Michel And Axe Bury The Hatchet (The French Bastard Book 2)
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MICHEL AND AXE
BURY THE HATCHET
Book 2 of The French Bastard
Avan Judd Stallard
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places and events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2017 Avan Judd Stallard
All rights reserved.
Published by Baby Blue Goat.
Edited by Spinifex Editing.
Cover by Ebook Launch, https://ebooklaunch.com
ISBN-10: 0-6481408-2-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-6481408-2-5
NOTE TO READER
This novel is set in Belgium during World War One. All characters are fictional or used fictitiously, and some events and locations intentionally diverge from history and geography.
Most spellings follow American English. All other conventions of grammar and style follow British or Australian customs. If something seems strange or consistently incorrect, it may simply be that a way of writing, spelling or punctuating commonly used somewhere in the Commonwealth has been employed.
ERROR BOUNTY
However, rare is the book, whether independently or traditionally published, with not a single error. That is not an excuse: grammar errors are an introduced vermin species, pure and simple, and if any linger herein, they must be eradicated.
Thus, if errors exist among these pages, I ask you to hunt ’em down, bag ’em up and beat ’em silly with a ruler till they play nice, then hand the word demons in. To the first man, woman or child to bring an error to my attention (at info@avanstallard.com), I will pay $10. Assuming, that is, that the error is not an innocent archaism, not a mere style choice or alternate spelling, not a victim of mistaken linguistic identity.
Based on the advice I have received from a consultant mathematician, that means that if you find 10 errors, I will pay out $100. For that matter, find 100 errors and I’ll pay your rent for a month. Unless you live in New York. In which case, it should last the week, and by the way, do you know Terry? Lives on Long Island. G’day Terry—tell him that for me. And shout him a coffee. No, scratch that. Make it a whiskey. Or even a whisky. I hear they taste very similar.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
NOTE TO READER
ERROR BOUNTY
PROLOGUE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
AUTHOR MESSAGE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
27 APRIL 1917, BELGIUM
From nothing, complete and pure, first there was weight, a sense of mass, before Michel became dimly present, aware of a muffled noise and a stabbing sensation inside his head. The noise had no sharp edges, nothing that made it sound like anything, just a heavy, repetitive, indistinct blare that shook through him.
Michel’s muscles began to unravel, to wake and seek to apply themselves to the levers and pulleys that made the frame of his body, and that is when everything exploded in pain. He cried out—his woozy brain told him he did—yet he barely heard himself whisper, perhaps because he was so focused on the hysterical beat of his heaving heart pushed into instant flight by a spike of adrenaline. The torrent of blood forcing its way through his body made everything worse and seconds passed in a kind of stasis, Michel frozen in darkness and agony.
There was no room left for further thought. The pain was everywhere, all-consuming, like no pain he had known or known could exist.
What is happening?
That was a thought, the only thought for a long time. At length, an answer came. It made too much sense not to be true.
He must have been sent over the top with the boys, and the bastards got him. Probably an artillery shell near him or on him. Now he was lying in a trench or crater, torn to pieces, dying like all the other dying men he had crawled past or stepped over in countless battles.
He hoped some of the others had survived and gotten up and gone on to take the turf—What turf? Where? Doesn’t matter now, never mattered—and killed whichever German soldiers had killed him, because he was dead or good as. Yes, this had to be dying and every soldier on the front knew dying was the last stop before dead. Plenty had proved that.
That sound. Its insistence made everything worse.
Go away!
Leave me alone!
He tried to open his eyes to see the thing that was tormenting him, tried to draw his eyelids up through the pain—Even my eyelids! They killed every bit of me!—and he did not know if he had or not, for nothing changed. Maybe they had killed him at night.
He wanted to see something. Anything. It was a desperate need. It did not matter if it was to see the thing making the noise or a trench filled with Germans, or even to glimpse his own tortured body. Just to look, see, one more time. It was so important.
He lashed out and tried to feel his arms, make sure they were still attached so that he could push his body up and orient himself and find his head and his eyes. He made the effort and the result was an eruption of color, his vision and brain exploding in hot red before a soothing black swept through.
Michel fell into a deep hole of unconsciousness that threatened to close over and bury him for good. Turn a dying man into a dead one. Even then, inside his unconscious mind, he heard the distant echo of something.
That same persistent sound.
If only Michel had been able to wake and open his eyes, he would have seen a three-legged dog standing a few feet away. Its tail wagged, its ears were high and it barked without pause until finally a voice issued from the little wood behind the canal.
“Enough! I hear you, Monster. Enough already!” said the voice in Dutch as a figure holding a rifle emerged into the half-light of dawn.
1
26 APRIL 1917, BELGIUM: THE DAY BEFORE
Major-General Fitzgerald was affectionately known to the men as Fitz. He was less affectionately known among his junior officers as Cyclone Fitz. His fits of rage were like tropical storms that materialized without warning and blew through in a hurry, leaving an eerie calm and a trail of destruction.
Today, he was just Fitz, and perhaps not even that. His mood was somber. The world war that seemed to focus all its energies on a han
dful of battlefields at a time weighed heavy on his thick, rounding shoulders.
Fitz looked up and inclined his head, not quite a nod. The corporal, by his side or within hollering distance every waking moment of the war, moved briskly to the tent’s exit to retrieve the soldiers Fitz had summoned—good soldiers, the sort of men who did what had to be done, which was all a soldier really was.
While he waited, Fitz ran his hands along the surface of his wooden desk, unconsciously feeling out scratches and dents. Though it wore the signs of abuse, it was a fine desk, strong and well-built and damned near indestructible. Almost three long years ago Fitz had demanded his men salvage it from the rubble of Cloth Hall in Ypres. That Belgian building had been almost as grand and majestic as Britain’s own Palace of Westminster, until the Germans targeted it with their heavy guns and reduced it to towering mounds of rock and dust.
That is, rock, dust and one blessed desk, standing atop the remnants of a monument to human industry that had stood for six hundred years and no longer existed. It had been as close to a miracle as Fitz had ever seen—a miserable sort of miracle, a useless one that saved no life and delivered no tangible good, but that was for God’s conscience, not his.
The desk had been with Fitz ever since, and he had come to consider it indispensable. It was not just a good luck charm, and not just the receptacle for the maps he spread out as he planned the movements of thousands of men. It was a daily reminder of the promise he made during the First Battle of Ypres in 1914: that he would see the war through, however long it took, whatever sacrifice it demanded. He had no idea then that he would be fighting over the same ground three years later as millions lay dead in mass graves, with no ground gained to show for it.
After moving south, then east and back again, chasing an advantage, fighting seemingly essential yet ultimately pointless battles across the Lorraine, the Somme and the length of the Western Front, Fitz was again on the outskirts of the city of Ypres. Of course, it was no longer a city in any meaningful sense. It had been emptied of people, and the shelling had obliterated nearly everything that ever stood, turning it back ten thousand years to an age of stone and disorder.
And yet neither side doubted that it was still worth fighting over. If all went to plan, this battle would be the beginning of the end for the Germans in Belgium. Which is what he and the generals had said during the First Battle of Ypres. And the second.
Third time lucky?
Fitz scoffed at his own stupid joke. There was plenty of misfortune in the war, but never any luck.
But isn’t my desk lucky? No, luck and miracles are different.
Luck was a moment of chance that panned out in one’s favor. Miracles were the occurrence of what should have been impossible. It had been one long war of the impossible, most of it hideous and unforgettable, like that morning’s battle in Gheer when a German forty-inch artillery shell smashed through a brick wall without exploding, only to find its target in a girl hiding under a bed. The impact almost tore her in half.
Most soldiers would happily never see another miracle, not the sort you got in war. Right then, Fitz knew that a miracle in the coming Third Battle of Ypres was of no use. What he needed was something possible, something the army meteorologists said was downright probable. A single month of good weather.
The whole campaign depended on it—luck, good weather, more or less the same thing. They could probably make do with just shy of three dry weeks. Even three weeks that were merely damp and not torrential might suffice. It was the middle of spring, after all. By the time the offensive was scheduled to begin, it would almost be summer. How much luck could be required for that?
2
Michel and Henry snapped to attention.
“At ease,” said Fitz.
Naturally, Michel was already at ease—he had been since the day he signed the enlistment forms. Meanwhile, Henry slowly exhaled a deep breath he had held far too long.
Henry was always nervous around important men, for he knew that he was thoroughly unimportant. He considered that a simple fact and by no means a bad thing. Being important was a burden. Henry had enjoyed a blissfully unimportant existence back home, one he thought about returning to every hour of every day of the war.
He had been a retail clerk with Brockman’s Supplies in Chatham. Each morning he went to work and did his job to a satisfactory standard, before knocking off in the afternoon and heading down to the Shabby Corset for a few pints with the old geezers he was proud to call mates. He was always home by six for a hot dinner with his dear mom, then a cup of tea by the radio and finally off to a warm bed, knowing exactly what the next day would bring.
It had been a simple life with which he was completely satisfied—until they shamed him into enlisting. On a dozen or more occasions some anonymous young lass with a deceptive smile had reached into her handbag, whence she plucked a white feather that she handed to Henry, saying something about it being a memento or gift for a fine coward such as he.
They always seemed to do it on the tram or bus, maybe because it was public and, unless he wanted to jump from a moving vehicle, there was no getting away. The second time round, Henry handed the feather back. Come the third time—and every time after—he took to saying, “I see you’re not fighting either. Tell you what. When you enlist, I’ll enlist. Till then, or till there’s Germans up the Thames, why don’t you take a long walk off a short pier.” It had taken him weeks to come up with that.
Then those mean old biddies, so-called friends of his mother, started leaving the white feathers in their mailbox. Started making snide comments to his mom in the street. Stopped inviting her out for morning tea. Humiliated her till she took sick, and that’s how they got him. Henry did not give a damn about France or Belgium or a war that made not the least bit of sense to him, but he did love his dear old mom as he would never love anything else.
So now here he was, in the presence of Fitz, who was unquestionably an important man, for he had a sprawling great army to run. And, while Henry may not have cared for the war or whatever cause preceded it, being that he was presently in it up to his neck, he figured they had better bloody well win. Yet right then he was actively losing it simply by existing, for every minute Fitz wasted with Henry was a minute closer to defeat.
“Well, boys, I never thought I’d be seeing you two again so soon. No point messing around. I’ve some news for each of you. Not the good sort.” Fitz smiled a grim sort of smile—a smile of knowing and resignation—and grunted, “Never is, is it?”
He looked squarely at Henry.
“I’ll start with you, Private Biggelow. You’ll know we’ve had heavy losses of late among the tunnelers of the Royal Engineers. Some bad luck with cave-ins and the like. Work is falling behind, and it won’t do. It’s an unpleasant job, dangerous, but critically important. We’ve just about emptied England of all the fit men. We’ll be sending old sods in as reinforcements before long. As it is, I asked each company sergeant to recommend a man for the RE. Sergeant Mendelson recommended you, Biggelow.”
There was a pause.
“Sir?” said Henry. His mouth had dropped open a little, and it was clear from the expression on his face that he did not fully comprehend.
“No one knows the men better than their sergeant, Biggelow. A sergeant’s judgment is to be trusted. I know you’ve done a lot already, more than your country can rightly ask of you. But it’s decided. You’ve been transferred. You are now a member of the Royal Engineers. Part of a tunneling gang, I expect. You’ll report for duty tomorrow with the garrison stationed off the Messines front. Corporal Denton will give you the details, but I thought you at least deserved to hear the news from me.”
“Sir, um, sorry, excuse me, sir. You mean … I won’t be on the front no more?” said Henry.
“Not exactly, Private Biggelow. You’ll be tunneling under it.”
“So … no machine guns or shelling,” Henry said to himself, his wistful muttering matched by a growing smile.
“Good. Look on the bright side. That’s the way.”
Fitz turned his attention to Michel. “Now, Private Blanc,” he said, his pronunciation sounding like “blank”. Fitz slid his sizeable buttocks forward in his chair. He shook his head.
“Damned if I know why, but you’ve come in for a little special treatment. From quite high up. I’d tell you more, but nothing doing, I’m afraid. I even put in a call to Lieutenant General Gough, which went down precisely as well as you might imagine. Be no Christmas card from him this year.”
Fitz sighed and looked Michel in the eyes. “Private Blanc, you are hereby honorably discharged, effective immediately. His Royal Highness and the British Army thank you for your service.” Fitz stood up and reached a hand out. “As do I.”
Michel’s face dropped. He hesitated a second, then stepped forward and reached across the desk to take Fitz’s hand. Michel’s movements were dull and trance-like. His grip was weak. The expression on his face was not altogether different from Henry’s—that of complete surprise.
“You’ve done your country proud, my boy. You’ll probably receive the V.C. for that caper in Rinay, and a citation for the mess at Oraon—the both of you. And of course I know you’d like to fight on, Blanc. All of us want to finish this blasted thing. I’m afraid it won’t be with us, though.”
Michel’s eyes grew increasingly wide as understanding washed over him. “Ah, thank you, sir,” Michel said slowly. His lips made to say something else, but no more words came.
“Well, chaps, seems you both got the short end of the stick on this one. Private Biggelow, I’ve arranged a leave pass for this evening. You two deserve a stiff drink. I suggest you find one. Then, tomorrow, we’ll get on with it.”
Fitz paused and thought. “Well, you and I will get on with it, Private Biggelow.” He turned to Michel. “As for you, Blanc, I suppose you can do whatever the hell you like. You’ve earned a reprieve. Of course, there’s many ways to serve other than fighting. Or there’s always that miserable bloody thing they call life. Dismissed.”
Henry saluted and turned on his heel, but he lingered, waiting for Michel who remained frozen to the spot. Henry coughed gently. He would not put it past Michel to get himself court-martialed for insubordination after he was no longer even in the army. He coughed again, louder.