For those who care .. I'll blog it from on. Gives me sumfink to stick in it.

BEFORE the war, Willie McCallion had been ‘Sure and Steadfast’ - he didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke and he didn’t run after loose women.

But that Willie McCallion had lived in a different time and place. The clean-living William of just a few years ago was now sucking the last drags from one of countless Woodbines and when the rum ration arrived -if it did -he’d be happy to take his tot with the rest of the boys.

As for women, he’d had one unsatisfactory encounter with a rather blousy lady from Armentieres but he fully intended to improve his performance on his next furlough. If he got the chance.

But for the moment, Willie was happy enough to lean back against the side of the trench, fill his lungs with the smoke from the best Virgina tobacco and indulge in a bout of sky watching.

Willie had seen more of the sky over Belgium than he had of the landscape.

He’d been over the bags once at the Somme, walking forward across acres of lush green grass bespeckled with wildflowers.

A shrapnel ball in the left buttock had ended Willie’s part in the big push but he counted himself lucky to receive a flesh wound. Too many of his mates from the Mudshires ¬- the ‘Muddies’ - ¬ had bought their final ticket on that hot July morning. Some said they were the lucky ones and Willie tended to agree. He’d spent the morning crawling back to his own lines with men who would live in a much altered physical shape from that moment on.

His wee pal from the Boys’ Brigade, Johnny Saunders, was one of those whose lives were saved .. and yet ruined. Johnny had lost one foot at the ankle and both his eyes. Willie had pulled ‘Bugler’ Saunders down when the screaming lad had hopped along on one leg, his arms outstretched, begging for help.

Sometimes Willie wondered if he’d done his mate a favour. He dreaded to think how life in Mudcaster for a one-footed blind man would pan out.

He never even glimpsed a German that day.

Willie still hadn’t set eyes on one and now it was early August 1917 and the battalion was now in the notorious Salient around Ypres. A patched up Willie had rejoined the drastically changed ‘Muddies’ three weeks after his wound at the Somme.

There were new faces in his platoon and those who had been through the carnage of the first day had aged visibly. They were a ‘Pals’ battalion in name only now, too many of the originals had gone west and the days of innocence were long gone. Willie knew what war meant now. He didn’t like it one bit but he was a typical Tommy who was still determined to ‘stick it out’.

He knew the battalion were due to take part in their first big attack since last Summer. They’d been line-holding since then, suffering a steady stream of casualties through the daily grind of trench warfare.

Most of these had come through the daily hate of shellfire, a few fell to the snipers and a sprinkling got theirs in grim, thuggish little actions when Division decided that trench raids were required.

Some people were cut out for raiding. In Willie’s case, he was glad to leave the job to men like his older brother, Bertie.

The two had joined up together in 1915 but Bertie had gone to a different platoon and in many ways this had suited both men. They’d had enough of sleeping in the same room at home and Willie had unhappy memories of wearing his big brother’s hand me downs.

They were fond of each other but Bertie seemed to thrive on army life. He’d been a handy boy in a punch-up back home and soon acquired a reputation in the battalion as a scrapper. He could have ended up in long term trouble but his Company Sergeant Major steered him away from the guardhouse when he produced a pair of boxing gloves.

Bertie never looked back and he’d defended the honour of the ‘Silly Seventh’ in a number of bouts before they¹d reached the real fighting in France and Flanders.

The tough boxing training made Bertie an ideal candidate for the ‘raiders’. Nominally he was ‘first bayonet man’, charged with leading the advance in the maze of German trenches when the bombers had thrown their deadly missiles into the next traverse.

But Willie knew Bertie’s preferred weapons were a Webley revolver and a trench club. And from what he’d heard on the rumour mill, Bertie was very, very capable of using both to deadly effect when it came to ‘the bit.’

His thoughts were interrupted by an elbow in the ribs from his mucker, ‘Squirrel’ Johnston.

“Any smokes left?” asked Squirrel as he adjusted his webbing in anticipation of a morning inspection by their platoon commander, 2nd Lt. Richard Langley-Baston.

“I’ll see you right when this git is past us,” muttered Willy, as the officer turned into their traverse.

Langley-Baston was called many things by the boys in the platoon. He was a tall, skinny type who inevitably had become known as ‘Lanky B.....d’, but not to his face.

The young officer cast a practiced eye over the men who had gathered for ‘stand-to’, the ritual during which both sides had to be ready for an attack at dawn or dusk.

Usually, Langley-Baston passed by with a cursory ‘carry on’ to the muffled troops.

But on this occasion he stopped in front of Willie.

“McCallion. I’ve got some bad news for you,” said the Lieutenant. “It’s about your brother.”

End of chapter 2