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Cecil Yates woke in the dead of night. He smelled blood and gunpowder, but then it always smelled like that. Cec could barely remember the feeling of fresh air in his lungs.
He shoved up his helmet, which he had pulled down over his head, and sat upright. At least it was quiet, as it had been the past three days. No one had made a move. It was as close to peaceful as this hell could get.
It was also, he remembered now, the night of the 24th of December, 1916. The Somme offensive had been going since June and though there was talk of abandoning the river once and for all, they had gotten no orders to move out yet.
The 1st Australian division was in shambles. For weeks they had held out in the muddy trenches south of what was left of Pozières, ready to either die or be recalled any moment. They were desperate. They were angry. But most of all, they were cold.
Winter had surprised them, despite everything. Cec, like most of the Australian soldiers, hadn't known cold before this. Melbourne could get cold in winter, sure, but not like this. Both Egypt and Turkey had lacked this quality of cold, too. The English and French soldiers knew what had been coming, of course. Two years on the Western Front had cost them all some toes, some fingers. They had told the Australians. The Australians had shrugged the warnings off.
And now they were freezing. Some were just giving up in their sleep, succumbing to the cold. Like Rory Jennings, who hadn't woken up a few mornings ago. Cec had grown up with Rory. Had enlisted alongside him. And the cold had taken him.
Which was why Cec now scrambled to his feet, though everything ached, to get his blood flowing. He took a few steps along the middle of the trench, careful, until he could feel his feet again. He went a few more steps, then turned around, carefully navigating around the legs of his sleeping comrades. Some stirred. Stood up like him, moved around. Shapes in the dark.
"I'd rather bloody charge now than try to sleep another minute in this wretched cold," a voice close to him said.
Cec looked down. "How's the leg?", he asked.
Ronnie Cliff shrugged. His leg had been caught under a collapsing support beam a few days back. That had been before the mud had frozen so solid nothing else would collapse until it thawed again. No one was looking forward to that. "Barely feel it," Ronnie joked. Cec couldn't really laugh about it.
He went back to the place where he had sat and slumped back down, seizing the tattered blanket he'd had wrapped around himself. It was still the middle of the night. Who knew what the morning would bring, so he might as well get some more sleep, he thought, though the cold was already seeping back deep into his bones.
Before he closed his eyes, he bumped his shoulder against the person sitting next to him. "C'mon, mate," he said, "You haven't moved in hours."
The figure grunted, and didn't move.
Cec sighed. "You have to get warm, Bert. Don't forget what happened to Rory."
"S'fine," Albert Johnson grunted in reply.
"It's not. You'll catch your death."
"'M ... not cold."
"Bloody hell, Bert, you ..." Cec reluctantly removed his blanket again and pulled Bert's helmet up to look at his mate's face. His hand grazed Bert's forehead and he froze. Cec swore under his breath. He could barely feel his own fingers, but still, Bert's skin felt icy. "You're way too cold. Shit. Shit - Thommo!"
He gestured over to the nearest comrade, Thomas Birmingham, who crawled over. "Get a doc," Cec instructed quietly. "Bert's freezing."
"We're all freezin'," Thommo said darkly.
"I know, but this is worse. He's icy. Get a bloody doctor, Birmingham."
"A'right, a'right, I'm goin'."
There were some groans around them, telling them to shut up and "can't a man freeze in peace?", which Cec ignored. He tried coaxing Bert again to stand up, quickly gave up, and instead wrapped Bert's blanket and then his own closer around his friend. Bert, in a sudden moment of clarity, frowned. "Yer gonna be cold," he said, muffled through both blankets.
"I'm fine," Cec lied. "It's not even that bad."
In time, though it felt like a ruddy long time, Thommo arrived back with the field doctor for their section, an abrasive Englishman whom Cec deeply despised. He was nonetheless extremely pleased to see the asshole right about now.
The doc knelt down, forced Bert's eyelid up and said, "Dilated pupils. Man's seriously hypothermic. Hasn't he moved? I told you stupid diggers to move at least once an hour."
Cec swallowed down a very harsh, very unproductive comment and simply said, "Easier said than done. Can you help him?"
"I got more important stuff to attend to than a freezing digger. Everyone's freezing, man. Try to get him warm, keep him sat up and awake, though good luck with that, and maybe he'll survive the night. Don't get your hopes up, though."
And then he left. Just left Cec and Thommo with a dying Bert, having done absolutely nothing. Thommo spat on the ground, hissing quiet swears at the back of the retreating Englishman, while Cec seethed in silence. But it was no use. Being angry at this incompetent charlatan wouldn't help Bert, either.
So Cec knelt down next to Bert and started removing first the blankets, then Bert's army coat, and finally his own. Thommo had stopped swearing to stare at him. "The hell are you doin'?"
"Getting him warm," said Cec. He placed himself down next to Bert and started re-wrapping both of them, first in his coat, then Bert's, and by the time he had done that, Thommo had caught on and helped him with the blankets. "You sure that's a good idea? If they attack, you won't be able to move."
"He's not able to move, anyway," said Cec, wrapping his arms around Bert underneath all four layers of fabric, which felt like no layers at all. "And you heard the doc. He'll die if we don't get him warmer."
"He might die anyway," Ronnie said, inserting himself in the conversation. He was a quiet lad, almost as young as Cec himself, who had faked his age to volunteer at 17. 19-year-old Cec looked back at his younger self, cursing him to all hells for his stupidity and his visions of heroicism.
Rory and him had met Ronnie and Thommo at the training camp in Egypt, and Bert soon after landing on Gallipoli. Bert was the oldest of the five at now 22 and had made it his pronounced task to look after his four younger countrymen. He wasn't very good at it, mind. Mostly, Cec had to look out for him.
Bert was a communist, they had soon found out, and a vocal one at that. After having seen the first days of battle, Cec was inclined to agree with him that the people in charge were injust in fighting their battles on the shoulders of the workers. Bert had gotten into many a fight with their superiors over his opinions and it was only Cec's reasonable and calming nature that had so far kept him from being court-martialled.
Cec knew he should be more annoyed at Bert, but he wasn't. At least, keeping an eye on Bert and the others gave him something to do. And miraculously, they had all survived. Survived the failed campaign at Gallipoli. Survived bloody Pozières. Survived months in this wretched mud.
But then the cold had taken Rory.
So Cec wasn't ready to accept that Bert, too, was dying. Not without doing everything he could to help, at least. As little as that might be.
So he pulled Bert's head into his embrace, shivered, and prepared for a long night.
And it was. The longest night in the history of nights, maybe. Anyway, so close to the 21st of December it was, objectively, extremely long. Cec didn't sleep again. He was too scared to wake up embracing the corpse of his friend. So he sat, shivering, slowly freezing, holding Bert who wasn't even shaking any more, whose skin was so bloody cold. Listening to Bert's breaths. Feeling for the heartbeat underneath his hands.
There were a few points during that wretched night where he thought that it was all over. Minutes during which he was sure he couldn't feel a heartbeat. Sudden jerking movements from Bert, like the last struggle of a dying man. And an hour during which Bert felt so cold it almost hurt to touch his skin.
But Cec never let go. He held on and he held on and he cried quietly, when he knew no one could hear but maybe Bert. And he whispered into Bert's ear, anything he could think of, told him of his childhood, and the trouble Rory was always getting the both of them into, and that girl Cec had wanted to impress by volunteering, and of his doting ma begging him to stay, terrified to lose her oldest son, the only boy of seven children. He didn't really know why he was doing it, talking like this - maybe to let Bert now that he was still here, still caring, still fighting. So that Bert would fight, too.
But then, when the sky just started to turn from black to grey on this Christmas day of 1916, Bert died. Cec knew because he could hear the angels sing for him.
It took him a while. A while for his overtired brain to understand that it didn't make sense for him to hear the heavenly choir when Bert was the one who was dying. That there actually was singing. Someone was singing a Christmas carol, though it was faint, and the words weren't familiar.
"Stille Nacht," sang the angels, "Heilige Nacht."
It took him another few seconds to understand that what he was hearing was German, the German version of Silent Night.
"Alles schläft, einsam wacht ..."
"No bloody way," Thommo whispered close to him.
By then, there were more voices. English voices, too. Cec listened, barely comprehending, the situation too surreal to grasp. He'd heard about this happening two years ago, in some other part of France, but he'd thought it had been a fairy tale the soldiers told each other to have something hopeful, at least, to cling on to. But here they were, no gunfire sounding, no dying men screaming, and the air filled with singing voices.
Next to him, a raspy voice said, "They 'ere to take me?"
"No," Cec answered, pulling Bert even closer. The skin under his fingers was almost warm. Bert was semi-conscious. They had both survived the night. The soldiers were singing Christmas carols.
And the angels, for the first time in ages, brought a message of hope.
Cec finally slept, knowing that when he woke, Bert would still be there.
And when he did wake up, he wasn't lying in the mud in the countryside of France any more. He was in a soft-ish but warm - oh, warm! - bed and he knew he was utterly safe.
He turned in his bed to look across the room, through dust particles dancing in the rays of the morning sun breaking through the cracks in the shutters, and he looked at his best friend, who was lying in his own bed, sleeping peacefully. Still there. Out of habit, Cec listened for Bert's breaths and when he heard them, turned back around to catch a wink more sleep before he had to get up.
Outside, the church bells were ringing to announce the birth of Jesus Christ. It was Christmas 1928 and France had never seemed further away. Though in nights like these, Cec was reminded that it would never quite disappear, either.