The Long Earth

even though he found a boot, lying in the churned-up mud, he couldn’t find a man’s leg to go with said boot. And the sergeant had said, patting Percy on the shoulder, ‘Well lad, seeing as he has no head either, I reckon he won’t notice, don’t you? Just stick to doing what I told you, lad: pay-books, watches, letters, anything that can identify the poor sods. And then stick ’em looking up over the top of the trench. Yes, lad, stick those dead bodies up there! They might take a bullet but, as sure as salvation, they won’t feel anything where they’ve gone, and there will be one bullet less for you or me. Good lad. Fancy a tot of rum? It’s the medicine for what ails you.’
    So the discovery of feet, his own feet, still attached as per, exhilarated Private Percy, known to his chums as Pimple because when your name is really and truly Percy Blakeney, pronounced ‘Black-knee’,
and
you still have bad acne in your twenties, you accept Pimple as a nickname and are grateful that it wasn’t anything worse. He lay back again and must’ve dozed off for a while.
    The next time he opened his eyes, it was still full daylight, and he was thirsty. He sat up. The Russians were still here, patiently watching. Looking at him almost kindly, through those furry faces, he thought.
    Maybe his head was clearing, a bit. It occurred to him for the first time that he ought to have a good look at his kit.
    He opened up his kit bag and emptied out the contents on the green ground. And he found that somebody had robbed him! His canteen had gone, his bayonet blade had gone, as had the blade of his entrenching tool. Come to that, his helmet was nowhere to be found ; he didn’t remember having that when he woke up, although he did find the strap around his neck. Blimey, they’d even taken the aglets off his boots and the nails out of the heels! All the bits of steel. And what was very odd was that even though his canteen had gone, what was actually missing was the steel flask – there was the stitched-leather container lying on the grass, intact. But his pay-book was untouched, and nobody had bothered about the few pennies in his kit bag, and even the glass bottle containing his rum ration was still here. It must have been a funny sort of thief! And he still had his paints – but the metal box that had contained the little tubes had vanished. Not only that, somebody had even taken the trouble to unwrap the metal bands around the bristles of his paint brushes, so that the little bits of stubble were left lying at the bottom of the canvas bag. Why?
    And what about his weapons? He checked the pistol at his belt. All that was left of
that
was the wooden stock. Again, why? Steal a pistol, yes, but you would have a devil of a job to use it without the stock. It made no sense. But then, what did? Where, on the western front, had good sense ever played a part?
    The Russians watched, silent, apparently baffled by his fiddling about with all this stuff.
    Memory came trickling back from whatever foxhole it had been hiding in.
    Private Percy had been seconded to the camouflage corps after his leg wound. This was because, amazingly enough, the Army had recognized that he had once been a draughtsman, and sometimes this Army who needed men who could hold a gun, and even more men who could take a bullet, also needed men who could wield a pencil, and select from God’s good rainbow just the right hue of paint to turn a Mark I tank into a harmless haystack, albeit with a wisp of smoke coming out of it if the lads were having a quick drag behind it. He’d been happy for the respite. And that was why he carried a paint box, for colour matching, and for bits of fine work after the usual application of daubs of camouflage green.
    What else could he remember? The very last thing before the shelling? Oh yes, the sergeant roasting the new kid because he had one of those wretched Testaments that fitted into his breast pocket, the kind of thing mothers and sweethearts sent to the front in the hope that the holy words would keep their boys safe, and maybe, if words alone did not do the trick, then the gunmetal coating might achieve what mere faith could not. And Percy, packing up his gear to go on to the next job, remembered the sergeant was apoplectic, waving the offending article in front of the kid and screaming, ‘You bloody, bloody idiot, ain’t your bloody mother ever heard of shrapnel? There was a sapper once, a good lad, and a round hit his