We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [19]
“Before it’s too late, eh?” the young driver said with understanding. “Know where you want to be, sir? If I can help, I’ll be happy to. Nothing filthier than a man who turns against his own.”
“Gathering information—the man I need to see will be just behind the front lines.” Matthew cranked the engine for him, then climbed into the front seat. They pulled away onto the early-morning road, crowded mostly with wounded coming back toward the hospitals.
“Looking for anyone in particular?” The driver swerved expertly to avoid a loose dog running after small groups of wounded men on foot.
“I’ll start with the chaplain of the Cambridgeshires.” There was no point in being secretive about seeing Joseph. He would have to ask people for directions in order to find his brother. Evasion had become a habit with him. He didn’t like it—he found he was often evasive even when there was no need.
“Oh, Captain Reavley? You said your name was Reavley. He related to you, then?”
“My brother.” He was proud to say that, especially here, so close to the fighting.
The young man nodded and concentrated on the road ahead. It was muddy and potholed at best, at worst gouged out by mortar fire and littered with debris. In the ditch there were broken wheels and shafts from wagons, old boxes half decayed, and sometimes even the carcasses of animals, mostly horses. That was something that sickened Matthew more than he had expected it to. They looked so vulnerable, having loyally gone to the slaughter to service men’s rage and futility.
He could smell the front line long before they reached it. It was like nothing else he had ever known, thick and cloying. He gagged at the mixture of raw sewage and the sweet, stale odor of rotting flesh.
The driver glanced at him, then ahead again. “You’ll get used to it,” he said cheerfully. “I expect you’ll be sick the first few times you step on a corpse thrust up by the mud, especially if it’s been there for a year or two and you realize it’s one of our own. But you’ll get on with it.” He sniffed. “And if they’re right, it won’t be for much longer anyway. If you’re around in no-man’s-land, watch for craters. Some of them are pretty deep, and God knows what else is floating in them. Not much gas left now, but it’s heavy, sticks to the low bits, so stay higher an’ you’ll be all right. Don’t need to tell you about the barbed wire, you can work that out for yourself.”
Matthew studied him in the now-broad daylight. He was a lieutenant, and he looked by his build and the fine texture of his skin to be about eighteen or nineteen. But from the weariness in his eyes and the dry, painful humor of his voice he was an old man, long past his prime.
“Thank you,” Matthew replied. “I’ll probably just be speaking to people, prisoners coming through the lines. But I’ll remember your advice.”
“You’ll have to find the prisoners before you speak to them,” the driver pointed out. “Chaplain’s back at the Casualty Clearing Station now and then, but mostly he’s forward. I’ll take you as far as I can.”
Again Matthew thanked him.
They continued on in silence past columns of men walking slowly in the opposite direction. They moved as if half asleep, and their eyes seemed to see nothing. They put one foot before the other, shambling unevenly on the ruined road. Had they been lying down rather than standing, Matthew would have assumed them dead.
Suddenly he saw the human cost not in numbers of millions but individually, each an irretrievable loss. He was no longer aware of the stench, or the far distant noise of guns beyond the flat horizon as the armies moved inexorably forward, closing on the old battlegrounds and then at last moving toward Germany itself.
He