On balance, he thought, drawing Zoe close against his shoulder, it was the latter. Knowing that Georgina’s marriage had been a happy one, that she had gone on to enjoy a long and apparently fulfilled life, eased much of the tragedy attached to her affair with Liam. Louisa and Robert, he felt – and Edward, too – should have been able to rest in peace, knowing that.
But what of Liam? The more Zoe told him, and the more he thought about it, the less Stephen understood. Having come to accept Liam Elliott’s presence in their lives, and his inescapable influence, it was increasingly apparent that in his case, the term, at rest, was simply not applicable. Zoe’s experience that day at the hospital served only to underline it; yet belief and understanding were still miles apart. It was one thing to acknowledge Liam’s power, to look back and realize that all his efforts so far had been to the good; but it was quite another to chart a definite pattern and to see what it meant.
Part of it, they were both convinced, was to do with themselves, in the love they shared, and the resolving of problems which had remained outstanding for more than seventy years. That sense of things coming right was almost overwhelming. And yet somehow, questions still remained.
Whatever else Liam was trying to say, the only way to understand it was to be open to him, to subdue logic and reason, and give him access to instinct. As far as either of them could tell, that was the way in which he worked best. So however hard reason might argue against subjecting themselves to the sadness of this journey, instinct said to carry on.
Next morning they were on the road shortly after nine, heading directly south for Bailleul and the area which had been the training ground for most of the troops arriving in France. Driving between hedges along narrow country lanes, it was possible to ignore the broad new swathe of autoroute over to the left, and to imagine Liam seeing this rich farmland for the very first time.
The villages had a sleepy, timeless atmosphere, as though nothing much had changed in the years between, and it was easy to pretend that nothing had. Within just a few miles, however, they had a rude awakening to reality. The string of hamlets and small towns that followed the meandering River Lys towards Armentieres started to blend into one, with industry crowding out what farms and fields remained.
Stephen had no desire to be embroiled in the maze of a busy city centre. On a sharp decision he turned away from the river and the factories, along a less busy but much narrower road that seemed to serve a string of farms and hamlets. Here, at last, in a flat land divided by hedge and fence, was it possible to visualize the lines of waterlogged trenches, barbed-wire entanglements and the sandbagged ruins of barns and houses. Somewhere along here had been the front line; in the region of this road Liam had spent a couple of months with his company of machine-gunners, learning to cope with the mud and the rats and the terrifying moments, learning to live with the deadly business of war.
They followed the road back to Estaires, and thence in a meandering curve away from the industrial areas of Bethune and Lens and Arras. Liam’s route south had been via St Pol and Doullens, and that was the way Stephen intended to go. It was an unexpectedly beautiful drive, past shorn wheatfields and woods ablaze with the first tints of autumn. Having lunched early, they stopped again at a wayside cafe just after four, and then continued south into Picardy.
On the Michelin map, Zoe had marked all the villages mentioned by Liam in his diary; they stretched in a broad, horizontal sweep either side of the main road between Doullens and Amiens, from the wide valley of the Somme near Abbeville in the west, to Albert and the valley of the Ancre in the east.
The distance was perhaps some thirty miles, which was, Zoe thought, a lot of marching, particularly after the stress and exhaustion of battle. Much easier by car, she decided, even while they debated which route to take; but Stephen said it had been a long day, even in the comfort of the Jaguar. He thought it advisable to head directly for Amiens and a bed for the night.
The following day, after a morning spent motoring through a wealth of tiny villages, Stephen and Zoe arrived in Albert at lunch-time. The basilica with its massive red and white brick tower was visible for miles, the sun glinting from the gilded Virgin and Child which crowned it. It was easy to see what a gift that had been as a marker for enemy artillery; so easy to cringe at the thought of shells landing with such accuracy in the square below.
There was a cafe in the square; sitting at a pavement table in the warm September sun, Stephen wondered whether it was the same estaminet where Liam and Robin had met in the summer of 1916. In a sentimental gesture, he ordered two beers, and while they were waiting for the omelettes et frites, he gazed up at that massive edifice across the way, comparing it to the postcard reproduction of a 1916 photograph. The battered church with its famous statue poised like a diver had been completely restored; so well that it was hard to believe that it had not always looked so solid. The town held no pretensions to grandeur, but they walked its streets before driving out to Fricourt, where Robin Elliott had survived the carnage of July 1st.
Nestling in a dip of those rolling chalk downs beyond Albert, the village was a pretty enough place in an attractive setting. But viewing the field of combat from the Green Howards’ memorial was horrifying. Beyond the wall of the cemetery lay a small field, bounded by a dense copse of trees to the left and a low ridge which curved from the right. At most, the ridge, which now bore a line of modern bungalows, was no more than a hundred yards away, a twelve-second sprint to a fit young athlete keen to gain his objective. In that field the young men of the 7th Battalion had been mown down by the score as they attempted to take the German guns.
Zoe shivered in the sun, knowing that what had happened here had, that very same day, been repeated along a front that extended for eighteen miles.
Stephen left a small wooden cross, bearing a scarlet poppy and his grandfather’s name, by the granite memorial. Robin Elliott, as much as the men who died here, had been a victim, too. Thinking about all those ordinary men, the clerks and the labourers, artists, miners and scholars, it seemed no more than an echo of his thoughts to find that someone else had written in the visitor’s book: ‘There are no politicians buried here…’
A short distance away was the German cemetery, as neatly kept but bleaker, somehow, lacking the gentling effect of flowers. Simple black crosses, set amongst trees, looked out from higher ground over the battlefield. Here and there an arched stone, bearing a Star of David, marked the last resting place of a Jewish soldier. In the light of that other war, a mere twenty years later, there was a dreadful irony about that.
Through a drift of fallen leaves they made their way back to the car. With a deep sigh, Stephen picked up the maps and guides, and made quite a show of studying the various routes to Pozières. Zoe looked out over the battlefield and said nothing at all.
He turned the car, going back the way they had come, through the village and right towards Becourt. By that deserted roadside lay another cemetery, row upon row of white headstones against a stubble field, with woods, gold and green, crowning the rise beyond. Within a few hundred yards, where the road curved into the next village, a large white crucifix stood at the junction of two cart tracks, one leading into the wood, the other skirting it, leading to open fields above.
‘This must be Becourt Wood,’ Stephen said, looking again at the enlarged map from the battlefield guide, ‘and that track, if I’m not mistaken, must lead to “Sausage Valley” – or “Gully” as the Aussies called it.’ He glanced at Zoe and she smiled. ‘Do you want to walk?’
‘Better get the welly boots,’ she replied, stepping out of the car. ‘I’ve a feeling that chalk uplands, after rain, will be greasy and muddy.’
She was right; and Stephen knew that it would take more than these few days of fine, sunny weather to dry out the ploughed fields that rose gently to either side. In scarves, sweaters and jeans they walked hand in hand along ‘Sausage Gully’. Hugging a raised hedge part of the way, the track swept up the centre of
that shallow bowl before curving away to the left, towards a crown of trees and shrubs that Stephen thought might be close to the village of La Boisselle. Straight ahead of them, a slender stand of trees indicated the village of Contalmaison, while beyond that, according to the map, lay Pozières.
Distances were deceptive, and the stiff climb to La Boisselle took longer than they thought. They were both breathing heavily by the time they reached the crest. What struck each of them with equal force was the time it had taken to climb one side of that shallow valley, and the absolute exposure. There were no hedges to conceal them from watchers on that horseshoe ridge, and it seemed fair to assume that any hedges pre-1914 had been grubbed up or blasted out of existence long before the Australians arrived. There had been trenches, of course, but still, to traverse that place in journeys to and from the forward line seemed hazardous in the extreme.
Looking back the way they had come, in the midst of those recently ploughed acres, it was possible to see white lines meandering across the earth, and large white patches, roughly circular, that marked the position of old craters and shell-holes. After seventy years, there was something faintly chilling about it, as though the earth itself was determined to keep its own memorial to those bitter days. More chilling still was the little pile of rusty, unexploded shells propped against a stone where the track became a road.
‘Seventy years’, Stephen murmured, ‘and they’re still digging them up.’ He looked down, and amongst the bits of chalk spotted a shrapnel ball, a heavy lead pellet the size of a child’s marble, just one of the hundreds packed into every shrapnel shell, designed to burst in mid-air like deadly rain. Weighing it in his palm, he imagined it biting through tender flesh, breaking bones with the force of its impact...
He slipped the small thing into his pocket, joining Zoe as she rounded the shrouding line of shrubs at the crest. There before them stood a wooden cross, right on the lip of a massive crater, the size and depth of which took Stephen’s breath away.
So this was the crater of La Boisselle, blown by mines before the Australians arrived, part of the British attempt to dislodge the German forces from their position on the ridge. Once, there had been trenches here, and deep dugouts; the rest had gone, but the crater remained, a deep well in the chalk, some sixty feet deep.
Stephen gazed into it and fingered the tiny lead ball in his pocket: from the large to the small, the opposing forces had tried everything to annihilate each other. Little had been achieved, barring the waste of a generation; and the land continued to tell the story.
A car with British plates drew up before the cross, the occupants two middle-aged men in overcoats. They smiled and nodded, looked up at the memorial, and down into the crater, and proceeded to walk the rim. Watching them for a moment, with a blustery wind sharpening the air, Stephen and Zoe debated what to do. The village of La Boisselle was a couple of fields away down the asphalt road, with the arrow of the Bapaume Road immediately beyond it. Pozières was perhaps another two miles. In the end, neither of them wanted to walk that distance along a main road, and as the afternoon was drawing on, it was decided to return for the car.
Zoe’s research into the action at Pozières made clear that nowadays there was little to see beyond a single main street, the Australian Memorial, and the base of the old windmill beyond the village. With a glance at his watch, Stephen decided that there was still enough daylight to do that before returning to their hotel in Amiens for a well-deserved dinner. So, a look at the rebuilt village, a visit to the Memorial, and back to Amiens for the night.
Old photographs reprinted in a modern account of the battle, revealed that Pozières had been a singularly plain French village of mainly single-storied houses, hugging the Roman road to Bapuame. Its gardens and orchards, according to the old maps, were all to the rear.
Nothing seemed to have changed. Driving up the hill from the direction of Albert, the village appeared as a short stretch of unpretentious dwellings, the kind of place to drive through, at speed, on the way to somewhere infinitely more interesting. Talking to Zoe, Stephen did just that before realizing where they were. As luck would have it, he slowed and stopped by the old windmill. Again, it was so modest as to be hardly noticeable. Along a strip of mown grass, a white path led to a flat memorial stone and the rough mound where the windmill had once stood; the old concrete fortifications were now sunk into the ground.
How many lives had it cost to take this place? Stephen did not know, could not even guess; but with its commanding view of the countryside to the north and east, he could understand why the Australians wanted it. From there it must have been possible to see the German guns.
At the other end of the village, by ‘Fort Gibraltar’ – a bramble-covered mass this time – stood the obelisk erected to the memory of those men of the 1st Australian Division who had fought so doggedly and endured so bravely throughout three long years of war in France. There was a plaque naming the legendary places of those engagements, from Pozières to Passchendaele, and a dozen more between Bullecourt and the Hindenburg Line. Above it, bronze against granite, rose the rising sun emblem with its imperial crown and curl of motto beneath, striking and instantly memorable.
Zoe called it a brilliant piece of design, but there were tears in her eyes as she said it, and Stephen knew she was thinking of Liam in this place, and trying not to weep.
In the west the sun was setting in a hazy, azure sky; to the north, a lilac mist wreathed the woods of Thiepval and its huge memorial, while night clouds gathered over Pozières. All around were the gentle slopes of cultivated land, a sense of peace accentuated by the twitter of birds settling down for the night, the murmur of a passing car and a distant buzz from a home-going tractor. It was hard to believe that this place had been obliterated, reduced to a naked, barren, ash-strewn heath; that earth and sky had been riven, night and day, by the constant thunder of the guns. Hard to believe, until the eye caught the glimmer of light on tall crosses between the trees, until the number of cemeteries were counted.
Thirty-seven
The lights of a small cafe caught Stephen’s attention as they returned to the car, and thoughts of hot coffee were suddenly more pressing than anything else. They were both chilled, so he ordered cognac too, Zoe responding in careful French to Madame’s warm and friendly welcome.
She was a plump, middle-aged, cheerful woman, the personification of her cosy and old-fashioned establishment. Delft racks and huge, dark dressers lined the walls, filled with an assortment of meat-plates and jugs and the myriad examples of wartime memorabilia. There were regimental insignia, photographs and flags, caps and helmets, polished brass shell-cases from the enormous to the minute, nose-cones, water bottles and bayonets. It was a collector’s dream and a place of endless fascination for anyone even remotely interested in the battlefields.
Glass in hand, Zoe wandered around, peering at everything, while Madame bustled in and out of the kitchen with plates of food for a group of travellers in the corner. The aroma was tantalizing, the presentation enough to capture a gourmet. Catching Zoe’s eye, Stephen shot her an enquiring look, and instantly she smiled and nodded. Why trail back to their hotel, when there were feasts to be had right here?
The pate was rich, the chicken delicately flavoured, and the cheese excellent. They drank a recommended wine and exclaimed over it, and finished with a colourless liqueur, on the house. With her other visitors gone, Madame was pleased to talk, about Pozières, her little cafe and its museum, and the people who regularly stopped to eat, drink and say bonjour. On 1st July the previous year, which had been the 70th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, she said she had served hundreds of meals, to Australians, Canadians, Irish, Scots and English: a memorable day for her family and the people of Pozières.
Some might have said, cynically, that the old war was good for business, and yet despite the difficulties of language, it was easy to understand that business was secondary to the fact that Pozières was not forgotten. The young men
who died here might have been foreigners, but Madame’s forebears had suffered, too; to the north and the south they had died under arms, and in the village itself, their lives had been wrecked by the destruction of their village and the land itself. The Gallic shrug said: well, that’s how it was, you have to accept it, yet this woman cared too much for the living not to be affected by that senseless waste. Zoe did not think she was unusual.
What struck her particularly – and Stephen, too, as they discussed it on the drive back to Amiens — was the tenacity of these people, their brave determination to come back and start again. Not only to return, but to rebuild their village as it had been before.
It must have taken years to clear their lands of the detritus of war, to reclaim those fields from the dead, but they had done just that, and done it with courage and respect. Here, it was impossible to forget the past; the young men who had given up their lives in one of the bloodiest wars the world had ever known, were part of these people’s present. They could never be forgotten, not here, not in Albert, nor in the hundreds of towns and villages that had formed the battlegrounds of seventy years ago.
That thought, having taken root, continued to grow as they eventually made their way north, back to Flanders and the medieval town of Ypres. Its wealth, accrued in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries from the wool trade, had given birth to a series of fine gothic buildings, most notably the massive Cloth Hall, whose tower dominated a grand market place.
Parking the car in that cobbled square, Stephen and Zoe stepped out in noonday sun to be faced by a dazzling array of medieval architecture, steep roofs and stepped gables, tall, narrow houses, tiny shops and cafes, and the glowing sandstone of the Cloth Hall itself. Here, the best of the past had been recreated to shine for the future; everywhere, date-stones from the 1920s proclaimed a new beginning after the holocaust. The whole town was a monument to endurance and determination.
Liam's Story Page 68
