What on earth was he doing? While Tom was in England, why was Stanley going into battle to defend Villers, Amiens, Paris? Why?
Stanley and his unit, and their dogs, marched along a broad, poplar-lined road, listening to the raucous singing of the cooks behind them, smelling sweat and smoke, hearing the ring of boots on cobbles. The whole world seemed to be moving east, a continuous stream of horses, troops and ammunition carts. Only the ambulances travelled both ways, fleets of them coming and going. There was an endless supply out here of both ambulances and horseflesh.
They marched though a village called Aubigny, another called Fouilloy. Stanley fought the pain of the aching muscles of his neck beneath the steel helmet, fought the blisters on his tendons where the laces of his boots dug in, the calluses on his heels, but the dogs were curious and easy and cheerful.
They passed an abandoned village, its streets strewn with sewing machines, mangles, bicycles, pots and pans and china. Trigger had grown silent, his enthusiasm for beating drums now on the wane. A cluster of crosses stood, huddled and gaunt, at an intersection in the road. Despite the heat, Stanley shivered. With each passing moment, with each passing sight, his fear grew.
Beyond the crosses and the ruined houses, one last house straggled some way behind the others. Each front room gaped, as open as a doll’s house, its facade completely gone. Where was the child who used to push that wicker pram? At the foot of the stone steps to the house, indifferent to the clouds of dust, indifferent to the passing traffic, sat an old man, holding his head in his hands.
That white hair was so like Da’s. The ground was giving way beneath Stanley, all his certainties in flight. His own father, so many miles away, might be sitting like that, his white head in his hands. Bones pulled at the lead, but still Stanley craned his neck to stare. The man’s head rose, leaden with pain. Stanley started as though he’d seen a ghost.
‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘What have I done?’
The old man started forward, arms outstretched, then faltered and stood for a few heart-breaking seconds, his trembling hands hovering in the empty air. He sank down again, his hands over his eyes.
Bones tugged again at the lead. On Stanley marched, like a sleepwalker through a chamber of horrors, between wooden crosses, around or over the carcasses of horses, onward past a sign, adrift in a pile of rubble all overgrown with wild mustard. That rubble, scarcely one brick on top of another now, had once been a village, and that sign had once named it. Haunted still by that lonely white head, Stanley passed more ruined houses, ruined lives, ruined families, growing more troubled at each step by the idea that he’d perhaps done wrong to his own.
Another fifty minutes passed. The column halted and men drank from their bottles. By the side of the road lay birdcages, dolls, prams, cots and bedsteads. Bones collapsed, his flanks heaving at Stanley’s feet, and placed his muzzle on Stanley’s boots. Trigger kicked the ground.
‘Hammered into dust . . . The fighting here must’ve been yard by yard . . . whole villages just hammered into dust.’
Stanley poured Bones some water, listening to Rigby and Doyle, seeing a fleeting, troubled frown cross Trigger’s clear forehead, his voice unusually subdued.
‘They say it was a rough time . . . all hands on deck . . . just a desperate hodgepodge making up the line – bottlewashers, cooks, artillery drivers . . .’
Stanley’s fear for what lay ahead grew. He placed a hand on Bones’s head. ‘All hands on deck’ would mean dog keepers too. Would he, after all, end up in the front line? He and Bones? A fleet of ambulances passed, sending up clouds of choking dust.
Trigger’s voice was still subdued. ‘They’re from Villers, these Tin Lizzies . . . all from Villers.’
‘They’ve had a hot time there,’ said Rigby. ‘All because of Paris. If the Hun gets Amiens he can range all his guns on Paris.’
‘They say he’s going to have another crack at Villers,’ said Trigger. ‘Ludendorff’s going to attack again. That’s why we’re going up . . . Haig’s sending us all up there to save Amiens.’
When the dust cleared, Stanley noticed amidst a row of ruined buildings opposite, a bar and a sign still standing: The Estaminet Au Cheval Noir. The inn had no roof or upper floor, but some horses, a team of gunners perhaps, were stabled in the ground-floor rooms. Though the buildings on either side were razed to the ground, there, amidst a scene of desolation and destruction, the horses stood, as dozy and peaceful as in the green fields of home.
The support lines lay across undulating land, above a low-lying plain intersected by canals and ringed on all sides by low, wooded hills. The line stopped. Stanley’s unit was met by their guide, an infantryman of the Devons. The infantryman looked a little put out, a little alarmed by Bones, and made sure to keep a good distance between himself and the dog as the guide ordered them not to smoke and not to talk. In silence and in single file they dropped into a deep communication trench leading to the back lines.
The air was thick, and hot, and stale. Curiosity getting the better now of his anxiety, Stanley admired the camouflage cover overhead, wire netting threaded with real grass, and the deep clay walls of the trench. He thought of the man-hours of digging that had gone into the making of the trench and felt glad not to be burrowing with the Engineers. Bones was large and clumsy, a giant in these cramped proportions, and the men hauling provisions up and down the trench cursed him as they passed.
They took a narrower access branch, which emerged into the back lines. More guides were waiting at an intersection to take companies up to their front-line posts. In absolute silence, Stanley and Bones, Doyle, Rigby and their dogs, and a Regimental Signaller with a pair of flags stuck in his pack, followed the dusty, claustrophobic, right-angled zigzagging of the trench for perhaps a mile. The straight bits, known as ‘bays’, were crowded with men, some leaning against the sandbag walls, smoking and looking bored. Others sat on petrol tins playing cards or reading. One man stretched out a hand to Bones. That wasn’t good: Bones would be distracted from his work if he was petted or offered food. Surely the infantry had been warned not to give the dogs food?
‘No,’ said Stanley firmly, a little surprised at himself. ‘No petting and no food.’
Trigger looked impressed. He was holding up six fingers. He’d developed a habit of counting Stanley’s words. Stanley grinned back.
Where Stanley could see over the parapet, the front edge of the trench, there was a clear view in all directions. The back line here ran along a bit of a ridge, overlooking a slope, and below that, the plain was ringed with trees and a river. So this, thought Stanley, this is it. This is the Somme. This terrible plain, slashed with the knife cuts of trenches; this is where Tom fought.
The view was bald and abrupt: first the potato fields, then the slope, the plain, then the German fences and wire. Well behind the line lay the village of Villers-Bretonneux on a spearhead of the plateau, a commanding position astride an old Roman road. It was clear to Stanley why the Hun wanted Villers.
A new guide met Stanley and took him to the back station, Battalion Headquarters, instructing him to report to Corporal Hunter, the officer in command of Signals for the Devons of XIV Corps. They reached a right-angled corner and some narrow wooden steps. Stanley was waved on down the steps, while Doyle and Rigby were to follow on. Trigger put an arm round Stanley, but addressed Bones as he said, ‘It’s up to you now, you’ll have to do the talking for him. Look after him. Take care of him.’ Then to Stanley he said, ‘Good luck, Stanley.’
‘Good luck, Trigger.’