Contents ( 45)
- DULCE ET DECORUM EST
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- CONTENTS
Thomas reached up to touch his medals, but found only fabric and flesh. He felt all around his neck, but the necklace was gone. He stopped at the tunnel entrance.
“What’s wrong?” Charlie asked.
“I left something in the dugout,” Thomas said. “You go on ahead.”
“You sure? I can wait.”
“It’ll only take a minute. I’ll meet you and the others in the support trenches.”
Before Charlie could argue, Thomas turned and hurried back toward the crew’s dugout.
On the way, he mentally retraced his steps, thinking back to the last time he’d touched the medals. The memory surfaced cold and sweaty.
Before Thomas had embedded his first loose fuse in the mine, he’d gripped his medals and said a prayer, asking his grandad and James to watch over them. When the crew built the final wall of sandbags to seal off the gallery, Thomas’s gas mask came loose for the sixth time that shift. He’d pulled it down from his face and let it hang beneath his chin. When Boomer noticed, he’d signaled for Thomas to put it back on. With a frustrated jerk, Thomas had yanked the mask back onto his face.
Standing outside the dugout, Thomas squeezed his eyes shut. “No, no, no, no…” He stared down the dark tunnel that led to the shaft and gallery where he knew his necklace must be. He had to hurry and find it before it was lost forever. Grabbing the door frame, he leaned inside the dugout. Mole stood with his back to him, folding up his Tommy’s Cooker and placing it with the crew’s tin cups in the crate they’d used as their table.
“Mole, I lost something in the gallery,” he said, grabbing a lantern from the wall. “I’ll meet you up top.”
“What?” Mole said, turning to face the doorway, but Thomas was already gone.
Mole rubbed his ears and grumbled to himself, “Blimey, now I’m bloody hearing voices.” He then finished packing the crew’s belongings and took the box topside to meet up with Boomer.
THIRTY-SIX
FOR OVER A MONTH, the young soldier spent sixteen hours a day toiling alongside his fellow prisoners of war in the German trenches. He dug and hauled spoil, loaded artillery shells into howitzer cannons, and scurried onto no-man’s-land during ceasefires to retrieve injured and dead German soldiers. He regretted every shovelful of earth he removed that helped fortify the enemy’s position, he begged God for forgiveness with every shell he loaded into a howitzer aimed at the Allied trenches, and he said silent prayers for the fallen comrades he left behind every time he carried the body of a fallen enemy off the battlefield. But the young soldier never questioned or refused an order. To do so would have earned him a bullet to the head and an unmarked grave.
At night, when he lay awake, too hungry and afraid to sleep, he stared across no-man’s-land. When the guns fell silent, he could hear the voices of Allied soldiers drifting over the battlefield. He dreamed of running across the stretch of desolate land to join them. It would only take him a few minutes to reach the other side if a German or British sniper didn’t stop him first. With a heavy sigh, he pushed the fantasy of escaping from his mind and curled up next to the French boy in their dugout. Trying to escape would be too great a risk. If he hoped to ever get home to his family again, he had to stay alive, and, burrowed deep into the higher ground bordering no-man’s-land, there was no place safer on the Western Front than the German trenches.