A Long Long Way (28 page)

By four o‘clock they were indeed wakened and in their positions. The trench was longer than usual and so they had an unusual sense of their own company and some of the other companies of the battalion. It was a sense of numbers that was not unwelcome.

Willie Dunne, like the rest, leaned against the parapet with his gun and his pack. It suddenly occurred to him that this would be the first time he engaged in a proper attack. It was not a mightily entertaining thought. It was still very dark across the lands ahead, although every few minutes went up from the Boche lines a starry shell that lit the ground extravagantly in front. There were a few new lads now, a fella called Johnson, and three lads that seemed to be all from around Gardiner Street in Dublin, whose names Willie hadn’t been able to garner. They looked like kids really. They had come straight into this and it would be their first understanding of the war, and as Willie himself didn’t understand what was going to happen, he pitied them. Yes, he pitied them. What should he feel, he wondered, for himself? By Christ, didn’t the blasted piss thrum in his bladder again; he was nearly bursting. As he leaned against the finely wattled side of the trench, gripping a beautiful German assault ladder, he tried to keep a grip on that bladder, he did. Suddenly the artillery went off in a vast line of explosions somewhere, a distant enough sound, and then very quickly the passage of the big-calibre missiles passing overhead and making tremendous noise about a quarter-mile back across the fields. They must have suspected something coming and were trying to get the range of the British guns, hopefully now marshalled on that cleared ground in Guillemont, or somewhere advantageous and efficient. Oh, he prayed now, did Willie Dunne, advantageous and efficient. Good Lord of the advantageous and the efficient, I pray to you, I pray to you, give me courage, oh Lord, let me not die today but return home safely in Your own good time to Gretta, dear Lord, protect me. The noise was beyond the scope of any other noise he had heard. O‘Hara whispered to him between blasts, ’New ordnance, Willie — big stuff, hah?‘ and Willie did not doubt his intuition for a minute. Maybe these were the new mortar bombs they had heard of, the barrels for them as big as sewers, huge ruddy things like armoured beasts unheard of in creation. The piss burst straight out and drenched his trouser legs.

‘You pissy cunt,’ said O‘Hara kindly, and gave him a dig with an elbow.

‘Holy Jesus,’ said Willie Dunne.

Now the Boche guns found good range on what used to be after all their own trench and the ground ahead was given a horrible pulverizing. Surely no man could be expected to leap out there with his own jolly human skin and walk through such a torrent? No, no, it must be their own guns, because the barrage started to go forward along the fields in a wild display, creating suddenly a thousand thousand holes in the muck that would be miserable to walk across.

‘Arra, fuck it,’ said O‘Hara. ’Arra, fuck it.‘

Willie glanced left at Joe Kielty. Joe Kielty looked back at him, serenely, and gave him a friendly wink, and a nod. He wasn’t in the gun detail that day because he had scalded his hand. Such a strange soul was Joe Kielty. He even gave Willie a pat on the back, and then before anyone could do anything else — piss, cry, panic or die — Captain Sheridan gave the company his order, and Christy Moran gave his lads the same like an echo, and up the ladders with them.

Before Willie lay suddenly the open ground. Away to the east was the sunrise, cold, pink and clear. There seemed to be woods everywhere on the horizon, but not a tree near by, only this bare, exploding vista. He gripped his gun in two places and hauled himself forward. Captain Sheridan, in his best Sheridan manner, looked fearless, waving them on with his stick, still not bothering to draw a revolver, shouting something at them that no one could hear. He went on ahead of them about twenty yards, they walked solemnly after him, keeping in line as they had been trained, even the new lads doing fine, despite the shell-holes. Their own barrage was just ahead of the captain, about fifty yards, and they knew they must try to keep after it and not be left behind, because then, by God, they would be out in the open and would find out quick what state of disorder or order the Boche were in. But the barrage ran on ahead of them and ahead of Captain Sheridan and not even a bunch of whippets could have followed it, not even a bunch of whippets.

But they went on unimpeded. The barrage had done wonders for the enemy wire and they found it quite easy to pass through, and suddenly a wonderful feeling rose in Willie’s breast. He suddenly felt fierce and true and young. It was something close to a feeling of love. It was love. He had strength in his legs despite his burden. He could see now as in a dream Joe Kielty on one side and O‘Hara on the other, admirably pushing forward. The whole line was going on, a whole line of Irishmen, he thought, yes, yes, it was magnificent.

Their barrage disappeared into a tumbled copse far ahead and almost immediately machine-guns opened up across the dim way. Captain Sheridan was shot and went down like a statue. Everyone saw it clearly. In one raking stream two of the new boys of Gardiner Street were removed from the line; one was left screaming behind, but no one could stop to help him, it was forbidden. Willie glanced back and saw line after line of his battalion coming after, and dozens and dozens falling under the weird and angry fire. A detail carrying their own machine-gun went down in a bloody heap. Then a splash of dark blood crossed his face, because now there were mortar bombs being dropped among them, and someone had been blown to nothing. Yet at his side still moved, thank God, his blessed companions, Joe Kielty and Pete O‘Hara. Willie hardly knew it, but he was crying, crying strange tears. He moved ever onward. They passed Captain Sheridan still alive, sitting on his bottom like a six-month-old child, looking entirely stunned, his whole left arm full, it looked like, of bullet wounds, and just on his chest there was another hole from which rich red blood was pouring. Mrs Sheridan, Mrs Sheridan, Mrs Sheridan, were the odd words that leaped into Willie’s throat. On, on they went, they walked, they stumbled.

There must have been a measure of chaos in the order of the lines because Willie could hear clearly Christy Moran’s bitter voice caterwauling at people to keep up and close up. Everyone could somehow sense what the machine-guns were doing, as if they were all the one body, and as men fell, they all fell for a moment, fell and rose up again, miraculously pacing. Then it seemed like a second before they reached the ground below the enemy trenches, and Willie saw a bombing party go ahead a little and start lobbing their Mills bombs and there were wild explosions then and maybe by the grace of luck they got the machine-gun but, whatever it was, they were able to keep going and then in another whisper of a second they were at the trench itself and it was like a mad version of training but nonetheless they plunged down into the trench and the first thing Willie felt was a man’s hands at his throat, at his throat like a crazy dream, what was happening to him, and Joe Kielty, gentle Joe Kielty, had a murderous-looking yoke in his hand, a sort of rounded hammer, and he struck at Willie’s assailant, and then he smashed the hammer or whatever it was into another man and there were shots and mayhem and then the Germans came round from the next part of the trench and they had their hands high and they were shouting like monkeys, ‘Kamerad, Kamerad!’ or such like and though the remaining boy from Gardiner Street did fire into them, he realized his mistake and was soon rounding them up into a clump, and what the fuck was happening then Willie didn’t know, but it seemed like a hot, dark, thirsty dream, the whole thing, and he wondered that the heat didn’t dry the piss on his trousers.

Then they were told by Christy Moran to group up and hold the fucking trench because the cunts would be back for a counter-attack in a moment, the fucking bollocking lot of them, the bastards. And he looked very wild, and frightened even, his face as white as the shining moon, thin as a dead man‘s, but oddly enough, when he approached the prisoners, he wasn’t violent towards them, but gentle enough, and told them to sit on their arses and be good.

The thirst in Willie’s throat was beyond all his experience. He lay there panting all day, panting. The counter-attack never came that day anyhow. Nothing came, no water, no food. The captured Germans were led back across to Guillemont. Maybe they were given some supper, Willie thought. What about the buggering Irish?

Were they heroes or eejits or what? Hour after hour he lay panting, they all did. Towards evening another battalion of the 16th came up and relieved them, and they were sent on their merry way, with Christy Moran in charge now, because Sheridan was wounded and the two lieutenants who had been leading the companies beside them were killed.

Wearily, hungrily, thirstily, they slogged back. They passed men they knew and men they didn’t know, all freshly killed along the way. They were like paint marks painted on the fields. Willie could see where the machine-guns had raked in an arc, with a sickle shape of the fallen for their reward. It was a wonder, a wonder that they had not all been killed. He didn’t know how they had come through. He had prayed and prayed to his good God and somehow it had sufficed.

They got back near the other trench and the wicked truth was that Captain Sheridan had died and they were putting him on a stretcher. Willie and the others seemed to be pulled towards that stretcher, they followed it through the labyrinth of the jump-off trenches, and all the way into Guillemont. And as they passed along, other members of their battalion watched them go, and even raised a cheer, for these lads who had come through, with their leader slain. Because the news travelled back fast that Guinchy had been taken, that men of the 16th were walking through Guinchy, although it was only a stretch of flattened ground with some light white patches where bricks and mortar of houses had been long since pulverized. So they were heroes of Guinchy after a fashion, Willie Dunne and his mates. But they were ghosts in their hearts. They didn’t even look at the men who cheered them, or honoured them, or whatever it was that was happening. Because they knew, because the fellas in question were not there beside them, that at least four men of their platoon were gone, and maybe two-thirds of the company, and maybe half the battalion was dead, and another third terribly wounded. Poor Quigley was gone. The field hospital couldn’t manage the deluge of grief and distress. The world was distressed into a thousand pieces. Captain Sheridan was a lolling corpse. And their heads were all screaming, screaming inside, the heads of those heroes of Guinchy.

PART THREE

Chapter Fifteen

There was a letter waiting for him from his sister Maud, which was unusual, as Maud was no letter-writer so far, though she had sent a few good parcels:

Dublin Castle.
September 1916.

Dear Willie,

I hope you are well I hope this letter finds you. Dolly and Annie and me send our love. But Papa is annoyed at you Willie. Your letter of recent date he says was not good he is angry Willie. What is it you said to him maybe you can write again and put his mind at rest. He says you must not be asking him about Redmond he wants you to write to him Willie. I hope you are well we send our love and please find a flat daisy from Dolly in the folds of this letter she found it in the castle yard. It is as good as heather she says. All for now Willie.

Your fond sister,

Maud.

He racked his brains then for what might have offended his father, but truth to tell it didn’t take much racking.

They had been brought back again into quite a pleasant district and it was so far from the lines that even the infantry could not be heard and only the airplanes speeding along overhead, which was a gay enough sight in itself, kept the war close.

Even writing his last letter he had had a funny feeling in his water that he was getting at things he shouldn’t be trying to get at in the company of his father, as it were, but since, as a child and a boy and a young man, he had always been quite open and at ease with him, and praised and nurtured well enough by him, he had thought he might follow his mind as always and speak it. But all the same he had had an inkling of the little rat of unease creeping about, a few words too far that might unsettle an old-fashioned mind like his father’s. And now he was a long long way off and he feared it would be too tricky to put it all right by mere letters, especially as he wasn’t quite sure what had caused offence, though he had a fair idea. But Maud would never have written if it wasn’t a serious matter, because Maud wrote only for births, deaths and marriages, which were what she considered letters were for, being absolutely against gossip and mere news.