Ungraciously, Half Pint allowed himself to be manoeuvred down into the gloomy dugout lit by a single hurricane lamp, where he was dropped unceremoniously onto an empty bunk. Sat and stood around him were a collection of discontented Fusiliers, brought here like himself by word of mouth. He wasn’t surprised to see Hepton here, either. Officially a War Office kinematographer, he always had a nose for trouble, or a “story,” as he preferred to put it. His rankless officer’s uniform covered by an Army Warm, he smiled affably and nodded at Half Pint as he entered. Half Pint ignored him.
“It’s not easy getting round on one leg,” he said, kicking out his stump to illustrate the point. “You should try it sometime.”
“If I thought it was a Blighty one, then perhaps I would,” said Wilson. “But it ain’t any more, is it? And that’s the bleedin’ point, i’n’t it?”
Across the way, Rutherford groaned. “Oh, don’t start, Wilson.”
“Look, I signed up for the duration,” Wilson retorted. “I did me duty. I volunteered to defend my country. But look around you. Is this la belle France? No, it bloody isn’t. As far as I’m concerned, my war is over. And so’s yours, and yours,” he said, jerking his chin round the dugout at the gathered Fusiliers.
“You don’t know that. The Lieutenant will get us back somehow,” protested Carter, but there was little conviction in his voice.
“Look, if your officer bloke don’t know the way home,” said Rutherford, addressing Half Pint, “then I do think he should tell us. If there isn’t one, if this is it, then fine. Let us make a new start, I say. Out there.” He gestured vaguely at the dugout roof.
“Well, you would say that,” said Hepton with a leer. “A little birdie tells me that you’ve got yourself a piece of urman skirt.”
“Her name’s Duuma,” Rutherford insisted. “And her enclave has got this place sussed. I’d rather be out there with them than stuck in these trenches, or back in a crumbling terrace, any day. Not that I could go back anyway, not after what I’ve seen. I wouldn’t fit in there no more.”
Wilson snorted with derision. “So what do you think, Bains?” he asked the silent figure in the corner.
The shadows hid Bains’ features, his face only visible in the red glow of his burning gasper whenever he took a drag. Blue smoke drifted up to the roof, snaking its way through the hanging knapsacks. Sitting on an upturned ammo box, he leaned out of the shadows, his elbows resting on his knees. He was an unremarkable man with large ears and untamed eyebrows. His cheeks were speckled with flecks of dried blood, nicks from a blunt razor. He had a chevron-shaped patch on his sleeve, slightly cleaner than the khaki serge around it, where once had been a Lance Corporal’s stripe. It was faint, but it was there if you knew where to look, and everybody in the dugout did. He took a final drag on his cigarette before dropping it on the dugout floor and grinding it into the dirt.
“We’ve been here nigh on four month now,” he growled. “I think Everson has had his chance. He doesn’t know anymore than the rest of us, I reckon. Like it or not, we’re here for good, I’d say, and I’ve had a bellyful of doing what the Army tells me. All I want is a fair chance to make summat for myself, and I’m prepared to take it if I have to.”
Monroe piped up. “But blokes have been doing that; desertin’, I mean. And patrols have come back saying they’ve found their bodies barely miles from here.”
“All right,” said Bains. “But how’s that any different from getting blown up by a Minnie, eh?” He looked round the gloomy dugout of malcontents and grousers. “Or ripped apart by shrapnel, or dying of a gut wound in a shell hole? We’re sitting ducks if we stay here.”
“But this place is all that we have left of Earth,” said Cox.
“And you’re really going to miss all that, are you?” said Bains. “People say the world will change after the War, if it ever ends, but I doubt it. Them as has money will still have it and them as hasn’t still won’t. I’m going to be no worse off here. But at least I can be me own master. And so can you. Starting right here, right now.”
“Why, Bains, you’re beginning to sound like a Bolshevik,” said Hepton with an oily grin.
“So what do we do?” asked Cox.
“It’s already being done. Word has gone out. Some of our brethren will be on sentry duty. They’ll let us pass. All I ask is that if you don’t join us, stand aside and let us take our demands to Everson. We just want a say in how things is run from now on, and we’ll man the barricades to get it if we have to.”
Half Pint heard Bains’ speech with despair. Grousing was one thing, but this was another kettle of fish altogether. It had started out innocently enough – they had genuine grievances, after all – but now it seemed to be gathering a momentum all its own. Bains spoke with passion, though it wasn’t altruism that was forcing his hand. He was letting his ambitions get the better of him. He hadn’t lost his stripe for nothing. Bains wanted power and over the past few days he had been giving the same speech to many small discontented gatherings like this. Half Pint, his glass by nature being half empty, expected the whole thing to blow up in their faces.
“And what on earth makes you think Everson’s going to listen?” needled Hepton.
Bains grinned. “He won’t have a choice.”
AT THE APPOINTED time, gangs of men, many with their faces covered, took advantage of the chaos caused by the mutineers, and rampaged through the trenches, and across the open ground between, in a spirit of mischief, revelling in the irresponsible respite from daily military routine.
Other men had darker motives.
Padre Rand, the army chaplain, knew the men felt lost, far from home as they were, and far from the sight of God. He knew because that was how he felt himself. However, he had his faith, or at least had rediscovered it out here. And with the largesse of the shepherd he knew he must use it to protect his flock from straying.
So it was that he found himself stood on a firestep, pleading with a mob of unruly men who sought to pass by. He raised his arms in the air, appealing for calm, but his uniform wasn’t helping. Although they held no army rank, chaplains wore an officer’s uniform with a dog collar and black bib.
“Let us past, Padre,” a voice from the masked crowd called out. “We just want to talk to Lieutenant Everson.”
The Padre, middle-aged and sandy-haired, looked down at them more in sorrow than in anger. “Then why cover your faces and go armed with clubs?” he asked, attempting to look them in the eyes. “Go back to your dugouts. This isn’t the way.”
A large bruiser of a soldier pushed his way brusquely to the front and stood before him. “Don’t be a martyr, Padre. This isn’t your fight. Step down.”
The Padre smiled sadly and shook his head. “I’m very much afraid, my son, that it is. You’re going down the wrong path. I am, for better or worse, stood at the fork in the road. You would do well to listen to me.”
“Then you can’t say I didn’t warn you.” The man pulled back his arm, drawing a gasp from the surrounding mob crowding the fire bay.
A man surged forward, ripping the kerchief away from his face as he did so, to restrain his arm. “Wilson, have you gone mad? You’ll lose your name.”
Wilson turned and snarled. “Take your hands off me, Rutherford.”
The Padre watched, startled, as the two men struggled. The soldiers around them tried to move back, away from the grappling pair, but in the cramped confines of the fire bay it wasn’t possible. An arm flailed out and caught the Padre on the jaw; he lost his footing and slipped, cracking his head against a revetment post.