Passions of War

by Hilary Green

  ‘But not you,’ Sophie said. ‘Not with that leg.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed, ‘not yet, anyway. Guess I’m due for a spot of home leave.’

  He was not sure himself whether to feel relief at the prospect or a sense of disappointment at missing out on the next scene of the drama, whatever that might be. He had developed close bonds with the men in his unit and he felt a sense of duty to go with the survivors, wherever they were sent. However, it was clearly not to be – at least, as he had said to Sophie, not yet – so he might as well enjoy his luck while it lasted. ‘The other bit of news is there’s a ship leaving the day after tomorrow to take guys like me home. So it won’t be long now before I can show you the farm and introduce you to the family.’

  She turned to look at him then and he saw that she had been crying. ‘Luke, I know about the ship. But I can’t come with you.’

  ‘Why not?’ He moved closer and reached for her hand. ‘Sophie, I know you miss your home and you want to go back, but it’s impossible right now. You know that, as well as I do. Maybe in a few months or a year, when we’ve finally routed the Turks out of the area, you’ll be able to go back, but it’s too dangerous now. You have to think of little Anton.’

  He saw the tears well up in her eyes again. ‘I don’t want to go back, Luke. But I can’t come to New Zealand with you. I asked the adjutant to post me to the ship as a nurse, but he says the immigration people at Wellington would just send me straight back because I have no papers.’

  Luke stared at her. ‘That can’t be right. You saved my life. Wait right there, I’m going to talk to the adjutant myself.’

  The adjutant, however, simply reiterated what he had said to Sophie. ‘I’m sorry, old man, but it would be irresponsible of me to let her board the ship, knowing she’ll be turned back at the port. There’s only one thing I can suggest, and that is that you go and see the consul. He might be able to provide some kind of emergency paperwork that would allow the young lady to stay in New Zealand for a while, at least. I’m afraid that’s the best chance I can offer.’

  Luke went straight out of the hospital, jumped into one of the horse-drawn gharries that waited at the gate and asked to be taken to the New Zealand consulate. There he insisted on an immediate audience with the consul, declaring that the situation was an emergency and using his status as a soldier wounded in the service of his country to press his case. The consul listened to his story and agreed with him that it showed remarkable heroism on Sophie’s part, which deserved its reward, but his final verdict was the same.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sergeant, but I don’t have the authority to produce papers for a resident of what is, for better or worse, an enemy country. Whether we like it or not, the lady is in law a Turkish citizen.’

  Luke ground his teeth in frustration. ‘What about natural justice?’ he demanded.

  ‘Not within my remit, I’m afraid,’ the consul replied.

  At that moment Luke had an inspiration. ‘Would it make a difference if we were married?’

  ‘You and this young lady?’

  ‘Me and Sophie, yes.’

  ‘Well, of course that would be different. As your wife she would have the right of residence.’

  ‘And she wouldn’t be turned away by immigration?’

  ‘I don’t see how she could be.’

  ‘Then that’s the answer.’ Luke got up, thanked the consul, and took his leave.

  He found Sophie about to go off duty and persuaded her to come and sit with him in the garden. They found a bench under the shade of a palm tree at the edge of a dusty patch of grass.

  ‘I went to see the adjutant,’ he began, ‘and he told me to go and talk to the consul.’

  She gave him a weary smile. ‘You should not wear yourself out like that. You are still not strong and it will do no good.’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that. There is a way, but I’m a bit doubtful about suggesting it. I don’t know what you will think about it.’

  ‘A way I can come to New Zealand, with you, and bring Anton with me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me. I will do anything I can.’

  ‘It isn’t anything difficult. All you have to do is marry me.’

  She stared at him. ‘Marry you?’

  ‘Yes. I know it’s a big step. You’re still grieving for Iannis and obviously you’re not in love with me. But it would be a formality, that’s all. I wouldn’t expect you to – well, you know. We might have to share a cabin on the ship, but I’d respect your privacy. Am I making sense?’

  For a long moment she sat looking down at her hands, which were clasped in her lap. Then she said, without looking up, ‘You would do this for me?’

  For the first time the full implications of what he was suggesting came home to Luke. It had seemed so obvious when the consul had mentioned the idea but now he realized that he was offering to commit himself to what was in essence a legal deception. Presumably he would be able to escape from the marriage in due course; words like divorce and annulment floated through his mind. If that was what he wanted . . . But what did he want? Why was it so important that Sophie should come home with him?

  He answered in the only way that seemed to make sense at that moment. ‘You saved my life. It’s the least I can do in return.’

  Slowly she raised her eyes and the expression in them was unfathomable. ‘Then, if you are prepared to do this thing for me, I accept. And I thank you.’

  Luke and Sophie were married by the hospital chaplain the following morning and the next day they took ship for New Zealand.

  ‘Stand to! Stand to!’ The hoarse whispers of the NCOs ran along the trench and men tumbled out of bunks hollowed in its sides, bleary-eyed but with their rifles in their hands.

  Tom yawned and shivered. It was almost the end of his three-hour watch. Soon he would be able to go back to the dugout for breakfast. Orderlies came along the trench with the morning ration of tea and rum. Tom headed for company HQ to wake the other officers, pausing on the way to exchange a few words with a man here and there. He knew all his platoon personally now, and consciously modelled himself on Ralph in taking an interest in their backgrounds and their problems. Besides which, he had sketched most of them and handed them the results, which had earned him the nickname of ‘Doodles’. He was not supposed to know that, but he had heard it whispered along the trench at his approach.

  He had returned from England just in time to see the New Year in with Ralph. The regiment had been in reserve in the village of Poperinghe but now they were back in the trenches and in many ways that was a relief. He had survived his officer training, but only just. It had put him at the mercy of some of the regiment’s ‘old hands’ – both officers and NCOs. Some of these men had served in the Boer War and were intent on preserving what they called ‘the traditions of the regiment’; traditions which, in Tom’s opinion, were merely a continuation of the bullying and meaningless rituals of public school. Junior officers were regarded as some kind of inferior being, to be humiliated at every opportunity. Tom, being a volunteer rather than a regular soldier, was a particular subject of contempt. When it was discovered that he was an artist, to boot, he became the target of every disciplinarian in the battalion. He was punished for failing to salute in precisely the prescribed manner, sent for riding lessons during which he was made to jump fences bareback on a particularly intractable mare, and forbidden, along with all the other junior officers, from drinking anything stronger than beer in the mess. Before the war he had not been particularly aware of snobbery and class divisions, but his time in the army had brought home to him the patent absurdity of such attitudes. In civilian life he would have been regarded as a social equal by even the most senior officers, because he was the son of a baronet. In barracks, he was treated worse than an errand boy.

  At the end of his training he had been given two weeks’ leave, which he had spent at Denham Hall with his parents. If he had found his training a time of trial, this period of so-c
alled relaxation had made him more eager than ever to get back to France. His father, always fond of a drink and a gamble, spent most of his time carousing with the red-faced local squires who were only too happy to accept his hospitality, or at his London club. His mother, meanwhile, whom he had always found chilly and aloof, seemed to have withdrawn almost completely from family life. Neither of them seemed to have any concept of conditions on the Western Front and his father’s only response to the information that Tom had volunteered for active duty and officer training was a derisive snort.

  Returning to France, he had seen Ralph with fresh eyes and realized how much he had changed. The bright gloss of youth had gone, both physically and mentally. Even his hair was no longer the colour of a freshly fallen chestnut; instead it was more like the dulled relic of the previous autumn. The devil-may-care courage had gone, too, replaced by a bitter endurance.

  At company headquarters, a two-roomed dugout in the side of a trench connecting the forward and support lines, he woke his fellow officers but found that Ralph was missing.

  ‘Called back to battalion HQ, sir,’ his batman informed him. ‘Some kind of a flap on, I expect.’

  Ralph had been promoted to captain and was now in command of the company, a transition that seemed to put a distance between them. Tom was sitting down to a breakfast of bacon, eggs, coffee, toast and marmalade with the others when he came in.

  ‘Good morning, gentlemen. No, don’t get up. Finish your breakfasts. HQ have intelligence that Fritz is digging a sap out towards our front line. They want us to go out and verify it. It means going out after dark and locating the area, then lying up in a shell-hole for the day, listening for sounds of digging. I need a volunteer to come with me.’

  ‘I’ll come,’ Tom said at once.

  Ralph turned to him with a frown. ‘No, not you, Tom. You’re needed back here.’

  ‘But . . .’ Tom protested, but at the same time a young sub-lieutenant called Carver, who had only been with them for a few weeks, piped up.

  ‘I’ll come with you, sir.’

  Ralph nodded. ‘Thank you. Be ready immediately after stand-to this evening. Now, is there any of that bacon left?’

  Tom opened his mouth to argue and then thought better of it. At worst it would be insubordination; and even if Ralph could be persuaded he could not go back on what he had said in front of the others. He must wait until after he had carried out his routine morning duties: inspecting the men’s rifles, checking that the trench was kept clean, and organizing work parties to repair and improve the defences. The trench system had developed by this time into an underground village, with a network of communication trenches and support trenches, where it was quite easy to get lost. The trenches were protected by a revetment of sandbags and broken into sections by traverses, to impede any enemy forces that might get into them. There was always work to be done to keep these in good repair.

  When he was sure that all this was in hand Tom went back to the HQ dugout. By good luck, he found Ralph alone except for another officer who was fast asleep in the inner room. He launched into his argument without preamble.

  ‘Ralph, this has got to stop.’

  ‘The war? I quite agree with you, but it isn’t going to – not for a long time yet.’

  ‘You know quite well that I’m not referring to the war in general.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘The way you are behaving towards me.’

  ‘Have I been less than correct in my behaviour?’

  ‘No. I’m not talking about manners or military correctness! I’m talking about the way you turn me down every time I volunteer for anything with the slightest risk.’

  ‘I simply feel that you are better employed here rather than out there between the lines.’

  ‘Are you afraid that I’ll panic? Do you think I haven’t got the guts for operations like that?’

  At last Ralph looked up from the maps he was studying. ‘Good God, no, Tom! I know you’re as brave as any man here.’

  ‘Then why are you giving everyone else the impression that you think I’m not up to the job?’

  ‘That’s not my intention.’ He paused and looked at Tom with an intentness that made him feel uncomfortable. ‘It’s just . . . Look, you’ve got more to give the world than some of us. You’re an artist. In all this mindless slaughter some people have to be preserved, and you’re one of them.’

  ‘Codswallop!’ Tom said energetically. ‘If I was Reubens or da Vinci there might be some justification, but my talent, if I have any, is a very minor one. There are plenty of other men out here with far more to offer in that line than me. What about some of the poetry that’s being written? That fellow Graves is writing some brilliant stuff but I bet his CO doesn’t go out of his way to keep him out of danger.’

  ‘Well, I’m not his CO,’ Ralph replied. ‘It’s my decision, Tom, and you’ll just have to live with it – live being the operative word.’

  Tom stared at him in despair for a moment, then he used his last ammunition.

  ‘You know what people are saying, don’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘People know that we were at school together. They think you are giving me special treatment because . . . well, because we have a certain kind of relationship.’

  He saw the colour rise in Ralph’s face. ‘Who is saying that? Tell me his name and, by God, I’ll call him out!’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ralph! What century do you think we’re living in – the seventeenth? You can’t fight a duel these days. If you even suggested it you would be in contravention of the King’s regulations. You’d be cashiered. Anyway, it isn’t one particular person. It’s just a vague rumour, a series of innuendoes. But it isn’t good for morale.’

  That was his trump card. ‘Morale’ was all important and Ralph would go to great lengths to maintain it. Ralph glared at him for a moment, then he got up and turned his back. ‘Very well, come if you want to. Come and get your stupid head blown off, for all I care. Tell young Carver that I’ve changed my mind.’

  As darkness fell Tom stood with Ralph at the corner of a traverse and heard the whispered word passed along the line: ‘Officer’s patrol going out.’ This was an essential precaution in case a sentry, seeing movement in the dark, took a pot shot at them. Ralph got up on the firing step and raised his head cautiously above the parapet. After studying the expanse of no-man’s-land for a few moments he glanced back at Tom and made a forward gesture with one arm. Then he wriggled over the top and disappeared. Tom hoisted himself up, his heart pounding, and followed. Flat on their bellies they inched forward, under their own barbed wire, and out into the shell-pocked land beyond. There was no moon and the sky was overcast, so the darkness was absolute. Every few yards they stopped and lay motionless, watching and listening for any movement. It was well known that the Germans also sent out patrols during the night. Then they crawled on again, sometimes skirting the shell-holes, sometimes finding no way forward but by descending into their waterlogged depths and then climbing out on the far side. Once a German flare went up, casting an unearthly light over the whole expanse, and they lay still, shamming dead, until it went out. Once Tom felt something slimy under his hand and recognized with horror that he had put it on the face of a corpse that had been left lying there for months.

  After crawling for what felt like miles Ralph beckoned him close and breathed in his ear, ‘This is roughly where they think the sap has got to. We’ll get down into this shell crater and hope we’re near enough.’

  The bottom of the crater was covered in a couple of inches of icy water. Tom tried crouching, so that only his boots were in it, but that position soon became untenable. It hit him that they were going to be there all through the next day until darkness fell again. He told himself that wounded men survived in similar conditions, so there was no reason why two healthy ones should not do the same. Nevertheless, the prospect was grim. A hand nudged his arm, and a flask was pressed into hi
s hand. It contained strong coffee, well laced with rum. Tom drank and felt a little better.

  Dawn came at last but once the protective veil of darkness was withdrawn he felt dangerously exposed. Ralph wriggled carefully to the edge of the crater and peered over.

  ‘We’re about twenty yards from the German wire,’ he whispered. ‘If we’re in the right place we should be able to hear them working on the sap.’

  They hunkered down, keeping well below the rim of the crater, and drank more coffee and ate some of their iron rations. Tom eased his position with a suppressed groan and caught Ralph’s eye. Suddenly they both grinned and Ralph whispered, ‘Well, you wanted to come.’

  It was a quiet morning. There was no bombardment and except for the occasional crack of a sniper’s rifle no firing of any sort. Then Tom’s ears caught a faint sound. He tapped Ralph’s knee to get his attention and cocked his head in an attitude of listening. From somewhere a short way to his right he could hear the unmistakable noise of a pick striking earth. Moments later it was joined by the muffled sound of voices. Ralph caught his eye and nodded triumphantly. He inched his way up the side of the crater until he could just peer over the rim, then slid back again.

  ‘Got a pencil and paper with you?’

  ‘As always.’

  ‘See if you can identify any landmarks to pinpoint the area where the noise is coming from.’

  In his turn, Tom squirmed to the rim of the crater and peered over. The whole area had been reduced to an almost featureless waste ground but a short way off a broken tree stump stuck up out of the mud. Nearer at hand, there was a more gruesome landmark, the skeleton of a dead horse. Tom’s eyes raked the scene, estimating the distance from the German wire, and the angle of their travel from their own base, committing the details to memory. He slid back into the crater, got out his sketch pad, which he carried in a waterproof pouch slung round his neck under his tunic, and rapidly laid out all the salient features. When he had done he handed the pad to Ralph, who returned it with a gleam in his eyes.