Extract from the novel Catlin.

“Right, once more from the top,” Cassidy announced to the small cluster of black faced men gathered about him. “We go up and over at midnight in the following order; myself, Gallagher, Sheehan, Lieutenant Moore, Lynch, Doyle and Corporal Dempsey. Dempsey will bring up the rear, making sure no one lags behind or goes astray. Two flares will be fired to the rear of the German trenches every fifteen minutes on the quarter hour. We head off toward the one on the left.” When Moore had asked Cassidy earlier in the afternoon about the use of flares to guide them, wondering aloud as he did so why they didn’t simply use a compass, the veteran platoon commander informed him a compass would be useless in no man’s land. “There’s simply too much metal scattered all about. Discarded helmets, smashed weapons, bits of gear, shrapnel, plenty of shrapnel, the odd unexploded shell and of course the wire, ours and theirs. Compasses simply can’t be relied upon. A few months back a newly assigned officer in B Company spent the whole night leading a raiding party about in circles because he insisted on using his compass. If someone hadn’t shot the damned fool bugger they’d probably still be out there.” Cassidy didn’t bother to tell Moore rumors had it the fatal shot had been fired by one of the officer’s own men.

“Once we’re through our own wire and as close to the Jerry wire as we dare go we wait until the barrage opens up at oh one hundred. On my command we go forward in the same order.” Pausing, Cassidy looked over at his corporal. Though Dempsey was only a junior NCO, he had made it clear to Moore that on this night, if anything should happen to him Dempsey was in charge. “What happens if we take fire before we reach the German trench?” Cassidy asked his corporal.

“Turn around and head back the way we came,” Dempsey replied without hesitation.

“Right. Just don’t be in too much of a hurry. Make sure the man behind you headed back as well.” Pausing, Cassidy took to looking at each of his men in turn. “The same goes for the rest of you. Don’t head back until whoever was in front of you has turned around and is ready to follow you back.”

Only when he was satisfied that they all understood did Cassidy continue. “Now, assuming we do reach the German trench, once we’re in we’ll take a minute to sort ourselves. “Gallaher, where is it you’re to go?”

“Front Bayonet man, on the corporal’s left.”

“Sheehan?”

“Behind Gallagher and to your left.”

“Lieutenant Moore?”

“Behind you and Private Sheehan.”

“Doyle?”

“To the left of the lance corporal here,” he whispered as he glanced over at Lynch.

“And which way will be you facing?” Cassidy asked.

“To the rear, sir, watching for any Germans comin’ up behind us.”

Cassidy rewarded the man with a quick smile and nod, causing Doyle to flash him a smile of his own that reminded him of a school boy who had just been complimented by his teacher for rendering the correct spelling of a particularly difficult word. “Remember you two,” Cassidy went while glancing back and forth between Lynch and Doyle as he did so, “keep your arses cheek to cheek with Lieutenant Moore’s. If you don’t feel his bum, pick up the pace.”

Had the new officer been a known quantity and his platoon commander had not warned all who were going out with him that night to mind what they said around Moore, Lynch would have cracked a joke or said something colorful. Instead, he simply nodded.

“Good, good,” Cassidy muttered before he reached up under his wooly-pully and took to fishing around until he grasped the silver flask he kept in his left breast pocket. After unscrewing the cap and letting it hang by the chain connecting it to the flask, he passed the flask around to the man on right. “Right, lads. You know the drill. A quick tip before we go out and one more when we make it back.”

When Corporal Dempsey saw the expression on Lieutenant Moore’s face, he couldn’t help but snicker. “A man’s got to have something to look forward to after crawling about half the night where no sane man would go if he had a choice, sir.”

When Moore glanced over at Cassidy, he noticed the veteran officer was also wearing a smirk. “This is an Irish regiment, after all.”

The newly assigned officer was still staring at Cassidy when the man next to him all but shoved the flask in his face. Not wishing to come off as a prude and seeing no harm in doing so, Moore took the flask and up ended it. As he sat there letting the warmth of a fine whisky course its way through him, he held the flask at arm’s length. In the faint light of a dying flare he caught a glimpse of a name beautifully engraved across the front of the flask. “Who is she?” he asked as he turned to hand the flask back to Cassidy.

“Who is who?”

“Caitlin?”

Dropping his chin a smidge, Cassidy smiled to himself as he took a moment to screw the cap back on the gift William had given him not long after they’d met. “Someone near and very dear to my heart,” he whispered longingly.

As much as he had wished it to be otherwise, Cassidy’s small party made it across the torn and tortured landscape that separated the two embattled armies without being detected, denying him the opportunity to use the excuse they had no choice but to turn back before reaching the German trench. Both the time of night and the steady rain of shells impacting beyond the German forward trench that sent fragments of British made shells zinging just overhead allowed them to slip unnoticed into the firing bay of an unguarded stretch of trench. Without a word being uttered, everyone automatically assumed their assigned positions. Only when he was sure they were set did the red haired officer slipped a Mills bomb from the vest he wore and took in a deep breath. “Ready,” he whispered as he pulled the pin from his bomb. When he heard the unmistakable sound of Sheehan pulling the pin of his first bomb as well, he gave the order to go. With that Corporal Dempsey and Private Gallagher stepped off with their bayonet tipped rifles held out before them at waist height, stopping as soon as he reached the first traverse.

It came as something of a surprise to Moore Lieutenant Cassidy, the senior platoon leader in the company had assigned himself as one of the bombers. Anyone who knew better would have found Cassidy’s decision to be in line with what they had come to expect of him. Besides being the second best bomber in the company, Cassidy was one of those officers whose interest in the welfare of his men was as much a part of him as was his coppery red hair, quick wit and unerring accuracy when it came to tossing a bomb. With well practiced ease, he and Sheehan let their bomb’s arming spoon flip up and away before chucking them over into the next traverse.

Less then a second separated the twin detonations which served as the signal for the whole tight gaggle to go forward, around the corner into the traverse they’d just bombed and up to the next corner where Cassidy and Sheehan once more tossed their bombs up over the intervening patch of dirt that lay between them and whatever was in the next bit of trench.

Moore followed along, ignoring as best he could the choking dust and clouds of burnt cordite that seared his lungs and left his eyes watering. Holding his pistol in his right hand safely pointed up just as Cassidy had instructed him to, he held fast to a handful of that officer’s sweater as they rushed forward, stopped, bombed, then rushed forward again. Twice he stumbled over the bodies of dead and wounded Germans, earning him a muted curse from Cassidy. “Damn you! Pick up your feet, man. Pick up your feet.”

The sound of a whistle and the cries of German NCOs all about them screaming at their men to rush to their alarm positions served as Cassidy’s signal to give the order to break off their raid, go up and out of the German trench and make for their own lines. He and Sheehan were the last to leave. Standing back to back, the two men each threw a few more bombs to their left and the right as quickly as they could. “Up you go, lad,” Cassidy ordered with a casualness that anyone other than another veteran would have thought to be out of place. When he was gone, the young red haired Irish officer took a second to determine where the greatest threat to him was coming from before chucking one final bomb off in that direction.

Cassidy didn’t linger in the German trench in order to savor the all too familiar sound of animalistic cries and screams the detonation of this last bomb left in its wake. By then he was already well away, scrambling along the ground on all four as quickly as he could. The once still night was now very much alive as flares burst just overhead and German machineguns came to life, sweeping the ground before them like a scythe being swung back and forth.

As they had before, the raiding party relied on flares to guide them through the featureless landscape, this time fired by their own company’s 2IC. Unlike before, the men were scattered due to the rear guard action by the two bombers. Dempsey had the bulk of the raiding party well in hand, Cassidy was sure about that. While he tended to an insufferable bore when the battalion was out of the line, Corporal Dempsey, like all the 1914 lads was solid and reliable when they were in the trenches. And Sheehan, a tough little Mick if ever there was one, was the kind of man who knew how to take care of himself in a tight corner. That left Cassidy with nothing to worry about other than making his own way back across landscape pockmarked and scared by years of incessant war.

Had he been able to be honest with himself, Collin Cassidy would have had to admit to wishing things could be that way all the time. Being responsible for no one other than himself was by far preferable to being in charge of an entire flock, a thrown together hodgepodge of men made up of every sort, ranging from tough old veterans like Farrell, Dempsey, O’Donnell and Sheehan to wide eyed novices such as Doyle who were all too often nothing more than a burden to the unit and frequently of little use in a fight.

Scrambling about from shell hole to shell hole, often crawling, sometimes rising upright in order to make a dash to what he hoped was cover he could reach before the German’s spotted him, Cassidy ignored the chatter of machineguns, the deafening crump of shells impacting and every so often the voice of someone yelling an order or crying out in agony. Oddly enough, it was at times like this, in the midst of a man made hell that the young Irish officer found his mind wrapping itself around memories of the all too brief interludes he enjoyed in Amiens, cherished snippets of time when he was free to give himself over to his true nature and enjoy life the way he oft times wished he could. In his mind those precious few hours were not an escape from reality. Rather, it was the time he spent in the line with his platoon that was the act, a farce he put on in a vain effort to prove to the world he lived in outside that small hotel room that he was no different than any other man.

A sudden yelp and cry just up ahead put an end to Cassidy’s effort to divorce himself from his surroundings. It was Sheehan. He instinctively knew that in the same way a mother is able to hone in on the sound of her own infant’s cry in the midst of a room full of wailing babies. Quickly changing directions, Cassidy made toward a monstrous shell hole where he thought Sheehan might be. It didn’t take long to find him, guided as he was by the man’s breathless whimpers. Rolling up over the crater’s rim, the young red haired officer half slid, half tumbled down until he found his soldier laying face down near the bottom.

The same barrage of flares the Germans were sending aloft in a vain effort to find Cassidy and his small raiding party provided him with more than enough light to do a quick assessment of Sheehan’s wounds. What he saw caused his heart to sink. A stitch of machinegun bullets had hit him square in the back. The blood, liberally mixed with mud, made it hard to determine how many times the man had been struck. “Ah, Rory, they’ve made a mess of you. But you’re not to worry. I’m here now,” Cassidy murmured in an effort to reassure Sheehan as he did all he could under the flickering glow of fading flares to stanch the bleeding with nothing more than a cotton bandage and his bare hands.

Hampered by the blood he was coughing up, Sheehan could do little more than make gurgling noises by way of response. “Now don’t you fret, lad,” Cassidy stated as calmly as if they were back in the pub where he’d first met Sheehan just after the two of them had enlisted. “I’ll get you home to your Da. He wrote me you know. Last week. He wants to know why you haven’t written him.” Whether the wounded man he was tending to understood what Cassidy was saying didn’t matter. With no hope of properly treating the man’s wounds in the bottom of a muddy water filled shell hole, the best he could hope for was that the son of a tenant farmer would be comforted by the sound of his voice and hang on long enough for Cassidy to get him back to the relative safety of their own trench.

Doing so was no easy matter. Though Sheehan’s stature was anything but imposing, like all but one or two men in Cassidy’s platoon, the wound man dwarfed his diminutive platoon commander in everyway imaginable. Had it not been for the courage Cassidy relied on to compensate for his physical short comings, bravery that had earned him both decorations and the respect of every man in the battalion, Cassidy would have had to endure in France the same viciousness his peers had heaped upon him when he’d been a boy.

Once he had managed to pull Sheehan’s arms up over his narrow shoulders and grasp the wounded man’s wrists with one of his hands, Cassidy used his free hand to claw his way up and out of the crater they’d been in. Sometimes staggering, sometimes crawling, the red haired Irish officer made his way back toward his own lines, finding the break in their own wire they had used on the outbound leg of their trip more by chance then by design. Only when he was sure he was close enough to be heard without giving away his position to the Germans did he take to calling out that he was coming in, doing so in quick, breathless gasps.

Like phantoms raising up from the ground, a pair of shadowy figures appeared and made their way toward their platoon commander and their mate. Upon being relieved of his burden, Cassidy sank down onto his hands and knees, hungrily sucking in great gulps of air as he struggled to gather up the strength needed to cover the last few yards. Above him he heard a voice. “Here you go, sir. Give me your hand.”

With more effort than such a simple act should have, Cassidy waved his arm about over his head until Sergeant Farrell latched onto. An attempt to thank the man was stillborn when the young officer found he didn’t have the air in his lungs with which to make the effort. Instead, he simply allowed himself to be shepherded along like a drunk being helped home.

Farrell waited until his officer had been afforded an opportunity to catch his breath and rest a bit before informing him the man he had struggled to bring back was dead. Looking over to where the stretcher party was in the process of covering the lifeless corpse, Cassidy told himself he’d still have made the effort even if he had known it was little more than a futile effort. To have left a man he had shared a drink with on the day they’d pledged their lives to the English King out there in the middle of no man’s land where over time rats and shells would have torn him to pieces, a man who had followed him through two years of hell without a single word of complaint would have been unimaginable.

“How do you get used to that?” a voice next to him asked plaintively.

Cassidy waited until the stretcher party disappeared around the corner before glancing over to where a very shaken second lieutenant sat with his knees tightly drawn up against his chest. Rather than answering the man straight off, Cassidy fished his flask out from under his sweater, slowly unscrewed the cap and took a long, lingering sip.

“Is that why you drink?” Moore asked.

Holding the flask up before him, Cassidy shook his head. “This? No. There’s not enough of this to wash away the memory of a man like Rory Sheehan.”

“Then what do you do to forget?”

Cassidy wanted to say you didn’t. He wanted to say you remembered them all, every bloody one of them, even the ones you didn’t see die. But he couldn’t. Instead, he looked over at the ashen faced officer who was leaning against the trench’s back wall, still staring at the traverse the stretcher party had disappeared into. “You think about something else,” Cassidy finally muttered before taking another swig of whisky.

“Like what?”

Before answering, the red haired officer took a moment to study the name engraved in the flask he held, running his thumb loving across it. “Something else,” he whispered.