We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [1]
Joseph said nothing, knowing no answer was expected. Memory held them together in wordless pain. He nodded, looked at Barshey for a moment, then turned to pick his way over the old duckboards and around the dogleg corner into the next stretch. All the trenches were built in a zigzag so that if the enemy did storm them, they could not take out a whole platoon with one burst. The wooden revetting that held back the crumbling walls was sagged and bulging.
Joseph reached Tiddly Wop Andrews just below the fire step. The young soldier’s handsome profile with its quiff of dark hair was clear for a moment against the pale sky; then he ducked down again.
“’Evenin’, Reverend,” Andrews said quietly. He started to say something else, but the increasing noise drowned it out as a hundred yards to the left the machine guns started to chatter.
It was time for Joseph to go back to the Casualty Clearing Station, where he could be of use to the wounded as they were brought in. He passed other men he knew and spoke a word or two to them: Snowy Nunn, his white-blond hair hidden by his helmet; Stan Tidyman, grinning and whistling through his teeth; Punch Fuller, instantly recognizable by his nose; and Cully Teversham, standing motionless.
Like every regiment, the Cambridgeshires had originally been drawn from a small area: These men had played together in childhood and gone to the same schools. But with so many dead or wounded, remnants of many regiments had been scrambled together to make any kind of force. More than half the soldiers now going up and over the parapet into the roar of gunfire were almost strangers to him.
Joseph came to the end of the dogleg and turned into the connecting trench back toward the support line and the station beyond. It was dark by the time he reached it. Normally the station would not have been busy. The wounded were evacuated to the hospital as soon as they were fit to move, and the surgeons, nurses, and orderlies would be waiting for new casualties to be brought in. But with so many German prisoners pouring through the lines, exhausted, defeated, and many of them injured, there were still nearly twenty patients here.
In the distance more columns of soldiers were marching forward into the trenches. At the rate they were taking ground now, the front line would soon move beyond the old earthworks, abandoned in the retreat. In the open the casualties would be far worse.
Joseph began his usual work of helping with more minor injuries. He was busy in the General Admissions tent when Whoopy Teversham came to the open flap, his face frightened and smeared with blood in the lantern light.
“Captain Reavley, you’d better come. There’s two o’ the men beating a prisoner pretty bad. If you don’t stop ’em they’re loike to kill ’im.”
Joseph shouted for one of the orderlies to take over from him and followed Whoopy outside, almost treading on the man’s heels. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dark; then he started running toward the pale outline of the Operating tent. The ground was rough, gouged into ruts and shallow craters by gun-carriage wheels and earlier shelling.
They were ahead of him, a group of half a dozen or so crowded together—lightly wounded men on guard duty. Their voices were sharp and high-pitched. He saw them jostle closer, an arm swing in a punch, and someone stagger. A star shell went up and momentarily lit the sky, outlining them luridly for several seconds before it faded and fell. It gave him long enough to see the figure on the ground, half curled over with his face in the mud.
He reached them and spoke to the only man he had recognized in the brief light. “Corporal Clarke, what’s going on here?”
The others froze, caught by surprise.
Clarke coughed, then straightened up. “German prisoner, sir. Seems to be hurt.” His voice was uncertain, and Joseph could not see his face in the dark.
“Seems to be?” Joseph said scathingly. “Then what are you doing standing