Field Service

by Robert Edric

  Then Drake turned to Alexander Lucas and said, ‘I was talking to a man in Albert a few days ago – Provost Crew, served for two years in the Battle Police – said he remembered you from Ginchy. Name of Anderson.’

  ‘It rings no bells,’ Lucas said.

  ‘Spoke very highly of you, as it happens. Said he was in the clearing-up brigade the morning after the so-called assault at the place.’

  ‘I was certainly there,’ Lucas said. He turned from Reid to face Drake.

  ‘He said you were knocked about a bit, that you were lucky to walk away from things.’

  It seemed to Reid that Drake was almost pushing Lucas to say much more.

  Lucas said nothing for a moment, concentrating on lighting another cigarette. ‘There were a hundred and fifty of us who were a bit more than knocked about a bit,’ he said eventually.

  ‘He told me that, too. If I see him again – not very likely, considering – I’ll tell him I spoke to you. Tell him you came through, shall I?’

  ‘You do that,’ Lucas said, but with no enthusiasm. ‘You tell him I came through. Perhaps he’ll have some idea of how many of the other hundred and forty-nine did the same.’

  ‘I’m sure Sergeant Drake only meant—’ Reid said.

  ‘But, as you say,’ Lucas went on, his voice raised, ‘it isn’t very likely that you’ll see him again, this Anderson, so we’ll never know, shall we? Not much call these days for the Battle Police squads, I should imagine. Not now that all the battles have been fought and paid for by others.’

  Drake said nothing in reply to this.

  It had always struck Reid as a ridiculous title, a ridiculous conjunction of both words and responsibilities.

  He wondered at the true nature of what had just passed between the two men, guessing only that both knew more than they were letting on. There was nothing suspicious in any of this; neither Drake nor Lucas were given to this kind of fond, embellished reminiscing. Besides, Reid doubted if many men would have anything to say in favour of the disliked police battalions.

  He was distracted from these thoughts by the arrival of several of Lucas’s men, who came to tell him that two of the lorries and some of his workers were about to leave for their new quarters in Amiens. Lucas agreed to let them go. The remainder of his men would return to their quarters in Saint-Quentin in the remaining vehicles when the work was finished.

  The men left, and Drake walked with them back to the waiting holes and coffins.

  When they were again alone, and just as Reid was about to suggest that they too return to work, Lucas took a postcard from his tunic pocket and gave it to him.

  At first, Reid thought this had something to do with the communication Lucas had received from his wife’s mother, but turning the card to read it he saw that it was nothing more than a dirty, unsent Field Service card made out by one of the men who had been retrieved from Prezière, and who now, presumably, lay in one of the nearby coffins.

  ‘According to that,’ Lucas said, ‘he was in good health, his spirits were high, and he was in a quiet part of the line. He’d been recently wounded, but only lightly, and was hopeful of being moved into a quiet sector as a result. His next letter home was going to be written at the first opportunity, despite having heard nothing from there for some time. He hopes everyone is well and hopes, too, to see them all soon.’ He took back the card from Reid. ‘As you can see, none of that wonderfully reassuring news ever reached anyone at home.’

  ‘Was he—’

  ‘One of those men with a head wound? He was. He still had the field dressing over his forearm where he’d been hit earlier. Shrapnel, probably.’

  ‘Suggesting he was at Prezière when the Germans overran the place.’

  ‘And wondering, like everyone from Prezière all the way back to Paris, when all that overrunning was finally going to come to an end, yes.’ Lucas turned to watch the departing lorries reverse through the gates into the lane beyond. Men ran and jumped on to them. Others stood nearby and watched them go. A cloud of blue smoke formed above the vehicles and then drifted slowly in their wake.

  21

  AS REID HAD anticipated, and despite the additional help brought by Lucas, that day’s work ended later than usual, and it was almost eight in the evening before he and the last of his exhausted men were able to leave the site.

  Several hours earlier, following the departure of Lucas and the remains of his workforce, and when it had become clear to Reid that the work would not be completed by the end of the usual working day, he had gathered everyone together and told them they would need to work longer. He had made one of his small, hopeful speeches to them, explaining something of the history of the bodies from Prezière and offering them time off in lieu in the days ahead. But the mood of the workers had remained sullen and unwilling, and it was only when Drake had intervened and given most of the men the following day off that they had acceded to Reid’s demands and returned to their labours.

  Later, when the work was finished and as they were all preparing to leave the site for the night, Drake returned to Reid and told him that he had made his offer to the men based on the knowledge that there would be no bodies on the following day’s train, only stores.

  Reid asked him how he knew this.

  ‘A sergeant pal at the Albert depot,’ Drake said. ‘It looks as though Wheeler or Jessop imagined we might need at least two days for this little lot.’

  ‘How much do you know?’ Reid asked him. ‘About the bodies, I mean.’

  ‘What does it matter?’ Drake said. ‘It’s done now.’

  ‘Will there be anything on the train?’

  ‘Supplies, I should imagine. Nothing you and me and Benoît’s boys can’t manage.’

  It occurred to Reid, as Drake was telling him all this, that neither Wheeler nor Jessop would be in any position to object to these concessions now that the men from Prezière were buried and all the necessary paperwork would soon be handed over.

  Drake left him then, to catch the last of their own departing lorries.

  Reid walked the two miles back to Morlancourt alone.

  Approaching his pension, he saw Caroline Mortimer sitting at a table of a nearby café. A man in uniform sat with her, his back to Reid, and at first he imagined this to be Lucas.

  Only when Reid drew closer, and when Caroline saw him and rose to greet him, did the man turn and reveal himself to be Jonathan Guthrie.

  It had been Reid’s intention, following their encounter and loose arrangement earlier that morning, to return to his room, wash and change his clothes, and then go in search of Caroline.

  ‘Captain Reid,’ Guthrie said, standing as Reid reached them.

  Caroline pulled out a chair for Reid.

  ‘You look exhausted,’ she told him.

  Reid told them about his day’s work.

  ‘Of course,’ Guthrie said. ‘Edmund said you were taking them on board today. Well done.’

  Taking them on board, Reid thought. Of course.

  Caroline filled a glass from the bottle on the table and gave it to him.

  Reid emptied this in a single swallow and she refilled it.

  ‘It’s foul stuff,’ Guthrie said. He picked up his own glass and sipped it.

  Not what you’re used to at your dinners with Edmund.

  ‘Alexander was here earlier,’ Caroline said.

  ‘Yes,’ Guthrie said. ‘He told us you’d be along shortly.’

  ‘We invited him to join us and await your arrival.’

  ‘Apparently, he had a bit to do,’ Guthrie said. ‘As I’m sure we can all appreciate. These are busy days for all of us. Captain Jessop put it most succinctly last night when he responded to a toast with the observation that we are laying the foundations here for a lifetime of remembering. Quite a phrase, I’m sure you’ll agree.’

  Caroline signalled to Reid that she regretted the man’s overbearing presence as much as he did.

  ‘I’m surprised Colonel Wheeler didn’t want y
ou out there with us today to say a few words,’ Reid said to him, his voice betraying nothing of his true intent.

  ‘As a matter of fact, he did consult me on the subject. However, both he and I came to the conclusion – and especially taking into account your ongoing labours at the place – that anything of that nature might be somewhat premature.’

  ‘Only, you seemed keen earlier to become involved at every opportunity,’ Reid said.

  ‘I’m sure the appropriate occasion will present itself soon enough,’ Guthrie said. ‘Besides …’

  ‘Yes?’ Reid said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You said “besides”.’

  ‘Oh, I merely meant that those men today will be honoured alongside everyone else you are interring at the place when the time comes to do so. The Commission, as I’m sure you’re aware, has great plans for when the time is right.’

  ‘I see,’ Reid said, draining his second glass.

  The exchange was ended when a waiter came out and put a basket of bread and a pot of pale butter on the small table. The butter immediately attracted several flies, which walked in circles around the rim of the pot until Caroline put her handkerchief over it.

  ‘Did you manage to lay them all to rest?’ she asked Reid. ‘Alexander told me that they far exceeded your usual day’s work.’

  ‘We did,’ he said. ‘In lieu of which, Drake has promised the men a day’s rest tomorrow.’

  ‘Drake?’ Guthrie said, a note of forced incredulity in his voice. ‘Your sergeant? I’m not sure if Edmund—’

  ‘No, me neither,’ Reid said. ‘But it’s done now. And given the circumstances, I’m sure Colonel Wheeler will understand and agree to the break.’

  Guthrie considered this. ‘Quite,’ he said.

  Reid knew that everything he said or suggested would be repeated to Wheeler, but rather than be made wary by this, he felt strangely pleased at the prospect.

  Guthrie spun the glass he held. ‘Yesterday evening, I tasted my very first Yquem ’09. Nothing like one of the great vintages, of course, but still …’

  ‘Quite,’ Reid said, catching Caroline Mortimer’s quick smile as she pulled the bread apart and started to chew on a piece.

  ‘I wish they’d cut the stuff,’ Guthrie said. ‘Instead of forever handling it like they do.’

  Caroline called inside for another bottle of wine.

  ‘Jonathan was just telling me that Colonel Wheeler has asked him to conduct the Sunday-morning service in Saint-Quentin,’ she said to Reid.

  ‘I volunteered my services and Edmund was only too happy to accept,’ Guthrie said. ‘So you see, I do have my uses, I do serve some purpose in all of this, however limited when compared to the efforts of others.’ He lifted his glass, as though about to propose a toast, perhaps even to himself. ‘Better still, I have succeeded in persuading Mrs Mortimer to attend the service.’ He turned to Reid. ‘Perhaps you yourself – and Lieutenant Lucas, of course – perhaps you, too, might see your way to accepting a small measure of spiritual consolation in these unsettled times.’

  Consolation?

  Guthrie went on. ‘I shall, of course, be speaking of your work here – not you, specifically, you understand, but of the Commission’s great labours as a whole – and of all that is being achieved on behalf of the living and the dead in pointing the way towards a hopeful and more enlightened future.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Reid said.

  In Albert, there were two services every Sunday at the Army church two streets back from the Commission’s hotel headquarters, and though all the serving men stationed in the vicinity and employed on the Commission’s work were encouraged to attend at least one of these, very few did so. Someone had come up with the idea of distributing mail from a lorry outside the church following the morning service, but even that had failed as a lure.

  ‘Well?’ Guthrie said.

  ‘I doubt I shall be in your congregation,’ Reid said. It was far from the answer he would have given the man had Caroline not been present.

  ‘I thought perhaps you might accompany Mrs Mortimer now that she finds herself abandoned here.’ He smiled at Caroline as he said it.

  ‘Abandoned?’

  ‘He means Mary Ellsworth,’ Caroline said.

  ‘I have, of course, also been working on my service for her nurses,’ Guthrie said. ‘I’ll pull out all the stops, so to speak, rest assured.’

  They were interrupted again by the same waiter, who came to see what they had called for.

  Caroline asked him in French for another bottle of wine, something better than the bottle on the table if he had it. He began to insist that what he had already brought out for them was of good quality, but Guthrie stopped him by holding up his palm to the boy, and then by throwing what remained in his glass to the ground.

  Caroline apologized to the waiter for this crude display, and he picked up the empty bottle and left them.

  ‘Well, I certainly think he received our message loud and clear this time,’ Guthrie said, pleased with himself.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he did,’ Reid said.

  A thought then occurred to him. ‘Will you be officiating at the opening of the cemetery?’ he asked Guthrie. ‘I mean when it’s finally completed and opened to visitors?’ He had never known when this was likely to be, exactly, and he had certainly never imagined that he himself might still be there to actually attend any such ceremony, or even be invited as a guest of honour. The event, when it did finally come, he guessed, would be attended only by the higher-ranking Commission members still in France, by officers representing the regiments interred there, and by the families of the buried men, their only true mourners. He and his workers, he knew, would be like the gravediggers at any ordinary funeral – standing back and hidden from the grieving family.

  He regretted asking, and braced himself for Guthrie’s answer.

  ‘Naturally,’ Guthrie said. ‘Here and elsewhere. Myself and others. In fact, it was another of our points of discussion last night. Edmund was outlining the timetable for the completion of various sites. I won’t be here the whole time until then, of course. My calling at home, you understand. But when the call does come, you can rest assured that I shall answer it and return to do my sacred duty.’

  Everything Guthrie now said clothed him further in his self-anointed glory. The man looked as self-satisfied as Reid had ever seen him.

  Seizing his advantage, Guthrie went on, ‘You know as well as I do, surely, Captain Reid, that everything these days is aimed towards some greater goal, that there is purpose in everything, however menial-seeming, that we do here. I am a Man of God, and it is where your own charges now rest – in His Holy Kingdom, and secure in the knowledge of His grace and His comfort and His protection.’

  It was a ridiculous and convoluted thing for the man to say, especially considering where they were and the day just past, but, as ever, Guthrie was pleased with himself and these unassailable confections.

  The waiter returned with a new bottle, already opened, put it on the table and left before any of them could confront him further. Caroline called out her thanks to him as he disappeared back into the café’s dark interior.

  Where they sat, the evening sun fell on the wall above them, casting the crumbling brickwork and painted plaster into shadow. The empty building next to them had recently been flattened and the rubble piled in mounds across the empty site. Pieces of shattered furniture and doors and window frames stood waiting to be burned. The children of Morlancourt made this and other similar sites their playgrounds, and several – Reid couldn’t tell whether they were boys or girls – ran back and forth across the broken ground. Benoît had told him that the lost building had been Morlancourt’s last remaining boulangerie, and watching the running children now and listening to their cries, he found himself wondering what the place might have looked like all those years earlier, before the war had come and pressed its hand upon the place.

  Guthrie sipped at the new wine and gr
imaced. ‘It’s every bit as bad as before,’ he said, drawing Reid from his brief reverie.

  ‘What did you expect?’ Reid said to him, and he raised his own glass for Caroline to fill.

  Then Guthrie rose from his seat. ‘I’m afraid I have to leave,’ he said. ‘As you might imagine, I have a great deal to prepare if I am to be ready for Sunday.’ It was only Wednesday.

  ‘Of course you do,’ Reid said.

  ‘Of course,’ Caroline repeated. She lifted her hand to the man, which Guthrie took and kissed.

  The chaplain took a step away from them, then paused and turned.

  ‘Oh, I almost forgot to say, Captain Reid.’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘Something else I discussed with Edmund and Captain Jessop yesterday evening.’ Guthrie took an envelope from his pocket and laid it on the table in front of Reid. ‘It seems that you are to expect the man from Neuville on tomorrow’s train. Chap called Etherington. I hope allowing your sergeant to be so gracious with his favours to the men won’t cause you any problems in the matter.’

  ‘Drake was told there would be only supplies.’

  ‘I’m sure he was, but believe me, the man is definitely coming.’

  More subterfuge? Reid thought, but knew that to contest anything Guthrie now said would only give him further advantage.

  ‘Then I’m sure we’ll be ready for him,’ he said.

  ‘Even without your labourers?’

  ‘With them or without them.’

  ‘Then I shall—’ Guthrie stopped abruptly.

  ‘What? Tell Wheeler?’

  ‘If you must know, it was Captain Jessop who asked me to let you know.’

  ‘He could have come himself,’ Reid said.

  ‘I daresay the man has a hundred other, more pressing things to do.’

  ‘Of course,’ Reid said. He rubbed at the earth caked in the hairs of his forearms. He suddenly felt as exhausted as Caroline said he looked.

  ‘I shall leave you,’ Guthrie said, having completed the drama of his departure.

  Just go, Reid wanted to shout at the man.

  When he was finally lost to their view, Reid picked up the envelope and opened it. He read it and laid it back down. Caroline gestured to it and he indicated for her to read its few details.