by Hill, David
‘Got hit by a piece of shell two years back,’ one of his escorts muttered as they moved on. ‘Poor lad.’
Then one grey, drizzly afternoon, everything changed. Edmund had come back damp and cold from the morning march. His half-dish of lukewarm soup and piece of tough bread put no warmth into him. Nor did his walking backwards and forwards between the walls.
Boots tramped down the corridor. ‘Stand back from the door!’ The cell door clashed open, and Corporal McKean stood there.
‘I’ve got news for you, Hayes. They’re taking you to France tomorrow. You’ll be dead inside a week.’
My Dear Mother,
I’m allowed to send you a proper letter this time, not just a postcard. However, there are lots of things we’re not supposed to write down. They say German spies are everywhere.
But I can tell you that we’ve been in a training camp in England for the last month. It’s been hard. It’s been boring. But it’s made better soldiers of us. If I was back in Mr Parkinson’s factory now, I could run everywhere!
I can’t wait to be where things are really happening, and give the Hun what he deserves. He’s already been hit hard and he can’t last much longer. I just hope the war isn’t over before I have the chance to do my bit. The other blokes all feel the same way.
The camp here is surrounded by farms. The buildings are so old. One English chap I talked to lives in a house built three hundred years ago. Can you imagine that?
I’ve been to London! We had a forty-eight-hour leave, and so a lot of us caught a train there. You won’t believe how big it is. I saw the Tower of London. I saw fire engines with women crews! We were going to pop in and say hello to the King, but he was busy.
Dear Mother, it may not be easy for me to send a letter when I’m finally in the trenches. But I will keep thinking of you and dear Jessie. I send my love to you both. Is there any news of Edmund?
Your Loving Son
William
William
The words about Edmund were down on the paper almost before he realised. He stared at them, lifted his pen to cross them out, left them as they were.
He looked at what he’d written. He hadn’t mentioned the big old tents that rain leaked through and wind blew through. He’d mentioned the farms, but not the route marches that took the troops past them day after day. A lot of the farm workers were women and girls; many of their men were off fighting. They watched the New Zealanders march past, but seldom smiled or waved.
‘Used to be all cheers and blowing kisses at the start of the war,’ an English NCO told William. ‘Too many deaths since then. And the Army took away half their horses, to pull guns and wagons.’
They took their turn on sentry duty, standing with rifle and bayonet at the front gates to the camp. ‘If ten thousand Germans attack down this road, you shout “Halt!” and we’ll capture them while they’re standing still,’ Sergeant Molloy told William and Herbert.
They did Physical Training, stretching and bending in rows, while an NCO on a wooden platform shouted orders through a megaphone.
They practised scaling walls, lifting a man up as he stood on a rifle held between two of them, then dragging themselves up as he stretched another rifle down to them.
They dug yards of trenches, grumbling all the time, learning how to strengthen the walls with timber, so heavy rain or shell-bursts wouldn’t make them collapse. ‘We won’t just be – gardeners after the war,’ panted Jerry. ‘We’ll be – miners, too.’
Jack patted him on the shoulder. ‘And we can use your hair to light up the tunnels.’
They learned also how a length of trench should be a zigzag shape, not a straight line, to give protection from any shells landing in them, or from any enemy who managed to capture part of the trench.
As the weeks passed, William got to know the other soldiers of 3 Platoon even better. Quick-tempered Jerry, who rushed into everything and who never stopped asking when they’d see some real fighting and give the Hun a shock. Strong, smiling Jack. Herbert, older than the rest of them, quiet and thoughtful.
He got to know the platoon NCO and officer, too. Sergeant Molloy was a blacksmith who had fought in South Africa’s Boer War. Mr Gowing, the lieutenant, had been a doctor before this war and was younger than half the men he commanded.
English officers ran the training camp. Since most of the younger ones were over in France, these were often retired men who had volunteered to help when war broke out. One was so fat that it took two soldiers to lift him up onto his horse. Another instructed them in marching drill while sitting in a wheelchair.
They sat on more hard wooden forms while a major told them that the British Empire, France, the United States, Russia, Belgium, Italy, Japan and Romania were all good because they were on our side, while Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria were all bad because they were the enemy. ‘Hope he didn’t mix any of ’em up,’ whispered a voice, and William didn’t know whether to grin or feel shocked.
A captain told them how Germany and its allies were running out of food and men and weapons, and one good battle would finish them. A colonel told them that the British were pushing forward everywhere in France and Belgium. Their own Mr Gowing, looking nervous, gave them a lecture on machine-guns. When he finished, some of 3 Platoon began to clap, until the NCOs shouted ‘Silence!’
They scrubbed their clothes in cold water with hard yellow soap. They had kit inspections every morning: if a single folded blanket was half an inch crooked, or a single bootlace unwashed, they had to run around the parade ground five times with their rifles held over their heads.
They were weighed and given a medical examination. Their teeth were checked, and Herbert got new false ones. ‘I’m going to get six fillings!’ Jerry said excitedly. ‘For nothing!’ Never before had William met anyone who rushed into the dentist’s chair.
Every day there was rifle practice. ‘Twelve aimed shots in one minute!’ the corporal instructing them yelled. ‘That’s what you have to do. A platoon of thirty rifles should sound like three machine-guns firing!’ Their new targets were shaped like charging soldiers with snarling faces.
They threw more Mills Bombs. They did more bayonet practice. They laid telephone wires along the sides of trenches and in narrow slits across the open ground to help with communications. They built hidden observation posts up trees. ‘Pretend you’re a sparrow,’ Sergeant Molloy told them. Herbert grinned. ‘Never seen a sparrow wearing a helmet, Sarge.’
They learned First Aid: how to bandage wounds; how two of them could make a seat with clasped hands for a wounded man to sit on while they carried him. When William and Herbert tried to carry Jerry that way, their hands slipped apart, and their friend fell in the mud.
Sergeant Molloy shook his head. ‘If I get wounded on the battlefield, please leave me there to die.’ He stared at Jerry, who was brushing mud off the seat of his trousers. ‘And you, you horrible little man, you’ve got a dirty bottom!’
But they didn’t laugh at other First Aid training. Especially the photographs of young men with stumps instead of legs, or a hand with only one finger and a thumb left. ‘They look bad,’ Mr Gowing told his silent platoon, ‘but First Aid saved their lives. So pay attention!’
After three weeks, their training grew more complicated. On a flat field a mile from camp, they practised more attacks, advancing in rushes through gaps in their own barbed wire, then spreading out into lines and striding forward while another imaginary artillery barrage kept moving ahead of them, and real machine-gun bullets whipped overhead.
They marched further from camp, to a dry plain dotted with boulders, and watched as teams of horses and a tractor pulled six big guns into a line. ‘Howitzers,’ a voice said. ‘Medium artillery.’ Then they practised moving forward behind a real barrage, fire and smoke and earth hurtling upwards in a wall of noise just fifty yards in front of them. William realised he was gripping his rifle so hard, his wrists ached. His ears hummed with the explosions. Smoke
stung his eyes.
A flying clod of earth sped past Jerry, and the redheaded soldier flung himself on the ground. ‘Get up!’ yelled Sergeant Molloy. ‘That’s friendly dirt!’
When the guns finally stopped firing, they stared at one another, shocked and excited.
It wasn’t all training. They had rest times, when they lay on their beds and played cards or talked. Herbert hoped to get married when he returned to New Zealand, he told them. His fiancée was a nurse, whom he’d met in the church choir. William didn’t say anything, but he kept thinking of dark-haired Violet.
One afternoon, 3 Platoon played cricket against 1 Platoon, thirty-a-side. There was cheering and laughing. William tried to imagine these same men shooting to kill others. The game made him think of his younger, sport-loving brother. Where was he now? How had they grown so far apart? It was Edmund’s fault.
They were given two days’ leave in London, and William thought Jerry would burst with excitement. A troop train took them through miles of suburbs, until dark tall buildings rose ahead. Huge balloons like giant grey cylinders floated over the city, tied to long wire cables. They were there to stop German bombers, but William knew that the enemy’s great Zeppelin airships had flown above them and attacked factories.
He didn’t know what to think of London. There were more people in one big shop than in his whole town back home. Everyone was in a hurry; hardly anyone smiled. He and Jack, Herbert and Jerry ate in a restaurant and couldn’t believe how expensive things were. ‘Someone’s making money out of this war,’ Jack muttered.
When they came out, a young man in a suit was standing on the footpath nearby, gazing blankly across the road. A woman passing by stopped, then spoke to him. ‘Why haven’t you joined up? Why aren’t you fighting?’
The young man took no notice of her and kept staring into space. The woman got angry. ‘Are you too frightened? Here’s something for you!’ From her handbag, she pulled out something white. William glimpsed a feather. The sign of a coward.
The woman shoved the feather into the young man’s hand, and he jerked as if he’d been hit. At the same moment, an older woman came rushing out of the next-door shop. ‘Leave my son alone! You stupid fool! He was blinded in a German gas attack. Oh, you stupid, ignorant fool!’
The woman with the feather hurried off. The older woman burst into tears. The young man reached out uncertainly until he touched her, then put his arms around her. William and his friends moved silently away.
Not everyone returned to camp after the London leave. Two men from another platoon were missing. One turned up drunk the next day and was put in a cell. There was no sign of the other.
‘Deserted,’ voices said. ‘Run away and trying to hide somewhere. They’ll shoot the fool if he doesn’t give himself up.’
Conscientious objectors were in another camp nearby, other voices claimed. A few men, Jerry included, announced how they’d like to stick a uniform on them and shove a rifle into their cowardly hands. Herbert shook his head. ‘They’ve got their own courage.’ William said nothing. Might Edmund … No, he probably wasn’t even in England. And if he was, William had nothing to say to him.
The next day, on a route march, they passed a field with two rows of old tents and a barbed-wire fence going up all around. There were soldiers with rifles, and fifty or so men in grey uniforms, standing or sitting in small groups.
‘They’re Huns!’ someone said. ‘Prisoners!’ Everyone stared at the strangers, who stared back. Some of them looked frightened. They edged away from the road and the marching troops. There were arms in slings, bandaged heads, men on crutches. A couple of them seemed only seventeen or eighteen. Others were as old as Mr Parkinson from the factory. None of them looked savage; just tired and lost.
Things were changing in the camp. Rumours sped backwards and forwards again. ‘The Hun trenches in France are ten feet deep, with concrete walls and platforms for machine-guns. Nothing can destroy them’ … ‘Both sides are digging enormous tunnels to reach under the other’s trenches’ … ‘Yes, and they’re packing them with explosives to blow the enemy sky-high.’ As usual, nobody knew what to believe.
More frighteningly, they were shown how to put on gas-masks and then had to walk through a long building full of yellow-white smoke. Nobody knew if it was real gas.
‘Don’t run!’ NCOs ordered them as they went in. ‘Learn what it’s like!’
William’s mouth felt dry. Under the sour-smelling mask, his face streamed with sweat. Through the goggles, he glimpsed figures stumbling forward through the smoke. Someone was gasping, almost sobbing.
When he blundered out into the wonderful fresh air and yanked the mask from his face, he heard yelling down at the far end where they’d entered. A soldier he didn’t recognise was wrenching his mask off, shouting ‘No! I won’t! No!’ Two NCOs were pulling him away.
They spent a whole morning cleaning boots, rifles, bayonets, belts, uniforms, even their lemon-squeezer hats. Then they marched past a wooden stand, where a fierce-looking officer with a white moustache and red tabs on his collar stood, saluting stiffly. ‘A general,’ someone said.
‘Hope we don’t have to do many more of these,’ Jerry grumbled when the parade was over. ‘I didn’t join the bloomin’ Army to polish boots.’
They didn’t have to do any more parades. Two days later, they left for France.
PART 5
The Trenches
DEAR Mother and Jessie
I AM well.
I HAVE BEEN in camp.
I WILL WRITE again, as soon as I can.
I WOULD LIKE some warm socks!
YOUR Loving Son,
William
William
There were so many things he wanted to write, but wasn’t allowed to.
LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS!
read a poster urging everyone to be careful what they said. ‘A Silly Letter Does It Better,’ said Jack, but nobody laughed.
I want to say how much I miss you, William told his mother and sister inside his head. How I feel excited but scared at what’s about to happen to me. How I’d love to hear all about home, and Jessie’s shop, and the tennis club, and … and Violet and her other friends – even the ones who giggle all the time. How I want to be with you all, but at the same time I can hardly wait to be in France, whatever happens there.
And I want to ask about Edmund. Was he in that camp near ours? What if we’d met and … But William couldn’t imagine what would have happened.
When he’d enlisted, everything had seemed so simple. They would get to Europe, thrash the Huns, then return as heroes. Everyone except for a few wrong-headed people like Edmund felt the same way. Now, nothing seemed so clear. Maybe it would in the trenches. William hoped so.
It was William’s first time in a really foreign country, where people didn’t speak English.
The moment they filed off the ship that had carried them across the English Channel, French voices were all around them. Wharf workers, horse-and-cart drivers, railwaymen. All of them shouting and waving arms and pouring out torrents of words.
William thought of Jerry carefully learning to say ‘Hello, pretty girl’. He glanced at the group of grimy, moustached, grunting wharf workers lowering a howitzer onto a wagon just along from where 3 Platoon stood waiting, and chuckled to himself.
They’d done a lot of waiting between England and France. Waiting for the train that took them to the ship – an old ferry boat with machine-guns mounted on its deck. Waiting for the other ferries to fill with troops, and then for the fast, grim-looking destroyers to come steaming up and join them. Waiting in the middle of the Channel, with the destroyers circling them. Nobody knew why they’d stopped, but everyone kept staring at the smooth green water, half-expecting to see the bubbling trail of a torpedo, and those who couldn’t swim made sure they stood near the lifeboats.
Finally, there was the waiting to get off the ferries and onto the trains that took them towards the battlefield. There we
re times when life in the Army seemed to be all waiting.
‘I didn’t join the Army just to sit around!’ Jerry complained.
‘Me, neither,’ said Jack. ‘I joined to lie down.’ And he did, on the hard ground.
At a railway siding near the wharf, an engine with a long line of wagons stood snorting steam. ‘Well, men,’ said Mr Gowing. ‘There’s straw on the wagon floors. That’s your seats, I’m afraid.’
A few groans. Then someone asked, ‘Sir? What’s that writing in French on the wagons? With those numbers?’
Their platoon officer gazed at the words. ‘It means “Five Horses or Thirty Men”. Lucky they haven’t mixed you in together.’
Laughter. Then another voice shouted: ‘Look! Up there!’
William and the others stared where the man was pointing. Inland, high in the bright blue sky, half a dozen black specks circled and twisted. Birds chasing one another, thought William. Then he saw one of the specks begin to plunge downwards, dark smoke trailing behind it, and he realised. A German plane? A British or French one? They watched and wondered.
In the wagons, they sat uncomfortably on their packs, or on the damp, smelly straw that covered the metal floor. At last, whistles blew, flags waved, a lot more French was shouted, and with a jolt that threw half of them off their packs the train began to move.
Past other trains and more troops they clanked. Past horses being led up ramps into other wagons, tossing their heads and whinnying. Past a square where women in headscarves and black dresses stood talking.
Then they were in open country. They sat or sprawled, dozed or talked or played cards, stared up for any more planes.
But when Herbert called ‘Look!’ he wasn’t pointing at the sky. On a road nearby, two black horses lay beside a shattered cart. The animals were stiff and bloated. William saw with a shock that the back legs of one were missing. A hole half the size of their railway wagon gaped in the road next to the dead animals. Clay and dirt were scattered all around. Another hole had torn up the edge twenty yards further along. Shells, William realised. He and the rest of 3 Platoon watched silently as their train jolted on.
