Page 9 of These Old Lies
“Good show, gentlemen, good show! Those Germans will be spinning fairy tales for their command today!” Everyone turned to the muddy figure walking down the trench line, rifle slung over his shoulder. His height and black hair were unmistakable.
Ned? The man with the officers’ uniform and fancy accent had taken on a German patrol single-handed? Spent a night alone in No Man’s Land? Charlie had never really thought about what sort of soldier Ned was. Ned never talked about his time up at the front, but then again, Charlie didn’t either.
“That was you, sir?” Thank God Henderson spoke first.
“Saw that you lads were in a spot of trouble, so I left my party and thought I would lend a hand.” Ned shrugged as if it was nothing and kept walking by. Charlie tried to keep the shock from his face but gave up when he realised Henderson and Smythe looked just as stunned as he did.
They probably weren’t also getting hard, though, which Charlie really needed to get under control immediately if he wanted to make it to breakfast with any dignity.
???
“Heard you were playing party games with the Jerrys last night?” Andrew Matthews passed Charlie a cup of tea in the canteen.
Charlie never knew what to say around the soft-spoken Matthews. It wasn’t just that he was in Ned’s section, he was Ned’s personal orderly. Matthews looked after Ned’s uniform, sorted his rucksack, and generally performed servants’ duties. Charlie wasn't remotely envious of Matthews; he had no desire to wash out Ned’s socks, but it was unsettling that another man in the division knew Ned so intimately. Matthews wasn’t bad-looking—he had fair blond hair with a nice dimple when he smiled—and Charlie wondered if he and Ned had ever messed around. In the end, Charlie figured Ned was far too much of a perfect officer to get involved with someone in his direct command. Still, the whole situation made Charlie feel awkward for a reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“Made it out in one piece, that’s all that matters,” Charlie replied, shrugging as he sat down beside Henderson and began the process of soaking his ration biscuits in tea to make them edible.
“Lieutenant Pinsent was furious that your officers hadn’t arranged for the wires to be cut. He wants to write to General Hull himself,” Matthews replied.
“Of course Pinsent would want to go straight to the general.” Smythe sat beside Matthews, jumping into the conversation. “I heard Pinsent’s father has some sort of title. Makes our Pemberton look like the butcher’s boy.”
“Well, if he’s nobility, what’s he been doing in the mud with us for the past two months?” Charlie tried to convince himself that his question was the normal scepticism of anyone who had spent more than an hour in Smythe’s presence, and that it had nothing to do with Charlie’s surprise at discovering Ned was even more upper crust than Charlie had imagined.
“Probably it’s our charming company,” Matthews joked.
“Man’s got a death wish to do what he did last night,” said Smythe as hefinished off his tea. “Maybe that’s why he’s out here—looking to die a hero.”
“We are all going to die heroes if last night was any indication.” Charlie struggled between the desire to have this conversation continue and learn more about Ned and wanting it to end immediately. “It won’t matter how many days we practise, we are still going to be sitting ducks trying to move the trench line.”
“The Germans didn’t fire last night,” Henderson countered.
“Last night there were a couple dozen of us spread out over several thousand yards. In two days’ time, there will be thousands. I don’t care how quiet we are, the Germans are going to notice something is going on.” Charlie stared into his tea and thought about how, with a bit of strategy and the right shots, they were able to mislead the German patrol. “We’ll never be quiet enough. What we need is to give the Germans another explanation for the noise.”
“That, Corporal Villiers, is an excellent idea,” Ned said behind them. Everyone suddenly sat up straighter. Instead of forcing them to stand at attention, Ned plunked himself down beside Charlie as if there was nothing out of the ordinary for a lieutenant to eat in the enlisted canteen. “But we need to do more than just give them an explanation, we need to make them frightened enough to hold fire.”
“Make them think we’re preparing for a big push?” Charlie felt a pulse of flustered excitement that his thoughts followed Ned’s so closely. He had these sorts of ideas all the time, the little ways that the battle tactics could be improved, but Henderson and Smythe laughed and told Charlie that he didn’t know his place.
Ned’s stare was intense. “Motors filled with empty shells running up and down the roads near the trench lines would make it sound like hell itself was about to be unleashed.”
“Biscuit tins too. We’ve loads of those lying around.” Charlie’s blood fizzed. No one had ever thought his ideas could be useful before.
Ned was already pushing away from the table. “I’m going to write to General Hull about this immediately. Capital idea, Villiers, capital!”
Charlie looked away from the lieutenant striding out of the mess tent, more than a little confused about what had happened.
???
The operation to move the front lines was launched the evening of 25 May. That night, Charlie had been signed to the diggers, carrying shovels and pickaxes weighted down with sandbags to limit noise.
Even though there was no gunfire or shelling, Charlie still couldn’t fight the thunder of his heart as he stepped up on the muddy field, shovel in hand. It took only minutes to cross the hundred or so yards and arrive at his appointed spot. Charlie put his shovel into the ground, and with a kick of the boot, he began digging their new home.
All around Charlie, thousands and thousands of men worked in near complete silence at the same task. There was a unity in their movements, as if they were one form, each man contributing to this single activity, of digging, moving dirt, creating supports for the new trenches, keeping guard. There was an energy that seemed to go up and down the line, an awareness of the hundreds of others Charlie neither saw nor heard.
It was the single most impressive thing Charlie had experienced in his entire life.
Even though the night was still early, Charlie knew in his soul that these rough-and-ready London boys were going to pull off this stupid fucking plan. In a single night, the 1st London Territorial was going to gain more ground than Charlie could remember in the whole course of his time in Flanders. Not because the generals were brilliant, but because the ordinary soldiers were brave and determined.
Charlie smiled as he heard the God-Almighty racket of the wagons full of biscuit tins going up and down the road. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it caused enough noise to hopefully scare the enemy from going over the top tonight.