After one such explosion, Bats thought he heard movement beyond the tunnel wall. Boomer gave Thomas a quick hand signal, and Thomas started to silently bore a second hole in the wall several feet to the left of the first hole. When he’d drilled deep enough, Bats listened again at the wall to determine whether they needed to load another torpedo. From his position farther down the gallery, Frederick watched Bats’s face for any hint of what he heard on the other side of the clay wall. His muscles tensed, ready to run should the listener signal that an explosion was imminent.

After several torturous minutes, Bats mouthed “False alarm” and gave the crew the all clear. Breathing a sigh of relief, Boomer signaled Thomas to remove the drill and start packing the hole while the rest of the crew resumed their work at the tunnel face.

Frederick, who’d returned with Feathers’s cage to his position behind Mole and Bagger, watched the small boy work, cursing the fact that Thomas would get to return to his family after the war and tell them he’d protected the Allied front by killing dozens of the enemy with explosives. All Frederick would be able to tell his family was that he’d carried sacks of clay, lugged lumber beams, and watched a stupid canary flit about its cage. That would be Frederick’s total contribution to Britain’s war effort—army ornithologist.

He nudged the cage with his elbow, sending Feathers into a flurry of flapping and chirping before the canary settled back onto its perch. Some war hero I’ve turned out to be, Frederick thought, returning his attention to Thomas. At this rate, my father will be too ashamed to let me in the house, much less hang my portrait in the family gallery.

Frederick had contemplated writing to his father and requesting he use his influence to have Frederick transferred to a unit of real soldiers. He felt confident his father would agree and go along with Frederick’s deception, not wanting a son of his tarnishing the family name by having to reveal he’d left school and lied to a recruiting officer, but Frederick wasn’t as certain about his mother. If she saw Frederick’s letter and learned where he was, she would move heaven and earth to bring him home. He’d be an Eton dropout, a military embarrassment, and the shame of his family.

No, he’d have to remain under no-man’s-land with these tunnel rats until he came up with a better plan. Sweat trickled down his face and back as he sat, hating everyone and everything connected to his unbearable situation. He pushed his glasses up for the millionth time, but they slipped down again the second he let go. Adding the stagnant heat and his poor eyesight to the never-ending list of things Frederick loathed, he left his glasses perched on the tip of his nose and returned to plotting new ways to get himself transferred from the clay kickers unit.

When George finally returned with a trolley stacked with timber and a new question for Mole, Frederick stood to help unload the trolley at the exact moment Bagger swung out a hand to cuff George for talking. This time George dodged the blow by jumping back, a move that drove the timber beam he held into Frederick’s gut.