‘Oh, God,’ said the boy.
‘There ought to be medical fellas around somewhere,’ said Willie, but he hadn’t seen any himself.
‘I have to say an act of contrition,’ said the man. In truth the blood was beginning to bubble in his throat, it was pretty horrible to hear. Are you Scottish, Tommy?‘
‘No.’
‘Well, whatever you are, Tommy, can you hold on to me while I say an act of contrition?’
‘Of course I can.’
So the young man said his act of contrition. It was as sincere and contrite as any priest could wish.
‘That sounded grand,’ said Willie. The man’s hand had a fierce grip on his arm; it was surprising, the strength left in him.
‘I only came out to win a bit of freedom for Ireland,’ the man said, laughing miserably. ‘You won’t hold that against me?’
‘No, no,’ said Willie, bizarrely, he thought.
‘I’m only fucking nineteen,’ said the man. ‘But what odds?’
His blood was vigorous and generous. It started to fill his throat in the wrong way and the young man began to splutter and choke, spraying Willie’s face and tunic. He was coughing now for dear life, for dear life itself. The grip began to loosen, to loosen and loosen, till the fingers fell away entirely. The man’s head tipped back and he was gurgling, in a nasty, metallic way, like a banging lid. Choke, choke, choke. The blood was thrown over Willie again and again like a fisherman’s net, again and again, and then the man was as still as a dead fish.
There was still a light in his eyes, just for a moment, and the eyes were staring into Willie’s. And then the light was gone, the eyes merging with the deep brown shadows of the hallway. Willie bent his head and muttered a quick prayer.
They were moved back out of position and then shunted back to the ship. They boarded it in the confused dark, as if perhaps there were also urgent things to be done by them elsewhere. They were all and everyone stunned and horribly hungry and thirsty. No one seemed to have the story straight at all. When Willie had come out of the hallway, he had not seen Jesse Kirwan anywhere about, but he found him again on the ship. Not everyone on board it seemed had been called back into Dublin, and there were a hundred strange conversations going on, people asking each other what the ruckus was, why there were fellas with light wounds being tended to by the nurses, what in the name of Jaysus had been going on.
When Willie found him, Jesse was away near the second funnel of the ship, sitting as alone as he could on a crowded troopship. The huge funnel reared above him, sending quite a timid streak of smoke into the darkening sky. There was that sense now of the deepening sea, and unfriendly cold, and the realms of other things besides mankind. But whether Jesse was aware of this Willie could not tell.
Willie sat down beside him as casually as he could. The chill off the sea was making his nose run, and he was wiping at the snots that started to seep down. Jesse turned his head and gazed his gaze again.
‘Snotty bollocks, aren’t you, boy?’
‘It’s cold, isn’t it?’ said Willie.
‘Do you want a fag?’ said Jesse Kirwan, pulling a clutch of small cigarettes from his tunic pocket.
‘No,’ said Willie Dunne.
Jesse Kirwan drew a nice old Lucifer box from his britches pocket and got the contraption to make a flame and lit his meagre little cigarette and pulled on it with a great movement of his lungs. He nearly pulled the red tip the whole length of the cigarette in one blast. Then he let out the dark blue smoke.
‘These Volunteers you mentioned, your crowd,’ said Willie, ‘were they the crowd was firing at us?’
‘What? No, you gammy fool, that’s the other Volunteers. You got to keep up, William. We were one and the same up to the war breaking out, and then some of us said we would do what Redmond said and fight as Irish soldiers, you know, to save Europe, but a few of them - well, they didn’t want that. You know. A handful really. But the names, you know, I know them well. Some of the best of us.’
‘I don’t understand this volunteer thing,’ said Willie. ‘You’re volunteers, you say - but, you know, I’m a volunteer too - I volunteered for the army.’
‘Ah Jesus, Willie. That’s different altogether. You’re a volunteer for fucking Kitchener. You can’t be this thick. Look it, boy. The Ulster Volunteers were set up by Carson to resist Home Rule. So then the Irish Volunteers were set up to resist them, if necessary. Then the war came, as you may have noticed, and most of the Irish Volunteers did as Redmond said and came into the war, because Home Rule was as good as got. But a few broke away and that’s who you just saw on the lovely streets of Dublin! Of course, Willie, the Ulster Volunteers came in too, but not for Home Rule, for God’s sake. But for king and country and everything kept as it is. You see it now?’
Well, it was a veritable tornado of volunteers, that was the truth. If he never heard the word volunteer again it would be too soon.
‘So where does it leave you, Jesse?’
‘I don’t know, do I, Willie? Where does it leave you?’
‘Well, I’m not one of those Volunteer fellas. And do you know, Jesse, I’d like to ask you, because I can’t work it out, did that bit of paper they gave out, did it mean the Boche were their allies, or what in the name of God did it mean? Our gallant allies in Europe. What does that mean?’
‘What do you think it means?’
Well, Willie didn’t know. It was cold all right, but there was a huge sky now of stars like wedding rings and all just thrown about against something as hard looking as an enamel basin. He half expected to hear them rattling. There was a great murmuring all over the ship that the talking men made, and the engines aching far below, but around that there was only the enormous single note of the sea. The green, green sea, darkening everywhere to black.
‘England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity. Did you never hear that, Willie?’ said Jesse Kirwan.
‘No, I never did, I don’t think so.’
‘It wouldn’t matter if England was fighting the French, the Germans, or the blessed Hottentots. Did you never hear of the French sailing into Killalla, Willie?’
‘Oh, I did, maybe I did, yes, certainly. Well, years ago. In a history book.’
‘So, that’s what you saw today, something like that. My father said it would happen. He sees a long way into things. And I should’ve paid better heed to him, I think.’
‘There’s Irish lads, hundreds and hundreds of them, have lost their lives now fighting the Germans, Jesse.’
Strange the grip of anger now when he said that, it seared along his throat, but he tried desperately not to let the anger escape. He was angry with this Corkman, but he thought the fella would find out soon enough his mistake. When he had a few bullets fired his way by the same Germans. And there was something about the man that you didn’t want to be angry with him, at all costs. And anyhow, Willie thought a person should listen to another person first, and be sure of what was being said. Aside from that, the starlight was so crisp, so sad somehow, that his anger fell away. And on top of that, instead of a rough answer, that indeed Jesse Kirwan might have offered, all he said, after a neutral silence, was one very gently spoken sentence.
‘Of course I know that, Willie,’ he said.
When it was time to get some kip and Willie went down into the light, he noticed that his uniform was badly stained with blood. It was the blood of that young man dying. Willie scrubbed his face at the basin provided and he tried a few scrubs at the cloth. There were instructions in his soldier’s small-book for the cleaning of khaki. Yellow soap and a little ammonia in a solution of water was advised. But he had no yellow soap and he had no ammonia. He tried again in the morning but in the main he carried the young man’s blood to Belgium on his uniform.
PART TWO
Chapter Eight
Quick as a sleep and a shave he was duly back in Flanders just the same as he might have been with or without the events of the last days, which was enough to mak
e his head whirl. Jesse Kirwan was sent on up to his own unit somewhere else, and Willie Dunne was sorry to see him go, but what could be done? Nothing.
The field flowers were just appearing; light rains washed and washed again the pleasing fields. In those parts the farmers seemed to have decided that they might prepare to sow a harvest. The little villages seemed queerly optimistic; perhaps the human hearts were infected with whatever infects the very birds of Belgium. The sun lay along objects with indifferent and democratic grace, gun-barrel or ploughshare. The war was like a huge dream at the edge of this waking landscape, something far off and near that might ruin the lives of children and old alike, catastrophe to turn a soul to dry dust. It was change so big in the offing that there seemed as if nothing could be done except to leave or continue. Even in Ypres it was said citizens were trying to persist, mourning every bomb that fell, every apple tree in every ruined garden, every brick of every finely constructed house, every speck of ash from the fires of habitual love. Nothing had changed just here where he found himself — utter change was just across the plains. Nothing had changed. But something had changed in Willie Dunne.
He found himself longing now for the solid words, the dependable thoughts, the plain and blunt expression, of Christy Moran, for his views on these curious matters, as he might long for the explications of a father. He had to talk to himself strictly when the panic rose in him, a panic that his sisters might be engulfed in some cataclysm beyond anyone’s stopping.
He found his regiment in reserve not too far from a place called Hulluch and he was informed that the next day they were going up the line, which came as an unwelcome shock to him, considering what he had been through in his own home city.
But at least he found the sergeant-major his own sardonic self, and though Captain Pasley was dead, the new captain was that cheerful Cavan man, Sheridan, who had been through Sandhurst and everything but didn’t look much more than nineteen himself. He was a tall, smiling sort of man, with a good hint of a Cavan accent, not one of those complete English types you found sometimes in the army with promising Irish names.
‘Fucking miracle he got a commission,’ said Christy Moran. ‘They don’t give fucking Catholics commissions in this fucking army. He must be of royal fucking blood or something, Willie. Were the Kings of fucking Tara fucking Sheridans?’
That night Willie Dunne held to what passed for barracks, a sort of low hut with a high bank of spring flowers raging just behind it. Way off in the distance clearly were heard high-explosive shells at their work, and he heard that big mortars had been brought up to Loos by the German artillerymen and extraordinary shells were being lobbed over, so it was something to look forward to the next day.
Although Willie might be hard put to describe to Christy Moran what happened in Dublin, it was harder nonetheless to get it out of his head. That that boy from Cork Jesse Kirwan should have been weeping was bad enough, but the young man dying had shocked him, shifted his very heart about, though he had seen a hundred deaths and more, and he was hoping that Christy Moran would have a cool perspective on the matter.
The curious part of it was that not many of the other Irish lads were talking about it. The news hadn’t really filtered through, Willie supposed, and maybe it would be considered a little enough thing in the general mayhem of the war.
‘The fuckers,’ was the sergeant-major’s first judgement. ‘What the fuck are they doing, causing mayhem at home, when we’re out here fucking risking our fucking lives for them?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t. It seems to me a terrible thing. Just a bad, dark thing.’
‘And how does the thing stand now?’
‘I don’t know. They were holed up all over Dublin, and firing out at the soldiers, and us firing in at them, and the place I was, was a ...’
And he couldn’t really describe to the sergeant-major what Mount Street was like, he couldn’t.
‘Well, Jesus, they’re going to get short shrift from the fucking mothers of Dublin, let me tell you, Willie, and what the fuck do they want anyway, to be Kings of Dublin or what?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Fucking carry on of them. It will all blow over, mark my words. Anyway, Willie, — did you happen to get a bet on “All Sorts”, while you were there, like?’ said the sergeant-major.‘
‘Why, sarge? said Willie.
‘Because he’s after winning the Grand National, the cunt.’
‘Did you back him, sarge?’
‘I did not.’
‘Well, I didn’t back him, but I know a fella that did,’ said Willie, happily.
‘Well, that’s good,’ said Christy Moran nobly. ‘At least some lucky bastard was thinking straight.’
This day they were to go up to Hulluch and it was the Wednesday, but there was no day of the week holy at the war, even Easter week. News leaked through that the rebels were being shelled from gunboats on the Liffey and when Captain Sheridan announced this as the men were lined up four by four for the route march, most of the men, even the ones that came in from the Volunteers, like Jesse Kirwan, and so might have taken pause at the news, and maybe dropped a tear, let out a cheer.
‘You see, Willie,’ said the sergeant-major, just near by. ‘You see, Willie.’
‘All right, men,’ called the captain. ‘Come on then.’
And they went on up to Hulluch.
It was evening-time now and they were in their new trenches. They had come up there in the darkness and they didn’t really know how things were thereabouts, except of course there was a deal of firing and all the usual noises. The men were just talking as they always did, and they had had a decent enough supper, though scant. Willie was sitting in a corner of the trench where there was a tidy niche cut by some thoughtful person. It was a chance anyway to write to his father.
Belgium.
26 April 1916.
Dear Papa,
How are you getting on in the midst of all, are you all well and safe? I hope you will write and tell me. I saw the turmoil in Dublin for myself just as I was coming away. I hope very much you will be taking care and watching out. The men here are very scornful of the whole business. We have heard that the Huns put up a placard opposite the trenches of the Munsters. It said there was Fire and Ruin in Dublin and that the British were killing their wives and children back home. Well, the Munsters didn’t think much of that, so they all sang ‘God Save the King’, and last night I believe it was or the night before they crept over in the dark and got that placard. My sergeant-major said a lot of those fellas are out-and-out Volunteers and fervent Home Rulers and he would not have expected them to know the words of ‘God Save the King’, let alone sing it to the Boche. I am praying that you and the girls are all right. What good times we had of it, when we were all small. Why I say that I don’t know. There is not a man in Ireland that has served Ireland better than you. No one will ever know how much it has cost you. I am thinking of the ordinary days, going about the castle yards with you in the evenings. Mark my words, you have brought us through like a proper father. If Dolly had no mother, she had a father as good as any mother could have been, I do believe so. Please write first chance and tell me what has been going on.
Your loving son,
Willie.
After stand-to next morning and a daybreak like a row of sparkling dinner-knives, a strange slate-grey light mixed with sunlight that sneaked up through the ragged woods, Captain Sheridan read out a communication from headquarters to the effect that a gas attack was suspected imminently.
That was how they had put it anyhow, but the colonel came by later and put it more plainly. They were going to try to drive them out like rats, he said, and indeed the Welsh boys they had relieved last night told of hundreds of dying rats coming into their trench one day during their tour of duty, and it was sore suspected that some gas must have leaked from their canisters, wherever the Boche had them set up and ready. They came in, those rats, like fellas expecting to be helped, but the
Cardiff lads that were there clubbed them to death as best they could with their rifle butts. So that was another kind of enemy.
The colonel was not Irish and it was remembered at headquarters that the Irish ran from the first attack at St Julian all those months ago. Willie and his companions had been issued long since with what were said to be the finest of gas masks. Yokes that went over your head, a kind of bag with a queer nose, and two big eye-holes. Like something the Irish Whiteboys might have donned when they crept out upon the countryside to burn hayricks and generally molest the land-lords. They certainly gave a ghostly, menacing look to the men wearing them, but the wearer did not feel either ghostly or menacing. His cheeks got hotter and hotter and dirty sweat burned down into his eyes.
But the colonel stressed the need to stand firm, and he said he knew his lads would do so, and not be letting the terror get the better of them again. This word ‘again’ did not appeal to his listeners. Everyone knew how many were lost at St Julian and even if some of the listeners were newer men and never had been there in that hellish time in the first place, no man relished a little bit of ironic talk just before what promised to be a nasty stretch.
To counter this, those that were inclined — and there were many, nearly all — went down on their knees with Father Buckley and had a quick pray. The sentries, of course, merely bowed their heads slightly, still keeping a weather eye on the mirrors that reflected the empty ground before them. Because they were in trenches which by necessity zigzagged every hundred feet or so, Father Buckley was invisible to everyone except where he himself was kneeling. But the twelve hundred men in the battalion nevertheless by some peculiar inner knowledge knelt or bowed their heads and a murmur of words rose up to the skies. Willie Dunne hoped God could hear them.
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