by Tim Atkinson
‘At Eat Apples?’
‘Yeah. Keeps telling us to go at it harder, run faster, stick the bloody knife in deeper.’
‘They was all like that,’ Jack says.
‘Anyway this bloody big bugger in our unit – a farmer he was back home, not the strongest, not the smartest or the quickest, but by God, he was the hardest. And this Pommie corporal starts giving him a hard time, telling him he’s mincing about and saying that he couldn’t stick his todger in a fat whore’s fanny – really riles him, he does. Really gets to him.’
The men laugh.
‘And then he says to him, come on then, have a go at me, don’t stick it in the bloody sack, come and have a go at me, come on, and he’s roaring at him and winking at us and Farmer Boy sees red like a bloody big bull and runs at him faster than he’s ever run and before the corporal knows it, he’s flat out on the ground and Farmer Boy’s about to bring down his bloody great bayonet in his throat!’
The men roar with laughter.
‘And then what happened?’
‘Well then, we dashes over and gets him off, pretty smartish. Corporal dusts himself down and stalks off in a huff and that’s the last we hear of bayonet practice for the day.’
‘So you missed the Dardanelles then?’ Mac asks.
‘Yeah, mate. I was out on the second boat out of Ozzie. Came straight here.’
‘But you enlisted straight away?’ says Jack.
‘Ye-es,’ he hesitates.
‘But?’
‘But the bastards kept me back on account of … well, shall we say I didn’t take to saluting the Ruperts very easily!’
‘That’ll do,’ Jack says, and exchanges a knowing look with Mac.
‘Anyway, that’s me then,’ Ocker says after a while. ‘That’s my lot. Pretty standard stuff for us. We were all just a bit too eager for a bloody great adventure.’
‘And now it’s over.’
‘Back to normal life, whatever that is.’
‘What I don’t get,’ Ocker says eventually, ‘what I really can’t understand is why you lot take it like you do. You’re all so flamin’—’
‘Subservient?’ Blake offers.
‘Sub— what?’
‘He means we do as we’re told, we don’t kick up a fuss.’
‘Not like some we could name,’ Mac says with a wink.
‘Yeah, right. You bloody did as you were told all right. You did what the Ruperts told you, respecting them just ’cos they talk like someone’s slipped ’em a gobstopper. Didn’t kick up a fuss on the Somme, did you, fellas? Oh no! Did as you were flamin’ told there, and if you was told to die, you had to do it their way – Come on, chaps,’ Ocker says, mimicking a British accent, ‘hold the line, don’t run, steady orn.’
‘It’s called obeying orders, laddie.’
‘What we’re here for,’ adds Jack sardonically. ‘Do as we’s told, mind us P’s and Q’s and know us place. Doesn’t end with the war, either. It’ll be just the same, back home.’
‘Not for me, mate.’
Jack takes a long draw on his cigarette, saying nothing.
‘Well, I’m ready,’ Mac says at last. ‘No work, mind. No missus any more, either. But – ach! something’ll turn up. It always does.’
‘You’re not tempted to stay on then – in t’Army?’
‘Och, no! I joined – make that rejoined – for the duration of the war,’ says Mac. ‘I’ve done my service, kept my promise and a whole lot more besides. It’s time for them to keep their part of the bargain – not least by giving me my Army pension.’
‘Aye, well,’ Jack says at last. ‘For the present, we’re all still all in t’Army—’
‘Not for much longer.’
‘And while we are we’ve got some work to do. Come on.’ Jack stands up and stretches. ‘Let’s go and do our duty by them poor sods as isn’t ever going home.’
29
‘One last job then, fellas,’ Ocker shouts jumping down from the truck at the side of a muddy field near Vlamertinghe. ‘Let’s make it a good ’un, eh?’
‘Right,’ says Jack. ‘I’ll take the far corner. Skerritt, you come wi’ me. Mac, Ocker – you work up from this side and we’ll meet in t’middle. Remember what we’re looking for?’
‘Another anonymous landowner,’ says Ocker.
‘It’s been a while,’ says Mac.
‘Certainly has.’
‘Reckon there’s something a bit odd about this one, if you ask me.’
‘Odd?’
‘Mysterious soldier. Kind o’ thing Ingham would’ve had us doing.’
‘If he was still here.’
‘He’s probably still tucked up in bed in Blighty getting over his little accident,’ Jack laughs.
‘Ashamed to show his head,’ says Ocker, ‘given—’
‘Steady!’ Jack nods towards Mac and Skerritt.
‘Given – as I was about to say, Jacko,’ Ocker winks, ‘that he couldn’t even hit it with his own revolver!’
Jack smiles. ‘Right, well, as long as everyone knows what we’re looking for this shouldn’t take us too long.’
‘What are we looking for, Jacko?’
‘Well, t’ground, obviously,’ Jack says. ‘Look at the grass. It’ll be greener than round and about.’
‘Nourished by the blood and bonemeal, no doubt.’
‘You putting yourself forward for a gardening job, eh, Mac?’
‘Just interested, son, just interested. It’s fascinating what you can learn from those horticultural chaps back at Remy of an evening.’
‘So what have they got to say about the rat holes then, Mac? The digging and scraping done for us by our four-legged friends?’
‘They’d probably say it aerates the soil, or some such.’
‘Well, well. They’ll have you staying on at this rate. Right’ – Jack starts to move – ‘let’s get cracking. Sooner we’re finished here the sooner we can get packed up ready for home.’
Clouds of small white butterflies flit from one small patch of wild flowers to another as the men pace slowly across the field. Young swallows gather and chatter overhead. Working outwards from the spot where the Belgian farmer first reported having found a body, Jack soon spots the telltale signs that something else is buried underground. He scrapes back the topsoil, digs a little further, then a little deeper. ‘Right, Skerritt lad, get the stretcher ready.’
At first what Jack uncovers looks like no more than a discarded pile of old uniform. Only as he gently presses sleeves and lifts trouser legs does he discover bone sticking with the remnants of rotten flesh to the inside of the clothing. Sunlight flashes on the shovel blade as he carefully digs round the corpse.
And then, suddenly, he has hit the head – naked bone, skin shrunk back like rotten leaves, a tin hat framing the skull like a black poke bonnet. The soil all around is stained and dark with what must be the maggoty remains of brain. Jack is scraping with the sharpened shovel, then he’s kneeling, examining bits of soil in his hands. Where do you stop digging? How much of a soldier does a grave need?
In sure and certain hope … In sure and certain hope of what? Could you scrape the thoughts, hopes, loves, fears, ambitions, the memories, the secrets, the glories and the shame of what was once a man as quickly, Jack wonders, as his shovel now scrapes the stinking, rotting, liquefying mash of what is left by what the man once was? Suddenly Jack realises he is, quite literally, trampling on another’s dreams. The grip of his Army boots cakes with what he can’t scrape into the sandbag Skerritt is shaking open at the side of the hole.
‘Right, lad.’ Jack turns away. ‘You can have a rummage for his ID, the poor sod. I need a fag.’ The match cracks like a rifle shot. Jack sucks the cigarette to life, lips hissing like gas. Skerritt is mumbling something. Jack’s mind is wandering.
In sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the body. At least this man had a body. What about the men who had nothing, the men who ceased to exist the moment a shell dest
royed what they had once been or when a mine atomised their bodies so completely there was never going to be anything left for anyone to find – nothing more than flotsam, floating on the breeze? What difference would it make not moving him? What difference did it make moving any of them? Not that all of this one could be moved anyway. There’d always be something of him here, soaked into the soil, leaked into the land, impossible to scrape up. Neater, of course, to have a grave. Is that what this is all about – neatness? A great tidying-up operation?
They said that Fritz used the corpses of dead soldiers for making candles. Kadaververwertungsanstalt – the corpse factory. Another atrocity story? What would it matter if they did? What difference would it make? Jack takes a long, last look at the man lying at his feet, old blood blackening the earth, heart and lungs shrivelled like rotten apples in a basket of broken ribs. Ashes to ashes? Dust to dust? Was ‘he’ – the man, the soldier, corpse – now no more than the ground, the earth, the black water in the bottom of the shallow hole, the worms and maggots crawling through the empty eyes and out across the open canvas shroud?
Mac and Ocker appear from the other side of the field, empty-handed. ‘There’s nothing, Jack,’ they say. ‘We’ve looked. Believe me, we’ve looked.’
‘Just this ’un then,’ Jack shrugs. ‘Might as well bury him, I reckon. Fancy digging one last grave, anyone? Where’s he for?’
The others stand and look at Jack. ‘All yours, mate,’ says Ocker. ‘We’ve got packing to do.’
‘Just leave me my bike, then,’ Jack says when they unload the corpse at Vlamertinghe cemetery. ‘I won’t be long.’
‘What about your shovel?’
‘I’ll leave it here. Won’t be needing it any longer, will I?’
‘Watch they don’t dock your pay for it, Jacko.’
Once the noise of the wagon has faded into the afternoon air, once another cigarette is smoked, Jack removes his tunic and gets down to work. Flies are already buzzing round the stitched bundle lying by the marked grave. Another hour and they’ll be unbearable.
Jack picks up the shovel and begins to dig. The first sod, the first clean cut of the shovel into turf – the easy loosening and lifting and then the gentle laying – is just a prelude to the serious digging. After this comes the hard work – the regular, fast mechanical action: the cut of the spade; the loosening sod; the lift; deposit. Jack’s shoulders and arms, his legs braced keeping his body in position, seem after a while to become the very forces necessary to move the growing mound of soil. His large, calloused hands that now no longer blister close loosely at first, then tighten into fists around the handle of the spade. His long, lean arms are perfectly proportioned for the job of cutting great thick slabs of earth then lifting them high over the deepening sides of the grave. Is it years of pitching hay and straw high onto farm carts stacked with sheaves under the hammer of a summer sun that did it? Is that what forged such skill? Or is it the winters digging drainage ditches in the lowest-lying fields? His body has been made for this. And more than just his body. A memory of watching someone digging, a shadowy figure shovelling, working the ground just the way Jack is doing, flits across his mind like the fleeting glimpse of a swallow swooping low to catch one of the flies buzzing round the bundled corpse. The man stops, straightens up and is now laughing as the little boy begins mimicking what he’s just seen the older man doing. Bend, dig, lift, turn and throw; bend, dig, lift, turn and throw. Jack can see the man’s teeth as he throws back his head and opens his mouth; he can smell the man’s sweat beneath the stained shirt, see his eyes wrinkle as he smiles and laughs. But that is all. No face. No place or name. Unknown.
The CO, Major Dundridge of the Royal Buckinghamshire Fusiliers, is turning down the row of graves, picking his way across the duckboards, avoiding the newly excavated holes while taking special care not to walk across the old ones. Behind him, a well-dressed young woman tries her best to keep up. The heels on her shoes aren’t helping. Jack sees them both, then turns back to the grave, gets his head down, slices the shovel into the ground at his feet, loosens another load of soil and throws it neatly out of the hole. He repeats the action, faster. Then again, and faster still. Big, furious shovelfuls of Belgian earth are flying up over his left shoulder and the hole is rapidly getting deeper. First his shoulders disappear and pretty soon his head is below ground, and all that can be seen is the top of his shovel, flashing in the sun as it lifts out yet more earth.
‘Patterson, you can stop digging now,’ the CO is calling, more mindful of the soil peppering his uniform than anything else. ‘I said, STOP DIGGING, DAMN YOU!’
Major Dundridge turns to the woman. ‘I do beg your pardon, miss.’
‘Not at all, Major.’
‘Sorry, sir,’ Jack calls out of the hole without turning round or looking up. ‘Didn’t hear you just then.’
‘Well, now you have heard get out of the damned hole, will you? There’s someone here who wants to see you.’
Jack stops. He puts down his shovel, wipes his muddy hands on his shirt and steps up onto the first rung of the ladder.
‘Right, I’ll leave you, miss, to have your, er … to discuss your private matter here with Corporal Patterson.’
‘Hello,’ the girl is saying, reaching her gloved hand into the hole as if to haul Jack back into the land of the living. He looks up at her, but doesn’t take the hand she’s offering. Not that it’d be much use if he did. The slip of a girl’d be down here at the bottom of the hole as soon as he touched her, he is thinking.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘But this is no place for a young lass like thee. The CO would’ve known that if he’d ever been out on a search himself.’
‘No, no. I can see that you’re busy. What is it that you’re doing?’
Jack continues climbing up the ladder, rising slowly from the grave, sucking and squelching as the wet mud from the bottom of the hole is squeezed between the soles of his boots and the rungs of the ladder.
‘I really am most grateful to you for breaking off like this to see me. I wouldn’t mind, but I’ve already been here once before, looking for you. Only, you weren’t here.’
‘If it’s urgent,’ Jack says, ‘then we’ll have to go somewhere else. We can’t talk here.’
The girl turns away as Jack buttons his shirt and pulls up his braces. ‘Swallows,’ she says, pointing across the cemetery. ‘They’re getting ready to leave.’
Jack pulls on his tunic and follows her gaze. ‘Parent birds’ll be off home soon, I reckon. But this year’s brood’ll be around another month or so. Know much about ’em, do you – swallows?’ He studies her carefully: neat hat, gold pin, expensive clothes, a young face. She can’t be much more than eighteen, he thinks, all the time wondering what it is that seems so familiar, and what on earth she’s doing wandering alone round a Flanders cemetery.
‘I was brought up in the country,’ she says. ‘And my mother was so very fond of birds.’
Ah, he thinks. Of course. ‘There’s a tiny place over there in t’village.’ He nods towards the group of recently rebuilt houses clustered round the church. ‘Don’t know about you, but I could murder a cup o’ tea.’
‘That would be … nice,’ says the girl, nodding.
‘Jack, by the way.’ He offers her his hand. ‘Jack Patterson.’
‘Yes,’ the girl replies. ‘I know.’
‘Oh, aye?’ He turns his head. ‘Of course.’
The little village café behind the remains of the church is quiet. Locals only. And Jack can tell if anyone is talking about them. He pulls a chair out for the girl, removes his cap then sits down opposite. ‘I’m sorry, miss. Back there, I must have seemed a bit …’
‘I know,’ she looks at him. ‘I understand. You were miles away.’
‘Aye,’ said Jack. ‘I were.’
‘My name is Anna.’ She removes her hat and gloves, placing them beside her on the table. ‘Anna Bowker.’
‘Aye,’ Jack nods. ‘I know.’
>
‘You do?’ The girl looks puzzled. ‘I’m somewhat surprised.’
‘Aye, well,’ he sighs, looking down at the red-and-white pattern of the tablecloth. ‘I reckon that’s not going to be for the last time this afternoon, neither.’
‘Go on,’ she says.
‘Nay, lass. You’ve come all this way. Ladies first.’
‘Well,’ she begins. ‘This is actually a little awkward. But my mother—’
‘Your ma,’ Jack interrupts. ‘Was it she that sent you?’
‘Ye-es,’ the girl looks down at the floor. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I mean, she did. It was her idea. But that was before—’
‘Thought so.’ Jack picks at soil from beneath his fingernails. ‘Aye, well. Go on, lass.’
‘Oh. Oh, I see. Well …’ The girl is expecting this to be a little awkward. But she isn’t really anticipating it being such hard work. ‘Well, as I was saying. My mother …’ The girl pauses. ‘Well, before she died Mama was very active in the committee establishing a war memorial for the village, and—’
‘Edgham?’ Jack says. ‘The village, that is.’
‘Yes,’ she nods. ‘That’s right.’
‘O’ course,’ Jack smiles. ‘She would have been.’
‘Would have been what?’
‘She would have been active, I mean, love. On t’committee, that is, before she, er …’ He pauses for a moment. ‘I was sorry to hear that she’d passed away,’ he says at last.
‘But how …’ The girl’s mouth carries on moving, silently.
‘How do I know? Why wouldn’t I know?’ Jack says.
‘I’m sorry, Patt – er, Mr Patterson.’
‘Jack.’
‘Jack. Oh yes. Oh dear,’ the girl flusters. ‘You see? I really don’t know what to call you.’
‘I can think o’ summat.’
‘Well … Jack, as I was saying. My mother,’ the girl looks down, briefly, ‘she was instrumental in establishing a memorial to the men of Edgham who had fought in the war. For a small village there was quite a sizeable contingent … But then, you know that don’t you? Yes, of course you do. Excuse me.’ The girl leans forward. ‘Excuse me, Jack? May I have a drink?’
