The Glorious Dead

by Tim Atkinson

  ‘Aye, well,’ Jack says. ‘Bit of a story, actually.’

  Katia raises her eyebrows. Jack takes a long, deep gulp of his beer. ‘Bloody hell, lass, that tastes foul.’

  ‘Foul?’ she looks at him, confused rather than concerned.

  ‘Dreadful. Awful.’

  ‘You don’t like it?’

  ‘Nay, lass. Not straight away. I don’t like owt I drink straight away these days.’

  ‘Owt?’

  ‘Anything,’ he translates. ‘Everything tastes of bloody petrol, that’s the trouble.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘That’s how we used to get it at the Front,’ he says. ‘Water, that is. They used to send it up in old petrol cans.’

  ‘That is terrible.’

  ‘Aye, well … It certainly tasted terrible.’

  Silence. He looks at her as she carries on decanting the beer from jug to tankard, going along each of the mugs in turn.

  ‘You and your aye, well,’ she says as the ale froths at the top of the mugs. ‘What does that mean anyway – aye, well?’ She stops and looks at him, waiting for the beer to settle, waiting for an answer. Jack shrugs and smiles, then turns away, unsure what to say. ‘I am sorry. You have had a difficult day,’ she says.

  ‘Aye, well … Sorry, lass. I mean, yes. Yes, you could say that.’

  ‘Could I? Why don’t you tell me about it, Jacques?’ She leans forward, resting her hand on his arm.

  ‘There was a bit o’ trouble this afternoon, that’s all – with the prisoners,’ he says as he wipes the froth from his lips. ‘Nowt much, but still.’

  ‘With the Germans?’

  ‘Aye, lass – with t’Germans.’

  ‘What were you doing with the Germans?’

  ‘They were digging graves over at Langemark. A few of ’em got a bit uppity, that’s all.’

  ‘Uppity?’

  ‘A bit big for their boots.’

  ‘Their boots?’

  ‘Sorry, lass. They was starting to throw their weight around a bit … I mean – look, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Then why was it trouble? Was it trouble for you?’

  ‘Nay, lass, not for me. I wasn’t involved. Well, not with t’fighting.’

  ‘You were fighting the Germans?’

  Jack looks at her and smiles. Then, suddenly, he starts to laugh – great, chest-heaving guffaws that leave him wheezing, holding the thin wooden bar for support.

  ‘What is so funny?’ The girl looks puzzled, then concerned. But in spite of the pain Jack can’t stop laughing.

  ‘I’ve been fighting … t’Germans … for t’past … three years,’ he says at last, once his wheezing laughter has subsided.

  ‘I don’t know what you find so funny.’ Katia suddenly looks upset.

  ‘No, lass,’ he says, striking a match and bringing the flame up to the cigarette clamped between his lips. ‘Neither do I.’ He rubs the flame out, tossing the stick to the floor. ‘But no. I wasn’t fighting them – the Germans, that is. Not on this occasion.’

  She pouts and flaps the tea towel she is holding at the counter. The bar is quiet. Jack turns and squints through his tobacco smoke at the yellowing, varnished posters – cracked and blistered with age – covering gaps in the walls where panels of the corrugated iron have been joined together. Music hall acts, he assumes. For long-gone performances.

  ‘You don’t hate them, do you?’ Katia asks at last. ‘You don’t hate the Germans, not like we do.’

  ‘Why should I hate them?’

  ‘You should hate them for what they did,’ she says. ‘For who they are. For what they will become.’

  Jack pushes back his cap and scratches his head. ‘I can’t … I don’t hate anybody.’

  ‘But they would have killed you, Jacques! They killed your friends. These men you dig up every day and bury …’

  ‘It were war, lass.’ Even though it is all that Jack can think to say, he knows it’s not much of an answer. ‘La guerre.’

  Katia stops, hands by her side, and looks at him. But she isn’t smiling. ‘Was it la guerre when our women and children were, were …’ She stops for a moment, struggling in her anger for the correct English. ‘When they were violées – raped, killed in 1914? Why, some of them, they were no older than—’

  No older than her sister. No need to say it. Jack can suddenly see it, see it all so clearly.

  ‘Was it war when les Allemands shot our menfolk simply because they were Belgians in their own country, living their lives peacefully as they had always wanted to?’

  ‘Aye, well …’

  But Katia is angry now, and in no mood for ‘aye, well’ any more. Jack turns his head. Again the posters catch his eye. He wonders why he’s never noticed them before. And alongside gay variety notices there are others – a plump, apron-wearing artisan holding a brimming mug of Vermeulen beer in front of the ruined campanile: demandez les Bières de la Brasserie … Vraagt de Bieren der Brouwerij, the slogan reads. Jack brings the mug he’s holding to his lips.

  ‘Maybe it was only “war” to you,’ Katia is saying, watching him, watching his eyes over the rim of his tankard.

  Remember Belgium – Enlist Today! Another slogan. And below the call to action is a smart Tommy standing to attention. Remember Scarborough! is the recruiting poster Jack can picture when he shuts his eyes. He remembers the bombardment, too – remembers the ripple of fear that had spread through the village at the thought that the Germans were poised for an invasion. Here, in Belgium, that fear was a reality. No wonder they – no wonder she – feel such hostility. He can see it in the figure of a blonde-haired young girl being held by the wrists and dragged off by a thickset, square-jawed Hun in a Pickelhaube; see it in the background of the angry fires of a burning Belgian city whose red flames turn the figures into silhouettes. Schrecklichkeit.

  ‘You had a gun,’ she says, following his gaze. ‘But what about the poor citizens of Andenne and Seilles, Tamines and Dinant?’

  Is Your Home Worth Fighting For? It Will Be Too Late When The Enemy Is At Your Door. Oh God, please no. But he can see it now – the baby on the floor, an old man seated, mother at the stove, father home from work, the table set for dinner. But it wasn’t bayonet-wielding Germans who had come to take his child. No, he doesn’t hate the Germans. Jack’s enemies are much closer to home.

  ‘Aye, well.’ He shakes the image from his head, stares again at the wall. ‘Aye, well,’ he sighs.

  ‘Aye well, you say. Aye well, aye well. It is easy for you to say. That is all you ever say – aye, well. Well I will tell you something. In August 1914 at Louvain, the German army set fire to the town, destroying the medieval library … all of its ancient books. Yes, and killing hundreds of innocent people and forcing – oh, milliers de personnes—’

  ‘Milliers de what, love?’

  ‘Oh,’ she shrieks. ‘Thousands – almost the population of the town – they forced them all to leave their homes. And for what? There were no francs-tireurs there. It was a seat of learning, a place of art and culture, and the Germans looted and destroyed it all.’

  ‘Franc – what, love?’

  ‘Francs-tireurs. Those suspected of resisting the enemy.’

  ‘And did they?’

  ‘Did they what?’ she asks, tears now welling in her dark eyes.

  ‘Did they resist the enemy?’

  ‘Katia?’ Françoise appears, looking up with concern at her older sister. ‘Wat is er aan de hand?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Katia shakes her head. ‘Nothing is wrong, Françoise.’ She looks at Jack. A cold, hard look. A mixture of hostility and guilt. ‘Give Jacques back his chocolate,’ she tells the girl.

  War Diary or Intelligence Summary:

  Army form C. 2118

  1919

  DIVISION MAIN DRESSING STATION—Remy Siding Map Sheet 28; Grid reference: L.22 d.6.3

  September 1st – Party of 4 Officers and 20 O.R.s instructed in the use of the fire pump at Lijssenthoek Fir
e Station. Remainder of Battalion in ordinary training.

  September 3rd – Concert by Divisional Brass Band. Men who did not bathe on 1st inst. bath parade Poperinghe.

  September 8th – Salvage operations commenced, ref. sheet 29 & 29 1/40000 Belgium. Court of Inquiry re illegal absence of 18667 Pte. F. REDSTONE, 2905 Pte. V.W. UNDERWOOD & 7742 Pte. R. McGARRY.

  September 11th – Parades held under Coy Commanders: Vlamertinghe. Ypres cordon sanitaire reduced to the immediate vicinity of Cloth Hall and St Martin’s Cathedral.

  September 16th – Guard detail of 1 N.C.O. and 2 other ranks sent to Ypres to enforce cordon sanitaire surrounding Cloth Hall and Cathedral at request of Army Town Major Lt. Col. BECKLES WILLSON.

  September 18th – Lecture by 2/Lt. Jenkins in Salvation Army hut – subject ‘The British Empire’. Orders received for a party of 50 men to proceed to BRUSSELS to escort a supply train.

  September 20th – All Coys at the disposal of Company Commanders. Hockey Match against 3rd Royal Welch Fusiliers, Battn lost 7–3.

  September 24th – ‘C’ Coy ordered to assume escort duties for 121 P.O.W. Coy and to leave immediately.

  9

  ‘Come on, you lot, shake a leg,’ Townend calls through the door of the half-empty hut first thing the next morning. ‘Ingham wants you on parade in half an hour.’

  Ocker’s boot crashes into the door just as Townend pulls it shut behind him. The other men stir.

  ‘It’s still bloomin’ dark,’ someone grumbles. ‘What the hell does Ingham want us up so early for? There’s no chance of finding any bodies in the flamin’ dark!’

  ‘Aye, and we cleared the last of that debris yesterday … eventually.’

  ‘Hey, fellas!’ Fuller shouts, returning from an early breakfast. ‘How about this then for a bit o’ news?’

  ‘We’re all ears,’ someone mumbles.

  ‘There’s only a party of tourists arriving this morning on the first train,’ he says, picking bits of bacon from his teeth. ‘And Ingham wants us to meet ’em at the station!’

  ‘So that’s what this is all about.’

  The men tidy up as best they can for the parade, but no officer or NCO checks that boots and buttons have been polished any longer.

  ‘Although,’ Ingham tells them, ‘some of you might want to smarten yourselves up a bit for this next assignment.’ He sniffs the air. As the men shuffle into line and the birds sing, the sky gradually starts to lighten, a blood-red sun rising out of the September mist.

  ‘Why’s that then, sir?’ asks Ocker.

  ‘Because as far as I can gather, Private Gilchrist, the party seems to consist mainly of former nurses. It would appear that they wish to see for themselves something of what the poor beggars they cared for had to put up with during the Flanders offensive.’

  ‘Bit late for that now ain’t it, sir?’ someone mutters.

  ‘Well you’d hardly have wanted them with you in the trenches, would you?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know about that, sir,’ says Ocker. ‘Might’ve, you know, brightened things up a bit.’

  Ingham doesn’t answer. ‘Patterson?’

  ‘Yessir?’

  ‘Clearly there’s not going to be any more digging for a day or two. There’s a great deal of paperwork to complete and I’m going over to Base Depot to meet with the ASC Commander and to update the maps and complete the burial returns. Sergeant Townend will accompany me.’

  ‘… to tell you what to do,’ says Ocker from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘And so while we are away … Private Patterson?’

  ‘Yessir?’

  ‘Didn’t you once have a stripe?’

  ‘Er … I don’t rightly know, sir. Did I?’

  ‘Ha! Yes, very good,’ Ingham nods and smiles. ‘Well, according to your record, which we seem to have acquired at last from your previous company’ – he looks down at the clipboard that he’s carrying – ‘yes, you were awarded it in 1917. It also says … Yes, it says here that it was revoked following an incident in which you were found to be drunk while in uniform.’

  ‘Tut-tut-tut! That doesn’t sound like you, Jacko.’

  ‘I do wish you chaps wouldn’t be so awkward.’

  ‘No, sir,’ Jack says. ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘Well, anyway, Patterson, I was thinking – consider it reinstated.’

  Townend coughs theatrically, glancing sideways at Jack.

  ‘Thank you, sir!’

  ‘Now, Patterson, take a couple of men with you and give these VADs a good … you know, a jolly good—’ The rest of the men suddenly burst out laughing. ‘A jolly good look around!’

  ‘Yes, sir. Very good, sir.’

  ‘Jesus, Jacko – you get a flamin’ stripe for giving a bunch o’ British nurses a bit of the how’s-yer-father.’

  ‘Gilchrist!’

  ‘Sorry, Sarge!’ Ocker shakes his head. ‘Jacko, you jammy bugger!’

  ‘I am referring, of course …’ Ingham blinks, his eyes staying closed for slightly longer than intended. ‘I am referring to a proper and respectfully conducted tour of the battlefields and the adjacent cemeteries. These nurses are particularly—’

  ‘Desperate?’

  ‘Quiet in the ranks! They are particularly keen to see for themselves what things were like out here in the Salient. And, no doubt—’

  ‘And no doubt to meet Lance-Corporal Jack-the-Lad whose reputation with the ladies goes before him!’

  ‘And, no doubt,’ Ingham carries on, ‘to pay their respects at the graves of the fallen, some of whom – for all we know – may be personally known to them.’

  ‘Do we know which cemeteries they’re particularly wanting to see, sir?’

  Ingham looks down at the clipboard. ‘I believe they would like to …’

  ‘… make the intimate acquaintance of the greatest grave digger in the whole of Flanders.’ Ocker bends low giving a mock twirl until Townend plants a boot on his backside and he goes sprawling on the gravel. Ingham looks up briefly, squints, then carries on reading.

  ‘Essex Farm and … yes, Tyne Cottage are the two cemeteries listed on the itinerary. No doubt there will be others too,’ he says, ignoring the commotion. ‘I’d ask them when they arrive if there’s anywhere particular they’d like to be taken.’

  ‘Or any way,’ says Ocker, picking himself up and dusting himself down.

  ‘They’ll be arriving on the first train from Hazebrouck, Lance-Corporal.’

  ‘Staying there are they, sir?’

  ‘No, Lance-Corporal. They are boarding at the new Skindles Hotel in Poperinghe, I believe.’

  ‘… now offering the luxury of bathrooms and central heating,’ Mac mutters to himself.

  ‘Yes – my friend Captain Poyntz has arranged rooms for them there, and I have agreed with the CO that some of my men should be made available to assist the parties as they explore the battlefields. We wouldn’t want any more accidents, would we?’

  ‘No, sir. Did you say Captain Poyntz, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Private MacIntyre, that’s correct. Captain Poyntz.’

  ‘He’s the chap that’s running the new battlefield tour company, isn’t he?’

  ‘He is, Private,’ Ingham nods. ‘Your point being?’

  ‘So we’ll be getting paid, I suppose?’

  ‘You’ll be paid by the Army, of course. As usual.’

  ‘So this is Army business, is it, sir?’ asks Jack.

  ‘These are your orders. From me. And as agreed by the CO. We can’t have parties wandering across the former theatres of war unattended. So be a good chap and meet them off the train, take them to their hotel and then arrange with the transport officer to take one of the trucks – no, make that a staff car, maybe even two – and give them a good day out.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘And Patterson?’ Ingham says as he is leaving.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Good luck!’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘
Not at all,’ Ingham smirks. ‘I think you’re going to need it.’

  ‘He’s not doing them all himself, is he, sir?’ Ocker shouts as Ingham walks away. ‘We can share ’em out between us, can’t we?’

  An hour later there’s a party atmosphere on the low railway platform at Poperinghe station. In addition to crowds of giggling girls in hats and coats, men in officers’ uniforms are busy shepherding parties of their own out of the station before looking round for transport. Smaller groups of older men and women stand in silence with their baggage, bewildered by the noise and smoke and shouts in a foreign language from porters and the guard. The stationmaster checks his watch. At the entrance Jack stands by the cars while Fuller goes along the platform looking for their designated group.

  ‘I say!’

  Without thinking, Jack finds himself standing to attention and saluting.

  ‘I don’t suppose we could get a ride out to Hill Sixty could we?’

  Jack glances sideways at the young subaltern standing with a group of smiling WAACs. ‘I’m very sorry, sir – Major Rennard’s orders. We’re awaiting a party of VADs. This is their transport.’

  ‘Now look here, Private …’

  ‘Lance-Corporal, sir.’

  ‘Really? I don’t see a stripe.’

  At that moment the party appears and the nurses climb aboard the two open-topped cars. Fuller and Skerritt crank the motors into life as Jack and Ocker pull on the throttles. The young subaltern jumps back as, with a tug, Jack releases the brake and sets the first car bumping forward. Fuller jumps up onto the running board and holds on tight, while the girls reach up to their heads and hang on to their hats as the cars set off on the Switch Road out towards Vlamertinghe.

  ‘Where are we heading for then, Jacko?’ Fuller shouts over the noise of the engine. The road is muddy and still pockmarked with holes, the more dangerous for being filled with water and covered with a thin shimmer of oil. ‘Somewhere nice and quiet? There’s one for each of us back there, y’know.’

  ‘Reckon we’ll go to Ypres,’ Jack cries, ignoring Fuller’s suggestive remark. ‘Show ’em the ruins. Then out towards the Yser before we stop at Essex Farm and have a look at the old dressing stations.’