Читать книгу The Sons of Adam - Harry Bingham - Страница 25

The trouble with fate is that it leaves no tracks. Fate never looks like fate. It doesn’t come crashing into a person’s life with heavy bootprints and a smell of burning.

Instead, fate lives in the little things. A child’s fondness for blackberry pudding. A father’s slight unfairness between two boys. The chance results of battle. A tiny scrap of purple and white medal ribbon.

And that’s a pity. Because danger noticed is danger avoided. Because what is invisible can nevertheless be lethal. Because even the smallest things can grow up and destroy a life.

On 25 September 1915, the British mounted an assault at Loos. Six divisions attacked and were halted by devastating machine-gun fire. The following morning, in an effort to maintain momentum, two further divisions – fifteen thousand men, all of them volunteers – were sent forward in broad daylight, in parade-ground formation ten columns strong. The German gunners were simply astounded. Never had an easier target presented itself. They blazed away until their gun barrels were burning hot and swimming in oil. The men fell in their hundreds, but they continued to advance in good order, exactly as though all this were part of a plan, unknown to the enemy, but certain of success. And then the survivors reached the German wire. It was uncut, unscathed, impenetrable. Then and only then did they retreat.

Tom got his medal: the Military Cross, a little strip of white and purple stitched to his uniform tunic. He was proud of it, of course, but it sank quickly into the background. It no longer seemed important. But it was.

Alan and Tom heard about the massacre at Loos from Guy, on one of his rare visits to the reserve lines. It was a chilly day at the start of October. Alan and Tom had been lying on the roof of a dugout, smoking and watching an artillery team sweat as they dug in one of their thumping 60-pounders.

‘Good morning, ladies,’ said Guy, sitting down beside them without invitation. ‘Good to see our front-line troops straining every sinew.’

‘Go to hell, Guy,’ said Tom, neither looking up nor changing posture.

They chatted briefly about trivia, but it wasn’t long before Guy began venting his frustrations with the assault at Loos and the conduct of the war more generally. ‘Sir John French was a bloody fool – a decent chap but totally useless. Haig’s not like that. On tactics, gunnery, supply lines, all that kind of muck, he’s absolutely first rate, the very pattern of a modern general. But – my God! – he’s obsessed with attack. He literally doesn’t care about casualties. I’ve seen him in the bloody map room, hearing about the losses at Loos, the slaughter of the 21st and 24th, and his only reaction was to make changes to the ammunition supply arrangements. Not a hint of anything else. Nothing.’

‘Poor bastards,’ said Alan. ‘It makes it worse somehow that they were all volunteers.’

Guy nodded. ‘And damn short of officers now. Men too, of course, but the officers did the decent thing and made sure they got even more thoroughly killed than the men. They’ll be scouring the other divisions now, looking for chaps. Either of you boys fancy a change?’

Alan and Tom glanced at each other, sharing the same thought, but it was Alan that spoke it.

‘Neither or both, Guy, neither or both.’

The conversation ended there that day. Guy was soon off – efficient, reliable, thorough. But the issue wasn’t over, not by any means.

A few weeks later, when Alan and Tom had returned to the front line and after enough rain to make everyone miserable, Major Fletcher came splashing down the trenches in search of Tom.

‘Ah, there you are, Creeley. Duckboards are a bloody mess, slipping and sliding like a bloody vaudeville act. Get ’em sorted out.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘On second thoughts, you may not need to bother. The company’s been asked to find an officer to make good the losses for the 21st and 24th divisions. The word from on high is that you’d be just the chap. MC and all that. The men’ll respect you from the off.’

‘You want to transfer me?’ Tom’s voice was shocked, but also belligerent.

‘Not want to, old boy. God knows who they’ll give me in your place. Some bloody milliner from Bristol, I expect. Thinks a bayonet is a bloody crochet hook. Not forward march, forward stitch, more like. But no use in arguing. We answer to the King, the King answers to God, and God answers to Sir Douglas Haig. Yes sir, no sir, at the double sir.’

‘I won’t go.’

Fletcher suddenly caught the tone of Tom’s voice, the glare in his eye. Fletcher’s tone changed as well. ‘If you’re told to go, you will go, Creeley. And when you speak to me, you will address me as “sir”.’

‘Yes, sir, but may I say that I won’t go anywhere without Montague. I don’t mind going anywhere, but I go with him or not at all.’

‘You do not tell me what I may and may not do, Creeley. I’m putting your name forward to Colonel McIntosh tomorrow morning and to hell with you. And sort out those bloody duckboards.’

Tom let Fletcher go, then burst from his dugout.

‘Watkins,’ he yelled, ‘Watkins.’

A corporal came running.

‘Sir?’

‘Get those bloody duckboards sorted out. They’re sliding around like a vaudeville act. And if anyone asks for me, tell them I’m seeing the medics.’

He began to climb over the parapet to the rear, preferring the relatively open country between the trench systems to the muddy darkness of the trenches themselves. It was an unnecessarily dangerous route, but Tom was in no mood for caution.

‘Yes, sir … Should I tell them what’s wrong with you?’

Tom was already mostly gone from view, but he turned round to yell his answer. ‘Certainly you should. You should tell them I’ve got a bloody arse for a cousin.’

He disappeared into the night.

And if there had been any doubt before, there was none left now. Fate had set her trap. The three men – Alan, Tom and Guy – had acted as they were bound to act. What followed, however disastrous, was certain to happen. Only a miracle could save them now.