Read Lord of the Nutcracker Men for Free Online

ground I have ever imagined. I have seen it only in the flashes of star shells, but it looks even worse for that, I think. In the fizzly light of the flaresit is utterly white or utterly black, with no shadows in between.
    We came up to the line in a great rush, in the dead of night, running through the mud with our rifles and our packs. It is now the hour before the dawn. Old Fritz's guns are hammering at our trenches, and ours are battering his. The shells pass overhead with eerie ripping sounds, as though the sky is shredding into pieces. His guns twinkle far ahead, and ours flash behind us. But in the middle there is darkness, until a star shell bursts and flutters down. Then we see the ground heaving up, the dirt and mud all tossed about, and it looks like the Channel on a windy day, the earth a stormy sea.
    The sound is tremendous. It shakes the air.
    As you might suppose, I haven't had much sleep. I've spent the night carving a little officer, enclosed. It will be up to him to lead us over the top when we march against old Fritz.
    The lads think I have nerves of steel to sit here carving and painting. But I find it rather relaxing.
    I have to hurry now, as in just a few minutes we'll get the order to stand to. I don't know yet what the day will bring, but it can't be worse than the darkness.
    I miss you very much.
    All my love,
    Dad
    It was like a story cut off at the wrong place, with the ending not quite there. I was left feeling funny inside, proud and worried and sad all at once. I held the wad ofcrumpled paper that had come in the parcel, feeling the shape of the little man inside. I didn't want to open it.
    “Read the letter again,” I said.
    “You just heard it,” said Auntie.
    “Please?” I said. “
    No, Johnny. Even if I wanted to, you don't deserve it. Not after the lies you've just told me.” She read the one from my mother. It talked about soldiers drilling in Hyde Park, and the suffragettes' battle to find work for women. But I barely listened.
    I heard the guns in my mind. I saw the earth flying up, and my dad whittling away, his wood chips scattering. He might have been talking about the same battle I'd had in the garden as I'd moved the wooden man with his tiny gun right up to the front.
    I worked at the crumpled paper until the new soldier fell out. It was a lieutenant, just like Sarah's father, wrapped in a trench coat spotted with painted mud. At his neck hung a whistle, a little tube of silver.
    Auntie Ivy finished Mum's letter. “Now off you go, Johnny,” she said. “And I don't want to see you until supper.”
    “Can I take my guy to Cliffe?” I asked.
    “If you're back in an hour. If you stay away from the farm.”
    I didn't even
want
to go there. “I heard someone screaming,” I said. “I tried to tell you, but you wouldn't listen.”
    “Then you shouldn't have come in telling lies.”
    “What happened, Auntie?” I asked. “I saw the postman there.”
    “He brought a telegram to Mr. and Mrs. Sims, Johnny. Murdoch, their son, just died in France.” She got up from the table, and gathered her knitting. “Mr. Tuttle met the postman, who told him all about it. The Simses thought their boy was coming home. They'd been told as much. Murdoch had been wounded in the leg, and he was coming home. That was the last his parents heard, until the wire came today.”
    She was holding the wool and her needles, but she put them down again. “Screaming, was she? Oh, it's dreadful. Johnny, I'll walk with you as far as the farm.”
    I didn't have a cart or a wagon. I had to drag my guy along the road, through dirt and patches of mud. His little cloth cap fell off as he tumbled behind me. Then a leg dropped away, and Auntie Ivy carried the pieces until we reached the gates of Storey's farm.
    “Don't dally,” she told me. “And be sure you stop at the next house. That's where Mr. Tuttle lives.”
    Auntie Ivy went up to the farm, and I lugged my guy to Mr. Tuttle's house. I propped him