“When was that?” Dan asked.

“Seven months ago, sir. The army sent word two months ago that he is missing.”

Johnny shook his head and handed him the photo. “I’m sorry for your loss, son.”

Thomas carefully tucked the photograph back in his pocket. “My brother’s not dead, sir. He’s missing.”

“Same difference out here, I’m afraid,” said Johnny.

Richard flicked the remnant of his cigarette at him. “Let him be, John.”

Johnny pressed the smoldering stub into the duckboards with the toe of his boot. “What? Am I lying?”

Richard pulled a new cigarette from his pocket but didn’t answer, and Dan suddenly became very interested in his cup of cold tea.

“No,” Thomas said. “You’re wrong. If James were dead, the army would have said as much in their letter, but they didn’t, which means there’s a chance my brother’s still alive.”

“Of course there is,” Richard said. He looked pointedly at Johnny and Dan. “Right?”

Johnny sighed. “Son, there are thousands of missing soldiers in this war, and the army knows exactly where they are.”

“They do?” Thomas tried to catch Dan’s eye for confirmation, but the young soldier refused to look at him. “Where are they? In field hospitals? Where can I find them? I know my brother is with them. He has to be.”

Johnny stood and motioned for Thomas to join him.

“John, don’t,” Richard warned.

“Richard’s right,” Dan said. “He’s just a boy looking for his brother. Let him be.”

“He may have been a boy before he raced his friends to the recruiter’s table, but the second he put on that uniform, he became a soldier. If he can’t handle the truth, he doesn’t belong on the front line, or under it.” He led Thomas to the front wall of the trench and pointed to a periscope fed through a small opening in the parapet. “Most missing soldiers are out there.”

Climbing onto the fire step running along the front wall of the trench, Thomas pressed his face against the periscope. The mirrors inside the rectangular tube reflected images of no-man’s-land, the same battlefield Thomas had been digging beneath just six hours before. Twenty yards in front of the Allied trenches, two rows of wooden posts extended along the battlefield in both directions. Miles of barbed wire, which the infantry called devil’s rope, stretched between the posts in tangled curls, like giant metal thorn bushes. On the other side, large craters pocked the earth. Hazy smoke drifted up from the deepest of them, and a chill stole through Thomas at the thought of how close those artillery shells had come to reaching his crew in the tunnels. The only remnants of what must have once been rich Belgian farmland and countryside were splintered trees, stripped of their bark and branches, jutting from the soil like wooden stalagmites.

Life no longer existed on no-man’s-land, except for the flies swarming over the dead and the maggots feasting on the bloated carcasses of horses and men, mowed down by machine guns or torn apart by artillery. The field was littered with them, no matter which direction Thomas looked. The uniforms, caked with dirt and blood, camouflaged the fallen soldiers’ allegiances. Friend or foe? Ally or enemy? It no longer mattered. Only the dead remained.