The moment it was in place he went to help those still struggling, hearing hardly anything above his own laboured breathing. The gas cloud was already oozing over the parapet, its underside purple and yellow like a bruise. It was impossible to see more than three yards ahead. Then, through the evil mist, Robert saw a young private from his platoon running around hysterically. He claimed to be nineteen but was clearly much younger.
‘My mask,’ he screamed, ‘where’s my mask?’ before he was overwhelmed by coughing and choking. He fell to the ground clutching his throat, writhing and retching, while shells roared over, throwing up showers of soil and stone. Robert tore open a field dressing and plunged it into a bucket of water, then signalled for one of the corporals to hold it over the boy’s face. He ripped a mask from the face of a dead man and pulled it down over the youngster’s head. Instinctively, the boy tried to pull it off, but the corporal held it fast. Then Robert ordered all the men who were crouching near the ground to stand up – crouching was a natural reaction, but a fatal one, as gas pooled in the bottom of trenches.
‘Keep your positions!’ he cried through his mask. ‘Sentries maintain your positions!’
But his voice was all but drowned out as an almighty din started up overhead, signalling that the British artillery was returning fire, attempting to take out those setting off the gas.
Captain Fleming appeared. ‘Fritz is coming across further up the line,’ he yelled to Robert through his respirator. ‘Groups of twenty to thirty. Prepare to retaliate!’
Robert yelled instructions to Sergeant Dobbs, then waited. Every new bomb seemed to land closer and closer. One of them would bear his name – today, tomorrow or another day soon; there was no way he could make it through this war alive. But he prayed that he would be killed by a bullet and not a bomb. A bullet, at least, was clean and honourable. Being blown apart was no way to die, obliterated, bits of you sprayed everywhere, as if you’d never even been human, but merely a collection of slimes and stains.
Further down the line three enormous mines went off, one after the other, and the earth convulsed. The gas hung over the flat French fields like a deadly morning fog, but the wind was blowing it backwards and forwards and it was starting to break up. Then Robert made out Germans in gas masks approaching in extended order. He grimaced, waiting until the last moment – until their counterattack would be most effective – then gave the order for the Lewis gunners to open fire. The first of the Germans went down, spinning like tops.
And now the last layer of his fear had fallen away. He was self-possessed, ruthless and utterly single-minded. He wasn’t a gentleman any longer; he was a warrior. And that was all. This would be proper battle at last: hand to hand, bloody, physical and clean, the righteous exacting retribution for the atrocities of the German aggressors. This was what they had all expected war to be, what they had signed up for – to protect Europe from the enemy, whose faces they could now finally see before them, not to cower in furrows gouged into the earth, shooting and strafing across the parapet at some enemy they never saw.
The Germans were picking their way through the gaps in the British wire that their artillery had made. Robert took out his revolver and, as they got closer, began to fire from in between the sandbags. The wind had changed direction and the gas was blowing back towards the German trenches now. Robert tore off his mask – and saw that many of the Germans had ditched theirs too.
It was suicide, marching on an enemy trench like this in broad daylight, with or without the pre-emptive gas attack – he could see it in the faces of the Bavarian soldiers before them. And he felt pity for them, even as he knew he must kill them. His men were discharging their weapons with deadly accuracy, in bursts of rapid fire, pausing for the officers to observe the effect of their volleys and to adjust their sights, exactly as they’d been trained. He felt a surge of pride.
The increasing proximity of the Germans meant the effect of their fire was starting to be felt. Several of his men were hit. It looked as if some of the enemy might even make it into the trench. Let them come, he thought, Let them bloody well come.
The Germans were throwing bombs now, but they fell short. He picked off several of the enemy with his revolver. Still they came. Their pluck was something to behold; you couldn’t fault the Hun for that – they were brave as lions.
A bomb landed close by. Robert was showered with debris and his ears rang. When he looked up a powerfully built German wearing a Stalhelm was poised to climb down into the trench. He couldn’t have been much older than Robert’s twenty-six years. The metal buttons and insignia of his uniform were tarnished green from the gas. His eyes were very blue, and his dark-blond moustache neatly trimmed. He looked altogether a cut above the average Boche; Robert had sat across from many similar-looking, earnest young men in the coffee houses of Munich and Vienna, talking about poetry and novels and the German Expressionist school of painting.
It occurred to him now that he had no quarrel at all with this man, and no wish to harm him. If it were just the two of them and he were to stand up now, smiling, and offer his hand, he was certain the German would take it, smiling in turn. And then they would both laugh, shake their heads at the absurdity of it all and sit down, lay aside their weapons, open a bottle of whisky.
But they were not the masters of their own destiny. The German’s face was contorted with hatred. He knew that he was most likely about to die. He was without fear and merciless, and that made it vital that Robert kill him first. The Bavarian pulled out a stick grenade, then went for the fuse. And in that moment Robert shot him, clean through the heart. And as his legs buckled beneath him, a piece of shrapnel sheared half his jaw clean away.
More Germans came, and then more. Several even made it into the trench and they fought hand to hand. Until, finally, at long last, it was over.
***
Much later, Robert went back to the dugout. Fleming was already there, snoring in an old armchair, his revolver beside him. Robert lay down on a bare chicken-wire mattress frame. His eyes were running, and his throat was sore – he’d obviously got a dose of phosgene. Soon he’d begin writing letters to the dead men’s families. His tremor was back. Now it was quiet, he felt his mind begin to unseal once more. Questions, fears, misgivings were stealing back in, like rats scenting blood.
Major Shaw, their company commander, came into the dugout. Robert went to get to his feet, but Shaw gestured for him to stay where he was. A Regular, he was a man of few words, but was loved and respected beyond all measure by his men, who all referred to him simply as ‘the Old Man’. They would follow him anywhere. He took a seat on a three-legged milking stool and slowly began to pack his pipe. He cupped his hand around the bowl, scattered tobacco inside, then tamped it down several times. It was a calming ritual; the men took great heart from it – it helped them to stay level-headed. Finally, he lit the pipe and puffed it into life. The dugout filled with the delicious scent of Virginia tobacco, of English drawing rooms and Mayfair gentlemen’s clubs. Robert closed his sore eyes.