The Shadow of War

by Stewart Binns

  ‘None o’ thy business,’ was the abrupt reply.

  Vinny tried to assert his authority.

  ‘Well, tha’ll need t’password when tha comes back, old fella.’

  ‘Will I now?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘So what’s t’password?’

  Vinny realized that Tommy hadn’t told them what password to use, but Nat came to his rescue and made one up.

  ‘Dirty Gertie!’

  Vinny could not believe the name Nat had chosen. The old farmer looked stunned.

  ‘Don’t be bloody soft, I’m not sayin’ that,’ he muttered, and wandered on his way.

  Two hours later, the old man returned, bow-legged and wizened, with his white muffler wound tightly around his neck and his clogs jangling along the road. When he was challenged, he ignored the two men in blue and walked past.

  Nat looked at Vinny.

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘I think we’re s’posed to shoot ’im.’

  ‘We can’t do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Cos all our bullets are blanks!’

  ‘Well, should we at least tell ’im ’e’s been shot?’

  ‘Might as well.’

  Vinny shouts after the old farmer, who has, by now, almost disappeared in the swirling snow.

  ‘Eh, old fella; tha’s been shot!’

  ‘Nay, lad; tha’s missed!’

  On another occasion, a platoon would not let a delivery lad from Oddies’ Pies pass their checkpoint unless he handed over a tray of pies ‘for t’ungry lads defendin’ King and country’, or so they said.

  Oddies complained to Captain Slinger, the battalion adjutant, and the miscreants all received one week of field punishments. The price of the pies was deducted from their pay.

  As well as the four ‘Accrington Pals’, several others in Burnley’s Keighley Green Club are in uniform. Because John-Tommy Crabtree, the former steward at the club, is a Pal, the Club has become D Company’s main watering hole. John-Tommy is there with some older men. Cath and Mary are also there; it is their night off from washing pots. Cath is huge; she has still not given birth, although the midwife thinks she is at least two weeks’ overdue.

  They had invited their Burnley officers to join them, but army protocol demands that officers and men do not fraternize openly. The Thorn Hotel, only 200 yards from Keighley Green, Burnley’s oldest tavern, and situated in the middle of the town amidst its better shops, has become D Company’s unofficial officers’ mess. The Thorn has several luxuries not typical of most of the town’s public houses. One of them is fitted carpets, even in the bar, another is bar food and a third, perhaps the most radical, is no spittoons.

  Tomorrow will be Christmas Eve and everyone in the Keighley Green Working Men’s Club is in festive mood.

  The Pals are having a late drink, having been at Accrington Town Hall for a battalion Christmas concert. It was a great success, and all the acts were performed by the officers and men. There was good humour between the battalion’s companies from different towns: A Company (Accrington lads), chided D Company (Burnley lads), while B Company (from Blackburn) did the same to C Company (from Chorley).

  John Harwood, Mayor of Accrington and founder of the battalion, gave a speech before the concert. He spoke well and with considerable East Lancs pride in what has been achieved. He also talked with some pathos about the casualty figures from France and about the plight of men at the Front shivering in their trenches. He knew that none of it would discourage the 900 men in front of him; quite the reverse, they are made of sterner stuff.

  C Company’s contributions to the concert included Captain Raymond Ross and Lieutenants Riley, Heys and Tough singing – reasonably melodiously – extracts from HMS Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan, although Fred Heys clearly had a much better voice than the other three. CSMs Severn, Muir and Lee played the spoons and brought the house down. Not only were they dressed in Egyptian fezzes and caftans, which seemed to have no relevance to a rendition of spoon harmonies, but their playing was neither tuneful nor in unison.

  Hoots of laughter rolled around the town hall as the three hard men, a Cockney, a Scot and a Devonian, who had spent the previous two months berating the inadequacies of their Lancastrian charges, turned a musical routine into a comedy act. It was hilarious and convinced those present, who had begun to wonder, that their company serjeant majors were human after all.

  During the concert interval, presents were distributed. Each man went onstage to collect a neatly parcelled gift of two pairs of socks from the officers’ wives and from Elizabeth Sharples, the wife of Battalion CO Colonel Sharples. A boxed, initialled silk handkerchief was also given to each of the officers, including the colonel, who looked more delighted than anyone else, leading everyone to the conclusion that he was not used to receiving presents from his somewhat severe-looking wife.

  At the end of the evening, Colonel Richard Sharples addressed the men. He droned on a little but, right at the last, produced the biggest cheer of the night.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted to be able to tell you this evening that, two days ago, we heard from the Ministry of War that the 11th Battalion East Lancashire Regiment will go to barracks in Caernarvon, North Wales, to complete their military training in early February next.’

  At long last, the tedium and discomfiture of playing at soldiers in their own backyard will be coming to a definite end. The men had begun to think that they would never leave their hometowns and that the war would be over before they had a chance to prove their mettle.

  John-Tommy Crabtree comes over to Tommy and Mick’s group.

  ‘Alreet, Mary; Cath, that’s a reet lump tha’s got there, when it’s due?’

  ‘Dunno, John-Tommy, feels like it shoulda been born a week last Christmas!’

  ‘So what are you two gonna do while these daft apeths laik at soldiers in Caernarvon?’

  ‘Mary an’ I reckon we’re gonna go down south an’ drive ambulances.’

  ‘Can you drive?’

  ‘No, but one o’ t’lads at Trafalgar Mill said he’d teach us on mill’s lorry.’

  ‘But how will yer find a job?’

  ‘Easy, Henry Hyndman said he get us sorted. Mary winked at ’im. He fancies Mary does old Henry.’

  ‘What about t’child?’

  ‘I’ll take it wi’ me.’

  John-Tommy then turns to the quartet in blue.

  ‘Hey up, Tommy, an’ what dost reckon to thy lasses runnin’ off down south?’

  Mick smiles mischievously.

  ‘They can suit th’sels, they ollus do. Me an’ t’lads’ll be chasin’ them Caernarvon lasses around.’

  Cath clips Mick around his ear.

  ‘If you go anywhere near ’em, I’ll ’ave yer knackers off an’ I’ll put ’em in a jam jar on t’mantelpiece. So think on!’

  John-Tommy quickly changes the subject and turns to Nat and Vinny.

  ‘So it’s off to Caernarvon fer us. Yer know they ’ave a different language yonder?’

  Nat is perplexed.

  ‘But it’s in England, in’t it?’

  ‘Nah, lad, it’s in Wales; they’re Welsh.’

  ‘So what do they speak, John-Tommy?’

  ‘Welsh, Nat.’

  ‘Are they on our side?’

  There is laughter all round, but Cath’s swipe at Mick has stirred her loins. She suddenly grasps her abdomen and lets out a moan of pain.

  John-Tommy is the first to react and tells Mick and Tommy to help Mary get Cath to the club office. He looks at the big clock above the bar. It’s almost midnight. He smiles at Cath reassuringly.

  ‘Looks like tha’s gonna ’ave a Christmas Eve baby, our Cath.’

  Cath is too preoccupied to notice John-Tommy’s words. By the time she is helped into the office she has almost given birth. John-Tommy pushes Mick into the office with his wife and Mary and gets everybody else out. He then grabs Vinny.

  ‘Go an’ get
old Ma Murgatroyd! Number 8, Parker Street, just round t’corner. Run, lad!’

  Ma Murgatroyd, who used to be a midwife, is fast asleep when Vinny hammers on her door, and she takes a while to get dressed. By the time they get to the club, they are too late.

  The baby, a boy, has been born.

  But there are no celebrations, no cries from the little infant. The lad is stillborn and nothing can be done to help him.

  Ma Murgatroyd confirms that he is dead and that he almost certainly died some time ago in the womb.

  Cath and Mick are inconsolable; it will be a very sad Christmas for the Burnley Pals.

  Friday 25 December

  Blair Atholl Castle, Perthshire

  From the outside, Blair Atholl Castle on Christmas Day 1914 looks much as it has always done. With fresh, thick snow on the ground and no overnight visitors to spoil the virginal blanket on the drive, the white stucco walls blend perfectly with the landscape of the estate and the glens all around. Only the grey slates of the conical roofs of its turrets and its many windows break up the pure white panoply.

  But much has changed at Blair. It is the quietest Christmas celebration in living memory. The pipes and drums of the duke’s private army, the Atholl Highlanders, are silent. Many of its men have volunteered for the army; as for the rest, the duke has asked them to stay away. There will be no piper playing from the battlements today. There have been too many deaths in France of men from the estate and the local community. Although not yet in mourning, the duke is sure that his middle son, Lord George, ‘Geordie’, is dead.

  More bad news arrived at 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve, courtesy of a willing young lad who brought the telegram from the village post office in the middle of a snowstorm. After spending several weeks at Blair recovering from his infected leg wound, Hamish returned to his regiment in France, the Cameron Highlanders, early in November. However, his company did not see action until 20 December, when he led them in an attack on German positions at Givenchy, near Ypres. The attack was a success and the German trench was taken. But late that night, while reconnoitring his defences with a small patrol, he was ambushed. Two of his men were killed. The telegram was brief and to the point.

  Regret to inform, Major Lord James Stewart-Murray, 1st Battalion Cameron Highlanders, taken prisoner, enemy forces, Givenchy, 20 December 1914. Whereabouts unknown. Reported unharmed and safe.

  Kitchener.

  The old duke, having been locked away with his mistress in her cottage in Glen Tilt for most of the winter, had dragged himself away to host Christmas lunch for his immediate family. Already desperately morose about Geordie, the telegram from the Ministry of War was too much for him and he immediately took to his bed, refusing all visitors. Lady Helen decided that she had no choice other than to send for his ‘lady friend’, Mrs Grant, who promptly took him back up to her cottage. He was in tears as he left.

  There will not be the usual houseful of guests at Blair this year; there will be none of its renowned gaiety, and certainly none of its notorious debauchery. Lady Helen has given most of the servants the week off. She has invited her friend from Edinburgh, David Tod, and Bardie and Kitty have travelled up from England. Lady Dorothea, ‘Dertha’, and her husband, Harry Ruggles-Brise, who is still recovering from his shrapnel wounds, have also arrived from England, but only late last night, delayed by the snow.

  So the family gathering is just six. They have all risen late and taken a very sombre breakfast, coming to terms with the news of Hamish. They decide to exchange presents before lunch and then to sit down together for the best Christmas fare Blair Atholl’s vast estate and fine kitchen can muster. There will be beef, goose and turkey, all Blair meat, and the vegetables will be those grown on the estate and in the kitchen gardens and greenhouses. Mrs Forsyth, the butler’s wife who runs the kitchen with a rod of iron and is never addressed by any other name, even by her husband, has made the stuffing, pudding, cake, mince pies and sorbets.

  It is also agreed to plunder the cellar for the 7th Duke’s favourite Bollinger and three bottles of 1900 Château Petrus, the finest vintage in a generation. Bardie asks Forsyth to bring up some Monbazillac for pudding and a Grande Champagne cognac for the men with their cigars. He means to ensure that some kind of Christmas cheer comes to the Stewart-Murrays, even if it has to be induced by alcohol.

  Bardie says grace before lunch and asks everyone to think of Geordie, in the hope that he has managed to survive, of Hamish, hopefully not too cold or miserable in a German prisoner-of-war camp, of poor old Father, heartbroken about what has happened to his family, and of Evelyn, about whom nothing has been heard for some time.

  After Bardie has finished, and the servants begin to serve lunch, Lady Helen produces a surprise.

  ‘Amidst the gloomy reports, I have some good news. I have just received a letter from darling Evelyn.’

  She begins to read as, for the first time since they arrived, everyone is able to smile.

  Dearest Father,

  I have taken a little cottage in the woods near Spa. Very quiet here, no hint of fighting. My rooms in Malines are just about in one piece, but the damage is extensive. Like the rest of the town, windows are gone, blinds are rags, china smashed to dust, furniture in splinters. I doubt I will ever return.

  But I am well, and my faithful companion is so kind to me.

  Please send my love to all at Blair at Christmas,

  Evelyn

  David Tod offers a thoughtful response.

  ‘All of us here, safe in Scotland, let us give thanks.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ is the response from everyone.

  Harry Ruggles-Brise, shifting uneasily in his chair as his shoulder injury makes him wince, makes polite conversation.

  ‘So, Kitty, what have you been up to?’

  ‘Well, I go to London on VAD business once a week. But it’s a long way from Blagdon; it’s a bit of a bore, really.’

  ‘Blagdon?’

  ‘Blagdon Hall, Matty Ridley’s home. He’s a Tory MP and Colonel of the Northumberland Hussars –’

  Bardie breaks in and takes over Kitty’s account.

  ‘Kitchener is still bothered about the east coast and has ordered me up to Northumberland at the beginning of the month.’

  ‘With the whole of the Scottish Horse?’

  ‘Yes, three battalions of us. Wouldn’t let even one battalion go to France.’

  ‘Bloody stuff and nonsense! There’s no possibility of a German invasion. I don’t often agree with Churchill, but in that respect, he’s spot on.’

  ‘Harry, strictly on the QT, I spoke to Kitchener the other day. Churchill and Lloyd George are cooking up a scheme to launch a spring offensive in the Dardanelles to get the Central Powers fighting on another front. He told me he’s earmarked the Horse for the campaign.’

  To the annoyance of the two soldiers at the table, who cannot understand how an Edinburgh merchant with a part-time line in sculpting can possibly have an opinion about war that is worth listening to, David Tod offers his view.

  ‘A wise strategy, it seems to me. If there’s a stalemate in France and Belgium, another front makes sense.’

  Bardie shrugs off David’s opinion.

  ‘Whether it does, or it doesn’t, is neither here nor there. I’ll leave that to Kitchener and French. But if it gives my boys a chance to fight, then I’m up for it.’

  Harry then chips in.

  ‘I have to say that, although Churchill has some military experience, he has never been in a position of high command; after all, he’s a bloody politician, for God’s sake! And now we’ve got that odious little Welshman sticking his oar in.’

  Helen draws a line under the conversation.

  ‘Kitty, Dertha, shall we withdraw?’

  The three ladies of Atholl settle in the drawing room. Unbeknown to the men, who are happily drinking cognac and smoking the finest Bolivar Cuban cigars, Helen has secreted a bottle of Bénédictine, her favourite tipple, under her chair.

 
‘Ladies?’

  An increasingly intimate conversation ensues as the liqueur bottle empties. Eventually, Kitty’s relationship with Bardie comes up.

  Helen is blunt.

  ‘So, Kitty, how have you persuaded Bardie to keep his trousers on?’

  ‘I haven’t. He can do what he likes with his trousers. But now we’re on an equal footing, which means other men’s trousers are within my compass once more.’

  Dertha is impressed.

  ‘Well done, Kitty. I’m pleased to say that I don’t think Harry has the imagination to stray. What about you, Helen, are you going to take the leap with your sculptor? He seems very sweet.’

  ‘I think I might. Father will be upset, but he’s now got other things on his mind …’ Helen’s eyes fill with tears. ‘Everything is changing. What will become of us?’

  Kitty takes the question to another level.

  ‘I worry for Bardie and for the family. When he inherits the title, will it mean anything? Old Europe is dying, and I fear Old Britain is dying with it. All those men being slaughtered at the Front! Will the survivors come back and accept the world they left behind? I doubt it. You know I don’t agree with the suffragettes, but do we really expect to deny working men the vote when they’re dying in multitudes for a country they have no say in running?’

  Dertha is shocked.

  ‘Really, Kitty, you sound like a communist! Harry says, if we give everyone the vote, we will be under socialist rule within five years.’

  ‘He may be right. But it may not be possible to stop it happening. And it may not be right to do so.’

  Helen is less shocked than Dertha, but is still surprised.

  ‘Kitty, you sound just like David; he says much the same. You should go into politics.’

  ‘Perhaps I should.’

  The conversation gradually becomes less and less erudite, the mood more and more solemn, until Christmas Day 1914 at Blair Atholl ends in a drunken haze. Everyone fears for the future and knows that the carefree days of the past are probably gone for ever.