 
Through the Woods of Babel

James Welsh

Copyright James Welsh 2012

Published at Smashwords

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For every name written down in the book at

Memorial Hall, The University of Delaware.

For Alexa.

For family, for friends.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

who cheer when soldier lads march by,

sneak home and pray you'll never know

the hell where youth and laughter go.

-Siegfried Sassoon, "Suicide in the Trenches"

Chapter I

Saturday, June 24, 1916

Somme, France

"No one wants to die, but everyone wants to die a hero."

Henry didn't remember much about his grandfather, but he certainly remembered the old man's favorite saying. He ended each of his stories with the phrase, as if the saying was a flourish of the pen. Just like a signature, Henry did not understand the meaning of the phrase, though his grandfather rumbled with a grave dignity whenever he said it. So Henry knew that the words must be important, in some way.

Francis Carrington, Earl of Nottingham, was a tremendous man with a thick handlebar mustache. The old man was proud of the mustache, keeping it like a steady brush of white paint. That was the other thing that Henry remembered about his grandfather. As a child, Henry would tug on the elder's mustache, as if amazed and not sure if the fashion actually existed. Many men would yelp at the pulling of hair, but Francis would only chuckle and say, "Be careful there, my boy! All of a man's power is in his hair. I'm just a modern Samson."

The Earl was certainly a warrior – he had dove into the wick of war for decades, only twice being burned by the heat of gunfire. He had fought in a series of campaigns that blanketed the world, whether fought in southern Africa or Burma. Each time he shipped off for war, he hoped to come home as a death notice for his wife. Each time, though, he showed up on the doorstep of their estate, looking disappointed. He had tried years before to explain this feeling to others, but he had long given up the efforts. His wife was far from grief-stricken to see her husband alive. She always squeaked with delight when she saw through the window his carriage pull up the road. That said, she may have been more excited to see the gifts that Francis always carried underneath one arm. Once, when Francis helped put down the Chinese Rebellion, he returned with two looted, beautiful vases, as blue as the deep Atlantic.

And still, Francis spent the better part of his life marching across continents, being the first to charge into battle, eager to draw blood like a painter with his canvas. Francis never admitted it, but he was not sure if this urge made him a suicide or a martyr. He'd rather see himself as being a hero to someone, although suicidal people still carved their initials on legend. Everyone from Ajax during the Trojan War to Shakespeare's Ophelia, every death became immortalized, one way or another.

In the end, though, Francis got his wish and died more like Achilles than Ajax. Even with a deaf ear in his later years, Francis still heard the call to war, and so he signed up to fight the Aros on the African continent. In spite of his advanced age, Francis was still let in on the fight, perhaps as a bet by amused commanders. During the assault on Arochukwu, the graying Carrington had been driven through with a spear, killing him in the space of a breath. He was buried later that day with honor in the rusty soil of that country, asleep forever in the battlefield, the only home he had ever truly known. His wife wore black for a year when she heard the news. The only gifts that came home that time were the Earl's belongings, as well as the old man's meticulous journal.

When Francis had died, he had passed onto his only son the title of Earl of Nottingham, as well as a beautiful estate deep in the woods, as well as a small fortune for summers in Italy, as well as a seat in the House of Lords, but little else. The new Earl of Nottingham would come to resent this lack of appreciation; however, the bespectacled man never explained why. Perhaps he felt too mature to sit in Parliament, or perhaps he wanted even more money. Perhaps he wanted to make his own future, instead of his father handing him one. It would take a shrewd man, a man too wise to ever be born, to look in the Earl's eyes and guess at an answer. The truth may have been that the Earl did not want to live like his father did, as a child too busy with his war-games to know that supper was ready. This notion would certainly explain the Earl's moves after his father's gruesome death. The Earl began a series of aggressive business deals in ports like Liverpool and Glasgow. For a small fee – well, one that shortchanged the competitors – the Earl would transport imported goods from the ports well into the heartland of England. In a few, short years, the man had become a sort of merchant's merchant. He expanded his business until he lived on the road, treating each of his ventures as a port of call, sailing to and from each port in his brand-new, steam-powered car, the wheels his sails, the dirt roads his seas.

Still, one looked at the travels made by father and son – they looked at the battles one fought, the arguments the other shouted – and they wondered if the two men were the same spirit, stretched along the generations.

The young Henry could never understand his father's motives. For the longest time, he thought his father's business was criminal at worst, immoral at best. Why abandon his family and home and the countryside and the crisp breeze for the musky port air? What colors did his father find in the city grays? Henry never understood the comedy of life until he spent three weeks in Liverpool one summer. The Earl had taken his son with him on his travels, hoping that Henry would finally learn what made the family name so respected. All Henry learned, though, was how far the brothels and pubs were from the hotel. Henry did not learn a single thing about the family business that summer, but he certainly learned what his inheritance was going to be. He was going to gain neither his grandfather's title nor his father's business. Instead, he was going to inherit their thrill for oddity. It was this magnetism for novelty that aligned all three generations like planets in orbit, in spite of the younger Earl not wanting to become a soldier like his father, in spite of Henry not wanting to become an entrepreneur like his own.

It could be said that the Earl did not believe in nature. This was not a hope but an expectation, as the man had seen little proof of nature in the shipyards. The years at business had turned the man as black-and-white as the contracts he signed. However, while the Earl's eyes turned cold, his hands became greedy with money. Finances were the only thing he truly believed in anymore, as he believed that it is far easier to believe in that which you see. He did not go to church anymore for the same reason, much to the clucking of his elderly mother, widow of the late Francis.

That is why when the Earl first heard of war breaking out on the Continent, he feared the worst. He was shaving his face one summer morning, back in 1914, when he heard the news. He immediately thought of his grandfather before he thought of his son. The thoughts rushed at him all at once and he yelped as he cut his cheek.

All it took was the memory of his father reveling in war, one week, some pulled strings, a few fat pockets, and the Earl had put his son in a factory, making munitions. The Earl's wife immediately cried foul over this decision. She did not do so for her son's sake, of course. No, she was shuddering at the gossip that she was already imagining in her head: to think, she would be known as "the Countess with the commoner for a son." She was even afraid of being near her son, for fear that his dirty skin would be contagious. As well, the munitions worker who lost his job of five years to Henry's appointment was far from thrilled.

The Earl ignored the outcry, though. He reasoned to himself, saying, "They would never draft my son for the war, not if he's so vital. If he's not making artillery shells, then who would?"

It was true – a factory worker could never fire any of the artillery shells or bullets that he created. This was the logic of Parliament. However, the Earl had other reasons for the maneuvering. What the Earl did not know was that he did pass down some qualities to his son, deceit being one of the many virtues.

That is why, when Private Edward Huxley asked what Henry did before the war, the young lance corporal was able to lie so easily.

"Oh, I wasn't up to much, I'm afraid," Henry said airily. "Just doing some odd jobs here and there. Spent some time in London, actually. Didn't you say that you're from there?"

The dashing private smiled broadly. "Yes sir, of course I was born and raised there. Where else can you live?"

Michael Brown took a moment to look up from his newspaper. He sneered in the way he always did. "Don't believe a word he says. That's right, Eddie, I've seen the address on the letters you send home. You're from Twickenham."

Huxley wasn't sure whether to be indignant or amused. He chose to be amused. "It's as London as St. Paul's Cathedral. Sure is more London than your Bristol."

In truth, London and Twickenham were the same and different, a city divided by a common river, the Thames. While London's moon of pollution eclipsed the countryside, Twickenham remained a rustic flare of sunshine. But London always had her fingers in the world, and she introduced industry to the town. Of course, some people protested this, over their pints in the pub, grumbling over cider. Many of them had fled London for Twickenham, in the hopes of finding something more private, more personal. But the city and its grime seemed to follow them everywhere. Huxley cheered the intrusion, though, because it meant steady money at the powder mills around town. London meant money, as it always had. But that wasn't the only reason why Huxley loved the city. When he wasn't working shifts at the powder mill, he was busy patrolling the hotspots of London. His father may have had a weakness for the drink, but Huxley's was women. The blond-haired, lean man made a sport of seducing London's powerful ladies, the wives of diplomats and MPs. He didn't like to brag, but he claimed twenty-one affairs before a sense of duty had shoved him with a stiff arm into war. The actual number of ladies, though, was closer to four, five perhaps.

Brown was immune to Huxley's charm, though, and waved it off. He called out in the train car, "Hey, who here is the best with French? Come now, don't be shy."

Henry pointed towards the back of the car. Although it was dark, he thought he could see the brief outline of Nigel Bishop. "I think Nigel is."

"Nigel. Hey, Nigel!"

Brown's shout shattered the church silence of the train car. His only response was grumbles from the other sleepy soldiers, desperate to stay in their dreams.

Michael Brown did not care in the slightest for being an interruption, though. The round-faced boy with short hair had gone stale years before, enough to make any pedestrian's nose wrinkle. Born into an Irish family of twelve in Bristol, his exit late one night from home went unnoticed. His entrance into the police station later that same night, though, was a bit more memorable. You ask any of the Bobbies, and they'd remember Brown as being the screaming young man they brought in, all for fighting over the tab at a pub. See, the world never smiled at Brown, but Brown certainly smiled back, his chapped lips curled, his rotten teeth grinding, his growl scratchy. Since that first night away from home, he had spent a decade in what he found to be a comfortable hell: whether it was behind bars or drinking in bars. Actually, he would have never left it for the war. The judge had ordered him to put on a uniform and charge into battle. With the alternative being locked away in a terrible prison for four years, Brown decided to take his chances with the Huns. And he made sure that everyone around him knew this.

Brown continued calling out. "Nigel!"

Huxley offered gently, "Maybe he's asleep."

"I was."

The three men looked up to see Nigel Bishop in the aisle, yawning while scratching the back of his long neck. The train took a curve in the tracks, but the gangly man didn't seem to notice. He always traveled a bit slower than everything else. Henry would have thought that a city man like Bishop – born in Bristol just like Brown – would have been more loud and quick. But Bishop had fled the city for the countryside when he was young. He found some work with the rich and powerful estates in the county, working mostly as a kennelman, looking after a lord's foxhounds. It was a good job, but Bishop badly needed the money, and the lords all seemed to know this. One fateful morning changed all of that, though. Bishop was invited out on a hunt – one of the lord's friends had come down sick. With one shot and two fox carcasses, Bishop became a legend to man, a monster to animal. As slow as the man seemed, he was frightening when he had a rifle in his hand. When the war sounded in the papers across England, Bishop was in Kent, hunting down some foxes that were becoming a nuisance for a little hamlet. The man held a bullet higher than Moses ever did with the Commandments, and that was not just because a bullet is lighter than a stone tablet.

Brown didn't feel the need to apologize, for being Bishop's wake-up call. "I need your expertise. For just a moment, anyways. What's..." (he paused as he tried to figure out the pronunciation) "... _accro_?"

Bishop closed his eyes for a moment. When they flicked back open, he said, "It's a love, or a lover."

"Really? Well, that makes no goddamn sense."

Bishop looked amused. "Why do you say that?"

"Well, this article's about a library. Least, I think it is."

Bishop plucked the French paper out of Brown's hands. "Oh, you meant _accroc_."

Brown demanded, "There's a difference?"

A sage nod. "Of course. _Accroc_ means something like a blot. _Accro_ , lover. A letter can make the difference between love and a mistake."

Huxley's eyes glinted. "Sounds like the correspondence I kept with my last girl."

The other soldiers laughed heartily. Even Brown felt rich enough to afford a chuckle.

Henry turned from the noise and jest and looked out through the silent window. The French countryside that swept past was haunting. The rolling hills were as steady as dried paint, but they followed you everywhere you went, like a pair of curious eyes on a portrait. Even as the train barreled along the cold tracks, like pain sparking along a steel spine, the wildness clung to everything like wet clothes. Henry could see the swamps, the thick pools of water soaking the roots of mighty trees everywhere. It reminded him of parts of England actually, when he would travel with father. The swamps there were treacherous, either by wheel or foot. He had seen many cars and carriages alike sticking tail-end out of a bog. As for going by foot – well, one wrong move could drop an unlucky soul into a free coffin. But Henry always loved those parts of the trips, passing by the murky grounds. He always loved what he could never touch...

A nasally voice boomed over the commotion, "Is there a reason why you men are carrying on here?"

The soldiers' laughter died away as they sheepishly glanced up at the man standing over them. Corporal Neville Liddell looked more like a bishop than a warrior, but younger, with his stern blues magnified and magnificent behind his thick glasses. He carried a thick book underneath one of his arms – at first Henry thought it was a Bible, but a closer look showed that it was the collected works of Shakespeare. Henry guessed there wasn't much of a difference between the two books. Liddell certainly didn't think so. A professor at Oxford when England declared war, Liddell was one of the first volunteers. He left the steady shores of his wife, Monica, and his two daughters, and he dove into what he simply called "Hell." Liddell had fought in the Battle of Loos some time before. Henry heard the stories of Loos, but they felt more fiction than real.

Brown put on the straightest face he could. He said with mock seriousness, "But we weren't carrying on, sir. We were talking about the latest news, just coming from the south."

"Oh? And what news was that?"

Brown's face froze, as if he had not expected a professor to ask a follow-up question.

Liddell snorted. "That's what I thought. Stop carrying on, and who knows? You might actually learn something about France."

"But sir, I don't want that job. The Germans can have it – they want it more."

Liddell cocked an eyebrow. Still, he ignored Brown's joke and said, "Be quiet; there are some men trying to sleep."

"Yes, sir."

The corporal turned to walk away when Henry asked, "Excuse me, sir, but I can't help but ask: what play are you reading?"

Liddell stopped and turned slightly. " _Titus Andronicus_. Have you read it?"

"Once, but it was a long time ago," Henry admitted.

"It's a good read. I'm at the part where the mother finds out her criminal sons have been baked into a pie."

Henry didn't remember much from the play, but he certainly remembered that scene. "Well, you know what they say, sir."

"What's that?"

"Revenge is a dish best served straight out of the oven."

"I suppose so," Liddell said, smiling a little. He kept walking.

As Liddell fell from earshot, the talk crept back into the group, this time more muted, this time about the corporal himself.

With the corporal gone, Brown found his courage and said with a sneer, "Could never stand Shakespeare. Can't see why anyone could, really."

"Surely you must like at least one of the plays? What about _King Lear_? Or _Othello_?" Henry offered.

Brown shook his head. "If you want drama, live life. At least that's free."

Huxley shrugged. "Maybe he's studying what he'll teach his students – did you ever think of that? You know, for when he gets back – when _we all_ get back."

Brown looked thoughtful. "Or maybe he's trying to figure out a good quote to chisel on his gravestone."

Henry chided, "Don't go talking like that, Michael."

"What? We're all going to die anyway."

"I know, but still...what are you trying to do? Put the fear of God into us?"

"No, that's what we have Dean here for. Ain't that right, Dean?"

Dean Jones looked hard and harsh across the aisle at Brown. A stout man, no older than Henry, Jones was a rock, his voice gravelly. He murmured, "I'm not the evangelist sort."

"You aren't?" Brown teased. "Isn't that what all of your Christians are? What're you good for, then?"

"Too busy in the battle for my own soul, I am. I don't haves the time for distractions."

Brown clapped his hands once and said, "Ah, a born general! Is the angel Michael your uncle?"

Jones did actually have an Uncle Michael, as a matter of fact. However, Michael's swearing made the old man ugly and far from being angelic. Jones himself had been born in Swansea to a dead mother one bitter night in November. Uncle Michael, an actor of little regard and even less money, took his nephew in. Jones had no choice but to join his uncle in his travels, with Michael performing at various theatres around Wales. One week, the old man was Lear, the next he was Dr. Faustus. Jones had to admit, as much as the travels wore him down, he loved the stage. He especially embraced the yearly eisteddfod, choosing to mark his birthday then, during the explosion of festivities and dramatics. As a matter of fact, if Jones had never heard the evangelist Evan Roberts speak on a street corner one morning in '05, he would have gladly followed his uncle onstage. So instead of the bright, butterfly colors of the theatre, Jones slipped back into the brown cocoon, and he was just fine with that.

Henry tapped Brown lightly on the shoulder.

"Hmm?"

"Get back to your paper, Michael, and stop being the prick you are," Henry said conversationally, while looking out the window.

Brown laughed. "Or what?"

"Or the rest of the boys will kick you off the train. Hopefully, they'll do it when we're going over a bridge."

Brown pled mockingly, "But sir, I have my ticket!"

"Just do it. Please."

Brown took to his newspaper once more, but this time with a little smile that took minutes to vanish.

Henry didn't have the strength to berate Brown. This was in part because he felt a bit like Brown, actually. Henry always felt the creeping challenge in his own voice, the rebellion hardening like phlegm. He heard the same coldness in Brown's voice, and he was afraid of silencing it. _Every man is a piece of the continent._

Henry sighed and continued looking out the window, hoping that he would fall into the same serenity he had moments before. The afternoon sun was melting behind the train, splashing a red carpet for the train cars to step on as they marched forward. Over the short years, Henry had grown tired of hearing the phrase _The night is darkest before the dawn_. He felt sick with people chanting that same saying over and over, like the opening to some hymn. Still, he held a steady belief in the reversal: _The day is at its most brilliant before the night_.

As the train cut across a dirt road, Henry saw, for the briefest moment, a funeral procession waiting patiently. Even the horses pulling the coffin were reverent, keeping their heads bowed and quiet. It would have been too easy to say that the towed soul was French, given the country that they were in. But a river can burst into a fireworks of streams, and so too did the region swell with international numbers. There were English, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian, German, American, even the occasional Chinese, all come to die there at some point in history. Somme was a cemetery, just like any other place in the world. Could those men and women still be called French or German or English in the cemetery, though? Henry realized that the only way you can tell the nationalities apart was through their language, whether it was by the deep grunts of the German or the wine sounds of the French. And one simply cannot understand a dead man, let alone listen to one. Death washed away the entire heritage that had calcified on a man over a lifetime. It was only with that heavy armor gone that all men would look the same – it was only then that they could finish their Tower of Babel up to God or whatever god that they each believed in.

"It's all so strange," Henry breathed.

Huxley looked curious. "What's so strange? What do you mean?"

Henry glanced back at the train car. He saw the men of his section looking at him, patiently listening. A bit red, Henry said, "It's nothing, really."

"No, we want to know."

"Well...I was just thinking about how we're all so different."

Brown offered, "No, no we ain't. We're all Englishmen."

"Think about it, though...you and Nigel are both from Bristol, right?"

"Yes, but..."

Henry continued, "Well, that would make you two Bristol...Bristol..."

"Bristolians," Bishop offered.

"Thank you. And Corporal Liddell is from Oxford. Edward is from London. Dean is from Swansea. Raymond is from Liverpool. I'm from Nottingham..."

As Henry spoke, he knew that he was leaving out one soul. But he didn't have time for the mysteries, not then anyway.

"The point is, there are almost as many places as there are people. But while each man is born to his own town, we all die as an Englishman, eventually. Isn't it strange how that works out?"

Jones nodded, understanding. "Speaking of that, we could have just as easily have been born Huns instead of English."

There was a blasting silence amongst the men. Henry could hear the rustle of wind through an open window, somewhere. He looked thoughtfully at the Welshman, wondering if Jones had read his thoughts from moments before, musing about nationality.

Jones smiled humorlessly. "I tried telling the tribunal the same, before they signed me up. Told them we were no different from the Germans, I did. That our King George is cousins with the Kaiser. We're all practically family – us fighting them is no different than you fighting your own mother."

Henry remembered the man's history, how the first minute Jones spent in the world was killing his mother and crying over her still breast. Henry had too much heart to point out the irony in Jones' pacifism.

Brown snorted loudly. "What did you expect by telling them that, Dean? A trip to prison for treason?"

Jones smiled somewhat. "More like going to the asylum. I always figured that a criminal is someone who cannot keep their hands to their self. A lunatic is someone who doesn't know when to close their mouth. Even though everyone knows our King is a German, they're all afraid to say it. As if something only becomes true after a man talks about it."

Brown persisted, "So why then? Why bother with your little crusades for truth?"

Jones patted his satchel tenderly. Even though it was closed, the men knew Jones, and so they knew that the King James Bible was just beneath the rippled surface of cloth.

"Because He tells me to."

If Brown had known the first thing about the Bible, he would have a lot to say. He could have said that Man is in God's image, and so he is bred to fight. God was a vicious being too, whether it was in the wash of Noah's flood or the ashes of Gomorrah. Brown could have said that perhaps God wanted the nations to fight amongst themselves, just as he had halted the construction of Babel through the splitting of language. But Brown did not know the first thing about the Bible, and so he did not know what to say to his Christian friend. So Brown just scowled and turned away.

Henry wanted to add something to the conversation, but he was afraid to. He felt that he did not have room to speak, as he was magnetized to a war that he did not have to fight in.

The awkward moment was a long one, though, so Henry broke it by prodding a sleepy Anderson.

"Yes?"

"Raymond, mind if I have a cigarette?"

The gangly, goofy man smiled widely. His teeth were stained with years of smoking and tea. He quickly said, "Only if I can smoke too."

The two men lit and smoked together. The rest of the section could not resist. Soon, a cirrus of smoke streamed out through the open window, the smoke smelling like a city after rain, the smoke trailing the train like ribbon curls in a young girl's hair.

The sudden good mood was thanks to the efforts – and bottomless pockets – of Raymond Anderson, the boy from Liverpool. An orphan just like Jones, Anderson did not have the luxury of an uncle. Instead, he spent his childhood in an orphanage before breaking out one unusually warm, autumn day. Like Brown, he spent the years after as a criminal. Unlike Brown, Anderson passed the time as a pickpocket, nothing elaborate or violent. It was what Anderson did with his spoils, though, that made him nothing short of extraordinary. Anderson made it a point of giving what he had stolen as "gifts" to the rampant poor in the neighborhood. He would say that the rich had too much, that they would not notice when the items went missing, anyways. He found himself propelled to the front out of a sense of duty – not to his King, not to his country, but to his fellow citizens of Liverpool. He was uncomfortable living in his hometown while his thousands of brothers were fighting and dying. It was this generosity of life that made Anderson the section's cheer. That he breathed alone made him the world's future and brightness.

But amidst the crowd's commotion, the bubbling revelry of different accents, the jokes and laughter, there was one man who was part of the group but distant. He was sitting in a seat just across the aisle, a man with cropped, coal hair, a man with pilot-blue eyes, a man with his own mystery. Noah Carow talked little and gave away less about himself. It was only during their weeklong stay in the city of Rouen that Anderson could not resist the curiosity any longer. He put his talents to use and snuck a look in Carow's belongings when the man was not looking. Besides some currency, clothes, a razor, and a French dictionary, though, there was little else in the way in clues. All the men had to go on was Carow's rare assertion, that he was a Newfoundlander, a thrill-seeker from St. John's, and son to a fisherman. None of the men had ever met a Canadian before, let alone a St. John's man, so they did not question his beginnings.

Besides, Liddell had, in his usual, professorial way, told the men to stop whispering rumors about Carow. He said that if Carow was good enough to fight for the King, then he was certainly good enough for the army.

Still, this could not stop the men from questioning things. This Carow felt like a solid man, something that they did not understand and so they did not want to believe. Although hard as granite, he was still soft enough to mold. And so the men pushed him roughly into all sorts of shapes. They imagined him with different histories, they pictured him with different looks. After all, every man needs to exercise their imagination somehow. And Henry? He was a romantic spirit, and so he could only see heroics in his quiet comrade, his Carow.

Chapter II

Sunday, June 25

Henry was following her through the snowdrifts. He had lost sight of her hours before – all he had for a compass was her laughter. The giggles rang through the stalagmites of ice, stirring up the coldness. As he passed the jagged, icy towers, he could have sworn that he had seen her run through the frosted glass. He reached out, but all he grabbed was a reflection of his outstretched fingers. Still, he trudged on. He did not need to stop, because he did not feel the exhaustion. He did not feel much of anything, actually. He was numb, numb years before that winter ever got to him.

He found none of this strange, even though he had never seen so much snow. He was not sure if he had even read of such things – where the snow fell down in clouds, where the wind whipped the white stuff like surf on the ocean. He did not find the chase strange – the hunt through the snow was no different than playing in the woods, than hiding around the estate, than stealing glances over the pews at church. They had measured their entire lives together in the time they spent apart. He felt useless without his rabbit, his rabbit with smiling eyes and sunny hair and feverish cheeks. He wondered if this was what the stars felt like on a December night, chasing sunlight over the tundra.

He only realized that something was wrong when he looked in the rolling snow. He had hoped to see her footprints, but he found none. Henry looked back at his trail, and he realized that he left no footprints behind himself. It was as if they were actually trudging through a sea, a sea that was dull and old and graying. But Henry looked at the next hill of snow, and he saw something strange. He saw a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, countless imprints in the white stuff. The way the snow was pushed and prodded and swept, it looked like a field of fossils of snow angels. He suddenly wondered if he was in Heaven, and if Heaven had gone extinct.

Somewhere, she laughed again. Henry spun in circles until he fell down, dizzy, but he did not know the direction of the laughter. He closed his eyes and let the darkness take him, hoping that it would take him to her rather than take him away.

But as he closed his eyes, he opened them. Ahead, he could see a dim light glowing, the bulb old and flickering. There was a shadow standing in front of the light, like it was some wraith from an older time. Its hands on its hips, the wraith called out, "All right, men, let's get going."

Groans bubbled around Henry as the others woke from their sleep. Henry got up slowly, as one who dips their toes in a steaming bathtub. A thick light suddenly erupted in the foggy window next to Henry – he blinked his eyes hard, then rubbed them, then he peered outside. They were in a train station, but Henry wasn't sure where. He couldn't read the signs looming over the platform – his French was not as good as his parents had hoped. All of that money for all of those tutors and books – wasted. Henry looked into the thick lights of the train station, and he felt strangely like a fish looking into the shark's jaws.

Grumbling the whole way, the men grabbed their gear and headed for the nearest doors. Hopping off the train's steps, the first thing Henry did was look for a clock somewhere in the station. He found one on the far wall. His French may have been terrible, but Henry had been literate in time for as long as he could remember. By the light of the station, he saw that it was just a little past four in the morning. His legs beneath him were stiff and aching from the journey, creaking and swaying like old trees under the absurd weight of his equipment.

Soon, the entire platform was swimming with uniform, as sleepy soldiers found their sections and larger groups. It all felt too clumsy to be a ritual, but it still amazed Henry. Ever since he was a child, he had looked at the pond near his father's estate, watching the geese playing in the water. Even though every bird looked just like all of the others, they knew without a second guess where their mates were in the crowd of shook feathers. It was certainly no different on the train platform – each man was dressed in the same muddy browns, the same steel gray helmets. He wondered if they were any different than geese on their great migrations, flapping into the unknown, pushed by the rough hands of duty.

Henry's section assembled on the lip of the platform, just overhanging the tracks. The train's sticky smoke clung at the wood beneath their feet. Liddell's pale face was a steady island in the liquid darkness – for a bizarre moment, Henry thought that he was seeing Liddell's own ghost.

"Okay, we've had a slight, um, change in plan, as you may notice..."

Brown, a bit grumpy, demanded, "Tell me about it, sir. I thought we were supposed to go further on the tracks?"

Liddell nodded. "We were supposed to. But apparently the conductor received word that the tracks ahead are mangled."

"Did a plane bomb it? Was it a saboteur?" Henry asked.

Liddell shrugged. "Not sure. All I know is that we have to walk from here, gentlemen."

The soldiers groaned.

Liddell scowled. "Be men for once. It'll be one, maybe two hours' walk from here. Don't say you don't need the exercise. We're going to be marching along the main road towards the front."

"When will we be heading out?" Huxley asked.

"In just a few minutes, so don't get too comfortable," Liddell said, stifling a yawn.

_Well, at least this will be the first time I'm at a station and didn't miss the train,_ Henry thought as the men ambled idly about.

Five, slow minutes later, the order was given. The flowing column of men left the station and marched down the lonely road towards darkness. They left behind the hot lights of the station, the cold steel of the modern age, the consistency of the clock. They walked into a primitive darkness that felt like their grandfathers' era must have. But in the darkness, and without a clock, could time still be measured then? Did time even matter then?

It was so dark, that Henry could barely see the vague shapes of the soldiers marching in front of him. So he decided to look up – as he did, his jaw fell down. What he saw was nothing less than gorgeous – the sky itself was on fire, burning with a million, countless stars. He had never seen the stars shine so silvery, not in all of his years spent in the countryside, certainly not in his frequent trips to the hazy cities and ports. By the strict discipline of the celestial cycles, the moon was in its dutiful wane, almost vanished. With the moon nearly gone, the embers burned even brighter in the campfire of heaven.

Henry knew that what he saw was the most beautiful thing he would ever see. He wondered if it would continue to be. What he didn't know was that he would be right.

Henry's section somehow found itself in the endless tail of the winding snake. This unfortunate placement made itself obvious quickly. Henry noticed that his boots were beginning to stick hard to the road. He looked down to find that the long line of men ahead of him had stamped the dirt road out of shape. The architecture of the road had become little more than cheap putty.

Henry wasn't sure why they were marching with such pace. He hadn't heard much more than he was supposed to. All he knew was that the offensive at Somme wouldn't begin for at least a few more days, maybe even a week. Their orders were simple. Henry's section belonged to the 46th Division. The 46th had to divert part of the German army because the 46th belonged to the 3rd Army, and the 3rd had to draw an even larger fraction of the Huns because the 3rd belonged to the King. And the King had to draw the entire Hun army because the King belonged to the French. The Parisians were being ripped open south in Verdun and needed some relief from the heat of bullets. Henry looked past the confusion of numbers and logistics and suddenly saw one rule in the whole mess: an ally is sometimes no better than a commander. Both can order you around in the same ways.

Henry became nauseous with the thought.

The earth was still dark, even beneath that night's rain of stars. They say that in the darkness, your imagination is a mad scientist, creating monsters as every turn, every breath. Henry's creativity was far from rabid, though – it was content and smiling. His dream from earlier was back, and warmer. Henry could feel her pulsing heat now, with her playful green eyes, the color of tumbling downhill in spring. Her sunny hair was grazing her shoulders. Her endless, endless, bashful smile...

It had been a year since he had heard her voice outside of memory, a year since he had seen her outside of a picture. But it takes much longer for the paints in a portrait to crackle and fade.

A call in the darkness woke him from his stupor. Brown asked, "Are we getting there anytime soon?"

Liddell's voice slipped its way through the column of geared and levered legs, marching. "Be patient. We'll be there soon enough."

"Just asking. What if we're marching in the wrong direction? Although I wouldn't mind stumbling on Paris right about now."

Some of the men chuckled a little. Suddenly, they heard what sounded like the dull applause of thunder. Since it was the summer month, they expected to get rained on. But the air felt too dry and dusty for a storm. Someone whispered, "Look, over there."

The soldier did not raise a finger to point, but the others did not need direction. They could see the noisemakers clearly off in the distance. There were bursts of overwhelming flame, each followed by a dull boom – the flashes fled across the horizon like auroras. It took even that nighttime sky a few seconds to chew the morsels of brightness.

Someone – at first Henry thought it was Huxley, although it was Jones – asked, "What is going on over there?"

Without a moment's hesitation, Henry breathed, "The barrage."

"What's that you say?"

Henry repeated, this time a bit louder. "It's the artillery barrage."

As they continued marching towards the maelstrom, the flames in the vast echo chamber did not cease. If anything, they seemed to reverberate sharper and louder. As they got closer, Henry wanted to say that the bulbs were becoming more defined, transforming into flares, arching into the pitch, like sunlight through brackish waters.

None of the men were able to speak, because none of the men knew what to say.

The blasts suddenly began intensifying, collecting themselves together, like soap bubbles in a hellish bath. And somehow, the east became a glow altogether. It took Henry several minutes to realize that it was the sun beginning to rise. He wondered if there was a difference between the barrage and the morning. He felt as if he was staring into a constant sunrise for hours, days even.

But even with the world rattling beneath every shell dropped, the sun rose like it always did, like roses always do, their reds blotting out everything. The morning began feeling its way along the road, painting the countryside on either side a color you cannot find on an artist's palette. The fields were dipped in a red wash, and Henry thought for a wild second that he had walked through a battle. A closer look, though, showed that he was wrong. The red had not come from a battle, nor did it come from the sunlight even. There was actually a vast spread of scarlet poppies, stretching through the emerald grasses until it was cut by the sharp horizon.

And as the sun and the poppies and the soldiers woke up, so too did the artwork of people. As the column of men trudged past each home, they were greeted by families. Even though all of the faces looked different, all of the families looked the same: the wives and mothers looking anxious, the elders watching silently with their arms folded, cigarettes smoking. The only ones thrilled to see the soldiers were the children. The little ones were clapping and jumping and running, seeing if they could run the whole length of the column. Anderson smiled, took a piece of chocolate from his bag, and tossed it to a lucky child as she ran past. The little girl yelped something in French – perhaps it was thanks, perhaps surprise – before scurrying off to show her find to her mother.

At first, Henry thought that the children were ecstatic to see such an impressive army of men, marching off to either victory or bravery. He raised this observation with the other men, but Liddell quietly pointed out something, something that Henry did not like to think about:

"Perhaps the children think it's their fathers and brothers, returning home from the war?"

Liddell may have not meant it, but his dry words punctured the cheer in Henry's soul. But what the corporal said was true: it was rare enough to see a father anywhere in France those days. Most of them were busy being marched into the grinding teeth of Verdun. He wondered how many of those children would become orphans by the war's end. He wondered how many of them already were and did not know it yet.

All of the sudden, Henry heard someone strike up a tune. It sounded dull, like the crash of wave against rock. But as it rippled over the columns, Henry began to hear the melody first, then the words:

♪Oh, to Anacreon in Heaven, where he sat in full glee,

A few sons of harmony sent a petition,

That he their inspirer and Patron would be...♪

"Dear God, that song was the reason why I left England," Brown moaned.

True, it was a familiar song to many in the crowd. But even though the drinking song was as old as Eve's sin, the men – as professional soldiers as they were – could not help but join in the song. It was the same song that every man had sung or hummed to himself over some pint in some pub, somewhere.

Their fathers had sung the same, and their grandfathers as well. Of course, some would mock this drunk inheritance. But each man was a citizen to a kingdom that survived centuries through lines of succession, lines as straight as either a pen or a sword. For those who could not afford passing down an estate, a barstool was more than enough. And the sons gladly took this inheritance, with thanks and smiles. After all, joy costs only as much as you want to pay for it.

♪I'll swing the ringleaders I warrant,

I'll trim the young dogs, for thus daring to twine

The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus' vine...♪

In the luscious, lit morning, Henry could clearly see the faces of those in his section. Each of the men kept with the words – either loudly or mumbling. Brown couldn't even resist the cheer, singing off-key as was his fashion. Henry noticed, though, that of all of the men, Noah was the only one who did not sing along. Instead, he whistled the melody cheerfully – Henry noticed a broad smile on Noah's face for the first time. It was the instinctive smile that comes with seeing an old friend on the street.

♪Ye sons of Anacreon then, join hand in hand,

Preserve unanimity, friendship, and love!

'Tis yours to support what's so happily planned.

You've the sanction of Gods, and the fiat of Jove...♪

For the first time since they left the dock in England, Henry felt at home – at least, he had for a bit. He wanted to believe that he was sitting in a pub again, enjoying the cheer of an evening with friends and neighbors. But the French fields around him were too gigantic and rolling, and his imagination was not as good as he would have liked. And so the ghostly images of a pub became translucent, and the French countryside bled through.

As they marched on, the French crowds began to thin away. So too did the grassy fields. Bit by bit, they left behind fields that were plagued with spring and sunshine. Someone's god was spinning the color wheel, and so the leafy greens began to mix into clay reds and muddy browns. The fields were torn up now, and the skies were becoming foggy with dirt and ash, ash and dirt. The men wondered amongst themselves, asking what sort of monster could churn up the world easier than cream. It was when they cleared the next and final hill that they had their answer. All along the east, they saw the grinding sounds of industry. There was the whining of motors, the barked orders...and, of course, the consistency of mortar shells, always firing, always thudding amongst the invisible Germans in the distance.

The sights of the battlefield were tremendous. Henry stared with awe, the view reminding him of moles burrowing underground. Everywhere he looked, there was a sprawl of trenches. Although a trench is, by definition, an empty space, it still felt organic, alive. That was because Henry saw the flurry of shovels all along the trenches, as soldiers either widened the crevices, or they began a new vein. Henry could not help but think of ivy growing up the side of a home. Yes, the trenches were living, like the parasites they were.

Henry was shocked by the sharktooth majesty of the trenches. He had never seen them outside of a newspaper back home. And he had certainly never read about them in any of his books. The trenches seemed so different in the pictures he had seen – when someone sees a black-and-white picture, they instinctively fill the picture in with colors of their own. So Henry painted those pictures, until they looked like the illuminated manuscripts from centuries before. But none of the knights of yore fought from a hole in a ground. And certainly his grandfather never did. Part of Henry believed, though, that his hulking grandfather simply wouldn't fit in any hole dug for him. Only his grandfather's grave was large enough, and even then just barely.

The column of men that had marched with Henry was now dispersing. Groups of soldiers began heading towards their respective trenches, guided by some vague sense of direction. Henry's section was frozen for a moment, as Liddell checked with a nearby officer for further instructions. As Henry stood there, in awe of the preparation for war, he heard a strained voice behind him wheeze, "Excuse me, sir. Coming through."

Henry turned and saw two, grimacing men holding an ammunition box between the both of them. Henry obliged and stepped to the side. He watched as the men eased their cargo into the nearby trench, disappearing into the crevices, like drops of water on a cobblestone road. Soon, the soldiers were reduced to little more than the tops of their helmets, comically bobbing just above the surface. Everywhere Henry looked, it all looked the same. He wondered if perhaps he had stumbled on some anthill instead of the front.

But beyond the anthill, Henry could barely see the true battlefield for the first time. A light morning mist had settled over the area, but Henry could still see the faint outline of sloping hills.

"I wonder how far the Huns are from our lines," Henry thought out loud.

Liddell, walking back to the group after speaking with the officer, heard the question. He calculated, "Probably six hundred yards. Maybe even seven."

"That far?" Brown asked, surprised.

Bishop grinned. "I think you mean _that near_. I've shot foxes farther away."

"If you can see the enemy, then that means he can see you," Liddell warned him.

Bishop patted his rifle lovingly. "I doubt they can outgun this."

"You damn well better hope that," Liddell said gruffly. He turned to the others. "All right, you all follow me. I know where we're supposed to go now."

As the men followed Liddell into the trench, Henry spotted Huxley. He thought that the morning was not kind to the young charmer from Twickenham. Huxley looked tired and haggard under the dewy sun. He wondered if all of the women that Huxley had ever slept with were treated to the same sight the morning after.

The section squeezed their way through the tight crevice, pushing past soldiers already manning the trench. Some of the soldiers pressed themselves against the wall to let the section past. Others, though, stood rooted to the deep, dark soil, staring unblinkingly like statues in a town square.

Jones felt unnerved by all of the dull looks. He murmured into Henry's ear, "All my life, I've never felt so dead."

Henry did not know. But if he had known, he would have said that those men had been living in the mud since they got there, that they had to spend every night sleepless from the constant pops of artillery. Even the strongest of men can go weak with distraction, an obesity of the senses.

Suddenly, Henry realized that they were too deep in the trenches to be found. Everywhere he looked was the same. Yet soldiers still flooded past, their faces flush from the weight of their equipment and the arrival heat of noon – as dirty as war was, they still washed with it.

Frowning, Liddell's face suddenly lit up as he noticed a wooden post nearby. He trudged over and peered at the papers tacked to the board, running a finger over the words as he read. Henry could remember his old teacher doing the same when reading textbooks, and he wondered if all academics were literate in the same ways.

Liddell turned and looked triumphant. "We're on the right path, gentlemen. Just a bit further this way."

As they continued, Brown couldn't help but ask, "What happens if the Huns overrun our lines? Can't have a Fritz reading a sign for directions, can we?"

Liddell called out, "What are the chances of them knowing English? Even our own countrymen don't know the damn language."

The men chuckled a bit as they continued.

Around a bend in the trench, they found themselves at the shore of a massive pit of mud, one that ran for a distance. Henry could tell just by looking at the mud that it wasn't the common type, what one sees after a rainy April. No, this was the kind that could stick to an unfortunate bastard like glue. There was a precarious connection of wooden boards running the length, a poor man's bridge if there ever was one.

"Watch out, men," Liddell warned. "Secretary Kitchener only gave us one pair of boots each."

The crossing took some work, as each soldier balanced on the beams while steadying their heavy loads. In the end, though, each of the men made it across – well, almost all of them. Jones was the last one to cross, and, as Henry could tell, the Welshman was having a bit of trouble. Holding out his arms like an acrobat in the circus, Jones slowly made his way ahead. Suddenly, his boot slipped on the slicked board beneath him. He grabbed at the trench wall for support, but the wall had no grip. And so Jones went down into the mud, staining his right side with the thick stuff.

By instinct, Jones let loose a string of swears as he struggled up. The men, surprised at hearing such a Christian man curse, did not think to help their comrade to dry soil.

Jones tried, in vain, to wipe the mud off his clothes, but only succeeded in turning his hand the same color. He looked up at the staring group and snapped, his eyes flaring, "Go ahead, takes in the sight. See if I care."

None of the men dared crack a smile. As the procession continued, however, Henry could have sworn that he saw Brown smile widely. Henry figured that the childish man from Bristol was silently going through a thousand 'savage Welshmen' jokes, humor as wrong as it was rehearsed.

After another minute of walking, they noticed that the claustrophobic walls around them were beginning to open up. And that was when they came upon a group of men sitting on their steel helmets, smoking cheap cigarettes, their shovels nearby. Just beyond them, the trench stopped – Henry knew what this meant, but he did not want to admit it.

So, too, did Liddell. He spoke quietly with one of the soldiers for a moment. Then he turned and announced, "Okay, men, it's time to start digging."

The men all groaned. Still, the section arranged itself into four-man teams, each shift being three hours. The digging looked exhausting by itself, but Liddell said there was a team on the other side digging as well. With any luck, they would meet up and connect the firing line together before nightfall.

The remaining men did not have the luxury of relaxation. Their job was to begin filling sandbags and setting them atop the trench wall facing the Germans. After all, the trench was deep, but not deep enough to protect the soldiers from a lucky sniper's shot.

One of the men asked, "What should we use to pack the sandbags?"

Liddell looked at the man as if he was stupid. "Use the dirt that the others are digging out. Use something, anything. As long as it can take a German bullet, I don't care."

And so the men got to work. Liddell left, to speak with his superiors about the days ahead, and so he left Henry in charge. Soon, the lance corporal found himself in the sandbag group. Henry thought it would be at least easier than trench-digging, but he soon doubted even that. He grunted and wheezed as he shoveled large scoops of earth into each bag. Not only that, but he had to hand each bag up to a man at the top, who would then arrange the filled bags into a low wall of sorts.

Henry thought that the task of arranging the bags would be suicide, given that the man would be in the German crosshairs the entire time. So he asked Bishop, who was given that task, "Aren't you afraid of getting shot up there?"

"No, not at all, sir. I don't think even I could shoot myself up here."

"You sure about that?"

"Absolutely. Come up here and take a look if you don't believe me."

Henry took a quick break and clambered up the ladder they had leaning on the trench wall. He peeked over the top and immediately saw that Bishop was right. Just beyond Bishop, there were the tattered remains of a hedgerow. Farmers had grown out the hedge years before, maybe even decades. But the war must have chased the innocents west, because the fence had since grown feral and patchy.

Somewhere beyond the hedge, the battlefield sat, majestic as a dying king at his throne. Anyone lucky enough to see the field and live would describe it as a moonscape, their eye like an astronomer's telescope. And like an astronomer, those who took in the sight only saw death. The space between the two camps was ruined. Just a few months of heavy trucks crossing the landscape, thousands of missed artillery shots, all of it had reduced the country breeze to a still, lifeless air. The green in the land had long since crumbled. It would probably stay like that for years, even after the war. It was as if the Allied and Central armies were the world's largest magnets, and their attraction unsettled the soil between them.

Henry looked behind him, and he saw that they were digging their trench in front of a country road. The road itself curled around a sudden hill, the bump in the earth seemingly out of nowhere.

"That's no good."

Bishop was confused. "What's that?"

Henry pointed at the road and the hill. "We're downhill of that. If it rains, the water will run off the road and into the trench. We should be setting up these sandbags behind us. Also, what if a Hun shell lands behind us? Do you really want to be filled up with shrapnel?"

"But what about our front...?"

Henry waved it off. "That hedge should be enough."

"If the corporal says anything..."

"I'll say it was my idea."

The sniper looked at Henry for a long moment then shrugged. "Fair enough."

They told the other men their idea and they began improvising. As they shifted the bags from the front of the trench to the back, Henry glanced along the line. He saw that, for as long as the hedge ran, the men were stacking up sandbags in front.

Henry breathed, "The fools."

Huxley asked, "What's that?"

Henry pointed along the trench. "No one has faith in nature. I say let the hedge do all of the dirty work."

The Londoner smiled, "They must be from the cities. Frankly, I don't know what to do with all of this green. Give me brick-and-mortar any day."

Henry may have seen the cities, but he was born in the country. He knew summer weather – and sure enough, he could see a darkness pulsing in the horizon. Henry was feeling prophetic, knowing that the weeks ahead would be torture enough, and that was without the rain.

As if the elements were intensifying all around him, Henry heard swearing. He peeked over the top of the trench. He saw the digging party standing around their work. He slipped down the ladder and asked, "What's the problem here?"

Brown wiped the sweat from his forehead. "We hit rock."

"Oh?"

It was true. The men had hit a quarry when they wanted a trench. They looked at it for a moment in silence. A man offered, "We could try digging over it."

Henry shook his head. "The trench would be too shallow then."

"How about around it?"

"We don't know how long this rock goes for. We could be digging for miles."

Brown looked thoughtful. "You know, I have a better idea."

"What's that?"

Brown grinned and simply said, "Grenades."

Henry shook his head. "No, we're not going to do that. I don't want the whole line thinking that the Huns are attacking us."

"We'll muffle it. Throw some sandbags over it."

Bishop, who had just finished moving the rest of the sandbags to the other side of the trench, swore sharply, "Christ."

But the idea was planted in their rich minds, and it was too late to upset the soil. The men quickly set up a rough stack of sandbags next to the detonation site as a soldier ran to find a grenade or two. He came back a few minutes later, walking much slower then, the explosives in hand.

The men figured that the sandbags would dull the explosion enough, just enough for the sound to mix with the distant barrage of the German lines. The men also didn't want to be hit by the shrapnel that was sure to fly.

Anderson, who had seen fighting before at Loos, had thrown quite a few grenades at the time, so the men trusted him the most. The section alerted the other soldiers nearby to take cover, in case the explosion cleared the sandbags. They ducked around the corner of the trench as Anderson calmly walked up to the stony dead-end. He set the grenades between stone and sandbag, took the lit cigarette out of his mouth, and lit the fuse for both of the explosives. He turned and ran in a crouched position towards safety.

The grenades blew a few seconds later. Although the sandbags absorbed some of the blast and its sounds, the men could still feel a shudder in their hearts. They looked around the corner and, taking in the sight, whooped. The grenades had done their work, crumbling some of the rock and reducing the rest to cracks. The sandbags had went out in a blaze of glory, lying a few feet away, their fabric torn, their dirty insides spread on the trench floor.

The section, relieved that the blast had not alarmed the rest of the line, began digging again, their job much easier. As they took to the mess with their shovels, Anderson said to Brown, "You know what?"

"What?"

"If we were still in Shakespeare's time, the people would have run you out of town for thinking up that witchcraft."

The men laughed as they continued digging.

Interval

April 4, 1900

Parlor at Carrington Estate

"Henry, my brave little Henry, have I ever told you about the time I fought the Burmese?...I have? Well, it doesn't hurt to listen to the same lesson again, does it? It's better to learn the mistakes than to make them, that's what I've always thought.

'Anyway, I want to say I was there in '85, but it was more than likely '86. I was busy fighting the good fight around Africa, and so was the Queen. Things had been uneasy in Burma for awhile, but we were too distracted to notice. Like always, it took the damn French to make us pay attention. Burmese officials were in talks with the French. The rumor was that the Burmese wanted weaponry, and the French wanted a better foothold in the Orient.

'To make a long story short, Henry, we bickered for a few years before we decided to go at it with the bastards. We sailed right down the river to their capital, ready to burn the whole thing to the ground. We wanted to make the pillaging of the American capital look like a friendly parlor game. The damn Burmese royalty cheated us out of a battle though – they surrendered as our armies closed in around their palaces.

'Now again, I wasn't there during the opening days of the fight. I was called in some months after, to help clean up the mess. While their king had given up, his soldiers certainly hadn't. They retreated into the jungles and kept fighting us at every turn. The fact that we had turned their dynasty upside-down certainly hadn't helped. Their land fell into chaos, and certain men understood this, and they took advantage of it. After all, vermin always live better in a heap of garbage than they do in a clean hospital room.

'It was the beginning of the difficult years. Even though we swarmed their land with troops, those rebels seemed to spontaneously sprout out of thin air. We finally realized that if we took away what they fought for, then they would stop fighting. So we burned down all of their villages, and we chased the rascals into the jungles. They never bothered us much after that.

'But was all of that worth it? True, their land is now ours, but we are still washing our hands of the blood, and we're using dirty water to cleanse ourselves. I was there for less than a year, but it felt like forever. I vowed never to go back once I hopped on the boat to head back home. It feels strange even to say that – I love the battlefield more than anything else. Well, except your grandmother. The fact is, I feel like Burma reminded me too much of home, as in England. The moment we stepped on their shores, their entire dynasty fell, their entire monarchy ended. This is a very important thing to understand, Henry – it is important because a nation represents a people's destiny. It is what inspires a society, it is what pushes them. When we took over, we snatched those dreams away from them and woke them up. This was a very frightening thing when I realized it. See, the other men saw the Burmese rebels as a nuisance, but I saw them as something more. I saw them as proud and willing to fight for their nation. They were no different from me, and their dynasty was no different from our monarchy. If their nation could fall under the weight of a battle, who says that we could not fold as well?

'It is bound to happen, of course. All nations fall as they rise – over time. It may be as quick as a moment or as long as a century, but all countries will die. All we can really do, I feel, is make our own decisions. Don't ever let someone make a decision for you, Henry. You're too young to understand this now, but at least remember it. Don't ever give up that right, because the second you do, that's the second you die."

Chapter III

Monday, June 26

Of course, when Liddell returned from meeting his superiors, he was far from pleased by the stunts his men pulled in his absence. No one was sure how Liddell found out, exactly, but they assumed he had built a knack for it after years spent catching students in their pranks and cheating. A student putting a bent pin on a chair was no different from a soldier using a grenade, after all. Later that evening, he gathered the section around him. There was a fury to him, straightening out his spine until his stance was as frozen as his eyes.

He barked, "You all know better than to use grenades to clear those stones. We're soldiers, not goddamn coal miners. Not only did you waste explosives we'll need in the weeks ahead, but what if you set off a false alarm? What if the rest of the army thought that the Germans were attacking? What then? Would you have been able to live with yourself, knowing that men had died because you were lazy?"

None of the men dared protest in the corporal's presence. They all looked sheepish, most especially Henry. Considering his disregard for the rules, the young lance corporal still had to abide by them. And they said that you only notice rules when they are being broken – Henry certainly noticed them at that moment.

Liddell continued. "That is why, starting tomorrow, Lance Corporal Carrington here will be in charge of latrine duty for this part of the trench for the rest of the week. As well, he will be doing sentry duty every night until I say so. Do you have a problem with that, boy?"

Liddell made sure the insult of childhood stung Henry. The runaway viscount said softly, "No, sir."

"Good. It's settled then. Everyone else, return to what you were doing. Don't let me catch you making a jackass of yourselves. Especially don't let me catch you making a jackass out of me."

And that was the story of how Henry earned himself a week of chore. First, he had to clean the bucket that they used for a latrine. On Sunday, they had dug a shallow alcove into the trench wall. There, they had set down a simple bucket – and that was the water-closet. And by Monday morning, the bucket was entirely filled, not only with urine and defecation, but also with pieces of trash accumulated over the day. The worst smells from all four corners of the world were stewing in that bucket.

Henry wrapped a piece of cloth around his face as a makeshift mask. Gingerly, he picked up the bucket and crawled up a rickety ladder to the surface. He was careful not to upset the bucket, but he could still feel a drop or two fall over the rim, splashing on his uniform. He fought down the urge to throw up. He would have to wait until he cleaned the bucket – then he would have something to vomit into at least.

Henry had to walk a short distance down the road – he was told that they were to dump the buckets down the road, somewhere, anywhere but near the firing line. As he walked, bucket in hand, he wondered how he got there. It was simple enough, really – he was the commanding officer during the grenade incident, so it was only naturally that he would absorb the blame.

If only he was a few years younger and not in the army...Henry could remember all of his pranks as a young boy. One morning, he sneaked into the pantry before the rest of the family woke. He switched the sugar for the salt and laughed when his father poured big heaps of the stuff into his tea, not knowing that he was turning his drink saltier than the ocean. Henry had admitted to it later, not out of guilt, but pride, knowing that he had outwitted his father. He was surprised when the man did not take the joke the same way. It turned out to be a lesson he would have to learn twice – apparently, the frail professor of a corporal was no better than the Earl of Nottingham.

But Henry was a fool then, as all children are. There, in the trench, it had to have been different. Henry had cleared the trench with grenades in the blink of an eye. It was smartness, it was command. Henry had not condemned it then, and he still made no attempt to do so. He was positive that if he had asked Liddell for permission, and Liddell had asked his superior for permission, and so on and so forth, Henry would have received a confirmation a year later. It bothered him intensely, knowing that he had to ask questions, even though he knew the answers.

And, perhaps most importantly, he did not enjoy being made an example. It embarrassed him, being talked down in front of the others in the section. Once you see a man reduced like that, he never grows back up in your eyes. He would always be stunted.

Henry sighed. He found a spot to dump the bucket – he knew this because the grass was stained, and an even worse, collective smell invaded his nostrils. Fighting down the sickness, he dumped the bucket in the grass. He hastily poured some disinfectant over the mess and began walking back to his post in the trench.

Henry had heard stories about the French. Apparently, the Parisians knew something about squatting in the wilderness – they would lay boards over a gaping hole in the ground and call it their latrine. When the hole filled up, they simply shoveled dirt over the smell and went to find another spot. But he knew that Liddell would laugh at the suggestion. The official policy of the British army was that no battle last more than a week at most. Why bother building luxuries when you will be back home soon enough? Besides, what did the French know?

Henry snorted. He muttered, "Dumb bastards, the lot of them."

His mood had not improved much when he reached the trench. Most of the section had left just a bit earlier, having been ordered to witness a machine-gun demonstration. Henry was disappointed, since he had never seen one of the big guns in action before. With little else to tend to, Henry could only think of dozing in the dugout.

The dugout was born as a thought late the previous evening. Given how narrow the trenches were, it was impractical to have the men sleep there. So, massive dugouts had been built further back on the British side. Those dugouts were something special, running fathoms deep and holding dozens, even hundreds of men at a time. Even though those dugouts were marketed as safe, Henry was still leery of them. Nothing holding that many men can escape a chance demolition by German counter-fire. An open dugout was little more than a premature cemetery.

No, Henry felt much safer in his own, private dugout. The section had dug the tiny recess into the trench wall. It was a foot or so off the ground – to prevent it from flooding – and only a few feet wide. So it was only good for two things: holding the soldiers' gear, and doubling as a makeshift coffin. Still, Henry found it handy – all he had to do was push the gear to the side and he had himself his own private space. After years of sleeping on a massive bed in a tremendous room, he was aching for the claustrophobia. He did not know why – perhaps it was because the tight space made him feel like a giant for the first time.

So when Henry slipped down the ladder into the heart of the trench, he crawled into the dugout and promptly napped. Still, it felt as if he had opened his eyes before he closed them. Henry could hear the chatter of the men as they made their way back through the network of trenches. Henry thought it odd that their cheer was what had awakened him, and not the perpetual rattle of the distant barrage. When soldiers were asked years later, just how they were able to sleep during the artillery barrages, a few of them said that it was reminiscent of rain. That is, despite the fact that rain is much more vicious to the ants in the grass than it is to the man asleep in the comforts of home. And all of those men were ants by the light of artillery.

As the men picked through their gear, intent on smoking cigarettes with soldiers just down the trench, few of them noticed Henry amidst their bags. Even fewer nodded in greeting at their disgraced lance corporal. And only one did more than nod.

"Say, are you one of those monks, Henry?"

Henry looked up at the smiling face of Carow. Curious, Henry asked, "What do you mean?"

"I forget the book, but I read somewhere about monks who slept in coffins...that's all right, guys, I'll catch up with you soon!"

Carow had directed the last part to the men as they walked down the trench. He looked down at Henry, and he continued:

"I don't know how you can sleep in that. I can't imagine those bugs crawling all over me."

Henry had to admit – it was an unsettling thought that he tried to forget. Even then, he could not help but look up at the low ceiling of the dugout. Although they had added beams and a tarp as support – flimsy attempts at keeping the dugout from caving in – Henry knew that there were worms and bugs crawling just inches from his nose. He guessed it was just practice for the afterlife, though.

"Something has to keep me company around here, I suppose."

Carow's face fell. "So I guess you ain't coming with the rest? Raymond found some really good cigarettes. Trust me, you'd rather have these kill you before the Germans ever do."

Carow held up a pack for proof. Henry was not sure if Carow had meant the last words as a joke or advice. He didn't bother to interpret. Instead, he said dryly, "I learned very little from my father over the years. The one thing I learned? Never make up your own invitations. If they can't bother to ask, then I shouldn't bother to join them."

Carow shrugged. "I suppose you may be onto something there. If it's any consolation, I'm inviting you to join us."

Henry shook his head. "Thank you, but perhaps another day."

Carow nodded, respecting his superior's wishes, and left. Henry watched the departing private curiously. That was the most he had ever heard Carow say, and he was still confused by the mysterious man.

And so, with Carow gone, Henry began silently making up stories to himself. As he slipped back to sleep, he imagined Carow as being lost on safari as a toddler, then being raised by the tribes of Africa. Or perhaps shipwrecked in the Mediterranean, washing up on some shore like Odysseus. Or killing a man in Canada and escaping the Mounties by jumping into the jaws of war. Or maybe he was from the future, or a son of an invisible man, or an escapee from an island run by a mad scientist, or some other invention of H. G. Wells.

Henry went through a whole list of Carow's origins before he could finally fall asleep, before the raindrops of artillery finally dulled. And all was at peace. And all he could see was her walking towards him. And all he could hear was her laugh. And all he could feel were her lips, pressed, warm, moist.

Henry woke to darkness. Even in the dark, though, he could feel something slimy on his arm. Grimacing, Henry flicked off what felt like a worm. The slimy thing hit the earth and immediately continued its crawl, unfazed by the sudden propulsion. Henry clambered out of the dugout, and he realized that he had slept into the evening. His sentry shift now begun, Henry took to the ladder and climbed up. He peered cautiously over the ruined hedge and could see nothing, but he knew the death was ahead of him, somewhere. It was no different from being in the dark waters with sharks. He looked to his right and left, seeing the lonely figures of other sentries in the distance, plastered to the tops of their ladders like gargoyles.

The darkness ahead broke. The British shells had landed somewhere in the distance, igniting in flares, turning the night morning. He could see nearby some dark shapes against the explosions and thought at first that the Germans were attacking. Henry panicked and scrambled for his binoculars. He hastily looked out onto the field, and he breathed a sigh of relief. They weren't Huns – they were dead trees, stripped of their branches and bark. They stood like statues on the battlefield, a strange memorial for what was perhaps to come.

As Henry took in the sight, he heard a voice behind him. "Hello."

Henry turned, caught off guard by the sudden voice. It was Carow, standing on the trench floor, looking up at the lance corporal. A faint light from somewhere in the trench flickered on Carow's face, making him look much older than he was.

"Sorry to disturb you, sir. Just figured you could use the company."

Henry sighed and turned back to his binoculars. He asked, "I guess you couldn't sleep?"

Carow laughed a little. "I suppose it was a bit of that as well."

"You should probably get some sleep, though. I'm the one who has to stay up all night, not you."

"You might be on to something. No worries though – I don't have to regret it until tomorrow morning."

Carow leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette. "You want one, sir?"

Henry shook his head without looking at Carow. He was too busy on the field ahead. "I'm fine. And you don't have to call me that, you know."

"What? Sir?"

"Right. I'm not the goddamn field marshal, wherever he is."

Carow asked, "So what should I call you?"

"Henry would be just fine."

"And you can call me Noah."

They sat in silence for a few moments.

Noah spoke up. "You know, I've always wanted to visit Germany."

"Is that so?"

Noah nodded. "Ever since I read Goethe. If the Huns had him as a writer, surely they all could not be savages."

Henry pointed to the east. "Well, I think Germany might have a problem with you walking over and taking a tour. Our generals would get uptight too."

Noah laughed. "Perhaps."

"Me, I don't think I ever could."

"Ever could what?"

Henry was quiet for a moment. "Be at peace with the Germans, I guess."

"Why's that?"

Henry looked back at Noah in the trench and smiled slightly. "I've read too many recruiting posters back home, I'm afraid, and not enough Goethe."

"Have you ever met a German before?"

"No. That's the odd thing. We've been firing artillery at them for awhile now, and I have yet to see a single one. When my grandfather fought in war, he always saw the enemy's faces. Here...well, here things are different, I guess. Have you heard some of the other men talk? They've fought in the past year, and even some of them have never seen a German face. Even _if_ this war ends, even _if_ I make a trip to Germany, I don't think I'll be able match their smiling faces up with this war. To me, these Huns will always be a nation of conquerors."

"But you'll have to see Germany someday."

"Why's that?"

"The only way we can end this war is to bring the Kaiser down. If he doesn't want to come here, we'll have to go to him," Noah pointed out.

Henry looked thoughtful. "I never thought of that before, really. I guess that going through Berlin is the only way to get to home in England."

A swift silence. Then, Henry continued.

"So, tell me...have you ever met a German?"

Noah nodded. "My neighbors were German. A very nice couple – the husband was into a lot of different business. He was a polite man, but that may have been because he never said a word. He just sat on his porch every evening, smoking his pipe. His wife always made cakes for me when I was little. I guess it was because she had no children of her own."

"Back in St. John's, you mean?"

"Hmm?"

"Isn't that where you're from? St. John's?"

Noah paused. "Yes. Born and raised."

Henry said, "My father visited there before for business."

"Huh. Is that so?"

"Yes. He said it was a beautiful city. He loved walking along the River Mersey after meetings."

"It is a wonderful river. I always liked walking along it, too."

Henry looked at Noah shrewdly. "The River Mersey isn't there."

The color went out of Noah's face. "It isn't?"

"No, it's in Liverpool."

"Oh."

There was a long, awkward silence.

Finally, Henry asked, "Where are you actually from?"

Noah was quiet for a moment and then sighed. "You promise not to tell anyone?"

"Promise."

That was the truth. There was no hint of blackmail in Henry's voice. The mere thought of a secret was kindling to him. A lie meant many things to many people, but to Henry, it meant deceit. To Henry, it meant disobedience. This only intrigued Henry.

Noah hesitated. His face looked long and haunting. Henry could tell that the man had aged from the secret. "I'm actually from Texas."

"Texas?"

"Yes. Back in America. We're those cowboys you always read about in those cheap books."

Henry wanted to say that he thought all Americans were cowboys, but he didn't. He also wanted to say that he thought the way Noah spoke was odd – it certainly didn't sound like the cowboys he read in his books back home. But Henry thought those were topics for later. So instead, he asked, "Why keep it a secret? Why did you mislead us?"

Noah looked a bit panicked, now that his cover was gone. "Listen, I wanted to be in the fight, but since my government is staying neutral, I had nowhere else to turn. But I was afraid that if the British army found out I wasn't a citizen, they would kick me out."

Noah then quickly added, "Just because I'm not one of you doesn't mean I'm one of _them_."

The American pointed to the distant German lines as he said that.

Henry said quietly, "Don't worry, Noah, I believe you. And I won't give your secret away. Heaven knows we need every man firing a gun."

"Thank you."

Henry could hear the relief in Noah's words but not in the man's voice. He asked, "You don't believe I can keep a secret?"

"Oh no, I'm not thinking that..."

"You are. I can tell – but that's okay to think it. Can't trust a lot of people these days. But if it makes you feel any better, I'm very good at keeping secrets. I've been keeping some of my own for awhile now."

"Have you now?"

Henry nodded. "Yes, like the secret that I'm a viscount."

Noah's eyes widened slightly. "What's that? Is that like a noble or something?"

"Something like that, yes."

"I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. After all, I thought all of you Brits were nobles."

Henry laughed. "Only the lucky ones are."

"So what made you leave that?"

Henry sighed heavily. "Because that wasn't this."

Noah looked baffled. "Again, what made you leave it?"

Henry laughed again. "Tired of living with customs, I guess. Everything's arranged for you before you even know it is. What you're wearing for the day, what you're eating for each meal, who you're going to marry. It's all theater, and my father was the playwright."

Noah offered sagely, "So you traded your father for the general."

"Something like that."

Noah said, "I guess that's one thing we have in common then."

Henry joked, "What? Are you a noble too?"

Noah smiled wryly. "Not quite. I'm the son of a businessman, though. They're the royalty back in America."

"What does your father do?"

"He, um, he owns an oil business. A very, very big business – they own a lot of oil wells out in Texas and California, if you know the geography."

"Sounds like he has a good life."

"He does, but he makes everyone else nervous."

"Why's that?"

"If his company crumbles, machinery in a third of America would stop running," Noah said as he tossed a rock against the far wall of the trench.

Henry was greatly impressed. "Sounds like a man with a million friends."

Noah laughed bitterly. "He was when he was dry and sober."

"Oh."

"On the days when he was good, he was good. But the old man was like a goddamn pendulum, I tell you, always swinging between the drunk and the champion. That's why first chance I got, I went to school out east. Lived a bit in Boston. New York City too. The old man went along with it – he thought that some schooling would teach me business. He thought that I would come back to Texas as a businessman, ready to take the reins."

"I guess it didn't?"

"Not in the slightest. When I heard about the war, I knew it was time to do something drastic. First chance I got, I headed up north to Canada. And, without boring you too much about the details, I bought my way into the system. Best damn use I ever got out of my money. I feel like I don't regret a moment of any of it...well, maybe the occasional moment."

"What's her name?"

Noah looked up, surprised. "Do I hide things that badly?"

Henry laughed. "No, no, it was just a lucky guess."

It was tempting for Henry to go further. He wanted to say that women were the only reason why men said and did the things they said and did. But Henry was afraid that saying so would make it true, so he kept quiet.

It seemed that Noah wanted to press Henry for an explanation. But when Henry didn't volunteer any information, Noah continued. He said, "Yes, there was a girl. When I was going to school in Boston, I paid a visit to my father's friend. He was a reporter for a big paper – my father always said that behind every powerful man, there was a writer. I doubted they were friends outside of business – my father was too blustery, the reporter the same. You never put two of that type together. Otherwise, you're just asking for a storm. Anyway, I'm getting off-topic. So I'm at the dinner, and that's where she caught my eye."

"Who was she?"

Noah sighed. "The reporter's daughter. Her name was Lucy. She was a stunning girl. I'm sure you know the type – red hair, green eyes. She looked like she had just stepped out of a painting. The father noticed me looking at her, and so he sat me at the opposite end of the dinner table."

Noah added with a laugh, "Of course, that didn't stop Lucy from sneaking out of her house that night and meeting me down the street."

Noah went quiet and smiled, remembering fond memories, looking at some invisible point ahead.

Henry had more questions to ask. He wanted to know what was so remarkable about the war to make him leave his Lucy? But he did not want to prod – at least, not at that moment. There was the issue of etiquette, of course. But in their game of give-and-take, with Henry admitting to being a viscount to Noah being American, he was afraid of what questions his comrade would ask in return. So naturally, he decided to keep silent.

"Henry, can I ask you a question now?"

Henry was afraid of the question, but he still said, "Sure."

"How did you know I wasn't Canadian?"

Relieved, Henry laughed. "Because you thought the River Mersey was in St. John's."

"No, no, I mean before that."

Henry looked at Noah and smiled. "Oh, that. We all had our suspicions about you, that you were different somehow. We just didn't know how different."

He turned back to his binoculars and continued scanning the horizon for attack. That night's duty as sentry was proving to be difficult. Usually, there was a thick swarm of stars across the nighttime sky, their luminosity challenged only by the moon. That night, however, there was something to the south blotting all of the stars. It looked dangerous. What was worse, it looked as if it was growing, like weeds overtaking a garden.

"Looks like there's a storm coming."

Chapter IV

Tuesday, June 27

It did rain, but not during the night. True, the clouds had been stewing for hours, turning the night even darker than usual. But the rain didn't begin to fall until daybreak, when the clouds began bursting and falling to earth by the bucketful. French families in the area did not mind the usual weather that came with their summers. They learned long before that they could outwait any storm that came their way, the families bunkering down in their rustic homes. The worst the storms could do to them was rub some of the paint off their homes, tap on the windows, perhaps startle some of the livestock.

The British soldiers out in the trenches, though, were not so lucky. They woke up in the mud, the water already lapping at their faces like excited dogs. The men hastily began digging a ditch through the dugout, in hopes of draining the water from their home, if they could call it a home. However, the soil had already begun absorbing the rainwater, transforming into a massive, heaving sponge all around them. It was a sponge that was sticky with mud, a sponge that already begun sucking the dugout inward.

The men pulled their gear out of the muck, swearing loudly at their luck as they did so. They swore at everyone and everything that wasn't in sight. They swore at their mothers and fathers, who brought them into such a world. They swore at their generals, who didn't see more permanent lodgings as being a necessity. They swore at their individual gods, who decided to rain down on them. For all of their curses, though, none of the soldiers bothered to swear at each other. Each man did not take for granted the soldier to the left or the soldier to the right of them. It took nothing less than a group effort to lay down tarps, to prop up makeshift tents, to stow their gear somewhere, anywhere that was drier.

The men in Henry's section soon got a small fire started, just hot enough to boil a pot full of water. They were careful not to make the fire too hot – all they needed was for the tarp thrown over them to catch on fire. As the water began murmuring, Anderson rooted through his equipment for a moment. Triumphant, he pulled out a battered tin of teabags in one hand, a papery box of sugar in the other.

Bishop was shocked. "How in the hell do you find these things?"

Anderson looked sly. "Well, I don't want to take the fun out of it."

He passed around the tea and sugar as the men put together their drinks. Courtesy of the government back home, they each had a stale biscuit as well. They guessed that the biscuit was to make the tea taste even better in comparison.

As the biscuit crumbled in Brown's mouth, he said, "You know what, Raymond?"

"What's that?" Anderson asked.

"You better not die on us now."

Anderson looked amused. "Oh?"

"If you ever die, I think the first thing we would do is mutiny. If we don't have our cigarettes and sugar, what's the point of fighting? Tobacco is a man's religion."

The other men who were huddled around the fire's warmth laughed and agreed – except for Jones, who looked a bit sour. Anderson didn't say anything, but he couldn't help looking pleased, at least a little.

As they tried to enjoy their breakfast, Henry came into the poor man's tent and kneeled down next to the men. Bleary-eyed from keeping watch the night before, he scooped some hot water out of the pot with his cup. He murmured, "Good morning, everyone. How did you all sleep?"

Huxley drank a gulp of tea before saying, "Well, I dreamt that I was far out at sea. My boat had sunk and I was drowning in the water. I woke up to find that I was still drowning."

Brown chided, "You just had to sleep in a puddle."

Huxley, in mock protest, said, "Well, the puddle wasn't there when I went to sleep last night."

As Henry tried to wake up with his cup of tea, Huxley asked him, "Another long night for you?"

Henry nodded solemnly. "The naps I take during the day aren't enough. If I don't get some sleep soon, I'm going to start seeing Huns everywhere. Hell, I might even think Noah's one of them."

Henry meant it as a joke, but while the other men laughed, Noah looked stricken.

Huxley lowered his voice, even though Liddell was nowhere near them. "You know, we can always switch places. I wouldn't mind taking a night or two as sentry. There's no point to you falling on your sword. The rest of us are just as guilty. We all took part in the demolition."

Henry waved off the suggestion. "Thanks, but I can handle it. It's just for a few more nights, anyway. Besides, I guess I didn't join this godforsaken war for the comfort."

"Isn't that the truth?" Brown said loudly. "I could only wish I brought that girl from Rouen with me. That's the real tragedy out of all of this."

Huxley snorted. "You mean that prostitute of yours, don't you?"

"I wouldn't go as far as to call her that."

"Oh? And what would you call her then?"

Brown paused. "A lady, just like any other. But her love was a bit pricier."

Bishop smiled. "Let me guess, you think that she loved you?"

"Isn't that the only reason why anyone does anything?" Brown asked before turning to Huxley. "Now, Edward, we all know you're an expert on scandalous love. How about a story?"

Huxley asked, his eyes glinting, "Oh? And not hear about your romps in bed with paid whores?"

Brown said nothing, so Huxley continued, a bit more seriously, "Well, first things first, I guess. I have never been to the whorehouse. I've heard enough stories about them to know that one never has a good story about a whorehouse. All you ever get from a whorehouse is itching."

The truth of the matter was, Huxley had been to a whorehouse before – twice.

Bishop asked, "So then, what were you up to the whole time we were in Rouen?"

Huxley smiled broadly. "Well, since I was new in town, I needed a guide of some sorts. And who knows the town better than..."

"God, I know where this is going, I just know it," Jones breathed.

"The mayor's wife."

Huxley was telling the truth that time.

The other men groaned when they heard this. Henry said, "You know, you're going to start a war with France before we leave."

Huxley laughed. "It was nothing too blasphemous, I'm afraid. She was nice. She was! Don't give me that look, Michael. Her name was Marion. A tall, willowy lady. Sunny hair. She showed me all of the landmarks – well, what we could see from her balcony, anyway. Rouen looked so different at dawn, before all of the people left their homes for work. I don't know why, but it just looked different."

Henry knew why. He found the same phenomenon in every city he traveled to in England. How, if you wake up at just the right time, you can open your door to a deserted city. When a city is bustling, all you really see are the people. But, whenever the distractions aren't there, all you see is silent architecture. It's like walking into a church when no one is there.

Brown waved off the talk. "Rouen is nothing special in the long run, though. We need to get to Paris sometime soon."

"Have you been there?"

Brown shook his head. "Not yet, but we have to get there. If the city lives up to half of the folklore, we might as well abandon ship right now. Has anyone been there?"

None of the men had, but they all wanted to go too.

Anderson mused, "Well, hopefully we'll be able to see Paris in our lifetimes."

"So sometime in the next few weeks, then?" Brown asked, acidic.

Anderson chided, "You mustn't talk like that. We're all homesick enough, what with this talk of ladies. But none of us want to go home if it means going in a coffin."

His eyebrows raised, Brown asked, "So you would rather stay alive and out in the trenches then?"

The others were silent, suddenly sobered by the talk of death. Brown, perhaps realizing what he had just done, fell back on the old conversation. "I hear that Paris is gorgeous. Of course, who hasn't heard that? It certainly would beat living in Bristol. And thank God people are free to be whatever somewhere. Paris might smell like any other city, but if it does, it's only because the people there choose not to wash."

Huxley was the first to laugh. "You're making a bit of sense, you know. I don't know whether to be impressed or scared."

"I'm just saying...Paris is where you go if you want to try things. I'm getting tired of looking at English women wearing the same dresses my grandmother wore. These Parisians, they _experiment_. I tell you, this is a decade for slim dresses and hats with plumage. The French are on to something with stuff like that."

Bishop looked amused. "Are you saying you want to wear that kind of stuff?"

"You think I'm the type to experiment?"

"Sounds like that's what you're saying. Besides, you only live once."

Brown's eyes twinkled. "Not really the type. Well, maybe if you put a few drinks in me first, I might reconsider."

The men in the circle around the fire laughed.

Bishop asked, "Raymond?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you have some jam I can use?"

Anderson nodded and reached into his bag. He tossed a tin can to Bishop, who opened it and began spreading some of the strawberry jelly on his biscuit.

"God bless you," Bishop said as he took a bite of the biscuit. "I need something to hide the taste of this bread. I think the army bakes this stuff already stale for us."

"I know what you mean," Anderson said as he packed the can of jam in with his belongings. "And don't worry – I'm keeping a tab for you. Just so you don't have to remember the costs."

Bishop laughed, then turned serious. "I can only hope you're joking."

Anderson smiled. "There's only one way to find out."

Huxley asked, "Hey, Noah?"

"Yes?"

"How about you? You got a lady waiting for you back at home, don't you?"

Noah suddenly turned shy. "Well yeah, but you all probably don't want to hear about that."

"No, no, we're all interested, honestly."

The other men nodded, curious about their mysterious comrade.

"Yeah, tell us about yourself, goddammit," Brown said, eager to join in with the mob.

Noah looked at all of them and shrugged. "Well, there isn't much to tell. I've been with this one girl, Julia, on and off over the years. We got back together the night before I left Canada. She said that she would wait for me."

"You think she'll actually wait for you, don't you?" Huxley asked, not sneering but curious.

"Yeah, but she'll probably leave me again the next day," Noah laughed bitterly. "I think both of us like the chase more than we like the catch."

"Spoken like a fisherman!" Bishop said jovially, slapping Noah on the back.

"I guess so," Noah said, faintly smiling.

The conversation soon moved on, but that did not distract Henry. He looked at the secret American shrewdly. He wondered what prompted Noah to change his story. What had happened to the Lucy from the night before? Noah could have told the story of the journalist's daughter without giving away his citizenship. Now, though, Henry was hearing tales about a girl named Julia. He wondered which girl was real – he wondered if neither was real – he wondered if both were real – he wondered if Noah loved them both.

Bishop suddenly spoke up, "I used to love a lady too."

"Well, haven't we all by the sounds of it?"

Bishop was quiet for a moment before continuing. "Mine was different. I knew her for a long time before I realized that I love her. Her name was the last thing I would say every night and she would be the first thing I saw every morning, even before I opened my eyes. She was everything to me."

Henry asked, "So what happened to her?"

"It got to be too much, you know? It's like when we were children and we would find cake, and we would just keep eating and eating and eating it. It got to the point where I just got sick of it. I loved her so much that she actually made me ill. The only antidote was walking away. That was a long time ago, though."

Anderson said, "At least you had someone. When I grew up in the orphanage, we were just next door to the church. That was probably the worst place in town for me to grow up."

"Why's that?" Bishop asked.

"Well, whenever we heard the church bells going, it meant that a couple was getting married. And, with both of me parents dead and gone for the longest time, that was the most I ever saw of love, were those church bells ringing."

"You know what?" A voice said behind them. The men turned to find Liddell standing before them, his tin cup of coffee in hand.

Liddell continued, "You all don't know the first thing about women until you marry them. Then things start to make sense. But you'll wish that God never gave you the answer to the puzzle."

"What do you mean by that, sir?" Jones asked.

Liddell cleared his throat. "Well, you all haven't seen your family and friends in quite a few months. Some of you, you've gone even longer. Me, I haven't seen my wife since I left Oxford over a year ago. And if I survive all of this, I know I'll come home to that same smile of hers. But I know she'll be grayer than a book you leave on the shelf for years, decades even. This war is such a dirty business, but it'll make you see things. And well, I'm afraid it'll make her ugly and common in my eyes. If you're lucky enough to have a woman in your life, keep her mysterious."

The men were all quiet, caught by the corporal's sudden honesty. Liddell, feeling awkward, quickly downed the rest of his coffee. Holding the cup limply at his side, he said, "All right, men, finish your meals and clean up in five minutes. The battle won't start for a few more days, at least, but we shouldn't be sitting around until then. There's too much work that needs to be done."

And with that said, Liddell left the men to their own thoughts. They were thoughts about what Liddell had just said, if there was any connection with the letter that he had received just days before. When the mail had arrived, two of the soldiers in the section saw Liddell suddenly ball up a letter and toss it into the fire. They had whispered about the look of fury on the professor's face then, saying that the snarl was unnatural. It was obvious that, while Liddell had become professorial once more, he was still an animal behind the reading glasses.

As the soldiers finished up their breakfast and headed for their chores – they were to assist the artillery batteries by delivering shells – Henry could hear a whining from overhead. He glanced up to see a formation of airplanes in the rainclouds. Henry could not help but stand rooted in the mud – it was the first time that he had ever seen a plane. He had read about them, of course, in the papers back home. But Henry's country estate back in Nottingham was far from all of the revolutions, even the ones up in the sky. Since the planes were directly above, Henry could only see the silhouettes of their bellies. Still, with their wings and dark colors, Henry wondered if they were the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. He supposed that even God had to join the industrial new world sometime.

Henry tugged on Huxley's sleeve. If anyone would know about the airplanes, it would have been the rare veteran. Henry asked, "Do you know what sort of airplanes those are?"

Huxley looked up and shrugged. "Can't tell from here. But they're probably doing reconnaissance – you know, spying on the Germans, stuff like that."

Huxley looked down the horizon, shielding his eyes. He said after a moment, "I may be wrong, though."

"Oh?"

"Those look like observation balloons down there, they do," Huxley said, pointing at the lumbering specks in the distance, plastered above German lines. "Our boys may be trying to shoot them down. Don't want Fritz telling his friends what we're doing, now do we?"

"You might be right," Henry said, still looking at the formation as it slid across the sky, towards enemy lines. It took him almost a minute to realize that he had been standing, staring, alone. He rushed ahead to join the others who were still walking.

Henry managed to put the airplanes out of mind for at least awhile. They had walked the whole way over to where the artillery batteries were stationed, only to find that they weren't needed. There were already enough men rushing supplies to the great cannons, which fired as soon as a shell was plugged in them. The efficiency scared Henry more than the war did. It was also Henry's first look at the artillery, what was responsible for the tremendous racket of the past few days. All of the cannons came in all different sizes, but they all looked the same: little more than a barrel leaning back on a pair of rickety wheels. Some of them were smaller than a man's torso, others larger than a wagon. Still, Henry could not believe that the sounds of their rounds could travel so far. He also noticed the phallic shapes of the artillery, and how they shot their rounds with a puff. Henry started to laugh, the chuckles trailing down his chin in beads of sweat.

Huxley turned and asked. "You're all right, aren't you?"

Red in the face, Henry said, "Yes, yes, I'm fine."

As they made their way back through the spiderweb of trenches, Henry noticed Noah at the end of the line. Henry fell back until the two new friends were marching side-by-side. Noah looked at Henry and asked, friendly, "You want to talk about something?"

Henry lowered his voice so that the men ahead could not hear him. "Why did you feed them that story at breakfast this morning?"

Noah looked confused. "What do you mean? What story?"

"You know...the story about that girl of yours. Julia, I think her name was."

Noah's face reddened. "Oh, _that_. Listen, Henry, it was nothing. Don't worry about it. I doubt half of what the other men said was true..."

"Well, for them, I don't know. But I do know what you said before."

"Okay, so?"

"So, who's real? Was it Lucy? Or Julia?"

Noah bit his lip, looking worried. "Like I said, Henry, don't worry."

It was too late, though. The curiosity was already burning in Henry's eyes. He did not care if it went against good manners. He simply wanted to know, and desires do not need reasons to be.

Noah, though, wanted the conversation to end at that moment. He said softly, but quickly, "How about this: I promise to tell you one day. I promise to tell you why I can't keep a story straight. I just can't right now."

Henry looked at Noah and frowned. Finally, he said, "Okay. I'm sorry to be so..."

"It's okay. Like I said before, don't worry about it."

Brown looked back and asked, "Say, what are you both up to? Plotting to kill me in my sleep?"

Henry forced a chuckle. "You could only wish we liked you that much."

That was when it happened.

The trench they had been walking through had a shallow, sloping wall. The claustrophobia of their home trench was nowhere. Instead, they were treated to a large span of the sky, a sky that was just beginning to clear from the morning rain.

It was because of the rare panorama that someone spotted the event. They pointed up at the sky and shouted, "Look!" All eyes followed the outstretched finger. A plane hung a thousand feet up in the air, deep in no man's land. Henry could only guess that it was one of the planes he saw earlier. While earlier he was filled with awe at the sight of a flying machine, Henry was now horrified. Not only was the plane the sole remnant of its earlier formation, but its engine was ablaze. The plane trailed a long tail of smoke behind it, like a horse-drawn carriage kicking up dust on a country road. The red fire mixed with the black smoke, creating a demonic color that Henry hoped never to see again.

Noah breathed, "Is he going to make it?"

Huxley shook his head solemnly. "Doubt it."

And he was right. The plane was beginning to make a steep dive. Large swathes of fabric and splinters of wood were crumbling off the plane, its cheap construction unraveled by the fire and stress. The men heard a distant scream coming from the airplane, but they couldn't tell if the dying cry belonged to the engine or the pilot. Maybe both.

The soldiers watched, horror-stricken, as the tragedy unfolded. Bishop couldn't find the breath to say it, but the plane's dive reminded him of the pheasants he would poach years before. Those gamebirds looked the same in their final moments, shedding their feathers as they fell to the earth.

The plane crashed in what used to have been a field. By instinct, the soldiers clambered up the shallow wall to get a better view of the scene.

Liddell hissed, "Keep your heads down! Don't be easy shots for a sniper."

Peeping over the trench the best they could, the soldiers were treated to the horror. The craft's elegance had vanished in a second, replaced by a brief flame, then smoke. As the plane smoldered in the distance, the soldiers realized that the fire was silent – they could not hear cries for help coming from the downed craft.

Noah asked, "Shouldn't we go out and see if he's...?"

Liddell shook his head. "I doubt he could survive it. And, unless you want a bullet in your head for playing hero, it's best just to say a prayer and move on."

Liddell turned and kept walking along, ignoring the sorrow, never once looking back. The men reluctantly followed, much quieter than they were before.

Chapter V

Wednesday, June 28

Anderson, being the kind soul he always was, had offered Henry some respite from the nightly sentry duty. Worn down, Henry gladly accepted the offer – even though he was hoping for a repeat of the other night, when he and Noah shared company and cigarettes. Still, sleep was more of a primitive urge than friendship, so Henry decided to sleep that evening, just that once.

And that was how Henry found himself back in the same dreamscape from before.

He had been chasing her voice all through the night, through the crunched snow, the lonely valleys, the frozen lakes that looked more like dropped mirrors than anything else. For all that he had heard her, though, he had not caught a glimpse of her. The doubts came back to plague him, and he wondered if she was even there – he wondered if she even existed to begin with – he wondered if that entire world existed in the first place.

But how could a world so cold and unforgiving not be real? It is only when a world feels neutral and soft that you have the right to doubt. While pain could be proof that the Creator never existed, it is evidence for the Creation having always existed.

As Henry rambled with his thoughts, his feet did the same. Without knowing it, he carried himself miles into the pitch, stumbling through knee-deep snow. He did not know what direction he was walking, but he knew he would be fine. He knew he would be fine because he did not know what direction her voice was coming from. The sounds surrounded him, and he felt pulled in all directions, spun wild like a compass.

It took him five, maybe ten minutes, maybe even a couple hours to realize he was walking in sand. The gritty bits of sand had felt and looked and sounded so much like specks of snow in the midnight light. Henry had traded tundra for a desert, and he had not even seen the difference. It unnerved him a little, but still, he kept on walking, searching, hunting. His mouth suddenly felt dry as he realized he was in some sort of Sahara.

But even with the vastness around him, Henry never once felt alone. He had her giggles for company. He whispers meant that she was there, somewhere. But even those wet syllables began to vanish, drying up in the desert. It took a while, but the sounds surrendered to silence, and Henry understood that he was finally alone. The horizon began to pulse and throb, slowly at first but picking up pace, like a heart in the first stages of panic. Had she finally abandoned him?

He never knew because the desert suddenly became washed in light. Henry heard shouts and screams and bells going all around him. Henry leapt from his bedding, and he saw the men from his section scrambling about. He quickly came to his senses and demanded of Brown, "What's going on?"

"Gas attack!" Brown yelled.

Henry swore and dove through his equipment. It took him five seconds to find his gas mask amongst the belongings in his bag. As he struggled to untangle the straps, he glanced around wildly. The others were quick but professional, fitting their masks over their silent faces. Others were not as calm under the weight of the moment – Henry spotted several soldiers scrambling up the wall of the dugout, fleeing backwards to safety, men with brains for hearts.

Henry took a deep breath and put on his mask. The inside of the contraption felt hot and sweaty with a jungle oppression. He exhaled hard and immediately began gasping for air – the mask did too good of a job – he felt as if he was suffocating. It took Henry a few, hyperventilated breaths to steady himself. Suddenly weak with panic and labored breathing, Henry sank down to the soil. The tiny eye windows on the mask were yellowed, and so the world around him looked sick and jaundiced. The others, their masks on, were unsure of what to do next. They could stay, and hope their masks worked against the poison. Or they could flee, and make themselves easy shots for snipers.

Slowly, the moments turned to seconds, the seconds to minutes. Henry was afraid to breathe, even with the mask on. There was something about masks that Henry just couldn't trust, no matter how hard he tried.

After some minutes of the terror, the alarms suddenly stopped ringing. There was a loud silence over the dugout. Someone called out, "Is everyone okay?"

There were some nods amongst the men as they warily took off their masks. A soldier asked no one in particular, "So was it a false alarm, or what?"

Brown shrugged. "Beats the hell out of me."

Word leaked that there was a thick patch of fog carpeting the fields that morning. A rookie spotter coupled the weather with a German counterattack that happened minutes before, and he guessed there was a gas attack. The men all looked sheepish, having panicked over such an error. If only it was possible to make decisions in hindsight. Still, Henry would rather have a mask for some fog than nothing for mustard gas.

Of all the men packing away their gear, Henry noticed that only one had not bothered even to put on a mask in the first place. Liddell sat on his trunk, as he had during the entire panic, smoking his second cigarette for the day, looking as calm as he did after a lecture back home. This surprised Henry – he felt betrayed. He had caught enough grief from the corporal for breaking the rules. And there was Liddell, not bothering to put on a mask, even though they tell you that before they even put you on the boat to France.

Henry was not the only one to notice this. So too did a captain, a great, heaving man, complete with a beard in need of trimming, the backs of his hands hairy. On instinct, Henry thought of squirrels, all fattened before the winter hit. Henry managed to turn his laugh into a hacking cough. Brown, who was nearby, looked up at Henry with alarm, thinking his comrade was choking on gas.

Henry knew what Brown was thinking. He said reassuringly, "It's not what you think it is."

"It better not be. Don't become our canary now."

Henry didn't hear what Brown said, too focused on what the captain was saying to Liddell. Like the captain himself, the words weren't pretty.

"How dare you, corporal! How dare you set such an example? Have you learned nothing? You've read the papers, haven't you? You damn well know what our enemy can do to us. We have lost thousands of men to those gases – men who have become disfigured, men who were blinded. We have lost enough soldiers without losing you to negligence. What do you have to say for yourself? Or do you want me to report you to your superiors, hmm? For not following orders? I'm sure that will look good in your records. They don't hand out medals to fools, you know!"

The whole time the captain barked at Liddell, the teacher simply sat and smoked, never saying a word. Henry could have sworn he saw a smile at the edge of Liddell's lips, but he wasn't sure. When the captain had finished his breathless monologue, there was silence in the dugout. The other soldiers had heard the commotion and had gathered, curious as to what would come next. Liddell was quiet for another moment before taking the cigarette out of his mouth. He exhaled and said, "I don't think it'll be necessary to report this, sir."

The captain's eyes widened. He sputtered, "Not necessary, you say? Like not putting on your mask when you're supposed to?"

Liddell said softly, "There was no need for panic."

"Oh sure, there is no need to panic now! But just because we now know it was a false alarm doesn't mean..."

"No, I didn't mean that," Liddell interrupted.

The captain was going red with madness. "Then what?"

Liddell puffed on his cigarette and pointed at the smoke, how it twisted and curled in the wind. He said simply, "The wind."

"What about it?"

"The wind's blowing east. If the Germans want to drop gas on us, the wind would push it back in their faces. They may be barbaric, but they aren't stupid."

The captain looked as if he was about to say something, then stopped. His mouth frozen, the fattened squirrel looked shrewdly at Liddell. A realization slowly rinsed over the captain's face, leaving behind a pale wash. He glanced around and noticed that the rest of the camp was looking at him, curiously, some smiling, even a few snorting with laughter.

Shamed and humbled, the captain said sharply, "Well, what are you men doing, lounging about? The war's not over! Get back to your duties, now!"

The captain huffed away. The men turned back to their business, the mood lightened by the absurd drama. Liddell's men stared at the corporal, surprised by what their leader had done. Liddell flicked his cigarette on the ground, roughly stamped it out, and said lazily, "And that, men, is why my students were afraid when I called on them during class."

He winked at Henry, always the little rebel of the section, and got up. He stretched and said, "I'll be back in a few minutes, gentlemen. Don't have another false alarm without me."

Liddell sauntered off to make his morning use of the facilities. As Liddell left earshot, the men began laughing and joking around. The mood felt too carefree that early in the morning, but Henry supposed that the men were still shaky from the wakeup call. The men's nerves were electric, and so the soldiers sparked.

It was the impetus for something mischievous. Of course, Brown was the initiator of the festivities. He reached back into his equipment, pulled out the gas mask again. He examined it curiously, as a daughter would with her doll.

"You know," Brown said slowly, "this reminds me of a fly's face. Doesn't it?"

He donned the mask and made an exaggerated buzzing sound for effect. The men laughed at how true it was – Brown looked like a fly on the hunt for manure. The mask, with its buggy eye windows and extended snout, was not built for looks. This was something that Huxley pointed out.

"Oh, you," Brown scowled. "You're just worried what the ladies will think when they see you."

"I'm not saying that," Huxley said. Henry couldn't tell if the soldier was amused or defensive.

"Well, even if you are, I daresay the mask would be an improvement," Brown smiled.

In jest, Huxley punched Brown in the shoulder.

Brown winced, "That hurt, you know."

"Oh, stop it. I think I hurt my fist more than I hurt you."

Brown turned a shade serious. "Have you heard about soldiers using piss-cloth?"

Anderson looked confused. "Piss-cloth? You mean they pour a pint on a handkerchief?"

Brown laughed. "No, no. I mean they actually use a cloth for a loo."

"Why would they do that?"

Brown shrugged. "Something about the urine, I guess. It's supposed to stop the mustard gas from getting into your lungs."

Henry smiled. "I don't think that'd be a good idea for you, Michael."

"Oh yeah, and why's that?"

"Well, you drink so much anyway, you'll probably go and get drunk off the fumes from the cloth."

All of the men in the section chuckled a little.

"Who in the hell do you think you are?"

The voice snapped across the dugout like lightning, rooting all of the laughing men. They glanced over their shoulders at several, ragged men standing before them. Their hair was matted and their eyes sunken, but the soldiers looked as proud as any other man. The man who spoke had blond hair, the color of sweet corn. His face was dark and crackly, like a field left outside in the summer heat. He was the shortest of the group, but he stood the tallest.

"I'm sorry?" Jones asked, confused.

The soldier trudged towards the group. A bit nervous, Henry wondered if the soldier was ready to fight. Instead, the soldier stopped and scanned the faces of the soldiers around him. He snarled, "How dare you fellows make fun of such things."

"Hey, we got to find something fun in this war..." Brown protested.

"Well, pick something else then," the soldier snapped. He stood face-to-face with Brown. Jones, fearing a scuffle would start any second, broke up the two men, Anderson assisting.

"Break it up now!"

"Yeah, stop it!"

The soldier's comrades silently jumped forward and half-dragged, half-led their friend away from the group. All of their faces were glum, all of them except for that one soldier, who looked indignant and angry and confused and even a bit terrified as he let loose a volley of unrepeatable words.

As the commotion softened, the men in Henry's section were not sure what to do next. The fun drained by the confrontation, the men went their separate ways, silently getting ready for the day. Henry reluctantly took to shaving. As he did the chore, he wondered what those soldiers meant. What was it about the poisonous gases that made it so sacred?

If Henry had known what had upset the soldiers, he would have made the whole section apologize then and there.

Those soldiers – that blond-haired man especially – had fought over a year before, in the battle at Ypres. They were the same soldiers who heard that, a few days earlier, the Germans had used gas before, somewhere out east against Russia. The men all thought that those were rumors, some sort of propaganda to confuse and frighten them, even to the point of mutiny. The soldiers laughed off the whispers, though – they knew such things were only possible in words. No man was a monster, and only monsters could use poisonous gases.

This happened on April 21, 1915. On the following evening, death came with the darkness. The Frenchmen holding the line saw a sickly green cloud crawling over the fields towards them. The men thought it looked so strange – they asked themselves if they had ever seen such a thing before. It was entrancing, sprinkled with danger.

It took a few minutes for the cloud to reach them. The mysterious thing was so heavy, it fell into the trenches instead of passing over. The men were trapped in the greenish fog, and the air smelled like fruit – this was to be their last comfort in this world. The men began dropping in the path of the chlorine. It was a terrible way to go – it could be said that the men asphyxiated, drowned even, as they breathed in the gas. The taste was bitter, the whole way down to their lungs. The men were suddenly dying in fits of coughs, passing away like elderly men instead of the strong youth they were. Just in the space of a few minutes, the men were robbed of breath – they left behind corpses with shock in the eyes and froth on the lips. Those that panicked crawled out of the trench to retreat – these men were immediately gunned down by German machinegun fire.

The soldiers that confronted Henry and the others, the soldiers who looked so young yet so old and grizzled, were the Canadians who survived that day a year before. They were the ones who breathed through cloths stained with urine; they were the ones who had to fight in the thicket of night and gas. Even though the Canadians held the lines when the French could not, nothing comes free – thousands of their countrymen were left dead or left _for_ dead by the fighting.

If the reading public back home were shocked by the accounts, the soldiers on that field were shaken with trauma. The survivors felt worse than the dead – some of them still woke up screaming some nights, their nightmares filled with gurgling breath, the fumes of chlorine, the constant fire of the guns all around them. Even though the battle was over a year before – the generals having forgotten and moved on – the soldiers still fought the battle in their minds. They would always fight the battle. It may take a year, maybe a decade, maybe even a century, but the battle would eventually claim all of them as casualties. That day was unrelenting, forever hunting the men like that cloud of green and yellow.

Henry did not know any of this – perhaps this was for the best.

Chapter VI

Thursday, June 29

The rains had returned to the battlefield after the brief intermission of sunshine. Thankfully, the weather was not as terrible as it was that Tuesday. The first storm was more flood than rain, running down in thick sheets that drowned the armies. This rain, though, was much quieter, softer, more like a falling blanket than an avalanche. As the soldiers sat through breakfast, some of the troops stood out in the elements, their cigarettes glowing in the dawn like hundreds of fireflies. The rain was so light, none of the drops could extinguish their cigarettes. The men were taller than giants, their exhales pushing midnight clouds of tobacco through the storm. The rain felt tiny and feathery on their skin, more ticklish than soaking.

Still, even with the pleasant morning rain, the ground was still ruined from the rain before. The soil, stripped of grass and plant and tree and root, was still a miserable pool, rotting away. Not even the afternoon heat was able to dry the mess. Some of the men were afraid of leaving their equipment on the ground, fearful that the ground would turn to quicksand and steal their belongings from them.

And that was just at the main dugout – the trench that the section had dug, the crevice that was the cause of Henry's many woes, was much worse. Located conveniently at the foot of a hill, the trench was transformed into a muddy ocean. Even the sandbags that the men had placed at the top of the trench were not enough, the rainwater worming its way between the bags. The men had tried draining the depression with some borrowed buckets, but the effort was not enough. Until the sun was able to soak up the pools, the men were forced to lay wooden boards, steel beams, whatever they could find across the still waters. However, they were no engineers, not even in the slightest sense of the definition. If they were, they would have understood the folly of what they had done. The mud swallowed every single thing tossed on its crust. And, even without looking at it, Henry knew that his personal dugout was probably ruined, the wet soil collapsing and filling up the little cave. He wasn't sure to count himself lucky that he had not been in the earthen coffin at that moment.

And the mosquitoes, the swarms of creatures were already rising up from the stagnant waters like bubbles bursting, their droning growing in volume. The men stayed close to their fires in hopes of keeping the bugs away, but it was not enough. The creatures were not afraid of the flames – if anything, they came even closer, entranced by the dancing flames. The bites had become vicious enough that Brown asked Jones, "Is this your God trying to tell us something? Shouldn't the Pharaoh being letting us free?"

Jones shook his head. "There weren't any mosquitoes in Exodus, I don't think. You're probably imagining the plague of flies."

Brown rolled his eyes. "You know, one of these days, you're going to take a joke."

Jones smiled barely. "I'll take the Lord's name in vain before I ever take a joke."

"I'm sure that...you know what? Forget it. It's impossible to argue with you people."

"What do you mean by that?"

Liddell, sensing an argument ahead, said sharply, "That's enough."

The men continued eating their breakfast, quietly.

But Anderson, always allergic to stillness, said brightly, "Well, look on the bright side, gentlemen. If we're getting soaked, that means the Germans are too."

Huxley shook his head. "Somehow, I doubt that."

"Why's that?"

"Those Huns may be bastards, but they're efficient bastards. You remember Loos, don't you? When we overran one of their trenches?"

The smile slipped somewhat off Anderson's face. "I try to forget things like that. I don't like things that keep me up at night."

But Henry was curious. "What do you mean? What about their trenches?"

"Well," Huxley began, "if there is one thing Germans love to do, it is to fight. If they could, they would do it forever. So at Loos, they built those damn trenches quick, and they built them to last. Those bloody dugouts might as well have been bunkers. When our artillery would start up, the Huns would just hide in the chambers they built into their trenches. Meaning our artillery was completely useless."

Eyes wide, Henry looked past all of the men, past the British lines, past no man's land, at the invisible German lines in the distance. The constant artillery bombardment was still ongoing. It felt as if it was always there, printed into the countryside. But, for the first time, Henry wondered if the Germans even noticed. Huxley read Henry's mind and said darkly, "Our generals will never learn."

"Don't get started on that, Huxley," Liddell warned. "Even if it's true."

The unwritten rule was that British generals were perfect. Take, for example, their astounding victory during the American Revolution. They had negotiated away a tumor of colonies, all for the cheap price of thousands of soldiers – coincidentally, many of those downed soldiers were German mercenaries.

Huxley reluctantly took Liddell's stern advice. He continued, "But, I mean, the Huns have been in this area for the longest time. I wouldn't be surprised if they turned into moles by now. Hell, they might even be digging under us as we speak."

"So what about that battle? You know, the one from before?" Henry asked, now more intrigued. He had only heard snippets of Loos in the papers. And here were veterans of the battle, and they were always silent on the history.

Huxley looked for a long moment at Liddell, searching the fellow veteran for advice on how to proceed. Liddell nodded grimly. Huxley sighed and said, "All right, gentlemen, you want to know what happened during that battle?"

The men were eager for a good story, one that made them forget the mosquitoes, the mud, the rain, the heat, the Germans. Anderson, the section's third veteran from the battle, was unusually solemn, and he said nothing.

Huxley said, "The battle began well enough. It began at dawn, when some of our engineers mined the German lines. Our orders were to charge when we saw the clouds from the explosions. We saw them, and so we went. What we found was that the mines didn't work."

Noah asked, "The mines were faulty?"

Huxley shook his head. "No, no, the mines were fine. They detonated correctly, at least, as far we could tell. Problem was, they didn't kill a whole lot of Germans because there weren't a whole lot to kill. When we got to the first line, it was damn near abandoned – swear on my life. That's when we found how prepared they were, what with all of the fortifications that went into that line. You don't just abandon good work like that unless you have to. We should have noticed. We should have."

Huxley was quiet for a moment. Then, he continued. "So far, we had been lucky. Only one man in our section had been killed. But we thought his death was not in vain, that we would be in Germany by the end of the day. We sure as hell were making good progress. Other men in the army weren't as lucky."

Someone asked, "Why?"

"Well, someone down the line had the bright idea of bombing the enemy with chlorine. A bit of revenge for Ypres, I guess you could say. Problem was, nobody bothered to lick their finger and check the wind. That was a hell of a problem, because when our artillery launched those shells, the wind pushed some of that gas back. Our army had set up a trap for themselves. In the first hour of that battle, more of our men had been killed by our own generals than by the Huns.

'Even with that, we had been lucky – so far. There was only light resistance, and we could even see some of the Huns retreating as we pushed on. That was our second problem, I guess. See, I've spent many a night since tossing and turning in my bed, trying to figure out what went wrong. I think our pride was what turned against us, and it turned like that chlorine gas in the wind. We thought we could chase every Hun home, so we kept going, and going, and going. We kept the charge up until we realized something terrible: we were doing too damn good of a job. We were now deep in German territory, while the other parts of our army were being held back, what with the gas blowing around and such. This meant that our brigade was now surrounded by Germans. It was a problem turning into a disaster. Our own artillery was out of range, but the Hun's certainly weren't. Not to mention the machine guns. Those goddamn machine guns. The way those guns were swinging, tossing bullets over the fields, you would think those machine guns have been aiming for me since I was born. Some fate that would have been. I still don't know how none of those bullets hit me.

'I don't know how we made it back to our lines. And those Huns kept that fire going, even with our backs turned to them. The fierce bastards, they don't even know what's fair anymore. The gentlemen make rules for a fair fight, and they forget them when the fight starts."

For all that was being said, there was even more that was going unspoken around the fire. Henry suddenly felt the urge to point out the hypocrisy in Huxley's venom. How the British put bullets in the backs of fleeing Germans, not expecting the same gift in return. But Henry did not want to get into that sort of debate, not that early in the morning anyway.

Anderson, meanwhile, was thinking of that retreat as well. He remembered it all too well, because that was the first time he had ever killed anyone. He could remember rushing back to friendly lines, hiding behind twisted, fiery vehicles and corpses along the way. A lot of bullets danced around his feet, jumping in the soil like frogs at spring. One lucky bullet hit him in his back, but his heavy bag took the blow. It was the first – and last – time that Anderson ever appreciated the load he had to carry. The impact still knocked him down, and he could remember being sprawled out in the dirt, thinking that he was dead. But he wasn't, and so he rose and kept running.

He was making his way through the German trenches they stormed earlier when it happened. A Hun, bloody but alive, was clambering out of the crevice. He had been apparently wounded in the shoulder and left for dead earlier, when the truth was far more inconvenient. He was breathing, and he was scared and angry. And the first Brit he saw was Anderson. The German raised his rifle, but Anderson was quicker. After all, they say that the hunted moves faster than the hunter. It took Anderson only one second and one shot to kill the man. The bullet slammed into the man's forehead, causing the German to topple backwards into the trench, dead before he even fell. Anderson froze, but only for a second – the teeth of death behind him were propulsion enough. He made his way through the trench, trying not to look at the German corpse, and kept running.

Anderson obviously survived the day, but he was a ghost for weeks after. When Anderson volunteered for the war, he was told he had to kill. But he was never told how to survive the kill. For the longest time, Anderson could only taste charcoal on his tongue, which numbed him, slowed him down. He could never talk about it, even almost a year later. He tried to wash the foul taste out of his mouth, first with water, then with alcohol, then with a malfunctioning pistol one late night on leave, but it wasn't enough. Even then, Anderson was lucky – if he had known that the corpse's name was Wilhelm von Puttkamer, age 19, of Frankfurt, it is possible that Anderson would have tried firing the pistol in his mouth a second time. The only thing that is worse than death is death with a name.

Of course, Anderson did not say any of what he truly thought – nor did he want to.

Suddenly, Brown turned to Jones and asked, "So, what does your God have to say about all of that?"

"He's your God as much as mine."

Brown laughed. "Well, after all of the ruin he's brought me, he's not much of a friend, I can tell you that."

"The Lord works in mysterious ways, he does."

Brown rolled his eyes again. "That's no answer, and you know it."

Liddell, who was still standing nearby, did not bother to break up the debate this time. Huxley's story had made corporal busy with sad memories. Liddell looked more distant than the Germans, even.

Jones felt insistent. "No one has an answer to tragedy. That is why everyone suddenly remembers the Lord during times of war or famine or devastation. You'll never see a church more packed than after an earthquake."

"An earthquake that your God made. He's nothing more than a marketing genius. He builds up a demand for his product, and you lot buy it with tithes and donations."

"Turning away from the Lord is worse than any disaster here on Earth."

Brown scowled and got up. "You're making me tired, and it's not even the afternoon yet. I'm going out to have a smoke."

Jones was glad that Brown had grown tired of the argument. He was afraid of more questions, such as how a religious man could fight in a war. Jones was the last person to break a commandment, but what else could he do? He was forced into the fight. If that was what God wanted him to do, then he had to do it. That said, all guns need a trigger, and all triggers need a finger to pull it...Jones knew how to hold the rifle, he knew how to aim it, but he could never fire it. God gave him at least that much responsibility. But Jones couldn't bring himself to admit it – no one else would understand why.

While that question never came up, other issues sprouted. Henry wondered if what Jones said was true, that man became closer to God after tragedy. _Some solace,_ he thought. It was a cold comfort that most men in war met God after taking a sniper's bullet.

Chapter VII

Friday, June 30

It was the night before the first assault, and it certainly showed everywhere. The British lines glowed with cigarettes, as nervous men in the trenches looked for a moment of calm before the calamity. Other men took to stretching or walking about, too energetic to sleep, too rigid to sit down.

Even through the nervousness, you could tell who the veterans were. They were the ones sitting off to the side, hunched over their trunks, using the hard surface as a desk while they wrote letters by lamplight. They were letters written on all sorts of paper, with all sorts of pens and pencils. They were letters addressed to all corners of the British Empire, whether it was to fishing villages along the Canadian coast or mining towns in Wales or stretches of lonely territory in South Africa or the jungles of India. They were letters written to different people: mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, neighbors, friends, wives, fiancés, and mistresses.

However, even though every letter was different, every letter was the same. They all began with memories, then requests, and finally forgiveness. None of the letters mentioned death at all, but the word was the ink they dipped their pen in. These soldiers would only feel relief after the letters were sealed and mailed. They knew that if they died, their last words would be saved, preserved like fossils in the bedrock. The only thing surer than taxes was death, and the only thing surer than death was that mail would be delivered. With an empire so vast, stretched thin over so many time zones, the postman was the only consistent way to keep the time.

Henry and the others sat around in their tent, no one saying anything. Several of the men were busy writing their letters. The rest stared ahead quietly, cigarettes lit and twitching. Not even Brown, with all of his bitter, loud words, could find the strength to lift the silence.

Bishop swore softly. He turned to Anderson and asked, "Do you have some paper I can use?"

"Sure."

Brown asked, a bit exasperated, "Nigel, how many times are you going to mess up your letter?"

"Not enough," Bishop smiled as he took a piece of paper from Anderson. "Thanks, Raymond."

"You're welcome."

Bishop said to Brown, "It's just that I want this letter to be perfect. I'm sure it took Oscar Wilde even a couple tries to get his last words right."

"If that's what you want."

Bishop looked up from the fresh paper. "Don't you want to write a letter to someone?"

Brown scoffed. "Me? Write a letter? Who am I going to write to?"

"I don't know. The Bobbies are probably getting worried about you."

The men laughed.

Suddenly, they heard a shout outside of the tent. Someone, with vigor in his voice, was calling out, "All of you men, let me have your attention! Please, it'll only take a minute! Come now, I mean it! Just one minute, please."

Curious, Henry and the others got up and left their tent. The vast expanse of the dugout was filled with a sea of men, heads bobbing, as they tried to catch a glimpse of the speaker. The man calling out was a great, burly man, with a handlebar mustache floating on his thin, squished lip. He had a cup of something in one hand, and he was leaning on his rifle as if it was a walking cane.

"Who is that?" Henry whispered to no one in particular.

Liddell strained his eyes to get a better look. "Not sure. He's acting like someone important though."

"That must mean he isn't," Brown snorted.

Huxley shrugged. "But sometimes, that's all that matters."

The speaker continued what he had come to say. "Men! You may not know who I am. I am Major Thomas Jackson. I just have a few, um, things I want to tell you tonight. First, it is going to be an honor leading you men into combat tomorrow! Why is that, you may ask? Is it because tomorrow will be the fight of our lives? Exactly! I have been informed that the attack begins at dawn, the second we hear our mines explode out on the battlefield. We will go out there, and we will push those Huns up against the wall. We will push them past the wall, and every mile towards the Kaiser himself! We will end this war by the end of the week! How do I know this? It's because I have faith in each and every single one of you, that's why!"

"God," Brown breathed. "This man's a fool. He better hope that a Hun spy isn't listening in on this."

Liddell would have chided Brown for insulting his superiors, but he too was embarrassed by the major and what the man was saying.

Major Jackson continued. "I know that many of you men are nervous, frightened even. You're afraid of what you read about in the papers. You're afraid of being shot, being blown up by grenades, choking on poisonous gas. Well, no need to fear! We have been bombarding that zoo of animals for the past week! The only good Hun is a dead one, and we will be finding a lot of nice Germans tomorrow, let me tell you!"

Jackson laughed heartily at his joke. Few in the crowd stirred.

Jackson cleared his throat and said with a smile, "So look lively, men! Tonight we may be sleeping in the mud, but tomorrow, ah tomorrow! We will be sleeping in their villages then! We will be sleeping on their fine beds with their fine ladies! I can already feel the goose feathers, can't you? But yes, we will show those bastards in the trenches" – he pointed east, to where the German lines stood – "we'll show them what British men are made of! Our bones are made of the finest steel, our blood the finest oil. We're machinery, and by God, we're built to last. So we'll trample them, men, no worries! God save our gracious King, long live our noble King! God save the King: send him victorious, happy and glorious, long to reign over us. God save the King!"

The major tried to raise the troops in a hearty verse of the anthem, but few moved their lips, and even fewer sang out loud. As the dozens, even hundreds, of men looked at the major curiously, the hulking man's smile faded. Jackson waved his rifle in the air and said, "Good night, gentlemen! And remember tomorrow what I said! We may have left home as British men, but we will come home heroes. Trust me!"

Jackson stumbled away into the darkness, leaving a crowd of bewildered men in his wake. Henry and his section stood there, silent for a moment, trying to take in the oddity they just witnessed. Finally, Huxley said, "Well, that was just bizarre."

"You see the pint he had?" Liddell spat, disgusted by Jackson's lack of decorum.

"Was that really what it was?" Jones mused. "Well, that would explain all that he just said."

"Never mind what that idiot just said," Liddell said briskly. "You men, gather around. I have something to say. Don't worry – it'll be better than what he said – it has to be."

The section gathered around their corporal. Whereas just a minute before, they were treated to a jester's spectacle, now they were expecting more. And Liddell was not going to disappoint. The professor had never looked so intelligent in the men's eyes. They suddenly felt like students again, sitting at their desks, eager for one more lesson, perhaps their very last.

"Before I forget, I want to tell you all a story. This is not a story to distract you from tomorrow. No, I am not here to amuse you. You could only wish that were so. I'm here to teach. But even I had to learn somewhere. All teachers were once students. You could choose whether to believe that or not. Regardless, I was once a silly child like any other. I remember living on my family's farm, deep in the countryside. And we used to have a dog. She was a wonderful dog – I named her Athena, after the goddess I learned about in class. Both the dog and the goddess were wise and clever. And that was the problem. Because Athena – the dog, that is – liked to sneak onto my neighbor's property and get into his chicken coop. It seemed like every other day, one of his chickens went missing. Finally, he could not take it anymore. He knocked on our door one afternoon, when my father was at home, and started yelling at him. My neighbor said that if the dog got into his chicken coop one more time, he was going to shoot it. My father was never one to fight, so he simply said, "Okay." I felt panic when I heard this. So I got some spare rope lying around and tried to keep Athena tied up. I thought that the rope would stop Athena from breaking free, from getting one of those chickens, from getting shot. It worked for about two days. Then I woke up one morning to find Athena gone – she had chewed through the rope. And I never saw her again.

'See, that should have ripped me apart. No boy wants their pet to die. I should have felt some infinite sadness over the matter. But I didn't, and that frightened me. I could never understand that feeling of distance until many years later. I remember sitting in a library as a student, reading through a tattered copy of Gibbon, and I had a revelation. I realized that I felt the same way about the Roman Empire crumbling and falling apart as I did about Athena vanishing. I understood them both from a distance. I had neither torn from my hands. And that was a bigger problem than you could ever realize. See, we're going to live on in the newspapers and books they'll write about us back home. So you don't have to worry – you'll have a legacy of some sorts. We're no different than the warriors from thousands of years ago, the heroes they would sing about around the campfire.

'The thing is, those heroes finally died when the people stopped singing their songs. Just like we'll die for good when the people back home throw their newspapers away, or set the book back on the shelf.

'And I know it must trouble you all, that you are fighting for people who have never met you and probably never will. We are fighting for an empire that goes by the numbers, whether it is the number of diamonds in Africa or the number of revolutionaries in Ireland. Our government treats each of us like some formula, a set of numbers that is solved the same way, every single time. They give us all the same terrible food, the same trenches sitting in the mud, the same horrors that we aren't supposed to write about in our letters back home.

'But we're all different, as much as our generals say otherwise. We have criminals..."

Anderson smiled while Brown laughed.

"We have a man that loves love too much to be an Englishman," Liddell said, pointing to Huxley. He continued, "We have a zealot, a brilliant sniper, a rebel..."

Liddell stopped and looked intently at Henry. The corporal said, "But as I'm starting to find out, a rebel is sometimes a necessary man."

Henry nodded his appreciation. It was the closest the two rivals would come to understanding each other.

"And we also have a quiet Canadian, here to keep us out of trouble," Liddell said, pointing to Noah with a flourish of the hand. A few of the men laughed. Anderson slapped Noah on the back good-naturedly. The secret Texan blushed a little and said nothing.

"And lastly, there's me, the teacher. The sort of teacher you may have enlisted to escape from. Point of the matter is, you never know who someone is until you know how different they are. And I think we all know each other pretty well by now, don't you think?"

All of the men nodded.

"So when you're fighting tomorrow, don't fight for the people you've never met. Don't fight for the King or the generals. This is something I'm just now starting to realize. None of those people can appreciate what you're doing, because none of them understand who you are. Instead, fight for each other, because the only way we're going to survive this is if we're going to stick together."

A fleeting look of regret swept over Liddell's face. Henry would never know what that look meant. That Liddell wished he had learned that lesson sooner. That perhaps he should have looked after his men more – perhaps then he wouldn't have lost so many at Loos.

"I hope you'll remember all of what I just said. Actually, I know you will – because if we can survive this battle, then we'll survive the rest of this godforsaken war. And you know what? When we get back home to our loves, we're going to remember every single thing that ever happened in this war. I doubt we'll learn anything – if we did, war would have gone extinct centuries ago – but we'll remember the whole, miserable lesson. And we'll remember the people we learned that lesson with. Gentlemen, this is the most important class of our lives. Please remember that.

'That's all I have to say. Go ahead and get some sleep. We have to march through Hell tomorrow."

Chapter VIII

Saturday, July 1

"It's time."

Liddell's whisper woke up the men, one by one. They opened their eyes to the darkness, and they wondered for a second if they were still asleep. But they noticed lights dancing around, like fireflies, as soldiers woke each other up for the attack ahead. The hand of the British Empire was balling itself up into a fist, ready to strike.

It had rained again during the night. Henry dipped his hands into a fresh puddle and splashed the water on his face. The water was warm and felt gritty, but it was still water, and it was enough to wake him up. At least, he was awake enough to find himself a cup of coffee.

As he began boiling water, the camp was slowly coming to. Groggy men began rifling through their bags, making sure they had what they needed for the long day that was ahead.

Henry poured himself a cup of steaming coffee, he suddenly swelled with newfound respect for Liddell. After the corporal's speech to the men the night before, Liddell had approached Henry. Henry had been expecting some harsh words from Liddell, something about the battle ahead, how good soldiers should follow orders no matter the circumstances involved.

Instead, Liddell told Henry to get some sleep instead of taking the sentry shift. When Henry asked who would stand in his place, the professor insisted that he would personally take the job. Henry was surprised by Liddell's sudden charity, but he readily accepted. Now, as Henry drank his coffee, he saw the corporal's eyes were bleary in the dancing lights. Feeling guilty, Henry poured another cup of coffee and approached Liddell.

Henry held out the cup of coffee. "Here you go."

Liddell smiled and took the cup. "Thank you."

"Well, I suppose it is the least I could do. After all, you were the one who took the night shift for me."

Liddell clinked his cup against Henry's. "May we live long enough for you to do sentry duty again tomorrow night."

Henry couldn't help but laugh. "Cheers."

As they drank, the sky began lighting up in the east. At first, Henry thought it was the sun rising for the morning. It took him a moment to realize, though, that the sun wouldn't rise for a bit longer. It was actually the shelling, intensifying even more than before. The batteries somewhere far behind Henry were lobbing everything they had. The first and final push was coming near.

It was time to assemble.

All of the men camped out in the huge dugout began filtering through the maze of trenches, heading towards the front line. As they moved, Liddell – who was behind the section, pushing the drowsy soldiers along – hissed in their ears, "Remember the plan, please."

The plane was a simple one: they were to advance in groups of four, two men trained in explosives, with the other two protecting them. When the command was given, they had to advance across no man's land, clear the trenches of any surviving Huns, and push through until they reached the village past the hills. It was a simple plan, but it relied on too many assumptions. Somehow, it reminded Henry of his plain tent back in the dugout, its fabric sinking deeper and deeper into the muddy foundation by the minute. All weight sinks, no matter how light.

Someone up ahead swore. The line marching through the trench halted momentarily.

"What's going on up there?" Someone hissed.

"Tripped over a cable," a voice called back. "Sorry."

The line kept moving again. As Henry turned the corner in the trench, he noticed that a telephone cable had been sticking up from the ground like a tree root. One of the soldiers had been lazy – those cables were supposed to be tucked into the earthy wall of the trench, unnoticed. Henry wondered if the accident had severed the cable. He had heard stories of such things happening, of soldiers accidentally breaking telephone cables, of artillerymen never receiving requests of support. A decade before, no one would have guessed that one man's fall would cause dozens, perhaps hundreds of others to fall later in battle.

They assembled along the firing line. To Henry's left was Anderson – to Henry's right was Noah. Henry and Noah looked at each other, the nerves written in their looks. The moment had come to be tested.

Henry was about to wish Noah good luck when the Texan, his face pale, whispered, "We're going to get through this. We have to get through it."

Noah said it with such a religious fervor that Henry believed it. The young noble from Nottingham nodded without realizing.

Henry turned back to face front, the trench wall just a few feet away. They had been positioned along a stretch of trench where the wall was very shallow – so instead of climbing a ladder, Henry could simply crawl up the side. Henry was not sure how much of a convenience that was.

He looked down at his rifle, to make sure that it was ready. He took a moment to admire how polished the weapon looked, even though he had been living in mud for the past week. However, he couldn't help but think how ridiculous the bayonet looked, fixed to the rifle. He doubted even his own grandfather, veteran of Queen Victoria's countless wars, ever used a bayonet. He suddenly felt obsolete, a relic chasing the ghosts of Napoleon's soldiers from a century before.

By then, the artillery had reached a terrible racket, plunging the battlefield into a clash of sound. Henry could barely hear himself think. And that was when a new sound came rolling over them. It was a dull, thunderous wave, one that shook his bones loose.

The men were silent, then someone finally asked, "What the hell was that?"

Liddell breathed, "The mines."

"The what?"

"They set off the mines," Liddell said, checking his watch by the pale light coming into the trench. The sun was starting to rise somewhere. "They're early, though."

"How early?"

"It shouldn't be for another ten, maybe fifteen minutes," Liddell said before crawling up the side of the trench. He peered over the side and swore. Henry asked, "What do you see?"

"I'm glad we didn't march through that. The blast would have blown us back to England."

Liddell continued squinting, trying to take in the rest of the field. "Damn it all, I wish I brought my opera-glasses with me."

"Is anyone else beginning to charge?"

"Not that I can see. They're probably all waiting until the exact moment."

Henry couldn't help it. He asked, "But shouldn't we go now? When the Germans are trying to recover from the blasts?"

"No, we wait. If we don't attack altogether, then we might as well not attack."

Henry knew that Liddell was right, but he didn't want the corporal to be right. He sighed and looked up and down the trench. The men were growing more and more nervous. Henry could see a few crying. Some were muttering quietly under their breath – was it prayer? Encouragement? Curses? Henry couldn't tell. He noticed that Noah was looking straight ahead. Some color had come back into the Texan's face, but as a cold gray. Noah now looked steely, hardened, ready for the fire.

But soon, all of the prayers wilted away. A soft snow of silence had fallen on the men. All of the artillery had stopped, the explosions gone. For the first time in days, Henry felt a stillness rush over him. And it was louder than any blast he had ever heard.

Liddell looked down at his watch – it was time. He shouted along the line, "All right, gentlemen, let's go! Move, move, move!"

As one, the men clambered up out of the trench and into the dawn's light echoing over the field. There was no mist that morning, and Henry could see for a mile. Not that there was much to see – the years of war had decimated the countryside. What hadn't been burnt to cinder had been chewed to splinters: gone were the barns, the roads, the pastures, the country life that once heralded. What remained were the craters of artillery, pockmarks on the earth. War represents man's first attempt at crafting a disease, one that could wipe out entire peoples, one that could sterilize landscapes.

Even with all of the devastation, there was some wildness. There were some fields, tall and weedy. Neither the farmers nor the artillery even could mow down those patches.

The march ahead was slow – his pack was weighing him down. He knew he needed his ammunition and grenades, but his shovel? Flares? He felt as if the pack weighed as much as he did, its contents stretching the fabric until he was sure it would rip and spill on the ground behind him. He wished he could drop the pack and run – rabbits don't survive in the world by trudging along. The quickest were the fittest, and the fittest always survived.

The German lines ahead were coming into focus. But even before Henry could see the spiderweb of trenches, the Huns had seen the British soldiers. Shots were beginning to ring out over the fields. He could hear cries all around him. This was not the way it was supposed to be. They were supposed to be marching on a dead enemy. And dead men shouldn't be able to fire a gun.

"Keep going, men!" Liddell shouted out. "Don't bunch up! You're making yourselves too easy of a target!"

Henry wanted to run more than anything. He could see the hulking carcass of a wagon just ahead of him, but it seemed a mile away at his slow pace. So he abandoned his pack. He slipped the straps off his shoulders and rushed towards safety in the distance. He slammed into the side of the wagon as the dirt danced around him with bullets.

He took a moment to collect himself. Taking deep, steadying breaths, Henry glanced around wildly. He could see that some of the other soldiers had the same idea, ditching their packs and running to avoid the hellfire. Others were not so lucky – a soldier, no older than Henry, saw the wagon too and began running towards it. A bullet came out of nowhere and slammed through his helmet. The boy fell back on the unforgiving ground, shaking wildly as if the murder exorcised him.

Henry had seen death before, but not that close. As he stared at the British corpse, the bullets kept coming, tearing up the body before his eyes.

Henry cried out, "Stop killing him! Stop it!" But he knew that monsters did not understand compassion, just as Germans did not understand English.

He spotted several men from his section plunging forward. It was a miracle that they were all still alive. Anderson and Huxley dove against the wagon on either side of Henry.

"What a hell of a morning!" Huxley yelled, checking his body to see if he was still intact.

"You're telling me!" Henry shouted back. "Did the others make it?"

"Not sure! What should we do now?"

"I saw...up ahead, to the left!" Anderson said, his voice drowned in the chatter of guns.

Henry asked, "You saw what?"

"A ditch! We can crawl through it."

Henry glanced around the side of the wagon. Anderson was right – there was a drainage ditch off to the side. The farmer who once tended to that field must have dug it, to stop the fields from flooding.

"Okay, we'll go on the count of three! Ready?"

The two others nodded quickly.

"One! Two..."

Anxious, Henry ran before he finished the count. He darted through the tall grass, his eyes on the ditch. He couldn't bring himself to look anywhere else. He knew that death would be staring back from all directions. He could hear heavy breathing behind him, the two others racing to keep up with the quick lance corporal.

The unseen Germans adjusted their fire for the sudden appearance of the three soldiers, but it was too late. The trio already dug into the ditch – the crevice was shallow, but it was just enough.

"Let's keep going!" Henry shouted, shuffling along as madly as he could.

He suddenly wished that he had kept his bag. It would have taken the brunt of any bullet that found its way into the ditch. Still, he ignored the rain of death and kept crawling along.

There was suddenly a sharp ding, followed by Huxley shouting, "Shit!"

Henry turned as best as he could. He saw Huxley shaking his head. Henry asked loudly, "Are you okay?"

"Bullet hit me."

"You hurt?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine! Ricocheted off my helmet."

They kept moving along.

Henry noticed that the ditch was beginning to even out with the field. He could see the ground getting churned up at the mouth of the ditch – the bullets were waiting for them.

Even worse, the Germans were anticipating the ditch being a problem. Henry could also see strings of barbed wire strewn at the end of the ditch, the wires propped up by stakes pounded into the soil. He looked behind him. Not only were Anderson and Huxley close on his feet, but so too were a number of other soldiers. Henry was leading a procession that could only go forward. It was too late to turn back.

Henry shouted, "I'm going to go ahead, see if I can find some cover! Someone, give me some cover!"

"Will do!" Huxley called out over the din.

"Don't move forward until I give the all clear! And watch out for the wire!"

All of the men behind Henry nodded solemnly. Anderson shouted, "Good luck, Henry!"

Henry crawled ahead until he was almost out in the open. The barbed wire dangled inches above his head. All it took was one misstep and he would be caught in a net of the stuff, held down for the German fire.

He suddenly wondered, _Why didn't our artillery wipe out the wire?_

It was no time to ask questions, though. Ducking as best as he could, he clambered out of the ditch and into the open. As he did so, he was horrified to find that he was being optimistic. The Germans didn't just lay the barbed wire around the ditch. No, no, they made a field of it, all of the way towards the first enemy trench.

Henry hopped over the wire as best as he could, bullets dogging him every step of the way. He could hear the gunfire behind him, Huxley covering him as best as he could. Henry wasn't sure how much help that was – the Germans were hidden too well. It was like shooting randomly into the darkness, hoping for a bite.

Twice, Henry had to duck for cover in his run.

Once, he thought he was dead.

He had felt a sharp thud against his side and he almost fell into a thicket of barbs. Henry crouched down and felt his ribs, to see if he was bleeding. By a miracle, the bullet had hit the butt of his rifle, cracking the wood open. But he was alive, at least for another second, maybe even a minute if he was lucky.

The first trench was just a few feet away. And, as he ran for it, he saw his first German. A helmeted head was rising above the trench, a ghost from its grave. The Hun was surprised to see Henry charging for him. The two men collided and fell back into the trench.

As the men struggled, Henry could see the Hun reaching for something off to the side. He glanced, saw it was a knife. By instinct, Henry punched the Hun in the side of the face, reached for his rifle, and plunged the bayonet into the German's stomach. The man gasped and sputtered as Henry pinned him to the ground. Henry wrenched the bayonet out and shot the dying man in the head.

It was the first man that Henry ever killed. But the young Brit didn't have the time to reflect, to mourn even. Without taking another look at the corpse, Henry glanced down the trench. He saw a flurry of soldiers, reloading their guns, pointing them over the wall at the battlefield. They were so scattered and so intense in the volleys, the Germans didn't know that Henry was in the trench with them.

With each breath, Henry took another shot. He knocked down four men before the Huns realized what had happened. They turned their sights on Henry, who quickly pulled up a corpse as a shield. It was not a moment too soon, as Henry felt bullets hitting the body. He heard moans and thought it was himself. It took a moment to realize that the body he was using as a shield was actually still alive.

Horrified, Henry tossed the soldier to the side and ducked behind a corner in the trench. Taking quick looks back, making sure no one was sneaking up behind him, Henry roared, "Move up! Move up!"

Ten seconds later, Huxley jumped in the trench beside him.

"Any trouble?"

"No, I...watch out!"

Huxley pushed Henry down and took a wild shot at a German running up from behind.

"Where's Raymond?"

"Still in the ditch!"

"Call him up – we need everyone here!"

Huxley roared, "Raymond! Get over here!"

The seconds passed, but no one came. Again, Huxley called out for their comrade, but all they heard was the whistle of bullets all around them. Henry said, panicked, "There's something wrong. I'm going to check."

"Be careful!"

Henry climbed up, just far enough to look over the trench. He nearly fell back by what he saw. He saw Anderson, hung up in the barbed wire, his arms outstretched, his eyes wide, his chest glistening red. The men in the trench behind Anderson desperately tried pulling the body down so they could get through.

Henry jumped back to the trench floor. Huxley took a shot at a German, hitting the soldier in the neck, and asked, "Where is he?"

"Dead."

Huxley turned quickly. He demanded, "Dead? Raymond's dead?"

Henry nodded grimly.

Huxley, a man who always tried to keep his cool, lost it. Screaming from either fury or frustration, he stormed the trench, startling the Germans who had taken cover. Henry rushed forward, hoping to stop his comrade from being reckless, when he saw a Hun appear out of nowhere. The German officer pulled out a pistol and aimed it, straight for Huxley's heart, finger on the trigger.

Then the officer fell over, the side of his head gone. British soldiers were now overrunning the trench, killing any and all Germans they could find. The battle was becoming bloodlust.

Liddell suddenly popped out of the thicket of fighting. Seeing Huxley in a rage, the corporal pinned him against the wall. Liddell roared, "Calm down! Don't act stupid now!"

It took a minute for Huxley to calm himself. He was no longer berserk, but he was now a quivering mess of tears. He slid down the wall and collapsed to the ground, sobbing, his hands to his face.

As the first trench was cleared of Germans, Henry took a moment to look over the wall, to see what was ahead. He was shocked to see a network of trenches running forever.

He slipped back down into the trench. Rapping on Liddell's helmet, Henry said, "Have you seen these trenches?"

Turning, Liddell yelled over the war, "Yeah, but I doubt we'll see much more of it!"

"Why?"

Liddell pointed at the other British soldiers, the ragged survivors of the earlier assault. He said, "We don't have enough to advance, let alone hold this!"

"Are you serious?"

"Damn right I'm serious."

Henry looked out over the sea of wretched faces. He did not want to admit it, but Liddell was right. He asked, "Shouldn't we be getting orders?"

"Yeah, tomorrow probably," Liddell retorted. He turned to some soldiers, and he snapped, "Man that wall now, goddammit! We don't want a counterattack!"

"So what are we going to do?" Henry persisted.

Liddell stopped giving orders and looked at Henry intently. Finally, he said, "I'm afraid we're going to have to do things your way."

"My way?"

Liddell nodded. He said quickly, "Never thought I would go against orders, but here we are."

He turned to the British men in the trench. He shouted, "Okay, here's what we're going to do! We're going to fall back, but first things first: we need to get these wounded back, now! If you're not carrying a man back to our lines, stay the hell in this trench! We need to buy some time to evacuate. Move it!"

Many of the men did not know who Liddell was, but they felt pressed into duty by his common sense. Not a single one questioned him. Men began carrying the wounded back to friendly lines, as countless soldiers defended the trench. Some of the men were posted along the wall – stopping an attack aboveground – while the others defended the twists and turns of the trench.

Henry was one of those along the wall. He found himself trading shots with several Germans all at once – at one point, a bullet hit the soil just inches from Henry's eyes. The dust hit Henry and he had to duck to wipe the dirt from his eyes.

When he resumed firing, he noticed that a number of Germans had leapt from the trenches ahead and were charging at their lines. Without thinking, Henry had picked his target – a stern, sallow man with a thick mustache – and fired. The shot hit the Hun in the groin, causing the monster to fall down with a cry. Henry kept at it, knocking down a few more Germans before the counterassault faded.

He felt a tap on his shoulder. Henry turned to see Noah standing to the side. Relieved to see his friend alive, Henry said, "Where have you been at?"

Noah pointed down the trench. "Fighting some Huns down there."

"Anyone else with you?"

"Just Nigel and Michael."

Henry asked, "Have you seen Dean?"

Noah shook his head. "No, but he'll be fine. He has his God protecting him."

"Raymond's dead."

Noah's eyes widened. He couldn't say anything but, "Damn."

They turned their eyes back on the German trench in front of them. The land seemed deserted – Henry figured that they were preparing for a fresh attack.

As they scanned for enemies, Noah muttered sarcastically, "I'm glad our artillery worked."

"Huxley was right from before. The Germans were prepared."

"Tell me about it. I just got a tour of one of their bunkers earlier. They were buried too deep for us to blast them away."

"All of those shells we fired this past week..."

Noah looked grim. "Wasted."

Henry sighed and turned back to the field. He saw a dark object tossed into the air and land some feet away.

"Grenade!" Henry shouted. The British solders ducked a second before the grenade exploded. Henry heard a scream coming from his left. He looked and saw a soldier on the trench floor, gripping at both of his bloody ears. A fellow soldier hastily tended to the wounded man.

Noah muttered, "The Huns might be bastards, but we can learn some lessons from them."

"How so?"

"That grenade did more to us than a week's worth of shelling to them!"

The battle raged on fiercely for the rest of the morning. The afternoon came with no relief. All of the wounded from that morning had been evacuated safely, but the makeshift medics brought back bad news. The orders finally arrived: the men had to hold the trench until reinforcements showed up – in three hours. They abandoned Liddell's strategy for retreat, hopeful that more Englishmen would be fighting alongside them soon.

So although the men were dusty and tattered, they kept at it. But as the sun rose in the sky, the men's sprits fell. No one else had advanced from the support lines.

What they discovered long after the battle was that there was a mistake in communications. The reinforcements promised were actually intended for another sector of the battlefield. The men were waiting to be rescued by ghosts. But even when the survivors found out, they could not blame their superiors for once. The battle was raging and felt omnipresent – there was no way for everyone to be everywhere at once. Not even the mighty Empire could perform miracles in numbers.

The soldiers slowly withdrew from the lines. Those still entrenched provided cover fire as a stream of British soldiers made their way back home to friendlier lines. Not all of them made it – Henry heard the occasional scream behind him as a lucky German bullet found its way into someone's back. What was worse, as the British withdrew, the cover fire obviously slackened. Henry looked down the trench, and saw few of their numbers left behind. He knew that it would be a hard fight back.

Liddell seemed to realize that as well. He roared at his section, "All of you, get back! Don't you worry about me!"

The men looked at their corporal with newfound concern. They heard Liddell's orders as a suicide note. They could not let their leader sign his name to such a letter.

Liddell read the reluctance in his men's eyes. This only made him more determined, though. He snarled, "Leave! That's an order!"

The men left, one by one. Some of them patted Liddell on the shoulder as they left, sort of an unspoken thanks. It was a muted appreciation, though, that Liddell still heard. Henry watched as each man retreated, praying that none of them were struck down. Thankfully, all of them made their way back safely. At one point, Henry saw Huxley fall and feared the worse. But Huxley had simply tripped over a dropped rifle, and continued running back.

Eventually, it was only Henry and Liddell left in their section of the trench. Henry scanned the trench for a headcount. He saw that the others were in the same predicament. The trench was now nearly abandoned, except for the unlucky British souls left behind.

Henry shouted to Liddell, "Come back in one piece!"

"I will, just go!"

Henry inhaled sharply and climbed out of the trench. He sprinted, not daring to look back. He could hear bullets kicking up the dirt around him almost immediately. But death biting at his heels only made him run faster. He took refuge behind the occasional tree stumps and dips in the earth. He refused to hide behind a corpse, or to use one as a shield. He had done that once, and once was enough for some things.

Finally, he made his way back, and not a moment too soon. He jumped awkwardly into the trench – his home for the longest week of his life – when he heard gunfire and a terrified cry. Henry thought the scream was his own, but turned and saw a comrade fall into the trench near him. The soldier clawed at yawning wounds in his back, itches that his hands could not reach.

Henry's lungs were fiery. He suddenly realized that he had not breathed at all during his dash. He fell back against the wall, raspy for a minute. His ankle was screaming from the fall – it felt like a sprain, maybe even broken. When he got his strength back, he understood something: Liddell was still caught in the German trench.

Henry scrambled up a ladder to the surface, ignoring the sharp pain from his foot. He peeked over the top, careful not to make himself a target for snipers. At that very second, he could see Liddell off in the distance. The corporal had just pulled himself out of the trench and was running back. Henry quietly begged Liddell to keep running.

But Henry's prayers went unheard.

Halfway between the trenches, Liddell suddenly collapsed. Even from a distance, Henry could see Liddell clutching his side, crying out. Henry felt the burning instinct to rescue. But the battlefield was alive with death, bullets skipping off the ground like pelting rain. There was nothing he could do for Liddell, even though the corporal had done so much for him.

With a loud groan, Liddell reached for his pistol and began firing towards German lines. He did not have the strength to aim the pistol, but he had just enough blood in him for revenge. Henry could hear the pistol thunder six times before it went silent. He saw Liddell lean back in the soil, trying to make himself comfortable. Henry was so far away, he could not tell if Liddell had died or was simply napping under July's sun.

Chapter IX

Later that night

Liddell was dead, though.

Henry knew it since that afternoon, but it took until nightfall – when the medics took to the battlefield under truce – for the death to be official. The battlefield's plague felt so potent that Henry was surprised the medics came back, or that they even wanted to go out in the first place. He heard somber whispers that just south of their position, medics were getting shot by Germans, uninterested in a flag of truce.

The wounded were not any better off than the dead were, though. High command had not anticipated the long list of casualties. A train of ambulances was scavenging the injured from the front lines, heading to field hospitals and safety. But the ambulances, even when crammed, could not haul away the dying fast enough. Henry could hear them from the dugout, their cries for mothers and water coming from the front line.

The intact were not any better off than the wounded, either. They had received their orders from the generals: they were to continue the assault the next morning. Either a distant high command could not believe the high casualties, or they simply scoffed at the numbers. Henry wondered what their weak ranks could possibly accomplish that next morning, given the tragedy they felt at their strongest.

If that pain wasn't enough, there was also the lesson learned. The British began learning the long lesson that morning, but they would not finish the class until years later, decades even. They found that the artillery barrage that they put up with for a week – a barrage they tolerated because it would kill all of the Huns – did not kill all of the Huns. In fact, the shells barely scratched the German helmets.

Everyone began to fault the other party for the failure. The British soldiers blamed their leaders for firing their limited artillery over a vast area, to the point where the barrage felt weak and scattered. Not to mention the fact that the Germans were buried so deep, the shells only shook the dust from their roofs.

The leaders then blamed the artillery batteries for failing to aim correctly.

Those manning the batteries then blamed the munitions workers back home in England. With war all around and soldiers shipped overseas, the factories in England emptied. Those who filled the empty positions were enthusiastic, but not experienced. They created millions of artillery shells, but a good many of them were duds, destined never to explode, never to hurt, never to kill.

Everyone blamed each other, and no one wanted to take the blame. No one wanted to admit that their pride had been their unraveling. Still, it felt that the barrage had killed more British soldiers in the end than it did Huns.

It was going to be a long night for everyone on the British lines.

Henry felt all of this weight on his shoulders now. With Liddell's death, Henry was promoted – without ceremony, without acknowledgment even – to lead his section of men. Henry felt more somber than he ever had – he wondered if this responsibility was what had made Liddell so funereal all of that time.

Henry knew that he was supposed to console his men – they were now his men – but he could not find the right words to say. So he distanced himself from the group, sitting in a far corner of the dugout, looking up at the stars heavenly while smoking heavily. The skies were clear and the stars had never looked so thick and near. The moon especially never looked so close, so domesticated like cattle. Henry wanted so badly to reach out to it. But the awestruck sight did nothing to relieve him – if anything, it mocked him. He could not understand how something so beautiful could rise out of something so ugly.

Henry was sitting on a box, and he could feel the box sink beneath him. The wet world was slowly reclaiming all that had been taken from her. He sighed and smacked at a mosquito that was chattering in his ear. He missed and the bug hovered over him, laughing. Henry had been hoping for a week that he would at least get used to the trenches. He did not have to enjoy it, or celebrate it. He just wanted to be comfortable in it. But as much as he failed at becoming one with the trench, the trench was succeeding in fusing with him. Day by day, Henry was becoming more sullen, more quiet, more wet with sweat and tears. He gave his soul a close look and realized that he could find death within himself, just as countless others had found death in the trenches. He was going to be his own convenient end.

As Henry wondered about himself, he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see Jones standing before him, quiet and steady as always.

"Are you going to join us, Henry?"

"Why?" Henry asked without thinking.

"We want to know what's going on tomorrow."

Henry was quiet for the longest moment before finally saying, "Okay."

He followed Jones back to the fire, where the other men of the section were gathered. They were all sober in their own ways. They were desperately trying to comprehend the end of Liddell and Anderson. Noah and Huxley were smoking, their cigarettes bursting with almost as much smoke as the blazing fire. Huxley looked more solemn than ever – he reminded Henry of the only funeral he ever attended, that pained look on the old man's face after delivering the eulogy. Henry knew that Huxley was in shards over his friend Anderson's death. Anderson had always been their cheer – Henry did not even know if he could ever laugh again.

Jones sat reading his Bible, although he knew the story by heart. Even Brown, the inevitable jackass of the group, sat with a sad dignity, not doing anything at all, but still looking regal in the flickering lights. All of the men had lost their smiles, their laughter, their playfulness. The war aged what it didn't kill. So while the soldiers before Henry were very much alive, they were beyond the age of men. They had lost count of their years. They were ageless.

All ears heard the approaching footsteps. All eyes fell on Henry. All minds wanted to know what Henry's orders were. All hearts would follow their new leader into the grave – the loyalty startling, even for the soldiers. The group had grown as one, and each man knew the other's weaknesses. They all knew what made Henry weak, but they knew that Henry knew those things as well. This only made their respect for him kindle.

Henry saw all of this, the curious soldiers waiting for him to speak. Wanting to take the weight off his screaming ankle, Henry sat down with a sigh. He unlaced his boot a little and massaged the tender skin, aware that all eyes were on him. He needed more time to think, to know the right words to say. But he wondered if there were any right words at all. So he took a deep breath and asked, "How's everyone holding up?"

Silence. Henry had been expecting that.

"This has been a hell of a day, gentlemen. I don't know how else to say it. We lost Corporal Liddell and Private Anderson. The army may give us two more soldiers soon as replacements, but we'll always be two men short. I doubt those cuts will ever heal – they'll always bleed, every time we move, every time we speak. And how could we forget them? Anderson gave his life so that we could get to that blasted trench this morning. And Liddell gave his life so we could come back. We can now say we've been to Hell and back because of those two.

'Still, those cuts will never heal. But why would we want them to?"

Henry paused to gather his thoughts.

"We are alive because they are dead. As painful as their deaths are, the pain shows us just how real and alive and breathing we are. They're still writing the lists of the dead, but I wouldn't be surprised if thousands of men lost their lives today. And for what? Why did they die? We took a trench, and we gave it right back to the Germans for their troubles. This battle's no better than this war – it's a failure for every man that died today."

Jones couldn't help it. He asked, "What do you mean by all of this?"

"I'm getting there, so don't worry. I've heard for a long time that men have hated this war, but I didn't understand it until today, when I saw our corporal dying out on that field. We were tricked into this war by the promise of adventure. Those of us who survive this war are going to walk away disappointed. I know very little of the world, but I certainly know that much. Because I know that I'm going to walk away disappointed.

'But I've been asking myself a very important question tonight. If I'm not fighting for gallantry, then what the hell am I fighting for? I mean, when you stop and think about it, this whole war started because we have good manners. Some archduke gets shot out East and, because everyone is friends with everyone, we all got dragged into the fight. So we can't get out of this mess with talk of chivalry and manners, because that's how this all started. I think it is time to abandon those excuses. I think it's time for revenge. I'm going to stop fighting for the King. I'm going to start fighting for the two men we lost today in this section, two men out of the thousands killed. I'm going to fight for those two men as they fought for me, and as they _would have_ fought for me. I think war tests loyalty more than it does courage. So even though I've known for the longest time what side I'm fighting on, tonight I'm finally starting to understand it.

'So for tomorrow, they're telling us that we have to do the same as today. They say that we have to retake that same, godforsaken trench we took and lost today. They're promising reinforcements for the assault tomorrow, but I have lost all faith in our generals. My grandfather once told me that trust is like glass – you can put it back together after it breaks, but it is slow and painful every step of the way, and you'll notice the breaks forever. And our generals have shattered that trust into countless shards.

'Still, I'm going to fight tomorrow morning. I'm going to charge against the same Germans in the same trench in the same battlefield. It'd be foolish to expect the outcome to be any different than it was today. Still, I'm going to plunge into the fight, even though I may very well drown – we all might. But I'm going to do it for you all, and Raymond, and Neville, not for our leaders. I've never seen our leaders outside of a newspaper. But I know all of you, down to your middle names, your hometowns, your passions.

'I know that what I just said is my opinion. I know that tomorrow, you may fight – or not fight – for different reasons. But we're all in this together, I want you to remember that. We all dug this grave together, and it's going to take all of our hands to climb back out. And, well, that's it."

When Henry finished, he felt like a true soldier, like his grandfather, but he wasn't sure if he deserved the feeling.

The rest of the men around the fire were quiet for a minute. Then, Bishop spoke up. "I'm going to fight tomorrow, and I'm going to fight for every one of you."

Jones followed, a bit more hesitant. Clutching his Bible tightly, he said, "Me too."

Brown nodded and muttered, "Me as well."

Almost all of the men seemed to be in agreement. But Noah was the only one not to speak. The others looked at him, expectant. Henry was especially nervous, waiting for support from Noah, his best friend in that whole mess.

But when Noah spoke, his voice shook with a cold fury that was not his own. He snarled, "I can't believe you all are going along with this."

Surprised, the men stared at Noah. Henry's jaw dropped slightly. He asked, "Why? What do you mean?"

"I mean this, all of what you just said. They're pretty words, but they're no better than your generals' orders..."

Brown argued, "They're as much your generals as they are ours."

But Henry knew what Noah meant – he knew the American's secret. He held up his hand for silence and asked Noah, "Do you really want to have this talk right now?"

"I might as well. I doubt I'll live to continue it tomorrow."

"Noah..."

"No! You listen to me!"

The men around the fire transformed from surprised to nervous. They were witnessing mutiny before their very own eyes.

Noah continued, his eyes aflame. "You say you're no longer fighting for the generals. You say you're fighting for those we lost. But if you charge into battle tomorrow, you're nothing more than a soldier under those generals. You all would be. None of us should be falling for it – we're all smarter than that."

"Are you proposing mutiny?"

Noah said quickly, hopefully, "I'm proposing we all run away. You said so yourself, that our generals don't deserve to be our generals. We're our own commanders, and if we believe that running away saves us, then we should."

"Noah, I order you to stop with this nonsense..."

"See! There you go again. For a man who hates being ordered, you sure do love to order folks around. And fighting for revenge?" He asked, laughing bitterly. "For every man you kill, they're going to kill two of ours right back. It's a bloody wheel, and it's going to spin out of control really fast with that kind of talk."

Noah took a breath and continued, "Now, I've spent a lot of time in the Appalachians..."

"Where's that?" Brown wondered, under his breath. Henry was confused as well.

"...and you know what? I crossed paths with a lot of preachers. They were all nasty fellows. No offense, Dean."

"None taken," Jones said.

"You know what one of those preachers told me, Henry? Told me I would die the day I turned my back on God. Well, I turned years ago, and I'm more alive than ever. Those men of God can't see my future anymore than I can," he spat. "If anyone here is a prophet, it's our damn leaders. They can tell us when we're going to die, right down to the minute we lead the charge against those trenches. I refuse to work under those kind of men, just like I refuse to work under my father, just as I refuse to work under God. And you know what? That's something I should have done a long time ago..."

Noah stopped talking as he saw Henry holding his rifle level at him, ready to fire. None of the other men breathed. Henry refused to take his eyes off Noah, so he couldn't see past the aura of the campfire. But Henry had a feeling that the rest of the camp was watching the event unfold, breathless.

"What are you doing, Henry?" Huxley asked, nervous.

"Yeah, what are you doing?" Noah asked, his voice still as water.

Henry lowered his voice, but it still rumbled. "Don't be foolish. You know why I'm going to shoot you. You're talking mutiny. I'm not going to let that happen."

Henry was terrified of what Noah represented – he feared that this brave talk of backing down would be contagious. He feared it would spread to the other men and infect them, ruin them. Henry had to contain it, before it could spread out of control.

And that was why he was pointing a rifle at his friend's face, ready to press the trigger, ready to aim, to fire.

But the finger never fell. Henry just stood there, frozen in time. Slowly but surely, he dropped the rifle down. All that time, Noah never moved, his eyes steady as he watched the drama being acted out in front of him. There was no look of anger in his eyes, no sense of betrayal by his closest friend in the war. If there was anything, there was an intense sadness. As happy as he must have been to be alive still, Noah seemed none too pleased to live with it.

"Get out of my sight," Henry snapped, waving him away.

And Noah did, bleeding back into the darkness like a wraith.

Henry tried to put the event out of mind, but it was difficult to do so. Even though Noah had followed that one order and disappeared for the night, he was very much alive in Henry's mind. That was how the lance corporal found himself awake for the rest of the night, turning in his sleeping bag, replaying the memory. Henry had to admit that the whole venture was foolish – there were proper channels to go through for that sort of treason. There was court-martial to go through, the whole, drawn-out procedure. It was bad enough for Henry, being a viscount, a soldier, and now a leader – he did not feel like adding God to his credentials. He did not like choosing who lived and who died.

There was a tap on his shoulder. Henry turned to look, but it was impossible in the pitch. He asked, "Who's there?"

"It's me, Noah."

Henry sighed. "What do you want now?"

"Listen, I just want to say..."

"What, to say you're sorry? Listen, if you were really sorry, you wouldn't have done what you did."

"I know, I know. That's why I'm not here to apologize."

Henry couldn't help but be amused, as angry as he was with Noah. "Oh?"

"I still think I'm in the right here. I haven't known you for long, Henry, but I think I know you well. I know you don't want to fight for this ridiculous cause, this political circus. Like you said before, we've never even met the people we're fighting for. That's why I'm not fighting for them anymore."

"I think you've already established that."

"I like to think so, too."

Henry asked, "So why are you here, still? Why haven't you fled, like you said you will?"

"I almost did. About ten, maybe fifteen minutes ago. I was all packed up and ready to go. But I knew that leaving meant abandoning all of you fellows. This war isn't mine to fight, but you all are practically the only family I have left. So no, I won't fight for anyone. I won't fight for the King, I won't fight for Field Marshal Haig, and I won't fight for you. But I will fight _with_ you, though."

"With me?"

Noah nodded in the darkness. "That's what friends do, right? I've never had a friend before, truth be told. All I know about the world is what my books have taught me."

Henry thought about all of the books he had back home in England, books that talked about the adventure in war. Henry wanted to say that books tricked people into misery, but he didn't say it.

Instead, Henry said with genuine warmth, "Thank you for doing this, Noah. You don't know how much I appreciate it. It is terrible enough that we lost two men yesterday morning. I don't know how we would have faced tomorrow with another gone. We're all too valuable to disappear."

Noah said sagely, "Well, you never know what loss feels like until you find it."

"I won't let you down, though – I'll make that a point."

"Same here, Henry."

And even though the darkness was everywhere, their hands still found each other and shook firmly.

Interval

March 5, 1901

Parlor at Carrington Estate

"Henry, Henry! Come over here. Have I ever told you about the time I fought the Zulus? Well, it was during the winter of '79, and we were marching along the Inyezane. At one point, some of those Zulu bastards took some shots at us from the fields. So the colonel sent some of us to root them out. We simply couldn't risk those damn scouts reporting back on our column's position.

'Anyway, so we're combing the fields when we come across this village. It was a tiny village, the sort you probably hear about in your schooling. Just a group of huts, surrounded all about with thorny shrubs – you know, to keep the lions out at night. We searched the village to see if any of those scouts were hiding out there.

'Unfortunately, we did not find a single scout there. The villagers didn't even know that a war was going on in the countryside about them. I was never so envious of someone so ignorant. I was also curious about them. I noticed that each of them was wearing robes made of the whitest colors you would ever see. They almost looked like priests with those clothes. The other soldiers did not care in the slightest, but I asked one of the villages about it. Yes, I knew the language all right – I could speak it like a native. I'm sad to say that I've forgotten much of it since, though.

'Anyway, so I asked them, 'Why are you all wearing those white clothes?' They gave me the most interesting answer, one that I still think about some nights. They told me that they were celebrating a terrible anniversary. Some years before, a wildfire had raged through that part of the country. It had ravaged the fields and chased away the game. Many of those who had survived the fires had died in the months after, from the starvation that settled in. Just think, such a proud and noble people, nearly wiped out by the savage wilderness.

'I was confused by this answer, though. I wondered, naturally, why they would choose to celebrate this sadness. Not only celebrate it, mind you, but to do so with the whitest whites. Here, we mourn death and destruction with black clothes. When my mother died, I wore a black suit for a year after. But here was this Zulu village, wearing all white! When I asked them further, an elder told me that the fires had not destroyed them, only the things they had.

'Now, here in England, we are sad, terribly sad, when we lose our belongings. But those people...they thought that the fires had burned away all of their corruption. The tragedy had cleaned their souls, leaving them fresh and naïve and pure. And that, my boy, was what they celebrated. That was one of the many reasons why I admired them so.

'I'm sure in school, they teach you that the Africans are a savage people, that they are beneath our Empire. Let me tell you this: they are a people who remember their past. They are a people who not only remember but are willing to fight for those memories. I thought I would never see something so admirable until I saw it. And remember, if someone chooses to fight you, they will always be your equal. Only those who choose to surrender and grovel are your inferiors. Many of our countrymen forget that a good fight makes a good friend. You are too young to understand that yourself, but hopefully you will, one day. Wisdom like that is what makes our Carrington name so great after all!"

'Now, all of this talk has made me thirsty. How about we have some tea before supper?"

Chapter X

Sunday, July 2

When Henry woke up, it was still dark outside. As he tiredly woke up the other men for the morning assault, he felt the familiar pangs of déjà vu. That morning felt like the one before, with the early waking, the nervousness. Soon, the bullets would be flying the same as they did before – he was expecting it, but not looking forward to it. The only thing that was different was now he was doing Liddell's job, preparing the section for the attack.

The men seemed to understand the repetition as well. They, too, found no comfort in the strange familiarity. As they quietly ate their breakfast by the fire, Brown was puffing steadily, his cigarette smoke pushed by the wind into the others' faces.

"Michael, you mind cutting that out?" Huxley asked.

Brown retorted, "I'm just smoking before my execution. Let a man have his last request."

"And for a last request, you just want a cigarette?"

"Yeah. Well, I don't have much of an imagination."

Huxley retorted, "Yeah, we already knew that much."

Brown swore good-naturedly and asked, "So, you genius you, what would you ask for?"

Huxley smiled slightly, his happiness haunting in the campfire. "I once had a great night with a woman back in London. She was a wife of some politician. I wouldn't mind having another night with her."

Bishop joked, "With all of your talk, I wouldn't be surprised if it was the Prime Minister's wife."

Huxley only smiled broadly.

Bishop asked, a bit more seriously, "It wasn't his wife, was it?"

"Soon-to-be dead men don't tell tales. What about you?"

Bishop mused for a moment. He said, "Me, well, I wouldn't mind having a gun."

Huxley laughed. "I don't think they would allow the man to bring a gun to his own execution. That would just make it too fair, don't you think?"

"Perhaps."

Henry said quietly, "Okay, men, finish up your meals. We have to fight our war soon."

The laughing mood around the fire was doused. The men suddenly remembered why they were sitting in a muddy trench in France.

As the men finished their meals, Henry took one last look at the trenches around them. He wasn't sure if he would ever see them again. A little bit of him was hoping he never would – even though dying meant being buried, he was sure that the grave plot would be more peaceful than an infested trench. He imagined that the suffocation of dirt around the body was no different than the fetus swaddled in the womb. He wondered if the Hindus were on to something with their talk of rebirth.

God, I can only hope death isn't as hard as life.

The fields outside of the trench reminded him of the wilderness back home. He spent the short years of his childhood running and playing in fields like that. The world dressed up and looked beautiful for those days. But the trenches – with their long grooves cut in the soil – they were ugly wrinkles.

If this world was a phonograph, then this war was the longest scratch.

The men, learning their lessons from the day before, abandoned most of their gear in the dugout. They only took the bare necessities with them. The essentials varied between men, but most simply brought their rifle and spare ammunition, a few carrying along grenades. In spite of everything, Henry felt strangely pleased, marching into battle without the weight on his back. Still, he felt no lighter than he did before, his shoulders hurting with a new sense of responsibility.

Finally, the order was given. Men began shuffling towards the dugout's exits, ready to march into death. Henry's section was towards the front of the movement, and so they found out immediately there would be problems.

The network of support trenches had been transformed into a full-fledged hospital overnight. The wounded from the day before were strewn awkwardly along the trench floor. Medics stepped gingerly between the bodies, tending to the injured however they could.

Huxley swore sharply. "Now, who thought that this would be a good idea?"

Henry shrugged. "The ambulances must be overwhelmed still. Besides, the trenches are a better place for these men."

"Better?"

Henry pointed to the field beyond the trenches. "It's better than leaving them out there for the Germans to practice shooting."

But the impromptu field hospital created more problems than it solved. Perhaps the biggest problem was the issue of movement. Henry knew immediately that it would be impossible to go through the trenches – the crevices were simply too crowded. They would have to find another way through, and Henry knew of only one way.

He simply said, "We have to walk aboveground."

The others looked at him, aghast. Brown asked, incredulous, "You mean we'll have to march in plain view of their snipers? We'll be dead before we even get to our own firing line."

"It's the only way," Henry said, pointing at the motion to their left and right. "See? Everyone else is doing the same. It's the only way."

Henry desperately wished there was another means, but there was none. So reluctantly, the men all began climbing up the wall of the dugout, towards the surface. As they helped each other up, Henry looked as far ahead as he could. The sun was slowly rising, and he could see nothing between himself and the German lines in the distance. This meant, of course, that there was nothing between him and the bullets.

Henry breathed and stepped forward.

He began with a jog, crouched slightly. The others behind him followed suit. He wanted them to stay invisible for as long as they could. It was now a race against being spotted in the morning light, and time was already up.

But when the clock ran out of time, there was still a ticking. Bullets began hitting the ground as the men moved quickly. The Germans had spotted them, and the British had not even begun their true assault yet.

He heard men groaning and crying around him as he picked up his pace. The men were being shot in their own territory – one of the worst ways to die in war. Brown grunted and fell to Henry's left. Henry glanced back to see Brown collapsed on the ground, grimacing, crying, clutching at his gaping stomach. Henry wanted to help, but there was no time.

It was the last time he ever saw Brown.

But Henry had no time to mourn. He saw the friendly firing trench just ahead. He knew the trench was too wide to jump, so Henry leapt into the crevice and began clambering up the other side. Several soldiers thought they were athletic enough to jump the trench. Some of them made it, barely, but others were not so lucky. Henry could hear soldiers hitting the earthen wall hard and sliding down to the trench floor. As Henry landed on the trench bottom, wincing with his injured ankle, he heard a yell behind him. He turned, expecting another of his men to be dead. Bishop, not seeing the trench until it was too late, fell in. He landed hard, his shoulder connecting with the floor.

"Are you okay?" Henry yelled out.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Bishop grunted, tears of pain in his eyes. He got up and started climbing the wall with Henry and the others.

When they cleared the trench, they found themselves officially in battle. As Henry began running and ducking for cover, he realized that it was no different than the day before. He wondered if they would be able to get past the first German trench. Somehow, he doubted it.

Henry ducked down in the grass as the machine guns rattled. With bullets whizzing overhead, Henry began crawling through the field. The grass was rough, and it scratched and irritated his skin. He was glad that was the most he had to put up with at the moment.

He heard screaming all around him as soldiers fell, staining the grasses scarlet. He knew it was only a matter of time before the bullets found him too – they swarmed like mosquitoes in the field, thirsty for blood.

All along the fields, men ran headfirst into death. As much as each man fell to the ground, clumsy with wounds, they never looked so kingly. Each of them was bleeding for a land that was more of a concept than an empire – England was infinite as far as they knew. She stretched from London to New Delhi, from that current moment back to William the Conqueror. The young soldiers dying on that field at Somme were no different from the archers at Agincourt, the dragoons at Waterloo, and the Highlanders at Balaclava. They were all sailboats on a sea of glass, pushed easily by the bully winds. There was no slowing down, no stopping unless at the edge of a bullet.

He heard the grass next to him rustle. Startled, Henry turned to see Bishop and Noah crawling alongside him. Both men looked stony, as if they dropped their humanity somewhere behind them.

"How much further does this grass go?" Bishop called out over the gunfire.

"Not much," Henry said tensely. "Have you seen Edward? Dean?"

"Yeah," Noah said. "Both are to our right, not too far off. Where's Michael?"

Henry knew the terrible truth about Brown, but he couldn't bring himself to say it. He fell silent, and the others, knowing, kept crawling.

The grass soon cleared and they found themselves at the edge of the field. Through the blades, Henry could see a tumbled hill of dirt ahead. Once again, they had come face-to-face with the first German trench.

"You see that?" Henry asked the others. They nodded silently.

"When I say go, we go. Okay?"

They nodded again.

Henry hyperventilated the fear out of him.

"Okay...go!"

As one, the three leapt up from the grass and charged at the trench. They leapt in before a surprised machine gunner swept his gun in their direction. Disaster fell as the trio did, though. As soon as they landed, a nearby German spotted them and took a shot. Of the three, Bishop fell back. Henry shot twice in revenge, cracking the Hun in the jaw. Noah pulled Bishop to the safety of a nearby recess in the wall. Henry looked out for them, taking shots at any Germans he saw. Up and down the trench, the same story was being written. British soldiers, many of them bloodied, were now fighting the German defenders hand-to-hand. Screams echoed through the trench – Henry couldn't tell if the cries for help were British or German.

Screams are truly one of the few universals.

It took ten minutes for the trench to be cleared of Huns. Henry peeked above the surface and saw Germans retreating into the next trench ahead. He took a couple shots, only managing to hit one German. The enemy soldier screamed as he fell, his leg ruined and paralyzed. Henry knew what to expect next – the day before had been their practice run, after all. He called out, "Grenades, men! Toss them!"

Several men nearby took their grenades out of their packs and threw them over. Three grenades landed in the next German trench, one landed on the new battlefield between them. Henry duck as the string of blasts rumbled, stirring the soil.

As the dust cleared, Henry looked through the dirty mist. He could see the German helmets through the mess. Henry fired, and one of the helmets vanished with a cry. Before the dust could clear, though, Henry saw the faint outlines of some British soldiers making their way forward.

"No, no! Fall back! Don't go..."

Henry's shriek went unheard though. There was the chatter of gunfire from the German trench, and the British soldiers vanished.

Henry shook his head at the instinct to charge. He leapt back into the trench and called out to Noah, "Check on Nigel! Make sure he's okay."

Noah nodded and rushed to the recess where they had hid Bishop. As Noah checked, Henry continued firing and throwing grenades. The war was exploding all around him, even worse than the day before. His ears were ringing, and all he could hear was blood. While reloading, his right ear felt itchy. He rubbed it for a moment and looked down at his fingers. He could see the red stuff on his fingers, slicked.

Henry wiped his fingers roughly on the dirt wall and continued firing over the trench.

Suddenly, a mass came up over the trench ahead. Like the surf hitting rocks, the Germans were leaping up from their trench, ready to charge en masse. Henry did not aim, nor did he need to. Germans filled up his sights, wherever he aimed his rifle. One of Henry's bullets shattered a Hun's helmet, killing the soldier as it dug into his brain. Again, there was no time to weep. He would have to say a prayer for the fallen later.

The German advance melted under the heat of British fire. As the Huns began to give up their charge and fall back, some British soldiers pursued them, firing at the retreating backs. The British soldiers once more made the mistake of advancing too far, too fast though. They soon found themselves caught out in a rain of Hun bullets, and all of those British men died in seconds.

As Henry continued firing from the safety of the trench, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, Noah appear. The American was standing at the foot of the trench, looking up at Henry with anxious eyes.

"Henry!" Noah shouted.

"What?" Henry called out over the chatter of guns.

"It's Nigel."

"What about him?" Henry asked, afraid of the answer.

"He's dead," Noah said.

"What?" Henry asked, more from being deafened then being incredulous.

Noah screamed, "Dead! He's dead!"

Their sniper, their best shot, a William Tell to his generation, dead at the hands of what he loved. Henry wondered if that was the worst sort of death or the best.

The battle raged back and forth for most of the day, the world stretched taut in the tug-of-war. Neither side budged much, trading ground for blood and blood for ground well through the afternoon. Henry didn't have the time to be bothered with the large numbers – he was most worried about those left in his section. He had not seen Huxley and Jones since the beginning of the battle, and he could only assume that they were still alive. Brown and Bishop were certainly dead, though, their bodies haunting Henry's mind at every turn.

As night arrived, Henry came to the slow realization that, once more, they would have to retreat. They had held out for a long time, certainly longer than the day before. However, they were scattered over deadly territory – like fish darting about in the whale's baleen, the British had to withdraw before they were trapped for good. And once again, there were no reinforcements to come to their rescue, no strongman to pry open the jaws of death. And so they began their long march backwards.

One by one, each British man ran back to friendly lines. Some made it, others simply did not. Soldiers stepped over comrades who had been shot in the back – the soldiers alive expected the same fate. Each man came back as a shadow. Those who stayed alive were silhouettes, never feeling quite human again. The ones who passed, they marched back as shades.

Once again, Henry was one of the few left behind in the captured trench. Noah was alongside him – two loyal friends, both firing their overheated rifles. And that was when Noah's rifle ran out of ammo. There were no more bullets to be had, as they had scavenged all of the clips they could find in the immediate area.

"It's time to go!" Henry called out.

Noah nodded. He looked carefully over the trench, making sure that there were no German guns aimed at him. He peered down and shouted, "Let's go!"

Henry scrambled up to the surface with Noah. They both ran for the nearest shelter, the remnants of a small shed. They were almost there when the world came undone beneath them. Both men fell hard on the ground, dust sprinkling on them as they groaned. There were lions of roar all around them, and Henry thought that the world exploded at first, in shades of gray and brown. The culprit was an artillery shell, one that hit too close for comfort. Henry looked wildly about for his friend, and saw that he was okay, but shaken. Noah's nose was bloody, broken from the sudden fall.

"Who's firing?" Noah shouted.

"I don't know!"

It was true – Henry did not know who was firing the shells. It could have been German artillery, firing at the retreating British. Or it could have been friendly batteries, firing too short of their targets.

"We have to get out of here!"

As soon as Noah said that, Henry could hear whistles in the air. The shells were hunting them down again.

"Come on!"

Henry grabbed Noah by the sleeve, and the two men rushed from their cover. They drove hard through the field, bending the tall grass with their boots. Another shell landed, this one even closer than the one before. The trauma of the blast picked both men off their feet, slamming them into the ground once more. Henry could taste the dirt. There was a rusty taste to it for some strange reason.

He shook his head and stumbled back up to his feet. He picked up Noah, who was still groggy from the fall, and both men shuffled towards friendly lines. As they moved, the momentum jarred their shattered senses back together. Once again, the fog cleared, and the world seemed crisper than autumn. Henry could see friendly trenches just ahead. They were almost there. They jumped over fallen bodies along the way. With each body that Henry stepped over, he realized more what the war meant. It was a thought that had bothered him for a bit, and one that gave a different answer each time. Henry finally realized his lesson from the war: it taught him that people were their own epidemic. Of all of the diseases – the plague, leprosy, the flu, all of that – man was the worst. He wondered how many others arrived at the same conclusion before...

Suddenly, everything shattered, and everything went pitch.

When Henry came to, the first thing he realized was that he could taste charcoal. Everything around him was blurred, the battle moving around him in thick swirls of watercolors. Numbly, he tried to stand up, but his legs were weak and fell beneath him. Henry collapsed in the dirt, bit into the soil. Even then, the foal taste of charcoal lingered on his tongue, and he wasn't sure why.

He did not realize it, at least not at first, but the world felt deaf. Through the haze, he could see soldiers running past, their lips moving, forming soundless words. Another explosion erupted nearby, but its venomous sound could not be heard. It was as if the world had found an antidote for war, finally.

But the world was beginning to come together again, slowly, even in the rip of war. And as his ears began to listen again, as his eyes began to see again, as his fingers began to feel again, Henry could also feel the pain. It was crawling all over his head, like spiders. His first reflex was tears, tears of overwhelming pain, his second reflex was reaching up and grabbing at his head wound. His fingers slipped on the gash – without looking, Henry knew his fingers were sliding on blood. But still, he gripped the side of his head, as if to stop his spirit from leaving his body.

And it was with the thought of spirits and mortality that Henry remembered the moments before the crisis. He struggled to look to the left, and that was when he saw his friend Noah. The American, animated with vigor just minutes before, was sprawled on the ground. His jaw had been blown away by the wind of shrapnel, his eyes shocked, his fingers still gripping at his rifle. And that was it – that was all that was left of a great man.

Henry could feel a new pain rushing through him, and he wept even harder than before.

But the war did not paused for the man crying over a fallen friend – it could not afford to stop for every tragedy that it manifested. The British and Canadian soldiers still plunged ahead, the German machine guns still rattled. And so, for all of the flurry and fury of motion, the battle ignored the British man weeping over the dead American, even though the man was screaming louder than the shells whistling overhead.

Henry felt fingers wrap around him. He tried to struggle, but he had gone weak again.

A tense, Scottish voice snapped, "Stay calm, boy! Just stay calm."

The fingers lifted him up and set him down in fabric. Henry whispered, "Noah, Noah..."

He wanted them to understand, to rescue Noah, to fix a broken friend.

But the Scottish voice misunderstood. "Yes! We're getting you out of here!"

Henry felt lost in translation, and the next minute, he was lost altogether.

Chapter XI

Monday, July 3

Henry did not remember much of what happened after that. The air around him was oppressive, burning, silent. He felt that he was encased in a statue on a summer day. At times, the disconnect from the world was so rampant that Henry wondered if he was dreaming, that his anguish, his tears were not reality. And it was that those moments where Henry floated back up to the surface, tasting air that scalded his lungs. It was enough to make him want to go back to drowning.

Luckily, those moments where he woke up were brief and sudden. The first time, he could feel himself bouncing. He could see blackness floating by – he did not know it then, but he was staring up at a raincloud. He felt warm breath nearby – there was someone, some man leaning over him. He was still out in the fields, being carried over scraps that were once machinery, bodies that were once men. Shells screamed in agony overhead.

The second time he woke, the air felt darker, but cooler. He could smell something in the air, some scent that reminded him of burning rubber. He idly wondered what was on fire. He did not know it then either, but he was smelling burnt flesh from a screaming soldier nearby. The soldier's crying was mute in Henry's ears, though. He could just move his head to the side. He could see soldiers laying down, medics looming over them, lips wordlessly screaming for mothers and lovers.

Henry had been scared before, but he had never felt so terrified in his life, hearing such strong men in their moments of weakness.

The third time he woke up, Henry could begin to hear. There were sharp, clear voices crowding around him. His vision was blurry. He wondered if this, this awakening of the senses, was a reenactment of birth. There were frantic faces looking down upon him.

"He's losing a lot of blood from his head. Damn it, I need more bandages!"

"I'm looking, I'm looking!"

"Hang in there, my boy. Don't die on us now. I've already lost enough today. Come on!"

For the first time in his life, Henry followed an order without thought. He tried to stay with the voices, but they were already leaving him, just like everyone and everything else he ever had in life. The world was abandoning him, like some unwanted child on the church's step. His last thought before drifting back to sleep was wrenching: _Why doesn't the world love me anymore?_

And then, all went dark and silent.

And then, all went bright and loud.

Henry found himself in a bed somewhere, tangled up in the sheets and his pain, his hands wrapped around the edges of the mattress. He felt how thin the mattress was, how he could grasp the depth of it with his hand. The bedding was papery and rustled like crumbling autumn leaves under his searching fingers. A couple of tears slid down Henry's face. He was silently crying, not from the pain that was ringing bell-like and saintly in his head. He was silently crying because he was actually laying down in a bed. After a forever of dirty blankets at the foot of a trench, he was finally grazing his cheek on an authentic pillow. It was this joy of reunion that took Henry away from his reality, back to his first bed, his parents' mattress in Nottingham. He knew that he was born on January 7th. His mother insisted that it was a warm day, even though it was in the dead of winter. Still, Henry had no choice but to believe his own mother.

His mother also remembered it being a Monday – she still knew the day of the week after all of those years. She knew because it had been Handsel Monday. True, the Carringtons never felt compelled to celebrate that holiday of gift-giving. However, the Scottish midwife – a round, graying woman – certainly did, which she gently reminded the new mother. Henry's mother liked to tell the young Carrington that, after all of the commotion died away and the midwife finally left, she held her baby close that entire night. The new mother had whispered in the newborn's ear the same phrase until she lost her voice: "You're my little gift."

Henry brought himself roughly back to the real, though, as he thought of this. He may have been thinking about his first bed because his new bed may well be his last. The mattress was a poor man's imitation of the one back home, but it was still a bed, and beds are good enough.

Henry winced as he felt those old, familiar stabs of a headache reach him. He didn't know if it was from the intense heat or from his frustration. He began playing over and over Noah's death. He did not know why he did that. It was a torture that seared, making his cheeks and forehead glow red with sadness. He knew that a generic funeral would be held soon enough for the young American. It would be a funeral made boring with ritual, a service that hit all of the same notes. He knew that back home in America, wherever home was for Noah exactly, the man's family would not discover the truth for some time. That's saying if they ever did. Henry doubted that Noah told them of his true plans, his joining the British army, his fighting and dying at the hands of a German. Henry felt compelled to find the family, though, to tell them what happened to their son. But first, first Henry had to survive that field hospital.

But for Henry, even the memory of Noah's death – as pure, as vivid as it was – was beginning to fade. Henry felt that he was looking at his friend's face through a frosted window. The sounds of artillery shrapnel, the chatter of bullets began to soften in his memory. All of it slipped away from Henry, until the young man from Nottingham was left holding himself. And having lost all of the clues, Henry suddenly began wondering if he actually _was_ Noah's murderer. This shamed Henry, because he had to be the keeper of his friend's memory. It was almost as if his friend was still alive, trapped in a quicksand of thought.

What Henry's lost mind did not know was that, at that moment, there was a nurse at the other end of the hospital. Well, it was not a hospital, at least not as Henry had imagined it. The casualty clearing station was not a normal thing. There were no walls, no hardwood floors, no sense of permanence. Instead, the station had been fashioned into a sort of tent city, where the walls were made of cheap fabric and the floor out of straw. There was also some sand scattered about as well – Henry did not know that, nor did he know that the sand was there to sop up fallen blood. It was amazing that there was even a station there, as it was all an empty field just weeks before. But armies knew how to build their hospitals.

There was a nurse at the other end of this station. Of course, the place was brimming with nurses, like any good infirmary would. If Henry was not so distraught, he would have passed the time imagining all of the women, hurrying softly between each bed, tending to the sick and dying, changing gangrenous bandages without a shake in their hands. It was that steadiness in a woman that impressed some men and frightened others.

What Henry did not know was that this nurse was tiredly flipping through records after a long shift. Passerby could tell just by looking at her that she had been in that messy business for far too long. Her heart should have been hardened to the coal as she lifted the long pages of the dead and wounded. She should have been asking how her Anglican God could be so literate, writing such a Book of the Dead. But as she scanned the pages, she was not overwhelmed with the sadness that plagued other readers. True, she would have been one of those a year before. But now, all of the names on the list had since swirled with one another, until she was looking at a thick pool, the pages rippling from a nearby open window.

It all looked the same to her.

Suddenly, her eyes stopped roving, cued by a startling name. This was in spite of the fact that it was a simple name, one that anyone else would have passed over. But she stared at the name, hoping that it did not belong. She found the man's records, saw his residence, discovered that he was from Nottingham.

She sighed and fainted.

The other nurses, stunned by the sight of their crumpled colleague on the floor, tended to her how they knew best. They whisked her away to a cool, dark corner and patted her head with a wet towel. She came to after a minute or so – the first thing she saw was a crowd of curious eyes. She felt embarrassed. She waved them away.

"I'm fine, thank you."

"Are you sure Ms. Mills? This heat is something terrible."

"Do you want some water?"

The nurse shook her head slowly. "No...no. I'm fine. It wasn't the heat. Something I saw."

"What do you mean?"

The nurse ignored their baffled looks and helping hands. Dazed, she stood up and slipped away from the crowd. As she walked past her desk, she grabbed the records that she was reading before her collapse. She wiped the wetness from her face and steadied her breath and began walking. She hoped that she was heading in the right direction. She hoped that the records in her hand would not fail her.

Meanwhile, Henry was pacing in his bed. It was unbearable within and without him – his headache was storming in the bowl of his skull, worse than any other he ever had. It felt as if someone was massaging his scalp with gloves of needles. His insides felt as if they were expanding, puffing him up into a balloon, a balloon ready and waiting to be punctured, a release of scalding pressure.

And as if all that was not enough, as if the pain was not folding him over and over like a sheet of paper, his vision was coming and going with his feverish mind. Everywhere he looked, there was a thick fog that he couldn't pierce with a pair of scissors. He could hear a stringed melody of voices, the constant footsteps, but he could not find any souls in the mist. The fact that everyone wore white only helped them camouflage more. All of them – either doctor, nurse, or soldier – they all looked the same with pale, vampiric skin, courtesy of either a life indoors or blood loss.

He called out, aimless, "Nurse? Nurse?"

Then, a voice he thought he would never hear again.

"Henry?"

He had not heard that voice in well over a year, but the tone rushed over his mind with memories. He weakly tried to sit up in the bed to meet the voice, but two slender hands eased him back into the covers.

"Don't push yourself, Henry. You've been through a lot."

Still, Henry made the effort to rub his eyes with his knuckles. After a few moments, he was able to massage some sight into his eyes. Although the pain still struck like lightning just behind his eyes, some of the fog was gone. And what he saw shocked him back.

"Sophia? That you?"

"It is."

Truthfully, though, she looked different to Henry. Some could say that the year she spent in France had taken away much from her, but others could say that the time gave her too much. It had given her a silvery tint in her usually sunny hair, making the strands look silken, white-gold even. It seemed to have raised her cheekbones, giving her a sallow, sickly look. It had added a few wrinkles – she still looked beautiful, but like a tablecloth that was not smoothed out. This was not the Sophia that Henry remembered, it was not the Sophia that left to join the war effort as a nurse, it was not the Sophia he had kept in his soul. She was still beautiful, but no longer in a lover's way – the war had aged her a decade at least. She was now beautiful in a mother's way.

The shock soon passed over Henry, though. A new thought came to him, one that was much softer, but still unsettling. He idly thought of the night that Liddell talked about his wife. How the professor was worried that the war would make his lover ugly. Henry had not believed the theory before, but now he was beginning to discover, and it made him feel ruined.

Henry looked at her for a moment before slowly asking, "I thought you were working at some other hospital?"

Her voice was husky with emotion. "I was, until a few weeks ago. They had a shortage of nurses here, so they ordered me over. Just think – what are the chances that we would find each other in a dirty hospital in the middle of war, hundreds of miles from home?"

"I wouldn't bet on it."

Henry's headache was beginning to come back, worse than ever. He felt like he was overheating, and the bandages around his head were not helping. He tried to unravel the fabric.

"Oh no, you mustn't," Sophia protested, guiding Henry's hands from his head. "They're there for a reason, you know."

Sophia pulled up a simple wooden chair to the bedside. She sat down and held Henry's stretched-out hand. Henry did not squeeze back.

Sophia asked, "When did you join the army?"

"Over this past winter."

Sophia thought that over. "That would make sense. It was about the time you stopped writing to me. But why?"

Henry was confused. "Why did I join?"

"Yes, that...and why did you stop writing to me?"

"I didn't want you to know I was joining the fight."

"You thought I would disapprove?"

Henry admitted, "I was afraid that you would be afraid."

He coughed violently into his free hand. He looked down at his palm in disgust before wiping it on the covers, out of sight.

Sophia looked at him curiously. "You know, I thought you would be the last person to join the war."

"Really?"

Sophia nodded. "You always liked being rebellious. I could never see you taking orders."

She pointed at Henry's tattered uniform, folded up and at the foot of the bed. She asked good-naturedly, "I guess that's why you became a corporal, then? I suppose you can make your own orders if you want."

Henry winced – Sophia had cut him to the heart, without even knowing. She did not know that Henry ordered men to their death, all because someone said that had to be done. Even if Sophia knew, would she understand? If she did not understand, could Henry make her understand? Like many things had turned out, Henry doubted it. Instead, he said shortly, "Everyone takes orders. Also, I'm a _lance_ corporal."

Sophia blushed slightly. "I'm sorry."

A pause. Their conversation was not at all like Henry had hoped. He had imagined during their time apart thousands of turns in their reunion. Their reality, though, was unexpected. Not that Henry cared – he was beginning to wake up from his dreams.

"You should be sorry, though."

"I should?"

Henry nodded. "You're the reason why I'm here."

Sophia turned confused. "I don't know what you mean."

"You know _exactly_ what I mean. You don't just make someone fall in love with you..."

Surprised, Sophia said, "I didn't make you."

"Again, you don't make someone fall in love with you, then just head off to war. What did you expect me to do?"

"I told you before, Henry, I just wanted to help..."

Henry shook his head fiercely. "You didn't have to be here. This might not be a gentleman's war – but it's certainly a man's war. It's stupid and bloody and not you. But it drew you here. I had to follow you, don't you understand? I had to rescue you."

Sophia frowned. "This isn't one of your books, Henry. You're not a knight, and I'm not the damsel in the tower. I have to sleep in a tent like every other worker here."

She pointed at Henry's ruined body, swathed in bandages. She made an attempt at a joke. "Besides, if anyone needed rescuing here, it'd be you."

Henry didn't say it, but she was right. She was the one administering to him now. He would have found pleasure in that a year before, even a month before, even a week before. But things were different – everything was different now. He felt disgusted. He wanted to burn all of his books back home, all of the books that carried the Arthurian legend and such.

He snapped, "It's all a rotten business! All of this taking orders!"

Startled, Sophia whispered, "Shh. Some are trying to sleep."

Henry lowered his voice, just barely. "All my life, I've been taking orders. Whether it's my father or my supervisor at my old job or the corporal or his superiors or the King of England, all my life I've been taking orders from the wrong people. People who thought they knew what was best for me. And..."

Henry suddenly stopped, the pain cascading within him.

Sophia noticed and took a wet cloth from a nearby bowl and patted Henry's head. She chided, "Don't overexert yourself. You'll talk yourself to death if you aren't careful."

Henry's eyes flared. "Then it'll be the first real decision I've ever made."

"You're talking nonsense. You'll get better, get out of this hospital, and laugh at the whole mess years from now."

Henry ignored what she said. "I always loved you, Sophia. I hope you know that, because you don't seem to know a whole lot else."

Sophia looked pained. "Don't say that."

Henry spat, "Do you want to know the reason why I've always loved you? Fine, I'll tell you. It was because you never asked me to do something. You never expected anything from me. You were an angel because of it. I hope you know that."

"But I'm human, love. I'm human just like everyone else."

"I know that...now."

Wide-eyed, Sophia could only stare at him. He could see the beginning of tears in her eyes. But there were so many things that she didn't know. She did not know of Liddell and Anderson and Bishop and Brown. And Carow. She did not know how many men Henry had to watch die, all so that the two could be in the same room, a soldier and a nurse. He had been dying to live with her. But how could she be both a lover and a nurse? How could she crack a man's rib off and still want to bind it?

Yet somehow, it all made sense. The most remarkable thing of living on the edge of life and death was the sense of balance he gained.

Henry paused. He took a deep breath and pointed away. "I want you to leave. I want you to leave and never come back."

"What?"

"You heard me."

Henry could hear the confusion work around in Sophia's mind. She was wondering how her friend of so many years could just order her away. So Henry made himself clear.

"You don't have to leave. You can stay for as long as you like. I'm dying in a bed – I can't order anyone to do anything now. But remember when I said that I loved you? That I always loved you? Well, I don't, not anymore. You're no better than my generals. You're ugly now, ugly with all of your heart."

Her eyes washed in tears, Sophia finally sobbed and swiftly left. She left behind a sullen Henry, who turned in his bed, his back to the world. The other wounded soldiers in the room did not say a word. Some were too polite, and others did not know if anything else could be said.

When Sophia left, though, the infection stayed behind.

Night was steadily approaching, and the streams of doctors and nurses withered to a trickle. Even as the help slowed, the cries never stopped. If anything, the number of wounded grew larger and louder, as more stretchers of tears and mangled limbs kept being brought in. While life needs to sleep, death never does.

And death was certainly awake, sitting in bed next to Henry. He could feel it hugging him, the mere touch causing his heart to beat faster, like pumps desperately keeping up with a flood. Henry's breathing kept pace with the blood, pushing out of him in sharp gasps. He was becoming a bellows, but his breath was feeding flames that were not his own. The fire that once burned in his soul like clockwork was now frozen in all of its arctic blues. Instead, an invisible fire burned all around him, the blistered heat of a summer night working the sweat out of him. Beads of the slick stuff slid down his chilled skin, tickling all the way down, unable to be stopped by numb fingers.

For the first time he could remember, he shivered during a summer month. He understood that it was his time to go. Because he was born on the warmest day of winter, it only seemed right that he would leave during the coldest of summer.

Henry tried to call out in the darkness, desperate for help. But with his head crowded with pressure, there was no room for words. Instead, a pained sigh escaped his lips as his fingers dug into the smooth bedsheets. A clock somewhere was standing guard over time itself, tapping away the seconds with a fascist precision. As the seconds, then the minutes, then the hours passed, so too did Henry.

And the headache was still there – it felt as if it was always there, whining a note higher every time that Henry thought about it. It made his thoughts caffeinated, speeding and shattering like the sun's rays hitting stained glass. He had never felt so distracted as he did then, on a simple mattress in a simple tent in the simple darkness, scrubbed clean of distraction.

Through the chaos prickling in his mind, Henry was able to find Noah. He could still remember the look of surprise on Noah's dead face. The shock was similar to being with an old friend and finding out how late in the evening it was. Noah's death mask was forever painted in Henry's mind, and the young Englishman could find no contemplation, no thought in his late friend's face. Henry wondered if that's why some people went to war. Many are afraid of death in all of its forms, but only suicide is a more sudden punctuation than a war-wound.

Perhaps that was why Noah's grandfather, as old as he was, kept going back to war. He could not bear the thought of struggling out his existence in a bed, dying over several days, a week even, from some illness. Perhaps Francis Carrington found more solace in that thrown African spear than he ever did in his old age. Henry wondered if his warrior-grandfather would approve of this, his sole grandson dying from wounds made miles away by artillery. He supposed that the old man would have – Henry could only hope. He could only hope because his grandfather's story was the greatest thing that had ever happened to Henry. This was enormous to comprehend, because that story was written by Francis Carrington, not his grandson.

And as Henry laid there, trapped within a cage of his making, the darkness crawling over the pores in his skin towards his heart, he found himself talking with his God. Some people in Henry's situation would go through the last rites, spending their final breath pleading for forgiveness. A week before, Henry may have been one of those people. But now, he was tired of taking orders from those he had never seen. The God he had spent his childhood praying to for confidence was no different from the generals he had never seen, the dreamy Sophia he had only imagined. He had taken orders without question, a fact that he now questioned. He asked how a benevolent God could split a common people with desire back in the Garden, with language back at the Tower. It burned Henry that a God could make a people in His image, only to shatter the picture later, as if He no longer cared...

But his God had long ago stopped listening, so Henry stopped talking.
