Shoulder the Sky (5 page)

"Thanks," Joseph took the cup and bit into one of the biscuits. It was crisp and sweet. It almost made up for the taste of the tea, made with brackish water and cooked in an all-purpose can. At least it was hot.

"There was a new war correspondent there," he went on. "Arrogant man. Scrubbed and ironed. Hasn't the faintest idea what it's like in a sap." He had been in one only once himself, but he would never forget how he had felt. It had been all he could do to control himself from crying out, as the walls seemed to close in on him, and he heard the sounds of dripping and the scurry of rodent feet. Every shell fired could be the one that caved in the entrance and buried him and his colleagues under the earth to suffocate to death. He was used to the tap-tap sounds of Germans doing the same. One could hear them in dugouts, even like this. In some ways the silence was worse: it could mean they were priming their fuses. The mines could blow any moment.

Sam was watching him, his eyes questioning.

There was no avoiding the truth. "He thought it might have been self-inflicted," Joseph admitted. "Somebody's been telling him stories, and he was full of it."

Sam did not answer. His curious, ironic face reflected the thoughts he refused to speak: pity for men pushed beyond their limits, and the knowledge that this could have been exactly such a thing; fear of punishment for the man, and that he would not be able to protect him; and weariness of the dirt, the exhaustion and the pain of it all. He smiled very slightly, a surprisingly sweet expression. "Thanks for trying."

Joseph took a second chocolate biscuit and finished his tea. "It's not enough," he said, standing up. "Watkins wasn't going to charge him, but I'll make absolutely sure. Corliss looked a bit shaky to me. I'll go back to the field hospital and make sure he's all right."

Sam nodded, gratitude in his eyes.

Joseph smiled. "Maybe I'll get a decent cup of tea," he said lightly. "I've nothing better to do."

He walked as far as the first-aid post, passing Bert Dazely with the mail delivery for the men in the front trenches. He had a whole sheaf of letters in his hand and was grinning broadly, showing the gap in his front teeth.

"Afternoon, Chaplain," he said cheerfully. "Seen Charlie Gee up there? Oi got two for 'im. Oi reckon as that girl of 'is must wroite 'im every day."

"I think she does," Joseph agreed with a momentary twinge of envy. Eleanor had died in childbirth two years ago, and in one terrible night he had lost his wife and his son. He forced it out of his mind in an act of will. There were things to do today, things to keep the mind and the emotions busy. "I've been with Major Wetherall; I don't know where Charlie is."

"Oi'll fin dim Bert said happily, knowing he carried the most precious thing on the whole battlefield.

Joseph had only a quarter of an hour to wait before an ambulance showed up, and since they had only two injured to carry, he was able to beg a lift back to the casualty clearing station, which was, in effect, a small mobile hospital. They had just recently come into full use.

He asked the first nurse he saw. She was a tall, striking-looking woman. Not until she spoke did he realize she was American.

"Can I help you, Captain?"

"Yes, please, nurse .. ." He hesitated, liking to call people by name.

"Marie O'Day," she told him.

"Irish?" he said with surprise. He must have mistaken the accent.

She smiled, and it lit her face. "No, my husband's people were, way back. He drives one of the ambulances. Who are you looking for?"

"Private Corliss, the sapper brought in with his hand crushed, yesterday."

The light in her vanished. "Oh. It's pretty bad. I think three of his fingers are gone. He's not doing so well, Chaplain. He's very low. I'm glad you've come to see him." She hesitated, as if to say more, but was uncertain how to phrase it.

The fear tightened inside Joseph, knotting his stomach. This was exactly what he was supposed to be able to help: the shock, the despair, the inward wounds the surgeons could not reach. "What is it, Mrs. O'Day? I need to know!"

"I don't know how it happened, and I don't care," she answered, meeting his eyes with a fierce honesty. "I don't understand how any of these boys have the courage to go over the top, knowing what could happen to them, or along the tunnels under the ground. They're terrified sick, and yet they do it, and they make jokes." Without warning her eyes filled with tears and she turned half away from him. "Sometimes I hear them saying .. ."

He reached out his hand to touch her arm, then changed his mind. It was too familiar. "What is it you want to tell me, Mrs. O'Day?"

She blinked several times. "There's a young war correspondent hanging around asking questions. I know they have to, it's their job, and people at home have a right to know what's going on. But he's heard something about self-inflicted wounds, particularly to hands, and he's pushing it." The indecision was still in her face, the need to say more, or perhaps it was the will that he should understand without her doing so.

Joseph remembered Sam's fear, and his own. He had seen men paralysed with terror, their bodies unable to move, or keep control of their functions. The underground tunnels were more than some men could take; the horror of being buried alive was worse than being shot for cowardice. He did not even know what Prentice was asking, or what he intended to write, and yet Joseph came close to hating him already.

"I'll find him," he promised. "War correspondents don't have any rights to be this far forward. They're civilians. Any officer can order them out, and I will, if he's being a nuisance."

Marie drew in her breath quickly to explain.

"I know," he assured her. "We don't know how Corliss lost his fingers, and I'm not certain that we want to."

She relaxed. It was what she needed. "Thank you, Captain. I'll take you to him." She turned and led the way out of the door, along a path of wooden boards and into another hut with cots along either side. Joseph knew already that it was immediately next to the operating theatre. He saw Corliss on one of the beds, lying on his side, his face turned away. The fair-haired figure of Prentice, in the middle of the floor, was easily recognizable by his clean uniform, if nothing else. He was talking to a soldier with his arm in a sling. He looked round as they came in and his face lit with anticipation.

"Ah! The chaplain again," he said eagerly, dismissing the soldier and moving towards Joseph. "Have you learned any more about how the sapper came to lose half his hand?"

"He did not lose half his hand!" Marie O'Day snapped. "And will you please keep your voice down? In fact, you'd better get out of here altogether. This is a hospital ward, not a cafe for you to stand around in the way, chatting to people." She was within an inch of his height and she was defending her territory and the men she cared about with a savage admiration and pity.

Prentice recognized that he was beaten, at least for the moment, and retreated.

Joseph gave Marie O'Day a beaming smile, then went over to Corliss's bed and looked down at him. He was lying with his eyes open, staring blindly into the distance, his face without expression.

It was situations like this that Joseph knew he should have some answer for, words that would ease the pain, take away some of the fear that twisted the gut and turned the bowels to water, something to make sense of the unbearable. Only the divine could serve; there was nothing human big enough to touch it.

But what could he say? Looking at Corliss now he knew at least that he was aware of being suspected, and that he could not prove his innocence. He had lost his hand. It might even become infected and then he could lose his whole arm. If he was found guilty of causing the wound himself, he would be blindfolded and shot to death in dishonour. Could anything worse happen to a man?

The words died on Joseph's tongue. He simply sat on the bed and put his hand on Corliss's shoulder. "If you want to talk, I'm here," he said quietly. "If you don't, that's all right."

For a long time Corliss did not move. When at last he spoke it was hoarsely, as if his throat were dry. "What did Major Wetherall say? It hurts like a knife in my belly to let him down."

Joseph saw the tears on Corliss's face. "He sent me to keep the journalist out of your way," he answered.

"Cos he's after me," Corliss said. "He thinks I did it myself, on purpose. I heard him say so."

"He doesn't know a thing," Joseph replied. "I might see if I can take him down a sap. That'll give him a good idea of what it's like. If he wants a story, that would be a great one. Make a hero out of him."

Corliss smiled only slightly, and gulped.

"And Major Wetherall knows what it's like down there," Joseph went on.

Corliss blinked.

Joseph allowed the silence to settle.

"Thanks, Chaplain," Corliss said at last.

Half an hour later Joseph spoke to each of the other men in the room, then went outside to find Prentice again. He needed to appeal to the man's better nature. If he understood what the losses had been, how many wounded and dead there were in every battalion, and no reserves to take their places, then he would not attack the morale of the men left who were trying desperately to stay awake day and night, sometimes to watch an entire length of trench from one dogleg to the next. They had been sodden wet most of the winter, and frozen half of it. They lived on stale food, dirty water and little enough of that. They slept in the open. Every one of them had lost friends they had grown up with, men they knew like brothers.

Many of them did not want to kill Germans. Some had guilty nightmares, blood-drenched dreams from which they woke screaming, soaked in sweat, afraid to tell anyone of thoughts that might be seen as disloyalty, cowardice, even treason, but were simply humanity.

Prentice was talking to Sergeant Watkins. He looked relaxed, standing a little sideways next to a table with splints and bandages on it. His weight was more on one foot than the other, as if he had infinite time to spare. Opposite him, Sergeant Watkins stood almost to attention, his jaw tight, his heavy face flushed.

"So morale is pretty low," Prentice was saying with assurance. "In fact, about as low as it can be. I've heard that some men don't even want to fight the Germans. Is that so?"

"No sane man wants to kill another, if 'e don't 'ave to," Watkins replied in a low, angry voice. "But if Jerry fires at us, b'lieve me, mister, our boys'll fire back. You go up the front line some time, instead of 'anging around 'ere, an' you'll soon see. What dyer think all that noise is thunder? God Almighty moving "Is furniture? It's guns, boy, enough guns to kill every bloody thing in Flanders. Not that there is much left livin' around 'ere!"

"And you're short of ammunition too, so I hear?" Prentice continued, not put off in the least. "Having to ration the men, even ask them to give back what they haven't used."

"None to waste," Watkins answered, glaring back. "Everybody knows that, just don't say so. If Jerry don't know, don't tell 'im."

"With the odds so heavy against us, and morale so low, it must be hard to make the men get out there and fight?" Prentice raised his eyebrows, his blue eyes very wide.

"You're talking rubbish!" Watkins said angrily, his face flushed dark red. "I got better things to do than stand 'ere listening to you rabbi ting on. You get out an' see what it's really like, an' leave the sick 'ere to themselves." He half turned away.

"I thought you might have come to find out if the sapper's wound was self-inflicted," Prentice said very clearly.

Watkins froze, then turned back very slowly. "You what?"

Prentice repeated what he had said, his eyes challenging, his expression innocent.

Joseph's throat tightened, his stomach churning. This was exactly what he had come to prevent. He must say something now, before it was too late.

"Mr. Prentice, you know very little about it," he interrupted. "And military justice is not your affair. Sergeant Watkins is thoroughly familiar with his job. He's regular army. He doesn't need you to direct him."

Prentice turned to Joseph and smiled, a cold, satisfied curve of the lips. "I'm sure he doesn't," he agreed. "He'll do the right thing, for the good of the army as a whole, towards winning the war, whether he enjoys doing it or it's personally difficult for him. He mustn't let like or dislike for a man stand in his way. Or anybody else's beliefs neither mine," he smiled even more widely, 'nor yours, Chaplain. He'll find the truth. But then I imagine that, as a man of God, you're for the truth too."

Joseph knew he had lost the argument, and he saw in Watkins' face that he recognized it too.

"What happens to a man who has deliberately injured himself?" Prentice went on. "You owe it to the rest of his unit to deal with it, don't you? The one thing I've noticed out here, even in a few days, is the loyalty, the extraordinary depth of friendship between men, the willingness to share, to risk and even to sacrifice." There was a note of envy in his voice, and he hurried his words with an underlying edge of anger. "They are owed honour, and the loyalty of those who have the power to protect them, and the duty to lead."

Watkins looked at him in silent misery.

Joseph searched desperately for something to say, but what was there? Marie O'Day knew that Corliss's wound could have been self-inflicted. Even Sam feared it. He had said Corliss was close to losing his nerve.