Liam's Story

by Ann Victoria Roberts

  Oxford Street, where they had wandered in and out of little shops and massive stores; Hyde Park, bleak beneath a grey shroud of snow; Buckingham Palace, where they had stood and watched the changing of the guard one sunny day last October...

  The wait at Victoria was interminable. On a walk round the station precincts he found a public telephone and was tempted to use it. Forcing himself away, he went to the bar and sank two pints of beer in quick succession, but instead of numbing the pain, the alcohol only blunted the fine edge of his decision, and within the hour he was back, demanding the hospital number from the operator. Georgina, however, was not on duty, and the ward-sister was too new to be able to tell him anything. There was no reply from Queen’s Gate.

  They spent five hours in Folkestone before boarding the transport for Boulogne, but that was all right: Georgina had never been to Folkestone. Huddled in overcoat and sheepskin, Liam took the chance of rest in a corner of the great cargo shed where hundreds were waiting. Some were playing cards, others writing letters, while a few were singing to the plaintive strains of a harmonica. It reminded him of the night before Gallipoli, except it was a damn sight colder and he did not wish to be part of it. He dozed for a while, to be woken by an anxious group of youngsters as soon as there was a rumour of boarding. They were excited and jumpy, eager to stay close to him with his veteran’s experience of war. Like the boys who had accompanied him to France from Egypt a year ago, they regarded him as some kind of oracle, pouncing upon every utterance and repeating it in hushed whispers amongst themselves. That he said little seemed only to make each word more profound.

  His shrug of unconcern regarding submarines was observed with awe; and his words, ‘Well, you take your chance, don’t you?’ went down the line with the speed of an express train. Their involuntary straightening gave him a certain bitter amusement. He wondered whether they would have been so keen to worship had they realized he genuinely did not care, one way or the other, whether a German torpedo sent him to the watery depths, or an explosion from hell scattered him across the mud of France.

  Any wild acts of heroism or aggression he might have been tempted to perform, were foiled, initially, by further training near Armentieres, which was so familiar it seemed he had never been away. Exactly a year, and little had changed, even the weather was the same. Bitter winter clinging on, then suddenly giving way before a wild outbreak of sun and green leaves. In a week, blossoms were everywhere, and the old Flemish faces in shops and bars were starting to smile again. But they were thinner and greyer and more wearied, and in his walks along the Lys, he saw that the cemeteries were fuller, and new ones created.

  He found himself thinking often about those stolen few days in Bournemouth, the scent of the pines in a narrow ravine close by the hotel, and the salty tang of the sea. With a pale sun glistening across the waves, it had seemed, in those few days, that even winter was being kind. They had strolled along the beach beneath the cliffs, dodging incoming waves and skimming pebbles out to sea, and happiness had been theirs – not a wild excitement, but a calm, sure awareness of contentment and each other. He had never been so relaxed, so absolutely himself, as in those days with Georgina. And for her it had been the same. Perfection, but perfection is such a fragile thing: they were aware of that, too. That last evening, returning at twilight along the promenade, the frosty air had been disturbed by a low, continuous rumbling, like thunder in the distance. Georgina, bemused, had asked what it could be; while Liam, knowing, had shivered in recognition.

  The beginnings of another massive bombardment across the Channel had seemed to herald the end of things, not just that brief escape from reality, but the end of everything.

  Here, the rumblings, if not particularly intense, were more or less permanent, and he had learned not to wince with every explosion, learned to school his expression into blank acceptance while his heart pounded and stomach turned to water at the memories each one invoked.

  There was no word from Georgina, despite resurrected hope. What did arrive was a short, sad letter from his father, saying that she had been accepted for service in Egypt, and had left London within a couple of weeks of his departure for France. Later, came a further missive, confirming her safe arrival. Unless Liam requested specific news of her, his father wrote, he would leave the situation at that.

  No address, and Cairo had several hospitals. It was a relief, however, to know she was safe, not in France where her presence might tempt him to go looking for her, nor in danger of being blown to pieces by stray shells or a sudden German advance. In Liam’s opinion, Egypt was not a pleasant place to be, but the officer status of nursing sisters would no doubt ensure a better standard of food and accommodation than he had ever enjoyed.

  He even felt the ancient history of the place would appeal to her; she had been fascinated by his descriptions of the tombs and monuments and museums. But even as he remembered those conversations, Liam was struck by a certain irony: if London had been unbearable because they had enjoyed it together, how would she feel about Egypt, where he had spent more than eight months of the war? Would she watch the moon rise over the Pyramids and see his shadow in the sand? While she wandered through the gardens and the palaces, would she feel his presence beside her?

  He would imagine her there, see the flaming desert sunsets again through her eyes, smell the orange blossom in the courtyards of Heliopolis and watch the fountains playing in their marble pools. All the hospitals were grand hotels or former palaces; he had convalesced at the summer home of the German Crown Prince, and that particular irony had given him a vast amount of pleasure at the time.

  That memory made him think of the last time he had seen Mary Maddox, and by association her brother Lewis. According to the last letter Liam had received from him, Lew was still in Egypt with the Light Horse, full of verve and confidence now that he had been promoted to captain. That he had continued to keep in touch was warming, a testimony to the reality of those months immediately preceding the war, and to the odd friendship which had sprung up between them.

  Liam might have let it lapse, particularly during the worst periods of the war, when Australia had seemed no more than a passing dream, but Lewis had kept on writing. Liam wondered now whether it was something other than friendship that prompted him. It seemed there was a need for reassurance, a need to know that he was not the only one left of those boys from Dandenong, that someone other than himself was still surviving. Perhaps he felt guilty, or slightly freakish in his ability to dodge death. Liam had known moments like that himself.

  He was saved from guilt, however, by a strong streak of fatalism; and by an inner conviction that for every man there is a time to die. It had not been his destiny to catch a burst of shrapnel on Gallipoli, nor to breathe his last with pneumonia at Heliopolis, and that strange dream of Ned had as much as told him so.

  In London he had mostly been too happy to think about it; but the subject had arisen once with Georgina, and she, surprisingly, had not disputed it. Nor had she entirely agreed with him: for her, the sense of appalling, unjustified waste was too strong. But she had seen the calm that came over dying men, as though old friends beckoned them away from pain and into peace. She did not think it was hallucination, and did not doubt the veracity of his experience.

  But she had no explanation for it, either.

  Since then, there had been too many other matters, more pressing, for him to dwell on it. Now, looking back on his friendship with Ned and at the love he still bore for Georgina, he had to wonder why such things came about, and why they had to end. In the midst of what he recognized as the pain of bereavement, it all seemed so pointless; and a small part of him wondered whether it might have been better to know none of it. Without love, could that sense of loss exist? But with Georgina there had been such happiness, such ecstasy; a sense of being one, with the same thoughts and feelings, desires and despairs. Through her, he had come to understand so much, and he was aware that in giving up her love he had lost far more
than could ever have been imagined four years ago.

  Knowing she suffered too, made everything worse.

  That deep, constant ache, and the bouts of misery which continued to sweep over him, made communication with his family difficult. He had to force himself to write, force himself to express what he hoped was a natural level of concern, when in effect he was experiencing both envy and resentment towards them all. Robin had Sarah, and now Tisha had her baby, a little girl. Although he was pleased for her, he loathed her cynical attitude, which took such precious things as marriage and children for granted. Even his mother, about whom he had been so worried before leaving, seemed more blessed than himself. She had known twenty years of happiness with Edward, and five before that with Robert Duncannon. Even now, whether she wanted to accept it or not, Liam knew she need do no more than say yes, to have her former lover permanently by her side. It seemed grossly unfair.

  Communication with Georgina, however much he might wish it, was not only forbidden, but impossible. Against a setting of Egypt, she was constantly in his thoughts, and in the end, coming across that three-months’-old missive from Lewis, Liam wrote to him. Towards the close of a letter which briefly recounted the least personal of recent events, he mentioned Georgina – ‘a close relative of mine’ — and made a casual request that Lewis look out for her, should he be in Cairo.

  It was not quite the long-shot it might have seemed. Officers managed a fair amount of leave, and the military community in Cairo was a close one. Georgina might be reluctant to make herself known to him, but on a specific request, Lewis would most certainly enquire after her. Knowing someone, even at one remove, might just ease things; and Lewis was a decent bloke. If he did come across Georgina, he would write and say so.

  The simple act of writing and posting the letter eased his mind, and the news that he was to rejoin his old company provided a further lift to his spirits. There had been some savage fighting at Bullecourt – twice in recent weeks – and in many ways he was sorry to have missed it. Although he was looking forward to seeing familiar faces again, travelling down by train to Amiens brought mixed feelings.

  Amongst his companions were reinforcements for the 1st Division, some still raw, others, like himself, lately recovered from wounds or sickness. The word was that three Australian divisions – the 1st, 2nd and 5th – were to be pulled out of the line for a long and much-needed rest. Everyone else latched onto this news with enthusiasm, but Liam knew that behind the lines, rest was a comparative term. What it meant was weeks of training to grind the new boys into the machine. It was boring and soul-destroying and left too much time to ponder the pointlessness of things.

  Nevertheless, for his old comrades-in-arms, he was relieved. Since July the previous year, the Australians had been involved in almost continuous fighting, on the Somme and at Ypres, followed by another return to the Somme for the winter. Sent in pursuit of the sudden German withdrawal, men who had slogged so hard to break the German line on the Bapaume Road in August, were at last allowed to take Bapaume itself in March.

  In Liam’s book that was excellent news, but he knew success had come at a price. It had been a savage winter on the Somme, in which sleet and snow and glutinous mud were far worse enemies than good old Fritz. In hospital in London, he had read the newspapers and shivered. Recalling November on Gallipoli, when men had died of frostbite and exposure, he could hardly imagine how they had survived the depths of a continental winter. But survive they had. They deserved their rest.

  The old Somme battlefield was oddly silent, a barren, windswept heath that at night seemed to moan with the souls of the dead. A blasted heath indeed, a fitting stage for tragedy beneath a climbing moon, although the worst of it had come and gone. Only memory was left, and even those days and weeks at Pozières paled beside more recent tragedy.

  By day, as a riotous spring settled into glorious summer, the first green shoots of growth appeared, and all along that barren line the poppies bloomed, bright pools of scarlet amongst the gauzy white of mayweed. Blood and Bandages, he thought, like the shoulder-patch of the 8th, his old battalion.

  Within a few miles of the old front line, in little, sheltered valleys, crops started to appear, tended only by women and children and very old men, but for Liam they were a sign of hope, a sign of life. And meanwhile, the decimated battalions began to replenish themselves, absorbing new men, new equipment, new strategies. Gradually the greyness disappeared, and the sun made them brown again, and laughter was heard in the camps at night. They drank and gambled, and drank and brawled, and some of them looked up old girlfriends while others found new ones. The bars and brothels of Amiens did excellent trade with the Australians that summer, and Liam obtained enough twenty-four hour passes to roister with the best. But his vow to make the most of wine, women and song was only partially successful. The songs and the wine he could enjoy, it was the women he had no taste for. It was not that they were unattractive; but what they offered was a poorly degraded currency, worthless after the gold he had possessed.

  He would look at that old photograph of Georgina and compare it with another he treasured, taken of the two of them in a studio off Oxford Street. There was sweetness in her smile, but the serenity had gone; her eyes were sad and full of knowledge, shadowed by the hours she worked and the suffering she had seen. It was a woman’s face, not a girl’s, and every time he looked at it his heart bled for her.

  His father wrote to say that she was well, working fewer hours and enjoying something of the social life in Egypt. Liam hoped that was true. There was still nothing from Lewis.

  His old friend Matt went on Blighty leave for three weeks, and came back full of himself, having painted the town red, seen every show worthy of the name, and cut a swathe through all the girls. Liam smiled and took it with a pinch of salt. Promoted to lance-corporal, his friend was now with a different team, and Carl had gone, too, after being gassed at Ypres. Not badly, but he was still in hospital. Somebody said Liam must have just missed him at Wandsworth, and wasn’t that a shame? But the shame was that so many old mates had gone, to be replaced by unfamiliar faces. Even his sergeant, Keenan, had recently lost an arm at Bullecourt. Liam could scarcely believe how much he missed seeing that repulsive gooseberry glare.

  Their new sergeant, however, was younger, fitter, and more able, and Liam both liked and respected him. He was a veteran of Gallipoli too, but had recently been transferred from one of the infantry battalions; and although he had done the requisite courses, he seemed glad of Liam’s experience with the Vickers guns.

  In June, the 3rd and 4th Divisions had a great success at Messines, although the casualties were horrifying. Just as at Bullecourt in April, and Pozières the previous year, the British commanders failed to follow up that success. The bitterness amongst the Australian troops was wholehearted and universal, the only consolation being that they, as soldiers, had not betrayed themselves.

  Haig’s plan for another great push in Flanders struck dismay into every heart. The artillery was moved up in July, the infantry and their supports, in September.

  If August had been a month of storms, September came in like an Indian summer, hot and fine and dry, as though determined to set the scene for their success. Infantry and artillery that had been bogged down, found the quagmire to the east of Ypres drained by the heat, and by the time the Australians were ready to take their part in the second stage of the Third Battle of Ypres, that shallow depression in the landscape resembled a cracked and rutted bowl.

  The planning was detailed and thorough, and secrecy, for once, was paramount. The care with which every man was prepared for the coming battle largely dispersed their initial dismay, and after four months’ training on the Somme, the men were fit and raring to go, ready to pull the British army out of the mire and crack the German defences once and for all. It was generally felt and often said, that with all these new strategies and any luck at all, Sir Douglas might actually remember to follow-through this time.

&
nbsp; Physically, Liam was feeling particularly good, conscious of professional pride and satisfaction, and delighted that the battle-plan, with maps and models, had been the subject of detailed lectures for days. Every man was aware of the aims and objectives and how these were to be achieved; and for the first time not one Australian division but two were to be fighting side by side, as the central spearhead of a push to take the ridge from Gheluvelt to Passchendaele.

  The first major objective was Polygon Wood with its huge butte, the long, high mound of the shooting range once used by the Belgian army; but before that were two more woods, Glencorse and Nonne Bosschen, and dozens of concrete pillboxes, from which the worst danger would come during the advance. There was, however, to be no hours-long bombardment, rather a creeping barrage behind which the attacking troops would hide. The danger there, of course, lay in the inevitable short-falling shells. In that situation there was always a chance that a man might be despatched by his own side, although the majority of them had a touching faith in the accuracy of their own artillery.

  They moved up from the Somme on 12th September, and settled in small villages south-west of Ypres, with orders to keep out of sight. On the 18th, the battalions moved in attacking order to within easy reach of the front line. They were due to march to their jumping-off positions at midnight on the 19th.

  Ypres, Liam decided, was no more beautiful than it had been a year ago, but at least the sun was shining on its shapeless brickwork and battered, crumbling towers. The medieval streets were no more than tracks between piles of rubble and gaping shell-holes, littered with charred oak beams and faceless, broken statues of saints and kings and merchants. They lay like the dead beside the shattered wheels of limbers and the gleaming metal of modern artillery, and they made him think of York with its churches and its carvings and its people. But there were no people here, only soldiers, and this medieval town was dead.