Dawn

The Second Week of Passchendaele 1917

The whistles are terrible at dawn. They summon the start of yet another day of slaughter. Often I lay among the broken sandbags in the bottom of the trench just simply aching with fatigue. Broken dreams and broken sleep. Never are the nights long enough in which to rest before the stand to at dawn.

The morning mist curls and billows among the wire as I look across no-mans land towards the German positions.

Yesterday they dropped leaflets on our lines. It showed rows of skeletons laid in neat lines awaiting burial. They were dressed in British uniform.

It is difficult to say what affect this had on some of the younger ones. Those fresh from ‘Blighty’ who have read the headlines of leading tabloids and believed we were bathing ourselves in glory, when the only bathing around here is in blood.

I am tired we are all tired, but I try to keep perky in front of the men, try to strike a note of irreverence as if mocking the very notion of hooded figures with scythes.

“Corporal Smith 689”
“Yes Sir?”
“See if you can knock up a brew. It’s a cold morning and we need to keep warm.”
“Yes sir!”
“By the way Smith 689 did your wife have the baby?”
“Yes sir a bouncy 6lbs boy named Nathaniel.”
“Very good Smith, carry on.”

I steady my hand and look once more through the tangled wire. My eyes are playing tricks. I see ghostly apparitions of fallen comrades. Tommy Atkins and Billy Williams are walking towards me side by side; yet in yesterdays advance I'm sure they died. They died in the first German bombardment. I saw them fall in the hail of shrapnel that ripped through the assembled ranks, as we marched slowly forward.

I looked in the cracked mirror on the wall of the underground bunker earlier and hardly recognised the rheumy red eyes staring back at me. It has been several days now since last we slept. I desperately seek refuge from the noise of the big guns that have been firing over our position from the rear for a week now. It is a prelude to our advance towards Ypres, whish to the men is called 'wipers.'

It is the brainchild of no less a person than General Sir Douglas Haig, and it is being lead by General Gough himself. I remember ‘Grouchy’ from Sandhurst where he was a staff officer when I was taking my commission, an absolute ‘bounder’ of the first degree.

I think of you now in these few precious moments before battle. How we would sit by the fire with the children and read aloud to them, and they would sing songs they had known since babyhood. I remember our last evening together. How we talked and cried and loved in each other’s arms, and then we fell asleep as the cold reflected light of the snow crept through the frost covered windows. Too soon, it was time to leave.

A thick mist hung everywhere, and there was no sound except, far away in the valley, a train shunting. I stood at the gate and waved goodbye, and kept turning and waving until the mist hid you from view. Then through the muffled air came your voice, your old calls coming after me "Coo-ee."
And like an echo I called "Coo-ee" keeping my voice strong to call again. "Coo-ee"
You are so faint now, so far away. Now, there is nothing except the silence of death.

All night it as rained, the jolly old rain. Long sweeping rain that hammers on the sheet metal supporting the sides of the trenches, and runs in small rivers down the sides. We live in mud and we die in mud, and a verse comes to mind, "Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood."

My fellow officers lie around the dugout and talk in low whispers. Overhead, shells scream towards the German positions a mile or so in front. We are told this is the lead up to an advance that we must make in an hour or two. Nobody is quite certain when we will have to rise from our trenches and summon the demoralised men forward into battle. It is a heartbreaking prospect. Already we have been forward and seen the open fields through which we must go. Already we have witnessed the killing that German machine guns inflict among our fellow troops. We have heard the screams, and seen the rotting dead wallowing face down in the sucking mud. Now we talk in nervous whispers. All bravado as gone and we are alone with our thoughts.

A cold shiver runs down my spine. I wrap my Greatcoat around me and strap my pistol to my side. Soon it will be time. I go outside once more.
"Good morning sir." whispers Corporal Plunkett.
"Morning Plunkett anything to report."
"No sir. It seems the bombardment is keeping their heads down."

I stand in the trench ankle deep in mud, and look through the eyeholes of the periscope towards the German positions. Low drooping flares confuse my memory of the salient. I realise our big guns have now stopped. I stand on a box so I can look above the parapet with binoculars.

Towards the east, the misery of dawn begins to grow and a merciless iced wind blows through the trenches. Now the silence worries us all. We stand to once more and wait in the grey light, and watch the clouds sag stormy across the sky. Bayonets are fixed to rifles now, steel against steel, and hardly a whisper.

Still the rain and wind blows on our up turned dreaming faces and I rub my hands together in almost silent prayer and command an end to this slaughter, and pray to God that he absolve us all from the murder we must commit.

On the streets in the cities of our nation men rush forward to join in this brotherhood. Flags waving, brass bands playing, and the big, bass drum beats out the Boom! Boom! Boom!

Now the whistles blow and we rise from our crouched position and start scrambling over the top of the trenches. Attacking once more in ranks of shivering grey, we march out into the dawn: a melancholy army.