by Ryan Byrnes
Your loving son,
Rodney
August 20th, 1914
Mother and Father
We did not stay long at Yorkshire, for the navy has the area staked out pretty well with mines and whatnot. Right now, I am cramped in with about a hundred other men on the train down to Southampton, where we will join up with some other battalions in the 10th Brigade. We will all join the other brigades for the 4th Division of the Expeditionary Force. It doesn’t smell very nice here on this train with all these sweating soldiers, so we have opened the windows to smell the nice countryside.
I will admit that sometimes I have dreams about combat, and they always end up with me being killed by Germans or whatnot. However, I face these thoughts with courage and a stiff upper lip, as you have taught me, Father. Once we reach We are set to leave for France on the 22nd and help out those poor fellows being chased out of Belgium. I pray to God for a safe passage across the channel, for the thought of the German under-sea boats lurking beneath fills me with terror. But through the grace of God, the strength of my mind, and my excellent training, I know I stand a better chance than most.
Father, I would let you know that you have had a profound impact on my life and have instilled in me courage and morals of the highest order. Mother, I would let you know that your words bring me comfort and tranquility, even in my greatest terrors. I will see both of you soon, and if all goes well, the war will be over before Christmas.
Your loving son,
Rodney
August 22nd, 1914
Mother and Father,
My regiment departed from Southampton this morning aboard the SS Caledonia. Do not worry, the trip is already over, and it was a success. I am currently safe in Boulogne, awaiting deployment to Belgium. As I write this letter, I am lounging in my camp tent on a farm outside the city. I have a full stomach and am relatively warm, so life is good. During the passage across the channel, not a single under-sea boat harassed us, although several of the men vomited from the sea sickness. I was not among them because I am used to long sea voyages, having sailed to India and back. I hope the two of you are well and receive my letter. It sounds like you did not receive my last letter, so I am currently in the dark.
One thing I have noticed is that there are quite a few brothels in Boulogne. Many of my pals—I will not say who—frequent them and often invite me to come along. That is the reality, but I refuse them and instead stay at the camp. That is, in fact, why I’m alone at the camp now. I recall, Mother, what you said to me before I departed, and I assure you I have never stepped foot inside a brothel. Father, I hope I have lived up to your example of decency and maintained my honor.
Your loving son,
Rodney
August 27th, 1914
Mother and Father,
Just a few days ago, we had a run in near a little town called Harcourt (or something like that, I don’t know how the French spell it). Once again, don’t worry. I got off with quite a few bruises and a bullet brushed my leg, but I’m able to carry on just fine. I can’t speak of the battle in detail; I will only say that many of the younger recruits died Once again, don’t worry. I got off with quite a few bruises and a bullet brushed my leg, but I’m able to carry on just fine. I can’t speak of the battle in detail; I will only say that.
Even that sounds like too much detail. Neither of you could understand what true combat is like, and it sounds so out of place for the words to be spoken with home and my old life in mind. So that is all I will say of the imagery. Do not ask me about it.
We were ordered to march out with all our wagons to set up a defensive line out in a field, but the Germans were also on the move with too many numbers. We were ordered to retreat, but by the time we reached a little town called (I think) Harcourt, command changed orders again, telling us to dig in and fight, which made everyone a little flustered because we hadn’t set up the artillery in time and were being fired at. The only option was to entrench ourselves. So we dug like mad until we had linked enough foxholes together to run the entire length of the ridge. The trenches are an odd sort of place. I watched a good many boys die that way, and when the Germans stopped to reload, we left cover and finished setting up the guns, where we entrenched ourselves and prepared to fight. Some of the other divisions were manning lines at other nearby villages, all of them along the ridge. Most of the fighting happened at La Cateaux (pardon my spelling) and Audincourt and Troyville and several other towns, so luckily, we took the left-over end of the fighting. They say we knocked up the Huns pretty well, but it didn’t seem that way to me. When the sun set, we retreated and didn’t stop our march until after it was dark and we reached the town of St. Quentin, where I am currently camped now and am writing this letter. I was terribly exhausted and had gone several days without sleeping. My eyes closed while I was marching, and for the first time, I experienced what they call “sleeping on your feet.”
But I repeat that I am well, and you should not worry for me. I hope everything is going well in Leamington.
Your loving son,
Rodney
CHRISTMAS EVE, 1914
THE WESTERN FRONT
~ LUTHER BAKER ~
I said goodbye to the good German in the pointy hat and he said Merry Christmas to me and I carried Rodney over the mud and the tree trunks and the wires and the bodies and when we got close to the trench they yelled because they thought I was German and I yelled back and said its me Luther Baker and Rodney Stoker is hurt bad and they said hurry and I went into the British trench and everyone yelled and asked me questions they thought everyone was dead and then they took Rodney Stoker away and I didn’t see him anymore. The man with the big hat came out and said I was going to get a metal, but I told him I didn’t want any metal because it hurts but he said nonsense that I was a hero and I deserved a metal and he was going to see to it that I got what I deserved and so I said thank you. He shook my hand and slapped my back and seemed nice and so I told him the Germans spoke to me and gave me a paper with writing on it and said they don’t want to shoot anyone on Christmas. I showed the paper to the man and he tore it to shreds.
Then the man talked to everyone some more and said we are going to attack the Germans because they won’t know about it and we might not come back alive and he said we will leave on Christmas morning. He said we all needed to be brave like me because there were people back home who needed us to save them. I asked how many days until Christmas and they said tomorrow is Christmas and everyone is going to attack the Germans on Christmas to try and get inside Germany. One of the pals called the man in the hat a bastard and said no way I am tired of fighting and the Germans are too just look at Luther's note and the man in the hat took that man away and we didn’t see him anymore. Someone gave me some food and everyone grumbled and stomped and sang angry songs around the fire. After I ate, I went into the concrete room to sleep and it was filled with water because of the rain that came through the ground. I sat in the corner and could not think and could not sleep and I did not want to be in the world. I just wanted to be home with Mum.
I stayed in the world because I had to give Mum the letter Rodney Stoker wrote for me to tell her I was okay so she would not worry and so she would not be sad anymore.
SEPTEMBER, 1914
THE WESTERN FRONT
~ MESSINES RIDGE ~
For a thousand years, scribes wrote of the Belgian hamlets. There was Ypres in the North, a skeleton of concrete and stone and all things that would not burn. From there, the River Lys curved like a trail of saliva, parting cratered fields in two, where soldiers on each side buzzed and bled. The infested copses and crossroads all along the river, through Hollebecke and Messines and Ploegsteert, all the way to Ypres’s twin skeleton, Armentieres.
Radiating from the river, the land gave way to a muddy stew of sandbags, barbed wire, and bloated bodies. And east of the river, in the highlands eroded by runoff streams, soldiers wearing pointed Picklehauben huddled together to rub their han
ds for warmth. Occasionally, one would stand tall to stretch the weariness out of his arms. A crack of some distant sniper, and his comrades would watch his finger splash into the mud at their feet. He'd take his time sauntering for the hospital tent, stopping by the mess tent to stuff some bread and sausage inside his helmet. With any luck, he'd land a week in the hospital and never have to fight again. Later, the rats caught the scent of his fallen finger, and they converged into a writhing, squirming mess. The rats would end up pinned to the bunkers from their tails.
Down the slopes, across the river, the British wallowed in the lowlands, where the water table rose up knee-high through the mud. One of the infantrymen paused, his boot stuck in it. He pulled, but it did not budge. He called for his pals, who finally dragged his foot out, but without the boot. They looked down at his bare foot, pruned and peeling, and shrugged.
Soldiers were always shoveling, digging runoff trenches to channel the chalk-water into the river. No amount of dams or canals could divert the water because it seeped up from below. Some of the trenches eroded so much that they were no longer trenches, but little gullies in which soldiers waded, hiding from the German guns. Even then, the trenches eroded, and soon they weren’t tall enough to conceal anything. So the men filled sandbags with forty pounds of mud and stacked them high, dodging sniper fire each time they slung one up on higher ground.
Soldiers passed the nights huddled around glowing cigarette butts. Anyone who lit their smoke too close to the frontline would soon drop it in the mud and fall to their knees, along with half their brains. Smokers and non-smokers alike breathed plumes of steam from their nostrils and pulled their arms close to conserve heat. Their boots were filled with water, their coats saturated, their undergarments half frozen. When rain taptaptapped along the trenches, the soldiers shivered with fever and could not keep food down or grab even a few moments of shut-eye. They walked the trenches lightheaded, half asleep, scratching at their lice.
Further out, telegraph wires crisscrossed the reserve trenches, behind which commissaries boiled turnips and artillery nozzles blasted shells into No Man's Land.
Some trenches faded to a lucky hedgerow that still grew between stray craters and the ruins of bombed-out barns. These followed the roads down to farmsteads where weeds grew thick on fallow fields. And along that road lived a regiment of beggars and prostitutes, once mothers and fathers and sisters, who had not even their dignity to sell for a franc. They clung onto the arms of any soldier they saw, shouting in Dutch and French and English and Walloon. Occasionally, soldiers would throw them bread.
Most families had left their farms earlier that summer. Packing all their belongings onto wagons, they locked, for the last time, houses that took generations to build. But some remained because they had nowhere to go. They stayed and housed soldiers, asking them for what they desired most, offering it at twice the price—turnips, chickens, cows—only to find their horses the next morning, laying in the road, stripped bare. Some of the barns became army headquarters, and officers would lay out maps and help the engineers set up telegraph wires.
Nearby, soldiers that sat in the prairies near their billets would shit en masse on little wooden toilets in the fields. They watched the robins. It was pleasant, peaceful even. Afterwards, they would walk down the road to the village brothels—Ploegsteert, Romarin, Messines—raiding homesteads for alcohol along the way. In abandoned cellars, they often found bottles of wine which they would drink while off-duty, laughing and weeping, because any emotion was better than reality. During their strolls, officers would find them drunk or passed out and sentence them to a few days in jail.
Duty would call, and the soldiers left their billets when the sun rose. They did not sleep those nights, and in the quiet moments, they would look up at the stars where once they saw God and now saw nothing. Philosophy, government, money, family—what did any of it matter when the most enlightened nations led by the most enlightened kings could not prevent this? The sons of teachers or gardeners or farmers would be soldiers forever, bound to crawl and charge and shoot on command.
One afternoon, the hazy outline of a man in khaki broke over the horizon. Then came another, and another behind him. Hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands filled the trenches shoulder to shoulder, ten men deep. Reinforcements. The men began to whisper to each other when the commissary handed out higher quality meats and when they saw the faint outline of artillery rising along the German trenches. They knew the bubble was swelling.
Daily shelling rounds lengthened, and soldiers crowded into their concrete-enforced bunkers for two days at a time. For two days, they paced from the bedpost to the wall and back with the full knowledge that their bunker could be hit at any moment. At first, the men were steely cool, but as the hours wore on, they flinched and jumped every time the ground rumbled and the lights flickered. At night, flares lit up the world like lightning so the aeroplanes could see. They ate rats because they could not leave the bunker. A few tore their hair and ran outside, into the open. Nobody saw them after that, and the rations were bigger because of it. As the sun rose on the second day, and the sky turned red, the ground stopped rumbling, and the soldiers’ eyes met, knowing what would come next. In the pale hours, they smoked their cigarettes and nodded to their pals.
“If you meet your sticky end out there, can I have your coat?”
“Take what you like.”
“I keep a secret stash of cigarettes in my trousers. You’ll have to fish it out if my body is still intact.”
“Cheers, mate.”
They would pat each other on the back, swallowing down their terror while others would seclude themselves and pray feverishly. “If you spare me, Lord, I will dedicate my life to you,” they’d say through tears.
Some were too afraid to pray. They hid in bunkers, where they raved like cornered dogs at anyone who tried to move them. Officers would have to force them into battle at gunpoint.
Some, with shaking hands, scrawled notes to wives or childhood sweethearts or mothers and fathers, often unable to finish because the horn would sound and commanders would call the charge. A line of men nine miles wide and ten bodies deep climbed ladders and threw themselves into the fray as the German line flashed with gunfire and artillery smoke hung in the air like morning fog.
The first line of soldiers stepped on the mines. Craters spat out plumes of black earth tall as a cathedral’s spire and so thick that debris from one explosion could not land before the next explosion went off. Then the second line of men dove for cover inside the craters. Some craters were so slick and steep-sided that soldiers clawed at the edges until the strength left their arms, and they slipped down into the muck.
Survivors called out that the Germans were reloading, and men crept from crater to crater, drawing closer each time. Soon, they approached the barbed wire, which snagged on their clothes so that the more they kicked, the more entangled they became, and the easier they were for the Germans to target. But still more soldiers came, more than the Germans had ammunition for.
When enemies came face to face, all human reason dissolved. Everything became a weapon—mud was for blinding, hands were for tearing, rocks were for throwing. Occasionally the British established little colonies in the enemy trenches, all the way down to the shore of the river, just below the ridge. By the time pale hours of morning changed to dawn, and dawn to high noon, the lines had not moved.
In the shadows at each end of the trenches, near Ypres and Armentieres, mounted cavalries trotted with binoculars and notebooks, writing down what they saw. Pinned down by gunfire, they camped on the spot for several days, observing battle lines ebb and flow with the phases of the moon. A regiment of khakied men, dark-skinned and wearing turbans—the Indian regiments—came to their aid. They rode back to headquarters, where officers convened to frown at maps and scratch their heads. After hours of deliberation, they realized the time for clever battle strategy had ended, and they had only one choice left.
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��Send in more troops.”
Noon turned to evening, which became dusk, and on the roads leading in and out of the Flemish countryside, never-ending lines of men with one arm, no arms, one leg, or any other possible arrangement of limbs limped through the darkness toward battlefield hospitals in abandoned churches where doctors offered each soldier a blanket. On the other side of the road, ranks of fresh soldiers marched in twos, headed for the front, holding their guns close.
By the third day, the German shells became more spaced out, and their reinforcements scrawnier. Then, the reinforcements stopped altogether. The khakis poked their heads out of their trenches, hearing the lack of gunfire. For the next two days, they inched forward, crouched low, bayonets pointed. Each trench they uncovered lay abandoned, each of the ruined villages empty. They raided the German commissaries for sausage and bread, tearing into them to ease their hunger. They crossed the river on a pontoon bridge the engineers had thrown together. All the while, the Germans watched from afar.
For ten days, the two brigades lived a field away from each other, each knowing that the next offensive would be their last; there simply weren’t enough reinforcements left. The men, who hadn’t slept in four days, took turns manning the guns so they could at last get some shut eye.
“How about a fire?” one man asked as he shivered under a wool blanket. Along with some of his mates, he sat amidst ammunition crates that elevated them from the water and blocked out the icy wind.