had formed an idea that God would take a dim view of his skill with a rifle. The odds were evil, he said, with his strike rate. You would be happier going out there with your knife? I asked him, many times. God would be happier, he said. Perhaps youâre surprised, Father, that he spoke like this. All I can say is that those who believed in God when they arrived arenât so sure now, and those that were wavering see him in everything. Well, I said to Thomas, for tonight, you have a Mauser, and unless weâre to be shot for desertion we had better take our posts. I went along the trench to mine and over we went. I survived another action. When I returned to Thomas at the end of it he was lying across the lip of the trench. He looked as though there was nothing wrong with him, as though he was sleeping off a hard night. The dawn did not wake him. I sat next to him and took his hand. It was still warm and I saw then that his face was not whole, but Iâd seen worse by then. I was thinking, when his hand goes cold, it will never be warm again, so I had better stay.
You have taught me that a man must act where he sees injustice, that this is what a man is, that in every moment might be the making of history. Father, if thoughts were treason they would have shot me many times over. But I can tell you here, where thereâs no one but us, that the only way to act in this place is to die or to run, and a dead man does nothing for anybody.
The Germans were drinking in their trench during a ceasefire for retrieval of the dead and wounded. Emil filled his tin mug and passed on the bottle of brandy. One of the German officers, Stemmer, was making a joke about the Australians. He called them armadillos: shell on top, tender meat beneath. He said that he liked to see their faces, feel how soft they were inside in spite of their muscles. Emil played cards in the officersâ trench between actions, to hear German, but if this was what he had to listen to heâd rather be among the Turks and understand almost nothing.
Out across the gullies the night was falling, the shadows in the creases of the land spreading across the hills. From the dark cracks came the men, the ones who came at night, more and more of them. Turks, British, Australians and New Zealanders. A German, always the same one, with a face he knew from his past but could not place. They emerged from the cracks in the land exposing their wounds obscenely. He blinked and banished them, knowing they would be back. They always came at this hour as the shadows spread from the gullies.
A peal of wild laughter from down on the beach. Sometimes, on a hot night, when no one was moaning and the guns were quiet, they did not sound like soldiers. You could smell the fires. They were roasting meat by the sea, eating and talking. For days he had been lying in his dugout with a fever from a mosquito bite, waiting for quinine. He would give anything to swim in the oceanâthe water would be warmâand then sit on the beach, clothes clinging to salty skin, eating and talking to other men about something that was not killing or cigarettes or when the post might finally arrive.
Perhaps when the dead had been removed and buried they would stop walking out at him at dusk. He could hear those Turks not on duty in their trench close to the Germans, their murmured prayers. He wondered whether the retrieval parties would find Thomasâs body, whether they would pray over it.
He remembered a hot night by the Rhine. He and Thomas played cards by the light of a little fire. They had stolen liquor being unloaded outside their fathersâ social club and lay on the damp grass moaning, the stars swirling. Thomasâs head lay still on the ground, in the summer field. He was becoming something of a heartbreaker around the town. His sister asked about him in her letters to the front. He had not yet answered her.
He let himself imagine for an instant, his head light, that