in the assassination capital of the world should have triggered the largest armed conflict in world history. But, explicable or not, that’s precisely what happened.
Needing a quick victory in the west to ensure decisive gains in the east, Germany sent its troops into Belgium, destination Paris. The British – deeply reluctant to go to war, but equally reluctant to hand Europe over to the Germans – asked Germany kindly to leave Belgium alone. The Germans said no, and Britain too was at war.
May 1915.
The night sky rumbled with a general low thunder and the horizon sparkled with the flashes of shells bursting miles away to the north. The largest French farmhouse seemed to have given up the notion of farming anything and had turned itself into a kind of hotel instead. In the spacious kitchen, three or four wooden trestle tables were crowded with soldiers, each paying half a franc for a vast plateful of fried potatoes together with a scrap of bacon and a glass of watery beer.
Alan and Tom, only just arrived in France, blinked at the light and the noise, and stretched their legs, cramped after a two-day journey by boat, train and cart. They weren’t left alone for long. A pale-faced man – a corporal, from his uniform – came running up to them.
‘Mr Creeley, sir? Mr Montague?’
The twins nodded. They had signed up shortly after the outbreak of war. After months of training in England, and still longer months of sitting around in a gloomy transit camp outside Manchester, they had finally arrived in France. They were second lieutenants and would each command a platoon of soldiers as new to the game as they were. The two men were uncertain of their soldiering skills, sobered by the strangeness of the fiery horizon.
‘Company Commander wants to see you, sirs,’ said the NCO. ‘Wants to know why you didn’t arrive yesterday. We move up to the line tomorrow morning.’
The NCO ushered the two men into what had obviously once been the farmhouse’s creamery – idle now that there were no cows to make the milk. An oil lamp hung from a hook in the beamed ceiling and a uniformed major was bent over some papers, booted feet across a map-covered chest, drinking coffee. He looked up.
‘Filthy stuff, French coffee. D’you have any? English, I mean?’
The newcomers shook their heads. ‘Bacon, sir,’ said Alan. ‘And marmalade.’
‘Uh.’ The major grunted. ‘Coffee. Best thing to bring.’ He put down his paperwork with relief and stood up. He was surprisingly tall, and had muscular in-swinging arms that made him look a little monkey-like: strong and potentially dangerous. He stretched out a hand. ‘Wallace Fletcher.’ They shook hands. ‘Take a pew.’ The pew in question was a couple of planks over a collection of milk churns. ‘Why the hell weren’t you here yesterday?’
Alan began to explain, but Fletcher shut him up. ‘Military organisation. Contradiction in terms. Wonder is you’re here at all. We go up into the line tomorrow, relieve C Company.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Mr Creeley?’
Tom nodded. ‘Sir.’
Fletcher screwed up his face, appeared to assess his new subordinate, and made a grunt of reluctant approval. Then he looked at Alan.
‘Then you must be Montague, eh?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You don’t have a brother do you? A major? One of our dear friends and brothers on the General Staff?’
Alan said he did.
‘Hmm!’ This time Fletcher’s grunt was disapproving. He picked up one of the sheets of paper from the stack in front of him and read out loud. ‘“It has come to our notice that in a number of companies the daily practice of rifle cleaning is not being correctly attended to … All company commanders … blah blah … regulation procedure … blah blah … inspections … blah blah. Please submit a report detailing … blah blah blah blah blah.”’ Fletcher dropped the paper with disgust. ‘Signed Major Guy Montague.’
There was a long moment’s silence. Alan was plainly uncomfortable. Tom, on the other hand, enjoyed the moment – or at least he did until it dawned on him that Guy was in France. He wasn’t precisely in command of Tom, but he was out here, in a position of authority, obliged to interfere. Once again, Guy’s shadow had come to fall over his life. Tom felt a surge of anger at the thought.
‘Want to know what the bloody trouble is?’ said Fletcher, at last.
‘Sir?’ said Alan.
‘My men keep firing their bloody rifles.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Makes ’em dirty. The rifles obviously, not the men. Men couldn’t get much dirtier.’
‘No.’
There was a pause. Then Alan began to defend his brother. ‘I believe my brother has no desire to –’
He would have continued, but Fletcher interrupted. ‘Oh, doesn’t matter. It’s all balls. I just tell ’em what they want to hear. Shiniest rifles in France. Cleaning drills five times daily. That sort of thing.’ He sat down, put his feet back on the chest, and started his second cup of the coffee that he so detested. ‘You’re new boys, I take it?’
‘That’s right, sir,’ said Alan.
‘You’re not going to be too bloody useless, I hope?’
Alan’s eyes jerked in surprise at the question and the tone, but before he could find an answer, Fletcher interrupted again.
‘Don’t worry. Training’s a waste of time. The only soldiers in the battalion are me, the CO, the adjutant, two youngsters from Sandhurst, and a sergeant-major who thinks the whole New Army idea’s a bloody joke. Here’s all the training you need. If you see Fritz, kill him. Keep your own bloody head from being shot off. Keep your men out of trouble. And let the CO go on thinking he’s Lord God Almighty. Got it?’
There was a silence.
‘And the coffee,’ said Tom.
‘Damn right. And mind the bloody coffee.’
Their introduction to the front line came all too soon.
‘Chalk. Lucky sods. Cushy first posting.’ Major Fletcher jabbed the bank at shoulder height and released a shower of white soil into the trench floor. ‘Dry as a stallion’s tit, even when it rains. You should see the bloody clay pits we lived in over winter. Two feet above the water line, three feet below. And Fritz taking a pop at you every time you tried to build the parapet an inch or two higher. Only buggers who enjoyed it were the rats.’
Alan kept silent. He and Tom were both shocked. They were shocked at the mud, the vermin, the maze of trenches, the danger that lurked in every gun slit, every weakness in the fortifications, every whistle of passing shells.
A little way beyond the dugout, lodged in the wire eighteen inches off the ground, there was a severed head. According to the British Tommies who had taken over this stretch of line, the head had once belonged to a French soldier killed by a shell blast. It would have been easy to release the object one night and dispose of it, but it had come to take on a kind of superstitious importance amongst the troops. The skull was known as Private Headley, and was treated as a regular member of the battalion. Food was tossed out to it, drinks thrown at it, even lighted cigarettes hurled as a kind of good luck offering.
‘And here’s your digs,’ said Fletcher, introducing