Regret to Inform You...

by Derek Jarrett

Tempted at first to tell Major and Mrs de Maine of their son’s appalling behaviour, Willy had stopped short; for once with the de Maines it was beyond his ability to keep things a secret. At least with Lionel in France, Ruby was safe for the present. Maybe the best person to speak to was the vicar; he was a discreet man; Willy decided to think about that.

  As he turned into Pond Street he virtually bumped into Grace Reynolds, bound for her cottage near the pond. ‘Willy, I heard you were home on leave; it’s a real joy to see you.’

  ‘Grace, and how splendid to see you.’ Grace had always been the most attractive girl at school and all his mates had thought how lucky Racer was to have her as a girlfriend; she really was beautiful. ‘How are you and all your family? Are you enjoying teaching?’ Willy asked.

  ‘Yes, thank you. Everyone’s well, although we had a bit of a scare when young Lily caught measles, but she recovered well enough. And I love teaching; Wensfield School reminds me of our time at Rusfield, but we have our down times as well. I have twins in my class and last month their father was killed in France: so terribly sad.’

  Willy nodded; he had seen friends’ families devastated by recent deaths. ‘And how is Racer or, as I should say to you,’ he added with a smile, ‘Abraham.’

  ‘Oh, he’s fine; at least that’s what he wrote in his recent letter. It was wonderful seeing him in March. I know he was worried about Boney and it’s terrible about Jammy and Fred. When this terrible war is over we shall all realise how much we miss them. But Willy, you may be just the person who can help. You’re home for quite a few days aren’t you?’

  ‘For ten more days. What can I do?’

  ‘Well, about two miles out of the village, there’s a camp where soldiers are training. Earlier this week, two of them came in to the village and Abraham’s father and I were chatting with them. One of them said how hard it must be for the children with their fathers away, especially having time on their hands during the school holiday. One thing led to another and we agreed to get together and have a special day for the children on Wednesday. Most of the soldiers can join us and we are to have some races on the village green and then, would you believe it, kite flying on Bramrose Hill. Apparently, one of the men we were talking to used to run a kite-making club. So Mr Watts is going to let us use the biggest classroom to make the kites and then we are going up Bramrose Hill to fly them. I think there will be a lot of children; can you come?’

  Willy smiled. He was sure none of the soldiers would have been able to resist an invitation to help the beautiful Grace; no more could he. ‘It sounds great fun. Of course, I’ll help. But Grace, I must get back home as we’re all going for a walk up the hill now and then back along the stream. Ruby is organising a stick race; I just wonder who will end up in the water!’ He kissed her lightly on the cheek. ‘It’s been wonderful seeing you. I’ll pop in tomorrow and you can tell me more about Wednesday’s event.’

  ‘Thank you, Willy.’ She turned left towards her house, thinking how Willy was always the one who knew the right thing to do. Willy turned right and thought about Grace; what a lovely woman she was and, he felt sure, what a fine teacher: lucky children.

  The afternoon walk took Willy’s mind back many years when the Sunday family walk had been one of the week’s highlights. Now, with Ruby, Rachel, Eliza, Harry, Robert and David in tow, he thought of Frank, now nineteen and in Mesopotamia. Judith and Raymond, hand in hand, walked behind their growing family; their thoughts, too, were on Frank, but rejoicing in seeing Willy again. When the stick race on the slow-moving stream was over, unconvincingly won by David as the sticks were all bunched together, the family walked back through the village. Willy was delighted to hear about the gardening project and had already made up his mind that the next day he would visit Violet Rushton and Robert Berry to thank them for the parcels he had received. He had, of course, been sad to find that none of his closest mates were about; even sadder that he would never see some of them again. But it had been good to see Grace and he looked forward to Wednesday’s activity with the children.

  ‘There must be over thirty of them up,’ Grace called to Doris as they watched the many coloured kites flying, some high, others fighting to stay aloft. They watched Willy run down the hill to unravel Florrie Edwards’ green and blue kite that had become entangled in a hawthorn bush. He soon managed to detach it and, with Florrie, walked a little way up the hill to relaunch it; her tears evaporated.

  ‘Just as well we have plenty of helpers,’ Fred Richards laughingly said to Olivia Atkins and Arthur Windle, ‘it’s certainly no easy job trying to keep them all aloft.’

  ‘I’m so sorry that Eleanor doesn’t feel well enough to be with us,’ added Olivia, turning to Arthur. ‘When I called in earlier this week, her cough still seemed quite bad.’

  ‘Yes, it comes and goes, but she can’t seem to really get rid of it.’

  Grace had been surprised at how many children had turned up at the school, all carrying a small picnic lunch; Mabel and Jack Mansfield had kindly agreed to provide drinks of home-made lemonade at the school afterwards. Grace, Willy, six soldiers and five other villagers had spent an hour earlier in the morning at the school. On the spaced out desks they had put: a variety of coloured tissue paper, old newspapers, thin wooden sticks, glue, scissors and lots of string, a product of which Violet Rushton had plenty in her shop.

  The children came tumbling into the room, abandoning all they had been told about coming into lessons quietly. It was Sergeant Robertson who took over. Other than a shriek from Lucy Palmer who claimed William Jones had jabbed her with his scissors, an incident Grace swiftly put down as an accident, everything went well.

  ‘Well, that looks like the first stage,’ Olivia Atkins remarked to Grace. ‘I’m not sure how many of them will fly, but we shall see.’

  Grace smiled, ‘Time for the races now and then picnic lunches. Hopefully, that will give the glue on the kites plenty of time to stick properly.’

  ‘Let’s hope they survive as far as Bramrose Hill,’ responded Olivia, ‘some of them look a little fragile.’

  On the village green, it was Willy who led the way in organising races, but it was the soldiers’ three-legged race that caused the greatest excitement. The sun continued to shine down on this happy day in the village.

  As Willy prepared to move off to fly the kites, he was surprised to see Peter Woods across the green talking to his sister, Ruby. He walked over. ‘Peter, how good to see you. Have you come to help?’

  Peter, momentarily embarrassed, smiled before replying: ‘Ruby told me about the children having a special day and thought I might be able to help. I hope you don’t mind me being here?’

  ‘Delighted to have you joining us, Peter; everyone feels you’re already part of the village.’ Willy could not think of anyone he would prefer to see with his sister, realising Peter had already cycled twelve miles to get back to the village after delivering the post and still had the return to Steepleton. Damage in transporting the kites was slight, easily put right by the strategic use of more glue that David Watts sensibly carried.

  ‘Now most of you have made your kites with one or two friends,’ Sergeant Robertson shouted above the excited chatter. ‘Stay with your partners, carry your kite carefully and follow me.’ He led them off up the hill to an open area. After a few false starts and two of the boys taking a tumble, the kites at least got off the ground. Some flew really well and stayed aloft for far longer than Willy had thought likely and he admired the patience of Sergeant Robertson in helping the children whose kites seemed more adapted to ground activities. After much excited flying of the kites, an increasing number becoming entangled with others, they were collected in with strings safely rolled and placed under the watch of Sergeant Robertson. Grace and Willy then organised a massive game of hide-and-seek for which the scattered bushes and small clumps of thick trees provided excellent hiding places.

  At five o’clock, Sergeant Robertson told Grace that the men must move back to
their camp, as the next day they were returning to Canchester. It was Willy who co-ordinated the three cheers for the soldiers and all the adults came over to thank them. ‘We haven’t enjoyed ourselves so much for a long time, have we boys?’ the sergeant said turning to his men.

  The children waved farewell, kites were gathered up and the slopes of Bramrose Hill returned to their age-old peacefulness. As the soldiers finally disappeared back to their camp, Eliza Carey wondered how many of them would survive the war. She had lost her wonderful son and knew many Rusfield parents would be wondering how many more would be added to the thirteen who had already given their lives. Anguish in the village tightened its hold, even on an outwardly happy day.

  FORTY-FIVE

  February - March 1917

  As he picked up the letter, Willy’s hand was shaking from the biting cold. He had been overjoyed to see it in the small batch of mail that had reached the trench that morning, only four days after another Rusfield parcel had arrived. He had put the grey socks on top of the previously sent thick ones, managing somehow to force on his boots; the grey balaclava was an additional protection. He shared the twenty woodbines with Cooper and Rigby, two of the men who always looked at the post, but never received anything. Wearing two pairs of gloves made opening the envelope cumbersome.

  Older brother Frank was well and had been transferred to Egypt which, to Willy, sounded a better place to be than Mesopotamia. Robert and David would be leaving school soon and both were likely to work for Mr Mansfield; such a good man, thought Willy. Ruby was well and his mother wrote that her occasional periods of upset had disappeared and her friendship with Peter Woods was flourishing. His mother was sorry that the Tuesday evening choir had been suspended for a few weeks as Eleanor Windle was not well.

  When he had been home six months earlier he had asked his parents not to protect him from any grim news and now she wrote that two more Rusfield men had been killed. Willy remembered Walter Groves, a year younger than himself; he thought back to going into Harry Groves’ small grocers shop and spending his weekly penny on sweets. Willy also recalled Walter telling him about his parents’ silver wedding to which over thirty brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews and cousins had attended; over twenty living in the village. Willy knew how each Rusfield death spread its web of sadness.

  He felt that he had been in this trench for ever, although it was only since the turn of the year. Would 1917 be any different to the previous three years? He thought not. Two months after he had returned from Rusfield, the rains had set in and rarely stopped. The Somme, which had continued to see terrible fighting in his absence, had become a sea of mud, the shattered ground over which the men had tried to advance in July and August, a bog. Holes from the incessant gunfire were vast in which men and horses occasionally drowned and attempts to construct paths were useless; to move was as much a fight against the filthy, smelling mud as it was against the enemy.

  The trench itself had become increasingly foul, the water filthier and deeper. The stench never left Willy’s nostrils and he thought it would remain with him for ever. Willy had seen plenty of rats in the barns at the manor, but never the size of these. They fed on anything thrown away and on human corpses of which there were plenty: British and German. He had watched Buzzer Briggs and his mate, Fugger, put a pole across the trench along which a rat would run. Buzzer would then wait for it to get halfway and hit it with a thick cudgel. Willy had never counted the number of rats killed in this way, although he and the others in the trench admired Buzzer’s growing skill.

  His mind went back to another grey day in early October when he found himself with a quiet man that he had seen before, but with whom he had not spoken. He had been surprised when this young, fair-haired and pleasant-featured comrade said to him in a winsome, almost apologetic voice: ‘I think today’s a bit special for me.’

  Willy, always quick to pick up clues in another’s comments, smiled and asked: ‘And why is that? Incidentally I’m Willy Johnson.’

  ‘Oh, and I’m Arthur, Arthur Passmore.’ They shook saturated gloves together before the new acquaintance of Willy further responded. ‘Well, I think it’s my birthday, at least that’s what I was told. If that’s right, I’m twenty today.’ He smiled in a most disarming way before adding: ‘Not really the weather for celebrating a birthday is it?’

  Willy smiled: ‘Well, I’m sorry I haven’t got much of a present for you, but at least have one of my fags.’

  ‘Thanks, that’s kind. Well, you see I never knew my parents. I was brought up in this place in Hull; it was called a home, but wasn’t really like the homes that some of the mates I went to school with told me about. I suppose the nuns did the best they could, but they were never very friendly. The best times were when I went to Park View School as I made some good friends there. Mind you, I never saw any park nearby.’ He went on to tell Willy how, after leaving school, he had lodged with the Robinson family who, rather grudgingly, let him join the local Territorial Army and as soon as he reached his eighteenth birthday, the regular army. Soon after that he was in France.

  Willy took out his treasured tin and offered another eagerly accepted cigarette. Arthur continued by moving on to his time in France. It was when Arthur went on to talk about an advance into a village in early 1916 that Willy realised it was almost certainly the same place he had been through, and about the same time. It was an abandoned piano that made the link between the two men.

  Arthur told of advancing on a deserted Flemish village; abandoned vehicles and human bodies just outnumbering the scores of dead horses. There was not a properly standing house; ‘But,’ went on Arthur, ‘we found this piano. There was this one house, the roof had almost all gone, but more of it remained than with most. A mate and I went in and we could hardly believe our eyes; just inside was this black piano, still standing.’ He smiled before continuing, ‘I wouldn’t say it was in tune, but it sounded all right. I’d learnt to play a few tunes when I was in the home and managed to knock out “Let Me Call You Sweetheart”; I remembered it well enough. It was just one of those magic moments as a dozen guys heard me playing and gathered round. Anyway we sang and then we joined in some other choruses. Of course, we had to move on fairly soon, but I will always remember it.’

  Willy had hardly been able to believe what Arthur described. ‘But Arthur, I remember going through a terribly destroyed village and seeing a piano in this knocked-about, small house. Did you leave the piano lid up?’

  They both laughed, slapping each other on the back. From that moment they became good mates. Willy reflected on a friendship which a couple of fags had started and an abandoned piano cemented.

  A few days later, Willy was reflecting on the stupidity, or maybe just ignorance, of the military leadership. Who could these men be that gave some orders; where had their intelligence come from? It was a young lieutenant that passed on the orders: ‘We’ve heard that the Huns across there,’ his arm wavered as if uncertain of the exact direction, ‘have been reduced to reinforce their line where the Australians are breaking through further west. We’re going to give them the bayonet and take over their trench.’ Willy knew this was less than a hundred yards away. ‘Be ready for 14.00 hours.’ It was then midday.

  Surely, thought Willy, to advance in the daylight was madness. ‘Fix bayonets.’ Men struggled to follow this order; young Grimes two down the line from Willy dropped his bayonet and came up spitting out filthy water. Willy was next to Arthur Passmore, but neither had any idea how many men were going over the top; their world was limited to the few in their part of the flooded trench. Yet once Willy had fixed his bayonet, any fear disappeared: the whistle sounded; up the slimy steps and over the muddy top. This was no sustained charge; this was fighting against deep mud, yet suddenly and unexpectedly Willy found his feet on a strand of firmer ground. He knew it was Arthur alongside him as he continued this crazy rush towards the enemy line. Ten yards short of the trench a machine gun from a nearby hillside opened up. He heard Art
hur next to him let out a shriek; he was gone. Willy moved on to a near certain death, but was amazed to find himself looking down into the trench with a white-faced lad looking up at him. With a single thrust he drove his bayonet into the youth’s chest and with another movement pulled it out. He was aware of others moving into the trench, the line of attacking men had been greater than Willy had realised. The enemy trench was in their hands; the British intelligence had for once been correct.

  As dusk fell, Willy crawled back to where the body of his briefly-known friend Arthur lay, dead; his upper body shattered from the cruel chatter of a machine gun. Willy lifted his body, crouched low and made back to the shelter of the overrun trench. Later he scooped out a shallow hole and lay the young soldier down before the shallow grave disappeared in the foul mud. No other would miss this young soldier; no parent, no sibling, seemingly no friends. The next day the news came that the Germans were counter-attacking and a courier arrived ordering the British to retreat. Willy learnt later in the day that over 700 men had been lost in gaining no yards at all. To Willy, the pointless death of Arthur had encapsulated the whole nature of the war; he reflected, too, on the young German soldier he had bayoneted.

  That had been in October, now it was February. In the spells away from observation, failed attacks and brief breaks for a hot drink, Willy found his mind returning to other times. Sometimes of imagined life in Rusfield; perhaps, such thoughts protected him from wondering about the unknown future.

  Back in January, the temperature had suddenly dropped as the wind moved to the east and within a week the ground had become frozen, in and outside their trench. The sharpest knife could not cut through the smallest loaf, uncovered hands immediately became numb and frostbite common. The endless sound of guns continued, but now the German shells were more deadly in their effect as the solid frozen ground refused to blunt the explosion. Men’s faces took on the look of frozen masks, bereft of expression.