Free As the Crow Flies by Jeffrey Archer

again, every bullet
placed carefully into its magazine, every Lewis gun tested, oiled and retested
and then the men finally shaved before they faced the enemy. Charlie’s first
experience of a razor was in near freezing water.
    No
man finds it easy to sleep the night before a battle, Charlie had been told,
and many used the time to write long letters to their loved ones at home, some
even had the courage to make a will. Charlie wrote to Posh Porky he wasn’t sure
why asking her to take care of Sal, Grace and Kitty if he didn’t return. Tommy
wrote to no one, and not simply because he couldn’t write. At midnight Charlie
collected all the section’s efforts and handed them in a bundle to the orderly of
ficer.
    Bayonets
were carefully sharpened, then fixed; hearts began to beat faster as the
minutes passed, and they waited in silence for the command to advance. Charlie’s
own feelings raced between terror and exhilaration, as he watched Captain
Trentham strolling from platoon to platoon to deliver his final briefing.
Charlie downed in one gulp the tot of rum that was handed out to all the men up
and down the trenches just before a battle.
    A
Second Lieutenant Makepeace took his place behind Charlie’s trench, another
officer he had never met. He looked like a fresh-faced schoolboy and introduced
himself to Charlie as one might do to a casual acquaintance at a cocktail
parry. He asked Charlie to gather the section together a few yards behind the
line so he could address them. Ten cold, frightened men climbed out of their
trench and listened to the young officer in cynical silence. The day had been
specially chosen because the meteorologists had assured them that the sun would
rise at five fifty-three and there would be no rain. The meteorologists would
prove to be right about the sun, but as if to show their fallibility at
four-eleven a steady drizzle began. “A German drizzle,” Charlie suggested to
his comrades. “And whose side is God on, anyway?”
    Lieutenant
Makepeace smiled thinly. They waited for a Verey pistol to be fired, like some
referee blowing a whistle before hostilities could officially commence.
    “And
don’t forget, ‘bangers and mash’ is the password,” said Lieutenant Makepeace. “Send
it down the line.”
    At
five fifty-three, as a blood-red sun peeped over the horizon, a Verey pistol
was fired and Charlie looked back to see the sky lit up behind him.
    Lieutenant
Makepeace leaped out of the trench and cried, “Follow me, men. “
    Charlie
climbed out after him and, screaming at the top of his voice more out of fear
than bravado charged towards the barbed wire.
    The
lieutenant hadn’t gone fifteen yards before the first bullet hit him, but
somehow he still managed to carry on until he reached the wire. Charlie watched
in horror as Makepeace fell across the barbed barrier and another burst of
enemy bullets peppered his motionless body. Two brave men changed direction to
rush to his aid, but neither of them even reached the wire. Charlie was only a
yard behind them, and was about to charge through a gap in the barrier when
Tommy overtook him. Charlie turned, smiled, and that was the last dining he
remembered of the battle of the Lys.
    Two
days later Charlie woke up in a hospital tent, some three hundred yards behind
the line, to find a young girl in a dark blue uniform with a royal crest above
her heart hovering over him. She was talking to him. He knew only because her
lips were moving: but he couldn’t hear a word she said. Thank God, Charlie thought,
I’m still alive, and surely now I’ll be sent back to England. Once a soldier
had been certified medically deaf he was always shipped home. King’s
Regulations.
    But
Charlie’s hearing was fully restored within a week and a smile appeared on his
lips for the first time when he saw Grace standing by his side pouring him a
cup of tea. They had granted her permission to move tents once she’d heard that
an unconscious soldier named Trumper