Fall of Giants

As the Pals shuffled forward, slowly getting nearer to the frontline trench, Billy found he was sweating.

Owen Bevin began to cry. Billy said gruffly: “Pull yourself together, now, Private Bevin. No good crying, is it?”

The boy said: “I want to go home.”

“So do I, boyo, so do I.”

“Please, Corporal, I didn’t think it would be like this.”

“How old are you anyway?”

“Sixteen.”

“Bloody hell,” said Billy. “How did you get recruited?”

“I told the doctor how old I was, and he said: ‘Go away, and come back in the morning. You’re tall for your age, you might be eighteen by tomorrow.’ And he gave me a wink, see, so I knew I had to lie.”

“Bastard,” said Billy. He looked at Owen. The boy was not going to be any use on the battlefield. He was shaking and sobbing.

Billy spoke to Lieutenant Carlton-Smith. “Sir, Bevin is only sixteen, sir.”

“Good God,” said the lieutenant.

“He should be sent back. He’ll be a liability.”

“I don’t know about that.” Carlton-Smith looked baffled and helpless.

Billy recalled how Prophet Jones had tried to make an ally of Mortimer. Prophet was a good leader, thinking ahead and acting to prevent problems. Carlton-Smith, by contrast, seemed to be of no account, yet he was the superior officer. That’s why it’s called the class system, Da would have said.

After a minute, Carlton-Smith went to Fitzherbert and said something in a low voice. The major shook his head in negation, and Carlton-Smith shrugged helplessly.

Billy had not been brought up to look on cruelty without a protest. “The boy is only sixteen, sir!”

“Too late to say that now,” said Fitzherbert. “And don’t speak until you’re spoken to, Corporal.”

Billy knew that Fitzherbert did not recognize him. Billy was just one of hundreds of men who worked in the earl’s pits. Fitzherbert did not know he was Ethel’s brother. All the same, the casual dismissal angered Billy. “It’s against the law,” he said stubbornly. In other circumstances Fitzherbert would have been the first person to pontificate about respect for the law.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Fitz irritably. “That’s why I’m the officer.”

Billy’s blood began to boil. Fitzherbert and Carlton-Smith stood there in their tailored uniforms, glaring at Billy in his itchy khaki, thinking that they could do anything. “The law is the law,” Billy said.

Prophet spoke quietly. “I see you’ve forgotten your stick this morning, Major Fitzherbert. Shall I send Bevin back to headquarters to get it for you?”

It was a face-saving compromise, Billy thought. Well done, Prophet.

But Fitzherbert was not buying it. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.

Suddenly Bevin darted away. He slipped into the crowd of men behind and disappeared from sight in a moment. It was so surprising that some of the men laughed.

“He won’t get far,” said Fitzherbert. “And when they catch him, it won’t be very funny.”

“He’s a child!”

Fitzherbert fixed him with a look. “What’s your name?” he said.

“Williams, sir.”

Fitzherbert looked startled, but recovered fast. “There are hundreds of Williamses,” he said. “What’s your first name?”

“William, sir. They call me Billy Twice.”

Fitzherbert gave him a hard stare.

He knows, Billy thought. He knows Ethel has a brother called Billy Williams. He stared straight back.

Fitzherbert said: “One more word out of you, Private William Williams, and you’ll be on a charge.”

There was a whistling sound above. Billy ducked. From behind him came a deafening bang. A hurricane blew all around him: clods of earth and fragments of planking flew past. He heard screams. Abruptly he found himself flat on the ground, not sure whether he had been knocked over or had thrown himself down. Something heavy hit his head, and he cursed. Then a boot thumped to the ground beside his face. There was a leg attached to the boot, but nothing else. “Oh, Christ,” he said.

He got to his feet. He was uninjured. He looked around at the members of his section: Tommy, George Barrow, Mortimer… they were all standing up. Everyone pushed forward, suddenly seeing the front line as an escape route.

Major Fitzherbert shouted: “Hold your positions, men!”

Prophet Jones said: “As you were, as you were.”

The surge forward was halted. Billy tried to brush mud off his uniform. Then another shell landed behind them. If anything, this one was farther back, but that made little difference. There was a bang, a hurricane, and a rain of debris and body parts. The men started scrambling out of the assembly trench at the front and to either side. Billy and his section joined in. Fitzherbert, Carlton-Smith, and Roland Morgan were screaming at the men to stay where they were, but no one was listening.

They ran forward, trying to get a safe distance from where the shells were landing. As they approached the British barbed wire, they slowed down, and stopped at the near edge of no-man’s-land, realizing that ahead was a danger as great as the one from which they were fleeing.

Making the best of it, the officers joined them. “Form a line!” shouted Fitzherbert.