I tell the others to go and find some food at the nearest field kitchen and then to pitch their tent and rest. It’s been a long day and, as Ollie’s immediate commanding officer, this last duty is mine to bear. While Morse trudges back to his own campfire, Percy and Robert shuffle off wordlessly into the night. They’ve suffered enough for one day and I don’t begrudge them leaving me alone. Except, of course, I’m not. Danny remains at my side as we weave through avenues of makeshift clothes lines, all strung with dripping vests and stained puttees.
I stumble at one point, very nearly falling, tired feet tripping over some obstacle hidden in the churned earth. Danny catches me, and I feel his head rest momentarily against mine, just as my head had lain against his after I freed him from the fence. I whisper: ‘Are you sure you want to come with me?’
‘Yes, sir,’ he says quietly. ‘I’m sure.’
And so we approach the old barn together, just as a flare goes up over No Man’s Land and the German typewriters begin to crackle. Machine guns whose noise punches through the big double doors and finds its echo in the raftered ceiling. And then the answering boom of the big guns on the British side, shuddering these timbered walls and making the cows stamp nervously in their stalls. We step further into the gloom, ignoring the startled birds that batter the air above, our gaze fixed on one point. The boy lying on his bed of hay doesn’t stir. Not even when another flare rips apart the darkness behind us and blazes in the whites of his eyes. I kneel beside Ollie and touch his hand – already cold – then look up at Danny. His face is bleak, worn with sorrow.
He says: ‘Maybe if we hadn’t stopped to try to kill a stranger we might have been here with him when he died.’
There’s no answer to that and so, in silence, I close Ollie’s eyes on the world.
17
Danny is on the warpath. He wants answers. I do too.
We go first to our platoon, some of whom are still awake, nodding over the embers of their fire. Seeing us approach, they stagger to their feet and salute. I think they’ve been waiting to tell what they know, to make their own outrage clear. They answer my questions but keep glancing at Danny, no doubt aware of the fury printed on his face. He says nothing, only listens, his fist clenched tight around the strap of his rifle. He doesn’t even flinch when a lucky German shell sails across the British line and strikes an empty ambulance wagon only a few hundred yards away, shards of wooden shrapnel shooting into the air.
It seems that Captain Beddowes was as good as his word and indeed gave Ollie all the attention he thought the private deserved. After leaving us at the crucifixion fence, he had returned with Gallagher to the column. While the colonel rode on ahead, Beddowes had ordered Ollie down from the cart. When the other men objected, pointing out that the boy could barely stand, the captain had threatened them all with charges of insubordination. And so together they had helped to rebandage Ollie’s feet, eased on his boots, and assisted him to the road. The next few miles had pretty much killed him, they all agreed on that.
‘The captain had ridden on by that point,’ Arthur Morse tells us. ‘And even if he hadn’t, me and the fellas had decided enough was enough and he could punish us however he liked, but we weren’t going to let the boy walk another step.’
‘Poor child.’ Spud Pearson nods. ‘Yes, I’ll call him a child, sir, cos in truth he weren’t much older than my grandson back home. Anyway, me and Taff gets hold of him between us and carries him half a mile or more, then Arthur here and some of the other lads took over.’
Taffy Colston bows his huge head. ‘It was rough-going, sir. I won’t lie.’
The fire has died and I glance at faces illuminated only by the smoke-shrouded moon. Young and middle-aged, innocent still or already knocked about by life, they all look back at me with the same harrowed expression.
‘He raved most of the way,’ Arthur says, his voice catching. ‘Raved with delirium or else was quiet because he’d passed out. That were worse in a way, the quiet.’
‘That’s how we brought him into camp, dead to the world,’ Taffy grunts. ‘Except not dead, not then.’
‘I sent one of the lads to fetch a doctor while the rest of us spied out that old barn. We made it as comfortable as we could for him.’
‘There wasn’t a doctorwaitingfor Ollie?’ I ask. ‘Captain Beddowes promised—’
‘Captain Beddowes made him walk,’ Taffy snaps, then holds up a hand in apology. ‘Forgive me, sir. But it weren’t no surprise that no doctor was waiting for the boy.’
I hear a creak of leather. The sound of Danny’s grip tightening on his rifle strap.
‘The lad finally came back with a medic,’ Arthur says. ‘Decent fella, from the field dressing station behind the line, but looking none too healthy himself, truth be told. He examined Ollie, gave him some stuff for the pain, but told us there was nothing more he could do. The infection was in his blood. Anyway, the doc was needed back at the Front. There’s not much left to tell, sir. We stayed with the kid, held his hand, asked if he had any messages.’
‘Did he?’ It’s the first time Danny has spoken. His voice sounds dead and cold, utterly unlike him.
‘He did. He wanted his mother to be told that he loved her. The doctor said that the poor boy was in a fever and that his wits had left him, but I think he knew what was happening to him. Hey now, where are you storming off to, Dan?’
I am much taller than Danny, my stride is longer, but still I have to run to catch up with him. He dashes between the tents, leaping guy ropes, darting around men half-asleep as they stumble from their billets in search of a latrine. I don’t shout for him to stop. The short gun battle has died down and the night is as peaceful as any night can be this close to the line. I don’t want to wake the men if I can help it.
It’s in a warren of streets winding their way to the Front that I finally catch up with him. My legs have weakened with each passing yard, the toll of the day threatening to bring me to my knees, but I have been in Authuille before. Captain Danvers and I passed through it in the blizzards of January when the snow was up to our waists. I know the rough layout of the village, its twists and turns and blind alleys. I wait now at the mouth of one of these for Danny to retrace his steps.
‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ He tries to step past me but I grasp him by the shoulders. ‘Answer me, Private. Now.’
‘Is that an order?’ he asks.
‘If you like.’ I sigh. ‘Danny, what’s going on?’
‘I need to find this doctor,’ he says. ‘Ask him how Ollie died. I want—’
‘We know how he died,’ I say gently. ‘His feet were badly infected. You helped dress them yourself. The wounds turned septic, that’s all. They were probably already heading that way when we treated them yesterday. But I know what you want the doctor to tell you.’
