Watching. Jeff Edwards
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released the dead man’s hand, and stood up. He nodded thanks to his cousin. ‘Alright, let’s get ready.’
An uninterrupted line of British troops moved up to the front, keeping to the sides of what had once been a main road, toiling through the thick mud. Their clothes were relatively clean, and their faces shaven, with eyes bright and alive.
The road itself was choked with trucks laden with the supplies of war, moving slowly forward, while ambulances, overburdened with the maimed, moved toward the aid stations at the rear. Artillery shells whistled overhead, their explosions distant reminders of the death that waited up the road.
On the opposite side of the road, a sad trickle of men stumbled toward the rear. When they had arrived at the front, just three days before, they had looked like their comrades on the far side of the road. Now, there were just twenty remaining of the original one hundred. Covered in mud and gore, their eyes seemingly on the far distant horizon, they paid little attention to what was happening around them.
Greetings from their replacements were ignored, and the lucky few that still had a cigarette, sucked hard on them. Several had lost their packs, and one had even lost his rifle in the madness they were leaving behind.
They were the fortunate ones. Of the original one-hundred-strong force, thirty had not made it past the first attack on the enemy’s trenches; trenches that were no more than the width of a football field from their own. They had been mercilessly cut down by the German’s machine guns, amidst the barbed wire of no-man’s land.
Staggering into the rest area, the survivors were directed to a line of tents, where en masse they cast themselves down on straw-filled palliasses. Some fell instantly into a deep sleep, while others lay like zombies, fearing what nightmares would come to them, if they dared to close their eyes. Eventually, exhaustion overtook even them.
They slept fitfully, and finally awoke, with their bladders demanding relief. After relieving themselves, they stripped their filthy uniforms from their muddied bodies, and attempted to wash away the stink of death that clung to them, but from the front lines, the breeze carried to them the cloying stench of war.
The desire for sleep was now replaced by hunger pains. Most, faced with imminent death, had been too wound-up to eat, and hadn’t been able to face the cans of cold meat they had been given in the trenches. Now, for the first time in days, they lined up at the mess tent for a hot meal and mugs of strong tea, which they carried back to their tents. There they sat, soaking up the meagre sunlight, savouring each mouthful.
Sergeant Richard Brown, and his younger cousin and neighbour, Lieutenant Robert Brown, sat side by side.
For young Robert, his first taste of combat since completing his officer training at Staff College had been nothing like he had anticipated, while Richard, ten years older, had been on the front line for nearly a year. Robert thought the fact that Richard had survived this long without any serious injuries, was nothing short of miraculous.
‘How do you stay sane amongst all this carnage?’ asked Robert.
‘You don’t. None of us are sane. The only ones that were, died a long time ago.’
‘You know what I mean. How are you able to keep going back up there?’
‘I have to; it’s orders. If you refuse to obey orders, they’ll shoot you as a coward. You’re an officer; you know that as well as I do.’
‘But how do you keep doing it? Right now I’d be prepared to shoot myself in the foot, or worse, just so I can go home ...’
Richard nodded, knowing exactly what his cousin was talking about. ‘It helps to have something to cling to. I think of what I’m going to do when this is all over.’
‘Like what?’
‘I think about my wife, my son, and what I’m going to do with the farm.’
‘What’s that?’
‘My wife comes from a family of orchardists. She’s been after me for years to give up on the carrots and potatoes, and plant rows of apple trees instead. She loves her apples; makes a very fine cider out of the couple of trees we have at the moment.’
Robert leaned back, smoking a cigarette, considering what he had been told, while Richard drifted off into his own world, far from the stench of death that surrounded them.
‘I’d like to fish,’ said Robert, breaking into his cousin’s daydream of lazy summer days down on his farm.
‘What?’
‘You know that when I inherited the estate, my younger brother decided to emigrate. Well, I visited him in Canada just before the war. He took me fly-fishing, and I caught the biggest trout I have ever seen. It was wonderful. That’s what I’d like to do. In fact, I’d like to have my very own lake.’ Robert’s face lost its haggard look as he became immersed in his dream. ‘I’ll show you. Give me your bayonet.’
Taking his bayonet out of its scabbard, Richard handed it to him. Robert took it, and began to draw in the dirt, explaining as he did so. ‘We have the spring that starts in the hills at the top of my property, and runs down through the top fields, then past my house, to where it divides, and one branch becomes the boundary between our two properties.’ He drew that branch in, and then the second branch. ‘The other branch travels down that depression past the ruin of Walton Abbey, with Walton Village below the abbey, and between the two branches.’ He then roughly marked in the ruined abbey, and the village with its two ancient stone bridges at either end of its main street.’
Robert now pointed to a spot just above the point where the river divided. ‘If I were to build an embankment across this spot, then the natural shape of the area above would create a perfect lake.’ He smiled up at his cousin, excited by his plan.
Richard studied the map. ‘I hate to spoil your dream, but if you did that, then the river between our properties would cease to exist. How could I water my crops?’
Disappointed, Robert looked back down at the lines he had drawn in the dirt. Suddenly he smiled. ‘Look at this,’ he said, pointing to the map. ‘If you let me build the lake, I’ll compensate you. You can have the land of mine below the lake. That part that now lies between the western and eastern branches. You can grow your vegetables over next to the river that will still be running, and your wife can have her apple trees where you’re growing your vegetables now.’
Pleased with his solution, Robert looked up at his cousin with a broad grin. ‘We can both have what we want.’
‘Very well thought out, cousin, but are you sure that you want to just give me those fields?’
‘It’s my dream. Are you going to deny me my dream?’
Richard actually laughed for the first time in weeks. ‘If we both get out of this shitty war, I’ll hold you to it.’
* * *
Two days later, and much refreshed, the cousins had the unenviable task of welcoming their latest batch of replacements.
‘They look younger every day,’ sighed Richard as he watched the new men file into the encampment. ‘I doubt if half of them even shave yet.’
‘Poor bastards! They don’t look like they’ve had a rifle in their hands for more than a week,’ Robert replied, and wondered to himself how many of them would be alive in a weeks’ time. He patted his sergeant on the arm. ‘I’ll leave you to settle them in. When that’s done, come and see me in my tent; I’ll get their paperwork in order. Now that they’ve arrived, I expect we’ll soon be ordered up to the front.’
‘Heaven help us.’
It was growing dark by the time that Richard had assigned the new men to their sections and settled them in. With luck, the new section leaders might have a couple of days to get to know their new replacements, but they wouldn’t be able to gauge the men’s mettle until they had been ordered to go over the top, and by that time it would be too late for many of them.
Making