Free Jack Firebrace's War by Sebastian Faulks Page B

was shellfire. There must be a tunnel.”
    “Don’t worry,” said Tyson. “Anyone can make a mistake.”
    There was a whining sound in the air about a hundred yards to their right as another shell came over.
    “Any news about when we’re getting out of here?” said Jack.
    “Supposed to be tomorrow,” said Shaw, “but I can’t see us getting down the line while this shelling’s going on. Did Weir say anything?”
    “No, I don’t think he knows.”
    The three men looked at each other with expressionless, exhausted eyes. Tyson and Shaw had been together for a year, since they had been drawn to enlist by the six shillings pay on offer to men with experience of working underground. Both had been miners in Nottingham, though Tyson had done little work beneath the surface, having been chiefly concerned with the maintenance of machinery. Shaw claimed to be thirty-one, but might have been ten years older. He would work like a packhorse in the tunnel but had little enthusiasm for the military discipline imposed on them by the infantry.
    In Jack’s life they had replaced two fellow-Londoners with whom he had worked on the construction of the Central Line. Both these men, Allen and Mortimer, had died in an explosion on the Messines Ridge near Ypres the year before. Jack, already immune to death, let their white faces drift from his memory. He had succumbed only with reluctance to the friendship of Tyson and Shaw, but found to his dismay that their company had grown important to him. When they lay down to sleep, he let Shaw rest his head on his knees, which were folded inward to keep out of the line of the trench itself. Sometimes he awoke to find a rat had crawled across his face. At other hours he lay rocked between the fear of being buried by a shell, consumed in the earth they had crawled under, and the overpowering need to lose consciousness of the noise that assailed them. There were wooden planks beneath them that seemed to lie against their bones. Even Shaw’s big flanks and shoulders gave him no cushioning of flesh as he rolled and tossed in half-sleep.
    Captain Weir’s face appeared round the corner of the groundsheet. He was wearing a waterproof cape over his white sweater and had changed into knee-high rubber boots.
    “Shaw, you’re needed in the tunnel,” he said. “I know you were in this morning, but they need help to clear the debris. You’d better report for duty, too, Tyson.”
    “I’m on sentry duty at ten, sir.”
    “Firebrace will have to do it for you. Come on, move yourselves. Sergeant Adams is in charge of the working party. Go and report to him.”
    “Finish my tea, Jack,” said Shaw. “Don’t let the rats have it.”
    With the others gone, Jack tried to sleep. His nerves were too stretched. He closed his eyes but could see only the dark of the tunnel face. He kept hearing the sudden quiet that had made him and Evans stop and hold their breath. He did not berate himself for failing to identify the sound of a German tunnel. He had done his best, and the men might have died anyway, perhaps in a worse way, with gas in their lungs or lying beyond help in no-man’s-land. They would find that part of Turner’s face and head and they would bury it beneath the earth with any other bits of bone and uniform they could bring back from underground. He thought of Shaw’s big hands sifting through the blown soil. For a moment he relaxed into sleep, but then the decontraction of his body made him jump and he awoke again, his body tensed and ready to fight.
    Abandoning sleep, he took out the letter from his breast pocket and lit a stub of candle he found in the side compartment of Tyson’s pack.
    My Dearest Jack,
    How are you keeping? All our thoughts and prayers are with you. We read the newspapers each day, we look at the casualty columns first. There doesn’t seem to be any news of where you are. We have had Mother staying and she says to tell you she got your letter and she is sending another