Man in no man's land
The minutes seem to crawl by. I think it's near midnight, but it's difficult to keep time here. All I know for certain is that sleep is slowly creeping up on me as well. I half-jokingly say to the soldier next to me, Tommy, watch out for me while I get a doss, and sit down against the plank walls. For a few minutes, I think I can squirm into an uncomfortable sleep. Then comes a shout, Christmas was a week ago, get back in the trench! My mate from before gives me a stir and I ask, what's the matter, Roberts? I don't hear the benefits. He tells me to take a look. Warily, I poke my head to just under the parapets. I see there on this New Years night, standing above a dugout to the front of the line, a bugler.
What's happening here? I can't many any sense of it. If it had been a week earlier, there would be nothing overly remarkable about something like this during those remarkable times, but the officers have since restored order to the ranks and reminded us of our grand animosity towards the Germans. They had returned it in kind, as if there had never been that moment of peace. Christmastime joviality had given way to the mechanical resumption of hostilities. There was no more room for that in this finely tuned war! Yet right now I can plainly see, out of defiance or delusion, that foolhardy bloke.
That night is too dim to see well, to where I can only just make out his silhouette barely contrast against the night sky. I imagine he looks much like anyone else here, a young man wearing a dusty uniform decorated with caked-on mud, wet to the bones, and shivering in the cold. What I see next is that same man perhaps steadying himself with determination, wetting his cracked lips, and placing the bugle to his mouth. I hear the first halting notes, just barely above the regular clamor on the front. The next few are more sure. The sound rings true, and I'm sure it's being heard up and down the trenches and even across the way. The lone bugler scraps on, filling the air with a familiar melody. I find myself reminded of an old long since.
Around me, I can feel something has sparked in these infantrymen. I hear a slowly rising din, maybe just one or two soldiers at first, but then I think the whole mob's in on it, and they're all crying for my jos and pint stowps and old acquaintances. The sound is all youth and yearning and hoarseness, but it's as clear as the bugle. Then judge my surprise, their trench being only dozens of yards away, I hear the Germans too. It's in broken English and heavily accented through and through, but the voice, the voice is the exact same, of men playing heroism for the brass and crown, of boys who've had the whole nature of this great spat revealed to them since Mons and earlier, of soldiers made to be cogs in the machinery of war, and of friends still up for a round of song. I think my eyes go glassy and my face is wet, but I'm convincing myself it's because of the water in the trenches. It stuns me, to listen to it, and for a long moment I feel as if though this all wouldn't have been if we'd only known a few German lads a bit better than one Christmas day.
When my senses return to me, I start to make my way through the trenches towards the dugout. I don't think I'm the only one, seeing all the movement, but I'm sure that some of that is the staff scrambling to find the redcaps and jacks and to loose them on us like the dogs they are. Something drives me, and as I go I'm listening to the fellows around me. It's not just their singing. I hear around me—good God, where did all our boys go—miss bonny old Scotland—cold's playing the mischief with us—what's the matter, Bill, why the crying—and all sorts of things from the sorry little devils living through this hell. The bugler sounds again, each time a blow against whatever has made all this suffering automatic, a song in the midst of a cacophony of bullets and barrages.
When I make it to the entrance of the sap, I notice some pip going up and down the trenches nearby, knocking about and telling us all to quit our horsing, that we were supposed to be acting as a soldier ought to and what would Sir French think if he were here and we were singing songs with the enemy. I see behind him more officers, jacks in toe. Then I see that a number have congregated on the entrance. They raise their voices belligerently, raucous voices drowning him out. I shout to him—I'll tell you, sir, that right now I feel I have far more in common with Fritz than with French.
I join the group and the singing, feeling like this is the best I can do to stave off resigning the part of me that's still immature and hopeful to the ordeal of fire. The military superiors, the representatives of authority, the would-be jailors make to start. I know, though, that there are more of us, that this rabble of a choir is going to hold firm. The lieutenant gives me a hard stare, tells us that the Germans won't hesitate to fire on us tomorrow morning for all our pleasantries, that we're all fools and fie on us for our disobedience! Over his bluster, the bugle calls, and we all jeer. The lieutenant and his lackeys begin to back away and we all clap each other on the backs and laugh.
I can not say that this feels like the enmity between us has come to a stop, nor has the fuel for the war come to an end because we have shared a moment. For whatever it's worth, I recoil at the lieutenant's words momentarily, and imagine the man with so much life and determination today might be lying broken with his instrument with the next round of shelling. As I mull over this, the last note is being played and the verses are coming to an end, but just when all seems almost quiet I hear a shout, happy new year! I don't know if it comes from the bugler or some other lad, but men from both sides of no man's land join with the cries of happy new year and frohes neujahr and wishing you wells and ein gesundes. I realize that, whatever the truth of that, that even if this war continues on forever, that even with all the machinations of war, human decency between man in no man's land exists now as it did in the days of auld lang syne.
For this new year, I make a few decisions. First, I will go and thank that bugler. Next, I will run. Maybe I will be called a traitor, maybe I will die in some field, maybe nothing will come of it. However, what I am certain of now is that it is better to be out of this misguided war than in it, that there is no life if it is life in the trenches, and that there exists something in us all that drives us together even as the world schemes to pull us apart. I resolve to find it.
2012-01-02, 18:19
Graphic Designer
