well thought out, cousin, but are you sure that you want to just give me those fields?’
‘It’s my dream. Are you going to deny me my dream?’
Richard actually laughed for the first time in weeks. ‘If we both get out of this shitty war, I’ll hold you to it.’
* * *
Two days later, and much refreshed, the cousins had the unenviable task of welcoming their latest batch of replacements.
‘They look younger every day,’ sighed Richard as he watched the new men file into the encampment. ‘I doubt if half of them even shave yet.’
‘Poor bastards! They don’t look like they’ve had a rifle in their hands for more than a week,’ Robert replied, and wondered to himself how many of them would be alive in a weeks’ time. He patted his sergeant on the arm. ‘I’ll leave you to settle them in. When that’s done, come and see me in my tent; I’ll get their paperwork in order. Now that they’ve arrived, I expect we’ll soon be ordered up to the front.’
‘Heaven help us.’
It was growing dark by the time that Richard had assigned the new men to their sections and settled them in. With luck, the new section leaders might have a couple of days to get to know their new replacements, but they wouldn’t be able to gauge the men’s mettle until they had been ordered to go over the top, and by that time it would be too late for many of them.
Making his way down the picket line, Richard came to the last tent in line, and stuck his head inside.
‘Ah good! You’re here!’ said Robert looking up from the small table he was using as a desk. It was littered with papers and in the middle; a kerosene lantern cast its feeble yellow glow. A pile of filled envelopes stood at the far end of the table. Robert pointed to them. ‘I’m only about half done with them; there’s only a couple of lines in each, but I still can’t catch up.’
‘I doubt you ever will. Maybe I can help.’
‘I’d appreciate that. It’s hard to write to a grieving relation, particularly when I barely had time to meet the poor sods themselves before they were killed.’
‘I don’t think the words mean as much to them as being reassured that their loved ones didn’t die in vain.’
‘Didn’t they? I sometimes wonder myself.’
Richard could see that his cousin was depressed. The letter writing was extracting just as much of a toll on him as the fighting had. He watched as Robert shuffled among the papers before him. Extracting the one he was looking for, Robert placed it before his cousin, and handed him his pen. ‘Sign that,’ he said.
Richard read the short document. It was a handwritten agreement between the two of them, with Richard agreeing to forgo his rights to the water in the stream beside his farm. In exchange, he would receive the property rights to the land stretching from one arm of the stream to the other.
‘You’re sure you want to do this?’ asked Richard. ‘It’s a sizable amount of land.’
‘We haven’t used it for more than grazing for years. I want the lake; it’s become my whole focus.’
Richard nodded, taking up the pen and signing. Robert did as well, and a pair of passing soldiers were brought in to act as witnesses to the document.
‘I’ll post this off to our solicitor in Walton Village immediately, and I have another letter already prepared for groundsmen at home. I’ve given them instructions to start work as soon as they can. Hopefully, we’ll be out of the army before it’s completed, but I doubt it. Still, it will be something for us both to look forward to.’
One week later, in the hour before dawn, Robert was standing on a parapet, raised above the muddy bottom of the trench where his men waited, arms at the ready. He was high enough to be able to look over the top of the helmeted ranks of his men. Their bayonets attached, each man awaited the sound of Robert’s whistle in utter silence.
He risked a quick look over the lip of the trench and through a gap in the sandbags placed there. Just yards away, the earth was erupting as British artillery pounded the German lines, hoping to open up a gap in the defences that the infantry could capitalise on.
This time will be different, thought Robert, over the deafening roar of the exploding shells. This time we’ll have help ...
A half hour before dawn, the firing ceased, and Robert knew that the Germans, hiding in their deep bunkers to protect themselves from the barrage, were now returning to their firing positions, speedily setting up their machine guns. He could almost hear them.
Just then, he became aware of a new sound from behind the British trenches. It was a noise that he had only heard once before, from an object that had only ever seen from a distance. Turning around, he watched as the ugliest contraption imaginable trundled toward him.
Grey steel like a battleship, with machine guns sprouting, and a pair of enormous caterpillar tracks propelling it forward, nothing could stand in its way. It crushed the rolls of barbed wire stretched in its path, and simply ignored the deep craters made by the enemy artillery, sliding effortlessly over the top of them.
The men in the trenches below scattered to the sides, as the monster rolled over the top of their hiding place, and proceeded across no-man’s land.
Robert looked at his watch. Zero hour! He placed his whistle to his lips.
Up and down the line of trenches, whistles sounded, and the dirty khaki army climbed the ladders to reach the lip of the trenches, and then advanced into the living hell beyond ...
Across the divide, a German sniper peered through the lens of his Zeiss telescopic sights. He had seen movement behind the sandbags, and was awaiting his opportunity. As the troops poured out of the trenches before him, the sniper’s finger tensed slightly then relaxed, ignoring the soldiers. He was after officers, not enlisted men.
He watched as his target climbed over the sandbags, pistol in his hand, whistle in his lips. These markers told the sniper that this was an officer, and he took aim.
Shifting his aim slightly to allow for the man’s movements, the sniper squeezed the trigger evenly, feeling the rifle buck slightly, as the shot was made.
The shot took Robert in the centre of his forehead, throwing him backward over the sandbags, where his body came to rest, head in the mud, legs resting above the rest of his body against the mud wall at the bottom of the trench.
Richard was unaware of his cousin’s fate, as he was marshalling his men behind him. They took up positions behind the lumbering tank as it made its way toward the German lines.
With the enemy’s bullets ricocheting off the tank’s metal skin, Richard found that if he kept his men close to its rear, the tank would protect them from much of the machine-gun and rifle fire, while it dealt death and destruction to those who stood in its way.
They reached the German trenches with few casualties, where they threw hand grenades into the midst of the German troops below, while the tank’s machine guns decimated the enemy.
Richard led his men into the trenches, where the fighting became hand-to-hand, with the bayonets now coming into their own in the tight
