ feet, Charlie had a moment of horror, fearing he’d been the idiot that fired too early. Except all the Germans were turning around, facing the opposite direction from where Charlie and the others hid. The shot had come from outside the collapsed house?
Charlie and his group didn’t have time to think about where the miracle had come from; they were already scrambling backwards, using the distraction to double back on themselves and return where the shelling had created deep dips in the land for men to hide.
They made it to a low ditch, and before he could think better of it, Charlie lined up his rifle, aimed at an empty shell case about ten yards to the left of the Germans, and fired. The enemy scattered again.
“What in God’s name, Villiers?!” Smythe hissed, grabbing his arm furiously.
“Some bugger out there tried to save our lives,” Charlie snapped, careful to keep his voice low, “and I wasn’t going to let them take him out.”
Henderson pulled Smythe's arm away, conveying his own views.
For the next few hours, they swapped volleys of fire at the Germans with the madman hiding in the dark. The Germans tried to respond, but with the shots coming from different directions, their discipline was becoming more and more frayed.
“He must be the worst shot in the world!” growled Smythe after yet another shot from their ally hit a tree instead of the terrified patrol.
“I think he’s a damn good shot.” Charlie’s certainty surprised himself, but somehow he knew that the other man’s actions weren’t haphazard. “He’s driving them east—” And it fell into place. The Germans were now well east of where the British would be digging new trench lines. The German patrol was going to report BEF activity in the wrong area. This madman was beingstrategic.
Charlie now felt like he was in some sort of silent communication with the other soldier. He could sense when the other man was waiting for Charlie to steer the patrol, or when he was taking the lead himself. Bizarrely, Charlie was actually having fun.
As dawn started to break, streaking yellows, pinks, and reds over the sky, the German patrol headed back to their lines. Their ally had gone silent, and Charlie hoped he was still alive.
Carefully Charlie’s own group voyaged back to British lines, and it was past breakfast by the time Charlie and the rest of the party were back in the trenches, once again surrounded by mud walls.
“We need to find that bastard and get him a pint!” Henderson clapped Charlie on the back. “Nearly six hours in No Man’s Land dodging German patrols, and not one man lost. I’ven’t ever seen something like that before.” Charlie was about to echo those thoughts when a familiar voice interrupted them.