A Whispered Name

by William Brodrick

  Just then Father Maguire trudged into the open with his arm around a stooped Private. The soldier was speaking in a strange tongue … it was a musical, racing hum, with the syllables dragged out at the end of each sentence. For a brief moment Herbert forgot where he was, so foreign was the sound. He watched the rapid movement of the lips as if they were an instrument, grateful for this short reprieve, hardly noticing the man’s humourless smile or the priest’s panic. Father Maguire’s head was bent, his breath misting as he listened. With a groan, he splashed over to the boy and pulled out his identity tags. After a quick check of the name he said, ‘Come on, son.’

  A doctor who wanted to be a vet, and a priest who talked of his children: everything is upside down, thought Herbert. Absolutely nothing makes sense. With that observation he set off for the Advanced Dressing Station where, amid the chaos of emergency amputations, screams and final sighs (like a rapture), his larger cuts were stitched and he heard that half his regiment had been wiped out.

  Chapter Six

  The Summons

  1

  Herbert’s wound was a ‘Blighty’, one that would take him back to England, if only for a few weeks. Herbert, however, refused the opportunity and went instead by train from Abeele to Étaples, far, far away from the guns, and then hitched the remaining thirty kilometres to Boulogne. The rain continued to fall, thinning to a heavy drizzle. Weak sunshine raised a low mist that shrouded the endless columns of troops marching to the Salient. In the town he popped into the Officers’ Club, leaving his contact details on the notice board. Then he took a room in a hotel by the sea – the room he always took when he was on leave. He didn’t open the door, save to go downstairs and eat. For hours on end he stared out at the twinkling waves, his mind drifting to the North East coast, to the sands of Beadnell and the looming Castle at Bamburgh. Between-times he twice wrote a letter to Quarters’ mother, Mrs Tetlow, and twice he threw it in the bin. Finally, he wrote to Mrs Brewitt, who’d married Alistair last May when he’d been on leave. In a way the Major had saved his life, and Herbert said so with imagined feeling, for he wasn’t sure of any gratitude. When he was drained of emotion, he wrote to his parents.

  Dear Mother and Father,

  We’ve come out of the line for a spell and I’m having a few days’ well-earned rest in Boulogne. Lovely view of the sea and, best of all, I can get up when I want to! Well, what can I tell you about the war from our end? I’ll let you into a secret: even out in the sticks, dinner is a good show; and we only have two pots and a frying pan. Seriously, though, most of the men are cheery and keen as punch to do their bit. There are grousers, of course, but not many, and we egg them along – sometimes a little unkindly! Everyone leans their shoulder to the wheel without asking too many questions. That’s not our place. It is, as you well know, Father, the only way. When one looks at the sheer size of the army, and the sophistication required to direct it purposefully in a state of war, one cannot reasonably form a judgment on tactical or strategic matters. So while we in the trenches may not know what the overall thinking might be, I can assure you we remain determined to see the business through to the end, come what may. As usual, Mother is right: it means doing as one is told!

  I’m now a Captain, by the way.

  Your loving son,

  Herbert

  Every word was true. In a way he was writing to himself, repeating an important credo. But his parents needed to hear it also, along with those friends who gathered in the sitting room in Alwinton. Herbert’s mother, Constance, would read it out loud. The atmosphere would no doubt be hushed and slightly tense. But everyone’s spirits would be bucked up by the end, by the rallying call; as were Herbert’s, now. He wrote much the same thing whenever he put pen to paper. He padded out his testament with snippets of daily routine, never referring to gas or bones or the guts upon the wire. Not because it was forbidden by the censors, but because the censors were right: it wouldn’t help anyone.

  Though an officer in the 8th (Service) Battalion, Northumberland Light Infantry, Herbert and his family hailed from Keswick in Cumberland. Upon his own estimation, Herbert had been blithely content until his eleventh year. At that young age he’d put his foot down about Stonyhurst in particular and boarding school in general. He wouldn’t go and, much to his surprise, his parents failed to demur. Consequently Herbert went to the local school in Keswick and was generally miserable. His hands were a bit too soft for the farming lads. As though it was an object lesson in life, his parents would not let him revoke that initial decision. Upon completing his education Herbert did the family thing and joined the regiment – the 22nd Lancers. He’d just been gazetted a Second-Lieutenant when an Archduke was shot in Bosnia. The papers said the Serbs were involved. ‘Who in blazes are they?’ muttered Ernest, Herbert’s father. He was outraged at the assassination. The done thing was a clean fight. In Keswick the shooting was simply table talk about barbaric people and distant places. ‘That would never happen in England,’ said Constance, checking the index of her atlas, not for one moment anticipating an eruption that within weeks would shake the surface of Derwent Water. She’d barely paid homage to Herbert’s uniform when he joined the British Expeditionary Force that sailed to France in August 1914. The boys were expected home for Christmas but events sent another ripple across the lake. Herbert was back by September. According to Colonel Maude, his Commanding Officer, Herbert ‘had failed to demonstrate the qualities of character that had secured the renown of the regiment’.

  ‘Let’s not talk of it, darling,’ said his mother in the drawing room that overlooked a pebble beach that skirted the water’s edge.

  She was shattered but would never say so; and, not being prepared to say so, she couldn’t touch on the subject at all. Her hair was wonderfully sculpted, matching the fulsome contours of a white lace blouse with endless buttons on the front. Herbert marvelled that his father ever managed to get past them. To do so required the resolve that had held the line at Mons. And even that brave stand was a prologue to retreat.

  ‘Maude should never have been commissioned,’ grumbled Ernest, swishing the decanter. He was an understanding man with heavy whiskers upon each cheek. But he was shattered, too. The Moore men had served in the Lancers for three generations. Only the buttons and braid had changed. ‘He was my staff captain in South Africa. Couldn’t tie his own damned laces.’

  The Moores, on the other hand, knew a thing or two about laces and buttons and brass. Without any reference to Herbert, a pow-wow was organised by his parents. Herbert only knew of it when Sir Ralph arrived, a long-standing family friend and military colleague of his father. General Sir Ralph Spencer Osbourne VC cut a short, compact figure. His lower jaw was slightly advanced; a pencil moustache gave emphasis to his upper lip; hair parted in the centre confirmed an air of precision not vanity. He stood in the drawing room, hands behind his back, not facing Herbert.

  ‘I’m the first in the family to break regimental crockery,’ said Herbert evenly, accepting another level of shame.

  ‘Least said, soonest mended.’ Sir Ralph kept his eyes on the lake, his fingers lightly slapping each other.

  Into the ensuing silence was ushered another visitor dressed in a morning coat. A man with a sallow face and the quiet step of an undertaker.

  ‘He’s what your father calls the Loss Adjuster,’ explained Constance outside, while the men talked. ‘We’re going to show Mr Maude what this family is made of.’

  The matter was never referred to again.

  One day, over tea, Constance announced that she’d found a magnificent property in the North East: Whiteland Manor, near Alwinton. An estate, she explained, with meadows banking the river Coquet. ‘Altogether beautiful,’ she concluded. ‘And yielding a reasonable rent, too.’ Though it was four in the afternoon, Ernest reached for the decanter. He loved Keswick and the beach of stones by the lake.

  So the family moved to Northumberland. Within three months of settling into the huge, grey-stoned manor, the Moo
re family had shown Colonel Maude their substance and mettle. In a daze, Herbert went to the tailors in Alnwick where he was measured for a uniform befitting a Second-Lieutenant of the Northumberland Light Infantry. ‘Forget the Lancers,’ whispered his mother, once more blushing with pride. ‘You can start a new tradition.’

  Over the years that followed, Herbert often wondered if Colonel Maude had cast his eye over the London Gazette, checking for unusual promotions. He’d have been disgusted.

  * * *

  On the third day of Herbert’s convalescence, when the rain finally stopped, there was a knock at the door. A sergeant from the military police swung a slow, model salute and handed over a small folded sheet of paper.

  ‘A signal, Sir. It is addressed to you.’ He took one ceremonial step back, stamped his foot and said, ‘I understand the contents are of an urgent nature.’

  All three disclosures struck Herbert as completely obvious. But he was used to it. The army had a special ritual for the obvious. With comparable gravity he opened the folded paper and read:

  Report to Battalion HQ on 31st August instant.

  FGCM. Third officer required.

  Confirm receipt.

  E. Chamberlayne (Capt & Adjt.)

  After the sergeant had left, Herbert walked to the window and gazed across the water. He could have gone home. But he’d stayed … because of a private vow to remain with his unit for the duration … to keep that life over there free from the corruption of this one over here. He sighed and opened the signal once more, his mind dwelling on one phrase: ‘Third officer required’.

  At 4.00 a.m. on the 31st August Herbert began the return journey towards the guns, scrounging first a lift on a charabanc to Étaples. At Abeele he obtained a horse and rode to Oostbeke, a small village northwest of Poperinghe where his and several other regiments from the same division had been billeted after leaving the front line. All the way he brooded upon the words dictated to Chamberlayne by their CO: ‘Third officer required’. In itself that was a statement of the obvious, worthy of the sergeant in the military police: a Field General Court Martial had to comprise at least three officers unless the convening officer (usually the Brigade commander) dispensed with the obligation for operational reasons. As Herbert cantered down a lane of puddles between fields of cabbage or hops draped on wooden scaffolds, he remembered that two officers had limited sentencing powers … the worst they could dish out was Field Punishment or Imprisonment. After a mile or so Herbert came upon the rows of bell tents and wooden huts, smoke smudging the sky above the troop kitchens. In the distance, near the artillery lines, three observation balloons floated high like fat maggots feeding on the clouds. It was obvious, really: without a third officer, there could be no death sentence.

  2

  Herbert’s billet was an old shed that housed various items of agricultural machinery. They were like instruments of torture – rows of spikes or claws on wheels – and he couldn’t for the life of him imagine how they might be used on the land. When he’d settled in, he tracked down Lieutenant Colonel ‘Duggie’ Hammond to a low farmhouse with a small courtyard occupied by three chickens. His room overlooked their manoeuvres. He was sitting on his bed, arms folded while his dog, Angus, slept twitching at his feet.

  ‘I’m told we lost half the regiment,’ said Herbert, sitting on a wooden stool.

  Duggie shook his head. ‘There is no regiment.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We’re down to fifteen per cent.’ His hair was ruffled. Blood spots from lice covered his face. He had a permanent frown, revealing temperance and a reluctant gentleness. He was a regular soldier though he looked like a man who would have preferred the quiet of marking books, his severity confined to solecisms of grammar and bad spelling. He glanced at Herbert’s arm and hand. ‘How are you getting along?’

  ‘Fine, Sir. Just some big scratches.’

  ‘You didn’t go home?’

  ‘No, Sir.’

  Constance and Ernest knew of their son’s decision and thought he was going too far, but they’d been quietly awed by his resolve to stay on the field of battle. They let it slip to the locals, and Constance told friends back in Cumberland, hoping they’d tell someone in the Lancers.

  Offensive operations had been brought to a halt, explained Duggie, ‘Just as the damned rain stopped.’ The next move was planned for the 20th of September – though that was secret – with an attack on the Menin Road. The broader objective: strong points on the Gheluvelt Plateau. If that could be taken, along with the Passchendaele Ridge, a glorious charge could be made for the coastal ports of Belgium: it would be a routing of the foe. A mile away was a mock battlefield, the terrain resembling the ground to be attacked. The regiment was to be urgently reconstructed with two Companies from the 10th Battalion in reserve, along with a batch of individual battle casualty relacements. With those added numbers, they could just about continue to fight. Rehearsals would begin in two days, on the 2nd. After the court martial.

  ‘One of our boys was picked up behind the lines,’ said Duggie, as if there was nothing else to say. ‘An Irishman from B Company. Flanagan. Do you know him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He vanished during the show. After the arrest some bright spark told Division who rang up Brigade. It’s out of my hands. They want the matter dealt with quickly, before we go back into action, so the court martial sits tomorrow. I’m sorry to have called you back. It’s a nasty responsibility.’ Duggie’s arm folded tighter, as if he were cold. ‘Brigade’s been twitching –’ he tilted his head as if the next echelon of power was brooding upstairs – ‘Pemberton says we have to keep our nerve, especially after what’s happened … he tells me the boys have to know where their duty lies.’

  Brigadier General Anthony Pemberton. He’d brought the remains of his four battalions out of the line and his first contact with Division had been about a desertion. They’d leaned on him immediately. As if following the same motion, he’d leaned on Duggie, the relevant CO; and Duggie, albeit reluctantly, had then tipped the accumulated weight of authority’s expectations on to Herbert – not any of the other available officers, but Herbert.

  They watched the hens scratching for seeds among puddles of water.

  ‘I’m a regular soldier,’ said Duggie, remotely. ‘I know what I signed up for. But these volunteers, yes, they wear the same boots and uniform but they’re not the same as us. And all the rules in the King’s Regulations can’t make that one important distinction.’ Turning to Herbert, he said, ‘I’m sure you remember, but it bears repeating: the military law we serve under was born in Wellington’s time. It was meant to restrain the mob. With a bit of tweaking it met the needs of an empire’s professional army … it wasn’t meant for this?’ He tilted his head towards the chickens, and the farmyard gate, and the troops beyond eating bacon in the fields.

  The court martial was set to take place in an old school, a mile down the road. Herbert was to present himself at nine-thirty the next morning. At the door, Duggie said, ‘The boys know their duty well enough.’ He paused to find Herbert’s eye. ‘Just do yours.’

  3

  Herbert ambled down the lane, turning over this last remark in his mind. In saying the boys knew their duty, Duggie seemed to be taking issue with Pemberton: the boys needed to be reminded of nothing; the one man who had to address his mind to duty’s call was Herbert. In some peculiar way, Duggie was relying upon him. He’d picked him out. Nothing else needed to be said. As if waking, Herbert stalled, his attention caught by a strange kind of singing.

  Turning to his left he saw a chipped brick wall and, behind it, a rather short steeple. Herbert had been so absorbed with his thoughts that he hadn’t paid any attention to where he was going, so much so that he hadn’t even seen the church. It was as though the place had just appeared. A wooden plaque read ‘Notre Dame des Ramiers’. A gate was ajar, without a bolt or a lock. Herbert pushed it open and walked down a long stone corridor, open to the sky. Ahe
ad was a white arched door. The singing grew louder as he drew nearer upon a path of cracked flagstones. He stood outside, disturbed by the rising chant. The sound echoed as if from a very distant place. He didn’t understand the language but he recognised a sort of pleading matched to a wholly foreign spirit of confidence. The melody was unbearably beautiful … it spiralled into the very place where Herbert’s soul grovelled when the shells came screaming towards him. Without deciding to do so, Herbert fled from a new kind of fear, back to the world he hated and understood. By the time he reached the lane, the singing had stopped. Herbert looked right, towards the tents and huts. On either side were the ordered dispositions of three brigades. There were officers galore, but Duggie had called on Herbert. He’d brought him back from Boulogne to ‘do his duty’.

  Chapter Seven

  Far from being the depot of Anselm’s imagination, the Public Record Office was a modern structure rather like one of those pillboxes in Normandy, only it was immense with a plentiful distribution of tinted glass. A great weeping willow by a lake bruised Anselm’s sensibility. The branches hung so low that the fronds trailed in the water like an act of veneration. At the reception desk Anselm asked for Martin Reid. Presently, approaching quietly from behind, Anselm heard a soft Scottish voice. ‘Good morning, Father. Welcome on board.’

  The joke was more self-conscious than clumsy. While Martin had been a confident, even commanding, presence on the telephone, face to face he was somewhat shy. Anselm placed him in his late forties. He was immaculately turned out: polished black shoes, pressed grey trousers and a blue blazer with silver buttons – an appearance wholly fitting a man who’d served under a naval ensign. It was a uniform of sorts, the only delinquent attribute being the open-necked checked shirt, though Anselm suspected a tie bearing a dolphin motif was neatly folded in one pocket. His eyes were dark brown, showing reserve, absorption and a friendliness more easily expressed from a distance. On entering his office, Anselm smiled. The room was in savage contrast to the character of its occupant. Books and papers were heaped on his desk among photographs in various garish frames. Four children smiled out with the exuberance – Anselm presumed – of their mother.