Explore "Birdsong" by Sebastian Faulks on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Under the cover of a fading twilight, Stephen Wraysford narrowed his eyes against the drizzle. The men in front were invisible beneath the bulk of their clothes and the quantities of kit they were carrying. They looked as though they were bound for an expedition to the Pole, explorers to the furthest regions. Stephen wondered what force impelled him, as his legs moved forward once more.
It had been raining for three weeks, drizzling, then surging into a steady downpour, then lifting for an hour or so until the clouds came in again over the low horizon of Flanders in its winter light. The men's coats were saturated, each fibre of wool gorged on water, and their weight added twenty pounds to what they carried. They had marched up from their billets into the rear area and already the skin on their backs was rubbed raw by the movement of the webbing beneath the load. Repetitive marching songs and chants had brought them to the support lines, but then as darkness fell they saw it was another three miles to the Front. Slowly the songs and conversations died as each one concentrated on lifting his feet from the mud that began to suck at them. Their worlds narrowed to the soaked back of the man in front.