Last Letter Home

by Rachel Hore

  ‘I shouldn’t mention Sarah to Richards, if I were you. It might add to your difficulties with him.’

  ‘I already know what he thinks of me,’ Paul said, trying not to sound bitter. ‘Thanks for the tip though.’

  ‘Major Goodall’s a fair sort. The men like him.’

  Again, Paul took his point. Ivor Richards was only the second-in-command. He resolved at that moment to stay out of Richards’ way as much as possible.

  When, the following evening, he found a quiet few minutes to begin a letter to Sarah, Paul wasn’t sure whether to mention the matter, but in the end found it impossible not to. You’ll understand that it’s not unexpected that I should come across them here, but that we should all three be in the same company was a surprise. I know that Richards is a friend of your family, but you understand my difficulties with him. He will always be watching me, and that is an extra strain.

  It was dawn, two days after Paul’s arrival at the barracks, when the unit assembled in the parade ground ready to travel out into the desert. The army lorries were lined up nose to tail by the river, silvery silhouettes against a pearly veil of mist, through which glowed the great lemon disc of the rising sun. When Paul drew close he realized with concern how dented and worn the vehicles were, their famous Desert Rat logos almost erased. By the time the men had piled in and the supply truck was loaded, the mist had dispersed and the sun was beginning to blaze. One by one, engines fired into life, the lorries lurched forward and moved out of the gates into the awakening streets.

  Despite the squash of men and possessions, Paul was thankful that they were actually on their way. The previous forty-eight hours had been onerous, a relentless round of packing kit, square-bashing on the parade ground and rifle training. The evenings had been free, but he’d felt too liverish to roam the streets much, and last night he’d felt the purging effects of some falafel he’d bought at a market stall.

  ‘What, are they them pyramids?’ Blackie cried suddenly, and they craned their necks to look, exclaiming at how rough-hewn they were close up, and what a dirty sandy colour, not the smooth gold that they’d imagined. There was much hilarity when they spied the Sphinx with its poor snubbed face. Paul guessed their next letters home would be full of it all. Some of those with him, he’d discovered, had never been outside their home county before the war, let alone beyond Britain’s shores. He felt a sudden sharp comradeship with them out here, all undoubtedly fearful of what they would endure, but determined to do whatever they had to with cheerful heroism.

  The road bent north, or so he surmised from the direction of the sun, and after a couple of hours low white buildings began to appear on either side, harbingers of a city that rolled out towards a blue horizon. The city was Alexandria and the blue the Mediterranean. Though they quickly swung away from the buildings, the blue grew nearer and more glorious, and soon they were travelling alongside a wide stretch of beach and the cool breeze that blew set up a longing in them. At lunchtime the lorries bumped off the road to circle an oasis and the soldiers undressed as they ran, shouting ecstatically, leaving their clothes on the beach as they splashed into the cool water and cavorted in the waves. Paul struck out far from the shore and when he turned to look back, treading water, he was filled with an intense pleasure in the world and the beauties of the desert. He loved the sense of being accepted by these men and being a part of their endeavours.

  It was to be a long time before he felt such joy again.

  After tea and bully-beef sandwiches came the call to move on and, sticky with salt and sweat, the men scrambled back into the lorries. The sun had passed its full height and begun to descend. The long heat of the afternoon bore down. There was less energy for talking now and they had to hold on to their seats for the tarmac was full of potholes. From time to time they passed ominous signs of battle, twisted bits of metal on the side of the road, the wreck of a lorry or the burnt-out fuselage of a plane. A group of sappers who were fixing the road stepped back, waving their shovels and cheering as the lorries roared past with horns blaring.

  Eventually, they left the tarmac behind and bumped out across the sand, following markers the engineers had left to show a safe route. The light deepened in colour towards sunset and still the desert rolled under the wheels. Everyone was heartily sick of the vast, grey expanses of sand with, apart from the abandoned rubbish of warfare, its featureless landscape.

  He must have slept, because when Paul opened his eyes next it was dark, though he could make out, by the weak, shrouded headlamps, the solid shapes of tents. They had arrived at the camp.

  ‘Keep your head down, for Chrissake.’ Paul obeyed Harry Andrews’ harsh whisper. ‘Where’s Stuffy?’

  ‘Over here, sir.’ Private Stephen Duffy’s eyes gleamed in the darkness. There was no moon. Only the ancient stars stared down.

  ‘You and Hartmann, do a recce while we keep an eye on this little lot over here.’ Paul lowered himself carefully from his position as lookout, clutching his rifle. ‘Watch your backs now, will you, and don’t make a sound.’

  ‘Right you are, sir,’ Duffy whispered.

  Paul rose silently on his haunches and followed Duffy along below the line of the ridge. He dreaded kicking any stones that might start a scree and advertise their presence to the German patrol they’d glimpsed a few moments before. How it had happened, he didn’t know, but his platoon had become separated from the rest of the company. One minute they were there, the next, they’d vanished without a shot fired. Now they were in danger of being surrounded, unless Harry Andrews’ idea was the right one, that this was a lone German patrol and not part of a bigger unit. They reached a break in the ridge and Paul sensed Duffy, ahead, sink down to negotiate their way round to the other side. Then Duffy froze and he froze, too. The seconds passed. ‘What’s happening?’ he started to say, but Duffy’s elbow jabbed him into silence.

  Very faintly now he could hear soft sounds, breathing, the scuffle and scrape of boots on grit. Paul felt a chill shoot through him and his heart began to pound in his chest so loudly that he was sure others must hear it. How far away was this man, and was there only him or others? The scuffling was close now. He felt Duffy tense and his hand closed over his rifle. Then the man was upon them. Duffy leaped, Paul heard a whimper and a grunt as the bayonet went in. The man’s body hit him as he rolled past them, the life gurgling out of his lungs. It was the first time it had happened so close. He sensed the warmth of the man, the vain struggle against death, the terrible silence, then his mind snapped back alert, his hearing acute, listening out. There was another sound, someone trying to retreat silently, he thought, but Duffy was in action again, stabbing the air, and Paul followed, colliding with solid muscle and bone, a big man this time. He jabbed upwards and felt the blade slide in. The man gasped ‘Nein!’ and clutched at Paul’s weapon. Paul felt the full weight of him falling forward, the stink of hot sweat and blood and something else, fear. He lay there struggling uselessly beneath the dead man until Duffy pulled the body off him.

  At that moment, further away, shots cracked the silence. Cries of pain went up and shouted instruction, then came a flare of light, an explosion, and sand rained down. ‘There’s a dozen of ’em there, did you see?’ Duffy whispered. ‘We must go back.’ He gripped Paul’s arm and dragged him away. Paul tripped over one of the bodies as he stumbled back the way they’d come to join the others.

  Dim in the darkness they saw them, several hunched figures shooting from the top of the ridge, Andrews caught in silhouette tossing a grenade. Another explosion, more cries of grief. A German voice barked an order. Retreat. Paul and Duffy threw themselves beside their mates, rising and falling to shoot. A soft thud and Paul glanced to see someone along the line jerk forwards, collapse like a drunk, but he couldn’t see who. He raised his rifle, peeped over the top, sensed rather than saw the bulks of several figures scrambling away down the escarpment. He fired in their general direction then ducked again. Beside him, Duffy fired too, and then there w
as no more shooting. They listened, but all they could hear were fading footsteps and, close by, the grunts of one of their comrades abandoned and in pain.

  A glimmer of light behind. ‘Briggsy, you poor old blighter.’ Duffy’s voice came cracked and shrill and Paul glanced down to see him bent over the ragdoll figure of Joe Briggs. Joe looked even slighter in death than he’d been in life and a lump came into Paul’s throat.

  Andrews had appeared beside Paul and shone a torch down over the ridge, its shaded beam describing an arc of horror. There were corpses, Paul saw, six or seven, and a man curled up like a foetus, shaking in agony. He was the one making the awful sounds.

  ‘Let’s go down,’ Andrews said softly. ‘See if there’s anything we can do. Briggsy’s beyond help, I’m afraid.’

  ‘There are more of them out there,’ Paul remembered suddenly. ‘I mean there’s another patrol. When their officer told them to fall back, he said they should find the others, I heard him.’

  ‘Damn.’ Andrews killed the torch and was silent for a moment. Then, in the far distance, it was as though a firework display started up, cracks and explosions, sparks, then a plume of flame.

  ‘Do you think that’s the rest of our lot?’

  ‘Who can tell? They’re certainly having a party.’

  Without a word, Andrews led the way down the escarpment, pistol in hand, Paul following with the torch. The wounded man tensed, tried to inch away. ‘Shh, we have come to help you,’ Andrews said, checking him quickly for weapons.

  Paul started to speak to him softly in German. He was about Paul’s own age, a compact, muscular young man, his face distorted with pain. Ahead, another explosion lit up the sky. The blood over the clutching hands gleamed like metal.

  ‘Tell him we have to move him.’

  Paul translated and asked him his name.

  ‘Hans.’

  ‘All right, Hans.’ He and Andrews each slid an arm under a shoulder and with much groaning and cursing they managed to drag him up to the others. There Andrews sent half a dozen of the men on various duties, while the remainder of the platoon crowded round their captive, and Paul, kneeling beside him, sensed their hostility. He ignored them and gently continued to reassure the young man as he applied pressure to the wound in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Someone pushed a phial into his hand. Morphine. He felt for a fleshy part of the boy’s arm and jabbed the needle in.

  ‘What do we do with him now?’ Duffy asked, but nobody knew. They were marooned, and somewhere out in the darkness this man’s pals were undoubtedly searching for them.

  Paul bound up Hans’ wound, but still the blood seeped through. He gave him sips of water from his own bottle and tried to keep him conscious by speaking to him in whispers. Hans mumbled that he had a brother, who was also in the army, but he didn’t know where.

  First one, then the other of the patrols returned. They’d found no one. Water and biscuits were passed around, then the patrols dispatched again. Hans was quieter now, he found speaking more difficult. Paul soaked a handkerchief and mopped the sweat from the man’s brow. He could see Hans’ face more clearly, the gleam of his teeth as he shifted in discomfort. Gazing around, it seemed that the stars were fading and the sky was lightening. Dawn was on its way. The light grew stronger. Paul could see insects moving in the clumps of coarse desert grass. Ahead, all was quiet, but a great cloud of smoke hung over the horizon where the front line must be. He glanced down. The boy was more peaceful now. He seemed to be sleeping, though from time to time his mouth twisted and he whimpered.

  It had been the longest night Paul could remember, worse even than after they’d taken his father. He had killed a man, but this rite of passage had not made him feel braver or more grown-up. It had simply happened, been the next thing he’d had to do, without thinking. And here he was trying to save the life of another who, for all he knew, he’d been responsible for wounding in the first place. He didn’t feel good about this either. It was so random, pointless, he thought. Why should one die and another live?

  His thoughts were broken as he became aware of a low, continuous rumble. He was wondering where it came from when one of the others, Pounder, that was his name, leaped up, in his reckless, terrier-like eagerness, shading his eyes to look east, behind them, into the glare of the rising sun. ‘Lorries,’ he said in excitement. ‘They’re ours, lads. We’re saved.’

  ‘Get down, you fool,’ Andrews snarled and Pounder obeyed, but heads were snapping round to make out what was moving in the dusty distance. Soon it was clear. A convoy of trucks was advancing along the marked-out track. Oblivious to possible danger, the men rose and waved their hats at them until they slewed to a stop in the sand hundreds of yards away. An officer jumped out and began to jog towards them.

  ‘We’ll get you to a doctor soon,’ Paul told Hans, but the young man slept on, twitching and gasping in his dreams. When Paul inspected the bandage on the wound, he was shocked to see that the bloody mess was crawling with tiny glistening flies.

  Thirty-three

  Briony woke to daylight filtering through the curtains, confused by the fleeing coat-tails of a dream full of shouting and gunfire. The alarm hadn’t gone off. Had she actually set it? She threw off the duvet, causing a sigh and crackle of paper, and sat up, breathing a curse at the sound of something solid hitting the floor, the cigar box. It lay open on its end, its contents spilling across the boards. She seized her travel clock and blinked at it until the hands on its face came into focus. Half-past seven. Relief. Was today Wednesday? Yes. No teaching until eleven. She lay back on the pillows, trying to recall whether there was anything she’d be late for. Nothing, she decided. She sighed as she slid out of bed, gathered Paul’s letters together and shoved them back into the box. She must have fallen asleep reading them. The result was they’d taken over her dreams.

  As she showered, she mulled over what she’d read. Paul had had his first brush with the enemy. He’d killed one of his own countrymen, then saved the life of another. He’d mentioned in a later letter that the man had been sent to a field hospital and survived, presumably to be sent to a POW camp when he’d recovered. Paul’s commanding officer, Major Goodall, had summoned Paul and asked him for a full account of events, had commended him for his ‘smart work’, which Paul had mentioned to Sarah with amusement rather than pride. He said he was ’glad to have a chap who could speak German in the ranks’, but that our Captain Richards looked none too pleased at this. Briony was surprised that all this detail had passed the censor.

  Subsequent letters had been written over the following year. She must remind herself of the significant dates in the Egyptian campaign, she mused as she turned off the shower and reached blindly for her towel. The high commands of both German and British forces had changed over that long dangerous summer of 1942. After she’d dressed, she pulled down a book from the shelves that lined her small living room and turned to a chronology. Tobruk had fallen on 21 June. That was when Paul Hartmann’s ship had docked at Suez. A few days later his company had joined the bedraggled remnants of the Eighth Army, defending the Egyptian frontier. By 30 June, the Germans under Field-Marshal Rommel had beaten them back to the little border town of El Alamein, and many of the foreign populace of Cairo and Alexandria fled in panic. How close defeat had been for the Allies. It was therefore an extraordinary turnaround that as October segued into November, the Eighth, finding new heart under the command of Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery, routed the Germans at the third battle of El Alamein and over the following months, beat Rommel back across Libya and into Tunisia. The Egyptian campaign was finally won.

  ‘Ah, Briony. I’d begun to think you weren’t honouring us with your presence today. A word, when you’re ready, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Of course. Give me a moment.’

  Briony had been unlocking her office at ten o’clock when Professor Gordon Platt, the Head of Department, appeared in the doorway of his, across the corridor. She shoved her bag into her desk drawe
r, took off her coat and tried to ignore her coffee craving as she hurried over to hear what He-who-must-be-obeyed wanted.

  Platt’s office was at least twice the size of hers, with a giant antique desk before which was arranged a selection of uncomfortable high-backed chairs. The long Victorian sash windows looked out over the courtyard, where there was usually something of interest going on. During the last protests against fees, students had erected billboards on the grass that featured a cartoon of the then Minister for Higher Education in rather a vulgar pose. Gordon Platt had kept his blinds down all day. In retaliation someone had thrown raw eggs at his window, to which his response, very stupidly, was to call the police. Consequently, his rating with the student body of the college stood at an all-time low.

  He was a tall, rangy man in his late fifties, with thinning hair that might once have been an enchanting curly blond, but which was now greying, scanty on top and too long over the ears. He had a penchant for wearing bright-coloured corduroy trousers. Sometimes they were brick-red, on other occasions mustard. On days of important college meetings they would be a more sober maroon or navy. Today was a mustard day and his olive socks didn’t quite go, Briony noticed as he came round the desk and shut the door behind her.

  ‘Now,’ he said, sitting down again in his comfortable chair. He looked over his bifocals at her with that ruthless, searching manner that had got him where he was today. ‘I need to talk to you about our engagement programme. The Vice-Chancellor thinks the department needs to be doing more to reach out to the public, but frankly I don’t have the time, so I’d like you to step up to the plate.’

  Briony stared at him in bemusement, the thought of the work this might entail rushing through her mind like a giant wave. Talks to schools, conferences, lectures, exhibitions for the public. Essential these days to justify universities’ existence. Although other members of staff and graduate students would be actually delivering them, being the organizer on top of all the other things for which she was responsible would take up a great deal of time. Time she didn’t have. She gave a sharp intake of breath to steady herself.