by Clare Flynn
Letter from Home
Aldershot
Jim had been in Aldershot for three months when he received a letter. It was dated a month earlier – all the Canadians complained about the unreliability of mail from home – it had to negotiate the dangers of the Atlantic with the risk of torpedo attacks, but the men believed torpor on behalf of the military contributed to the delays.
The envelope bore his mother’s familiar scrawled handwriting. She’d tracked him down as he should have guessed she would. He was ashamed for not writing to her first and overwhelmed by homesickness as he read the letter. Helga wrote first about the farm, the progress of the winter wheat, the heifers that were ready to calf, her worsening rheumatism, the forecasts of an exceptionally cold winter. It was as though she were writing a report for the local newspaper, not sending a letter to her elder son who had left for war without so much as a farewell. He turned the page and the tone changed:
I am not going to beat about the bush any longer, son. I’m disappointed that you have not been touch with your father and me. I had to find out where you were from Amy Howardson. How do you think that made me feel? When she mentioned you were in the same regiment as Tip over in England my jaw nearly hit the floor as you hadn’t even dropped us a line to say you had joined up, let alone that you were already overseas.
I know you must be hurting, Jimmy, but it isn’t right to take things out on your pa and me. We knew nothing of what was going on between your brother and Alice. I can tell you I was as angry as you were when I found out. I don’t take well to being played for a fool. Nor does your pa. You should have heard him yelling at Walter. At first he didn’t want Alice in the house. Called her all kinds of names. But then we agreed we had to make the best of things and accept that what will be will be.
Walter and Alice were married last week and have taken a few days as a honeymoon visiting Alice’s grandmother in Toronto. It was a quiet ceremony. No fuss. Only the priest and us and Alice’s parents. We didn’t put it in the local paper. It didn’t feel right in the circumstances. When it comes up, people can know, but we don’t want to go round making a noise about it. And your pa told Walter and Alice they had to be respectful of you and your feelings.
The words swam on the page in front of Jim’s eyes and he put the letter down, catching his breath. It was inevitable that Walt and Alice would marry some time, he’d just not reckoned on it being so soon. His stomach felt hollow and the blood pounded in his ears. He forced himself to read on.
One day soon, when the war is over, you will come back to the farm. This place will always be your home. Time is a great healer and I know eventually you will find it in your heart to forgive Walter and Alice. Remember, there are plenty more fish in the sea. I know it’s a corny old saying but it’s true. I’ve never spoken of this before and never will again and will be grateful if you don’t let on either, but your pa was not my first choice for a husband. I was engaged to a fellow who died of tuberculosis. I thought I’d never get over it but then your pa came along and I have never regretted a moment of our life together.
I pray for you every night, Jimmy. Your pa says my knees are going to wear a hole in the rug by the bed, but I can’t stop worrying about you. Mrs Howardson says none of the Canadian boys have seen any action and the government and the British want to keep it that way, specially with you all being volunteers. It must be nice for you to have Tip around – someone familiar who shares the same memories of home. I pray you’ll all be safe and come home to your mothers soon.
Well that’s all, son. I’ve been up early writing this while your pa is doing the milking so I need to get on and get the bread in the oven or there’ll be none for his breakfast. Your pa sends his love. He’s not angry with you. He understands why you felt you had to leave. He’s still mad at your brother though, but that will pass I’m sure.
Your loving mother.
P.S. That dog of yours is pining for you. It’s breaking my heart, son.
Jim folded up the letter and stuffed it back into the envelope and put it in his pocket. His hands were shaking. Bile rose in his throat and he tried to swallow, but his mouth was too parched.
Jim was confined to barracks. It was the third time this month and, as usual, it was for a minor infraction. This time he had been reprimanded by Corporal Howardson because his bed-making didn’t pass muster. There was no point railing against the injustice of Howardson’s constant pettiness. Jim’s bed was as neatly made up as all the others in the dormitory but there was no way to prove that was the case once the corporal had kicked the blankets to demonstrate his point. Jim wouldn’t have cared normally, but it was Mitch Johnson’s birthday and Mitch had promised to stand everyone drinks. There had also been talk of a darts match. The Canucks had acquired a taste for the classic English pub sport and Jim had become something of a star among them.
Howardson appeared at the side of Jim’s bed while he was lying on his stomach reading a book.
‘You think you’re so clever, don’t you, Armstrong? You’ve always thought yourself superior. But you’re a snivelling coward. You took your time to volunteer and that brother of yours took even longer. You're both chicken.’ Tip’s face was disfigured by a sneer.
Jim rolled onto his back, his stomach lurching. Tip had been Walt’s friend. Now he appeared to have turned against him too. But it wasn’t possible that Walt had joined up. What did Howardson mean?
‘Did you want something, Corporal?’ he said. It was always difficult having to address this jumped-up, small-minded bully respectfully. It stuck in Jim’s craw. Especially as most of the Canadian NCOs were happy to be addressed by their first names, as were some of the officers.
‘Stand up when you’re addressing a non-commissioned officer.’
Jim swung his legs off the bed and scrambled out – not easy to do in a hurry from the narrow gap of the lower bunks. He dug his fingernails into his palms and forced himself to take a deep breath.
‘I wanted to give you some good news.’
Jim was alarmed. His idea of good news and Tip’s were bound to be different.
The corporal moved towards him, pushing his face up close so that Jim could smell a mixture of tobacco and onions overlaid with peppermint. Jim held his breath and tried not to wrinkle his nose.
‘Your brother is on his way to Aldershot. Maybe he was feeling bad about stealing big brother’s girlfriend and thought he ought to make it up with you. What do you think?’ His lip curled in contempt.
Jim said nothing. His hands felt sweaty and he rubbed one down his leg. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true.
‘There’s five hundred rookies arriving tomorrow and Walter Armstrong is one of them. Of course it’s always possible there’s another Walter Armstrong in Ontario, but I’m pretty damned sure there’s only one who comes from Hollowtree.’
He stepped away from Jim, a malevolent smile on his face. ‘Going to be interesting round here. I’m looking forward to seeing Walt again.’
Tip Howardson left the room and Jim punched the wall in a rush of anger and frustration. What the hell was Walt thinking? He’d just got married. Why the hell did he want to go to war? Why had he chosen to follow Jim and leave Alice on her own? His rage built up inside like molten lava. His body felt hot, despite the cool of the draughty barrack room. He jerked his shirt collar away from his neck and punched the wall again. The pain made him look at his knuckles. Bloody. He wanted to go out, to walk, to get away from this building and keep on walking until he was miles from Aldershot, but he wasn’t even allowed to step outside. He leaned his forehead against the cold glass of the windowpane and tried to breathe his way back to calmness.
It was typical of Walt to follow him into the army. Walt had always tried to compete with him. When they were children, if he and Jim each got a toy to play with, Walt would break his own then purloin Jim’s. When Jim did well in school, Walt wouldn’t rest until he did better. If Jim made the baseball team Walt would have to be captain. If Jim
broke a record, Walt would beat that record before the ink was dry on the page. Jim had always tolerated this with amusement. It was a kind of hero worship. Little brother wanting to emulate big brother. But stealing a sports record was one thing. Stealing a woman was another. And now the possibility that Jim could return to Canada a hero like their father must have proved too much for Walt to bear. He had to get in on the act too.
There was always the possibility that this was Tip trying to wind him up. Perhaps he wanted to make Jim’s life a misery of anticipation at the prospective arrival of his brother. Tip could sit back and enjoy the days of dread until the recruits arrived and Walt’s absence would enable Jim to breathe again. But he knew it was a forlorn hope. This was exactly what Walt would do. It was completely in character. Walt would have dressed it up as being a tribute to his older brother, when in reality he wouldn’t have been able to bear the idea that in the eyes of the family he might be considered less noble, less brave. And he wouldn’t want to risk Jim being lionised by Alice as a war hero, while Walt stayed at home and ploughed fields. No, it made perfect sense. Walt was coming and Jim was going to have to look at his brother every day on the parade ground or on exercise. Every day that would chafe at the still raw wound that was the loss of Alice, keeping it open, preventing any possibility of it healing.
Jim pulled his holdall out from under the bed and rummaged inside for the bottle of cheap whisky he had won in a darts match. He unscrewed the top and drank deeply. The only hope he had of getting any sleep that night would be to get blind drunk. Drunk as a skunk as Grass would put it. He swigged down another mouthful and lay back on the bed.
The terrain around Aldershot was rough heathland – gorse and bracken growing on thin sandy soil. The soil was too poor to make good arable land. It was however ideal for the produce of war and the British army had bought up a large tract of land in the nineteenth century at a low cost per acre to create a permanent training ground for the military. Firing ranges were scattered across the landscape. Soldiers from the garrison dug slit trenches all over the countryside, only for officers to decide they were in the wrong place and they had to fill them in and start all over again. The men were not slow to recognise the pointlessness of these exercises and began to feel disillusioned about their role in this war.
Jim took an instant dislike to the countryside. It was so different from the fertile farmland of his home in Ontario. Not for the first time he questioned why he had given up a life he loved for this miserable existence in these ugly surroundings.
He had always been lean and fit, with muscles built on the daily routine of farming, but nothing had prepared him for the exercises he faced every day in Aldershot Camp. The gymnastics routines alone were exhausting, their strenuous physical regimen included lifting logs over their heads and star jumping for what seemed like hours on end. Cross-country runs were spiced up by having to crawl on their bellies though mud under barbed wire fences, tramping through ditches and ponds with full kit on their backs until their feet were like sponges, swinging between trees on rope walks or negotiating minefields. They learnt to manoeuvre tanks across rough terrain and became skilled in the operation of machine guns.
Experts came to the garrison to lecture them on the art of camouflage and why it was so critical to a soldier’s survival in battle. What battle? they all wanted to ask. It was followed by day after day of putting the training into practice as Jim and his cohorts transformed into mobile bushes, covering their tin hats with sacking and weaving leaves and branches into their webbing. It seemed pointless to be spending hours polishing buttons and belts until they gleamed, only to dull their glinting helmets with camouflage so the elusive enemy would be unable to spot them.
While Jim performed all these exercises as well as any man in his unit, nothing he did was ever deemed good enough by Tip Howardson. The way the corporal singled Jim out for criticism had been noticed by the rest of the squad. Night after night when his friends went out dancing, to watch a movie or to swell the coffers of the local pubs, Jim would be confined to barracks. Howardson had him running circuits around the parade ground, doing extra duties in the canteen or the laundry and, no matter how hard he tried to stay out of trouble and perform his tasks perfectly, his corporal managed to find fault.
‘I think you should make a formal complaint to the RSM,’ said Mitch one day, when Jim eventually returned to the dormitory after performing fifty circuits of the parade ground in full kit at the end of a day of exercises. ‘It’s obvious he’s picking on you, bud.’
Jim shrugged. He knew there was no point.
Part II
1941
These are not dark days; these are great days—the greatest days our country has ever lived;
Winston Churchill 1941
A New Job
Eastbourne
Gwen was on the terrace checking on her pots of onion plants when the telephone rang. She ran inside. It was Daphne’s husband, Sandy Pringle.
‘I say, Gwen, could you come and see me this morning? I’d like to discuss something with you.’
‘What’s it about, Sandy?’ She felt uneasy. There was something about Major Pringle that always made her feel as though she were being reprimanded.
‘All good stuff, nothing to worry about. Ten sharp at HQ.’
He hung up. Gwen looked at her watch. Already almost nine. Better step on it. She decided to wear her WVS uniform. She wanted to meet Sandy on her own terms and not as Roger’s wife, which was how she sensed Sandy usually saw her – a less interesting and rather insignificant adjunct to her husband.
Sandy Pringle had had a distinguished career in the last war, serving at Gallipoli. After the war, there had been a spell at Sandhurst, then he had been a staff officer for the War Office and was now coordinating military activities in the Sussex region and acting as a liaison between the allied forces and the Home Guard. Sandy had gone to school with Roger and the two had reconnected when the Pringles moved to Eastbourne before war was declared. Gwen wasn’t entirely sure about his exact remit, as he appeared to have a finger in many pies. His rank was Major and he had a tendency to bark rather than speak. He spoke to Daphne as though she were an insubordinate private and Gwen wondered how she stood it.
As she waited to be shown into his hallowed presence she felt nervous. Was the summons to do with Daphne’s discovery at the fundraiser that she spoke German? She hadn’t seen Sandy for months but perhaps Daphne had only just told him. Was he going to give her the third degree as his wife had done?
‘Enter!’
Sandy’s voice boomed through the door and Gwen looked around to reassure herself that she was the only person waiting in the anteroom, before opening the heavy oak door. Pringle looked at her through narrowed eyes and ran a finger over his moustache before rising to greet her.
‘Sit down, sit down, Gwen.’ He waved his hand at the empty chair in front of his desk. This was clearly official business, whatever it was.
‘I’ve a job for you, Gwen. Mrs Robson tells me you’re capable and trustworthy and a real asset to the WVS.’ He gave a slight roll of his eyes as though dismissing that anything the WVS did was of any real value.
Gwen felt a rush of excitement, tempered with irritation that he was speaking to her in such a condescending way. Was she at last to be given something to do that amounted to more than making cups of tea and sorting clothing?
‘My wife tells me you speak German.’ He frowned at her and again his eyes narrowed.
He did suspect she was a fifth columnist. ‘Look, I already told Daphne that I was at school in Switzerland in the ’20s. Speaking German doesn’t make me a sympathiser. For heaven’s sake, Sandy, er, Major Pringle, I’m as British as you are.’ She paused, then added quietly, ‘You know that.’
‘Of course you are, my dear. Above reproach. Roger’s one of my oldest friends.’ The formal military demeanour softened. ‘Whatever made you think you were under suspicion?’ He began to laugh. ‘Was it old Daffers putt
ing the wind up you? Two left feet that woman. I’m always telling her she needs to show a bit more tact. Doesn’t listen to me though. No, Gwen, it’s quite the opposite. I want to put your skills to work. I’m seconding you to work on a special project. You prepared for that?’
Gwen sat up taller in her chair and swallowed. She felt a mix of nerves and excitement. ‘Of course, San…I mean, sir. What would you like me to do?’
‘It’s hush-hush. You’ll find out in good time. Need to be tested first. Got to check your German’s up to scratch. And we’ll need to do a security vetting. We’ll do all that right away. Then you’ll have to be fully briefed and trained.’
Gwen shivered with excitement. She would be doing something useful. Something that could help the war effort. Something that might make a difference.
‘I must stress again the vital importance of maintaining absolute secrecy.’ He tapped his chubby fingers on the desk. ‘Now that Hitler has called off the invasion he’s doubtless hoping we’ll all sit back on our laurels. Not going to happen. The bally war may well drag on for years and it’s all the more important to be on our mettle. Secrecy is everything. Sealed lips.’
‘Of course.’ Gwen nodded. Her mouth was dry and she had difficulty swallowing.
‘Not even my wife can know what you’ll be doing. Especially not my wife. Not a word. Val Robson doesn’t know what you’ll be doing either, so keep it that way. We operate entirely on a need to know basis. Not a word to anyone. Even Roger, if you hear from him. You can say you’re doing secretarial work for the regional HQ.’
