Field Service

by Robert Edric

  ‘Ah, that again,’ Lucas said.

  Guthrie turned back to Reid. ‘Jonathan Montague Symes Guthrie,’ he said. ‘Chaplain to the Royal West Surreys, and latterly – as Lieutenant Lucas has already somewhat clumsily suggested – adviser on spiritual matters to the Imperial Commission.’

  ‘Are you here to assist at Prezière?’ Reid said.

  ‘And much more,’ Guthrie said, smiling.

  ‘Much more,’ Lucas said softly, and Reid heard the warning in the words.

  Meaning what? That the man had been directed by Wheeler to watch over and report on what now happened at Morlancourt?

  Lucas rose from where he sat and began to gather up his possessions.

  Outside, a horn sounded, followed by shouting from the gathered men.

  ‘Captain Lucas’s lorries are here,’ Drake said. ‘And a motor car.’

  ‘My sturdy chariot,’ Lucas said, going out on to the platform. ‘Now all I need are my bow of burnished gold and my arrows of desire.’

  Guthrie shook his head at the words. ‘He displays his heathen’s credentials and appetites like other men wear their medals and ribbons,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ Reid said, doing his best not to smile.

  Guthrie followed Alexander Lucas out towards the lorries.

  Reid went to the doorway. At the edge of the station yard, Lucas was already standing in the passenger seat of the car and looking down at everything around him. He called out instructions and his men immediately started loading their own scattered equipment.

  9

  REID SPENT THE remainder of the day in the cemetery. Work continued on channelling the small stream and keeping its water away from the recently excavated graves. He had argued against deepening the culvert, but Wheeler had insisted on this. It seemed to Reid that all it had achieved was to increase the flow of water in its new course. He made a note in his log to request a visit from one of the Commission’s supervising engineers the next time he met with Wheeler. Meanwhile, he calculated which of the short lines of graves on the cemetery’s higher land might now be excavated without delay in readiness for the bodies Alexander Lucas would soon deliver to him.

  At mid-morning he blew his whistle to signal a break. The men immediately stopped what they were doing and congregated on the few patches of long grass. They ate and drank and smoked. Most sat in small groups, and a few of the younger ones kicked a ball back and forth. Reid wanted to tell them to rest after their labours, to save their strength for what was left of the day ahead, but he had long since learned to say nothing. He would allow them half an hour in that heat, and except for the few men who now approached him with questions or who came to him for fresh instructions, he remained apart from them.

  He sat against a tree at the edge of the small copse overlooking the slope and brought his log of works up to date. Some of the men, he saw, still carried the pieces of oil cloth they had used to sit on during Active Service. The material, in addition to keeping their backsides dry, was widely considered a preventative against piles. Reid himself had once organized the distribution of such pieces from the factory in Bapaume, when the mayor and his aldermen there had made a ceremony of handing over the damaged rolls. The factory itself had lost its roof and most of its walls and had soon afterwards been abandoned and fallen into ruin.

  He was close to finishing the log when someone called to him and he shielded his eyes to look around him. The voice had come from behind him, somewhere in the trees, and the sound of someone coming through the undergrowth caused Reid to rise and turn. The voice called again, and this time Reid recognized Jonathan Guthrie. He called back, and a moment later the chaplain appeared amid the thin trunks. There was someone following him, and Reid watched as Caroline Mortimer was finally revealed. She came along the same narrow path a few paces behind the man.

  ‘We heard your whistle,’ Guthrie said, emerging into the open. ‘I must say, I doubt I shall ever hear the same thing again without the sound sending a chill up my spine.’

  ‘No,’ Reid said. At the beginning of the work on the cemetery, he had rung a small bell, but the sound of this had not carried, and the newly arrived workers had complained about every minute lost to them.

  ‘We met on the far side of the hill,’ Guthrie said. ‘Caroline was explaining her own duties here.’

  ‘Duties?’ Reid said.

  ‘To her fallen nurses,’ Guthrie said.

  ‘Of course.’ It surprised Reid to hear the man, only so recently arrived, call her by her Christian name.

  ‘I was showing Reverend Guthrie the view towards the river,’ Caroline said. ‘When the land beyond the canal is restored and planted again, it should provide a beautiful setting for your cemetery.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Reid said.

  It was something he had not considered. It had always surprised him to see how swiftly the farmers had reclaimed and then planted their land as the fighting had come and gone around them. Even when the local population had been forcibly evacuated en masse, they had invariably returned at the first opportunity to resume their work, despite all the warnings to wait until the land was made safe again.

  ‘They do a pretty good job,’ Guthrie said. ‘At Aubigny they filled in the most enormous craters and were ploughing over the old trenches and picket lines within days of our departure. I daresay we shall be wondering where everything went before we know it.’ He looked around him at the scattered men. ‘Should they not be working?’ he said.

  Reid heard the note of disapproval in his voice. ‘On a break,’ he told him.

  Guthrie pulled back his cuff and looked at his watch. ‘I see,’ he said.

  Caroline Mortimer came away from the chaplain to stand beside Reid. ‘I hear you’re being delayed by flooding,’ she said. ‘The villagers know everything.’

  ‘I’m sure they do,’ Reid said. He pointed to the stream. ‘Whoever drew up the plans probably imagined it to be a lot smaller and considerably more intermittent than it actually is.’

  ‘It’s water,’ Guthrie said, but nothing more.

  The three of them then sat together at the edge of the trees.

  ‘And you?’ Reid asked Guthrie. ‘Do you have a specific duty here?’ It was something he had been considering since meeting the man earlier in the day.

  ‘As I believe I told you, I was chaplain to the Royal West Surreys. Over the past year I have officiated at a great many of their burials. Brigadier Ronaldson was assiduous at locating as many of our lost and missing men as humanly possible. He’s back at home now. I promised him I would continue to do what I could. I’m here for another three months, on attachment to the Commission. You might say I am finishing the job for him.’

  This answer left Reid none the wiser, and he tried to remember if any of the Surrey dead had already been assigned to Morlancourt.

  ‘You will no doubt be aware, of course, that a number of recently retrieved Surreys are to come to you here,’ Guthrie said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then, naturally, I shall perform my duties here on their behalf.’

  Reid could only say, ‘Of course,’ again.

  Guthrie took off his cap and wiped his forehead with a clean white handkerchief. Everything he said continued to sound both detached and rehearsed. ‘I was hoping you might show me on your plans where the graves will eventually lie.’

  To hide his ignorance, Reid explained that he would need to consult the maps in his room back in Morlancourt. He guessed that some of the men awaiting delivery would remain unidentified. ‘Perhaps you might be able to help with identification where necessary,’ he suggested.

  ‘Of course,’ Guthrie said, but with little conviction. ‘Though I daresay the opportunity for that, like a great deal else, is already long past. I knew a good many of those men personally. I wrote to their families.’ He glanced at Caroline Mortimer sitting close beside him. ‘I told Colonel Wheeler – Edmund – that he must avail himself of my services at all times. The war itself ma
y be long over, and all that … I spent a week in the Flesquières salient when the pits there were uncovered. A hundred and seventy bodies were removed, and all of them – imagine that, Captain Reid – all of them, every single one, were fully and properly identified. I daresay there were many other instances when not a solitary corpse was afforded that same privilege.’

  ‘Many,’ Reid said, uncertain how they had come so swiftly on to this other path. He wanted to signal to the man to watch what he said in front of Caroline.

  Catching something of Reid’s concern, Caroline herself said, ‘I am equally fortunate in knowing the identities of every one of my nurses. I, too, wrote to their families – their parents, usually – and I gained considerable balm from both writing those letters and receiving their many replies.’ She closed her eyes as she said this, perhaps remembering the women.

  ‘At Havrincourt,’ Guthrie went on, almost as though she had not spoken, ‘I held a service close to our support artillery. The shells flew over our heads as we knelt and prayed. Nine-fives, long-distance jobs.’

  It seemed an odd remark to make, and Reid was reminded of an incident when three of his own men had been killed by a solitary shell that had fallen on the railhead at Brouchy, which had landed a dud but had then exploded the following day as the men were loading timber for new trench work.

  ‘I mention this because it is my intention to hold a service here,’ Guthrie said loudly, distracting Reid from his thoughts.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘A service. I shall hold one here, at the cemetery. Soon. Sometime in the coming weeks.’

  ‘While the work is going on?’ Reid said. ‘Surely not?’

  Plans had already been made by the Commission for inaugural ceremonies when all the nearby burial grounds were completed and handed over to their eventual keepers.

  ‘You’ll need to talk to Wheeler,’ Reid said, angry at what Guthrie had just proposed, but convinced that Wheeler would prevent whatever the man was planning while the ground itself remained in a state of such obvious turmoil and disarray.

  ‘I’ve already done so,’ Guthrie said. ‘Edmund told me I must do whatever I see fit to honour the Surreys – everyone, in fact.’

  ‘I doubt if—’ Reid began to say.

  ‘In fact, I was rather hoping you might see your way to rearranging your schedules somewhat – I doubt they are set in stone – so that all the necessary graves are dug and filled at the same time. Edmund certainly seemed to believe this to be well within your capabilities. He told me to tell you that you might contact him directly if you have any concerns regarding what I’ve just asked of you.’

  Reid saw how completely he had been outmanoeuvred. He quickly calculated the changes required to his schedules, and what extra work this might entail, especially in light of Alexander Lucas’s earlier revelation. He was convinced that Wheeler – Edmund – had only agreed to Guthrie’s proposal because it had been put to the Commission in a manner that had made it difficult for anyone to refuse him. It would be almost impossible, Reid knew, especially given the labour and transportation required, to reinter all the Surreys either soon or at a single ceremony, even if this had already been sanctioned by some distant figure at the Commission.

  ‘We usually manage ten to fifteen burials a day,’ he said. ‘To correspond with the bodies delivered to us each morning.’

  Guthrie considered this, clearly aware of Reid’s objections to what he had just proposed. ‘I shall be seeing Edmund later this evening,’ he said. ‘Perhaps he and I might consider things then at greater length.’

  ‘And say what?’ Reid said. ‘Like I say, the pace and routine of the work here is dictated to us by the number of bodies – mostly reinterments and new retrievals these days – sent to us from the Graves depots. Most days we fulfil our quotas, and other days we fall behind. Even here, some men are interred and then later removed for burial elsewhere. It’s more common than you’d think. I imagine even Colonel Wheeler—’

  ‘Please, I meant no criticism of you or your achievement here,’ Guthrie said. He looked at Caroline and smiled as he said this, as though expecting her to share his surprise at Reid’s objections. He then held Reid’s arm for a moment and Reid felt himself flinch at the man’s touch. ‘And I certainly never meant to cause you any offence, Captain Reid.’

  Everything Guthrie said and suggested kept Reid at a disadvantage.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Reid said, regretting even this small concession. He looked away from Guthrie, watching a group of diggers who lay along the low banks of the stream and scooped water from it in their cupped palms. He regretted more than ever Caroline Mortimer’s presence beside them.

  ‘Perhaps I might be able to do something similar for my nurses,’ she said hesitantly. ‘A small ceremony, I mean. Something separate from whatever Colonel Wheeler intends at a later date.’

  ‘I hardly think—’ Guthrie began to say, but stopped abruptly when she turned to him and held his gaze.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Reid said.

  The graves for the women were already dug and waiting. Every man who had worked on them had known who they were intended for, and greater care than usual had been put into their preparation on that account. Several of the diggers had even approached Reid to say that they would appreciate some further element of ceremony to the day’s routine when the women finally came to them. Given the usual constraints, Reid had promised them he would do his best. Perhaps what Caroline was now suggesting – after all, she was unlikely to be refused by Wheeler – would be the perfect solution.

  Guthrie looked again at his watch and, seeing this, Reid took out his whistle and blew on it. Caroline had already covered her ears with her hands, but the sound surprised Guthrie and he gave a start, afterwards laughing at himself.

  All across the cemetery, men rose from where they had been lying and sitting and walked singly and in small groups back to their work.

  ‘“See them toil in the fields of the Lord”,’ Guthrie said, then he too rose and without a word to either Reid or Caroline, walked quickly down the slope towards the road.

  10

  REID SAW NOTHING of Alexander Lucas for the whole of the following day. As agreed, he had arranged a room for Lucas in his own small pension and had anticipated spending the evening with him upon his return from Prezière. But by ten that night, Lucas had not appeared, and neither had his men and their lorries.

  When Lucas did finally come, at six the following morning, he was alone and driving himself. He sat in the street beneath Reid’s window and sounded his horn.

  Reid went to his window and Lucas beckoned for him to go down to him.

  Reid arrived at the car and started to tell him about the room he had arranged.

  ‘I’ll bring some of my stuff later,’ Lucas said, interrupting him, yawning, and showing little interest in what Reid was telling him. ‘It’s a Hudson,’ he said, meaning the car. ‘Last time, they gave me a Daimler. Beautiful machine. I own a Sunbeam at home.’ He yawned again and stopped speaking.

  It was clear to Reid that the man was exhausted. ‘Did you get your bodies?’ he asked him.

  ‘We made a start,’ Lucas said.

  ‘You were there all day and night?’

  ‘Some of us.’

  Lucas started the engine and drove them out of the village, stopping a few minutes later alongside the near-empty Ancre canal.

  ‘What is it?’ Reid asked eventually as the two men walked along the embankment.

  Lucas arched his back and swung his arms. ‘Wheeler sent a despatch rider to await our arrival,’ he said. He sat down on the slope, his feet only a yard above the surface of the green and stagnant water.

  Reid sat beside him. Insects swarmed over the surface of the drained channel and rushes grew along most of its length. Its faintly sulphurous smell filled the warming air.

  ‘Because of what he already knew you’d find there?’ Reid said.

  ‘It’s possible. The rider was ther
e to tell me to make the site secure, keep everyone out, and to make sure that every body we retrieved was properly identified – as far as possible – and then fully logged. To be honest, having seen the place and the bodies, my concerns remain elsewhere.’

  ‘Meaning what?’ Reid said, already guessing.

  Alexander Lucas rubbed his face with both his hands. ‘The bodies were more severely burned than the farmer’s account had suggested.’

  Reid watched ripples along the surface of the canal where sluggish fish rose to take the flies.

  ‘Was the farmer there?’ he said.

  ‘He was working in the fields during the day, but he left in the evening before I could talk to him. I camped in the ruined barn.’

  ‘With the bodies?’

  Lucas smiled. ‘With the bodies. We counted thirty-six of them. None of them are covered as such, just lined up on the ground under the rubble of the collapsed building.’

  ‘And the burning?’

  ‘Like I said – worse than I’d anticipated, but in most cases still only superficial. The corpses were certainly all intact. It looks to me as though somebody poured petrol or paraffin over them and set them alight.’

  ‘Were you able to make your identifications?’

  ‘They’d been there almost two years. Nothing was instantly identifiable, but most of them were in some kind of uniform and with kit attached. There are some indications of looting – not many watches or cigarette cases or small arms, for instance. But there they are in their neat and tidy rows all the same. Believe me, I wish all our retrievals were as easily accomplished.’

  ‘Does their being laid out like that suggest that whoever did it was – I don’t know – showing them some measure of respect?’

  ‘It’s a possibility. I’ve seen it before, though usually with far fewer bodies.’

  ‘Then perhaps they were simply gathered up and laid out by men who assumed they’d be collected by our own teams afterwards,’ Reid suggested.

  Lucas shrugged. ‘Besides, as Wheeler keeps reminding me, all that matters now is that we’ve actually found and recovered them.’ He yawned and stretched.