“Keep down!” a warning voice bellowed as rifle bullets zipped toward them; they left behind lines of hanging light that cut through the wire. Lots of them were cutting through the wire now.

“How are we supposed to . . . ?”

“For fuck’s sake!”

Harry heard teeth chattering, a fragment of prayer, and a metallic clatter that came to him through his fingers as much as his ears. Their hands were on the wire, pulling, clambering, clawing at it. Cutters were working, rifles trying to push it down. To his left a figure leapt forward, running at it, plunging and then convulsing.

A shell hit just behind. Theirs now. It sent them all rearing up and thrown onto the tangled trap. Harry’s clippers were working. The wire tore at him as he cut. Its barbs were yanking at his sleeves and scratching at his wrists. He could see that his hands were sticky. He pulled the wire apart, inched forward, and began again.

“In and out, eh?” a humorless voice to his side asked with a laugh.

Shells were landing behind again and he found himself facedown in the wire. It was stuck in his puttees and his tunic and his sleeves now. He felt like a fly in a spider’s web. It pulled and cut against him when he tried to move. The white arcs of bullets fizzed through the darkness. In the shell light he stared at the clippers in his hand. How could he ever cut his way out of this?

The last thing he saw, as the earth plunged up, was Pembridge’s face at his side. There were tears on his cheeks. Then it was all convulsing up underneath him, like the wire had an energy of its own, the brambles and the pickets lashing and writhing. He heard the wire whip and felt it rush all around him. His legs were wet and the whistling light rushed to white.

Chapter Thirty-Four: Harry

Chapter Thirty-Four

Harry

Péronne, Somme, August 1921