War Girls

by Adele Geras

  Uncle Gustav bows. ‘Thank you, monsieur. I’ll give your respects to General Foch.’

  Scowling, the official stomps off.

  ‘What was that all about?’ I ask.

  ‘Let’s just say he’s not too fond of letting geese travel for free.’

  There are only soldiers waiting by our next train: grim-faced men with bed-rolls and backpacks and boxes strapped to their belts. Some carry rifles. A few of them are singing. The smoke from their cigarettes mingles with the smog.

  Glancing back, I see the stout official talking to an officer. They look in our direction, and the official points at us.

  ‘Uncle Gustav.’ I tug at his sleeve.

  ‘Uh-oh. What’s up now?’

  The officer is walking towards us, waving his stick.

  ‘Let me handle this, all right, ma petite?’

  I feel a flutter in my stomach. Is something wrong? Will we be allowed on the train? I find myself holding my breath.

  ‘Monsieur,’ the officer calls. ‘You have supplies for General Foch?’

  ‘Yes, monsieur,’ replies Uncle Gustav. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘There is if you expect to find him at Frévent.’

  Uncle Gustav stiffens. ‘But I’ve seen his camp for myself.’

  ‘If you did, monsieur, you should keep it to yourself. Military locations are not a matter for public discussion.’ The officer flicks his eyes at me. ‘That goes for you too, lad. Not a word. Paris is a nest of spies.’

  He turns to Uncle Gustav again. ‘You have a requisition chit?’

  Uncle Gustav hands over our piece of paper. Frowning, the officer reads it.

  ‘And who is Mademoiselle Lacroix?’

  I step forward. He raises an eyebrow but only says, ‘And these geese belong to you?’

  ‘No, monsieur, they belong to my brother, Pascal Lacroix, but he’s at the Front. I was hoping General Foch might know where he is and that perhaps he might let me see him.’

  ‘Why?’

  Blushing, I look down. ‘I … I …’

  ‘Speak up, mademoiselle. What is it?’

  ‘I want to give him a goose for his Christmas dinner.’

  The officer sighs deeply. He looks me up and down, shaking his head, but then his expression softens a little. ‘By rights I shouldn’t tell you this, so don’t go spreading it around. But there’s no point in looking for your brother at Frévent – or any of our lads for that matter. General Foch has been pulled back by the High Command because people are saying it’s his fault we lost so many men at the Somme. Utter nonsense if you ask me, but there you are. People have to blame someone for this abominable War.’

  He turns to Uncle Gustav. ‘Where were you going after Frévent, monsieur?’

  ‘Étaples.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘It is my home town.’

  ‘I see.’

  Suddenly, the train lurches backwards, shunted by a belching locomotive. The platform billows with smoke and grit. I see the railway official vanish in a cloud of soot. The officer folds our piece of paper and gives it back to Uncle Gustav.

  ‘In that case, monsieur,’ he says, ‘I’m sure you know another camp where they’ll be glad of a Christmas goose. I hear the food there’s atrocious.’

  He touches his cap and marches briskly away.

  ‘Come on, ma petite. Hurry up. This is still our train.’

  ‘But where are we going?’ I ask as we load the geese onto the nearest cattle truck and clamber up behind them.

  ‘To sell your geese to the British soldiers at Étaples. Their money is just as good as General Foch’s.’

  ‘I know it is, Uncle Gustav. But we won’t find Pascal there, will we?’

  Sadly, he shakes his head. ‘No, ma petite, we won’t. But we will find a lot of other very brave boys. English, Irish, Scots, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Indians. Half the British Empire is there. All packed in together, the wounded and the sick as well as the fighting men. They say,’ he adds quietly as we shut the geese into pens, ‘that the training inside the camp is so brutal that some of them are glad to get to the Front.’

  Shocked, I stare at the young men who are throwing their kit into our truck and climbing up after it. Are they British, I wonder. I don’t think so. But how could I tell? They just look like soldiers to me.

  Close up, I notice something strange in their eyes. A kind of blindness as if they can’t see the filthy wagon we’re in, only things far away. Is that how Pascal looks? Is that what this War has done to him?

  Sighing, I kneel by the little goose who got herself stuck in the fountain. She’s lying on her side, blinking up at me. I pick her up and feel her flop against my arm.

  ‘I think she’s sick, Uncle Gustav.’

  ‘Ah, well. Keep her apart from the others, then.’

  I lay her in my lap as we wait for the train to leave. More and more soldiers scramble aboard until we’re jammed together like meat on a butcher’s cart.

  When at last we move off, my eyes shut of their own accord. I fall asleep praying that tomorrow we will reach our journey’s end.

  ‘Abbeville! Abbeville! All change at Abbeville!’

  The voice of the station guard seems to come from the depths of a well. Or perhaps it is me who is in a dark hole where the air is so cold that my lungs have turned to ice.

  ‘Ma petite?’ Uncle Gustav shakes my arm.

  I don’t want to wake. I don’t want to remember where we are or where we’re going, or endure the pain of forcing my frozen limbs to work again.

  ‘We have to change trains, ma petite.’

  I open my eyes. The wagon is still, the door open. Outside in the darkness I see lanterns and men and mules. Their breath smokes just like the trains.

  Standing up is slow agony.

  ‘Where’s my little goose?’ I ask.

  Uncle Gustav squeezes my hand. ‘It was for the best, ma petite. She was suffering.’

  Tears spring to my eyes. I try to hide them because I know it’s wrong to cry for a goose when so many men are going to war. But truly I can’t help it. I stroke each bird as I pass them out to Uncle Gustav. Napoleon hisses at me but I risk a quick pat anyway.

  On the platform I count them. Then count again. I can’t bear to ask why there are only twenty-four.

  Around me, the soldiers look sullen or sad, or still afflicted by that strange blankness I saw at the Gare du Nord. Just once I hear a ragged cheer as a train grinds through the station, shaking the platform with the weight of its load. Standing on tiptoe, I see that one of the wagons is a solid black shape: a colossal cannon with a gigantic barrel pointing into the night.

  ‘Look, ma petite. They call those the Devil’s Gun.’

  ‘I see it, Uncle Gustav.’

  But I don’t feel like cheering.

  Our train arrives. Horses are led aboard. We share a wagon with soldiers and chickens, even a pig. We set off slowly, crawling through flat countryside.

  A young soldier slides open the door. I stand next to him, looking out. The air is tainted with soot but I’m used to that now. I watch silver pools slipping by and the wild marsh grasses rippling.

  I have a sudden impulse to set the geese free. If they could fly, I really think I might. The farm feels so far away that saving it seems less important somehow. But I summon up a picture of Mother and Pascal together again, and step back from the door.

  At last we clank into a siding and stop. Everything goes quiet. The vast, icy stillness of the night enters the wagon. The geese lift their heads. Can they sense the water, I wonder, and the wilderness?

  I’m surprised when Uncle Gustav takes my hand and says, ‘Don’t be afraid, ma petite. Sound carries a long way at night.’

  I’m about to ask him what he means when lightning flickers in the east. It flashes distantly again and again. Minutes later I hear the first thud of thunder.

  Except that it isn’t thunder. Or lightning. I can tell from the pain in Uncle Gustav�
�s eyes.

  ‘Is that the Front?’ I whisper.

  He nods. ‘Artillery. You can feel the vibrations when they fire the really big guns.’

  Horrified, I watch and listen. Are those our shells raining down or theirs? Does it matter? The suffering underneath must be just as great.

  Soldiers climb out of their wagons and stand by the tracks. I join them, despite the biting cold which freezes my tears to my face. Quietly, Uncle Gustav lays another limp goose on the ground.

  I don’t know how long we stay there, how many hours the sky glimmers and the dreadful rumbles roll across the land. Outside I’m numb. Inside I burn with pity for Pascal. For the men who stand beside me. For the living and the dead. Even Father. How can the world ever be the same again?

  At last a bugle sounds and the soldiers move as if waking from a trance. Uncle Gustav and I climb aboard too, and the train heaves forward. We enter Étaples at dawn. In silence.

  Scientists now believe that the presence of live geese, ducks and chickens – plus horses and pigs – at the infantry and hospital camp at Étaples created a breeding ground for a deadly avian flu virus which became known as ‘Spanish’ influenza. The first cases were recorded during the bitter winter of 1916–17. At the end of the War, soldiers returning home via the camp spread the disease around the world, causing a global pandemic which killed at least fifty million people.

  Mother and Mrs Everington

  by Melvin Burgess

  Mother and Mrs Everington

  Mother was busy knitting. I think that she must have knitted over a mile of scarves and enough socks to clothe the feet of nations. She had the maid and the cook doing the same and tried to get me at it too, but I told her I’d rather stab my eyes out than sit still knitting all day when our young men were dying for their country.

  ‘What are the troops going to do with all these scarves, Mother, strangle the Bosch to death with them?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s all about morale, Effie,’ she said. ‘It shows the men that the women are behind them.’

  Behind them, indeed! What Mother doesn’t realise is that this War, dreadful though it is, is a wonderful opportunity for us women to show the men what we’re made of. Women of her generation may be used to being things of ornament, panting their lives out in a whalebone cage, but that’s not for me. I want to be an inspiration. And if I can’t be that, I’ll damned well be useful at least!

  Sorry for the language. As you can see, I feel strongly about it.

  So while Mother and her dear fat friend Mrs Everington were producing scarves by the mile, I was learning how to drive. I commandeered my brother Robbie’s little car and drove it round and round the paddock behind the house, churning up the mud and scaring the pony half to death. I got Jimmy, the milkman’s boy, to teach me the basics. He was scared to come with me at first, but within a few hours I could drive better than him. That’s what he said, anyway, although as soon as he was out of the car he claimed it was just an excuse to escape.

  ‘You’re a wet blanket,’ I told him. ‘If you’re scared of me driving you around a field, how are you going to cope in the trenches? Or is that why you haven’t joined up yet?’

  Jimmy said he’d rather face the Bosch than my driving any day. ‘And I’m not eighteen yet, miss,’ he said. ‘It’ll be another year and more before I’m old enough to fight.’

  ‘That didn’t stop my brother, did it?’ I said. Robbie did the bravest thing and lied about his age in order to fight for his country. Mother helped him – it’s amazing what you can get away with if you’re only born a male. She wrote a letter assuring the draft that he was over eighteen, and ready to go. Mrs Everington was furious about it and told her she was putting the men at risk, sending a boy out to do a man’s job, but we all know she was just jealous. Her son Howard joined up at eighteen and she was livid that Mother had stolen a march on her. You should have seen her face when she heard! If she’d had a genie in a lamp, I swear she’d have got him to conjure her up another son, a month or so younger than Robbie, just to win back the edge.

  It’s pathetic, really, but Mother is just as bad. They are at it hammer and tongs, desperate to outdo each other in the War effort. Still, it was a triumph for us, no denying it – and you should have seen the party we put on when Robbie left. Mother made a cake iced in the Union flag and I painted a scene in watercolours of the trenches with our brave boys chasing the Hun across Flanders mud, and nursing their noble wounds back in the trenches.

  I think I shamed Jimmy in the paddock that day, but he would have been horrified if he’d known what I was planning. It’s no use us women crying out for the vote and equality all warm and dry in our cosy sitting rooms while the men are out there sacrificing their very lives for King and country. We have to show them that we are their equals. In fact, we have to do better than them, be braver and more willing to risk everything, even though we’re weaker in body, if we’re to win back those centuries of lost pride. And Mother and Mrs Everington are content to knit while the menfolk give all!

  Not this generation – not this woman! I told Robbie I was going to drive the butcher’s van so as to give a fit young man a chance to go to the Front, but that was never my real idea. I wanted to be where the action was. I had set my heart on being an ambulance driver.

  I was ready to find my way to the Front that very week but I had to put it off because – great news! – Robbie was on his way back to us! He had been wounded – nothing serious, thank God, just a bullet through the leg, but they’d sent him home to the loving arms of his family, to get better the faster so he can return to fight the Hun.

  Of course, we went to town all over again. Mother invited Mrs Everington over to join in the festivities. She came, although she was clearly livid that our family had been the first to shed blood for our country. We were so proud! We got out the bunting and put Union flags out of all the windows, and red, white and blue flowers on every surface. Father took time off from his work in town, which he hardly ever does during these days of National Emergency.

  Father and Mother went to pick Robbie up from the station, but I had something else up my sleeve. I wanted to give him a surprise, you see. I was hidden behind the curtains in the sitting room ready to jump out on him, like we used to only a few years ago – gosh, it feels like an age! – when we were still small. The trick was that even though the other might guess you were hiding, you still had to catch them out and make them jump.

  If I had only known the unknowable – the unthinkable! What can I say? The whole thing went disastrously wrong.

  I waited until they were all gathered in the sitting room. I was certain Robbie must know where I was. It was just a game, that’s all. I waited until he was settled in the armchair by the standard lamp, with everyone around him talking admiringly about how smart he looked in his uniform. Then I leaped out with a terrific yell.

  It was terrible. I never regretted anything so much in my life. Robbie jumped to his feet with a terrible roar.

  ‘Effie, you stupid bloody cow,’ he bawled. His whole face twisted with rage. I swear for a moment he looked like an angry dog. The whole room froze. It was the worst moment of my life.

  ‘Watch your language, sir!’ Father snapped at him. And Robbie – God help us, poor Robbie – he sank to his knees and began to cry like a baby.

  I burst into tears. Mother rushed across to embrace her poor boy. Mrs Everington gave Robbie a look which I can only describe as utter hatred, mingled no doubt with relief that it wasn’t her boy blubbing on the sitting room floor. ‘I said it was a bad idea, sending a boy out there!’ she screeched.

  Father ordered everyone out. I didn’t need telling. I fled upstairs to my room and wept and wept. I had ruined everything. I had turned the family pride into shame!

  One thing was dreadfully clear to me – our Robbie was a broken man. What terrible things had happened to him over there? He was always so strong and brave! Surely, I thought, it must be this dreadful War and the horri
ble machines they use to fight it that has done him in. And if it’s happened to Robbie, it could happen – must happen, has happened – to all the other young men too. Because the thought – the thought that Robbie alone …

  I won’t say it. It can’t be true.

  That night, when all was still, I crept into his room to beg forgiveness. He looked so white and useless lying there, I couldn’t help but think that if it was men like this we depended on, we were going to be hard pressed to win. But I pushed such thoughts out of my mind. I had come to comfort him and not to judge, even though – I must be honest – my belief in him was shaken.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Effie,’ he said; and he blushed – with shame, I’m sure.

  ‘I’m so sorry – I really put my foot in it, didn’t I?’ I said.

  ‘The fault was mine. I just wasn’t expecting … After all that noise at the Front, I was expecting quiet here at home,’ he said; but I couldn’t meet his eye.

  ‘Weren’t you in hospital for a good while?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, but they started shelling positions just front of us and, you know, Effie, how I always hated loud bangs, ever since I was little. Just before I was wounded we had three weeks of it, three weeks of constant shelling – the bloody things whizzing overhead and blowing up all around us and … and …’

  And, bless me, poor Robbie, he started weeping again.

  I stayed with him an hour that night and he told me some terrible things, about how men die, and the stink, and the pain, and so on. But I could not answer – I could not! All it did was confirm my very worst fears. These things are to be expected in war. They didn’t shock me. No, it was Robbie who shocked me. Robbie – my brave, gallant Robbie – was a coward! I would never stop loving him, of course, but I cannot tell you how ashamed I was – for myself, for our family, for our country, but most of all, for him.

  ‘Don’t think badly of me, Effie,’ he begged. ‘Other fellows get their nerves shot to pieces as well. We all need to escape after a time.’

  On and on he rattled, but he must have known what I felt. The truth is, if I was him, I would rather be dead, killed a hundred times over, than to come home turned into this yellow creature, this white-feather crybaby.