by Val Wood
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Mary closed her door in Grotto Square but didn’t lock it. No one locked their doors in this part of Hull for few people had anything worth stealing, and besides, the neighbours would notice if anyone went into the wrong house. She was on her way to Baker Street and patted her coat pocket to make sure she had her keys; the Thornburys’ door would be locked for there was plenty that was worth stealing there, even though Mrs Thornbury had packed quite a few of their valuables away because of the war and Mr Thornbury had taken some to the bank for safe keeping.
But first she must call on Dolly and find out if she’d heard anything from Josh or Stanley; Ada too was waiting to hear from her husband Isaac as she hadn’t received a letter in weeks. Ada rented a room further down Mason Street which she and Isaac had taken in readiness for their wedding day, but he had only spent a week in it before being called up and sent off immediately for training. Ada had kept it, as she was earning enough to pay the rent; she liked being mistress of her own place even though it was just one room, as she could come and go as she pleased, something she had never been able to do before.
Mary came through the archway and turned right, looking about her. There was a woman ahead of her standing in the middle of the footpath as if she were looking at something or someone. Mary paused. People were constantly on edge, looking in the sky for enemy aircraft, seeing spies everywhere, throwing bricks through the windows of shops with a German name. Oh, no. She drew in a breath; the woman was looking at a telegraph boy cycling towards them.
It was one of the worst things of the war, Mary thought, the waiting and watching for news, and the poor young lads carrying telegrams must have hated their jobs, for inevitably they were bringing bad news to someone.
I’ll just wait a minute, she considered. He’s passed Ada’s house already. I’ll wait for him to pass our Dolly’s. The woman in front of her crossed over the road and walked on; she must have been doing the same thing as Mary and had now decided that it was safe to go home. Thank goodness we had daughters and not lads, she thought. I’d not have a minute’s peace if my bairns were abroad like Dolly’s.
Then she heard screaming and someone, a woman, hurtled down the steps of one of the dwellings. It was her niece Ada, and she was running towards her mother’s house. Mary hurried towards her, calling, ‘Ada, Ada!’ but Ada took no heed and almost knocked over the telegraph boy, who was dismounting from his bicycle.
Finally hearing her aunt’s calls, Ada turned to Mary. ‘Aunt Mary!’ she shrieked, waving an opened telegram in her hand. ‘It’s Isaac! He’s missing, believed killed in action.’
‘Come inside.’ Mary took Ada’s arm and led her up the steps towards Dolly’s rooms. ‘Try to keep calm; come on, come on.’
They were halfway up the stairs when the doorbell rang and she turned and saw the telegraph boy standing on the doorstep looking through the open door.
‘Mrs Morris?’ he said. ‘I’m looking for Mr and Mrs Morris.’ He held out an envelope. ‘I’ve got a telegram for ’em.’
Mary grabbed the banister rail and muttered under her breath. Not another blow! How will they cope? She looked up the stairs; Ada had paused and was standing with her lips parted and her hands clutched to her chest, then Mary slowly lifted her head and looked up to the next landing to see her sister Dolly staring down at them.
‘I can’t take it, Dolly,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to come down.’
Dolly slowly descended, shaking her head. She patted Ada’s cheek as she passed and it was as if she were sleepwalking as she continued down the stairs. ‘I’m going to collect ’washing,’ she mumbled. ‘I shouldn’t be here really. I’m late.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Mary said softly. ‘Everybody’ll understand.’
Dolly looked at the telegram and her lips moved as she silently mouthed their name and address.
‘Is it you, missus?’ the boy asked.
Dolly nodded and he touched his cap and turned away, and Mary thought again that it wasn’t the right kind of job for such a young boy.
They sat down in Dolly’s neat as a pin room and Ada looked at her and mumbled. ‘It’s Isaac, Mam. He’s been killed at a place near – Yp—’
‘Ypres, is it, lovey?’ Mary asked and Ada nodded, tears rolling down her face.
‘Thing is,’ Ada murmured, her voice thick with grief, ‘I feel as if I hardly knew him. I should’ve married him afore, when he first asked me.’
Dolly sat with the telegram in her hand and looked down at it. ‘Should I wait till your da gets home?’ she asked Ada.
Ada shook her head. ‘You need to know, Mam. Mebbe one of ’lads is injured and coming home. Open it.’
Dolly’s fingers trembled as she tried to slit the thin paper, and then read the message inside. She handed it to Mary, who took it reluctantly.
She read it and swallowed hard. ‘It’s Stanley,’ she whispered. ‘And he’s not coming home.’
Mary had the painful task of breaking the news of Stanley’s death to Dolly’s husband Tom and their sons Bob and Charlie; they were all at work. First of all, though, she went to Baker Street and left a note for Nora Thornbury to say that her family had received bad news from abroad and she was informing the other relations and would be in later. They would understand, she knew, but nevertheless she didn’t want them to come back to a cold house and no dinner.
What a dreadful time, she grieved as she walked across to the Paragon railway station; bombings by Zeppelins, families killed in their beds and lately the endless casualty lists in the newspapers; and now, she sighed, there would be two more to add to the number.
She left messages to be given to Bob and Charlie, who were both elsewhere on trains, and then she called at Bob’s house and spoke to his wife Iris, who was expecting their second child fairly soon. ‘Ask him to go and see his mam when he comes home, will you, love? And our Ada.’
Iris knew how important families were at this time and how upset Bob would be to lose his brother. ‘What about Josh?’ she asked. ‘Has owt been heard about him?’
Mary shook her head. ‘Let’s hope that no news is good news, eh, love? Now, you go and have a sit down. Shall I mek you a cup of tea?’
‘I’m expecting my mam to call in,’ Iris said, ‘she’ll mek one. But you can stop if you like.’
Mary thanked her but said she’d better get off. She had yet to locate Stanley’s father, who, Dolly had told her, was working in one of the warehouses at the town docks that week, and Mary wasn’t relishing breaking the news to him. Tom was a man of few words – mainly because with a wife like Dolly it wasn’t always possible to get a word in edgeways – but she also knew he would hold in his grief and that wasn’t a good thing to do.
She was directed towards the back of one of the warehouses off Princes Dock, where she found him shifting large crates ready for loading on to a ship. He looked up and she knew she didn’t have to say anything. The news was etched on her stricken face.
‘Which one is it?’ he asked huskily.
‘Stanley.’
‘Gone? Or injured?’
Mary put her fingers to her lips to still them. ‘Gone,’ she choked. ‘I’m so sorry, Tom. Can you go home to our Dolly?’ She gulped down tears. ‘There’s more,’ she said. ‘Isaac, our Ada’s man. He’s gone too.’
He put down a crowbar he was clenching and reached for his jacket, which was hooked on a wall close by. ‘Come on then. We’d better get home.’
They walked in silence across the town; it was a calm late autumn day with the sun bright but not warm, as if winter were hovering near. Many women were wearing black and some men had black armbands and Mary wondered how many bright young lads who had gone singing and whistling from the city with a sense of adventure and derring-do, prepared to fight for their country, would be coming home. And if they did, how much would this dreadful war have changed them?
She remembered how proud Dolly and Tom had been when they had seen Stanley, the recr
uiting sergeant, outside the city hall telling the queue of men who were waiting to sign up what a wonderful life soldiering was. And mebbe it was once, she thought, and this war, so it was said, was the war to end all wars. I hope that’s right, she mused, and then our children’s children, and their children’s children, can sleep safe in their beds at night.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Josh had been resting for five days. It had been good to relax and chat of normal things; he’d seen Oswald, who told him he’d met Edie and Lucy recently, and then he’d shot off somewhere in a hurry. He’d had hot meals from the canteen, bought cigarettes and tobacco and had a good scrub down and washed his clothes to get rid of the lice. He was bothered about his feet, which felt spongy, but the nurse who looked at them just said try to keep them dry. He’d laughed at that and remarked easier said than done; she’d agreed that it was and given him some extra talcum powder to put inside his socks. But he felt in better spirits for being clean and fed and wrote a letter home to tell them everything was fine and that a rumour was going round that the enemy was losing heavily.
He had heard that the British army, including the Canadians, had lost a lot of men over the summer and early autumn during the earlier Ypres battles, though he didn’t mention that. It also worsened his concern over Stanley. The Germans had massacred a British line near Passchendaele; there had been several battles in that region over the last few months and he knew that Stanley’s battalion had been heading in that direction. It was shortly to be his platoon’s destination too, as soon as they received their orders.
The command came sooner than expected; the next day they were directed on to lorries on the first stage of their journey to the battlegrounds where, they were told, the ultimate prize – capturing the village of Passchendaele – would be waiting.
They were directed towards the trenches only recently vacated; most of them had been blown apart by shells and needed to be repacked with sandbags and duckboards. Many of the working party, the trencher men, were sickened by what they found and could be heard retching as they dug their spades into the wet ground, even though stretcher bearers and working parties had been there before them to rescue who or what they could find.
‘I think this might be the final battle of Ypres, sergeant.’ Henry Warrington came to speak quietly to Josh. ‘I gather that Haig will pull back whether we take Passchendaele or not. I … erm, I’ve written a letter home.’ He tapped an envelope in his hand. ‘If I give it to you – you know, in case I don’t make it – will you post it for me? I sent one from the canteen, but …’
Josh nodded. ‘Yeh, course I will, sir.’ He took it from him and slipped it into his top pocket. ‘I’ll give it back to you when we’re done here.’
Henry grinned back at him and put out his hand to shake. ‘I’ve been glad to have you by my side, Josh, and not fighting me as you once suggested we might.’
‘Did I?’ Josh laughed. ‘I wanted to fight everybody when I was a lad,’ he admitted. Then he became serious and his grin slipped. ‘But now I’ve had a bellyful and I’m done wi’ fighting for ever if we get out of here in one piece.’
Henry tightened his grip. ‘Me too,’ he said. ‘Let’s be sure that we make it.’
Oswald had a regular driver, Corporal Tommy Morris of the RAMC. When he first met him and enquired if he knew Stanley and Josh Morris, Tommy told him he was a cousin: his father was one of the brothers of their father Tom.
The two of them got on well together. Tommy was not only an expert on motor engines and dynamos but also a fearless driver, and took many shortcuts over land instead of roads in order to reach either a field ambulance station or a CCS in half the time it would normally take, so that Oswald could quickly set up the X-ray machine to locate the broken fragments of bullets or shrapnel lodged inside the injured men, and the medical officer would then direct them to the nearest place where they had more surgeons and facilities to remove them.
Both of them had an unerring instinct to turn up where they were needed and both also acted as stretcher bearers when necessary. Now, though, they were in the middle of an argument and rank didn’t immediately play a part.
‘We’re not needed in Passchendaele,’ Corporal Morris complained. ‘It’ll be too bloody, too messy and too muddy. I’ll never get ’lorry through and you don’t want us to turn it over and lose your precious machine, do you? We’d be better going to a base hospital.’
‘It’s not my machine,’ Oswald roared back. ‘If it belongs to anybody it belongs to Marie Curie and I defy you to tell her that we must take it where it’s needed!’
Corporal Morris continued to argue but Oswald would have none of it. In the end he shouted at him. ‘Right! I’ll drive the damned lorry myself,’ and proceeded to climb into the cab. ‘It’s not that far from here.’
‘You don’t know how to drive,’ Morris claimed, ‘and besides, I’ve got ’keys.’ He patted his pocket triumphantly.
Oswald jumped down from the lorry. ‘I’ll know how by the time I get there. Give me the keys and that’s an order. I’m pulling rank, corporal, and I’ll put you on a charge if you refuse.’
Corporal Morris’s mouth dropped open and he handed over the keys. ‘You wouldn’t.’
‘Probably not,’ Oswald admitted. ‘I wouldn’t want to see you in front of a firing squad.’ He looked at him squarely. ‘Are you coming or not?’
‘Yeah, I suppose so.’ Tommy Morris took back the keys. ‘Somebody’s got to look after you. I was warned you were a nutty boffin, and now I know it’s true.’
Oswald glared at him but hid a grin. It was true he probably would have turned the lorry over, and as they lurched over ruts and rubble and wrecked roads towards the outskirts of the village and he saw the boggy land with its deep potholes and craters where men and horses could lose their heavy gun carriers, he knew that the corporal’s concerns were justified.
It was dark by the time they reached the canteen that had been set up in a small wood, well away from the front line but within sound of any battle that was expected. General Haig wanted the prestige of finally wresting the Passchendaele Ridge away from the Germans and this, it seemed, might be his last chance. He had brought in the Canadians under General Sir Arthur Currie, who had his own ideas of a battle strategy; Currie was a commander who stayed with his men out in the field and knew of the obstacles that had to be overcome.
The canteen was being run by the YMCA and they were given hot soup and sausages and hoped for a quiet night, though they both doubted that would be possible, which was confirmed by a Canadian soldier with an injured foot in a temporary splint who had been left behind by his division.
‘Our units are up there on the western flank with the French,’ he said. ‘You’ll hear fireworks before long. I wish I could have been there with them.’
You might find you were pleased not to be, Oswald thought. Not everyone will come out unscathed. There had been thousands killed in the battles across Flanders and the bombardment of Ypres had been going on since July; they were now at the beginning of November. Three months, he considered, and for what?
They slept in a hut until early morning and as a cold dawn was beginning to show across the horizon Oswald heard the first explosions of the artillery offensive; he looked out of the door and saw the sky redden and then turn black and then yellow. He sniffed. No smell as yet, but he was almost sure the yellow was a gas cloud.
‘Come on, corporal.’ He shook Tommy Morris by the shoulder. ‘Time we were off.’
‘No breakfast again,’ Tommy mumbled. ‘I’m going to complain to my quartermaster about unfair working conditions.’
Oswald smiled. What was it about the Morris clan that kept them so cheerful?
The canteen was open and they grabbed a bacon sandwich and a cup of hot coffee that they gulped down before moving off. The reverberations of explosions and artillery gunfire were deafening, and they knew that they would be more useful in this battle as stretcher bearers and first-aiders tha
n endeavouring to use the X-ray machine. ‘We can use the lorry as an ambulance to get the injured to a hospital,’ Oswald said. ‘This is going to be another almighty gruesome battle.’
An hour later they were approaching the immense battle area. The British field guns were firing, as were the Canadians’; the Passchendaele Ridge was being assaulted from all sides and yet the enemy in a final desperate attempt to save their line were answering back. The ferocious gunfire, the shouts of armed men and the barrage and clamour of explosives was overwhelming.
‘It’s sheer slaughter.’ Oswald couldn’t keep the anguish from his voice as Corporal Morris parked. ‘So many men. Such carnage.’ He went to the rear of the vehicle and pulled out the folded canvas stretcher that had been allocated to them. The X-ray machine was of no use here. It was physical help that was needed now.
Henry rang the gas bell violently and insistently. He’d seen the insidious yellow cloud released from the enemy’s gas cylinders heading towards them before he’d heard the gunfire, and he prayed that the masks and respirators would suffice to help them breathe and that the toxic substances would not penetrate. The medics and officers had been warned that German scientists were constantly working on various poison gases, and their British counterparts were working to find a deterrent. One of the suggestions put forward was that the soldiers should make a flat pack of mud, something that was readily available, wrap it in a cotton handkerchief and place it inside their respirators, so that if attacked by gas they would be able to breathe through the mud. Not all the soldiers complied, but many did, including Henry and Josh.
