My Brother's War by Hill David

Author:Hill, David [Hill, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742532653
Publisher: Penguin New Zealand
Published: 2012-05-25T04:00:00+00:00

The rest of their six days in the trenches were much like the first. Hours of dirt, hunger, discomfort and boredom. Then a few wild minutes of noise and fear. Then dirt and boredom again.

On the second afternoon, as William huddled in his muddy sleeping space, yawning and hungry, yells swept along the trench. ‘Gas! Gas!’ Next minute, men were hurling themselves at their packs, dragging out the clumsy gas-masks, jamming them over their faces. Nothing happened. A sentry had seen the smoke from a cooking fire, and panicked.

On the third night, orders came to double up the sentries. A password was issued: Farm Gate. As darkness grew, the trench was lined with men, eyes straining through the slits between sandbags. Something must be happening, but nobody knew what.

Those trying to sleep lay with a hand on their rifles. ‘Just make sure it’s not pointing at me, chum,’ Jack told Jerry as they huddled against the trench wall. ‘Tell it I’m on your side.’ Jerry managed a tired grin.

Hours passed. William’s turn for sentry duty came. He stood on the firing step, shifting from foot to foot, trying to see. Had a shadow moved? No. Was that a man? No, a wooden stake. ‘Farm Gate,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Farm Gate.’ If he did see a man, if he called out ‘Farm’ and the figure didn’t answer ‘Gate’, could he make himself shoot?

The blackness exploded into light. German guns were firing. Flashes of flame, fountains of dirt burst out all across No Man’s Land. The ground was lit as bright as day. William glimpsed rats scurrying into shell-holes. Then darkness again. More explosions, more glares of light. Machine-guns hammered, not far away. Rifles cracked.

William heard the sentries further along calling out: ‘See anything?’ ‘Nothing!’ Their own artillery burst out, in a madhouse of noise and white-red fire. William pressed himself against the trench wall and waited for the world to end.

It didn’t. After ten minutes, the noise faded. Occasionally a rifle shot rang out. A few flares rose, glowed, faded. William’s two hours ticked away. In the morning, they learned that a raiding party had set out from their lines to attack the enemy trenches. Nobody knew how many were dead or wounded. Muddle and mess and mix-ups, William told himself. That’s what war mostly seems to be.

He didn’t feel a hero in the trenches. He was too tired, dirty, hungry. Staying awake and ready took all his energy. One look at the yawning, filthy faces of the others showed they were the same.

On the fourth night, there were strange creaking noises somewhere behind the German lines. The sentries were more nervous than usual. Mr Gowing came along the trench, looking as exhausted as everyone else. ‘Keep alert, chaps. Something could be up.’

Something was up. They saw when daylight came. A big observation balloon, floating high above the enemy trenches on the end of a wire cable. A big black basket hung below it.

‘There’ll be an observer in that,’ someone muttered.

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