The Cartographer of No Man's Land: A Novel (31 page)

“Alright—nine. We’ll head out.” Angus winced and pulled a map of their side of the ridge and his compass from his tunic pocket. The glass was shattered. He stared at it and up at Keegan. “Dead reckoning is what we’ll rely on.”

“Dead reckoning, yes sir,” Keegan said. “Where to?”

D
EAD RECKONING TOOK
them on a stuttering, twisted path up and across the broad slope to where the land rose sharply and to a final reckoning. Shells fired somewhere in the distance. The snow around them was blackened with gunpowder and bright with blood. It might have been hours, it might have been minutes, since they’d left Happy Holly. Time’s linear march had ceased. Angus looked at his watch.
5
:
07
P.M.
A corpse lay at his feet, hands clasping a rifle, eyes wide with surprise, mustache crusted white with snow. Above them, a shadow loomed through the mist and took the shape of a concrete pillbox.

They had entered the world of the dead. Before them and all around, arrayed in grotesque angles of disfigurement, among blackened stumps of trees, lay bodies. Angus peered again through the frosty mist at the pillbox, hulking above them, then cautiously brushed the snow off the man at his feet and saw the badge of the
45
th, and on the next man and the next. Every one from the
45
th.

The men fanned out and checked for survivors. Not one was found. Angus stumbled from corpse to corpse, yanking them up to see their faces, until somewhere through his fevered search he saw boots and heard Keegan’s voice. “Sir?” he said. “I believe the battle’s moved on. Should we . . . carry on over the ridge?”

Angus, holding a private by the collar, realized the man he held was sliced in half. Keegan was staring at the blood dripping steadily on the snow at Angus’s feet. “You may want to rewrap that, sir,” he said. “Should we move on to—”

Damn it! They couldn’t move on. Did Keegan not understand that? There were more bodies to check. “We’ll check these bodies,” Angus said. He felt himself weaving.

“For what exactly, sir?”

“For—never mind! I’ll do the checking.”

“Yes sir. We can help check if you tell me what we’re—”

Again, Keegan looked at the blood, dripping.

Dropping the corpse, Angus left Keegan dumbfounded and tramped off through filthy slush, through shot-off arms and legs, jerking men up and letting them drop. Every face that was not Ebbin’s filled him with relief. And horror. It was appalling what he was doing, but he kept on in a frenzy until, at the body of a man with no face left, he dropped to his knees.

He grunted to a stand and they trudged up the icy hill to the concrete bunker where they were greeted by smashed equipment and dead Germans sprawled about. Angus leaned against a wall while Hanson and Ostler stripped a German corpse of his badge and revolver. Souvenirs.
Se souvenir
. To remember. Angus prayed he’d forget. Kearns kicked one of the corpses. Angus peeled the bandage off his leg and looked at the wound for the first time—a gash about four inches long, still bleeding, but shallow and beginning to close. He rewrapped it, then got the men going. Some talked about how they’d do the Krauts in, retreat or no, they’d make them pay. But when they reached the eastern slope, all talking ceased. Mouths fell open. What lay before them was too fantastical, too unreal to be true.

Spread out below, all the way to Lille, was the Douai Plain. Tiny towns and church spires dotted the landscape. Straight roads and railways intersected a neatly laid-out patchwork of flat fields. There was a hint of green on grass and in the still-standing woods. It may as well have been the Garden of Eden. Here was not a trace of the withered, ruined, rat-infested hell they’d lived in for months, for years, for all time. Here was a place unscathed by battle—a place of German occupation, yes, but one of railroads and prospering farms, of standing barns and church steeples, and buildings with rooftops. A world of color and shape and form. It took their breath away.

Only Hanson spoke. “I’ll be damned,” he said.

For a long moment, no one moved. Then Angus pulled out his binoculars and scanned the plain for the Lens-Arras Road and the villages of Vimy and Petit Vimy to the southeast, La Chaudière to the east, noting their positions. He drew a quick sketch and stuffed it in his pocket.

“Get the men. We’re moving out. We’ve got to find the rest of the
17
th,” he said to Keegan.

The men slowly gathered their gear. Angus, limping along in the lead, felt their eyes on him and heard their muttered complaints. They joined the streams of soldiers and prisoners, the lost, the wounded, and those who, with heads down, were just doing their jobs. Angus realized unless he got his wound tended, he would not be able to do his.

He got directions from some stretcher-bearers to the nearest aid post. He ordered his men to help support the walking wounded. When they reached it, weakened by loss of blood and the sight of faces contorted in pain at the entry, Angus thudded onto a crate with a red cross painted on its side. His leg out stiff, he peeled back his kilt and began to unwrap the bloodied bandage again.

“Here, you! We need those!” a medic said, pointing to the crate. When he saw Angus’s wound, he bent down. Angus waved him off. The medic pulled out scissors and began to cut the bandage. Angus put his head back and saw only lavender sky and desultory snowflakes spinning, each one unique. See, Simon? Cut the edges, fold again, make more cuts. Not too much, now, or you’ll have nothing left. Unfold it, now. See? Simon’s snowflakes filled the sky. “Don’t cut too much,” he said aloud.

“No sir. Just pressing it now. Cleaning it out.”

The medic splashed an orange liquid over the wound. Angus sat bolt upright at the flash of pain.

“Iodine. There. That breathed some life into you. Wound’s not too deep. Just a few stitches, sir, and then I’ll need that crate of bandages.” He disappeared into the timbered entry from which screams sliced the air, and returned with a needle and black thread.

“This’ll do the trick.” He pinched the wound with thick fingers and made hasty stitches on the ragged flesh, then wrapped it once again.

“Now, sir, those bandages you’re sitting on, if you will.” He stepped back. Angus stood and tried to open the crate. He slumped against the wall, dizzy, breathless. How was a simple wound doing him in?

“Lost some blood there,” the medic said. He pulled out a small vial of smelling salts. “Here, sit down. Keep these. Might come in handy. I’ll see to that crate.”

Angus managed to thank him. The salts jerked him awake. He was parched, and somehow his canteen was missing. A man next to him was gulping water. Where’d he get it? It was all Angus could do not to grab it from him. “Water?” the man said, and passed his canteen over. Angus took a long swallow and held up the canteen—his own. A glance at the man’s cracked lips, his round eye filling with blood beneath a bandage, and Angus passed it back.

Katz and LaPointe materialized, and with Angus they stepped around the line of wounded men. The pungent smell of blood gave rise to another wave of nausea. Angus ordered Keegan to round up the rest of the men—they’d head over the ridge, he told them. Their progress was slow, for dusk had fallen. Angus had to forge a path through the debris every few yards, then come back and lead the men. He had to concentrate, concentrate. Then he had to wait, wait until every man passed. Count them, each one. And still the men fell into holes and tripped over wire and ordnance and the dead and wounded. They bumped into other soldiers coming and going, many of them lost and without officers. At some point, Angus wasn’t sure when, they were told by a gunnery captain that the
17
th had indeed moved on to the other side of the ridge with the
45
th.

Darkness had fallen by the time they reached the crest. They came upon a concrete dugout. The back wall had been blown away so that, like a cave, it was level with the ground. Angus flicked on his torch and flashed it over an overturned desk, four chairs and two empty crates.

“Cleaned the place out, eh? Bastards,” Kearns said.

“Or maybe our own took what was worth taking,” Hanson replied.

Not quite. In the corner the torch lit up the black metal shaft and pearl handle of a Luger pistol, and next to it, a dead German captain, a bullet through his head. Angus put the pistol in a pocket of his greatcoat and handed Keegan the light as he searched the soldier’s pockets. The first thing Angus found was another Luger, still in its holster. He pulled it out. In the man’s jacket he found a packet of letters, which he thumbed through roughly and replaced. He wanted no reminders of the life the man had led. There seemed no point in moving the body, but Angus closed the eyes and rolled it over so it faced away from them. There was no coat to cover the face, which looked neither startled nor stunned, but simply dead. If there had been, they’d have used it for warmth. He herded the men into the dugout. “No point going further in the dark. Too dangerous with all the debris,” he told them, and they slumped down and huddled together against the cold damp wall.

He instructed those with water in their canteens to share it. “Got something we can eat? Anyone?” he asked. Boudrey’s eyes lit up and he withdrew a chocolate bar from his tunic pocket like the treasure it was. “Got it in a comfort box.” He carefully peeled back the stiff waxed-paper wrapper and broke the bar into its twelve grooved squares, taking so much time that Ostler grabbed it and the chocolate fell to the ground. He lunged for it. Angus stayed his hand and the men waited as Boudrey slowly picked up every piece. There was something reassuring in his deliberate movements. “Don’t close your fist over it, Boudrey! For the love of God, you’ll melt it,” Ostler bleated. Breathing loudly, undisturbed, Boudrey collected every square in his filthy palm, then with a loopy grin dropped them one by one to open hands.

“Did yourselves proud today, boys,” Angus said. “A moment of silence for Zwicker, Eisner, Oxner, and Bremner. God rest their souls.” He paused and then told them they’d stay there until first light. But the men kept their heads bowed. “Men?” he said. Without looking up, Hanson said, “What about the rest of it, sir? Like you did for Orland?” Angus nodded.

“I am the resurrection and the life,” Angus said softly. “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. In the midst of life we are in death. Amen.” The men sat back, satisfied. “Now, loosen your boots. In fact, take them off and rub your feet before you put them back on. Get some sleep.” He started rubbing Boudrey’s feet. If he’d had whale oil, he’d have rubbed it on. If he’d had a blanket, he’d have tucked them in.

Keegan and Kearns offered to serve as lookouts, and Angus joined them. The pain in his leg flared briefly and then dulled. He felt a wave of nausea, but it passed. Looking out over the ruins of the parados in the gloom, he wondered if a parados became a parapet when the trench changed hands and the Front moved on. A rhythmic ticking started up, like a halyard tapping a mast. The source—a rope, fixed at the top of the trench, stretching the length of a timber to the ground—was tapping in the wind. Angus leaned his hand against it and hung his head and let the rise of the swells take him beyond the sound of distant shells exploding, the light of flares, beyond hunger and fatigue, far beyond and back, until he was awake again, on deck, on watch.

W
HEN FIRST LIGHT
came, the wind turned sharp. There was no snow falling, just a gray haze. Angus took out his binoculars and scanned the plain below. Canadian troops were on the move and he hoped the Germans were in retreat. He bent his leg a couple of times—stiff, but much less painful. He thanked God for the medic. He still had the limp, but felt no fever.

It was then he sensed a presence. Pistol drawn, he inched around a pile of the rubble. A German officer fell to his knees and threw up his hands. It was light enough to see his eyes, but Angus couldn’t read them.

“Canada,” the man said. Angus had been prepared for “
Kamerad
,” not “Canada.” The officer said it again, and, in his accent, Angus pictured it as “
Kanada
,” which helped him keep his distance when the officer clutched his side and moaned. Hands up again quickly, he again said, “Canada.” Then added, “Gooood.” He tried to smile, then collapsed on all fours. He pulled back his greatcoat. His holster was empty.