A Long Long Way (17 page)

It was evening-time now and they were in their new trenches. They had come up there in the darkness and they didn’t really know how things were thereabouts, except of course there was a deal of firing and all the usual noises. The men were just talking as they always did, and they had had a decent enough supper, though scant. Willie was sitting in a corner of the trench where there was a tidy niche cut by some thoughtful person. It was a chance anyway to write to his father.

Belgium.
26 April 1916.

Dear Papa,

How are you getting on in the midst of all, are you all well and safe? I hope you will write and tell me. I saw the turmoil in Dublin for myself just as I was coming away. I hope very much you will be taking care and watching out. The men here are very scornful of the whole business. We have heard that the Huns put up a placard opposite the trenches of the Munsters. It said there was Fire and Ruin in Dublin and that the British were killing their wives and children back home. Well, the Munsters didn’t think much of that, so they all sang ‘God Save the King’, and last night I believe it was or the night before they crept over in the dark and got that placard. My sergeant-major said a lot of those fellas are out-and-out Volunteers and fervent Home Rulers and he would not have expected them to know the words of ‘God Save the King’, let alone sing it to the Boche. I am praying that you and the girls are all right. What good times we had of it, when we were all small. Why I say that I don’t know. There is not a man in Ireland that has served Ireland better than you. No one will ever know how much it has cost you. I am thinking of the ordinary days, going about the castle yards with you in the evenings. Mark my words, you have brought us through like a proper father. If Dolly had no mother, she had a father as good as any mother could have been, I do believe so. Please write first chance and tell me what has been going on.

Your loving son,

Willie.

After stand-to next morning and a daybreak like a row of sparkling dinner-knives, a strange slate-grey light mixed with sunlight that sneaked up through the ragged woods, Captain Sheridan read out a communication from headquarters to the effect that a gas attack was suspected imminently.

That was how they had put it anyhow, but the colonel came by later and put it more plainly. They were going to try to drive them out like rats, he said, and indeed the Welsh boys they had relieved last night told of hundreds of dying rats coming into their trench one day during their tour of duty, and it was sore suspected that some gas must have leaked from their canisters, wherever the Boche had them set up and ready. They came in, those rats, like fellas expecting to be helped, but the Cardiff lads that were there clubbed them to death as best they could with their rifle butts. So that was another kind of enemy.

The colonel was not Irish and it was remembered at headquarters that the Irish ran from the first attack at St Julian all those months ago. Willie and his companions had been issued long since with what were said to be the finest of gas masks. Yokes that went over your head, a kind of bag with a queer nose, and two big eye-holes. Like something the Irish Whiteboys might have donned when they crept out upon the countryside to burn hayricks and generally molest the land-lords. They certainly gave a ghostly, menacing look to the men wearing them, but the wearer did not feel either ghostly or menacing. His cheeks got hotter and hotter and dirty sweat burned down into his eyes.

But the colonel stressed the need to stand firm, and he said he knew his lads would do so, and not be letting the terror get the better of them again. This word ‘again’ did not appeal to his listeners. Everyone knew how many were lost at St Julian and even if some of the listeners were newer men and never had been there in that hellish time in the first place, no man relished a little bit of ironic talk just before what promised to be a nasty stretch.

To counter this, those that were inclined — and there were many, nearly all — went down on their knees with Father Buckley and had a quick pray. The sentries, of course, merely bowed their heads slightly, still keeping a weather eye on the mirrors that reflected the empty ground before them. Because they were in trenches which by necessity zigzagged every hundred feet or so, Father Buckley was invisible to everyone except where he himself was kneeling. But the twelve hundred men in the battalion nevertheless by some peculiar inner knowledge knelt or bowed their heads and a murmur of words rose up to the skies. Willie Dunne hoped God could hear them.

Father Buckley said the Our Father and a few Hail Marys and kept himself short. He didn’t attempt a talk or warming homily because no one could hear him except the nearest twenty men.

Suddenly the enemy guns opened their filthy cursing mouths and belched forth a ruinous misery of shells. The men heard shrapnel searing about in every direction and the biggest bombs were being dropped it seemed into the support trenches a good way behind. But the men didn’t drop a stitch of the Hail Mary they were halfway through knitting, one soothing word to the next.

Then mysteriously every man knew Father Buckley was done. Perhaps it was achieved by a seamless series of Chinese whispers, or Chinese winks and nods anyway But it was a remarkable thing, Willie thought, a remarkable thing.

Of course, any fool knew it was bad news when the padre came right into the trenches. If they had been on proper orders they might have gathered in a field somewhere in the reserve lines and had a decent mass of it, and a sermon from his nibs.

It wasn’t that he was unwelcome. He was well known because he showed his face everywhere, and though he was a bit strange and apart in some ways, the men liked him as they would perhaps a beloved aunt. If there was such a thing as a fearless womanish man, he was it. For he was gentle and spoke soft with a lettered accent.

There were round bits in his words where the men had sharp, and sharp where they had round, though indeed he didn’t talk like a gentleman as such. It was whispered that he had been found in private weeping and yet he had been seen in a dozen battlefields tending to the dying with a dry eye and a murmuring word. A drink of rum he always refused, but he smoked woodbines with everyone and a woodbine was his calling card to a new man in. Religion as such he rarely discussed and sins or the like were not his constant song, though you could go to him for confession should you so have chosen and he would give you the stiffest penance he could within reason — within the reason of the war. He advised chastity all right, but only because a dose of the clap was a fearsome embarrassment to a young man.

Willie supposed Father Buckley was a man who had seen every type of wound the war could offer close up, because he had held every type of wounded man in his arms. He must have whispered last rites to headless men, and also to men with only a head left and the rest blown into a billion drops of air, he had surely felt the warm ballooning armfuls of entrails spill into his own lap, and strained not to lie to any dying man, to’ steady him and ready him for the off, like a flighty horse in the stalls before a race. Certainly he believed a man’s soul would issue forth like a dove and fly up to its dove cot in the high realms of heaven. He told the men that their guardian angels had come back to them from childhood and were with them again, watching over them silently and lovingly He had endured those that screamed in terror and those that screamed in self-pity, those that said generous last words — which might indeed be the memories that made him cry later — he had heard the sudden heart change that might rescue a man from the yawning pits of perdition. And indeed he had disappeared a few weeks back and it was said, also in whispers, that he had been given a week’s furlough at home because his nerves were tottering. But you would have to expect that. A man, especially a priest, could not witness scenes like unto the end of the world, as if the armies of the West had joined battle with the armies of the East, in that wild apocalypse shown to poor St John, in his penal servitude under the Romans on the island of Patmos in that vanished world, and so on, without disturbing a few hairs on the head of his mental ease.

Be that as it may, Willie knew and everyone else knew without saying a word or exchanging a look that things would be of a harsh enough nature, because Father Buckley had elected to be with them.

The gas sirens went off suddenly and Willie nearly left the sanctuary of his pelt. O‘Hara beside him jumped like a dog. He was trying to prevent it, but that cold, unfriendly terror flooded instantly into his brain. A sweat, incongruously chilly, formed in his hair under the helmet. Everyone struggled to don the wretched gas masks. Now if these were the finest masks in creation, they were a bloody muddle to get on, and there was always the fear you might be missing a little place where the poison might seep in. Captain Sheridan came up cursing from his dugout with Christy Moran, looking like storybook monsters. But they all looked like storybook monsters. The sergeant carried a canvas bag of trench weapons, more like the weapons of medieval times than anything else, sticks with nails in them, rough-cast things with iron knobs, and he was handing these out. Willie was given a thing like an Indian tomahawk, and he stuffed it into his webbing.

‘All right, lads,’ said Captain Sheridan, but the words were darkened and muddled by the mask. He lifted it off viciously. ‘All right, lads, listen to me, look it, we can hold this now, we can. I want you to make sure you’re well masked up, check each other’s masks, lads. And just let the foul stuff go over. Don’t take off your fucking masks for any reason. The gas’ll fall in on us here and just sit for a long while. There may be a lousy attack following it. That’s the important thing. And, lads, for the love of God, don’t let the bastards get any further than this very spot in Belgium. You’re to crucify the cunts, now, men, if you don’t mind!’

And that was not a bad speech, thought Willie Dunne. It was a pity that the captain’s voice trembled so. But you had to say something to fellas in this predicament. Three men up stood Quigley, who had come up only this very morning, arriving in with a few other lads. Quigley was a tall, gangly lad from the city. He had never seen a real trench in his life, let alone been expected to withstand some kind of assault that he could not fathom the nature of. He was having grave difficulty with the straps of his mask, and was muttering and staggering about. A big, clear, dark stain of piss showed now on his britches front.

And Willie was just glad he had his own mask on now and no one could see his eyes. The memory of the other time at St Julian was howling in his head. A hundred pictures returned to terrorize him. He shook his head in his misery. By God, O‘Hara, whose leg touched his left leg, was trembling. His whole body was rattling. Suddenly Willie thought of what those fucking men were doing in Dublin and he cursed back at them, cursed them for their violent ignorance, he did. Captain Pasley’s twisted form was illuminated there, it would seem, behind his eyes.

Through the silly murk of the eye-holes he looked at these twenty or so men in this stretch. The machine-gun crew were ready with their weapon to mount it on the parapet, three crouching men. Four men were assigned as bombers and had each a belt of Mills bombs. Better at least than the old bean-cans full of explosive they used to hobble together and fling at an ungrateful enemy. Maybe there was something ridiculous in the scene. After all, every man crouched in the same direction, some head down now the German artillery had proper range on them and the shrapnel bombs were landing just feet in front of the parapet. They looked like the men at the back of any Irish country church on a Sunday, kneeling on one knee in manly fashion, the women of the parishes ranged on the seats proper. But they were not talking of beasts and ewes now, it was not their God they were waiting for, but the long shadows of the friends of Death himself. There was no star of Bethlehem here, nor wise men nor kings, only poor Tommies of Irishmen, Joe Soaps of back streets and small lives. Heroic things had been suggested to them, and though they were not heroes as you might read about in old Greek stories, their hearts, such as they were, answered. No man could come out to the war without some thought of proper duty, some inkling of possible deeds to match the tales they heard as children. There were no fathers or mothers here now, no raggedy dresses, no ringing games, spires of familiar churches, no ancient stones set one upon the other, no St Patrick’s Cathedral and no Christ Church. Only a furrow of excellent agricultural clay where they in their complete insignificance crouched. This was not a scene of bravery, but it seemed to Willie in his fear and horror that there was a truth in it nonetheless. It was the thing before a joke was fashioned about it, before an anecdote was conjured up to make it safe, before a proper story in the newspaper, before some fellow with the wits would make a history of it. In the bleakness of its birth there was an unsullied truth, this tiny event that might make a corpse of him and all his proper dreams.