How Soon
Colonel Rupert Fitzwilliam explains life in the trenches. Rupert is 24, a future peer of the realm, if he manages to get out alive. As an audition piece, this is punchy and emotive. In the hands of the right actor, you will have the casting agent in tears.
RUPERT: A summer night in July and here we are, darkness settling over the trenches and the constant noise of thousands of us all beating up against each other. Shuffling. Freezing. Trying to keep our stiff upper lips intact as we trudge along the muddy gullies marked with ‘Regent Street’ and ‘Piccadilly Circus’ designed to remind us of home. It’s funny though because I never remember the streets of London being lined with corpses, although the number of rats is comparable.
They called me a hero, you know. In the papers in London. Heroic. There is nothing heroic about this. They all think I am a good soldier. I’m not. I’m really not. Just lucky, I guess.
We are a small brigade of men – men! Boys… barely out of short trousers. A young lad called Ernest, supposedly eighteen, but no more than fifteen is crouched on the parapet. His skinny legs are perched, his head low observing No Man’s Land. I doubt he has ever had a proper hearty meal in his life. He had the wan look of the working class, the one where you can’t quite tell if it’s sickness, fatigue, sadness, or a sullen combination of all three. If a bullet doesn’t get him, then disease will. I can already see the lice crawling on him. Poor bastard.
There is a mild pop out in the distance. A shell. Brace yourself! I grab my hat, but there is no point. If my number is up, then it’s up. A thin tin hat will do nothing at all. The bang is loud, exploding a mile along the line. It reverberates throughout my body, I can feel the vibrations as the ground shudders. Shouts. Screams. Moans. A ringing in my ears. The thuds along the wooden duckboards. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
I look up. The boy is still in position. Still vigilant but glancing around. Unnerved now. It always gets them like this for the first few duties. They are all ready to die willingly for King and country, but only if it comes quickly and with a bang. It’s different when it’s a haphazard bayonet to the chest, and a long lingering death screaming for their mothers half-buried in the French soil.
“Are you alright, Sykes?” I ask him.
“Yes, Sir.” He says, a wobble to his voice.
“Good lad,” I say, lighting a cigarette and handing it to him. He takes a long drag, coughs a little, his face scrunched up.
“Keeping my eye out for the Hun” he squeaks, a little voice more suited for answering a schoolmaster.
He asks me if I think we will be home for Christmas. I lie and tell him, of course, we will. It’s funny how war has a way of blurring the lines. Usually, I would never have known this scrap of a boy, with trembling hands and eyes as blue as an ocean he’s probably never seen, but here we are. I know that I would trust Private Sykes with my life. War does something to men.
I’m not scared of dying, he tells me. He asks me about the Somme. I can barely speak about it, can’t bear to tell him that the worst thing about a battle like that is surviving it. We advanced six miles and lost nearly half a million lives. I know that whatever the outcome of this bloody war, that this will never be worth it.
Cold hits right through to my bones, can’t even feel my toes, but the end is in sight. I complete the round, trudging through, only two more hours before relief. A bath. A good shave. And letters.
I write to her every night, scribbling all of my thoughts away, folding them up carefully into small, regulation envelopes. It has been three months since I saw her last, a splendid few weeks classed as unfit for duty. They said I was a hero then too, but it’s that damned luck, and it will run out soon enough, I have no doubt about it. I asked her to marry me again; she said no. She wants me to concentrate on bigger things. Things like staying alive, she said, and she showed me that night just how important staying alive could be.
Sykes disappears off to the mess to make tea, trundling off down the line, his uniform too big, his helmet moving from side to side. Too big. Designed for a man, not a child. He’s changing duty with an older Private who fought the Boers. Sampson is a miserable old fucker who has a magnificent moustache and murderous glare. He hoists himself up and gets into position with a grumble.
We don’t say anything, Sampson and me, we know that there is nothing heroic about a war like this. It is not a place for heroes. It is a place for survivors. The sad lonely remnants of a generation half-wiped out by bad choices and terrible decision making. Three years now. Three years where they move forward, then we move forward, and then we all stop. I wonder when it will all end, maybe it never will.
The sky lights up with a bang and a fizz and an explosion. Sykes is running toward me, shouting, screaming, his arms flailing as he rattles down the line. The tin cup full of hot brown liquid spills everywhere. Damn it, man! Stop running! Stop spilling the tea!
Then there were screams, my screams. A thousand tiny stars fall on my skin, and in that moment before everything turns to nothing, I know that my luck has run out.