The Lost Soldier

by Costeloe Diney

  “You can, of course,” Adam agreed, “but they’re not here in the parish any more, at least not the old ones, before 1945. They are in the record office in Belcaster. You’d have to go there to see those. I’m comparatively new to the parish, so I’m afraid I don’t know the history of many of the families in the village.”

  “How do you feel about the proposed development?” Rachel asked.

  “Probably as most people do, if they’re honest. They don’t like it, but recognise that without it the village will continue to dwindle away.”

  “And the Ashgrove?”

  “If there is some way it can be preserved, then it should be. It was designed as a living memorial to those men, but it hasn’t been maintained as such. The families concerned haven’t made sure it is recognised as a memorial, and many people in the village had no idea of the significance of those trees. I wouldn’t have known myself if it hadn’t been for the history of the parish written by one of my predecessors.”

  “Is that the booklet in the church?” Rachel thinking that the Ashgrove had had only a passing reference in that.

  “No, another little history which was left here in the vicarage. Written by a man called Smalley soon after the first war.”

  Rachel felt a surge of excitement. Henry Smalley was the rector who had dedicated the trees. “I suppose I couldn’t see it, could I?” she asked casually. “It sounds most interesting.”

  The rector reached on to a shelf behind him and took down a slim volume bound in linen covers. “Here it is,” he said, and passed it across to her. Rachel took it and opened it at the first page. On the flyleaf, written in faded brown ink, was a name she didn’t recognise. Underneath was the title A History of the Parish of Charlton Ambrose by Henry Smalley. Flicking through it quickly Rachel could see that for anyone interested in the parish it would make fascinating reading.

  “I suppose I couldn’t borrow this, could I?” she asked.

  Adam Skinner looked a little doubtful and said, “I’ve only this copy. I’ve never seen another and I wouldn’t want to lose it.” Then he smiled at her, shaking his head at his own reluctance. “Of course you can borrow it. I know you’ll take care of it, and it isn’t as if I don’t know where it is.”

  “Don’t worry,” Rachel beamed at him, “I quite understand. Are you really sure? I promise I’ll look after it and return it to you in the next few days.”

  “Yes, that’s fine,” Adam Skinner agreed.

  “Thank you,” she said softly, stowing the little book in her bag. “I’m sure it will be most helpful.”

  The rector got to his feet to show her out. “Do come back and tell me how you are getting on,” he said. “If there is some way we can preserve the memorial without losing the houses, that would be perfect.”

  The December evening had closed in and it was almost dark as Rachel made her way back to her car. She tossed her bag on to the passenger seat and climbed in behind the wheel. Suddenly she’d had enough for one day and she longed to be back at home and soaking in a hot bath, after which she planned to spend the evening curled up in her big armchair reading The History of Charlton Ambrose, by Henry Smalley.

  Later, as she did just that, she found herself immersed in the history of the little village. She read the whole book. It wasn’t very long, but the part that fascinated her most were the years immediately after the first war when Henry lived and worked in the village himself. He told of the struggle to readjust after the war, of the flu epidemic, of how much the men who had not returned were really missed, of the planting and dedication of the eight trees, and then mentioned the unexpected arrival of the ninth.

  “There was great uproar in the village when the extra tree was noticed. Many people wanted the tree uprooted, but stuck into the ground beneath it was a small frame containing a card on which were printed the words ‘To the unknown soldier’. The Rector was much moved by this small memorial and discussed it at length with the squire. He was finally able to convince the squire that the tree did not detract from the memorial, but rather enhanced it with the addition of yet another man who had made the ultimate sacrifice. The squire allowed him to perform an additional service to dedicate the last tree. Thus the Ashgrove Memorial has since had nine trees. It is unfortunate that the carved stones that Sir George intended to have placed under each tree had not been commissioned when he died and his heirs did nothing about them. The small metal plaques originally naming each man disappeared over the years, and most of the trees are now unmarked, including the ninth tree, the man unidentified to this day. It is fortunate that the eight men are also remembered in the church on a separate memorial, so that it shall not be forgotten that they laid down their lives for their country and for their fellow men.”

  At last as she lay in the quiet darkness of her room, Rachel’s thoughts drifted to Nick Potter and his invitation for this evening. In the circumstances it was a good thing she had refused, but she hadn’t known that at the time. Why had she refused it, she wondered? She hadn’t been out on the town for ages and it might have been fun. She had no regular boyfriend—several embryo relationships had bitten the dust when Rachel had put either her work or her independent lifestyle ahead of the man concerned. As a result she was sometimes lonely and missed having someone special to do things with; perhaps, if Nick did ask her again, she would go. After all, he was an attractive man and, more important to Rachel, he was interesting to talk to. But it would be strictly no strings. Rachel valued her independence too much.

  1915

  Belcaster Chronicle

  Friday, 19th March 1915

  OUR BRAVE LADS!

  Nurses from the cottage hospital were among the families and friends who crowded Belcaster Station last Wednesday to wave farewell to our brave lads. Any tears shed by those left behind were tears of pride as our boys set off to France at last, to do battle with the Hun. The 1st Belshire Light Infantry are newly trained and ready for action and they will soon be joining their comrades at the front holding the lines against the German aggressor. A group of pals from Charlton Ambrose, (pictured below) with their officer Lieutenant Frederick Hurst, were in high spirits as they set off with their mates to fight for king and country. Look out Kaiser Bill! Our lads are on their way and there are plenty more where they come from!

  5

  The post lay on the brass plate in the front hall when Sarah came down for breakfast, and, seeing the letter with the French stamp addressed to her in a familiar, sloping hand, she caught it up and ran back upstairs to the privacy of her own room. Sitting on the window seat, she held the letter unopened in her hand for a moment, almost afraid to open it. She looked out over the dear, familiar garden, bright with the autumn morning. Sunlit struck fire from the beech trees that lined the outer edge of the paddock, and chrysanthemums in the bed against the southern wall of the vegetable garden glowed golden, orange and rust against the mellow stonework. As always, she thought of Freddie and wondered if he would ever see the garden again.

  “None of that, Sarah,” she admonished herself, and drawing a deep breath, she slit the envelope and drew out the letter.

  My dear Sarah,

  Thank you for your letter. It was lovely to hear from you after so long. I am glad your father remains in good health and that so far Freddie is safe.

  You ask if you may come and work with us here, but though you tell me you have done your Red Cross nurse’s training and have been helping at your local hospital I am not sure it equips you to work in our hospital here in France. I am sure you have had some useful experience there, but here would be quite different. We have been flooded with wounded from the front and working with such badly injured men is most distressing and stressful. It would probably be better if you joined up as a VAD and came over here after some experience with the wounded in a hospital in England.

  However, as you asked me, I have spoken to Reverend Mother and she says if you are determined to come and nurse in France she will have you in our hospital here
as we could do with all the help we can get. Obviously you would live in the convent with us, and be bound by the convent discipline that governs all our lay helpers, but this offer is entirely conditional on written consent from your father. If he forbids you to come there is no place for you here.

  My dear child, I would love to see you after all these years, but am anxious about you leaving home at your age to come into such a dreadful business. The work here is never-ending and extremely hard. The sights we see are indescribable, the pain and the despair harrowing, but if you have the heart for it, your hands will be most welcome.

  I wait to hear from you again, and in the meantime send my love,

  Aunt Anne

  Sarah read the letter through several times, her heart beat quickening.

  I can go! she thought. I can go to France! All I have to do, she continued more ruefully, is to convince Father.

  She thought of the letters they had received from Freddie, telling of the hideous casualties his regiment was suffering and how, despite all the work of the doctors and nurses in the army hospitals and casualty stations, there was never enough medical care.

  “The dressing stations and casualty clearing stations can’t cope with the number of wounded,” he had written, “and the base hospitals are swamped. Everyone does his best, but men are dying from relatively small wounds simply because they aren’t being treated in time and their wounds become infected.”

  Immediately she had read this letter, Sarah had written to Aunt Anne, her mother’s sister, who was a nun in a nursing order in France asking if they would let her come to them and help nurse the wounded.

  Sarah’s mother, Caroline was Roman Catholic, and it had been considered most unusual for someone like her father to have married into a Catholic family. Certainly his mother had never approved, especially as he had had to agree that the children should be brought up as Catholics, but the marriage had been very happy, and when Caroline had died having her third child, and the child with her, George had stuck by his promise and continued to have Freddie and Sarah taught the Catholic faith. He, however, remained the patron of St Peter’s Church in village, and the children often accompanied him to the Manor pew where they seemed as comfortable as in Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Belcaster.

  Aunt Anne had shocked even her own family years ago by joining a nursing order in France and becoming a nun. She had kept in touch with her sister’s children by letter since Caroline had died, and it was to her Sarah had turned when she had been told by the authorities that she was too young to go and nurse the wounded in France.

  “It’s not fair!” she railed at her father when she had been turned down. “Freddie’s out there fighting for his country, and so are thousands of men, much younger than I am, but they won’t let me go to do my bit.”

  “You’re doing good work here,” soothed Sir George. “Look at the hours you put in at the cottage hospital.”

  “But it’s not a hospital for the wounded!” cried Sarah in frustration. “I want to help nurse them.”

  “You are in a way,” her father pointed out. “By giving your time here, you’re releasing fully trained nurses to go to France, or to help in the big London hospitals.”

  But Sarah continued to brood, and one hot afternoon she let her frustration flow over again as she and Molly, the housemaid, were turning out the linen cupboard to find extra sheets for use in the cottage hospital.

  “But don’t your auntie nurse in France?” asked Molly as she folded the sheets they had found. “Can’t you go to her hospital?”

  Sarah stared at her. “I… well, I don’t know,” she said uncertainly. She got to her feet and, pushing a pile of towels towards the maid, said, “Fold these too, please Molly, and then pack them into that trunk on the landing. I’ll get Peters to take them down to the hospital later.”

  Molly’s idea took hold, and Sarah thought of it day and night for a week. Why not, she asked herself? Why not ask Aunt Anne? They must need help over there. The convent hospital had started as a couple of large rooms in one wing of the convent building, well away from those nuns who led a more contemplative life, but it had grown gradually over the years, and now, like all the hospitals in the northern parts of France, it was struggling to help with the ever-increasing convoys of wounded that straggled back from the front.

  Without telling her father, Sarah had written to her aunt asking to be allowed to come and help with the nursing. Now, with Aunt Anne’s answer in her hand, she not only had to break it to her father that she wanted to go, but had to persuade him to give his permission in writing.

  She stared out over the garden again. It looked so peaceful in the morning sunshine, it was hard to imagine the desolation of the battlefields just across the channel. Freddie had been home on leave some weeks earlier, and it had been several days before he had spoken to them of his life in the trenches; before he had opened up enough to give them just a glimpse of the misery he, and thousands of others like him, were sharing in the front line.

  On two successive nights he had woken up shouting, and Sarah had rushed into his room to find him sitting up in bed, a cold sweat breaking on his forehead as he forced himself awake to escape from the nightmare. Gradually he told Sarah a little of what it was like, keeping most of the horrors from his father, who, though guessing much, asked nothing. Sir George was the sort of man who coped with his son being at the front and in constant danger by refusing to let his imagination run free. Freddie was there to serve king and country, and it was his duty, but his father didn’t want or need to know the details of that service.

  When Freddie returned to the front at the end of his leave, they had not accompanied him to the station as they had when he and his battalion had first left for France. The razzmatazz of that day was long gone and the cold reality of what he was going back to invaded their hearts with icy fingers. Freddie had taken his leave of them at home in the library, with the evening sun streaming in through its long windows.

  “Easier not at the station,” he had said. Sir George had, in a rare demonstration of affection, gripped his son in a bear-like hug, and then turned away to stare into the garden as Sarah hugged Freddie tightly in her own farewell. He was still alive, thank God, and kept in constant touch by letter, but they had not seen him since.

  Sarah looked down at her aunt’s letter again. There was little in it to recommend the idea to her father, except the fact that it was clear that any help would be welcomed, was indeed desperately needed. That was the way she must try and persuade her father; she must convince him somehow that she was needed.

  There was a light tap on the door and Molly came in.

  “Excuse me, Miss Sarah, but Squire says are you coming to breakfast today?”

  Sarah jumped to her feet saying, “Yes, yes of course.” She slipped the letter into the pocket of her skirt, and followed Molly downstairs to the dining room.

  Sir George looked up from The Times when she came in and said rather irritably, “You’re very late this morning, Sarah.” He looked across at Molly who hovered by the door. “Off you go, Molly. Miss Sarah will serve herself.”

  “Sorry, Father.” Sarah slid into her seat and reaching for the coffee pot, topped up his cup before filling her own.

  “So, why are you so late?” he asked, putting down the paper and regarding her over his reading glasses.

  Sarah felt the letter, stiff in her pocket, and deciding he had given her the opening she needed, plunged in.

  “I had a letter this morning,” she said, taking a sip of her coffee and looking at her father across the rim of the cup.

  “Did you? Who from?”

  “Aunt Anne.”

  “How is she?” Sir George enquired, about to retire behind the paper once more.

  “Exhausted. The convent have opened their hospital to the allied wounded and they are completely swamped.” She had his interest now and she drew a deep breath and went on, “She says Reverend Mother says I can go out and help with the n
ursing. I can stay at the convent, so I’d be quite safe, and…”

  “No, Sarah, I’m sorry. You can’t possibly go. You’re needed here.”

  “No, father, I’m not. The cottage hospital can manage perfectly well without me…”

  “But I cannot,” interrupted her father. “I need you here, to run this house. It’s your duty to look after your family at home.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if I were a boy,” said Sarah, trying to sound reasonable. She knew that it would be disastrous for her to lose her temper. Once her father had taken a decision he seldom changed it; she needed time to work on him, to persuade him that going to nurse in France was the right thing for her to do.

  “No, I wouldn’t,” he agreed. “But you’re not, and the duties of men and women are different. Yours, as my daughter, is to remain at home and keep that home running smoothly for your brother to return to.”

  But supposing he doesn’t come home, she wanted to cry out. Supposing he gets wounded and doesn’t make it home because there aren’t enough people to tend the wounded? But she fought down that cry, knowing it was far too dramatic for her father and would simply anger him. Very calmly she said, “Our home would run very smoothly without me, Father. Mrs Norton is an excellent housekeeper, and already it is she who sees to everything. She only consults me as a matter of form, you know.” This was not quite true, and Sarah knew it. Mrs Norton could certainly run the house without aid from Sarah, but the housekeeper considered it a matter of great importance that Miss Sarah should be consulted in all things.

  Miss Sarah would have her own house to run some day soon, Mrs Norton reasoned. She had no mother to teach her how and it was important she should know what went on below so that she could keep a firm hand on the helm, and take no nonsense from lazy servants.