Christmas 1917
The worn aluminium pan on the stove was waiting for Parsons to load the methylated spirit and set a match. The stove sat on an earth shelf about a foot above the duckboards that squelched when anyone passing walked by, head down in case of snipers.
Jenks hacked the stale bread into four pieces.
Laycock opened the tins of bully beef with the point of his bayonet, tipped them onto a plate and began to slice them thickly. A faint smell of gas wafted up the trench. No one reached for their gas mask, so intent were they on the meal about to be made.
Parsons got the stove working and heated the pan, laying the meat slices as compact as a mass burial, and soon the fat began to sizzle.
Smithy took six filched eggs from his trench-coat pocket and cracked them into a mug to scramble, his fingernails black against the white shells.
Taff arrived with his mother’s food parcel. Barra-Brith, he announced. The others barely acknowledged it, but he set the tin down next to the stove, and Parsons scooped the meat onto the lid before adding the bread into the fat and frying that too. Smithy stirred the mug with the eggs, with the pencil from behind his ear.
Parsons checked the underside of the bread and flipped each piece over to soak up the rest of the fat before adding them to the tin lid. Then in went the eggs, spitting like distant gunfire, and each intent pair of eyes stared at the food, knowing the meal was nearly done. Reaching for their mess tins.
Jenks began to share out the bread and meat with the point of his bayonet, then Parsons spooned egg on top of each bread slice.
Taff poured water from the jerry-can into a billy and set it on the stove for tea. Say, Grace Laycock. Grace, said Laycock and scooped egg onto a spoon and into his mouth. He was still standing behind a mound of sandbags for lack of anywhere dry to sit.
Parsons crouched by the stove relishing its heat. He took each mouthful of meat, bread or egg sedately, to savour. Smithy, perched on an ammo box, reached into his tin, scooped out the bread and used it to shovel the food into his mouth as though he were digging a new trench. Taff squatted on his haunches and began to eat. No one spoke. They finished long before the water had begun to boil.
When it did, Parsons heaped tea leaves into the billy and watched it turn brown, ignoring the film of petrol on the surface. After around three minutes he dipped in his mug and used it to ladle tea into whatever receptacle they were going to drink from.
Smithy used the same tin he’d eaten from to save washing up after, he explained. He sipped daintily with pinkie finger outstretched and asked if the vicar was invited and had Lady Marsham sent her apologies.
No butter for the Bara-Brith, apologised Taff. Smithy adopted a mock aghast expression. The others smiled. They felt almost warm then. Even Smithy’s banter was almost agreeable. Taff shoved along to share the ammo box, carrying his slice of loaf. They imagined aloud what Christmas would be like back in each family home, asking one another if they had a girl waiting for them, did they have sisters? They had never discussed these things before.
They stopped suddenly as the sound of the Germans singing carols drifted over to them.
Taff reminisced. He’d been a choirboy back home in his chapel. He was a treble solo and could sing Pie Jesu in Latin. He was more baritone now with a blend of Capstan full strength, he explained.
They chivvied him to demonstrate, promising extra rum rations. He stood behind the sandbags and concentrated, then began to sing.
It wasn’t perfect; they could all tell that, but it sounded all the better for its rustic charm. Even the Germans stopped singing. They expected just a few lines, but Taff seemed to be going for the full requiem.
Smithy stared as though he’d never heard anything so beautiful. Taff was a large misbegotten warrior, the fiercest of the battalion, but his soul was in that song, and if he should die out here in Flanders, he hoped Taff would sing again until the angels resurrected him. Then they noticed the tears in Taff’s eyes as his voice began to tremble, falter and then stop.
The Germans started cheering, asking for more, but Taff wouldn’t be able to sing again even if his life depended on it. Parsons shuffled off his shelf and poured his rum into Taff’s mug. Drink, he tells him. You are still talented, and it’s our job to see you survive this war. The choir needs you. Yes lads? Now it’s our turn, I’m sure we could manage Silent Night. They managed a rough version and, to their relief and amusement, Taff and the Germans joined in, perhaps sensing they needed help.
Then more rum was passed around, and Smithy tried some impersonations of the higher ranks. One or two were close but needed perfecting, and now they were laughing together.
Summer 1921
It is Parsons that finds the trench again. He is almost sure of it. There is no physical evidence that this was the place, just an instinct, a feeling as though he was close to friends once more. The war had been over for nearly three years, but still the search for bodies by the Imperial War Graves Commission went on. If he hadn’t walked down the trench for a piss, he’d have been just another lost body too, missing in action his folks would have been told.
He stepped on broken duckboards, placed the gramophone on a soil shelf, positioned a record, wound the handle, rested the needle, then stood as though to attention and listened again, to Pie Jesu.
