by Anne Bennett
It was all so familiar to Finn and yet wasn’t that the very thing that he railed against? Didn’t he feel himself to be stifled in that little cottage? Maybe he did, but, like Christy, he had never been further than Buncrana all the days of his life. As he felt a tug of homesickness wash over him he gave himself a mental shake
Christy was obviously feeling the same way for he gave a sigh and said, ‘I wonder how long it will be until we see those hills again?’
Finn decided being melancholy and missing your homeland before you had even left it, was no way to go on. He clapped Christy heartily on the shoulder.
‘I don’t know the answer to that, but what I do know is that joining the army is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me.’
Christy caught Finn’s mood and he gave a lopsided grin. ‘I can barely wait. People say that it’s all going to be over by Christmas and all I hope is that we finish our training in time to at least take a few pot shots at the Hun before we come home again.’
‘I’d say you’d get your chance all right,’ Tom said as they began to walk towards the town. ‘And maybe before too long you’ll wish you hadn’t. War is no game.’
‘Sure, don’t we know that,’ Finn commented. ‘When we decided to join up, we knew what we were doing.’
Tom said nothing. He knew neither Finn nor Christy was prepared to listen, and maybe that was the right way to feel when such an irrevocable decision had been made. The die was cast now and it was far too late for second thoughts.
Finn and Christy were part of the 109th Brigade, 36th Division, 11th Battalion, and they began their training at Enniskillen. The recruits had all been examined by a doctor, prodded and poked and scrutinised, and both Finn and Christy were pronounced fit for the rigorous training.
They were fitted with army uniform which Finn found scratchy and uncomfortable, but the discomfort of the uniform was nothing compared to the boots. He had been wearing boots most of his life, but the army boots were heavy, stiff and difficult to break in, even though route marches were undertaken on an almost daily basis, often carrying heavy kit.
Finn couldn’t see the point to some of the things that the recruits had to do and he wrote to his family complaining.
There have to be proper hospital corners on the bed sheets each morning, as if anyone cares. And there has to be such a shine on your boots that the sergeant says you will be able to see your face in them. Now what is the use of that? Unless of course we are supposed to dazzle the enemy with our shiny boots and will have no need to fire a shot at all.
And the marching would get you down. We are at it morning, noon and night, and I have blisters on top of blisters. The tramp of boots on the parade ground can be heard constantly because we are not the only company here.
Finn was looking forward to target practice with rifles, which he anticipated being quite good at. Both he and Christy, the sons of farmers, were used to guns.
However, Finn had never fixed a bayonet to a rifle before, nor screamed in a blood-curdling way as he ran and thrust that bayonet into a dummy stuffed with straw. He did this with the same enthusiasm as the rest, though after one such session he told Christy he doubted that he could do that to another human being. ‘In war you likely don’t have time to think of things in such a rational way,’ Christy replied. ‘They’re not going to stand there obligingly, are they? They more than likely will be trying to stick their bayonets in us too.’
‘I suppose,’ Finn said. ‘God, I’d hate to die that way, wouldn’t you?’
‘I’d hate to die any bloody way,’ Christy said. ‘I intend to come back in one piece from this war, don’t you?’
‘You bet,’ Finn said. ‘And at least when we are in the thick of it, they won’t be so pernickety about the shine on our boots.’
‘Yes,’ Christy agreed, ‘and if I looked anything like our red-faced sergeant, and had that pugnacious nose and piggy eyes, I wouldn’t be that keen on seeing myself in anything at all, let alone a pair of boots.’
‘Nor will they care about the way the beds are made,’ Finn said a little bitterly, remembering how the sergeant, angry at the state of his bed one day, had scolded him with his tongue in a manner that resembled Finn’s mother in one of her tantrums. And then he had not only upended his bed, but every other person’s in the hut too and Finn had had to remake them all.
He had been so keen to join up because he was fed up being at the beck and call of his father and brothers and was never able to make his own decisions. In the army he soon found it was ten times worse and a person had practically to ask permission to wipe his nose, and he realised that he had probably jumped from the frying pan into the fire.
It soon became apparent as 1914 gave way to 1915 that this was no short skirmish, and soon, with his training over, Finn would be in the thick of it. The family always looked forward to his letters, which arrived regularly. He wrote just as he spoke so it was like having him in the room for a short time.
In early January he mentioned he had a spot of leave coming up.
I won’t make it home as it’s only for three days so I am spending it with one of my mates. They say we’re for overseas afterwards, but no one really knows. I can’t wait because it is what I joined up for. Bet we’re bound for France. Them French girls better watch out. Ooh la la.
The tone of Finn’s letter amused Tom, Joe and Nuala, but it annoyed Thomas John, who said the boy wasn’t taking the war seriously enough.
‘God, Daddy, won’t he have to get a grip on himself soon enough?’ Tom said.
Biddy pursed her lips. ‘War or no war,’ she said, ‘Finn has been brought up to be a respectable and decent Catholic boy, and I can’t believe he talks of women the way he does. Of course you get all types in these barracks. I just hope he doesn’t forget himself and the standards he was brought up with.’
Joe sighed. ‘Do you know what I wish? Just that Finn keeps his bloody head down. That’s all I want for him.’
‘Don’t speak in that disrespectable way to your mother,’ Thomas John admonished.
‘I’m sorry,’ Joe said, ‘but really, isn’t Finn’s survival the most important thing?’
‘Anyway,’ Tom put in, ‘it’s likely this is the way he copes. He’s probably a bit scared, or at least apprehensive.’
‘Doesn’t say so,’ Thomas John said, scrutinising the letter again. ‘According to this he can’t wait.’
‘Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? Joe said. ‘That’s how he was: always claiming he wasn’t scared, even when we could see his teeth chattering.’
‘None of this matters anyway, does it?’ Nuala said, her voice husky from the tears she was holding back. ‘All this about how he feels and the words he writes in a letter. I agree with Joe. All I care about is that Finn will come home safe when all this is over.’
‘That’s all any of us care about, cutie dear,’ Thomas John said gently. ‘We just have different ways of expressing things. Didn’t know myself how much I would miss the boy until he wasn’t here. He would irritate the life out of me at times and yet I would give my eyeteeth now for him to swing into the yard this minute, back where he belongs.’
By the end of April, Finn and Christy’s training was complete, and they were ready and anxious to take on the Hun. In Belfast on 8 May they were all paraded in front of City Hall before the Lord Mayor and were warmed by the cheers from the watching people.
How proud Finn felt that morning as he donned the uniform he now felt he had a right to wear. He had got used to the scratchiness of it and thought, as he looked in the mirror, that he had seldom been so smart. His dark amber eyes were sparkling; in fact his whole face was one big beam of happiness, though his full lips had a tendency to turn up at the corners as if he were constantly amused. He had polished his buttons and belt, as well as his sparkling boots, and his peaked cap sat well on his head as his dark brown hair had been shorn by the army barber.
The whole battalion moved together as one, t
heir boots ringing out on the cobbled streets and their arms swinging in unison. Finn could seldom remember feeling so happy.
‘This must be it now,’ he said that night to Christy. ‘Surely we will soon be on our way to France.’
However, it was July before the troops were on the move again, and though they crossed the water, once on dry land they found themselves in England, not France, just outside a seaside town called Folkestone.
The camp was called Shorncliffe, and situated on a hill, from where, on a clear day, the outline of France could be seen. One of the men lent Finn his field glasses, and Finn was startled to find he could actually pick out the French coastal towns and villages.
‘Brings it home to you just how close it is,’ he remarked to Christy. ‘Here, see for yourself.’
‘Course it’s close,’ Christy answered, taking the glasses from him. ‘We wouldn’t hear the guns if it wasn’t close.’ And Christy was right because the distant booms could be heard quite distinctly. ‘They are making sure that they won’t reach here, anyway,’ he went on. ‘Look at all the destroyers out at sea. Searching for torpedoes, they are.’
‘Aye,’ said Finn. ‘And those new flying machines are doing that too.’
‘I’d like to have a go in one of those, wouldn’t you?’ Christy asked.
‘Part of me would,’ Finn admitted. ‘It looks exciting all right, but I think that I would be too nervous. I would rather ride in an airship. They look safer somehow.’
Christy stared at him. ‘You’re a soldier and we are at war, man,’ he said, ‘in case you have forgotten or anything. You shouldn’t be bothered that much about safety.’
‘War doesn’t mean we can throw all caution to the wind,’ Finn retorted. ‘We’re here to fight the Hun, not throw our lives away.’
‘And I think fighting the Hun will be no picnic,’ Christy said. ‘Look at those poor sods being unloaded from the hospital ships in the harbour.’
Finn took a turn with the glasses and he too saw the injured soldiers and felt his stomach turn over with sympathy for them.
At last, in October, the orders to move out came. Finn was glad to go. Camp life had been boring, the only distraction the favours of the camp followers. Initially Finn and Christy had been staggered by how far the girls were prepared to go. At the socials in Buncrana, even if the girls been semi willing to do more than hold hands, they were overseen by anxious mothers, often belligerent older brothers, and of course the parish priest, who endeavoured to do all in his power to keep marauding young men and innocent young girls as far from each other as possible. That girls might be even keener to go all the way than they themselves were had been a real eye-opener to Finn and Christy. These girls often took the lead, and that again was strange, but Finn was more than grateful that they knew what to do, at least in the beginning. However, he soon got the idea and readily availed himself of what was on offer, like most of the other men.
Finn was glad to be on the move. Bedding girls, pleasant though it was, was not really what he had joined the army for. Whatever awaited them in France, he told himself as he marched alongside Christy that autumn morning, so early that it was barely light and icy damp air caught in the back of his throat, he was well enough trained to deal with it.
Despite the inclement weather and the early hour the people of Folkstone lined the way, cheering and waving, wishing all the soldiers well.
The autumn winds had set in by the time they reached the harbour. The relentless waves crashing against the sides of the troopships made them list drunkenly from side to side as the soldiers climbed aboard.
As they pulled out into the open sea, Finn looked back. ‘Look at those white cliffs,’ he said to Christy. It was a sight that neither of them had seen before.
‘That’s Dover, that is,’ one of the British Tommies remarked. ‘By God, won’t them cliffs be a great sight to feast your eyes on when we have the Krauts beat and we are on our way back home again?’
Christy agreed. Finn didn’t say anything at all because he was too busy vomiting over the side. Nor was he alone. He could only be thankful that the crossing was a short one.
TWO
Once across the Channel, Finn soon perked up. He was surprised by the landscape, which, even in the murky gloom, he could see that the fields were as green as Ireland. The region itself, however, was as unlike craggy, mountainous Donegal as it was possible to be, for the whole area was so flat that he could see for miles. Now he understood the reason for fighting in trenches.
‘At least we are in France at last,’ he said to Christy, ‘though my family probably think I have been here this long while.’
‘Why should they?’
‘Well, I thought when we were paraded in front of City Hall that time that it was embarkation for us and so did they. I could tell by the tone of the letters they wrote, urging me to keep safe, keep my head down and stuff like that.’
‘Didn’t you put them right?’
‘I tried to, but the censor cut out any reference to my location, which means most of the letter was unreadable. Point is, to tell you the truth, I feel a bit of a fraud.’
‘Why on earth should you?’
‘Well, we joined up not long after this little lot started,’ Finn said, ‘and yet, for all our training, we haven’t seen hide nor hair of the enemy. Yet look at the injured we saw getting unloaded at Folkestone.’
‘I heard they’re saving us for the Big Push.’
‘What Big Push?’ Finn cried. ‘And how do you know that when they tell us nothing?’
‘One of the chaps at Shorncliffe overheard a couple of the officers talking.’
‘And where is this Big Push to be?’
‘He didn’t catch that.’
‘Well, I hope it comes soon,’ Finn said, ‘otherwise I will feel that I have joined up for nothing.’
‘You told Tom that was the most exciting thing that had ever happened you,’ Christy reminded him.
‘It was,’ Finn said, ‘but it all falls flat when nothing happens.’
‘Well, something is happening now,’ Christy said consolingly. ‘Let’s see where we end up tonight.’
The family, back in Buncrana, did think Finn had been involved in the battles in France for some time and hadn’t been able to make head nor tail of the letter he had sent telling them where he really was. In the newspaper they read with horror of the machine guns that could rip a platoon of soldiers to bits in seconds and the new naval weapon—the submarine that floated below the water.
They’d been horrified by the bombs that had landed on innocent people in the coastal towns of England in December 1914. And that wasn’t all, for in May of 1915 they read about air raids on London from something called a Zeppelin.
Unfamiliar words and places became part of the Sullivan language as 1915 unfolded, words like Gallipoli and Ypres and the Dardanelles, and the battles in these places and the terrible casualty figures. One hundred and twenty-five thousand Irish had volunteered for war, and by the summer of 1915 some of those whose bodies had not been left behind in a foreign field began to arrive back on Irish soil. People were shocked to see many of the young, fit men who had marched off return with missing limbs, blinded, shell-shocked or wheezing like old men, their lungs eaten away with mustard gas.
Each day, Thomas John woke with a heavy weight in his heart, waiting anxiously for the letters that told them that Finn was still alive.
Finn’s letters to Tom and Joe were in a different vein altogether. Remembering his time in Folkstone he described the camp followers offering a man everything for a packet of cigarettes, and he couldn’t help boasting about it all to his brothers, who had thought him a young boy the day he had left home. This would show them he had become a man. Finn knew they would think he was talking of French girls but he couldn’t help that. He couldn’t mention where they had been for the censor would cut it out and so he just wrote,
You scoffed at me, Tom, but you wouldn’t scoff now, for the
se girls that hang around the camp are wild for it, if you get my meaning. God, I didn’t know what I was missing when I was in dear old Ireland and the Catholic Church had me seeing sin in even thinking about a girl. I wonder what they would do to me now, when it doesn’t stop at thought. If I was ever daft enough to confess it, I would spend the rest of my life in prayer, I think.
Tom folded up the letter with a smile. Finn was sowing his wild oats right and proper, a thing not even Joe had ever had the opportunity to do. He was glad, though, that his young brother had something else to focus his mind on sometimes, ‘distractions for the fighting man’, he had described it before he left, and God knew distraction of any sort had to be welcomed because the death toll continued to rise. It was estimated that as many as 250,000 men had died by the summer of that year. In Ireland there were many Masses said for those serving overseas, or for the repose of the souls of those who hadn’t returned, and Tom’s constant worry about Finn was like a nagging tooth.
The soldiers camped that first night at a place called Boulogne-sur-Mer, not far from the coast. However, the following morning Finn and Christy were part of a sizeable section that was detached from the original company and marched off without any indication of where they were heading or why.
Once they had set up camp beside a wide and very picturesque canal, overhung with weeping willow trees, and had a meal of sorts brought to them, which mainly consisted of bully beef and potatoes, they were free until reveille the next morning.
‘Fancy going into the town and having a look about the place?’ Christy asked Finn.
‘Hardly much point is there?’ Finn replied. ‘We might be better hitting the sack. We’ll probably be off tomorrow before it’s properly light.’
‘No, I think we’re set here for a while,’ Christy said.
‘How the hell d’you know that?’
‘Well, I was talking to one of the other men here and he told me that he had volunteered to be a machine gunner,’ Christy said. ‘Apparently this town, St-Omer, runs a school here to teach them, and I don’t suppose you learn to be one of them in five minutes.’
