Read Online As the Crow Flies by Jeffrey Archer - Free Book Online Page B

a barbed-wire fence some three feet high which an old
corporal told him had already cost a thousand lives of those who had done
nothing more than erect it. Beyond that lay no man’s land, consisting of five
hundred acres once owned by an innocent family caught in the center of someone
else’s war. Beyond that lay the Germans’ barbed wire, and beyond that still the
Germans, waiting for them in their trenches.
    Each
army, it seemed, lay in its own sodden, ratinfested dugouts for days, sometimes
months, waiting for the other side to make a move. Less than a mile separated
them. If a head popped up to study the terrain, a bullet followed from the
other side. If the order was to advance, a man’s chances of completing twenty
yards would not have been considered worth chalking up on a bookie’s
blackboard. If you reached the wire there were two ways of dying; if you
reached the German trenches, a dozen.
    If
you stayed still, you could die of cholera, chlorine gas, gangrene, typhoid or
trench foot that soldiers stuck bayonets through to take away the pain. Almost
as many men died behind the lines as did from going over the top, an old
sergeant told Charlie, and it didn’t help to know that the Germans were
suffering the same problems a few hundred yards away.
    Charlie
tried to settle his ten men into a routine. They carried out their daily
duties, bailed water out of their trenches, cleaned equipment even played
football to fill the hours of boredom and waiting. Charlie picked up rumors and
counter-rumors of what the future might hold for them. He suspected that only
the colonel seated in HQ, a mile behind the lines, really had much idea of what
was going on.
    Whenever
it was Charlie’s turn to spend four days in the advance trenches, his section
seemed to occupy most of their time filling their billycans with pints of
water, as they struggled to bail out the gallons that dropped daily from the
heavens. Sometimes the water in the trenches would reach Charlie’s kneecaps.
    “The
only reason I didn’t sign up for the navy was because I couldn’t swim,” Tommy
grumbled. “And no one warned me I could drown just as easily in the army.,
    Even
soaked, frozen and hungry, they somehow remained cheerful. For seven weeks
Charlie and his section endured such conditions, waiting for fresh orders that
would allow them to advance. The only advance they learned of during that time
was von Ludendorff’s The German general had caused the Allies to retreat some
forty miles, losing four hundred thousand men while another eighty thousand
were captured. Captain Trentham was generally the bearer of such news, and what
annoyed Charlie even more was that he always looked so smart, clean and worse
warm and well fed.
    Two
men from his own section had already died without even seeing the enemy. Most
soldiers would have been only too happy to go over the top, as they no longer
believed they would survive a war some were saying would last forever. The
boredom was broken only by bayoneting rats, bailing more water out of the
trench or having to Fisten to Tommy repeat the same old melodies on a now rusty
mouth organ.
    It
wasn’t until the ninth week that orders finally came through and they were
called back to the manmade square. The colonel, monocle in place, once again
briefed them from his motionless horse. The Royal Fusiliers were to advance on
the German lines the following morning, having been given the responsibility
for breaking through their northern flank. The Irish Guards would give them
support from the right flank, while the Welsh would advance from the left.
    “Tomorrow
will be a day of glory for the Fusiliers,” Colonel Hamilton assured them. “Now
you must rest as the battle will commence at first light.”
    On
returning to the trenches, Charlie was surprised to find that the thought of at
last being involved in a real fight had put the men in better humor. Every rifle
was stripped, cleaned, greased, checked and then checked