by S. C. Howe
CONTENTS
Title
Dedication
Author’s Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
Copyright
To John, of course.
AUTHOR’S NOTE.
Some of the places mentioned in this story are real, for example Kidderminster, Worcester and Ludlow, but even within them I have imagined fictional areas. Many of the rural place-names are fictional but based on areas I know well, and some, as with the above-mentioned, are the names of real places but with imagined or amalgamated areas within them. Beauterre in this story is entirely fictional.
I have used stronger swear words to convey the sense of the dialogue and atmosphere, even if some words were, arguably, recorded in written sources a few years later. I felt to use the milder counterparts would not be believable in extreme circumstances.
CHAPTER ONE
‘Come on! Move on!’ A voice shouted, pushing back the crowd. Spouts of water shot uselessly from hoses. The battle had long been over. In front of them, the ruin of an art gallery smouldered and the reek of burnt paint hung on the cool air. Several of the gallery’s staff stood by as men emerged with the contorted shapes of once-prized paintings. Fielder walked over and stared at the top canvas, at the heat-twisted frame and the blistered inhuman face. Another painting was thrown onto the pile; it then toppled, face down, onto the wet pavement. He walked away.
Communication trench, Northern France,
November 1917
‘Private Fielder?’
‘Yes?’
A short, wiry man stood before him. ‘I’m Miller. Come to take you to Captain Barratt.’
Fielder frowned, uncertain how to address the man. Although he looked in his twenties, his own age, there was knowingness in Miller’s face, as though the grime had worked its way into hitherto invisible creases and conjured age and experience.
‘Come on!’ There was a note of irritation in the voice. Fielder followed him to the start of the trench, which dropped without warning below ground level. His heart contracted. So this was it, was it? As he moved along, he tried to remember what he had been expecting, but his mind was oddly blank. He was only aware of Miller’s voice, warning him to watch out for obstacles. After a long walk, they descended steep steps into a dugout.
‘Private Fielder, Sir.’ Miller addressed a young, dark-haired captain who was sitting hunched over a makeshift desk, reading by a candle that was guttering in a tin.
The man peered up without interest. He picked up a sheet from the too-small desk and glanced at Fielder’s new armband.
‘Stretcher-bearer,’ he said. Fielder wasn’t sure if he was being addressed. ‘Take him down to Private Deerman.’
‘Yes Sir.’
‘Are they back yet, Miller?’
‘Yes Sir.’
The captain turned to Fielder. ‘We’re in for a spot of bother shortly, Fielder. So be prepared. Remember, a cool head and reliability, that’s what we expect from our stretcher-bearers.’
‘Yes Sir.’ Fielder’s voice sounded quiet, sullen even.
The captain looked up sharply then waved him away. Fielder went to speak but the man was reading a report, his hand over his forehead, as though he had already forgotten his existence.
‘Private Deerman’s a brick,’ Miller explained. ‘He’s a good lad. He’s made a stand of it…see. His uncle’s Colonel Deerman or something, so you can imagine the trouble’s he’s had.’
Fielder remembered to give the necessary answers as they walked on. The trench intrigued him. It was so small but everything about the war seemed contained within it. In the evening light, there was a sense of unreality about the place, reminding him of the time when, as a child, he had stepped aboard the fire plate of a train. It had been a squally night in November, but on the train, the intense orange glow from the furnace and the protective heat made a deeper darkness outside, as though the guard and he were, at that moment, the only ones alive. And now, there was the faint glow from the officers’ dugout, throwing strange shadows around them like a cloak, and the smell of tobacco and fried bacon lingered on the air, giving the sense that nothing of the war existed above the parapet.
‘It’s not what I imagined,’ Fielder called out to Miller.
There was a sharp ‘Hah!’ and ‘It’s a bloody balls-up, mate!’
They walked on, squelching through the mud. Fielder had known mud, but this stuff was like nothing on earth. It was green-tinged and smelled thickly of decay and urine, and he found himself holding his breath as he walked. The stuff really did seem to have a life of its own because, as he pulled each foot up, it felt as though there were a dozen grasping tentacles trying to force his boot off. Fielder looked up; saw men crouching against dirty, sandbagged walls, like despondent queues, waiting for something they believed would never come. Some tried to sleep or play cards; others cleaned weapons or whittled away at bits of wood to make carvings. Several nodded in a sort of half-hearted acknowledgement of the new recruit, while others stared vacantly, as though a new face was not in the slightest way noteworthy.
Fielder tripped against Miller who had come to an abrupt halt in front of a strong-looking man who was sitting against the back of the trench. His stretcher-bearer’s armband was picked out by the old hurricane lamp burning on a box beside him.
‘Here we go!’ Miller announced. ‘One Private Deerman.’
Fielder looked in surprise. He realised he had already built up a picture of Deerman. As a colonel’s nephew, he would be young and lithe, with arrogant, thoroughbred looks, but the man who smiled up at him had a broad, kind face with friendly blue eyes and straight, unruly hair the colour of over-dried wheat. By the side of him sat a rough-coated mongrel dog wearing a tin helmet.
‘The captain says you have to take care of Fielder,’ came Miller’s voice. ‘He’s the new stretcher-bearer.’
Deerman got to his feet with a rheumatic difficulty that belied his age. He was tall, well-built and held out a large, calloused hand.
‘I was going to say ‘welcome’ but that seems a bit inappropriate out here.’ His voice was sure, accent-less. Friendly. ‘This is Dominic,’ he added, pointing to the dog that was watching Fielder carefully from under frothy eyebrows. ‘Shortened name is Nico.’ It was an odd-looking dog of unknown origin, but possibly a lurcher of sorts, with its tufts of coarse fur sticking out at random angles.
‘Oh.’
Deerman appraised his new helper. He was a few inches shorter and strongly built, but had worried eyes in a wind-tanned face. Deerman guessed that if his expression had not been straitened by anxiety, his face would have been lively, responsive. Scratching the back of his head suddenly, Fielder snatched off the too-clean helmet and inspected the inside. Deerman tried not to smile then looked again. In the light from a hurricane lamp, Fielder’s hair shone like dark bronze.
‘It helps being about the same height,’ Deerman said, taking the tin helmet off the dog and putting it on his own head.
Fielder looked at him distractedly.
‘For stretcher bearing...it’s easier if you are roughly the same height as the rest of us.’ He could see Fielder was up to the mark, physically at least. A farmer worker someone had said. Miller probably. Miller knew everything. ‘You do speak, don’t you?’
Fielder was looking around as if trying to find a less congested section,
like a new boy at school, awkward and unsure, trying to learn quickly. He re-focussed on Deerman.
‘What’s your first name?’ Deerman asked.
‘Tom. Thomas.’
‘Hello, Tom-Thomas,’ Deerman said, holding out his hand again and grinning – two deep dimples indented his cheeks. ‘I’m Joss.’ Fielder shook the warm, large hand and smiled, almost in spite of himself.
‘Joss?’
‘Yes.’
‘Short for?’
‘Joss.’
‘Hello, Short-for Joss.’
Deerman laughed heartily.
‘It’s a bit–’
‘Overwhelming?’
‘Yes.’ With one foot on the fire step, Fielder launched himself up to have look over the top of the trench, but was immediately snatched by the legs and pulled down, landing heavily in a stagnant puddle which sprayed his too-clean uniform with green mud.
‘What are you doing?’ Deerman was standing over him, a look of horror on his face. ‘You’ll get a bullet through your head doing that!’
‘Sorry.’ Fielder tried to clean himself down. Deerman sat down against the trench. The dog was trying to shuffle up next to him, staring ahead as if not really doing anything. There was a sheen of sweat on Deerman’s forehead. He pulled out a cigarette from his breast pocket, lit it awkwardly with a guttering match.
‘So you sleep where you eat and sit during the day?’ Fielder asked. It seemed imperative to say something – anything – because Deerman looked as if he had recoiled into himself.
‘Didn’t anyone in Base Camp, in training, tell you not to do that?’
‘I forgot.’
‘Well, don’t. One lapse and you could be dead – like that.’ Deerman snapped his fingers. ‘Anyway, sit down. This really is it, I’m afraid.’
Fielder shuffled down beside him.
‘Here.’ A musty smelling blanket thumped onto his lap.
‘But you need it.’ As if in answer to Fielder, a freezing, steady rain began falling, like liquid ice.
‘I’m used to it.’ Deerman said. ‘Anyway, if I get cold I have this to rely on.’ He pulled out an oversized woollen jumper. ‘I call it my ‘If All Else Fails’.’
Fielder smirked.
‘I don’t know what the ladies back home think they were knitting for,’ he added, unrolling it and hanging it out like an enormous sail. ‘A race of monstrous apes, I think.’ The friendliness had returned to his voice and expression. He then pulled a small cape out of his pack and did it up under the dog’s neck.
Fielder smiled broadly.
‘It was made by my aunt,’ Joss explained. ‘When I told her about Nico, this arrived. She’s almost as barmy as me. Here, take this too.’ The jumper also landed on Fielder’s lap.
Fielder pulled on the enormous jumper, which swamped him, the arms trailing on the ground like a chimp’s.
‘They say there’s a chance of a dugout soon,’ Deerman said, ‘which probably means another hole somewhere.’
‘I hear you’re a colonel’s nephew.’ Fielder winced at his own ineptitude.
‘Brigadier’s,’ Deerman said, casually.
Distant booms and thuds sounded all around; the sky momentarily lit up by Very lights.
‘Come on, let’s get some grub before it all goes,’ Deerman added. Men were stepping over them, tripping over Fielder’s pack and swearing loudly.
‘That takes guts, what you’ve done,’ Fielder said, hurrying to keep up with him. Nico was trotting along between them, his cape rustling.
‘Guts?’
‘For staying as a private.’
Deerman looked at him oddly for a moment. ‘It was either stretcher-bearing or prison, so I chose this. Anyway, I wasn’t interested in the OTC.’
Fielder blinked.
‘Officers’ Training Corps. At school.’
‘Oh.’
‘So, how about you? I heard you worked on a farm. I thought that would have exempted you.’
‘I was only a farmhand,’ Fielder said.
Farmhand? thought Deerman. The accent somewhat belied that. Sounded studious, careful.
‘And they’re running out of men,’ Fielder added.
‘Yes, I had heard.’
They walked past the lines of sedentary bodies, which were coming to life, started pushing past as others returned with mess-tins of unappetising fare.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ Joss continued as they reached a wider section of trench.
‘I was at grammar school until my grandfather died when I was sixteen,’ Fielder replied, with the manners of a polite child. ‘Then it was a matter of fending for myself. My parents didn’t stay together you see. They didn’t get on. Then my father died and I went to live with my grandfather.’ Deerman’s eyebrows rose at Fielder’s openness. In his circles, things like that were left unsaid. Then, as though anticipating his thoughts, Fielder added. ‘I haven’t seen my mother since I was a small boy. She walked out on us, back to her own class my father said once. I’ve always felt her leaving killed him.’
Deerman wondered how he could shut Fielder up before the others heard too much. It was as though Fielder was being asked about himself for the first time in his life, and it was coming out in a flood.
‘Do you like farming?’ Deerman asked.
‘It’s all right... Is it as bad as they say? The killing?’
‘Who’s they?’
‘Some of the old timers at Base camp. Is it?’ Fielder switched a raindrop off his nose.
‘It’s bad. Apparently there’s an offensive expected from the Germans any day.’ Fielder noticed how Deerman stared ahead whilst saying that, disengaging.
‘How do they – we – know?’
Deerman looked at him. ‘Aerial recces, night patrols. There’s more fetching and carrying than usual... Oh grub!’ he announced as they joined the end of the queue. Several men greeted Deerman like an old friend, and he responded with an easy friendliness and a genuine concern over the plight of two privates who had had their hands cut badly on wiring duties. Fielder watched him, taking it all in. Deerman introduced him to the others. Nico thumped his tail at the many soldiers who gave him scraps from their mess tins. When he began obsessively shaking hands with one private, Deerman called him.
‘Come here!’ he exclaimed, catching hold of Nico’s cape. ‘Nico’s a bit of a charmer,’ he said to Fielder. ‘Though he can rather overdo it at times.’
‘Is he your dog?’
‘He’s adopted me,’ Deerman said, stooping down to the animal that seemed to be grinning up at him. ‘He was found in no man’s land and decided to attach himself to our company, and he seems to have picked me out as his special carer.’
They made their way back through the trench cramped with the queue. Finding a quieter section, they sat down on the fire step.
‘Remember,’ said Deerman. ‘Keep your head below the parapet.’
Fielder nodded, tried to eat the unappetizing gloop, which Deerman was shovelling down enthusiastically.
‘You need to eat it,’ he observed. ‘There’s nothing else.’
Fielder tried but his throat contracted.
Later on, he sat, using Deerman’s blanket as a cape and, as the trench quietened down, he felt his eyes snatching and, within minutes, he was asleep. Deerman manoeuvred him carefully to a more comfortable position, looked at the clean face, and wondered how long it would be before he took on the grey, faded pallor of the rest of them. Involuntarily, he recalled a scene from his last summer’s leave in Worcestershire. He had been sitting by the Severn watching two fledglings sitting on a branch, just above the bottle-green water. They had looked at each other and then out for a moment, worked their wings, and flown away across the water, as though forgetting completely the sensation of fear.
Fielder woke with a start as Deerman tapped him. The sodden night’s clouds greyed to a cold dawn.
‘Stand-to,’ Deerman whispered.
Fielder looked along the trenc
h at the line of shifting, sleepy men, felt elbows in his ribs, boots stubbing against his shins. Men were everywhere. The faded khaki of their uniforms and the ghost-pale faces in this dawn made the place look unreal, insubstantial, like some odd dreamland. Again, his eyes were drawn to the top of the parapet. The desire to see what all the talk had been about was irresistible, because so far all he had seen of the landscape of war was these sandbagged and revetted trench sides. He also wanted to understand the feeling of duty, which had pushed him out, made him afraid of going to prison and battling it out as a conscientious objector. It was something about ‘doing his bit’, but even now he was not sure what the ‘bit’ was, or to what purpose.
The sergeant, a man in his thirties, of weary but kindly bearing, called stand-to.
Fielder copied Deerman.
‘It’s the same show every morning and evening,’ whispered Deerman as they watched the line of men stand on the fire step, holding their rifles in readiness. ‘We think the Germans are more likely to attack at dawn or dusk, so we go through this rigmarole.’ Then he whispered even more quietly. ‘And they’re probably doing the same thing over there.’
‘And how far is ‘over there’?’
Deerman sighed. ‘If you really want to see, come over here.’
They picked their way to the far end of the trench and stopped by a sergeant who was searching no man’s land through a periscope. Deerman did not say anything until the sergeant glanced round.
‘Have a look,’ the sergeant said, handing him the periscope.
Deerman looked through it, and, without saying a word, passed the contraption to Fielder.
It was, perhaps, one of the most surprising sights he had seen in his life, in that all he could see was a flat piece of muddy and churned up ground, rather like a rugby pitch in late winter. And, as if to remind them this was indeed a war zone, a sagging tangle of barbed wire ran on the British-held side, with straighter sections of tripwire and criss-crossed barbed wire near the German trenches, whose position showed up as a lip of sandbags. But what surprised him most was just how small everything was. Seeing one or two paintings of the Boer War, he had imagined the desperate sounds of artillery, the flashing colour of constant movement, long charges over huge plains, but, no, it looked like any badly over-grazed field with abandoned fencing left to dip and fall.
