The Lambs Read online

  ‘Do you have to do that?’ Flynn asked, watching Gallagher repack his kit for the fourth time. All around them others were doing the same, going through mindless rituals – psychological comfort blankets to pass the time. Flynn worked the bolt of his rifle, its click-clack perversely satisfying as the oiled steel slid smoothly into place. He worked it again and again and again.

  ‘Do you have to do that?’ snapped Gallagher, who was midway through his fifth repack.

  ‘So what do you think it’ll be like?’ asked Flynn.

  ‘Ye’ll find out soon enough,’ said Devlin softly, his voice an island of calm amid the buzz of excitement. Unlike the rest he wore webbing, not leather equipment, marking him out as a regular soldier not a wartime volunteer. His rifle’s furniture glinted in the morning sun, lovingly polished and oiled, an oilskin cover guarding the working parts against the slurry of sleet tumbling down from the leaden sky. Mahon stood nearby, his middle-aged frame bolt upright despite the weight of the kit draped about him like a lethal Christmas tree. His boots gleamed, flashing in the sunlight as he moved. Gallagher farted loudly, grinning childishly as he wrenched his cap off to scratch his head. His hair was cropped close at the back and sides but hung long across the fringe, flopping over his eyes. Flynn thought it looked strange, reminding him of the haircuts sported by medieval Irish warriors, but it was a popular trend amongst Kitchener’s men.

  ‘Christ, my head’s cold,’ whined Gallagher as they stepped out into the crisp morning air. It had snowed, dusting the area with filthy, grey-brown slush, a cruel easterly wind chilling their bones. Whilst most of them had taken the wire stiffeners from their caps, Gallagher had managed to acquire a battered old ‘Gor Blimey’ trench cap from somewhere. It was tatty, stained and shapeless, reminding Flynn of an old flat cap. It was obvious that he was desperately trying to cultivate the impression that he was some sort of grizzled old veteran rather than a new arrival.

  ‘Serves you right for getting such a bloody stupid haircut,’ said Flynn, who had resisted the temptation to follow suit and have his hair cropped like Gallagher’s.

  ‘Dukey here told me they were all the rage over here,’ answered Gallagher. The Duke shuffled his feet, trying not to catch Gallagher’s eye. ‘Didn’t you say you were going to get one yourself, eh, Dukey?’

  ‘Said, you great culchie eejit, I said said,’ chortled the Duke, ostentatiously raking his fingers through his thick mop of unruly hair. Before he knew it, Gallagher was on him, whooping with glee and slapping him around the head with his battered cap.

  ‘That’ll be corporal culchie eejit to you!’ Gallagher chuckled.

  ‘For the love of God, will ye give it a rest? We’ve work to do, ye blathering Jackeen eejits!’ snapped Devlin, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. Beckoning Flynn over, he led him out of earshot of the others. ‘I know this is your first time, Kevin, but it’s theirs too, and as long as ye’ve them stripes on yer arm they’ll be looking to you if anything happens, so try not to look so bloody worried. Smile, joke and make them think ye’ve not a care in the world. I don’t give a shit if ye’re crying inside, nor will they; if ye look happy, they’ll be happy too,’ Devlin said softly, patting Flynn on the shoulder. Flynn nodded, forcing himself to smile. By the time they’d loaded up with picket posts, barbed wire, bombs, ammunition, food, water and the myriad of other bits of awkward, unwieldy junk so innocuously labelled ‘trench stores’ on the QM’s inventory, it was almost midday. The guns had stopped, probably for lunch according to Carolan, and the snow had redoubled its efforts, leaving a light frosting on caps, packs and shoulders.

  ‘Gosh, fellas, this stuff weighs a fricking ton,’ grumbled Fitzgerald.

  ‘For the love of God, will you stop bitching? You’re a flaming Yank – you aren’t even supposed to be here!’ snapped Doyle grumpily. Devlin smiled to himself: as long as they were complaining, he knew their morale was good. It was when they stopped that he’d worry.

  ‘Come on, ye miserable bastards, sing!’ Devlin shouted. A voice from the back of the column boomed out ‘Whiter than the whitewash on the wall …’ joined by dozens answering ‘… on the wall! Oh, wash me in the water that you wash your dirty daughter in and we will be whiter than the whitewash on the wall!’ Devlin belted out the chorus, urging others to join. There were Tommies lining the road: grey, sallow-faced, fatigue etched into their bones, wallowing in the sheer luxury of inactivity. Here and there one smiled or even waved but for the most part they sat staring blankly. Swirls of snow whipped up around their feet as the Irishmen swaggered past, singing gustily, drawing nearer to their destination. Flynn couldn’t help notice the subtle change in the bleak winter landscape as nature’s desolation gave way to man’s.

  ‘Jakers, what’s that stink?’ gasped Carolan, gagging violently. Flynn smelt it too, a putrid stench clawing at the contents of his convulsing stomach. Then they saw it: a shambles of bloated, rotting flesh that used to be a horse, its front legs torn away, its glassy eyes staring in disbelief. ‘Poor bugger,’ he muttered as they passed, the singing trailing away into uneasy silence. There was a ramshackle farmhouse nearby, a casualty clearing station. A ragged hole marred the roof; shrapnel scars gouged the walls. They had only come a mile or two at most but it was another world. A doctor stood in the doorway in shirtsleeves despite the cold. His rubber apron was splashed with blood and he watched them with little more than casual professional interest, exchanging meaningless pleasantries with Murphy as they passed. Men whistled as they dug in the field behind. A plane circled overhead like a mechanical bird of prey.

  ‘What are they digging trenches here for?’ asked the Duke.

  ‘They’re not trenches,’ muttered Gallagher, leaving the rest unsaid as they came to a halt. Flynn noticed a group of mud-caked soldiers watching them from further up the lane. One of them, a young-looking sergeant with a wispy blond moustache, sauntered over, saluting Murphy. He stank like a farmyard, his ‘Gor Blimey’ cap perched on the back of his head unleashing a shock of blond hair.

  He wore a goatskin over his coat.

  ‘My name’s Sergeant Kay, sir. I’ll be taking you up into the line,’ he said in a rolling Lancashire accent. Murphy returned the salute. They said something Flynn couldn’t hear and then they were off, following the sergeant’s easy, economical, infantryman’s stride. The noise of the guns grew louder and the slushy mud grew deeper till it slurped over the tops of their boots.

  ‘Join up, they said … See the world, they said …’ someone muttered from the anonymity of the ranks, drawing a grim look from Clee. Then they were silent.

  ‘Copped it last night, sir,’ Kay told Murphy as they passed a tarpaulin covering three bodies, their mud-caked boots sticking out from beneath it. Flynn tried not to look – he’d never seen a corpse before – but he couldn’t help it. ‘A stray whizz-bang got them,’ he added, matter-of-factly, as if being emotional was too much effort. ‘It’s pretty cushty really, sir,’ said Kay, but his words lacked conviction. It wasn’t long before they reached the communication trench, passing a battered sign ominously declaring ‘Beware of the Snipers’. It didn’t take long for Flynn to lose his bearings as they snaked along the wet clay gutter decked with cracked boards. At least Kay seemed to know where he was going. Something rent the air, sending skittish fusiliers ducking for cover beneath showering dirt. Flynn was on his arse.

  ‘A fecking banshee!’ quailed a whey-faced Gallagher.

  ‘And since when did you get all culchie, believing in banshees?’ chided Flynn.

  ‘Show’s over, let’s get moving,’ said Devlin, calmly ignoring their baptism.

  ‘It’s not the ones you can hear that will kill you,’ said Kay with a smile that was at once weary and knowing, indulgently shaking his head. Flynn struggled to his feet, his hobnails skidding. The iron wire pickets he’d been given bit into his shoulder despite the layers of serge and flannel between them and his flesh. There were more loud bangs, more dirt. He was slick with sweat despite the sn
ow and a lump grew in the pit of his stomach like a badly digested meal. Devlin’s words, ‘They’ll be looking to you,’ swirled through his mind, crushing him beneath the weight of responsibility.

  CHAPTER 10

  31 December 1915, British front line, Ploegsteert, Belgium

  In a few hours it would be 1916. Flynn’s lips were dry. They’d been ordered not to touch their water and for the first time he really got what Devlin had meant about conserving it. War made you thirsty; very thirsty. They’d been told not to touch their iron rations either. Murphy said there’d be hot food waiting. Flynn didn’t believe him. Gallagher still had his fruit-cake, buried in his pack, and some chocolate too. No one asked where he got it from as long as he shared. He always did and Flynn savoured his square as he walked. It took his mind off his blisters and the nipping cold. Then they stopped. They were there.

  ‘Could be worse,’ said Devlin, looking sickeningly happy. Flynn wondered if the Ulsterman was as miserable as the rest of them. The trench was a shambles; a potpourri of unwashed humanity, decaying matter and discarded food tins. Kay’s Lancastrians had obviously done little to make the place habitable. ‘We’ll soon have this sorted.’ Doyle skidded on a greasy duckboard, almost losing his boot in the viscous slurry.

  ‘Well, at least it’s not raining,’ chipped in Kay.

  The heavens opened and a lazy stream of opaque effluent began to slide, rather than flow past, before oozing into the entrance of a nearby dugout, slithering down its steps. Flynn pulled his groundsheet over his head, watching Kay, Devlin and the officers vanish around a traverse. His feet were like ice and he knew if he didn’t change his socks soon his feet would begin to rot. Gallagher flopped down next to him, disappointed that his chocolate was all gone.

  ‘This place makes the Liffey smell good,’ he observed.

  ‘And what exactly did you expect?’ Flynn asked.

  ‘Dunno, it’s …’ replied Gallagher, shrugging his shoulders, drinking in the scene. Here and there the trench’s sides had collapsed under their own waterlogged weight or shellfire, despite the best efforts of dilapidated corrugated iron and rotten wood. It was an open sewer in every sense of the word and together they watched what looked unmistakably like a turd drift slowly by before eddying into an oily, semi-frozen pool of slushy filth to nudge against a discarded, rusty bully-beef tin. Gallagher offered Flynn a cigarette.

  ‘Why not? Maybe it’ll get rid of the smell,’ Flynn replied. It didn’t.

  ‘See anything?’ asked Cronin as he scrambled up beside a buck-toothed sentry who looked barely out of short trousers. They peered into no-man’s-land, looking like children playing soldiers. Keeping his eyes on the wasteland, the sentry shook his head. Cronin looked excited, his eyes shining. He was enjoying himself.

  ‘Jerry’s up there,’ said the sentry, pointing up at the crest a few hundred yards distant. ‘The buggers have all the high ground round here; pump the bloody water out so it runs downhill into our trenches every time it pisses down.’ There was a series of dull crumps off to the left and Flynn fought the urge to dive for cover. Gallagher began dishing out the last of the cake. More explosions followed.

  ‘Some poor bugger’s for it,’ muttered one of the Englishmen. Then it stopped as suddenly as it began and for some inexplicable reason Flynn felt the urge to climb up onto the fire step and take a look for himself. Tufts of grass thrust up around the picket posts amid the dirty snow. Somehow it was nothing like he’d expected. It was, well, ordinary. Rusty barbed wire sagged beneath its own weight, swaying in the gentle breeze. Harmonica music drifted down the hill towards him. It was almost peaceful.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘Jerry. They always seem to be singing or the like; musical little bleeders, them lot,’ observed the sentry.

  ‘No, I mean what’s that?’ repeated Flynn as he craned up to get a better view of the misshapen bundle sagging the wire. There was something vaguely familiar about it. Something long and white – bleached in the sun – protruded from it.

  ‘Oh, that? That’s a Jerry too,’ the sentry informed him, matter-of-factly. Crack! Thump! Flynn felt something hot zing past his cheek.

  ‘Get down, you bloody idiot!’ bellowed Sergeant Kay, doubling towards them, followed by Devlin, but Flynn just looked stupefied, unable to comprehend what had happened. Then Gallagher grabbed his belt and heaved him down. Several more rounds zipped overhead. Crack! Thump! Crack! Thump! Crack! Thump! It was a bit like being in the butts back on Ash Ranges outside Aldershot. A machine gun joined it for good measure, sounding like tearing canvas. ‘Now look what you’ve bloody done!’ Kay snapped angrily. Gallagher flashed Flynn one of those looks he used to reserve for when Mr Byrne told them off back in the office. It seemed a lifetime ago. Crack! The rifle shot cut Kay short. Everyone turned to stare at Cronin, who stood on the fire step, grinning like the Cheshire cat.

  ‘Gotcha, you filthy Hun swine!’ he muttered, his eyes bright with elation. The machine gun had stopped as suddenly as it had begun. There was a ragged cheer.

  ‘Well, look at you. Here five minutes and you’ve already potted a Hun,’ Gallagher crowed proudly as he slapped Cronin on the back. Beaming, Cronin applied his safety catch and got down.

  ‘It’s a terrible thing to kill a man,’ muttered Mahon.

  ‘Weren’t you in the South Africa war?’ asked Flynn.

  The old soldier gave Flynn a doleful look, as if some long-forgotten memory had awoken.

  ‘I was, and I saw my fair share of killing. The Boers were the enemy, that’s all. It was him or me. I took no pleasure in it. Once you’ve killed a man, there’s no going back. It changes you.’ He sniffed before walking off.

  ‘Well, when ye’ve quite finished trying to win the VC perhaps ye can do something useful like sort this dump out – it’s a flaming disgrace!’ barked Devlin, snatching up a long-handled spade and tossing it at Gallagher, who just managed to catch it without dropping his cigarette.

  ‘You heard the man, let’s get to work,’ said Flynn, hopping gingerly into the slime that oozed over his ankles and into his boots. ‘Hey, Mickey, you were a chippy.’

  Doyle nodded, running an expert eye over the cracked timbers.

  ‘I’ve not got my tools but I’ll see what I can do,’ he said, tapping one of the beams with his muddy boot. They began digging out the trench, chucking spadefuls of slurry over the parados. It was a thankless task as the evil-smelling burgoo slid back into the trench. Flynn’s spade struck something. He didn’t look too closely.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked Flynn, pausing to listen to a muffled clack-clack-clack sound coming from the German front line.

  ‘That’ll be Jerry pumping out his trenches,’ answered one of the Englishmen.

  ‘Marvellous, absolutely bloody marvellous,’ sighed the Duke, hovering in mid-scoop. ‘So why do we fecking bother?’

  ‘Because, me old china, it’d be a bloody sight worse if we didn’t!’ chortled the Englishman. ‘Now let’s see if we can shovel faster than them buggers can pump!’ By sunset the trench still looked like a sewer. At least Doyle had managed to do some good with the woodwork and whilst the rain had stopped the darkening sky threatened more to come. Murphy, Callear and Clee were in their traverse. Clee was cradling an earthenware jar in his arms: rum. Flynn licked his lips. He could do with a tot.

  ‘Stand to!’ bellowed Clee.

  ‘Holy cow, are the Krauts coming?’ cried Fitzgerald, his face blanching as he flung himself at the fire step.

  ‘Didn’t you listen to a word they said in training?’ said Carolan. ‘It’s just trench routine. We stand to at sunset and sunrise, just in case Jerry tries to have a crack.’

  ‘Do y’reckon the Boche is doing the same over their side?’ asked Doyle.

  ‘That they are,’ replied Carolan.

  ‘Silence!’ snapped Devlin from behind them. Flynn felt light-headed, the blood pounding like thunder in his ears. It may be quiet but as soon as it was dark the fr
ont lines would come alive with work parties and patrols. His eyes were drawn to the bundle on the wire fading into the dark as if it were being sucked back down to the underworld where it belonged, and began to fidget, reading the letters and numbers stamped into his rifle’s metalwork. He could hear the others breathing. Somewhere out in the thickening dark the wire creaked and the grass rustled. Whoosh! A green flare lanced into the sky, stripping out his night vision before wafting gently earthward beneath its parachute. The flickering canopy of light set shadows dancing amid the wire pickets and Flynn’s thumb drifted towards his safety catch as he fought the temptation to slip it off. Half an hour later they were stood down. Food arrived: battered green Dixies full of tepid ‘all-in stew’. They wolfed it down none the less. Then there was tea: orangey-brown tea sweetened with condensed milk and a splash of rum.

  ‘All right then, I need two volunteers to man a listening post,’ announced Devlin when they’d finished. No one moved. Everyone knew manning the listening post was a vital job but when it came to it no one wanted to do it.

  ‘Never volunteer for anything,’ muttered Gallagher out of the corner of his mouth to Flynn. He’d learnt that much about soldiering already.

  ‘Now you bloody tell me,’ replied Flynn with a brisk laugh.

  ‘Well done, Corporal Flynn, you’ll do!’ called the sergeant.

  ‘I’ll go, Sarge,’ Cronin said, picking up his rifle and groundsheet as a collective sigh of relief rippled down the trench.

  ‘Good man!’ Devlin beamed, leading them to a sap. ‘I’m told there’s a shell hole about thirty yards in front of us. Just follow this here cord and ye can’t miss it.’ He placed a length of thick string in Flynn’s hand, then handed him a Very pistol. ‘If ye hear anything suspicious fire this straight up, then keep your heads down or ye’ll get ’em blown off. Keep an eye on the boy and don’t go doing anything stupid, understand?’