by Ryan Byrnes
Blank Slate Press
Copyright © 2019 Ryan Byrnes
All rights reserved.
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real or historical people or places is purely coincidental and a product of the author’s imagination. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted except as permitted by copyright law.
For information, contact [email protected]
Manufactured in the United States of America
Publication date: November 5, 2019
Cover Design by Kristina Blank Makansi
Cover Art: Shutterstock
ISBN: 9781943075607
For the Precious of the Earth
CHRISTMAS EVE, 1914
THE WESTERN FRONT
~ RODNEY STOKER ~
“I need a volunteer to lead the patrol tonight.” Captain Blanding marched toward us, boots caked up to the ankle in mud. We’d been making the most of tea time—spooning a bit of stew out of our helmets. We’d learned to eat slow and waste nothing, relishing every morsel and lingering over very drop. He stopped next to our huddled group.
“Appleby, can I trust you with an officer’s patrol?”
Why the captain even asked was a question for the ages. Every bloke knew that when an officer “asked” for volunteers, the answer was always the same.
“Yessir.” Appleby swallowed hard. He’d worn a target on his back ever since that one night he got plastered and wandered into the captain’s quarters.
“Pick your squad. Be out soon as it’s dark,” Blanding ordered. Before he turned to leave, his gaze fell on me. “Stoker, you’ll take second in command.” He gave me a curt nod. “Be careful, men.”
Everyone rushed to finish eating, wiped their helmets clean, packed their things, and hurried back to business before Appleby could decide on his squad.
“Looks like I’m going with you, mate.” I shrugged. “I figure we’ve had luck together so far, right?”
“You’re a real pal, Rodney,” Appleby clapped a palm on my shoulder.
“I’ll go, too.” Luther looked up from where he was huddled in a dark corner, arms wrapped around his rifle.
Luther? Volunteering?
“Certainly not,” I said. “Luther, you’re to stay in the trench.”
Appleby frowned. “We’ll see who else we can get, but if we’re short volunteers, we’ll have to take him.”
“He’ll only get in the way,” I protested.
“No!” Luther shook his head. “If you’re going, Rodney Stoker, I’m going, too.”
Good lord, I just hoped he wasn’t going to start rocking and flapping. He didn’t do it often anymore, but when he did, it was hard to calm him down.
Appleby sighed. “Rodney, we may not have a choice.”
Turned out, there were no volunteers. Fancy that. So we impressed Wallace, Wright, Somers, and Nash because they were the only ones who hadn’t yet cleared the dugout. With Luther, we had a patrol. As each person went off to try and prepare for, or rather, distract themselves from, what might pass come nightfall, I caught up with Luther, who was now heading back to his post.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said.
No response. As usual.
“Hey, listen to me.” I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him around to face me.
He reared back, nostrils flaring. For some reason, I got the idea he was going to hit me, so I snapped my hand back and took a step away. Luther looked down on me.
“You’re still afraid of me, Rodney Stoker.”
“Th—that’s beside the point. Listen, you need to get someone else to go on the patrol tonight, okay? You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”
“I do know.” He took a step toward me. “You think I’m daft, that I don’t know because I’m different than you. But I do know. I know a lot.”
“Bollocks. If you know so much, why’d you go and volunteer?”
No answer.
“Luther, have you any idea how bloody lucky you are? How many people are rooting for you to survive all this?” I gestured at the filthy trench we were stuck in. I hadn’t planned on giving a monologue or anything of the sort, but the words just spilled out. “Since you arrived in November, things have been pretty quiet. If you play your cards right, you can make it to Christmas without actually seeing any combat, and then maybe Ethyl’s letters to High Command will earn you a free ticket home. But a guy like me? I’m stuck here for three more years—three. If I get hurt, they’ll just patch me up and keep sending me out to the front until I don’t come back. And if I’m still breathing, but too injured to keep fighting, they’ll amputate a leg or an arm or give me a new face and send me home to live with a bunch of civilians who’ll look at me with pity and tell me to buck up and have a stiff upper lip when I can’t find a job or when I close my eyes only to see all the men I’ve shot parading in front of me.”
I was surprised those words came out of me—it sounded treasonous, mutinous, like old Tommy Wright from back home. What would my father say? He wouldn’t countenance cowardice.
Luther sniffled and hung his head. “I just want to help so you won’t have to be afraid anymore.”
“’Don’t you worry about me, Luther. Look after yourself. That’s your job.”
“But I do worry, Rodney Stoker. I worry about everything. All the time.”
My words had bounced off him. I was a little bird tweeting at an elephant. Soon, we arrived at his post—a gap in the sandbags through which he’d stick his rifle and pretend to aim out of. He’d managed to fashion a little bench into the dirt wall, now frozen solid, and a small shelf where he kept an assortment of round marbles rolled out of mud. He saw me look at them and simply said, “Truffles. For Mum.”
Then he looked like he was going to cry, so I decided to change the subject. “Do you write to your mum?”
His eyes widened, and he shook his head. “I don’t know my letters.”
“Doesn’t she write you?”
“I don’t know my letters.”
I swallowed. I remembered Mrs. Baker from the candy shop. She’d always given me the collywobbles. Damned if I knew why. According to Father Carmichael, she’d carried me in her arms all the way through the village when Luther gave me a nasty concussion. We were just young lads then, but in all the years since, I’d never thanked her. I was pretty sure Mrs. Baker hated my parents. And that the feeling was mutual.
“What about if I write for you, Luther?” I asked him. “What if I help you write your mum? Would you like that?”
He touched his throat, feeling the lump in it, and swallowed. He exhaled a few times, heavily, his breath a cloud in the cold.
“Alright, alright, no crying.”
That comment didn’t go over well, and Luther started in on the weird noises.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Cut the cackle, now will you?” I snapped my fingers close to his nose, and he crossed his forearms over his eyes, surprised.
“But what will you write, Rodney Stoker?”
“Whatever you tell me. In fact, let’s do it right now. Hold on.”
I trudged down the trench, through puddles in the thick chalk mud that still hadn’t managed to freeze, over to where Mo Bipton, our own Royal Warwickshire poet, sat scribbling with his pencil and paper. After a short negotiation, starting with four cigarettes, we managed to make a trade—six cigarettes for stationery and a pencil. I rushed the supplies back over to Luther, who was eyeing his new creation, a mud truffle-pyramid, with a furrowed brow.
“Alright, so what do you want me to write?”
Luther ran a hand through his hair, and his fist stopped to tug on it, palm resting on his forehead.
“T
ell her, um, tell her,” he squirmed in his seat, popping his knees up and sitting on his heels, “tell her I, tell her that I, I—” He paused, clicking his tongue and staring off into the distance.
“Tell her what, Luther?” I rolled my eyes. “We can’t be here all day; we have a patrol to prep for.”
“I don’t know! What do you want me to say?”
“Whatever you want, God almighty!” Blood rushed to my face, and I was surprised at myself. I was usually able to keep calm no matter what, but Luther took a lot of patience. And maybe the patrol worried me more than I wanted to admit.
“Let’s just write it later,” he said.
“No. We’re writing it now.”
“I don’t know what she wants to hear. I’ve never written a letter. Let’s talk about the patrol.”
“Alright,” I exhaled. “We can write your mum tomorrow. Here’s what we’re going to do on the patrol tonight. There will be seven of us, and Appleby is in charge.”
“Appleby?”
“Yes, John Appleby. You know, the bloke you just volunteered to go out with.”
“I know him.”
I drew in a long breath. “Are you sure? He’s tall, got a thick mustache. Straw-colored hair. Missing his pinky.”
“Missing his pinky. I know.”
I could never be sure what Luther knew or didn’t know, but I went on. “Okay. So we’re going to crawl across No Man’s Land when it gets dark, crater to crater, until we get to the listening post. We’ll stay there and listen for a few hours, then come back before sunrise. Here are the rules. Luther, hey.”
He’d reached down and scraped up a handful of mud and started rolling more out more of his truffles. His eyes closed as he felt the little balls between his palms. I snapped my fingers in his face again, and he looked at me.
“Here are the rules. Stay behind me at all times, especially if you hear gunfire. If I’m not there, hide behind Appleby or one of the others. If you’re alone, hide in a crater and stay there until the patrol finds you come daylight. Luther, listen to me. A dozen German rifles are trained on any given point along this trench. Draw attention to yourself in any way, and there go your chances of seeing your mum again.”
“I know,” he said. Then he closed his eyes and started rolling more mud balls and setting them gently on his truffle shelf. I watched for a moment, then got up and left.
About an hour after supper—maybe five, maybe six—the sky bruised to red, then purple, after which we had only the moonlight’s glint off the frozen chalk mud to see by. We gathered where we knew the machine gunners would give us cover fire if needed. We stripped off our heavy overcoats and left them in a pile; everyone knows that heavy coats slow you down when you’re trying to run. Plus if we didn’t make it back from the patrol, there’d be free coats for the freezing blokes who needed them. In just my khaki uniform, I hugged myself, breathing into my hands for warmth. My fingers were purple and cracked and shaking; my breath clouded about me.
“Ready?” Appleby asked, passing his cigarette butt to one of the gunners.
“Yep,” I nodded. It was a lie we all told ourselves.
“Right.” Appleby took a breath and stepped up the first rung of the ladder.
He poked his head out of the trench. No gunfire. One second later, he rolled over the edge and flattened himself by a line of sandbags and a coil of barbed wire. Wallace stepped up to the ladder as well. One or two cold drops struck my neck, and I noticed flakes in the swirling filth at the bottom of the trench. Snow.
CHRISTMAS EVE, 1914
THE PORT OF LE HAVRE
~ THE PORT ~
The black waves of the English Channel erupted with spittle and foam. Warships chugged through the churning crests, every square foot of the decks crammed with khaki-clad soldiers. “Mind the ice,” they’d mumble, pointing out slicks on the stairways and ten-foot icicle stalactites on the smokestacks. They congregated under tarps to pass cigarettes and play cards while the port of Le Havre slowly emerged from the fog. The medieval city walls hinted at a time of wooden ships and cannonballs, though recently reinforced with artillery nozzles peeking from concrete pillboxes.
For longer than even the oldest citizens could remember, Christmas tree ships would arrive in Le Havre from the forests of Norway, and salesmen dragged out bundles of spruces, standing them in rows under green banners that read: Marché de l’Sapin de Noël. Mothers towed babbling children to the makeshift Christmas tree market to ooh and aah, and in the evening, salesmen set out oil lamps around the trees so that the little forest twinkled.
“Maman, je veux que, je veux que,” toddlers squealed, pointing chubby fingers at their chosen tree.
“Vous devez être bonne cette année,” mothers replied, and because the good boys and girls knew Pére Noël was watching—Pére Noël in his red cloak and his bulging belly, tugging a bag of gifts—the children would try so very hard to be kind. On the way back home, they would offer to carry the tree even though it was thrice their height. They would offer to help their grandmothers cross the roads where the armored cars rattled and the soldiers marched. When babies cried at the distant sound of heavy artillery, they would press lips to the smooth cheeks in an attempt to quell tears.
Mothers and grandmothers pulled their children close as they passed the alleys where refugees crouched in the shadows. They had made the pilgrimage from as far as Belgium and had erected shanty-towns near street-corners, near brothels, near the steps of churches.
Some churches, boasting gothic arches and flying buttresses, glowed with colored light from within, adorned with banners of purple and pink, wreaths of green and red, and constellations of candles. There were the advent candles of peace, hope, joy, and love. There were candles in remembrance of family members long dead. And there were the candles lit by nuns whispering prayers for an end to the war.
From the single-room slum flats to the red-brick rowhouses, families strung their evergreens with ornaments of folded newspaper and straw; they had donated their metal ornaments for bullet-making. Grandmothers left Yule logs by fireplaces, and children laid out their shoes at the hearth. Mothers sat their children down and told them stories from rocking chairs, while suckling their babes under their shawls. These women told the children that if they were good and kind, Pére Noël would leave special gifts in their shoes that would make them forget the whole war. But only if they followed the new rules. First, they must not talk to the soldiers or play outside during the day anymore. They could only go outside when Mama was there. Big boys could go outside when looking for scrap metal to sell, but only the big boys, not the little boys or little girls. If the rules were broken, the good boys and good girls would become bad and Pére Fouettard would slide down the chimney instead of Pére Noël, bringing his whip for the bad boys and bad girls. The children lay on their bellies while they listened, brows creased, heads propped up on their palms.
“Quand papa rentre à la maison?” the little boys would ask.
The mothers would reply it was not the time to ask when Papa would return. Right then was the time to tell stories. And so the mothers would tell their children stories of baby Jesus, of how farm animals spoke to each other on Christmas Eve, of kindly ghosts that return to the living, of how wars eventually end and people live together again. Outside, more ships docked. More soldiers and trucks and armored cars rolled by on their way to the front.
~ JIM BAKER ~
When we docked at Le Havre, I was in the cargo hold of a big steamer, crammed wall to wall with post sacks. I’d passed most of the Channel crossing talking to a gent named Gibson, a stout fellow assigned to guard the post. A son was born to him six months ago, he explained with great enthusiasm, showing me the photographs.
“My second child. Little man’s probably crawling by now.” He flashed me a grayscale snapshot of a wee potato of a baby dressed up in a bonnet.
“I don’t suppose you’ve met him yet?”
He shook his head no. I think I lear
ned everything there was to know about babies as I sat there next to Gibson, hugging my knees and praying the ship would stop rocking.
“You married?” Gibson asked. “Got any children of your own.”
“I have an older brother, Luther, but sometimes I think he might as well be a child.”
Gibson slapped me on the back and roared with laughter for what must have been the fifth time.
“What, is your brother a lawyer?”
“He makes candy.”
Gibson threw his head back like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
“Now he’s a soldier. I’m actually on my way to see him.”
“Duty calls, I suppose.”
I could have spat just then. What did he know about anything? This soft bloke’s only job in the world was to sit on a boat and make sure nobody stole the bloody post. Who would want to steal a letter, anyway? I wanted to tell him that Luther wasn’t like other men, that he’d been tricked into joining up and was drafted illegally, and that I’d come to spring him from the army and put him on a boat to Algeria, but I kept silent. A drop of water landed on my neck, so all I said was, “Is this boat leaking?”
“Boy, there’s less a chance of this boat catching a leak than a U-boat blowing us to Davy Jones’ locker.”
What?
We sat together in the cargo hold with the post sacks for another few hours, and eventually I tried closing my eyes but never could fall asleep. Whenever a wave bashed against the hull, the sacks shifted, and the dissolved fish and chips from my last meal sloshed around in my stomach.
“You nervous, son?” Gibson asked. “About fighting in France, I mean.”
“No, no,” I shook my head. “I mean, I won’t see any fighting. I’ll just be a postman. Behind the lines, you know. I’m taking a train to Hazebrouck to fill a position as a lorry driver. Completely safe.”
This time, Gibson didn’t laugh.
A while later, the engines quieted, and Gibson’s head shot up. “That’ll be the shallows. We’ll be there soon.”