by Tom Phelan
It was during our stay in Collins Camp we felt for the first time the effects of what the lads in Dublin had done a few months earlier. Up to June of 1916, I had heard no words of awkwardness expressed between Irish and English soldiers; we were all young lads in this dung heap together and it didn’t matter to anyone where anyone else came from, except as a matter of curiosity. But after Pearse played out his fantasies in Dublin at Easter, everything changed. Suddenly, we Irish were suspect, and the Germans made things worse by putting up signs in their trenches inviting the Irish to come over to their side, promising to treat us better than the English had treated the Easter rebels.
In Collins Camp the Irish lads and the English lads started keeping to themselves. “Which side are you blokes on?” is how the English taunted us, while we cursed the stupidity of Pearse who’d been so taken up with being a martyr for Ireland that he couldn’t hold on to a job for long. He had lived with his mother and sister to save himself from dying of hunger while he scrawled poetry in his garret. A few hours in a trench in France on a wet day would have knocked the illusions out of that lad.
The rumours continued to run through the swelling camp. Because the ordinary soldier didn’t know what the next day would bring, nor the next minute, nor the next second, rumours gave our unstable lives a few minutes of stability—until the next rumour broke out. The prevailing rumour was that the day of the big battle was coming soon, that this new push would be the one to break the Germans’ backs, that Haig’s cavalry would break through the lines and be halfway to Berlin before the Germans knew what had hit them. We’d be home for Christmas.
And some of the rumours were confirmed when the big guns started up near the end of June: the flashes in the dark for miles, the noise. It was like living in an enormous building the shape of the Canal Bridge, except the arch was made of noise instead of stone—screeching, howling, roaring, piercing, bone-shaking, head-splitting, explosive, brain-numbing, nonstop nonstop nonstop nonstop.
The new rumours had to be shouted into ears by up-close lips. And the rumours were still encouraging. The big guns, with their undercarriages almost touching each other, were stretched along the front for miles; two million shells would be fired; the shells were shredding the German barbed wire and destroying their trenches; our soldiers, when the push began, would climb out of their trenches with their seventy-pound packs, would walk across no man’s land, and take over the German trenches; the cavalry would charge through and that would be the beginning of the end of the War.
On the fifth day of the shelling, our platoon of stretcher-bearers was ordered forward, and we joined the long lines of men marching to the front with hope and gladness in their hearts, their huge backpacks turning them into strange two-legged creatures. There was the singing of the usual songs, the monotonous “Tipperary” as worn out as an oversung Christmas carol. And as we marched along a tree-lined lane leading out of Collins Camp, we saw soldiers stripped to their waists and digging in the field not twenty feet from where we were, digging deep and wide holes and using wheelbarrows to move the soil to the edges. The singing stopped, and in their forward movement, the lines seemed to stagger.
“What are they doing?” a collective voice seemed to ask.
“Digging mass graves,” Con said.
“Graves for who?” and I could hear in the collective voice that the collective voice already knew the answer to the question.
“For us stupid fuckers!” Con roared. Suddenly he was Jeremiah, tall in the crowd and looked up to by a flock of dumb sheep. His rolled-up stretcher was a shepherd’s crook in his hand. “They’re for us. Those are our graves. We’re not going to Berlin. We’re going to our deaths. We’ll be piled on top of each other in those holes like sticks.”
“But I thought …”
“Oh, sweet Jesus.”
Ralphie Blake
My insides always warned me to keep away from Johnjoe Lacy the way they told me to keep away from a dog with the mange having a fit. Even as I was saying yes to him, I was telling myself I was going to be sorry for saying it. And the first time I was sorry was in October of 1916 when I saw him attacking Kitty Hatchel. He must have thought Kitty, being so young and a woman, would be an easy mark. I never heard of him attacking any of the other women in the town with men in the war.
Two weeks after them lads in Dublin were shot for shooting at the English soldiers through the windows of the Post Office at Easter, Johnjoe leaned on the wingboard of my ass and cart. It wasn’t easy to look at Johnjoe, since he’d called Dan Griffin an Englishman in front of everyone at a Fair Day just over a year ago. His nose was in the wrong place, and his jaw was out of line with the rest of his face. I hated when he leaned on my wingboard because I knew I was in for half an hour of his patriotic shite.
As well as that, I had to keep telling him to stand back every time I moved the ass and cart to the next pile of dirt I’d swept up. Mind your feet there, Johnjoe, I’d say, and at the same time I’d be wanting to say, Will you get the feck off the wingboard and go and sweep your chimleys?
“Ireland is on the lookout for a few good men, Ralphie,” Johnjoe said after glancing up and down the road to make sure no one was listening.
I didn’t ask him what he was talking about because I knew I would hear the History of Ireland from the coming of the Fir Bolg in their magic whirlwinds to the killing of Pearse and his crowd in Dublin. “Aye begob, Johnjoe,” I said, “the farmers are complaining about the scarcity of labour since the War began.” Wrong turn you took there, you eejit, I said to myself the minute I mentioned the War.
“Feck the farmers; they’re always complaining.” Johnjoe didn’t talk to you as much as preach like a priest, like he was the last word on everything. He had the makings of a great bishop in him. “It’s not farm labourers I’m talking about, Ralphie. It’s patriots, strong men to step forward now that it’s our chance to fight the English while their backs are turned.”
Stories had been going around about Johnjoe since Easter time in Dublin, that he’d been involved in derailing the train on the main line near Marbra to slow down the English soldiers going to Dublin when the shooting started at the Post Office. Stories were going around too about how he was getting together some of the locals in case they were needed if the English started getting tough. I didn’t want to get mixed up in any of that stuff, get caught by the English and have my head covered with pitch and hung from the nearest tree till my guts fell out, or get sent off to Van Diemen’s land forever. So, when Johnjoe said it was now our turn to fight the English, I wanted to take a shite. And while I was trying not to make a show of myself in public, Johnjoe asked, “Are you an Irishman or what?” so loud that it sounded like he wanted other ears to hear his question or his accusation.
“Will you whist, for Christ’s sake?” I hissed at him, and I looked up and down the road for perked ears. “Do you want to get a fellow hanged?” There was always someone ready to run over to the Redcoats in Marbra to report whisperings of rebellion.
“Someone’s always going to get hanged, Ralphie, and it’s now our—”
“Johnjoe!” I went around to his side of the cart, pressing my arse cheeks together and dragging the clattering head of the shovel behind me over the hard road. I was very close to his ear when I whispered, “Johnjoe, I don’t want to be hung. For God’s sake, don’t talk so loud.”
But Johnjoe was like a tick that’s buried up to its arse in your skin. He wouldn’t talk quiet. He wouldn’t go away. He told me he wouldn’t leave me alone until I “made a commitment,” tormenting the life out of me by raising his voice on purpose. In the end I was so afraid that I gave in and made a half-hearted promise just to keep informers from hearing him talking rebellion to me. I could be counted on to help out when “the lads” needed me if they had to make a strike to defend Ireland. The hure. The bastard. The stupid fucker.
And as Johnjoe walked away pushing his barrow with its ladder and rope and rags, I thought to myself that somed
ay I was going to be sorry I’d given in. No matter how weak the promise was that I’d made, it was still a promise.
I didn’t sleep for a week.
It was on account of this promise that I did not, to my shagging shame, take Kitty Hatchel’s part later in the year when Johnjoe attacked her. Even though Kitty did not need me or anyone else to take her side against Johnjoe, I still felt terrible bad standing there as he tried to beat her down. It was like I stood by and did nothing while a rancid old bollicks raised the front of a young girl’s dress with the tip of his walking stick.
Since that day Johnjoe “recruited” me, as he liked to call it, anti-English activity was heating up around the country. It’s strange how things can change so quick: at first the Easter Post Office lads were being shouted at and spitted on because of all the hardship they’d caused in Dublin. People couldn’t get to work, and a man with hungry children is more interested in getting paid at the end of the day than in the higher things like poetry and patriotism. If the English had only given them all a good kick in the arse and sent them home to their mothers, the whole thing would have been over and done with in a matter of days. But when Pearse and his gang were shot in Kilmainham, everything changed. It all happened as quick as Christ’s turnaround with the resurrection. Christ was an eejit when he was a corpse and a hero when he came back alive, while the lads in Dublin were eejits when they were alive but heroes when they became corpses. The magic was done by the English with their firing squad.
Kitty chirped and fluttered a wing at me like she always did when she went by that morning in the Enderly pony and trap. As she was tying the reins around the pole outside Ward the Harness Man’s shop, Johnjoe Lacy ambushed her.
“Still working for them Protestant hures, Hatchel?” he asked loudly.
God! I wanted the ground to open up under me. I let on I hadn’t heard Lacy. I kept sweeping and looked out through my eyelashes. Kitty tried to pretend too that she hadn’t heard anything. When she finished with the reins, she turned around to go into Mister Ward’s shop and pretended to almost fall into Johnjoe’s barrow. She put her hands on the edge like she was saving herself from falling.
“Youps!” she said. “I nearly went into your barrow, Mister Lacy.” She blew soot off her fingers.
“Did them brothers of yours get killed fighting for the English yet, Hatchel?” Lacy asked so loudly that Kitty couldn’t pretend any longer.
“I hear Mister Griffin broke your nose and jaw last year and left you lying in the cow dung, Mister Lacy,” Kitty said. “When Con and Matthias come home from the War I’ll ask one of them to break your nose again so you can move it back into the middle of your face.”
By God, Kitty! I thought to myself.
“They won’t be coming home, Hatchel. They’re as good as dead. Every Irishman who abandoned Ireland to join the English army deserves to die, and good riddance to them is what I say.”
“You say an awful lot, Mister Lacy, and from what I hear most of it is all blather, like the things you said to Matthias and Con when they were going off to see the world. But when Matthias stood up to you, you soon took off with your tail between your legs. And what are you doing now, Mister Lacy? Attacking the woman when the man is away? You’re a tough one, Mister Lacy. I’m shaking in my boots.” Kitty was nice to look at when she was being normal, but when her fights were up she looked like a woman warrior. And from where I was standing it looked like the ambusher had been ambushed himself, as my father once said after kicking a cat in the arse just before it pounced on a thrush.
“Some women need to be attacked, Hatchel, or do you call yourself Hodgkins?” Johnjoe didn’t know what to do with Kitty’s counter-attack and his nose was moving all over his face. “You work in a Protestant house. Your brother is off fighting for the Protestant English. And so is the orphan, Wrenn; the army is a great place for orphans.” Lacy made “orphan” sound like “bastard.” Kitty had crossed the footpath and was standing in the doorway of Mister Ward’s shop.
“Before the War, them lads were Sunday beaters for the Hodgkins chap when he was home from his posh school, beating the bushes for the gentleman with his shotgun and his hunting clothes, and bringing him into your own house for tea and sweet cake when the poor lad was in danger of fainting from too much walking; bringing the murderer in for tea, I ask you!”
In Mister Ward’s doorway Kitty looked like a painting in a big picture frame, blue dress the colour of a September sky in the morning, cheeks red from raised blood, eyes blazing. “Lionel Hodgkins never murdered anyone, Mister Lacy. Why don’t you stop making up stuff? I hear you turned over a train on the far side of Marbra all by yourself last Easter, put your back to the engine and threw it off the tracks. You’re such a tough man, Mister Lacy, that you frighten the life out of me. Look at me shaking.” Kitty shook herself like a dog spraying water into the sunshine after climbing out of the Canal.
“Neither your brother nor the orphan will come home from the War, Hodgkins … I mean, Hatchel. They should have been fighting in Dublin at Easter instead of fighting for the wrong side in—”
Kitty would not let him finish. “Why are you picking on me, Mister Lacy? Are you practising at being an eejit or what?”
“Let me finish what I’m trying to tell you, you little brat—”
“Why aren’t you picking on all the other women in Ballyrannel? Everyone in this town has a relative in the army, and nearly every house in this town gets a cheque from the English government every month. And where was yourself at Easter, Mister Lacy? I didn’t see you running up to Dublin to fight. More likely you were under your bed making up a story about lifting a railway engine off the tracks by yourself. You don’t need any more practice at being an eejit, Mister Lacy, because you’re perfect as you are.”
Mister Ward the Harness Man came into the door frame beside Kitty, a crooked leather-cutting knife in his right hand, an apron older than himself hanging from his neck on a piece of twine. Two women in headscarves, carrying homemade baskets in the crooks of their elbows, stopped to listen. Johnjoe suddenly had more people to hear him and he loved that.
“You’re going to talk yourself into an awful lot of trouble, Hodgkins. If you keep on praising the English, some people might start thinking about tar and feathers.”
Kitty took one step back out onto the footpath. “Oh, aren’t you the clever one, Mister Lacy, to start talking about tar and feathers. That’s always the answer of the brave Irishman when he’s ashamed of his own cowardice and stupidity and jealousy—get attention away from himself by tarring and feathering a woman and cutting her hair off and getting a free feel while he’s at it.”
By God, Kitty. Give it to the old bugger, I thought from the handle of my shovel. It was great to see Lacy getting it back quicker than he could give it, especially from a woman.
“We might be tarring and feathering your brother and the orphan too, if they ever come home.” Lacy never knew when he’d lost, like the time he wouldn’t stay down after Dan Griffin punched the shite out of him at the Fair Day; he just kept getting up for more, like his show of bravery would make the onlookers forget the stupid words that got him into the fix he was in.
“Con and Matthias will come home, all right,” and I heard a tiny crack in Kitty’s voice. “If you’re going to tar and feather men who joined the army, why haven’t you done it to Ownie Egan and Mick Nolan—one shell-shocked and the other with a wooden leg? Why don’t you go right now and pull them out of their houses and tar and feather them, Mister Lacy?” Kitty wouldn’t let Lacy interrupt her. “Because you know right well that Ownie Egan and Mick Nolan didn’t join the army to fight for the English. They joined up because it was the only job they could get to support their families, the same way my brother and Matthias Wrenn only joined so they could see the world.”
“They’re fighting for the English ar—”
“They’re not fighting for the English. They’re fighting to save Belgium. They’re fighting against th
e Germans for all of us.”
Lacy opened his mouth, but he was cut off by Mister Ward in the doorway, his white wild mane all over his face and ears. “Why don’t you take yourself off, Lacy, and take a good shite down someone’s chimley? It’ll do your brain all the good in the world.”
The two women with their baskets snorted. Lacy tried to get his bluster back, but Mister Ward pushed him away with a wave of his crooked knife. “Be off with you,” he said, and then he turned to Kitty. “I just this minute finished the collar. Come on in and don’t be letting that windy old bollicks upset you.”
“Be janey,” one of the basket women, Missus Ryan—Liam’s wife—said, “you met your match there, Mister Lacy, and she nothing but a slip of a girl. We’ll have to tell everyone.” Missus Ryan gave the other woman a poke in the ribs and the two of them sauntered away.
I began brushing like hell and kept my head down in case Johnjoe started sharpening his teeth on me.
The second time I was sorry I’d agreed to help Johnjoe was when I went with him and his lads to burn down the Lamberts’ house.
Matthias Wrenn
The roach were silvery-red, sitting there in the still water, so still they were almost invisible. Like playing crows sitting up there facing into the breeze and not moving a feather, the roach kept themselves in position by whirring little silver feathers near their gills. The perch were wrapped in swatches of almost-black and almost-green, a spined sail on their backs that went up when there was danger or when you pulled one out of the water with your fishing rod.
“Fishes have no eyelids,” Con said one day, across the Canal. “They sleep with their eyes open.”