Page 17 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm
“Real Sherlock Holmes type?”
“Minus the seven percent solution,” Bell replied, referencing Holmes’s famous use of cocaine. “When do we head to the front?”
“Trucks should arrive in about an hour. Get yourself some hot food while you can. I’ll find you when it’s time to load up.” Everly moved away at a brisk clip, but came back an instant later. “Let’s have a look at your gear.”
He inspected Bell’s boots, clothing, and coat and the contents of a leather dispatch bag he had over his shoulder. “Not bad for a civvy, especially the pistol. What is it?”
“Browning automatic in nine millimeter. I prefer the stopping power of the Colt .45, but I am simply a better and faster shot with this.”
“You want stopping power, you need one of these.” He pointed to the heavy Webley revolver strapped around his waist.
“I hear they use those against rhino in Africa.”
“And elephant in India,” Everly said in a deadpan. “Listen up, I’ll ask Major Fleming’s batman to find you a helmet, gas mask, and a pair of puttees for your legs. And you’re going to want to muddy up that coat once we’re on the line, so you don’t stand out.”
“Will do. Thank you, Sergeant Major.”
“And one last thing. I don’t think either of us are used to taking much guff. How about for the duration I’m Evs and you’re Bell?”
“Evs?”
“It’s what my mates call me.”
“Evs it is.”
A convoy of trucks arrived at the camp two hours later, muddy and bedraggled soldiers sitting on benches in the rear or leaning over the wood-framed sides of the cargo beds. Some of the men called to one another, comrades who hadn’t seen each other in a bit, but for the most part the men coming off the line were quiet, introspective, and ashen.
Bell had heard that their sector of the front hadn’t seen much more than a couple of patrols and a few random snipers in months. If this was the toll taken for just defending a quiet section of the front, he couldn’t imagine the horror of a proper battlefield, and he was beginning to think he didn’t want to, Wilson’s conscience be damned.
As with all things in the military, unloading and reloading the trucks took far longer than need be, with time spent simply standing around and awaiting orders that weren’t really necessary. It was near enough noon when they were ready to leave and since the mess was opening up for lunch, the men were allowed to disembark and have a final proper meal before their deployment.
They finally arrived at the rear-most battle positions at two in theafternoon. These were fields of artillery embankments, like giant anthills made with sandbags with cannons as big as trucks in their centers. A few were far bigger, monstrous fieldpieces sitting on iron wheels that were fashioned of steel plates and looked like a circle of metal feet. These siege guns had barrels as thick around as beer kegs and could hurl a projectile weighing in the hundreds of pounds.
A short while later they arrived at the first of three trench lines dug into the oft-pummeled earth. The men quickly exited the trucks. Bell stayed close enough to Everly to not get lost, but far enough away to let the man do his job.
The trenchworks were heavily supported with timber balks and boards built into their faces for stability. The floor of the trench, some seven feet deep, was covered in more wood to prevent mud from building up. There were storerooms and barracks built into the sides of the trench and sandbag parapets and bulwarks along the forward rim of the zigzagging trench. Trucks in their convoy had been carrying additional supplies. The soldiers worked tirelessly to unload the vehicles and stow ammunition, food, and crates of military gear.
This was the third line of defense and was the best of the three, having not been overly shelled, and thus was in great repair. A series of connecting trenches ran forward for a thousand yards to the second line. This trench was also laid out in a zigzag pattern to help absorb the explosive forces of a direct shell hit. Staying close to Everly, Bell noted more mud in this trench, some standing water in a few places. Many of the sandbags had been holed by shrapnel and appeared partially deflated.
A farther thousand yards to the west they entered the main trench that faced no-man’s-land and the German lines some half-mile distant. It smelled of raw sewage and decay. Clots of mud stuck to Bell’sboots even though it hadn’t rained in a couple of days. Rats the size of racoons and just as fearless scampered amid the offal. The men barely gave them a second thought. The soldiers tried to keep themselves clean, but in such an environment it was nigh on impossible. Some were so filthy they made Bell think of Appalachian miners coming up from working a coal seam with nothing more than a pick and their bare hands.
It was a thoroughly awful and dehumanizing place, a circle of hell that Dante failed to mention.
“Bell, on me,” Everly barked and strode off.
The trench was so narrow in places, especially corners, that the men had to turn sideways and still brushed against each other. Fifteen yards from where they’d entered the main trench, they came to an observation stand, a bench built into the western face of the trench with a dual-lens periscope mounted on an adjustable tripod. Two men were taking turns sweeping the no-man’s-land with the device.
Bell followed Everly up the short ladder to the bench. Neither soldier saluted the sergeant major, but there was deference in their stance. Everly took a few moments with his face pressed to the eyepiece as he traversed the periscope from left to right, surveying the disputed territory between the lines.
He stepped back and made a gesture to Bell. “Your first look at no-man’s-land.”
The trench was paradise on earth compared to the ground laid out when he peered through the eyepiece. Crater holes overlapped each other so that the very large ones might contain the scars from five or six more high-explosive detonations. Skeletal poles for strings of barbed wire rose up from the tortured soil like accusatory fingers. Of the barbed wire itself, there were acres of the stuff, as thickand dense as hedgerow. There was no human way through it, and finding a path around looked impossible. In the far distance, Bell saw brief flashes of movement and it took him a moment to recognize the coal-scuttle helmets worn by the German soldiers. They were working on their own trench, and he caught an occasional head pop up as more sandbags were piled onto the edge of their embankment.
“I see some of their men,” Bell said as he stepped away from the apparatus.
“They do that from time to time to dare our snipers into firing at them.”
“Why?”
