“Yes, sir!” said Riley.
Tomkins now closed in on Riley. “How is it that you failed to notice a fellow officer desecrating the dead?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“You will learn to watch more carefully next time.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Norton, I am turning these over to headquarters. And God help me, if you are ever caught doing this again you will be broken by a court-martial. Are you clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Leave me, then,” he snapped, turning on his heel.
Captain Tomkins did not look at them again as they filed out, but instead returned to his tiny desk and tablet, shaking his head in silence.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Fromelles Road
The Western Front
Friday, December 25, 1914
Christmas had come to the Western Front, although from the look of the fields in the wet gray dawn, there was not much to celebrate. For days there’d been rumors of a truce to bury the dead, but the rumors had proved false. The orders were as usual: stand guard, protect the wires, and shoot on sight. Brook no mercy with the enemy, even if he is flying a white flag: it is a trick and you will receive no mercy at his hands once you’re captured. On this last point there was ample evidence. Corpses littered the soaked field between the trenches. Most were just shot. Mutilation would occur only if you were captured—a random cycle of now-personal revenge occurring when an officer’s back was turned. It had been this way since Belgium. The stories of torture were bone-chilling, and Wils Brandl had seen enough to know that more than a few of the tales were true.
He flicked a louse crawling up his sleeve into a large puddle at his feet in a frontline trench. He was covered tip to toe in mud except, he supposed, for the inside of his mouth.
He should have been back in the communications trench, fighting for a solid duckboarding plank with another officer. But instead he’d been shuffled off to stand in a large heap of silt and coffee-colored water that these Westphalians considered a trench.
He was to guard and repair several thin wires that transmitted news from the forward positions back to headquarters. They’d been snapped only a half dozen times by jackboots more intent on gossiping about an unannounced truce near Bois-Grenier than shoring up the walls with sandbags. Captain Grimber had thought that if an officer was posted by the wires, the enlisted men would stop tripping on them. Instead, they tripped over him too while dragging a Christmas tree to the fire bay. It was the height of folly, thought Wils, who, to keep his head from being shot off, had to squat uncomfortably in the shallow trench for the better part of the shift.
The kaiser had sent a few trees to make the trenches seem more hospitable, along with copies of the Bible and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Wils wished the men would chop off the branches to create a bridge over the more egregious water holes that punctuated their flooring. But the men did not. Instead, they were trying to signal to the other side by setting candles on the tree’s branches for Christmas. They still believed in the holiday.
In some ways it made sense. As there was no order to who got killed out here, why not attribute the good luck of living to God, the Ghost of Things Yet to Come, the Angel of Mons, or anything one might see while standing on the verge of hell under heavy enemy fire? It was a lovely thought, but in contradiction to the events of the past three weeks. The French had been banging on the British to blow through the German positions south of Ypres. The British had tried at Wytschaete and at La Boutillerie, which was why Wils was now sitting in the trenches just inside the French border, making certain that the problems that had occurred with these transmissions last week did not recur. The move had delayed his mail once again. He’d had only two letters from Helen and knew there were bound to be more.
And such a letter, he thought, as a smile broke through the dirt that caked his face. She told him of a half dozen nothings—her return to class, Copeland thundering on about the use of the passive voice—not because they were important, but to amuse him. She’d included a lock of her hair, which he had carefully placed in his wallet, and wrote softly about their time together in the woods.
A flare shrieked overhead toward them. He closed his eyes and listened for the shell. It hit farther down the line. He scanned the trench.
After the blast two men sat back up and again tried to tie candles to the tree’s limbs—a nice sniper target. It was good for them all that in the moist air the candles kept going out.
It would be so different with Helen, he thought, as he checked the new wires again. They would live in a clean house with a large study and windows that stretched from the top of high ceilings to the floor, with chairs and desks for only the two of them. She would be his companion for eternity. They would laugh, and sing, and write, and kiss, and make love all day long, one day becoming the next without end. He saw another flare, this time headed toward the British. He’d not have to move for that.
He looked down at his boots, submerged in mud. It is only time until I see her again, he told himself silently.
After another hour of sporadic firing a sentry splashed up. He crouched at the fire step and lifted a periscope to view the battlefield, then closed it and shook his head.
“Anything out there?” Wils asked.
“Yes,” said the sentry in a weary voice. “One of ours. A soldier from down the line with a Christmas tree.”
“A suicide?”
“The men say there’s a truce.”
They heard the crack of a gunshot, and Wils shook his head, sorry to have been right.
The sentry shrugged, left his periscope, and turned back along the narrow corridor, nearly slipping in the mud on the wires.
Wils crawled over to the fire step and peered through the periscope, over the parapet. It was lighter now—bright gray, to be exact. He didn’t see the man, but something hanging on a broken tree caught his eye. He checked again. The tree stood, and an electric torch hung from its branches. He smiled. God bless that boy. He has his Christmas now.
The sentry returned with another splash. Father Rupert stepped quickly behind him, a look of concern on his wide, florid face.
“Another soldier gone up,” huffed Rupert.
“Dead?” asked Wils.
“Not yet,” said the sentry. He lifted the periscope and pointed to the right.
Wils took a look. His heart began to race. “I give him twenty seconds.”
“Fifteen,” countered the sentry, pulling out his watch.
“Eight,” said Father Rupert glumly. “Tell me it’s not Konrad,” the priest said as they watched the seconds tick off.
“No, Father,” said the sentry. “One of the Saxons. They’ve been drinking since midnight.” Twenty seconds passed.
“What are they waiting for?” said the sentry. “Get it over with.”
“A drunken suicide,” Rupert mumbled, crossing himself. His jowls sagged as he shook his head. “What a waste.” The priest sat down beside Wils in the narrow trench, sinking into the mud, seemingly oblivious to the cold and damp. “Wilhelm, what brings you to disreputable parts such as these?”
“Watching communications wires break.”
From a distance they suddenly heard a voice—a song. Wils shook his head as the deep baritone voice rang through the dawn. The startled sentry took another look.
“Seventy-three seconds. They’re not shooting,” the stunned sentry said.
Wils couldn’t believe his ears.
He took the periscope from the sentry and looked over the top of the trench to the area where the sentry had pointed. He saw the dim outline of a figure walking steadily toward the British line. How he’d made it past the barbed wire, Wils had no idea. His voice cut like a knife across the gloom of no-man’s-land, slowly silencing the murmur of men on either side of the divide.
St
ille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Alles schläft, einsam wacht
Nur das traute hochheilige Paar.
Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar,
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!
The song ended. Still no shots. Wils shook his head and gave the periscope back to the sentry.
After a pause, the German sang the song again. Wils heard Father Rupert, his head bowed, murmuring a prayer and saw him crossing himself. The three waited for the silencing crack of a rifle.
“Now, your turn, Tommy! You sing,” shouted the soldier in English. Wils winced, waiting for the shot.
“He’s almost to the other side!” said the sentry. “They’ll take him prisoner and hack off his ears.”
“Another look,” demanded Wils. The sentry stood back as Wils took the periscope again and looked over the trench.
As the soldier went farther toward the British lines, again, palms outstretched, Wils suddenly dropped the periscope and peered out with his own eyes. The lone figure repeated his offer. A flare went off overhead and Father Rupert jerked Wils back.
“Don’t get yourself killed.” The priest’s face looked ashen.
In the distance, a British response exploded across the lines:
Silent night, holy night.
Shepherds quake at the sight
Glories stream from heaven afar
Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!
Christ, the Savior, is born!
Christ, the Savior, is born!
“Mein Gott im Himmel!” said Father Rupert, his eyes bulging. “A miracle!” He pulled out a flask and screwed off the top. “To our Savior’s health, men!” he said, taking a drink, then offering one to Wils and the sentry.
“Hear, hear, Father!” said the sentry, downing a gulp. Wils took a draft. The schnapps felt like fire in his throat.
Suddenly the narrow trench was filled with many men, rushing to the crumbling mud wall, trampling his precious telegraph wires into the ground.
“Truce! Truce! Truce!” they yelled.
Wils stood with Rupert in amazed disbelief. The lowly enlisted men were calling off the war!
“Go!” yelled Rupert to Wils, stuffing the flask into his coat pocket. The priest fashioned his corpulent hands into a stirrup to help push Wils over the parapet. He demanded a hand of help himself once they were up, from both Wils and the sentry.
They rose to the field, as men of both sides flowed past. He looked around the desolation. Before him were acres of severed barbed wire and shrapnel, shards of trees cracked as if they’d been matchsticks. Ancient stone houses had been shelled into piles of mud. Corpses of men and animals lay scattered everywhere.
And among the devastation stood the living—walking and running through no-man’s-land. They were shaking hands, stunned—as if the calamity could be called off by a small mutiny of soldiers. As though the hostilities were theirs to stop. His eyes stung as the chorus of voices rang up from the hell around him, lifting him out of the ruin.
What was this? He was aboveground breathing the sulfurous air, free for at least a moment from Prussian order. Free of the rats and lice, the freezing water, the waiting—the boredom of waiting to be killed.
He looked at the waves of men—at least a thousand—wandering in the field and wondered what in God’s name he was supposed to do with this temporary freedom. The songs became a tumult around him. He heard laughter—what business did laughter have in anyone’s throat that day?
He gave a shiver. He walked a few more paces as the song lifted again, and then fell to his knees in the mud, breathing the rotten air as deeply as he possibly could. Dear God, what if it were over? What if he’d actually go home alive to Helen?
And kneeling there he joined in the chorus of voices singing. He was above the ground and he would sing with the angel who’d brought them there—a simple ransom he’d pay for a reprieve.
After a while he stood up, laughing himself. Perhaps he’d been wrong about this stretch of hell. He’d thought that kindness had left that world—that it had burned, dissolved, and blown away like so much ash on a cold north wind.
To be wrong. He shook his head. What he would give to be wrong.
* * *
At that moment a small British soldier with a cleft palate walked up to Wils.
“Fritz! Trade you some bully beef for chocolate,” he said with a lisp.
Wils looked down at his empty hands. “I’ve nothing with me.”
The boy’s eyes widened.
“Yes, I speak English.”
“So did every German cabdriver in London,” retorted the young boy, giving him a cautious glance.
Wils shrugged. The young man’s wrapped legs were already sinking in the mud. A thought came to him.
“I’ll give you my belt buckle if you know how to get me to Lieutenant Rhyland Spencer. Have you ever heard of him?”
The young soldier squinted at him and shook his head. “Where’s he from, Fritz?”
“London.”
“That don’t narrow the field,” he said, shifting in the mud.
“He went to Harvard. In Boston. The United States.”
“Nah, never heard of him,” the soldier said dismissively. “But, hey, Fritz! Got an electric torch? Trade you my beef for one.”
Wils shook his head. “It’s back at the trench.”
“How ’bout I get it next time we’re over there?”
“Right,” said Wils nervously, looking around to find another soldier. “See you later, Tommy,” he said and turned to walk away.
“Fritz!” the soldier called back. “I’d check up the road there,” he said, pointing west. “I heard there was some ambulance drivers from Harvard come to help us out.”
“Thanks!” said Wils, his face brightening.
Riley! He turned and started moving toward the road as fast as he could. He’d no idea how long this cease-fire would last.
He found a northbound road and had begun to walk its deeply ridged, soggy ruts when a truck of laughing British and German soldiers drove by. He waved them to stop, but they passed him by without looking back, splashing him in their haste.
Minutes later he heard an ambulance. Wils waved madly at it and yelled as loud as his hoarse voice would allow. It stopped.
“I’m looking for a British soldier and a Harvard man,” Wils called up to the driver. “Name’s Rhyland Spencer. Do you know him?”
The grizzled driver looked down from the car. “I don’t know any Spencer, but I know some Harvard folks west of La Boutillerie. I can take you to them, but you’ve got to promise to keep your eyes closed. It’s one thing to be on the field back there, but up here they may not take it as well. Hop in.”
“Thanks, Tommy!” he said with a grin. But as he opened the door, he gagged at a foul odor. He got into his seat and turned back to see the back laden with decomposing bodies.
“Been waiting to get our men,” he said as they bumped their way north. Wils held tightly to the door.
“Where’d you learn English?” the driver asked after hitting a particularly nasty crater.
“Harvard.”
“I knew a guy from Harvard once. He was a jerk.”
Wils nodded. “Some are.”
After a few miles of soft road, the ambulance came to a quick halt outside a white tent with a red cross on it. Men with stretchers and a chaplain in black bands emerged from the tent.
Wils climbed down from the truck and thanked the driver, who pointed him to a garage shop nearby.
“Hey, Fritz, do you know a Friedrich Kriesler?” asked the driver.
Wils shook his head. The driver shrugged. “Met him in London. Was a waiter at the Savoy.” He shrugged. “Good fellow. Well, if you’re back by noon, I got my second run out to pick up more poor
lads, or, er, what’s left of ’em, and I’ll run you back,” he said matter-of-factly before motoring away through the puddles.
Wils checked his new pocket watch. Two hours. He turned quickly and walked across the road to a roadside stand of round stones and weather-beaten boards. A large flag with a red cross was sadly draped between two boards, creating a doorway for Wils to enter.
One man stood in overalls soiled by big patches of black oil. Another wore a khaki jumpsuit, his white armband sporting a red cross. They seemed to be arguing over who was going to get under the vehicle. Surprised by the field gray uniform, they looked up bewildered. Wils held up both his hands.
“Harvard,” said Wils.
“Yes. And you?” asked one in denim overalls cautiously. He had a flat Midwestern accent and dirty blond hair.
“I’m class of 1915. Wilhelm Brandl. There’s a truce for the day on the front. I’m looking for Rhyland Spencer—a cousin of mine.”
“You’re a 1915? Shouldn’t you be studying for exams?”
“Why start now?”
The Midwesterner gave a lopsided grin. “Who did you say you were?”
“Spencer’s cousin. Wils Brandl.”
He looked at him cautiously. “Spencer’s just up the road a bit. I saw him last week. You can walk it from here. In fact, if Mike here can work on the ambulance, I’ll take you myself. I haven’t had much luck talking with the Boche. I’ve been too busy cleaning up after him. It’s worse than living at Grays.”
“You lived at Grays?” asked Wils.
“Indeed. Where were you?”
“Beck.”
“Beck Hall! We’ve got a prince here!” said the man, his look softening. He wiped his hands on a dirty rag.
“Grays—do you know Jackson Vaughn?”
The young man’s eyes widened. “The rich boy who went crazy after his girl left him? He’s trying to fly planes now. Don’t know how that’s going to work out.”
“That’s Jackson.” Wils laughed.
The young man nodded and extended his dirty hand. “Bill Wimmer, Chicago. Class of 1916. I’ll take you to Riley, but put on this armband,” he said, handing him a white cloth with a red cross on it. “They won’t bother you.”
The End of Innocence Page 22
