into none other than Guy, who’d been running fast in the other direction.
It was an extraordinary coincidence: not that they should meet, but that they should meet in a trench. Guy, as a staff officer, hardly ever entered a front-line position, still less during a time of heavy combat. But, Tom remembered, the divisional telephone exchange had been completely smashed during earlier shelling, and he supposed the divisional staff must have been desperate to obtain a reliable picture of action on the ground.
Both Private Hemplethwaite, in charge of the Lewis gun, and Privates Jones and Carragher, who were then shovelling out the fallen trench, saw what happened next. The two officers had a blazing argument. The older officer was trying to push past and the younger man was physically restraining him, pushing and throwing him back against the wall of the trench. The noise of the shelling was too loud to catch any words, but it was clear that they were shouting at each other.
The younger man began hitting the other. Hard, forceful slaps, which the other man defended himself against by putting his arms to his face. The older man kept trying to get past. The older man didn’t once offer any violence at all to the younger.
Then it happened.
All three men were absolutely unanimous on the fact. The younger man drew his revolver. He pointed it at the other man’s head. The older man drew back, making a gesture of surrender. The younger man was still shouting. He seemed extraordinarily angry. The noise of battle continued to drown the sounds. Then the younger man lowered his gun until it was pointing at the other’s groin, or thereabouts. There was a shot. The shot was perfectly deliberate and at close range. A bloody rosette leaped into the khaki flannels. The older man jumped backwards as the bullet tore into his thigh. The younger man, a lieutenant, holstered his revolver, took one last furious look at the other and tore onwards up the line. Dark blood began to soak down the older man’s leg.
And that was it.
Tom raced away up the trench. Guy came staggering down, his face white as a sheet, incoherent with shock, anger, and fear.
The fighting remained fierce until nightfall.
On a few bloodstained acres, too many men lay dead or dying. The air was heavy with the weight of shells and bullets. For the first time since coming to France, Tom found himself longing for the bullet wound that would send him home to England, away from the fighting.
Night came.
Tom posted sentries, praying that the Germans were as exhausted as their opponents. He desperately wanted whisky, but was pleased not to have any. This night of all nights, he’d be too likely to get drunk, when the last thing he needed was a muzzy head.
He was furious with Guy.
Furious. Far from relieving his feelings, the incident in the trenches had simply added to his fury. He’d shot Guy and hadn’t even killed him. Tom’s anger remained hopelessly unsatisfied, but his action had now put him into a position where Guy could, and quite likely would, have Tom court-martialled. There was only one sentence for firing on a superior officer and that was death. Tom knew that there were witnesses and he certainly wouldn’t be able to rely on their discretion. Perhaps Tom’s outstanding war record would make a difference, but Guy was a major and so often these things depended on rank …
Again and again that night, Tom relived the incident. He never once regretted firing on Guy, but his fingers curled round the butt of his revolver and he imagined a hundred times the same incident with a different outcome: Guy struck not in the thigh, but in the chest; Guy not harmlessly wounded, but killed outright.
Tom stayed on duty for the first sentry shift. So much had happened, he needed time to think. Somewhere in the afternoon’s fighting, he had crushed his pack of cigarettes, but he carefully extricated a couple of the flattened paper tubes and delicately reconstructed them into something smokable. He lit up, throat aching for the taste of warm tobacco.
‘Mr Creeley?’
‘Yes?’
By the brief flare of his match, Tom could see a man’s face – silver-haired but young, grey moustache beneath youthful blue eyes.
‘Captain Morgan. Just sent across from the Warwickshires to give you lads support.’
The two men shook hands and Tom handed over the last of his battered cigarettes, lighting it before passing it across.
‘Support?’ said Tom, mumbling through his cigarette. ‘God knows we need it.’
‘Look here. I’ve got some rather rotten news. I’d best spill it. The brigadier wants to sweep the Boche off the salient for good. His idea is, if we can storm their machine-gun posts, we can dare to risk a general assault.’
‘The brigadier is a murderous bloody-minded lunatic’
Captain Morgan laughed, embarrassed at Tom’s bluntness, but hardly denying the charge. ‘Your name came up,’ he said.
‘Came up to do what?’
The captain grimaced. ‘The guns.’
‘To storm their machine guns?’
‘Yes. I think it’s a damn fool idea myself, but the brigadier seems blessedly keen on it.’
‘It’s lunatic.’
‘I’m terribly sorry, old fellow – bearer of bad tidings and all that. The brigadier wanted you to take a dozen men. Use your own initiative on how to proceed, then get started at once. I’ll follow with a full company to support you the moment you’ve put a stop to those guns.’
Morgan handed over a packet containing written orders that confirmed his summary. Tom read the papers, then tossed them away.
‘My initiative? My initiative tells me that the brigadier’s lost his bloody marbles.’
The captain swallowed. Even to a newcomer, it was fairly clear that the brigadier’s orders were virtually impossible to fulfil.
‘I can’t say I don’t feel for you, old man. I’d have put my own name forward, except that I really don’t know the ground here. I must say, I thought the chap who put your name forward was a bit of a bounder. It’s not really the sort of thing that one fellow volunteers another fellow for.’
‘Who put my name forward?’
Captain Morgan paused. He had said more than he should and was kicking himself for it. ‘Look, I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s really not my –’
‘But you did. Who was it?’
Captain Morgan paused again, taking a long drag on his cigarette. He burned the tobacco down half an inch, then dropped the butt fizzing into the mud. ‘All right, old man. I wouldn’t normally say, but given the circs and everything … It was a chap called Montague. Mr Montague. I didn’t get the first name.’
‘Mister Montague?’ Tom was horrified. ‘A subaltern, my age?’
‘Yes. What? You have a lot of Montagues, do you?’
‘Not a major? We have a lieutenant and a major Which one?’
‘Lieutenant, old man. One star on his shoulder, that’s all. Positive sighting and all that. Definitely lieutenant.’
‘His leg? Was he wounded in the leg at all? A bad flesh wound, very recent? This afternoon?’
‘He was sitting down, old boy. I didn’t see his leg. But wouldn’t he be in hospital with a wound like that? He wouldn’t be sitting around with the brig, I don’t suppose.’
‘No. I suppose he wouldn’t.’