by Max Hennessy
It was as the Field Marshal, no longer willing to go to London or be part of the war in any way, gloomily considered the future, that a letter arrived from Helen in Berlin.
It came via Holland as usual but, with the blockade round Germany growing tighter, the letters were fewer these days and there were inexplicable delays as if the Dutch, with no wish to be embroiled, were behaving with extreme caution. The letter had been forwarded to Switzerland and finally to France. The date was December and to their surprise it was not addressed to both parents as Helen’s letters usually were, but to the Field Marshal alone, and it bore his full rank and every one of his decorations, so that it had a derisory, sarcastic look about it. The old man opened it warily, conscious that it contained a shock.
Karl-August had been killed commanding a Bavarian brigade on the Somme and Helen’s resentment, already showing against her own country since the previous year, had suddenly become deep-seated and passionate.
‘Why did you kill him?’ she wrote. ‘How could you kill your own son-in-law?’ With the letter addressed only to him, the accusation was thrust directly at the old man. He was a British soldier and, in his daughter’s wretchedness, was therefore alone responsible for the death of her husband.
He read the letter slowly, watched by his wife. There was no sign of forgiveness in it, no sign of understanding. Helen’s grief had embittered her and there was only accusation and anger.
‘I no longer wish to call England my country,’ she announced. ‘Until now, I could never forget where I came from, despite the blows that have been delivered against my adopted country. I even tried to forgive the blockade that is forcing German people to go hungry and has caused my children to do without many of the things they need. Now all I can be aware of is that England has killed my husband and left his children fatherless. I wish to have nothing more to do with you.’
The old man read the letter in silence then, without a word, he passed it to his wife. His eyes bleak, he saw the tears come into her eyes and roll down her cheeks.
‘Oh, Coll–!’ She tried to speak, but was unable to and she broke off and hurried from the room, her hand to her eyes.
The old man sat in silence as the door slammed behind her, his eyes on the folded sheet of paper on the floor. His thoughts were confused and he was totally unable to put them in order. He had no idea even where to start. He had long been aware that the war had become a watershed in the lives of everyone. The Empire would never be the same again. It would end up impoverished, its classes – those societies on which it had been so securely built – destroyed. No one would ever trust anyone again. The old honest calm life would have vanished and in its place would come a new raucous existence that might satisfy the young but could never satisfy people brought up in a more gracious age.
He tried to think of his daughter and her family, but it was so long since he’d seen them he couldn’t even remember properly what they looked like and he rose hurriedly and fumbled clumsily in a drawer until he found a photograph. As he stood staring at it, his heart thumping wildly, oppressed by the weight of misery, the door burst open and Josh appeared at a rush. Seeing the old man, he stopped dead.
‘Grandpa, what’s the matter?’
The old man thrust the photograph away and sat down hurriedly. ‘Your Uncle Karl’s been killed.’
The boy started to say something, then sensing that his grandfather was racked with unhappiness, he changed his mind and, instead, crossed to the old man to do the only thing he could think of. As he patted the old veined hand, for a moment the old man seemed unaware of it, then he grasped the boy’s fingers and clutched them tightly.
‘There must be no more war, boy,’ he said fiercely. ‘There cannot be any more war. Let us finish this one as soon as possible and then forswear it for ever.’ He suddenly became aware that the boy held the daily paper. It had to come from York and arrived in Braxby on the nine o’clock train so that it never appeared at the house until mid-morning.
‘What is it, boy?’ He made an effort to thrust aside his wretchedness. This child was the future and must be treated as if he were. ‘What have you there?’
The boy smiled, a little uncertainly before the old man’s bleak look. It was so long since he’d seen his German relations, he’d almost forgotten them. Indeed, at school it had sometimes been wiser to do so, and he was glad now of the opportunity to push the matter from his mind.
He lifted the paper up, opening it wide and holding it in front of him. ‘America Joins With All Her Resources,’ the headline announced.
The boy’s smile widened. ‘The United States have come in,’ he said.
It gave them something to talk about and took their minds off Helen’s bitterness, and to the surprise of the household the first result of the news was the arrival of a letter from Virginia.
It was from Richmond, was addressed to the Field Marshal via the War Office, and was signed ‘Micah Burtle Love, Lieutenant, 12th Cavalry.’
For a moment it jabbed at the old man’s liver with the memories it raised. Over fifty years before he had been captured by a Micah Burtle Love in Maryland and helped a wounded Micah Burtle Love off the field near Parks’ Bridge before taking over his command for the Wilderness and Yellow Tavern. His mind, occupied with the grey despair of No Man’s Land in France, was suddenly filled with memories of a long-forgotten campaign where men fought hand-to-hand and were not butchered in thousands by enemies they never saw. There was a swirl and a romance to the name even. Micah Burtle Love. The old man’s mind swung back over the years to Jeb Stuart and the frail glory of a war where men had still gone into battle carrying flags and wearing cloaks; where, dammit, his own wife, Augusta, had appeared before him carrying a sash, a plume and a locket containing one of her curls, which he’d carried with him then and ever since wherever he went.
His eyes were faraway when his wife appeared. The letter had made him realise just how old he was. His contemporaries were all dead now. Only Evelyn Wood seemed to be alive and these days they never met, two old men who had fought in forgotten wars living on their memories. ‘Bala-bloody-clava? Christ, no wonder we’re losing the war!’ The laughter and the derision jerked at his liver again.
‘Who is it?’
The sharp question as his wife appeared at the door cut across the memories, carving like a knife through his emotions.
He thrust the letter at her and she stopped dead.
‘It must be – no, it couldn’t be – my cousin, Micah, died in 1912. It must be his grandson.’
The old man looked again at the letter. ‘American soldiers will very soon be in Europe, sir,’ he read. ‘But I shall be arriving ahead of them. A great many young men joined the United States Air Service when war broke out in 1914 and we have now volunteered for immediate service abroad. Some will go to France to be trained by our new allies and fight with them until our army can supply us with airplanes, some will go to Italy, some to Canada. I requested that I might be sent with the batch that will come to England, because, I said, I had English relatives. I trust you will not mind this, sir, nor the hope I have that I may call on you…’
‘Good God,’ the Field Marshal said. ‘He’s coming here.’
It was clear that new battles were brewing up and, through his contacts, chief of whom he rated his grandfather, who had contacts of his own far more illustrious and reliable than the contacts of any other boy at school, Josh was aware that the war had entered a new phase.
But before that happened, his father returned from France on leave. It startled Josh to see how he had changed. He was a colonel now, in command of the Regiment – the only regiment that Josh acknowledged – but he suddenly seemed like an old man. There were lines on his face that the boy had never seen before and grey streaks in his hair. It gave him a faded look, though his manner was as brisk as ever.
It startled him, too, to
see the passionate way his mother clutched this almost strange officer with the row of ribbons on his chest. He could understand that she was glad to have him home but, remembering how several of his friends at school had lost their fathers, he could only put down the way she clung to him as springing from a fear that he might not have come at all.
As he swung his small daughter into his arms, Dabney saw his son watching him gravely.
‘Hello, Josh,’ he said.
Hugging his father, Josh was aware of the strange smell about him. His uniform was stained and seemed to have absorbed some of the stink of France.
‘How are you doing at school?’
‘All right, Father. I’m not at the bottom of the form.’
Dabney’s face wrinkled in a smile that was as the boy remembered. ‘I’ll bet you’re not at the top either.’
‘No, Father. About half way. Top half, in fact. That’s not too bad, is it?’
Dinner was a quiet affair and Josh noticed that his parents hardly took their eyes off each other.
‘What’s it like in France, Father?’ The silence was becoming intolerable.
At first his father didn’t seem to hear him, then he started and turned. ‘What’s that?’
‘I said, what’s it like in France?’
There was a pause. ‘Not very comfortable, Josh. But a damn sight less comfortable for the infantry than for us.’
‘I had a fight at school last week. Reeves Major said the cavalry weren’t pulling their weight.’
‘Did he? I take it that Reeves Major has a father in the infantry.’
‘No, sir, a brother. His father was killed in 1914. He was in the Rifle Brigade.’
Dabney looked down at his hands where they rested on the table beside his plate. ‘And what did you say, Josh, in reply to this calumny?’
‘I didn’t say anything, Father. I hit him in the eye. It was all right afterwards, of course. We’re quite good friends really, and Grandpa being in the Light Brigade at Balaclava carries a lot of weight. I also told him you were at Omdurman and got the DSO in South Africa, and another in 1914. That took the wind out of his sails, I can tell you.’
‘Did he have any answer to that?’
Josh hesitated. ‘Well, yes,’ he admitted. ‘He said you hadn’t done much since.’
Dabney paused. His son was looking at him, begging him to tell him that it wasn’t true.
‘Perhaps Reeves Major’s right, Josh,’ he said. ‘But it’s not our fault. After the South African War, which was all horses, everybody felt certain that this war would be the same. But it turned out to be more different than anyone expected and it just happened to be our bad luck – or good luck, whichever way you see it—’ he glanced at his wife who was watching him with tragic eyes ‘—that we were horsed soldiers and that we rode to war in a saddle instead of marching on our own hind legs.’
‘Does that mean, sir, that he’s right?’
‘I’m rather afraid he is, Josh. We had our day in 1914 and we didn’t do too badly. But since then, we’ve not done much. Sir Douglas Haig’s always hoped we’ll get our chance and that there’ll be a gap in the line we can go through, but it’s not happened yet and we’re still waiting.’
‘I see.’
Dabney studied his son. The boy was growing fast but he looked like taking after himself and his grandfather and would not be big. He hadn’t the shoulders and strength of Robert’s boy, Aubrey, not tall but sturdy, slim-hipped and strong-legged. His hands were fine but they were going to be strong, too. He was going to end up with a perfect cavalryman’s figure. It was a pity he would never be a true cavalryman.
His son was still watching him with troubled eyes. ‘Will it happen, Father? Will you get your chance?’
‘We all hope so, though I’m inclined to doubt it. War’s changed, Josh. The rifle, you see. It gave birth to the rifle pit and the trench, and that made the bayonet a pointless weapon, blunted the sword and the lance and forced artillerymen to place their guns beyond reach. Which meant that artillery had to grow heavier with a longer range.’ He paused. ‘It also dismounted the cavalryman. We fought in trenches in 1914, as you know. Nowadays, they prefer to let the trench fighting be done by men who’re experienced at it, and keep us in reserve for when the breakthrough comes.’
‘Suppose it never does, Father?’
There was a long silence. ‘That is the question,’ Dabney said gravely. ‘Sir Douglas Haig thinks it will. I’m inclined to doubt it.’
‘That means you’ll not be in the war?’
‘It does indeed.’
Josh was not too young to miss the glance of gratitude in his mother’s eyes.
‘It seems a bit unfair, Father.’
‘I’m afraid it does. On the other hand, all isn’t lost. We have a new arm you’ll have read about. Tanks.’
The boy was silent for a long time. ‘And will the cavalry never do anything?’
Dabney was silent again, then he sighed. ‘The cavalry,’ he said slowly, ‘has been superseded for its reconnaissance duties by the air, and if there are to be breakthroughs they’ll be made by tanks. I suspect, in fact, that they’re the cavalry of the future and when this business is over I intend to find out if they’ll give me a job.’
‘But, Father, Reeves Major says they only go at five miles an hour. A Sopwith Camel can fly at over a hundred. Even a horse can gallop faster than five miles an hour. What about the charge, Father? You can’t charge at five miles an hour and charges are what cavalry’s for, aren’t they?’
Dabney shook his head and his voice grew harsher. ‘Horsed charges are gone forever, Josh,’ he said. ‘Cavalry is finished and I’m ashamed to sit behind the lines with thousands of others with nothing else to do but tend our animals while men die every day in the trenches.’
As he finished speaking, Dabney tossed down his napkin, finished his wine, rose and stamped towards the door. For a moment his wife stared after him, then at Josh, then she rose herself and ran after him. For a long time, Josh stared uncomprehendingly across the table at his sister, his eyes full of tears. Something, he felt, was dreadfully wrong. Idols he had believed in all his life had toppled. His father, whom he adored, could find no joy in his service. It left him wretched and miserable and bewildered. There seemed a desperate need for something to be done.
‘Grandpa, I’m ten now. How old do I have to be to enlist?’
The old man moved restlessly. ‘A damn sight older than you are now, boy,’ he growled.
Joshua studied the Field Marshal as he huddled in his chair in the library among the silver statuettes of cavalrymen and the pictures of soldiers in gaudy uniforms. A clock ticked and the room seemed as silent, gloomy and dead as the graveyard where they’d buried Tyas Ackroyd.
There was a faint sun and it shone on his grandfather’s head which in the last few months seemed suddenly to have grown bald. The old man, inert as the stuffed pike on the wall, stared with puffy eyes at the newspaper. The headlines struck Josh. ‘French Attack Punches Hole in German Line.’ Since they’d announced only about a fortnight before that the British had punched a hole in the German line at Arras, this new French attack on the Chemin des Dames, or whatever it was called, seemed to him to presage the end of the war. The Germans couldn’t go on having holes punched in their lines as often as all that.
Rather to his surprise, his grandfather had not seemed impressed, which was why he had asked his question.
‘I could do exercises, Grandpa,’ he suggested.
The old man heaved in his chair. ‘Wassat?’
‘I could do exercises.’
‘What for?’
‘Build up my strength.’
‘What do you want to build up your strength for?’
‘Join the army, Grandpa.’
‘Too y
oung. Have to be eighteen at least.’
‘Reeves Major had a cousin who joined up in 1915 when he was only sixteen.’
The old man shifted in his chair. ‘Then the people who accepted him ought to be ashamed of themselves. Boys of that age are nothing but a nuisance. Haven’t the stamina.’
‘He was nearly six foot tall, Reeves Major said.’
‘And as muscled as the pith of an orange, I expect.’ The old man grunted. ‘Bet he didn’t last long.’
‘Reeves Major said he was killed on the first day of the Somme.’
The old man was silent for a while. Poor little bugger, he was thinking. Josh was watching him closely and he felt obliged to go on.
‘I’d never have under-age boys in the Regiment when I was running it,’ he said. ‘Used to send them home and tell ’em to grow a bit. A few colonels turned a blind eye to keep the numbers up, though. Didn’t pay. Didn’t last. When the cholera was knocking us over like ninepins in the Crimea, it was always the youngsters who went first. Same in South Africa. Most of those who died of enteric were young. No lasting power, y’see. Strength gives out. Besides, a boy of that age doesn’t have the same moral strength as a man of twenty-odd.’
‘What’s moral strength?’
‘Guts. Ability to keep going when all the rest have stopped. The ability to make decisions when they’re alone instead of hanging on to everybody else’s coat-tails. Your father showed he had it at the Graafberg. I suppose I must have had it, too, or the Regiment would never have been represented in the Light Brigade at Balaclava.’
‘Have I got it, Grandpa?’
‘I expect so. Runs in the family. Didn’t you punch that Reeves boy in the eye?’
‘Yes, I did. He said Father wasn’t doing his share.’ Josh frowned. ‘But when I asked Father, he said he wasn’t, too. He said he wanted to join the Tank Corps. He said they were the cavalry of the future.’
