Thomas knew the answer. It was the same thing the miners in Dover did with dead canaries. Toss out their bodies, replace them with new birds, and get back to work. But the truth seemed too harsh to speak as Charlie continued to pet the dead canary. Apparently, George did not feel the same way.

“They’ll replace him, just like they do when a soldier dies on the front line or a miner in the tunnels.”

Charlie’s chin trembled. “He deserves to be remembered. Everyone does.”

“Just because he deserves it doesn’t mean it will happen,” George mumbled.

Thomas caught George’s eye and shook his head.

“What?” George said. “It’s the truth, and Mouse knows it. The bird is disposable, just like the rest of us. It was no different in the factory, right, Mouse? A worker gets killed in an accident or falls sick, and the next day a new worker is standing in his spot. There’s no time for mourning or memorializing. There’s work to be done.”

“There’s time now,” Thomas said.

“You want to bury the bird?” George asked.

Charlie looked up at Thomas. Tears welled in his eyes.

“Why not?” Thomas said. “He was part of our crew. His death saved my life. It saved all of us.”

George took off his helmet and ran a hand through his messy hair. “Sure. Why not?”

The boys carried the cage to a field beyond the reserve trenches. The cold, wet March weather that had greeted the boys the morning they’d arrived in Ypres had lingered into April, leaving the abandoned farmlands behind the Allied lines as lifeless and muddy as the battlefield that stretched before them.

“I never thought any place could make me miss the streets of London,” George said as he knelt below a large elm tree. The leafless branches offered the boys huddled beneath them little protection from the rain that had begun to fall in earnest again during their walk from the tunnel entrance. George sank his fingers into the mud beside the trunk of the tree and started to dig a small hole. “But when this war is over, I never want to see mud again.”

“Bats told me in another month or so all of these fields will be covered in poppies,” Charlie said.

Thomas knelt to help George. “That sounds nice. I’ll be happy to see any color other than brown.” He pulled a handful of cold, wet soil from the hole George had started.

“Bats said after shifts last summer he’d come out here and sit among the poppies to remember that even in the middle of all this fighting and death, beauty still exists and life continues.” Tears brimmed in Charlie’s eyes as he stared at Feathers’s still body. “I hope I get a chance to see them.”

“You will,” George said. “We all will.”

When George and Thomas finished digging, Charlie wrapped Feathers in a handkerchief and placed him in the grave, which George covered with the removed mud. No one spoke. Any prayers offered or thanks given were done so silently.