The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [346]
He joined up. In 1916 he was sent, with the fresh conscripts and the middle-aged reservists, with the British Third Army to the hills and woods and pretty villages of the Somme. It was calm there. They were known as the Deathless Army. Harry practised his French, and once, in Albert, collecting provisions, he ran into Julian Cain, who was in the trenches opposite Thiepval. He told Julian that the Robins were dead—“killed instantly, within two days of each other,” he said. Julian smiled benignly. “Keep an eye out, young Hal,” he said. He did not say, though they all knew it, that they were building up to an important attack. They were constructing railroads and communication trenches, with good revetments and duckboards to walk on. They were practising communication by field telephone and signals. They were exercising their bodies, to make them hard and healthy. They would flow out of the trenches, over No Man’s Land, and take the Germans by surprise, driving them back, and then there would be real warfare again, with marching and galloping armies, charges and feints and acts of courage, the generals believed.
Julian had taken to writing poetry. It was not poetry of despair, nor yet—not yet—savage poetry of anger. It was not poetry about the glorious hour, the glorious dead, and the high calling, either of perfect gallantry or of bugles and fifes. It was poetry about trench names, which in themselves were poetry.
Harry’s battalion was part of III Corps which, in the small hours of July 1st got ready to attack. The British bombardment of the German positions in the villages of Ovillers and La Boisselle had been loud and heavy. The plan was to make a breakthrough in the German defences through which the Cavalry would sweep forward. The gunners of III Corps were cautious about their wire-cutting. They could not cut distant wire, and had not enough ammunition to be sure of cutting what was nearer. Nevertheless, before the attack, the artillery gave up on the wire, and began shelling more distant Germans, which was part of their plan to make way for the Cavalry. Nevertheless the brigades moved forwards. Between the two villages ran Mash Valley, which was No Man’s Land. It was wide. It was eighty yards wide. A mine which was intended to bury the Germans in their dugouts and confuse their response to the attack had been discovered by the Germans, and the miners captured.
Harry waited. He was standing next to an old corporal, Corporal Crowe. Harry thought in bursts, and between the bursts was numb and placid, as though nothing was real. He did not think about the King or the Flag though he did briefly think of the quiet North Downs. He thought: I am young and full of life. His teeth chattered. Corporal Crowe patted his shoulder, which he did not like, and said everyone was frit, no exception. Very brave men, he said, had filled their trousers, a miserable thought which had not occurred to Harry and added to his alarm. I am young and full of life. I have a gun and a knife and must fight. Corporal Crowe handed him a water bottle which turned out to be full of rum, and told him to take a swig. Harry didn’t like rum. It upset his stomach. But he drank quite a lot, and felt vaguer, and giddier, and sick.
They were told to advance. The German shelling was precise. Hundreds of men died behind their own front line, or struggled back to the medical post. Harry got out of the trench in one piece and so did Corporal Crowe. They started to walk forward towards the black stumps of a wood on the skyline. There was noise. Not only shells and bullets, whistling and exploding, but men screaming. They stumbled over the dead and