The Sons of Adam. Harry Bingham

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      Tom stayed on duty for the first sentry shift. So much had happened, he needed time to think. Somewhere in the afternoon’s fighting, he had crushed his pack of cigarettes, but he carefully extricated a couple of the flattened paper tubes and delicately reconstructed them into something smokable. He lit up, throat aching for the taste of warm tobacco.

      ‘Mr Creeley?’

      ‘Yes?’

      By the brief flare of his match, Tom could see a man’s face – silver-haired but young, grey moustache beneath youthful blue eyes.

      ‘Captain Morgan. Just sent across from the Warwickshires to give you lads support.’

      The two men shook hands and Tom handed over the last of his battered cigarettes, lighting it before passing it across.

      ‘Support?’ said Tom, mumbling through his cigarette. ‘God knows we need it.’

      ‘Look here. I’ve got some rather rotten news. I’d best spill it. The brigadier wants to sweep the Boche off the salient for good. His idea is, if we can storm their machine-gun posts, we can dare to risk a general assault.’

      ‘The brigadier is a murderous bloody-minded lunatic’

      Captain Morgan laughed, embarrassed at Tom’s bluntness, but hardly denying the charge. ‘Your name came up,’ he said.

      ‘Came up to do what?’

      The captain grimaced. ‘The guns.’

      ‘To storm their machine guns?’

      ‘Yes. I think it’s a damn fool idea myself, but the brigadier seems blessedly keen on it.’

      ‘It’s lunatic.’

      ‘I’m terribly sorry, old fellow – bearer of bad tidings and all that. The brigadier wanted you to take a dozen men. Use your own initiative on how to proceed, then get started at once. I’ll follow with a full company to support you the moment you’ve put a stop to those guns.’

      Morgan handed over a packet containing written orders that confirmed his summary. Tom read the papers, then tossed them away.

      ‘My initiative? My initiative tells me that the brigadier’s lost his bloody marbles.’

      The captain swallowed. Even to a newcomer, it was fairly clear that the brigadier’s orders were virtually impossible to fulfil.

      ‘I can’t say I don’t feel for you, old man. I’d have put my own name forward, except that I really don’t know the ground here. I must say, I thought the chap who put your name forward was a bit of a bounder. It’s not really the sort of thing that one fellow volunteers another fellow for.’

      ‘Who put my name forward?’

      Captain Morgan paused. He had said more than he should and was kicking himself for it. ‘Look, I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s really not my –’

      ‘But you did. Who was it?’

      Captain Morgan paused again, taking a long drag on his cigarette. He burned the tobacco down half an inch, then dropped the butt fizzing into the mud. ‘All right, old man. I wouldn’t normally say, but given the circs and everything … It was a chap called Montague. Mr Montague. I didn’t get the first name.’

      ‘Mister Montague?’ Tom was horrified. ‘A subaltern, my age?’

      ‘Yes. What? You have a lot of Montagues, do you?’

      ‘Not a major? We have a lieutenant and a major Which one?’

      ‘Lieutenant, old man. One star on his shoulder, that’s all. Positive sighting and all that. Definitely lieutenant.’

      ‘His leg? Was he wounded in the leg at all? A bad flesh wound, very recent? This afternoon?’

      ‘He was sitting down, old boy. I didn’t see his leg. But wouldn’t he be in hospital with a wound like that? He wouldn’t be sitting around with the brig, I don’t suppose.’

      ‘No. I suppose he wouldn’t.’ Tom was more shocked than he could give words to. There were two German machine-gun posts. One of them had been dug into the site of a deep shellhole, built up with sandbags and well wired all round. The other was one of the German gun posts that had survived pretty much undisturbed all through the fighting. The post had been built of poured concrete, ten feet thick and laced through with railway ties and steel bars. Attacking the posts was a short walk to suicide, nothing less. And Alan had wanted it. More even than the probability of his impending death – a fact which Tom treated as certain – what shocked him was that Alan wanted it.

      Captain Morgan looked at Tom with a depth of feeling in his eyes. Beyond the makeshift parapet, some two hundred yards away the white concrete gun post shone pale in the moonlight. ‘I’m terribly sorry, old man. I do wish you the very best of British luck.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      ‘There’s nothing I can do, is there? Nothing you need?’

      Tom shook his head. ‘Just … Look, for reasons I can’t explain, it matters to me very much indeed – more than I can possibly say – who suggested my name this afternoon. You’re perfectly sure it was a Lieutenant Montague?’

      Pause.

      In the distance a couple of shells boomed, and there was an answering snap of rifles.

      ‘Look, I was at Sandhurst four years ago, made captain last year. I know when to salute the pips and when to look for a salute myself. I’m absolutely positive, old man. I’m sorry.’

      Tom nodded.

      Another handshake. ‘I’d best leave you to it, then.’ Morgan began to walk away. A Very light shot up into the sky, and hung there, slowly dropping. The gloomy trench filled with its glow.

      ‘Excuse me, Captain,’ called Tom.

      ‘Yes?’ Morgan turned.

      Tom held out his crumpled cigarette packet. ‘I’ve managed to crush these. You don’t have any by chance?’

      Morgan felt in his tunic pocket. He had a packet of Woodbines intact and just slightly damp from a shower of rain earlier. ‘Take these, old man. You’re welcome.’