by Tim Atkinson
‘Take it easy,’ Ocker says, paying out the rope. ‘Might be an unexploded shell down there.’
‘Well it’s not gonna go bang after being under all this water,’ Jack says.
‘I wouldn’t be so sure, mate.’
Jack hears him. He hears the slop, slip, slop of the water, the bump, bump, bump of the bargepole. And he feels the sudden, yielding crush of bones as the pole crashes through the ribcage of a sunken body.
‘Oh, bloody hell.’
‘What is it, mate?’
‘There’s summat here, that’s what,’ Jack shouts. ‘Get us back to t’edge, will yer. I’ve had enough.’
The two men carefully record what they have found, record where – complete with compass bearings, map references and descriptions – and then rejoin the rest of the company. And then comes the ambush. The enemy is suddenly all over them, and quickly advancing.
One of them slips. Or has he been hit? A boy, the battalion baby. What was his name? What was his name? He tumbles down the chalky slope, bouncing like a doll. Another shell bursts above them. Shrapnel. Burning metal on the back of Jack’s hand. At least they’ve escaped the sudden burst of machine-gun fire, Jack is thinking. But artillery fire is landing right at the bottom of the shell-hole where they are both heading.
‘Come on, yer bugger!’ Jack is shouting at him. ‘Let’s get out o’ here.’ But the boy cannot hear him. And anyway, where are they going? Out there to where the 9.2s are bursting, yards away? Out there to where the rat-tat-tat of enemy machine guns is raking up the ground and making the dead dance one final, fatal flourish? Out there to where the dead and the soon-to-be dead are all lying, waiting patiently for what is coming? He opens his eyes and stares at the boy. The boy’s lips are moving but he’s saying nothing. Shells are exploding all around them but they’re making no sound. The corpses in the shell-hole are already black with flies.
‘Christ!’ The boy is twisting round now, writhing in his own blood. ‘I’m hit, Jack. I’m fookin’ hit. Oh Christ Jesus!’ Jack flattens himself on the ground and closes his eyes. He could stay here – out of reach of the guns – until the futile attack on Fricourt is called off. But from the bottom of the shell-hole comes a whining, like the bleating of a lamb. ‘Help me, Jack. Help me.’
As much as Jack desperately wants to help, he is desperate to advance. This isn’t duty; he is not doing this for King and Country. Nor is it obedience to the sergeant’s orders – ‘If they’re wounded leave ’em for the bearers, lads. Press on with the attack or before you know it, Jerry’ll be here and you’ll be for it. And if it ain’t the Alleyman,’ the sergeant twists his mouth into a smile, ‘it’ll be the Battle Police. And let me tell you lads – they take no prisoners.’ No. This is not courage or obedience. This is not cowardice or fear. This is it. This is the end. This is the moment Jack has been waiting for. This is what he enlisted to do.
But first, there is the boy. He cannot leave the boy here. Jack feels responsible for him. Why wouldn’t he?
‘Come on, yer bugger.’ The farmer is standing over them, muttering. ‘Come on!’
Midday. The sun is blinding. Suddenly he is no longer in the shell-hole but on the hillside. It is not the boy’s bloodied fingers but the hot grip of a ewe’s last uterine contractions clenching round his wrist. And the elastic tightening of the animal’s cervix closes painfully around his arm. Jack closes his eyes, gives one more enormous heave – all his strength, the young boy shepherd straining all his sinews. But now the numb, aching, sleepless fatigue of another night awake on a bare hillside listening for the familiar low, grunting, bleating of an animal in labour is against him. And the earth is stronger. The pull of the earth is always stronger …
Jack suddenly opens his eyes, expecting to see cloven hooves, slimy-wet, spindly legs and blind, black sticky eyes – a comical red tongue, too, pushing through clenched jaws in readiness for a first, whining bleat. But the staring, terrified eyes are blue, the water in the bottom of the hole is black. And the smoke and fog is a French dawn in the heat of battle. There is no sound – no low panting, groaning, and no high-pitched bleating; no shells screaming, no gunfire cracking – just the slurp, slop of water as the soft earth underneath the boy’s feet sucks and sucks. In one last, ghastly heave of a convulsion it will all be over.
Then suddenly, from nowhere, he has an idea. He is hurriedly unshouldering his rifle, checking the bolt and clicking the safety catch. The boy stares, blue eyes wide, into the endless black barrel of the dull Lee Enfield. Somewhere in the black tunnel of darkness, in the chamber, lies a bullet. The knowledge that he is now about to die, that this is how it will be, that there is nothing more now to be done, that he is drowning, that he will drown, that he will choke on this thick green slime or else this man will pull the trigger that will explode the sharp, lead tip from the polished brass case, sending the bullet spiralling down the rifle and out of the barrel and into his skull, and that will be that – that certain knowledge and the sudden sight of the blue-black gun barrel inches from his nose suddenly, instantly, stops the boy from moving. No more churning, no more straining. Nothing.
The water in the shell-hole suddenly stills as the final ripple hits the muddy sides. Jack looks at the face, over the sights of his rifle. The boy squeezes his eyes tight shut and waits. Jack waits … And then, suddenly, someone’s arms are enfolding him in the darkness, soft and warm, though he is wet with sweat and cold with shivers at the same time …
‘Jack,’ his mother whispers gently in his ear. ‘Jack … Jack.’
And his hair, tangled and damp, is being stroked gently as she cradles his head in her bare arms, cradles him just like the baby he has suddenly become, like the sobbing infant at her warm, bare breast, bleating for life like a newborn lamb, bleating for milk, bleating for air, for love, for life, for warmth …
*
‘Jacques,’ the whore says softly in the small, damp bed in the maison tolérée. ‘Monsieur Jacques, réveillez-vous!’
He hears a knock at the door. Another customer. He turns and places a hand on the girl’s soft breast and feels the nipple harden. ‘À bientôt!’ she smiles and the madame bustles in to change the water in the washstand. Jack gets up, gets dressed and leaves the room, pushing his way past the queue and down the staircase. The fresh blue morning air washes over him like a cool Dales stream in summer. And suddenly, there he is again, in the fields, beside her, the midday heat of the sun bursting through his thumping head …
‘Jack.’ He can feel the woman’s chin nestling in his hair. Her arm is supporting him as he sinks deeper in the darkness, into her naked softness. A hay cart bumps along the track high above them on the hillside. He starts to breathe more slowly. The afternoon gradually begins to reassemble all around him. Even with his eyes closed, the river by their side, the drystone walls, the fields, the sheep in the valley all vividly take shape. A dove is purring gently in the trees above their heads – torr-torr; torr-torr.
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away;
For lo, the winter is passed, the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds has come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
And now the padre. Church parade. And the sudden shock of a Bible reading – could it really be a Bible reading? – that Jack seems instinctively to know by heart. He is asking about it afterwards, months, even years later. And as Blake reads from the Song of Solomon, Jack can still remember every word:
My dove, my undefiled is but one;
She is the only one of her mother,
She is the choice one of her that bore her.
‘I’m pregnant, Jack,’ the girl says. She is smoothing his hair and soothing his head as he lies in her bare arms, in the shade of the tree, by the river. He is afraid. He is not much more than a child himself and she, maid of the lady of the house and daughter of the foreman. But his fever subsides, and he hears her words as clear
ly as if she were there by his side. ‘I’m pregnant, Jack. I’m gonna ’ave a baby.’
War Diary or Intelligence Summary:
Army form C. 2118
1920
DIVISION MAIN DRESSING STATION—Remy Siding Map Sheet 28; Grid reference: L.22 d.6.3
March 5th – The Battalion played the Middlesex Regiment (12th Battn) at Rugby Football and were beaten 21 points to 7.
March 6th – 2/Lt. N.V. FITTON proceeded to UK for demobilisation. The Commanding Officer inspected Billets.
March 7th – Church Parade – all denominations.
March 9th – Major J.L. COSGRAVE proceeded to St Omer as President of a Field General Court Martial. 5 O.R.s reinforcements arrived.
March 11th – Companies (strength 30 O.R.s per Coy and HQ 15) paraded at Lijssenthoek for inspection by the CO. The R.S.M. delivered a lecture to all N.C.O.s in the Recreation Hut.
March 13th – Captain R.J. ABBOT commenced series of lectures entitled ‘Homer and the Age of the Hero.’
March 15th – 2/Lt. I.T. NORWOOD proceeded on leave to UK. Lt. A.C. CAMPION and 2/Lt. E.F. ANDERSON to XIII Corps Demobilisation Camp CAMBRAI as Conducting Officers for demobilised personnel.
March 18th – Clearance operations commence at Tyne Cottage Military Cemetery, Zonnebeke.
18
As early as 1920, Tyne Cot Cemetery has begun to assume the epic proportions that will soon see this bare Belgian slope transformed into the largest concentration of Empire war graves in the world. No trace exists of the houses that were once scattered along the Spilstraat. Debruyne’s farmhouse, Markey’s bakery and myriad other small dwellings that once formed part of the Rozeveld estate have long since vanished. Surrounding fields remain drilled with shell-holes, each one filled with stagnant, oily water. The old stone roads that once led up the hill are little more than dust covered in a layer of mud. Only the cemetery is growing, spreading slowly like a bloodstain down the slope from the crest of Passchendaele Ridge.
The Albion lorry struggles up the narrow track to the cemetery entrance and is forced to slow to a crawl behind a man pacing, head down, up and down the lane, scanning the ground as if searching for a pin.
‘Christ Almighty, Blakey! Give the daft cove a blast or we’re going to drive him into the mud.’ Blake squeezes the big, black rubber ball on the end of the brass trumpet horn. The man looks up momentarily, turns and eventually faces the truck, but remains – transfixed – in the middle of the road.
‘Oh bloody hell,’ Jack grumbles. ‘If we ’ave to stop here we’ll bloody well sink into the mud.’
‘Come on then – run the bastard over,’ Ocker says. ‘Put your foot down, Blakey – one less yokel won’t make much difference. And we’ve all got our shovels in the back. We’ll soon bury the critter.’
‘Aye, but that’d upset his conscientious principles, wouldn’t it, Blakey?’
By now the heavy wagon has slowed down to a crawl, and the old man steps aside just as it passes. The men in the back shake their fists.
‘Daft bugger,’ says Jack.
‘Come on, we’re going to find out what the bloody hell he thinks he’s doing,’ Ocker shouts as he jumps down from the cab once the truck stops moving.
‘This sounds like fun,’ Jack says as Blake cuts the engine. ‘I’m coming with you.’
The others disembark, shake stiff arms and legs loose and begin unloading tools. Jack, meanwhile, strides back down the Vijfwegenstraat, catching up with Ocker just as he reaches the old man who is still bent, head down, studying the ground.
‘Hey!’ he shouts as they get within earshot. ‘Cooo-ee!’ It takes a hard tap on the man’s shoulder to get his attention.
‘What do you think you’re playing at? There’s plenty o’ room for us both here, y’know, and your boots’ll keep you upright in that field.’ Jack points a finger at the muddy slope that stretches for a mile back down to Ypres. ‘You’ll not sink, you know. But we will.’
‘Look, mate!’ Ocker takes hold of the man by the arm. ‘You see that thing over there?’ He nods towards the truck. ‘Weighs a couple o’ hundredweight, that does. And if we come off the road we’re done for.’
The man looks bewildered. ‘Ah, come on, mate.’ Ocker turns to Jack. ‘We’ve found the village idiot here. Let’s not waste any more time.’
‘Ik ben op zoek naar mijn boerderij.’ The man smiles as the men turn to leave.
‘What?’
‘He says … hang on a minute.’ Jack asks the man again what he was doing, this time struggling to put the question into Flemish.
‘What’s he saying?’
‘Says he’s looking for his … farm, I think. I think he said his farm. He’s certainly looking for summat.’
‘What? In the middle of flamin’ nowhere?’
‘Well it’s not much now, is it?’ Jack says. ‘Hard to tell t’road apart from t’fields, if it comes to that.’
‘Suppose not,’ Ocker says. ‘So anyway, Jacko, has he found what he’s looking for? Go on, ask him.’
‘Says there’s no trace,’ says Jack.
‘Is that a fact?’
‘Not even a ruin.’
The old farmer ends the short exchange by vigorously shaking both men’s hands and thanking them for everything they’ve done for him, for his country and for his family. Finally, he leans to kiss them, but the two soldiers make it clear that won’t be necessary.
‘Blimey,’ Ocker mutters as they walk back to the cemetery. ‘That’s a bit rich, isn’t it?’
‘What? Givin’ us a kiss?’
‘No. Well, yeah – that too, sure.’
‘What, then?’
‘Thanking us like that, for what we did.’
‘He’s very grateful,’ Jack says. ‘They all are.’
‘Maybe,’ Ocker nods. ‘But it was probably our flamin’ guns that flattened his farm in the first place.’
‘Aye,’ Jack adds, ‘along with t’rest of this bloody place.’
‘The only things our fellas couldn’t flatten round here were those bloody German blockhouses.’ Ocker stops and puts his hands on his hips. In front of them, amid several hundred graves, between the marked burial plots and the ground already levelled to receive several hundred more, the remains of four concrete bunkers sit like full stops on the German Flandern Stellung. A series of great, grey machine-gun posts clustered close to the crest of the ridge, it is these – rather than any heavily manned enemy trenches – that successive waves of Allied troops were sent to capture back in 1917. The concrete blockhouses are chipped, but the three-foot-thick protective walls managed to withstand everything that Allied artillery could throw at them. Unlike the houses and the farm buildings that once stood close by.
‘Can’t quite believe we did that, y’know, Jacko. Can’t quite believe we let ’em get away with such a daft idea.’
Jack narrows his eyes. ‘An’ which particular daft idea were that then, lad?’
Ocker laughs. ‘Plenty to choose from, eh, mate?’
‘Aye, and each time we went along with ’em. We must’ve been daft.’
‘Like a load o’ flamin’ sheep.’
‘Aye, lad.’
Ocker shakes his head. ‘The mud was bad enough, Jacko, without these things waiting for you once you arrived.’
Jack laughs, but he isn’t smiling. ‘Used to take us hours just to tramp a couple o’ hundred yards on bloody duckboards.’
‘Yeah, and God help you if you fell off,’ Ocker says.
‘Aye, but He didn’t, did he?’ Jack adds quietly. ‘Oh no. He were far too busy.’
Both men can vividly recall struggling up this wet slope, their comrades being picked off or blown up in their hundreds. One remembers emptying a revolver through the sinister, black firing slits.
‘Still gives me the shivers,’ Ocker rubs his arms. ‘Looking into them black holes.’
‘Aye,’ Jack says. ‘Although, once you lot had captured ’em, well …’ He wipes a hand across his
face. ‘We was actually quite glad of ’em then, weren’t we?’
‘Once you knew it was our fellas inside, eh?’
‘Aye.’
‘Especially that one.’
Squatting on the hill surrounded by weeds and random, scattered graves, one blockhouse in particular – the famous ‘Tyne Cot’ itself – sits brooding like a giant spider in the middle of a tattered web, in which are trapped some of the earliest Allied burials in the cemetery.
‘They’re gonna move these, aren’t they?’ Ocker says, Army boots crunching on the gravel path as they join the others. ‘I mean, they can’t just leave ’em here like this, surely?’
‘That one looks pretty hard to shift to me,’ Jack says.
‘I’m sure the engineers could do the job,’ says Ocker. ‘Few sticks o’ dynamite, we all go for a brew and – BOOM! Napoo blockhouse.’
‘Oh aye – and napoo all the poor wee beggars lying all around them too.’ Mac tuts as the others catch up. ‘It’s a wonder you weren’t given a job on the staff, laddie. Brains like that.’
‘Well why didn’t they think of that in the first place?’ Fuller says. ‘Why didn’t they just clear the ground before they started burying bodies?’
‘Look,’ Jack points to one of the crosses. ‘Look at the dates, lad.’
SERGEANT LEWIS MCGEE, VC,
40TH BATTALION AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY,
KILLED IN ACTION 12/10/1917
CAPTAIN CLARENCE SMITH JEFFRIES, VC,
34TH BATTALION AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY,
KILLED IN ACTION 12/10/1917
PRIVATE JAMES PETER ROBERTSON, VC,
27TH (MANITOBA) BATTALION CANADIAN INFANTRY,
KILLED IN ACTION 06/11/1917
‘That’s why they didn’t clear these places first.’
