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  Invisible Frontline

  Trench Raiders Book 3

  Thomas Wood

  BoleynBennett Publishing

  Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Wood

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Thomas Wood

  Visit my website at www.ThomasWoodBooks.com

  Printed in the United Kingdom

  First Printing: March 2019

  by

  BoleynBennett Publishing

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  Details can be found at the back of this book.

  1

  Being a trench raider was now just as much a part of my life as breathing and eating. It wasn’t so much that I was being asked to do it anymore, but it had now become a necessity in order for me to live. I had become obsessed.

  I had a strange relationship with the exhilaration of it all. On the one hand, I was utterly terrified of what was waiting for me around the corner, and the other totally addicted to what I had become so good at.

  It was that not knowing what was in the next dugout; maybe a hastily abandoned trench, or a well-fed and well-oiled Maxim gun, that seemed to keep my heart beating and that without it, I would die of boredom within days.

  I was fully aware that my next few seconds in the German frontline could well be my last, but that was what I had begun to crave. That, and another sip from my hip flask.

  That wasn’t to say however, that I had become used to death and I had certainly not become desensitised to the premature end of a teenage boy. Just last week, I had found myself almost in tears, staring into the lifeless eyes of Private Paul Anderson, a young lad from Devon, who had managed to fall victim to a boobytrapped helmet that he had somehow knocked.

  What had made the whole affair even more affecting was the fact that it was only the lad’s second outing. He hadn’t really had much of a chance to adapt or learn to what he was being asked to do.

  We had been forced to leave his body in the German trench, where he would hopefully be buried on the enemy’s side of the line. We were fairly confident that despite the horrific advances in being able to slaughter one another in this war, that both sides still held some regard for the sanctity of human life, in the way that we treated one another’s dead.

  Anderson had been absolutely dripping in blood by the time I had managed to get over to him, lethal shards of sheared artillery shell sticking out of him in every direction. The Germans must have been banking on the trench raiders to be souvenir hunters and, in Private Anderson, they had found the perfect target.

  I was certain that Harry Earnshaw, the man that Anderson had replaced, would never have fallen for such a trick and cursed whatever doctor was keeping him housed up in some hospital ward. Anderson would have still been allowed to live if Harry had been with us.

  Despite the constant reminders of how dangerous being in an enemy trench actually was, I began to feel far more at home in a German trench, than a British one.

  Ever since the Germans had begun to launch their own retaliatory raids on the British frontline, with considerably more success than our own, the Brits back in our sector of the line had treated us with an overwhelming animosity.

  We had become the antagonisers, the figures who appeared late at night to poke the enemy into action, only to retreat back to the relative safety of the nearby village. We were becoming more of an enemy to them than the Germans were. Especially because of the number of casualties the Germans were inflicting.

  But there was something even more comforting in a German trench than a British one. Maybe it was the way that they were much better built, with higher parapets and more comforting sandbags. It could have had something to do with the knowledge that their dugouts were better protected from the falling shells, or the way in which that they somehow managed to keep them relatively clean. Further still, it probably had something to do with the fact that they never wanted to leave and so had transformed it into a home from home, complete with the Imperial flag that adorned many of their dugouts.

  The flag that I caressed between my finger and thumb, as these thoughts paced through my mind, was battered and filthy, fraying edges and the odd hole here and there. But it still took pride of place in this dugout, nails bashed through into the wooden supports so that it would be the first thing a soldier would see when he awoke, and the last thing that he saw before he got some shut eye. It was a clever placement.

  Don’t be stupid. Put it down.

  I repeated the reprimand to myself three or four more times as I struggled to tear myself away from the beautiful, simplistic design of the German ensign.

  This is how people get killed. And not just you. The others too.

  I had been perfectly conscious of the way that my mind had become distracted in the last thirty seconds or so. But, to my mind, I deserved it; I had just managed to dispose of three German soldiers before they could so much as rub their eyes as they got out of their beds.

  But I was also becoming increasingly frustrated with myself for not letting the flag go. I knew I had to. For some reason, the thought that I might get myself killed wasn’t troubling me as much as it previously had done.

  The thought that I might simply be condemning the others also, was in fact, troubling me even less.

  The more complacent I became, the easier I found it to face up to the reality that I was going to die. It was what I had been taught by a Sergeant some time ago now, but even he would have been despairing of the soldier that I had become.

  Let go of it. Get on with the search.

  I closed my eyes for a couple of seconds, allowing the initial wave of pain, that came with sheer exhaustion, to pass over me, before I reengaged my brain.

  If you’re not going to let go of it, take it. Rip it off the wall and be quick about it.

  I didn’t need to tell myself twice. Within a flash, the fraying, slightly stale-smelling ensign was stuffed down the front of my trousers ready for the return trip.

  Now you can get on with what you are actually here for.

  “Anything, Corporal?”

  If Captain Arnold had come in just half a second earlier, then he would have caught me in the act of pulling the flag down, something that I knew he would stand firmly against, to the point where he probably would have had me nailing it back on the wall.

  N-No, Sir,” I muttered back in reply, finally pulling myself together to get on with what I was meant to be doing.

  “There’s got to be something here. Let’s look a little more, shall we?”

  He raised an accusing eyebrow in my direction and I immediately became thankful for the cork and grease packed onto my face, as my skin suddenly flashed redder than a letter box. I could tell that he could sense it, even though he wouldn’t have been able to actually see the guilt that now stained my skin.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  His eyes began darting around the small dugout, that had, until recently, housed a few sleeping soldiers as t
hey waited for their watch. I could feel the cogs whirring in his head, like a pocket watch, as he evaluated exactly where he should begin his search to optimise the small amount of time we would have in there.

  The bags that dragged his eyes downwards had grown larger and more solemn in recent weeks, as the pressures of leading this band of not-so-merry men began to weigh him down greater than a millstone. But still, he was as indefatigable as ever, moving around the dugout with agility and enthusiasm that I could only wish of having.

  “Come on, Ellis. Hop to it.”

  I began searching anything and everything that my eyes fell on, even rummaging around in the pockets of the dead soldiers to see if there was anything of any use. My search turned up nothing apart from a few faded photographs of sweethearts and the odd carton of cigarettes, that I was quick to liberate.

  “Sir, I would reckon we have about two more minutes in here. We need to wrap up shortly.”

  I hadn’t noticed Sergeant Hughes sneaking into the dugout, but I had known that he was keeping watch outside, alongside the others, who were all crouched outside at various points trying to keep us safe.

  “Thank you, Two Pews,” retorted the Captain, without even looking up from the leather suitcase that he was rifling through.

  He was desperate to find what we had been told might be lying around; plans for a series of underground tunnels that the Germans were hiding and living in. He had even been fairly confident that we might stumble across the entrance to the tunnels themselves, in which case he would have been the first down into the rabbit warren.

  From outside, there was a dull, irregular thump, like the kind that a cricket ball makes as it lands on the other side of the boundary.

  Startled at the apparent unexpected noise, Sergeant Hughes spun on his heel and scurried out of the dugout, revolver raised up high and ready for use.

  I looked across at the Captain, who nodded to me and I made my way over to the entrance of the dugout to see what was going on.

  I knew nothing of what went on outside the dugout, except that everything happened in the blink of an eye.

  The German, who had caught Bob Sargent off guard, punched him to the ground, accounting for the dull thud that we had heard from the dugout. Bob was uninjured, apart from a broken nose and a slight momentary blackout.

  The enemy soldier then progressed along the frontline trench, maybe making for his friends in the dugout, whereupon the figure of Sergeant Hughes appeared from behind the felt curtain.

  The explosion of his gun lasted no longer than a third of a second, by which time he was already standing face to face with me; his third enemy soldier of the night.

  I had no time to react with anything other than my instincts, as the cold steel of my sharpened bayonet was thrust into the man’s chest, as I repeated the motion over and over while I tried to hit as many vital organs as I possibly could.

  By the time that I relinquished my grip on the dead German, the front of his body resembled something more like a pincushion than a human chest. But still, I couldn’t resist one last, fleeting thrust into the man’s gut, in anticipation of the body that I would lay eyes on, upon exiting the dugout.

  The Captain, as soon as he had seen that I had matters under control, had uncharacteristically abandoned his search, in favour of finding out what had befallen his Sergeant.

  Sergeant Hughes was splayed out on his back, a hole perfectly in the centre of his chest, burnt fragments of his tunic and undershirt falling into the crater that the bullet had created.

  The Captain began to flap around, as he began his futile attempts to keep his long-time companion in the same mortal realm as he was.

  McKay appeared, just in time to watch the Sergeant lose consciousness, the pathetic, almost unnecessary heaves of his chest the only indication now that he was still alive. To all intents and purposes, Sergeant Nicholas Hughes was dead.

  Blood began to roll from the corner of his mouth as the Captain applied some meagre pressure to the gaping hole in his breastbone. Within seconds, a similar bead was racing to the floor, emanating from one of Hughes’ flared nostrils.

  Hughes had seemed to tire in the last few days, as if the old-man stigma of the group had slowly started to catch up with him. Indeed, even as he lay there in an eternal rest, the wrinkles on his forehead seemed far more pronounced than they ever had done before, the bags beneath his eyes doing nothing for his otherwise youthful features.

  As the weak gargles from the back of his throat began to fade away, I couldn’t push the strange obsession from my mind as I watched my Sergeant die.

  Now I’ll never know why he was kicked out of the clergy.

  I rebuked myself again for being so foolish and instead busied myself with what an NCO should do.

  “McKay, check on Sargent. Make sure he’s okay.”

  Everything had changed for me in a flash.

  We had been there under instructions to be as silent as possible, as the prospect of having artillery to back us up was untenable, due to a shortage of shells.

  Now though, I was preparing to move as hard and fast as I possibly could, not caring for the amount of noise that I generated, even if it was to get everyone else killed.

  I had no allegiances anymore, no personal connections that would blur my vision. It was me and the enemy, each one looking exactly the same as the one that had pressed a revolver into Sergeant Hughes’ breastbone, and squeezed the trigger.

  There were no attachments to anything or anyone any longer.

  2

  Captain Arnold refused to leave the side of Sergeant Hughes for many more moments, leaving me in charge of the entire affair, something I relished but also quite quickly became petrified of.

  I didn’t know whether to go over and help McKay sort Bob out, or if I should stay with the Captain and offer him some sort of meagre comfort.

  In the end, I opted for somewhere in the middle, trying to coax the Captain out of his trance-like state of mourning over his dead Sergeant, while also trying to ready whatever resources we had for what was to come.

  In the small section of the trench I had a few things that I was absolutely certain about. For now, at least, there were no enemy soldiers posing an immediate threat. We had one man dead, another groggily coming round after being punched to the ground. Our commanding officer was otherwise indisposed, which meant that at either end of the trench, where the rest of the German army could be waiting in the wings, we were completely exposed.

  At least to my left, the northernmost end of the trench, McKay was perched next to Bob, who could at the very least, offer up some sort of warning at the sign of an attack. I would need to be the one to hold the right flank, and wait for the advancing German soldiers, determined to retake their trench.

  But, I would also need to drag the Captain away from Hughes, there was no time for mourning or weeping in a war such as this. Life went on. At least for a little while anyway.

  “McKay,” I whispered, grabbing his attention. I put one of my thumbs up. Thankfully, his went up in reply.

  Bob was going to be okay, he had just been knocked unconscious and maybe lost a tooth or two, but within minutes, he would be back on his feet. McKay had managed to drag him out of the direct firing line and was now perched himself behind the wall of the dugout, revolver peering around the corner in anticipation.

  I moved to the far end, to mimic his movements.

  As I scurried across the wooden floorboards, I smacked the Captain on his shoulder, hard.

  “Come on, Sir. Stuff to do. Leave him be.”

  He didn’t move a muscle as I spoke to him, completely locked in one of his own little worlds that he formulated the second there was a crisis. The general advice was like that of a sleepwalker; do not disturb him, but right now, I needed my Captain to take control of the situation once more. I was beginning to flap.

  As I took up position at the southern end of the trench, my revolver bravely creeping around the corner in my right hand,
my bayonet extending an inch or two further from my left, I searched myself for some element of sadness.

  I had known Sergeant Hughes for months now and had ventured out with him on many an operation. And yet, I could not for the life of me find any sense of remorse at his death, nor grief. I wasn’t giving myself the usual harsh treatment of searching questions and evaluations as I would normally have done.

  What could I have done to save him? Was it my fault that he was dead?

  I rattled the question over and over in my conscious mind, but I paid little attention to providing myself with an answer.

  Hughes was a good man, a fantastic Sergeant who had nurtured me greatly in the short time that I had known him. But I hadn’t quite taken to him as I had with Sergeant Needs, whose memory seemed more like a dream to me now.

  I had always expected my Sergeants to have been gruff, tough men, a man who would kill everything that looked at him the wrong way. But Hughes hadn’t had that about him. He was an educated man, a genteel fellow and for some reason, that had made him far less likeable. To the point where I wasn’t experiencing any grief whatsoever.

  The only meagre aspect of misery that I was experiencing was making me feel intensely guilty, but I could not shake it.

  I will never know why he was kicked out of the clergy.

  Don’t be so downright stupid. Focus.

  “What do you reckon, Ellis?”

  The Captain began breathing heavily into my ear.

  I was surprised at first that he was asking me such a question, as he always seemed so steadfast in his own decisions that he never had the need for the likes of me. But then it dawned on me the amount of quiet breaths in Hughes’ ears, that had resulted in the next ingenious decision from the Captain.

  Hughes was gone. I was the next confidante for the Captain.