White Feathers

by Susan Lanigan

  My dear brother Albert, something has recently happened that preys on my mind and fair disturbs my sleep. As you heard my confession all those years ago, I beseech that you do so now. A confession within a confession, like a Russian doll! It is written in John 8:32 that ‘The truth shall make you free.’ So I hope it shall be in my case.

  I joined this particular battalion on 30 August 1915, in preparation for a great attack that had been planned for September. It was supposed to be a secret, but the dogs in the street knew something was happening. The road to Cambrai was clogged with traffic, cavalry, supply trucks and men marching north to join their comrades. We all met at Saint-Pierre, and the men in the 1st and 2nd were in high spirits. General Haking had told them this would be ‘the greatest battle ever fought’. I confess I did not believe a word of it. I’d heard of Haking, and nothing good either. He’d lost a good chunk of the New Army back at Aubers Ridge in May. Sent the pipers of the Black Watch over the line, piping away – for all the good it would do them – and the Germans had mown them down at close range with machine-gun fire. Poor fools. So I was more than a little doubtful that he would succeed here. But I could not tell anyone what I truly thought of General Haking and his talk. It is the role and duty of a chaplain to put heart into his troops and prepare them to fight a just cause, not to sow dissent and anxiety.

  As often happens – my dear brother, you know this yourself! – many of the men sought me out for confidences, most of them on the same theme. I told them this: that if they must sin they were to go to the official blue and red brothels and to try to abstain from the full act. The officers were not immune either, though few of them came to me at first, not being Roman Catholics. (I could say a great deal about the C. of E. chaplains and how they conspicuously absented themselves in the thick of the action – but I won’t.) I know it is not what we were taught at the seminary, nor in the Catechism, but these poor boys have little enough comfort. It is one thing to formulate doctrine when safe at home with a roaring fire and a glass of port, quite another when one ministers to men who are wet and cold, screaming with trench foot and having to watch rats run over their comrades’ corpses.

  I got on well with many of the lads, but there was one I could never really warm to. Which was strange because he was the most devout of the whole battalion. This private, Joseph Cronin, a native of Tipperary, had a wheedling, irritating manner, as if he always wanted something from you, even when he was merely making a statement. He disapproved of the other men drinking, or consorting with women not their wives. In theory, I should have been on his side. In practice, I found him a colder fish than ever swam in the Atlantic.

  I asked him once if he heard often from his wife, and it was the one time I saw any emotion cross that long, pale face of his. I felt a dram of pity for him: for all that he stayed so tight-lipped, the pain in his face when I asked him that question told me something wasn’t right there. He recovered quickly enough and said, ‘Why do you want to know?’ in that suspicious way he had about him. I didn’t answer.

  We left Saint-Pierre and marched for two days, through barely undulating countryside, the coal stacks puncturing the flatness of the place like odd black pyramids. The rumour that reached my ears was that the attack was due to start soon and that we would be using gas. My heart sank, because before then only the Germans had done this dastardly thing. It is no way to fight a war, this foul yellow curse. To see what it does to a man, blinding him, burning him … I cannot agree with it.

  The morning the battle was due to start, we were still well behind the line. The men were billeted in a hay barn just outside Saint-Omer while I was back in a village house next to the staff sergeant. I am sure they all slept soundly, given the previous day’s marching, but I could not get to sleep myself. I was restless about that battle, I had a bad feeling about it. I paced the room back and forth. I’m sure I drove the lady of the house demented.

  The next morning, I heard nothing from the front; no messengers, runners, telegrams, nothing. I stopped at a village hotel and phoned Division, to be answered by a young officer. They’d only just repaired the communication lines. I asked him how the battle was going, and here you will have to pardon my language, for I must truthfully report what was said. ‘Bloody balls-up’, was his reply to me. ‘Completely, from start to finish.’ Well, Albert, I had a divil of a time teasing out what had gone wrong, but it came down to this: the gas people had made an utter hames of opening the cylinders. They were only able to free up about twenty of them, after running all around the place asking if anyone had a spanner. A spanner. By the time they did manage to let the gas off, half of it drifted back into our lines and turned the men’s buttons green. I won’t say what it did to their lungs and their noses and their eyes.

  And the shells, don’t talk to me about the shells. They were duds from America, and the ones that did explode fell into No Man’s Land and on our advancing troops. Jerry might just as well have been sitting down reading the paper for all the threat we were to him – but he wasn’t, he was ready to fight, and did so ably indeed, training his rifles and machine guns on the Middlesex and the King’s Own and on God knows who else, and by the time he was finished there were scarce few left to keep up the attack. Hence the complete – well, just as my officer friend had described it.

  When I heard all this my heart sank in my boots. For I knew that rather than give up the fight, as a man of sense would do, Haking would send a fresh batch of men in for a repeat performance. That would be us, the 2nd Irish Guards.

  By the time we got to the front, it was raining and had been all day. There is something indescribable about rain in the trenches. It is not normal rain. It is not even like Irish rain, and God knows Irish rain is not normal. This rain soaks through everything. When it falls on my uniform and stains my white collar beyond recognition, it smells of mud and copper and foul death.

  It didn’t take much reconnaissance to see that everything had been destroyed. Communication trenches gone, front lines blown up or full of water. The raised hill we called the Hohenzollern Redoubt stood there, mocking us. We hadn’t moved forward one inch.

  On 27 September, Companies 2 and 3 began the attack, to no surprise whatsoever on the part of the Germans, who responded with a barrage of shells. They’d made short work of Kitchener’s New Army the day before. The lads got to a disused colliery where they were supposed to ‘dig in’. I tell you, Albert, if you’ve ever tried to put a spade in wet chalk to build a position in the pouring rain under enemy fire, I wouldn’t recommend it. I’m fairly sure not a lot of digging got done that day.

  As for me, I went back to oversee the next wave from 1 and 4 Companies – to put the fire into them, though I was feeling little of it myself – and there, sitting in the dugout while everyone else was on the fire-step, was Private Joseph Cronin, as dour as an egg, with his rifle cast down by his side. ‘Cronin,’ I said to him, ‘are you not joining your friends?’ He cast a glance of contempt over the whole platoon and said, ‘Sure I’m not going out in that.’ As if he didn’t fancy a stroll in the rain! I had to reason with him for a good five minutes before I could drive it into his thick skull that taking part in this offensive with his fellow soldiers might be rather important. Finally, with a puss on him like a cat drinking sour milk, he took up his rifle again and joined his company.

  Over they went, except Cronin, who fell back. As the others ran on into the firepower of the Germans, Cronin crumpled in a heap, splashing into the six inches of water at the bottom of the walls of mud, quivering and shaking. ‘For God’s sake!’ I kicked him. ‘D’you want to get yourself court-martialled?’ I heard shouts approaching the position. Ours, retreating. I wasn’t surprised.

  One of them, an officer, jumped, or fell, into our trench. He landed on top of Cronin and swore when he saw the regimental flash on Cronin’s sleeve. ‘Did that man fail to go over?’ I said nothing. He shook me by my lapels. ‘Answer me, man! Did he fail to go over?’ Seeing that I was going to say no
thing, the officer turned to Cronin. ‘That’s it, Private, you’re under arrest.’ To me: ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Cronin.’

  ‘I see. Right, men.’ They frogmarched him off.

  I thought no more about it as I had a lot of work giving last rites hither and yon; for the rest of the day I zigzagged about the trenches with my anointing oil, hoping to God I wouldn’t be hit. The enemy were lobbing Jack Johnsons at us with all their might. The poor lads up in the Chalk Pit I couldn’t reach, not that I could do them much good. I cannot describe the horror of that front line: it was littered with the dead and dying of the previous attacks: the Middlesex, Argylls, Highlanders. All those regiments, the machine guns just tore into them. Men on our wire, men drowning and bleeding in shell holes, and rats running around fat on the still-living men they were eating. It was a holocaust.

  And it rained, and rained, and rained.

  I nearly got knocked sideways by a shell whistling past my ear. It blasted a hole in a section of trench, cut an officer clean in half, his dead eyes still surprised, and threw a shower of mud in my eyes and mouth, leaving me blind and spitting and wiping and mercifully unable to behold the rest of the damage. I found shelter in the hole it had created and collected myself there for a while.

  It was almost dark by the time I got back to our original position. There, flanked by two NCOs, was none other than Joseph Cronin. He had his head down and was rocking back and forth. The NCOs kicked him into standing up straight again. ‘We had nowhere to put him,’ said the officer, who I later learnt was Lieutenant Colonel Fenton, ‘so we brought him back to fight. But he shows no inclination to join his fellow soldiers.’

  ‘Well,’ I wiped my brow with a decidedly soiled handkerchief, ‘there’s precious few left for him to join, to be fair.’

  ‘He’ll be back at battalion headquarters tomorrow when we decide the outcome,’ Fenton said.

  ‘“We”?’ I said, taken aback.

  ‘I’m the Judge Advocate of the Court Martial.’ Fenton’s voice was flat. I, however, was outraged. ‘Hold on a minute,’ I said, shouting in his ear for the drone of shells, ‘you’re telling me that you’ve arrested the fellow, he’s under your command, and you’re now president of the court that’s putting him on trial? Next thing you’ll tell me you’ll be sorting his firing party while you’re at it!’

  The way Fenton’s face sagged, I had the horrible suspicion I was right. He looked at me with a fierceness in him that reeked of despair. ‘For God’s sake, do you think I like this any more than you do? It stinks, from top to bottom.’

  The battle went on for several weeks, but by the end of September, it was a ghost of a fight; the rest of October was nothing but futile skirmishes until the 21st, when we were finally relieved. Two days after that, at general headquarters in Saint-Omer, Cronin’s fate was finally decided. Two guards dragged him out from the little room above the chemist’s where they had been holding him and the battalion was rounded up and put on parade to hear his fate. A cavalryman read out the sentence as dung dropped out of the other end of his horse: Cronin was to be shot to death by firing squad at dawn the next day. The firing party would be chosen from his own company. His own company! Another rule broken, right there.

  Poor Cronin fell to his knees with an almighty wail, a sound that nearly cracked my heart open. The other men looked pretty miserable, even Whelan and McGill, who had complained to me about Cronin’s bible-reading and holy foolery in the past. They came to me afterwards, begging to be let off, as if I could help them. ‘I don’t mind killin’ Fritz,’ McGill said, ‘but this is different. This isn’t soldiering. ’Tis something else altogether.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jimmy,’ I said, ‘it’s not up to me. Lieutenant Colonel Fenton is the man who makes that call.’ I tell you, there were men crying that day: the prospect of killing one of their own filled them with a horror that no words of mine could displace. It made them vomit up the first decent meal they’d had in weeks. Guilt. Nothing gets to you like guilt.

  Soon after I had gone to bed, Fenton’s orderly appeared and told me to come: Cronin wanted me. Of course I was there straightaway. The guilt was getting to me too.

  To my relief, Cronin had calmed down. The room where they were holding him was like an icebox and had no light in it, only one candle on a round table, illuminating that long face of his. I pulled up the one remaining chair and sat opposite him, reaching over and touching his hand. It was already cold, even though he was still living. ‘Joseph,’ I said to him, ‘is there anything you need to tell me before tomorrow?’

  He flinched slightly, but did not break down. ‘Yes, Father. I feel a terrible burden on me.’

  ‘Well, that’s understandable.’

  ‘No, it’s not that.’

  ‘Then … what?’ I took the glass of water intended for him and allowed myself a great big gulp out of it. Churlish, I know; my throat was fierce dry.

  ‘I’m here because of her. My wife, Eva.’ And then he got tearful again, using the back of his hand to wipe his nose. ‘Pardon me, Father.’

  I handed him my deplorably filthy hanky. Not caring for its state, he sniffed and blew, long and wet.

  ‘Your wife,’ I said carefully when he had finished. ‘You never talk about her, Joseph. Bit the head off me when I asked about her.’

  ‘Well, I’m talking about her now, amn’t I?’ His voice was rough. He slammed the handkerchief down on the table, which rocked from the sudden movement. ‘She hated me. I could hardly lay a hand on her without her shuddering. Do you know what she called me, Father? She would wait till I lay down with her, and then she’d whisper in my ear, like melting butter, “D’y’know, Joseph, you’re a repulsive little gombeen man.” In a hoity-toity accent, like a debutante! Is that anything a man’s wife should say to him? ’Twas the only time I ever saw her get pleasure out of me, after she called me them names.’

  ‘Joseph, Joseph,’ I said, ‘don’t be telling me this. Don’t be distressing yourself.’

  ‘Well, if I don’t tell you, who will ever know? It gave her joy to see me suffer,’ he said. ‘Father, she never loved me. Not for one second.’

  I asked him then why he had married her if that was the state of affairs.

  ‘I was mad after her, and her mam wanted it.’ Cronin’s face showed a new, tearless anguish. ‘Her stepmam’s a friend of my family, and I’d come to visit them over in England from time to time. Mrs Downey – that’s the stepmam – wrote to me and told me Eva had changed her mind – nearly a year after last refusing me. I admit I was surprised at the time, as she’d said “no” to me more than once. But Mrs Downey told me that everything had been settled. There was some unpleasantness with a fella – I heard he wouldn’t enlist – but Mrs Downey told me not to worry about that. She and Grace had sorted it all out.’

  ‘And Grace is …?’

  ‘Mrs Downey’s natural daughter. A beautiful wan, but bloodthirsty. Never stopped on about the war the whole time I was there. I swear it turned my stomach to hear her talk. Eva being only a stepdaughter, Mrs Downey never bothered much with her. I used to like to talk to her of an afternoon, or just sit and watch her reading or standing by the window. But I made a mistake marrying her. I was sold a pup, Father.’

  Cronin drained the glass of water. I called the orderly and told him to get more. In the meantime, I looked at Cronin, pity mixed with revisited dislike. It was as plain as the nose on my face that his wife had been in love with this other fellow and had married Cronin under duress. And he was speaking of her as some possession to be traded.

  ‘The day after we got married, there was not a word out of her the whole way to Wales and back home. I left her with my mother, and she never said a word to her either. And in the bedroom – well, I’ve just told you. I couldn’t bear it any more, so I signed up. And all she said was, with a face flat as wood, “Don’t blame me, I never made you.” I left for training the day after that. But then I was home on leave, and the day before I w
ent back to France, I was a man again. I had her – more ’n’ once – and she could do nothing about it!’

  Albert, I hate to speak so of a man facing his death, but there was something in his triumphal wail that brought bile to my throat. For that instant, I was glad he was going to die. For such an inhuman thought, I had to shake myself. ‘Joseph,’ I said briskly, ‘I’m glad you felt you could trust me with these matters. Why don’t I hear your confession?’ (Of course, what was that but a confession – but how can I absolve one who is unrepentant?)

  After he had finished, I stayed on. I had hardly slept the night before, so, in spite of the chill of the autumn night and the uncomfortable chair, I let my head nod onto my chin. A dream came over me, and I imagined I was in a church. The most sublime organ music played from the balcony. The place smelt of incense, sweeter and fresher than even the most potent mixtures I had burned on Sundays before my world shrank to this hellish battlefield. When I looked up, I saw the balcony was empty and I could find no source for the smell. Then the music was drowned out by shouting. Someone was calling my name: Father Knapp, Father Knapp … It was Cronin. He was wide awake. He must have been watching me the whole time I slept. ‘They will be here soon,’ he said.

  And, indeed, a reluctant line of indigo had begun to steal its way across the bottom of the horizon. Dawn, still threatening dark, no sign of the sun. The knock on the door was quick to follow. Fenton’s orderly and two guards were waiting. Cronin took a small bag and handed it to me. ‘This is everything I have,’ he said. ‘My penknife that my father gave me on my Confirmation, my trench torch and a pen from my good friend Fred Regan and the bible from my mother. They should go back to the people who gave them to me.’ His calm manner was more unnerving than the tears and knavery of the night before.