Barbed Wire and Roses

by Peter Yeldham

  His platoon was confined in a forward tunnel where duckboards were laid to protect them from the sea of mud around them. The mud was deep, as dangerous as quicksand; men had vanished into it and been lost within seconds. And not just their own side: Germans were entombed here too, for both armies had occupied these trenches, both had shed blood for this place, both had won then lost it, men dying by the thousands in a single afternoon to regain this small strip of pockmarked ground.

  They were here because Field Marshal Haig’s grand plan to retake the Somme had failed. The British had fought until an entire army corps was annihilated, when even the unrelenting Haig had been forced to order their withdrawal. As a consequence Australian troops were deployed as reinforcements. Their objective was to regain the town of Pozieres. No one had yet told them the truth: Pozieres was a ruin, a village that no longer existed.

  They had marched from Amiens, through countryside once sylvan and now stripped of green, past miles of defoliated trees with blackened limbs like grotesque casualties. For Stephen’s platoon it was their first sight of Picardy, trudging the Bapaume Road as the Tommies limped back. The British wounded, too numerous to count, were piled on horse wagons, while those still able to stand were being made to march in step. Their exhausted faces gazed in bewilderment as the Anzacs tramped past, hardly anyone in step, young voices massed in a raucous chorus:

  We are the Ragtime Army,

  The A-N-Z-A-C.

  We cannot shoot,

  We don’t salute,

  What bloody use are we?

  And when we get to Berlin,

  The Kaiser he will say:

  ‘Hoch, hoch, mein Gott,

  What a bloody odd lot,

  To get six bob a day!’

  But chat was over seven weeks ago. The swagger had gone and the incessant day-and-night bombardment of high-explosive shells had wreaked its dreadful effect on morale. Even worse was the impact of the Minenwerfer: huge land mines fired by howitzer that ripped craters out of the earth, destroying trenches and the soldiers sheltering in them. Men who escaped death from these massive explosions often suffered concussion and were left glassy-eyed, crying helplessly and unable to control their bowels. Sometimes at night, when he could find a candle in the dugout, Stephen wrote in his diary, attempting to analyse what these past weeks in France had done to them.

  We came here too young, too sure of ourselves. We’d begun to believe we were special, like the British papers said. Even their generals praised us, which should’ve been a warning. Generals sit in safety far behind the lines, they play their games of war and never count the cost. Look, we’re as shit-scared as everybody. And why not? Gallipoli was bad, but this is a bloody carnage. There is a dreadful feeling of utter hopelessness here, and we play a game of tag with death every hour of every day.

  He often found himself thinking of London, remembering the warmth of the teashop, the grey eyes that watched him as he talked, the laugh that made other men’s heads turn. He wondered if this was disloyal to Jane, then dismissed the thought, because it was just the occasion he had enjoyed so much, the few friendly hours with a girl his own age instead of the continuous company of army mates. Nothing more than that. Although… he could still feel the touch of her hand and the brief kiss on his cheek, and wondered how different his ten days might’ve been had they met sooner. Just to walk about London with her as a companion would’ve made it a different city. Above all, he regretted there was no way he could write to her. She might perhaps have agreed they could meet on his next leave, but with no address that was impossible.

  He thought instead of Jane at home, imagining her day as he worked out that the time would be mid-morning there, and tried to envisage his son who must be walking and talking by now. In his diary he sometimes wrote of their fondest moments.

  I often lay awake at night thinking of our few days at Katoomba, Jane’s voice echoing down the valley, us hugging each other and dreading all the curious eyes that were trying to calculate if we’d made love yet or not at that smart and snobbish hotel. It was what the English call ‘posh’. But after the first night we weren’t a bit shy or nervous, and we used to walk through the foyer as if we owned it, not caring how many of the guests whispered about us. We decided they were all old and past it and jealous. We hung a ‘Do not disturb’ notice on our hotel door all the time, even when we were just chatting or reading. Gosh, it’s hard to realise that soon it’ll be two years since the last time I saw her.

  There was comfort in remembrance of the past; it helped him to forget the horror of the present or the bleak prospect of a future.

  The diary was his slender grip on reality. Sometimes he wondered if anyone else in years to come might read it.

  The platoon was very different now. So many gone, too many new faces. The recruits seemed younger than ever; they huddled in the trench, alternately shivering and sweating while listening to the roar of the big guns, openly terrified as the bombardment began to find range. The trenches were not deep enough — no real protection against the German field artillery, let alone the weapon the troops were calling ‘Minnies’, the 100-kilogram landmines against which there seemed no defence. In the sweltering dark they could detect the acrid smell of smoke bombs.

  They feared that later there would be gas.

  Stephen was about to check his watch, then remembered he had left it behind with his diary, and the final letter written to Jane — just in case. Always, before an impending action, they were told to write final letters to next of kin and were reassured it was only a precaution: all letters would be returned to them after the action, but it was sensible to make these provisions — ‘just in case’. This phrase, so often repeated, gave no one the least scrap of comfort.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Buggered if I know,’ Bluey replied, shrugging. On their leave he’d had his twenty-first birthday, and his girl’s parents had put on a special tea. Now he looked years older; there were traces of grey visible in his red hair. Not surprising, Stephen thought. Before they came to France there’d been twelve survivors of their original platoon, now just five remained.

  They had been such kids. So stupidly naive. It was incredible to recall how desperate they’d been at the prospect of missing the ‘great adventure’. In Cairo while fed up with training he’d dreamt of fighting here in France, the cauldron of the war; now he pined for the heat and dust of Egypt, the mere discomfort of a sandstorm seemed like bliss after the time spent here.

  ‘What day is it?’ Jerry Tate, one of the five originals, asked. ‘Dunno, mate. But I know it ain’t a Sunday, or you’d have your Bible out, linin’ up for church parade,’ Bluey scoffed.

  ‘Why not?’

  Both were instantly embroiled in a recurring and familiar argument. ‘What’s wrong with belief? Everyone must believe in something,’ Tate insisted.

  ‘Not me, sport. Not after the things I seen.’

  ‘I’ve seen them too, don’t you forget that.’ Tate was thin and nervous, but never afraid to voice his conviction. ‘It’s clear that God is testing us.’

  ‘He is, eh? Well, when you and ‘im next have a chat, tell ‘im I failed his test,’ Bluey retorted. ‘But say not to get upset; don’t let it bother ‘im. I never passed no tests at school neither.’

  ‘Get off his back, Blue,’ Stephen said. ‘You know the old motto. No politics or religion in the trenches.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Bluey grinned, cracked his knuckles and slapped Tate on the back while declaring that his disbelief was nothing personal. He had nothing against Jesus. From what they’d told him in Sunday school, he seemed like a fair sort of a bloke. He could rustle up a feed for a crowd, cure the sick and probably even manage a walk across the Somme when it was flooded. And people always reckoned that if you wanted a bit of work done in the house, you couldn’t find a better carpenter.

  Stephen steered him away before Tate was taunted into the folly of trying to hit Bluey. ‘You big ugly bastard,’ he admonis
hed fondly, ‘can’t resist it, can you? Can’t help giving the pot a stir.’

  ‘Got no one else to get a rise out of these days, since silly old Double-Trouble forgot to duck.’

  ‘I know,’ Stephen said, thinking of how his anecdotes about their friend had made Elizabeth laugh on that treasured afternoon. ‘The four fiancées and all those other women are certainly going to miss him.’

  ‘If they ever existed!’ Bluey replied. ‘He could come the raw prawn with some of his stories, you know that. Double-fucking-Trouble, strewth I miss ‘im. Stupid bugger! Skinny as a skeleton, and the awful thing is he ain’t even that now! I keep wishin’ that I never hit him so hard on that train ride back to Salisbury.’

  They still found it difficult to believe their mate, the chatterbox platoon comic, had been blown to pieces the day after they were ordered here. His was one of the dissevered corpses that lay beyond the wire in no-man’s-land, impossible to recover for burial because there was no way to tell which remaining scraps of bone had been him.

  ‘The great nong,’ Bluey persisted. ‘We told him to piss in the trench. No, not flamin’ Double. “I want a bit of fresh air when I take a leak,” he says. I must’ve loosened his brains when I knocked him out… Why else would he go up there when the Hun artillery was on target?’

  ‘Take it easy,’ Stephen said. ‘I nearly went with him.’

  ‘I’m bloody glad you didn’t,’ Bluey told him.

  They walked back along the duckboards to the others. A new recruit was talking to a group near the signals dugout.

  ‘I had a letter from home, about what they call the Anzac landing.’ He was the youngest of the reinforcements, looking almost too young to be anywhere near a war. ‘Some of you blokes were at Gallipoli, weren’t you?’

  ‘Just shuddup,’ Dan Ridley said sharply. ‘Shuddup about lousy bloody Gallipoli.’

  The boy looked taken aback, but Stephen and the others knew the cause of his rancour. Ridley had been platoon sergeant when they landed at Anzac Cove; months later, found hiding, terrified in an abandoned trench, he’d been stripped of his rank and given six months hard labour.

  The British colonel who presided at the court-martial had been caustic, describing Dan as a snivelling coward, deserving of the death penalty. An execution, he stated, would set an example. When this was refused, his angry remarks about how these ill-disciplined colonials could be knocked into shape if a few were shot at dawn had given rise to some sympathy for Dan Ridley.

  On completion of his sentence, to everyone’s surprise Ridley had requested a return to his original unit. To face the mates he had let down was how he put the application, and after some discourse this was eventually granted. He was a private and would remain so, but it created an awkward situation. Stephen, who had become the platoon sergeant, knew none of the survivors were comfortable with Ridley’s presence.

  As Bluey had put it, ‘We’re all scared at times. But you don’t hide in a hole and let your mates down. That’s what I can’t forgive, or forget.’

  ‘The bloke was petrified, Blue.’

  ‘So? The same bloke was full of blood and guts when we was in Egypt trainin’. Gave us a real hard time. When some shit starts to fly, he’s petrified. Maybe he’ll be petrified again tomorrow, when we’re in trouble. What I’m tryin’ to say is, you can’t count on ‘im, not when it matters. And that’s a real worry, if he’s the joker taking care of my back.’

  ‘It could happen to any of us. You can’t tell. Maybe happen to me or you.’

  ‘If it did, we’d manage till it was over,’ Bluey asserted, ‘not run away and hide. You wouldn’t, and I don’t reckon I would. Truth is, mate, he shoulda never come back to the unit. Been better if he’d made a fresh start somewhere else.’

  On that Stephen could only agree. Those who knew of it — the originals — kept it to themselves by unspoken accord. But it was not a good situation. Particularly when a chance remark provoked such a reaction from their former NCO.

  ‘Gee, I wish I’d been at Gallipoli,’ the young reinforcement went on, clearly unable to take a hint. ‘I couldn’t get Dad and Mum to sign the form in time.’

  ‘Half your luck.’ Ridley spat on the ground.

  ‘We don’t talk a lot about Gallipoli,’ Stephen said, trying to end the conversation.

  ‘Why not?’ The boy seemed surprised.

  ‘Because it was a proper fuck-up,’ Ridley said brusquely.

  ‘They don’t think so at home. They celebrated it. Same as in London, when we were there. We took part. There was a dawn service, then a march, and the English people all cheered us.’

  ‘Fancy that.’ Ridley’s flushed face began to show real anger. ‘A dawn service, and a march, eh? And you, who wouldn’t have the faintest clue what it was like there, took part. Is that s’posed to make us feel good?’

  A flare exploded high above the trench. Stephen glimpsed Ridley’s tension, his nerves stripped raw by the accidental comments of this boy.

  ‘Just one good thing about flamin’ Gallipoli,’ Bluey began, feeling it was time to change the subject, ‘there were no rats. At least not great big evil things like here. In winter, the bastards are the size of feral cats.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ the boy replied. ‘I ain’t seen one that big.’

  ‘You will, son,’ Bluey assured him, ‘if you stick around long enough. But don’t try to earn a Victoria Cross, or you’ll end up with a different cross… a wooden one stuck in the ground, with you stuck underneath.’

  ‘Fair go, Blue,’ Stephen protested. ‘Give him a break.’

  ‘I am, mate. I’m giving him good advice. The thing is, kid, don’t try to be a hero. Keep that in mind. You know why the rats are so big?’

  ‘No.’ The boy looked nervous, fearful he was being ridiculed.

  ‘Cos they feed on dead soldiers — either us or the Germans, the buggers ain’t real fussy. Mind you, the Huns have more meat on their bones. All that sauerkraut makes ‘em tasty.’

  Stephen Conway saw shock freeze in the vulnerable young face. It was time to put an end to this. In another hour, perhaps sooner, they would need all their reserves of courage — not tension stretched to breaking point.

  ‘Knock it off, Blue. I need to talk to these fellers.’

  The reinforcements clustered around him as if there might be comfort in proximity. He felt a moment of indecision. What was he to tell them? The truth? How they were in such disarray until relief officers arrived that he’d been ordered to take charge of three other platoons as well… That by default he was virtually a company commander without any command experience, and when the new officers did arrive, they’d be untrained and useless for this kind of warfare? Should he explain how the losses had become horrendous, beyond belief? That a month ago at Fromelles, another Australian division had lost five thousand men in a single day? He wondered himself how many they would lose here at Pozieres.

  Beyond the focus of their eyes — these kids hoping for some word to quell their fear — Stephen saw an English major standing outside the signals dugout. He realised the officer, who looked out of place with his polished Sam Browne and spotless uniform, had been lingering there with one objective: to listen to them. Bastard, he thought, annoyed by the arrogance of this blatant intent to monitor their conversation. He turned back to the platoon, knowing exactly what he would say.

  ‘We’ve got some tough days ahead, don’t let me kid you, and what we all need is a few laughs. Cheer us up. Does anyone know any jokes?’ When there was no response, Stephen asked, ‘Ever heard the story of the general and the sentry?’

  The veterans grinned. The newcomers shook their heads.

  ‘It happened in Cairo. A sentry was on duty when a general drove past. A spick-and-span general, wearing a plumed feathered hat. The sentry failed to salute. He just lent against his sentry box and ignored him. So the general stopped the staff car, not at all pleased, telling the sentry to stand to attention. “You’re supposed to salute me,
soldier. Don’t you know who I am?”

  “No idea. Sorry, sport,” said the sentry.

  “I’m your commander-in-chief! I’m General Birdwood.”

  “Is that right?” the sentry said. “Well, why not shove those feathers up your arse… and fly away like any other bird would?”’ There was a roar of laughter. It ended abruptly as the British major approached and snapped an order for them to be silent.

  ‘I want a word with you, sergeant,’ he said, walking away with stiff outrage and waiting until Stephen joined him. ‘Are you mad?’ he asked, fuming with disbelief. ‘Are you totally insane?’

  ‘It’s a matter of opinion,’ Stephen replied.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You asked about insanity. Being here like this, we often discuss if we’re mad or not. We could be at home, on the beach or at the races, if we hadn’t volunteered. I’ll bet the people enjoying themselves back there think we’re mad as a gum tree full of galahs.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Stephen Conway.’

  ‘Rank and number. And say “sir” when you answer me.’

  ‘Sir,’ Stephen said, then after a provocative pause, gave his rank and army number. The major took out a notebook and wrote it down.

  ‘No non-commissioned officer in our army would dare ridicule a general with such a derisive and impertinent falsehood.’

  ‘It’s not a falsehood… Sir.’

  ‘Don’t interrupt. I intend to put you on a charge for this.’

  ‘If you insist… Sir.’

  ‘Insist? Insist? Where do they get you people? How do they find trash like you? I most certainly insist! I don’t in the least care for your attitude, Conway. My name is Major Carmody, and the charge will include your behaviour towards me which ampunts to insubordination.’