Chapter Fifty-One: Harry

Chapter Fifty-One

Harry

Houthulst Forest, north of Ypres, October 1917

THE FIRST LIGHT WAS IN THE SKY NOW AND HARRY COULD MORE clearly see the tape line stretching out across the mud. There was something almost laughable about the precision of this white line. It looked feeble and false; such a small, silly thing amid the rule-breaking bigness of the landscape that it demarcated. It didn’t look like something that trust ought to be invested in. They had obediently followed the tapes forward, though, past the dead mules and the dead men, all churning together as the heavy shells fell and the columns of black water roared into the air.

Lines of other men had been moving the other way, following the tape lines back. Harry couldn’t see their faces in the gloom—they were anonymous, invisible men, only there in the jostle and the noise of their boots and breath. They could well have been a ghost army retreating. The duckboard tracks, the heaving howitzers, and the tapes were the only things that had kept the scene from being some vision from the Old Testament. Armstrong had said that it was like going through Dante’s seven circles. Summerfield said that this Dante clearly had a nasty imagination. The night air billowed hot and cold and smelled of sulfur. Harry had been reminded of a William Blake illustration for the Divine Comedy—a writhing whirlwind of doomed lovers—and had kept his eye on Francis’s back moving on in front of him, following the tape into the flood and fire and darkness.

This tape line had been laid out by the engineers in advance of the front line. The men had been crouched on it since two a.m. It gave a strange illusion, Harry thought, like this was the start of a race—as if there would be an engraved cup and a congratulations cream tea for the first man across the finish line. Summerfield tapped the face of the wristwatch that his mother had just sent him. Tate tested his rifle, kissed it, and spat. His rifle had kept jamming with the damp and so he now played with it like a nervous tic. Flares glimmered occasionally ahead. The finishing tape, such as it was, was the line of the forest, just beyond the road junction that rose some thousand or so yards ahead. At 5:35 a.m. they were due to start advancing toward it. They were waiting for the rolling barrage to start. He could see Francis just a few yards away to his left. He still hadn’t spoken.

Harry had been trying not to stare at his brother. When their eyes met he saw that his attention was not welcome, but it was difficult now not to watch Francis. He didn’t trust him to look after himself. When Harry went forward it was not just his own skin that he must steer out of trouble.