1917

by Kelly Gardiner

  ‘All right,’ said Lizzie. ‘Then why did the horse cross the road?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Elsie.

  ‘Because it was the chicken’s day off.’

  I groaned, but Lila and Elsie burst into giggles. It was the first time I’d ever seen them smile.

  ‘That’s not all,’ I said, catching on to Lizzie’s ingenious plan. ‘How do you make an octopus laugh?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Lizzie, with a big wink as if she was on stage. ‘How do you make an octopus laugh?’

  ‘You give it ten tickles.’

  They all just stared at me.

  ‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ said Lila.

  ‘Tentacles,’ I said. ‘Get it?’

  ‘What’s an octopus?’ said Elsie.

  ‘D’you know any jokes, Elsie?’ asked Lizzie.

  Elsie craned her head to make sure Miss Higgins wasn’t in earshot.

  ‘It’s a bit rude,’ she whispered, ‘but …’

  ‘Did you make that joke up?’ I asked Lizzie later.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I heard Roy Rene tell it at the Tivoli one time. You?’

  ‘My brother.’

  ‘Got any more?’ she asked. ‘We’re going to need a lot. Might need to be better than that one, though.’

  Lizzie told jokes to the other girls every chance she got. But most of all, she laughed. We all did. Lizzie and I laughed at everything. Miss John and Miss Higgins laughed with us while we were harvesting the carrots. And eventually Elsie and Lila made sure they were with us all day too, working and laughing lots. That’s what we needed, each of us, in the middle of so many things that were sad and hard. Miss Higgins had lost her beloved nephew in the war. Lizzie and I were worried sick about our brothers. Elsie and Lila were homesick and grieving—a few jokes couldn’t fix that, but laughter did make us feel more like friends, almost like family. And maybe that, in time, would help us start to heal a little.

  Then the flower harvest started. It was back-breaking work, and we moaned and groaned, but nobody really complained too much. Everyone just got on with it.

  Before market days, we all bent over the fields for hours, cutting the blooms low to the ground so they had lovely long stems.

  ‘They’re so pretty,’ said Elsie.

  ‘We grew them,’ said Lila. ‘Fancy that.’

  Miss Higgins resisted saying that Lila hadn’t been much use at all in the growing phase, which was kind of her, I thought. Instead, she offered each of them a bouquet.

  I don’t think anybody had ever done that before.

  ‘You can put them in your room,’ said Miss Higgins.

  ‘Really?’ Lila’s smile was as wide as the sky.

  ‘I have entered us in the Agricultural Show next week,’ said Miss Higgins. ‘I quite like our chances in the Mixed Bouquet with Bulbs.’

  October, 1917

  Women’s Farm,

  Mordialloc

  Dear Alex,

  Do you think I could be a newspaper reporter like Louise Mack? If so, this would be my scoop of the week.

  Dramatic Scenes at Agricultural Show Dramatic Scenes at Agricultural Show There was a frenzy in the winners’ circle at last week’s show, when Miss Elsie Lang and Miss Lila Gibb of the Women’s Farm won first and second prize in the Junior Mixed Display section. Never, in the history of prize-giving, have there been two more proud (and loud) recipients of a blue and red ribbon, respectively.

  Do you think I have a future in newspapers? Must do, since Dad reckons they’re full of lies, and just between you and me, those two had a little help from Miss Higgins making their spectacular floral displays. But never mind. Between Miss Higgins and her flowers and Lizzie and her jokes, the Battle of Mordialloc has been won. Elsie and Lila have been well and truly captured and we are now fighting on the same side.

  Just in time too. Ma reckons Mr Hughes wants another referendum on conscription. If that’s the case, this time I’ll help Ma with the campaign against it. I don’t think I quite understood what she and Dad were on about last time.

  But now, with you away, I feel it much more strongly. We all do. Before, especially for Ma, whether or not a man should fight was a matter for his own conscience and faith. It was like a debate about ideas. Now this war has dragged on for years and years and looks like continuing forever more. And we know how it feels to have someone you love in danger on the other side of the world, and we are very sure that no family should be forced by their own government to endure such pain—or worse. I shall climb off my soapbox now. For the moment, anyway.

  It’s a busy time here, with the spring harvests and different flowers coming into bud all the time. Now the days are getting longer, I ride my bicycle down to the beach in the evening, with Lizzie perched on the handlebars, so we can watch the sun go down and paddle our feet in the shallows. Sometimes Miss John takes us all there in the Ford for a picnic tea. We seem to be always tired and always hungry!

  I’ve learned so much about running a farm and building things and growing all sorts of plants. I think it’s quite as fascinating as your planes and engines. It will come as a shock to you, but I have completely given up reading all those novels about Anne of Green Gables. Instead, Miss Higgins has a million books about trees and bulbs and livestock, and lets me read them after supper. But she seems to have memorised every word. She can answer any question I ever ask her. Amazing.

  Then I look at the books and those flowers have completely different names to the ones we use, fancy Latin words you’d never be able to guess unless you were some kind of genius. Or Miss Higgins. She knows every single one. Aren’t people clever?

  Must stop writing now. Elsie wants to tell us one more time about how she won a ribbon at the show.

  Love

  Mags

  I’d never really seen the battlefield from the ground. It was a mess. There was rubbish everywhere, broken wagons by the side of the road, and sometimes dead horses too. We drove through the old lines, where the trenches had been before the last Push. All the way from Ypres to Hooge was a bog of deep mud, churned up by shells, and bits of barbed wire, and signs pointing the way. The troops always came up with cracker names for places, even when there wasn’t much to laugh about. There were signs pointing to Piccadilly Circus and Petticoat Lane, but they didn’t look at all like places you’d want to go to. But chaps liked to keep their spirits up. As Len always said, you had to laugh, because if you didn’t you’d cry.

  This Aisle for Front Seats, said one sign. Fireworks Show Every Night. But some were deadly serious. Do Not Stand About Here was shot through with bullet holes. Walking Wounded This Way led to a first aid station. Other signs bore names that we knew had cost thousands of lives. Menin Road. Polygon Wood. Sanctuary Wood. Suicide Corner. Places fought over, back and forth, and shelled into nothing for years. The whole place smelled of death.

  But today it was alive—trucks and wagons loaded with supplies and ammunition drove in long, slow lines as far as the eye could see. Motor cyclists weaved in and out of the traffic, racing to deliver messages from generals to their units.

  ‘Where are our planes?’ said Charlie, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘They should be up above us, making sure the Germans can’t see all this preparation.’

  ‘Funny to think that they watch us as much as we watch them,’ I said. ‘Scary, really.’

  ‘Annoying, that’s what it is,’ said Charlie. He honked the horn at the truck in front, even though it was stuck behind another truck, which was stuck behind a water cart, which was stuck behind an ambulance.

  At last Charlie turned off the main road and nosed the car in behind a camouflage net strung over the top of the biggest cannon I’d ever seen close up. A soldier waved us further in.

  ‘Drive under the net,’ he said. ‘They have planes, you know, that can spot vehicles from the air.’

  Charlie laughed. ‘We know.’

  ‘You’re those pilot chaps, then?’ As we climbed out of the car, the soldie
r glanced at the wings on our uniforms. ‘What’s it like, eh? Up in the air, away from all this murdering?’

  ‘Still murderous,’ said Charlie.

  The sound of shelling was like thunder here, even without that cannon firing. I didn’t like to think how loud it would be when it went off.

  The soldier motioned us to a hole dug into the earth a few yards away.

  ‘Our fancy headquarters,’ he said. ‘Just like General Haig’s, except with rats.’

  I’d flown over General HQ. It was an old chateau in the countryside, well behind the lines. Somehow I couldn’t imagine General Haig getting his boots dirty sliding around in the mud. We clambered down some slippery steps cut into the ground in what must have been an old trench, and Charlie called out a greeting.

  ‘Hello, hello!’ A captain, about our age, popped his head out through a flap of canvas and waved us inside. ‘We don’t get many visitors here. Happy to see you. Come on in.’

  We shook hands all round and introduced ourselves. Nobody bothered saluting.

  ‘Tea?’ said Captain Owen. ‘Afraid that’s all there is.’

  The dugout was only just big enough for us to stand up. Charlie had to stoop a little so he didn’t bang his head. A few planks on an upturned ammunition case made a desk, with an empty kerosene tin as a chair. It was dark, with the only light a couple of candles hammered into a timber upright.

  Charlie’s nose crinkled. The place smelled of old boots and wet woollen uniforms and putrid water. They must be used to it, I figured, though it seemed impossible that anybody could ever get used to living in a stinky dark hole, with bombs dropping all around. But these chaps had it better than those in the forward trenches.

  ‘You’ve come at a good time,’ said Owen. ‘We’re not firing today. Resting up before the big Push.’

  ‘Glad to see you get days off,’ I said.

  ‘We don’t really,’ Owen said. ‘Tell you the truth, we’re out of ammo. Wagon got bogged just up the road. Everyone else is over there digging it out. Damned tricky.’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘Maybe we could drive up there, give it a tow?’ said Charlie.

  Owen shook his head. ‘You’d only get bogged too, and then we’d have to dig you out as well,’ he said. ‘We’re used to it. Flanders mud. Look at these boots. Ruined.’

  He was the colour of mud. So was everyone we’d seen all day. Mud was everywhere. Even the tea tasted of it.

  ‘But never mind that,’ said Owen, ‘let’s get down to—’

  Thump! The ground trembled all around us. Charlie grabbed at my arm.

  ‘As I was saying, we—’

  Thump!

  ‘Shouldn’t we go to the bomb shelter?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘We don’t have one,’ said Owen. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Of course.’ Charlie’s fingers dug into my wrist. ‘In case the Hun shells the airfield.’

  ‘How interesting,’ said Owen. ‘Well, we don’t bother digging extra holes around here, I’m afraid. We can’t. Any deeper than this and it’s just water. So we’ll just have to make do.’

  Owen’s glance took in Charlie’s pale face, the fingers clutching at me, and eyes darting around the dugout.

  ‘Steady up,’ Owen said, ‘those shells fell at least half a mile away. Nowhere near us.’

  ‘Sounded pretty close to me,’ I said.

  ‘You chaps must have to get used to different things,’ said Owen. ‘You wouldn’t get me up in one of those contraptions of yours, not for love nor money.’

  I threw him a grateful smile. ‘It’s not so bad, when you get used to it.’

  Charlie took a few deep breaths and let go of my arm. ‘Let’s get this over with,’ he said. ‘I don’t like being underground when half the German Army is trying to bury me alive.’

  ‘Sensible fellow,’ said Owen.

  We bent over the trench map—the same one Ferguson had showed us.

  ‘Here’s us,’ said Owen, tapping the map, ‘and over here’s the hill they call Passchendaele.’

  ‘We know it,’ I said.

  ‘Very well?’

  ‘I’ve been as close as I can get without attracting Archie fire.’

  ‘We want you to fly even lower if you can,’ said Owen. He slid his finger along the contour on the map. ‘We think there’s an artillery battery somewhere out the back here. We can’t see it on your photographs, but there are shells falling onto our trenches from that direction.’

  ‘But they could come from anywhere,’ said Charlie.

  Owen shook his head. ‘I’ve figured out the trajectory, and that’s the only thing that makes sense. It must be there, well hidden. Maybe dug in, with some kind of camouflage over the top. And it must be found before our attack starts, or it’ll be a bloodbath.’

  ‘Won’t it be a bloodbath anyway?’ said Charlie.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Owen, ‘but let’s try to stop it being any worse.’

  October, 1917

  7 Squadron,

  Royal Flying Corps

  Proven, Belgium

  Good news, Sis! The Australians are here. New Zealanders too. General Monash and his new ANZAC Corps are going into action right in front of us, and Charlie and I have to help them out.

  It’s wonderful to hear so many voices from home when we go into town. They’re all mucking about, buying souvenirs to send back home, and eating everything in sight. They reckon it’s about time we showed Kaiser Bill we mean business and are busting for a fight. But I worry about them. They don’t know what it’s like out there, with the mud and the … well, everything. Some of them were at Gallipoli, so I suppose they can guess what they’re up against, but the new recruits look so fresh.

  Still, there’s nothing for it but to just get on with it. I only hope that it helps bring an end to this war. So hopefully soon you’ll be reading in the newspaper about our victory at Passchendaele, and you’ll know your brother played a small part in it.

  Think of me tomorrow,

  A

  We were all having afternoon tea with Miss Goldstein, as a special treat, at the Hopetoun Tea Rooms. There were women in aprons who brought your tea and served the cakes and everything. Bertie was on his third scone, but none of the adults had noticed because they were too busy talking about the Prime Minister’s thunderbolt. Another referendum on conscription, in just a few weeks’ time. The country was in an uproar. Again.

  Later that afternoon, the Prime Minister was to hold a debate on the topic at the Town Hall. There were rumours that gangs of men would turn up to disrupt it.

  ‘Must we fight violence with violence?’ Miss Goldstein asked.

  Miss John grimaced.

  ‘I feel as if that path leads us nowhere,’ she said.

  ‘If we do,’ said Ma, ‘how can we also argue that war is wrong? We are no better than the warmongers.’

  Bertie slathered jam and cream onto another scone. I wiped a smear of cream off the end of his nose.

  ‘Some people,’ said Miss Goldstein, dropping her voice to a whisper, ‘suggest that we must take up arms ourselves. Fight.’ I was pretty sure she meant Adela.

  ‘People are angry,’ said Dad, shaking his head sadly. ‘But that’s not the answer.’

  ‘Smashing shop windows, throwing rocks,’ said Ma. ‘Nastiness. Where will it end?’

  ‘Indeed. Is hatred ever justified?’ asked Miss Higgins. ‘Under any conditions?’

  ‘We’re supposed to hate the enemy,’ said Dad, ‘but I just don’t understand the whole idea of it.’

  ‘You’re a good man,’ Ma said, and squeezed his elbow.

  ‘I suppose we’d better get to this meeting,’ said Miss Higgins. ‘Though I do worry it’s going to be a debacle.’

  ‘Do we have to?’ Bertie moaned. ‘I don’t feel very well.’

  ‘How many scones did you have, exactly?’ asked Ma.

  ‘Four. Or maybe five.’

  ‘You’ll recover,’ she said. Everyone stood up, our chairs scraping
on the wooden floor.

  ‘Maggie, wait.’ Miss John took my elbow. ‘We want a word with you.’ She and Miss Higgins stood in the doorway so I couldn’t escape.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing at all, far from it.’

  ‘Phew,’ I said. ‘Because if Elsie’s kicked up again, I’m out of jokes.’

  ‘We greatly appreciate your work on the farm,’ Miss Higgins began.

  ‘But?’

  She cocked her head to one side, like a sparrow watching me. ‘But we think you can do better.’

  My stomach fluttered. ‘Are you giving me the sack?’

  Miss John smiled. ‘No, dear Maggie. But we do want you to go back to finish school next year.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  She glanced behind me. Ma and Dad stood there, smiling even wider.

  ‘Because after that, with your parents’ permission, and of course your agreement, we would like you to go on to further study.’

  ‘More school?’ I asked. ‘You’re kidding!’

  ‘The Horticultural College at Burnley, where I studied,’ said Miss Higgins. ‘You and Lizzie.’

  ‘Both of us?’ I checked each of their faces. It wasn’t a trick. ‘Really?’

  ‘We think you would make very good garden landscapers,’ she said. ‘Or you might farm, if you wished. But landscaping is a growing area, if you’ll pardon the pun, and ideal for young women like you. Either way, a couple of years at Burnley would stand you in very good stead.’

  I moved closer to Dad and whispered in his ear. ‘Can we afford that?’

  ‘Don’t have to,’ he whispered back, then spoke out loud. ‘The ladies have very generously offered both of you a kind of scholarship, so long as you help them at the Women’s Farm on your holidays. Apparently, you are needed there.’

  ‘You are indeed.’ Miss Higgins grinned. ‘Guess what? We’re going to start growing spuds.’

  The public meeting was in the Town Hall, and the Lord Mayor welcomed everyone but especially the Prime Minister, members of Cabinet and distinguished guests.