by Tim Atkinson
‘But I am also aware from the register that many of the men you are reburying were unidentified when first laid to rest.’
‘That’s right,’ Jack says.
‘Well, it’s just a thought,’ the man goes on. ‘A hope; a slim chance.’
‘A chance?’
‘That something was, perhaps, overlooked when the man was first placed underground. I’ve no doubt some of these early burials were hastily conducted.’
‘Oh aye,’ Jack says. ‘Under fire, at times.’
‘Of course!’ the man exclaims. ‘That’s why it would be so easy to have overlooked some … well, some vital clue, some small item, maybe personalised, a maker’s name on a shirt, a brand of boots, a style of breeches.’
‘We always check,’ says Jack. ‘If there’s any means of identification left, sir, we’d find it.’
‘I’m certain of it,’ the man says. ‘Yes, of course.’ They glance down at the yawning, earth-brown hole beside them. ‘So who is this plot for?’ he asks.
‘This is for …’ Jack looks down at the burial returns. ‘Plot 9, Row D … Unknown,’ he says. ‘Unknown British Soldier.’
‘Unknown,’ the man says quietly.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jack says.
‘Oh no,’ the man shakes his head. ‘No, no. Not at all,’ he smiles. ‘Not unknown.’
‘No?’
‘No,’ the man says. ‘Not “unknown” at all. Never “unknown”. Because’ – he smiles – ‘ultimately, all these men are known, aren’t they?’
‘Are they?’
‘They are indeed,’ the man frowns. ‘All men are known personally to the One to whom they have returned in glory.’
‘Well, I suppose …’
‘Yes, Corporal,’ he adds quietly. ‘Known unto God.’
Birds sing, far off. Tiny birds, no bigger than a puff of feathers. Skylarks. Small, khaki, feathery forms holding steady in the breeze: facing enemy lines. The man looks down and prods the earth with his walking stick. ‘Ah well,’ he says at last, ‘I shall continue my search. Having this’ – he shakes the wad of paper in the air and smiles – ‘having this makes the task so very much easier.’
‘Aye,’ Jack says. ‘But if the name you want to find isn’t on the list … Which regiment did you say this fella fought with?’
The man looks at him, but doesn’t answer.
‘I just thought, if you told me …’
‘My son,’ the man says quietly. ‘Irish Guards … Forgive me,’ he says. ‘But it is so very hard, having no grave. His mother, you understand …’
‘Aye, o’ course,’ says Jack.
‘Well, you’ve been most helpful,’ the man says, replacing his cap. ‘May I ask your name?’
‘Yes, sir. Patterson, sir,’ Jack replies. ‘Jack Patterson.’
The man smiles. ‘Well, Jack, I shan’t keep you from your digging any longer. What shall I do? I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed.’ And he turns on his heels and walks, head down, towards the cemetery gate.
Jack watches him, suddenly desperate to say something, anything, but equally unable to think of any suitable words. ‘They’re bringing men in all t’time,’ he calls out eventually. The man keeps on walking. ‘We’re still finding them!’ And they are. But only the birds now answer.
Jack plants his shovel in the ground and lights a cigarette. Far off, in the original corner of the cemetery, a small group of visitors place flowers on an old grave. Battlefield clearances are coming to an end. As farmers return to what were once their fields, as they plough and sow and husband the land once more, a bitter and dwindling crop will remain underground waiting to return in the years to come. But there are to be no more bodies buried here. All that remains for Dud Corner is for a permanent memorial to be built, for the wooden crosses to be replaced with bright, clean Portland headstones and for the grass to grow and regrow and for the flowers and shrubs, such as they are, to take a gentle hold on the landscape and soften it into a place of peace once again.
More people will come, and some will leave flowers of their own. In time, new roads will reach across the fields and take new visitors to this and other cemeteries. A small recess in a wall at the entrance will hold a printed copy of the book the man was carrying back on that windy afternoon in early 1921. But there will still be one name missing. There will always be one name missing.
24
‘It makes a change to see a different pile o’ rubble, I suppose,’ says Ocker as the men freewheel down the hill into the town.
‘Aye, laddie. And at least this one was destroyed by our guns!’
Like Ypres, Lens is basically a huge post-war construction site. Or more accurately, a reconstruction site. For although just a few miles behind the front lines, Lens was in German hands for much of the war. British shells seem to have done just as much damage to the French town as the German guns at Ypres.
It is dark by the time Jack finally arrives, but finding the men isn’t going to be difficult, he thinks. He knows that all he has to do is to follow the noise and maybe ask the odd well-directed question of the locals. Yes, a party of Englishmen has been here earlier; no, they didn’t say where they were going but the estaminet on Rue de Vermelles will still be open.
Jack has a pretty good idea of what he is likely to find too. With the exception of Blake, the men all cope with their nightmares and their grievances by getting drunk. They all have money, but few if any of them have any family responsibilities. There is food provided, too. After a day’s searching for or burying bodies the unit cook will have boiled up something hot and tasty for them to eat. And there is always plenty of bread. So with meals provided and pay in their pockets, what the men earn is theirs to drink. And digging graves is thirsty work. To say nothing of the need to wash away the foul and lingering taste of death and decay.
Jack wheels his bicycle among the shadowy outlines of buildings. Unlike Ypres, the City of Fear, the shape of Lens at night is unfamiliar and holds few terrors. His footsteps echo on the sharp cobbles, but he doesn’t hear the sound re-echo, doubled, trebled, multiplied tenfold, twenty even, as another ghost battalion is moved out through the Lille gate or sent along the Menin Road. No flashes of light on this horizon silhouette the known outline of shattered buildings; no remembered rumble of the guns suddenly sends a shiver up his spine. In Ypres, there is always something – a shape, a sound, even just a broken paving stone – ready to act as a reminder. Here there is just the ruin of an unknown town in the still darkness of the night and with the silver moonlight overhead.
Jack marches on smartly until he arrives at the brightly lit entrance of the estaminet on the Rue de Vermelles. Stepping up to the door of the bar, he knows that he has found the men at last. There is noise. Laughter. Singing. Someone is singing one of the old songs:
Pack up your troubles in your old kitbag
And smile, smile, smile.
While you’ve a lucifer to light your fag,
Smile boys, that’s the style.
What’s the use of worrying?
It never was worthwhile,
So pack up your troubles in your old kitbag
And smile, smile, smile.
Where had he last heard that song? And when? Suddenly there is applause. And then a crash. Someone falls down drunk from one of the benches.
‘Jacko! Look, it’s Jack,’ someone shouts as they see the figure in the doorway. But Jack turns smartly on his heels and as the door of the estaminet shuts behind him the sudden stillness of the evening hits him like the shattering of breaking glass. Then, out of nowhere, Mac is at his side, slightly breathless, hurrying to keep up.
‘Good God, man, where are you off to in such a hurry?’
‘Sorry, Mac. It’s just a bit too noisy for me in there tonight.’
‘Slow down, laddie, look’ – he coughs – ‘I’m out o’ puff.’
‘Sorry.’ Jack stops. ‘I’m just not sure I’m in the mood for it this evening. I’ll not be much company. I need t
o … I don’t know. I need time to think.’
‘You need a drink, man – spending all day digging holes for the dead is nae good for a fellow. Come back to the bar. It’s a pretty lively place we’ve found.’
‘I know. No, it’s not what I need right now.’
‘Suit yourself. But you’re missing a good one!’ Mac says.
We’re here because we’re here, because we’re here
Because we’re here, we’re here because we’re here
Because we’re here, because we’re here …
‘Sounds like it. Have one for me, eh, will you? I’ll go back t’billet and see you lads in t’morning.’
Mac’s footsteps fade in the darkness. Jack finds himself alone, under fierce stars. He pulls up his collar and carries on walking, wheeling the heavy black bicycle along at his side. Above him stars move slowly in familiar patterns. The same moon shines on the road ahead as shone on Katia when they walked hand in hand along the ramparts. The same stars, same moon, and tomorrow the same sun will rise here just as it will back there. Will she be looking at this same knife-edge arc of a silver moon as she closes the curtains on her little room at the back of the bar?
Jack walks on. He doesn’t notice the transformation as the sound of his footsteps changes from the hard scrape of boots sparking on cobbled streets to the softer shuffle of dusty grit on the country road. Only out in the fields, with his boots in the mud, under the constant stars and in the silence of the night, does he stop short and look at where is he is. No guns, no shells. No noise, no singing. Nothing. Just the blue-black night, closing in on all sides.
Back at the camp he lights the small stove in their hut and he waits. There’ll be no point in trying to get to sleep, he thinks, until the rest of the men get back. But in spite of that he finds his eyes will not stay open. He drifts into a fitful, upright sleep until suddenly he’s wide awake and bolt upright as the noise of shouting wakes him.
‘Look sharp, old man,’ says Mac. ‘Did we scare you?’
‘No, I was just, er …’
‘Good, because we’ve got something to tell you,’ Mac says.
‘Oh aye?’ Jack looks around. ‘Where is he?’
‘There was a spot of bother, I’m afraid,’ Blake tells him.
‘Gendarmes?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
Jack groans. He starts to put his boots back on.
‘Och, don’t fiddle with your laces,’ Mac says. ‘You’ll be fine until the morning. He’s sobering up right now, as we speak, in the cells.’
‘Oh God,’ says Jack. ‘How many of ’em did it take to get him there?’
‘Och, just a couple … Well, maybe three or four. And we gave them a hand.’
‘You gave them a hand?’
‘Aye, man. We had to. It was for his own good. First Madame stopped serving him, then he picked an argument with a Frenchman – laid the fella out, too.’
‘I’m sure,’ says Jack. ‘How did it happen?’
‘Well,’ Mac smiles to himself. ‘This Frenchie starts pushing him about and, well, you know what Ocker’s like.’
‘I can guess.’
‘He says to him, he says – Where was you when there was fighting to be done? At home in bed with your finger up a tart’s …’
‘Yes, thank you, Mac,’ Blake interrupts. ‘I think Jack can guess the rest.’
‘And anyway’ – Mac starts laughing to himself – ‘Frenchie, he makes to hit him, but Ocker ducks pretty smart and then – wallop! He ups with his fist and the Frenchman’s down on the floor, flat out cold.’
‘Oh bloody hell,’ Jacks sighs. ‘Bloody hell.’
‘I’m afraid that’s not the end of it though,’ says Blake.
‘No?’
‘No. Then he decides that if Madame won’t serve him any more then he’ll simply help himself.’
‘He nicks it?’
‘Oh no. He pays for it: leaves the money on the counter like the good honest Aussie that he tells us all he is. But takes the liquor all the same.’
‘And that’s when she sends for the gendarmes,’ Mac says.
‘Ingham’ll be livid,’ Jack sighs.
‘If he ever finds out.’
‘What d’you mean? Jack says. ‘How will we keep it from him?’
‘Well, turns out – we didn’t know it at the time – but it turns out that he – the gendarme, that is – was working as a bobby in Villers-Bretonneux in 1918.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ Mac says. ‘He was there when the Germans took it.’
‘Oh, aye?’
‘And there when the Aussies took it back,’ Blake adds. ‘Yes, and very impressed with them he was.’
‘We’re never going to hear the last of this are we?’ Jack says.
‘The bobby bought us all a brandy once we’d laid ol’ Ocker out.’
‘You laid him out?’
‘Don’t look at me!’ Blake holds up his hands. ‘You know how I abhor violence.’
‘Jack, it wasn’t difficult. The wee idiot was fleein’. He was no trouble.’
‘Aye, but even so … he’s a strong bugger, Mac. Hard, too. And Skerritt’s not, well … is he?’
‘The bigger they are, the harder they fall,’ Mac is saying almost to himself, as he puts the kettle on the stove.
‘Aye, well. We’ve that to be thankful for, I reckon. If it wasn’t for a bunch of strong hard buggers like the Aussies giving old Fritz a fistful at Villers-Bretonneux, then we might’ve had a lot more argy-bargy with the redcaps, to say nothing of Ingham.’ The kettle starts to whistle. ‘Can’t leave you fellas for a minute, can I?’
‘He’ll be as right as rain in the morning, once he’s slept it off.’ Mac hands Jack a tin mug of tea.
‘Well, maybe,’ Jack says. ‘Let’s hope so.’
‘Got to see the funny side though, haven’t you?’
‘There’s a funny side?’
‘Of course,’ Mac says.
‘Anyway, if I may say so, sir, it was your fault for sending us on our own into that French town.’
Jack can’t tell if Blake is being serious.
‘Aye,’ Mac nods. ‘Blakey here reckons it’s enough to lose you your stripe!’
‘Why? After it yourself are you, yer cheeky bugger?’
‘So.’ Mac pulls up a chair beside Jack. ‘Tell me what happened this afternoon. Get much work done, did you?’
‘A little,’ Jack says. ‘Got most of row C dug and then …’
‘Then?’
‘Then this fellow comes along. Seemed like he wanted to talk.’
‘And he chose you?’ Blake raises his eyebrows.
‘Here.’ Jack picks up his empty mug and dangles it in the air. ‘Go and make yourself useful for once and get your corporal another mug of tea.’
Blake puts the kettle back onto the stove.
‘So anyway’ – Mac turns to face Jack – ‘was he looking for someone, this fellow o’ yours?’
‘Aye,’ says Jack. And he tells them all about the strange, solitary figure in the cemetery. ‘Works for the Commission too, apparently.’
‘I knew it!’ Mac shouts.
‘What?’
‘Must be the same chap we met in the town soon after we arrived. I’m afraid I might’ve been responsible, Jack.’
‘Responsible?’
‘Responsible for sending him over to you,’ Mac says. ‘I thought if anyone might know it’d be you.’
‘Know what?’
‘Know how to help him – where to find what he was looking for.’
‘Or who.’
‘I suppose so. There’s no one digs more graves than you, Jack. As we all know.’
‘Aye, well. This chap didn’t need to ask me. Didn’t need to ask anyone really. He had one o’ them cemetery registers with him when I spoke to him. Showed me the great long lists all typed up neat, page after page but—’
‘But no name?’
‘Oh aye, Mac �
� hundreds of ’em.’
‘Just not the one he wanted.’
‘No,’ says Jack.
‘Sad,’ Mac shakes his head.
‘No sadder than the rest, the other thousands that we’ll never find.’
‘No I mean …’
‘What?’
‘Well, the man pulled strings, Jack. He’s a bigwig, got his boy into the Irish Guards but he should never have been out here. Should never have been here at all.’
‘None of us should ever have been out here,’ Jack says quietly. ‘Nobody should have seen what we’ve seen or gone through what we’ve gone through.’
‘But the lad was hardly more than a boy, Jack.’
‘I were only a boy myself,’ says Jack quietly to himself.
‘What?’ Mac laughs, ‘When you enlisted? What war was that, then Jacko – Waterloo?’
‘He doesn’t mean when he enlisted, do you, Jack?’
Jack shakes his head.
‘What then, son?’
‘We know there’s something not quite right, Jack.’ Blake’s hand is hovering above Jack’s shoulder.
‘Aye, something’s not right,’ adds Mac. ‘If you want to—’
‘No.’ Jack stands. ‘No, Mac. It’s not summat I can talk about. But thanks, anyhow.’
‘Any time, son.’
‘So this chap told you all about it, did he?’ Jack adds, stoking the brazier and sending fresh gouts of smoke into the hut.
‘It gets worse,’ Mac says. Jack looks up. ‘He was unfit, apparently. Short-sighted. Horribly short-sighted. Couldnae see a thing beyond the end of his nose without his spectacles.’
‘Oh aye?’
‘And the boy was killed just a couple of weeks after being posted to France …’
‘Poor bugger.’
‘And now his pa’s looking for t’lad’s grave.’
The kettle whistles, unattended, for a moment. ‘So, anyone ever come across a “Lieutenant John Kipling” written on a cross anywhere?’
The men all shake their heads. Someone stokes the fire. Jack gets up and pours himself another mug of tea.
