Read Online A Girl in Wartime by Maggie Ford - Free Book Online

had any gas masks earlier on. Some say they’d piddle on their handkerchiefs and put that to their noses – that’s supposed to stop gas getting inside a bloke.’
    â€˜Shut up and eyes front!’ came a harsh command from behind. They shut up and looked to their front, glad to be finally halted. The smell had become even stronger as they’d neared their destination.
    â€˜Smells like something died,’ Ronnie muttered. ‘Dead horses?’
    But no one answered as something other than dead horses dawned in the mind of every man, their expressions tightening as they clambered down into the already crowded trenches that seemed to go on and on. Albert followed the rest, the clinging smell coming up to hit him, making him want to gag. He was to discover its source the next morning. But tonight he slept, worn out, half-sitting for want of room, hardly out of his kit before his eyes closed. Ronnie was already snoring despite the occasional explosion of enemy shelling. Neither realised how lucky they were that no one would be ordered over the top tonight and they could rest.
    Waking up stiff and parched as dawn came up, Bertie peeked over the parapet in the half-light and finally began to make out strange humps dotted here and there across the churned-up mud. As the light grew, he saw they were bodies, unretrieved bodies. Horrified, he asked why of the thin air.
    â€˜You can’t go out there collecting ’em, sonny,’ answered a gruff voice behind him. ‘More than your life’s worth with Jerry lookin’ on. Try doin’ that and you’ll end up joining ’em.’ The sergeant smiled sadly at his stunned expression. ‘I know, son, they deserve to be buried, decent and proper like. But who’s gonna do it, and what’s the point? They don’t know they’re dead and gone to heaven, sonny, so what’s the point getting yourself killed just to get ’em back?’
    Without waiting for Albert’s response he moved on.
    Ronnie groaned himself awake and stretched his cramped limbs. ‘What’d he want?’ he asked. To which Albert muttered, ‘Don’t know.’
    Waking up had brought the return of the smell: the poisoned and burnt mud mingled with that cloying stink of rotting corpses. The odour of men crowded together in a narrow space had another smell all of its own: controlled fear, body sweat; control deserting a man, a bowel emptying itself unexpectedly, and stale vomit of those who, on the last onslaught over the top, had seen the limbs or the head of a comrade blown clear from his body, a man cut clean in half. These stricken witnesses did not weep, but they had a special look of their own. There was a vacancy about them, in their stare, in their silence.
    Hastily, Albert turned to peep again over the parapet at the churned-up stretch of mud, interlaced with barbed wire and pitted with shell craters. News reports at home bore no resemblance to seeing it first hand as they had marched.
    â€˜Christ!’ Ronnie had cursed when they’d been first ordered down into the trench, which was narrow and already crowded. Albert had not replied – couldn’t. That single word exploding from his brother’s lips said it all. Minutes later his boots and several inches of puttees had disappeared under the muddy water, despite the duckboards. As he lifted one foot clear, a man already there, squatting on some firing steps, had grinned up at him.
    â€˜Wouldn’t bother, mate. You’ll get used to it.’
    â€˜Used to this?’ Bert had shot at him, too shocked to grin back. ‘Pigs couldn’t get use to this!’
    The man stopped grinning. ‘Then fuckin’ don’t. Anyway you’ll soon be dead, so don’t fuss your fuckin’ self about it.’
    So saying he’d got up to plough his way further along as the intake of raw young soldiers piled into the trench in the dark.
    The only