How different that is from being in the middle of a war! Here on the Western Front we do not soar like eagles, but slog along like the rats that keep us company in these muddy trenches. I believe there are commanders somewhere who have a sense of battle lines, and I hear that our lines are not moving much – which is bad, but also that the Germans’ are not moving either – which is good. Beyond that, I do not see the movement of armies or the grand sweep of battle – only the slimy, mud-covered walls of a trench, with a bunker dug in at the end where I huddle with a few of the bravest boys I’ve ever known.
And they are boys, darling – at twenty-four, I feel like an old man here. So strange to think that had I stayed at home, I would be the youngest lawyer in a practice, a youngster still wet behind the ears, making beginners’ mistakes and learning from my elders. Here in this trench, I’m the old man, Captain Porter, a senior soldier though I have virtually no experience of war, save that I came through the Gallipoli campaign and am one of that First Five Hundred who drilled at Pleasantville in the days when we didn’t even have rifles.
How long ago it seems! And how long ago all that talk of the war being over by Christmas. Going on two years now, and no end in sight. We signed up for a year, do you remember? I’ve been married nearly two years, and we had two nights together as man and wife. What a strange start to a marriage. It comforts me only a little that thousands of couples are in the same predicament.
Somewhere far above this filthy trench, where that eagle soars and looks down on us, plans are being made. We hear rumours of a Big Push, but what that might involve – except for more battles and more blood – we cannot imagine. Home before autumn, the most optimistic of the boys say now…and I wish I shared their optimism. Darling Katherine, I hope this letter won’t be shredded by the censors because it betrays a hint of doubt about the war. If soldiers wrote what we truly thought, not a single letter would get through.
Hang it all, I can’t end on that note. I want to say something cheerful and encouraging, and to-night’s mood is hardly conducive to that. So I will say the most hackneyed and clichéd thing of all – that the thought of you, of being with you again, is all that keeps me going in these darkest hours – because it is, however trite, simply the truth.
Ever your own,
Ben
“I notice he never writes much about the fighting,” Kit says, folding away the letter which she has just read out to Trif. Ben told her years ago when they were courting that he wasn’t much of a letter-writer, and that was true until he went overseas. War has unlocked his pen; his letters now are long and thoughtful.
The two women are enjoying the cool of the June evening on Trif’s front bridge. Trif is knitting, something she never liked to do when she was younger. Now her hands are rarely still; she has knitted more pairs of socks for soldiers than any woman in Missing Point.
“He’s not much like our Will, then,” Trif says. “Of course Will don’t write near as well as Ben – he never was much for book-learning – but all he does write is about fighting. I thought he’d sober up pretty quick once he got over there and saw what it was like, but he’s not hurt so far and he still thinks it’s grand.”
“Even after Alf was killed?” Kit says. Word had come during the winter that Seaman Alfred Mercer was lost on the Alcantara – the first casualty among the boys from the Point.
“You’d think that would bring it home to him, wouldn’t you?” Triffie says. “He said Char took it some hard. But to hear Will talk about it, you’d think crawling through barbed wire, slogging up to his knees in mud, and shooting artillery shells at the German trenches was no more than skipping rocks down on the beach on a fine fall day.”
“I hope he never has cause to change his mind.” Kit remembers those early letters of Ben’s. Ben is older and wiser than Will, but still when he first went overseas he was idealistic, believing he was fighting in a noble cause and right would be rewarded. Gallipoli knocked that out of him – seeing men he knew, boys under his command, wounded around him. He’s written little about battles, it was true, but in a few sentences he could sketch what it was like to find the body of his commanding officer – a man a few years his senior, who had gone to school with him at Bishop Feild – torn and mangled on the field, his perfect blue eyes staring unseeing at the shining Turkish sky. Ben is a gifted writer – too gifted, Kit sometimes thinks. His letters put pictures in her mind she’d rather not have there. He has moved up through the ranks quickly because of the deaths of other men, many of whom he liked and respected. There is little boyish enthusiasm left in Ben after nearly two years overseas, a year of active service at the Front.
“Ah well, all we can do is wait and pray, and do what we can to help out,” Trif’s knitting needles fly as she speaks. “You’re still going to do the recitation at the concert, aren’t you?”
Trif’s energy amazes Kit: she works around the house and garden all day, caring for Katie, pulling weeds from the rocky soil on the hill above the house where her vegetables grow, scrubbing and mending, baking and cooking. Jacob John is away for the fishing season, so Trif does everything. In what she calls her spare time she does WPA work, which includes not only knitting but also canvassing for money, organizing donations of clothing for the Red Cross, and now planning a big fundraising concert.
“I can’t say no, can I?” Kit says. “I feel like a lily of the field next to you; it’s the least I can do to help the cause.”
The Women’s Patriotic Association on Missing Point is officially run by Mrs. Wilf Parsons and her daughter Rebecca, and Mrs. Reverend White. But everyone agrees that Trif Russell works harder than anyone. Unlike the women of Bareneed, who couldn’t co-operate and had to start two WPAs, one for the Methodists and one for the Anglicans, the ladies of Missing Point have banded together for the war effort. Even Trif’s adherence to the Adventist faith doesn’t exclude her from raising funds to relieve the needs of soldiers and war orphans.
Trif’s religious convictions are as much a mystery to Kit as they have ever been – perhaps more. Sunday after Sunday this summer, Kit sits between her mother and father in their pew and listens to the minister pray for an Allied victory, for the success of the British army and navy in their battles, for the safety of Newfoundland boys and especially those from the Point and surrounding areas. During the school year she goes to church in town and hears the same kinds of prayers, the same patriotic sermons exhorting everyone to do their part for the cause of freedom and liberty. She cannot shake the thought that in some Lutheran church in a little German village, the pastor is urging his people to pray for German victories, for the triumph of the Fatherland, and most especially for the safety of the brave boys from their village. Both sides claim God as their leader, just as has every army that ever marched – and what does God do? Pick sides? Turn a deaf ear? Or laugh like Puck, sitting back as the chess pieces stagger drunkenly about the board and say Lord, what fools these mortals be!
She tries to put something of this into words, now, to Triffie. Despite Trif’s fervent faith, she is the only person to whom Kit can honestly express her own doubts. Trif is never shocked by the things Kit comes out with, and now she nods. “Jacob John says that the English say, ‘God is on our side,’ the Germans say, ‘God is on our side,’ and God says, ‘Good God, what am I going to do with this crowd?’” She laughs at her husband’s flippancy, then grows serious. “Honestly, Kit, if I thought God was fighting on our side like most people here seem to think, I wouldn’t think much of Him either. God is above all this; He has a greater purpose.”
“And what are we all supposed to do then? Sit around and wait for the end of the world?”
“Wait for it, yes, but work for it too. And do what we can to help others while the suffering lasts. I don’t hold with them who says we shouldn’t do anything at all to help out with the war effort, like Aunt Hepsy.” Hepsy Snow has made herself unpopular of late by proclaiming that since war is the work of wicked men and God will soon put
a stop to it all, His faithful people should have no part in it at all, not even to the point of knitting socks for soldiers. Kit can’t imagine Trif, no matter what her religious beliefs, sitting back and doing nothing when there’s a cause to support. The WPA effort animates Trif, gives her a crusade, and Trif’s never happier than when she has a crusade.
“Well, I should go on and let you get some sleep,” Kit says, packing up her own knitting, which doesn’t take shape nearly as quickly as Trif’s does. “I’ll try to have my mind made up about the recitation by tomorrow. Do you want it to be patriotic, or does it matter?”
“My dear, you can recite what you likes so long as ’tis not ‘Lucy Gray’,” Trif says, and they both laugh. The hackneyed old poem from the Third Royal Reader is a favourite with a great many people, and in school days Trif and Kit had both been so moved by poor Lucy’s fate that they had cried for hours.
The sun has set and the sky is a vivid twilight blue as Kit walks down the South Side Road to her parents’ house. She finds her father sitting out on the front bridge of the house. “Mother’s already gone up to bed,” he tells her.
Kit sits down beside her father and they watch the waters of the bay turn gray under the darkening sky. It’s a companionable silence; Kit has always been closer to her father than to her mother, always appreciated his willingness to take her ambitions as seriously as those of a son. She steals glances at him as they sit; his hair is gray now, almost white. He still keeps the books for his brothers-in-law, Abe and Wilf Parsons, and he worries about his wife, whose health has never been good and is worse this year. Kit has taken over the housekeeping while she is home for the summer.
“What will you do when I go back to town?” she says. “You know Mother’s not going to be strong enough to cook and clean anymore. It’s high time you hired someone to help out.”
“I know.” Her father nods as he looks out at the water. “Mother don’t like to admit she haven’t got the strength anymore, but I was talking to Aunt Sarah Dawe and she says their Ida is thirteen now, done with school, and she could come up and cook and clean for us once you’re gone.”
“That’s good,” Kit says. She is bringing back her own hired girl when she returns to town; Cousin Ethel’s old housekeeper is no longer able to work, and Trif’s cousin Betty, at fourteen, is eager for the chance to move into St. John’s. Kit pushes aside the thought that she herself ought to stay home on the Point and look after her parents. It would be the dutiful and daughterly thing to do, but much as she enjoys the summer here she can’t imagine living this life throughout the fall and winter.
On the night of June 30, the church hall in Missing Point is filled to the point of standing room only for the benefit concert. Though most of the fishermen are down on the Labrador – except, of course, those who are overseas – there are enough women, children and old men in the community to fill every seat. Two more boys about to volunteer – Ki Barbour and Wilf Dawe – are given seats of honour at the front of the room.
Kit has chosen “The Charge of the Light Brigade” to recite; she and Trif both love Tennyson, and the military theme seems to suit the occasion. Not all the evening’s entertainment is required to have a patriotic or war theme: there are many good old-fashioned recitations and love songs, but sprinkled in among them are pieces like Miss Agatha Mercer singing “When the Boys Come Home,” accompanying herself on the mandolin, and the Church of England choir will close the evening with “Land of Hope and Glory” followed by “God Save the King.”
Kit’s recitation is the last item before the choir sings. The night is warm and even with all the windows in the hall open, the press of bodies in chairs gives the room a close, sweaty feel. Ladies fan themselves with fans or with paper programs, and Kit keeps checking the clock, wondering how late the program will go. It’s half-past nine now and Ada Morgan is singing “O Promise Me,” a song she mastered for her sister Sally’s wedding last winter. Sal got cold feet at the last minute and left Ki Barbour at the altar. Now Sal is gone off to Carbonear in service, Ki Barbour is enlisting, and Ada is bound and determined to sing her solo.
The applause is not quite as warm as the room when Ada sweeps off the stage and Kit steps on. In fact, Kit gets a larger round of applause just for walking on stage than Ada does for singing: somewhat to her own embarrassment, Kit is something of a romantic figure to her neighbours. Local girl who made good, went away to college and became a teacher in a big school in St. John’s, and a war bride to boot!
Kit takes the stage and looks out at the hot, uncomfortable people crowded into their chairs, some glad for the evening’s diversion and others no doubt hoping it will soon be over. She straightens her spine, puts on her recitation voice, pitched to carry to the back of the room, and begins.
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward…
Everyone knows the poem, of course, some of them probably memorized it in school, and all have sat through at least half a dozen recitations of it at various concerts and events. She sees lips moving, people forming the words along with her. But as she begins the second verse, the familiarity of the memorized words with their echoes of school days falls away, and she sees the trenches of Flanders, those blood-soaked, mud-soaked fields she has never seen except in newspaper reports and in Ben’s letters.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Someone had blunder’d.
Someone had blundered. There is a tone in Ben’s letters, things he will not put into words for fear of the censor. She senses he has doubts – about the wisdom of the men above him, about the orders he gives to the men below him. What if someone has blundered? Every time she says “the six hundred” she thinks of the five hundred, the First Five Hundred. There are nearly twice that many over there now, huddled in the trenches on the Somme, waiting for the Big Push, the great advance that will shatter the German lines and secure the Allied victory they are all praying for. The Newfoundland Regiment is earning a reputation, everyone in St. John’s says, for bravery, for devotion to duty. For going ahead fearlessly in the face of incredible odds. Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do… or die.
This was the wrong poem to have chosen for tonight, Kit thinks. The images tumble through her brain; she thinks of talk she has heard back in St. John’s. The Regiment has suffered no great losses yet, only a handful at Gallipoli, but Ben believes – all the men believe – that their day is coming soon.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made,
Honour the Light Brigade
Noble six hundred.
Apparently no-one shares her misgivings about the choice of recitation. The hall is silent for a moment, then the wave of applause breaks over her. Kit takes her bow and leaves the stage, not even seeing the two people coming on as she walks off, blundering into them and apologizing before she realizes it’s Joe Bishop and young Rebecca Parsons, going up on behalf of the NPA and the WPA to make a presentation to the two young men who are soon to go overseas. Joe makes a little speech and Rebecca, giggling, hands over a pair of hand-knitted socks to each of the boys, and gets two kisses on the cheek in thanks.
The choir ladies push past, eager to assemble under the two Union Jacks draping the stage.
Wider still and wider, shall thy bounds be set,
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet!
The audience joins in, everyone singing, pleading with God to make England mightier yet, and then it’s the anthem and everyone goes out into the blessed cool of the last night of June. Triffie, of course, stays behind to clean up, and Kit stays with her, sweeping up garbage from the floor of the hall, taking down decorations and putting them away. Triffie hums the chorus of “Land of Hope and Glory” as she folds bunting.
“How much did we make?” Kit wonders.<
br />
“Fifty-three dollars,” says Trif with pleasure. “I sent the money box off with Mrs. Parsons already.”
The lamps are out now and the hall is dark; Kit follows Trif out onto the step and Trif locks the door behind her. Trif may worship with a suspect offshoot sect, but she is still trusted with the keys to the Anglican Church hall, because she is Trif Russell, and who would deny her? Kit slips her arm through Trif’s.
“It was the strangest thing tonight – when I was reciting,” Kit says. “I shouldn’t have picked that poem – I couldn’t help thinking of Ben and all our boys – wondering where they are, what they might be facing. And what it’s all for, in the end.”
“It’s for the best,” Triffie says, with such confidence Kit wonders can she really feel it. “It’s all part of God’s great plan,” Trif adds, as if convincing herself. Arm in arm, they walk down the road.
Kit sleeps in Trif’s house that night, sharing her bed as she often does during these weeks while Jacob John is away fishing. Both women are sound asleep, dreaming their own dreams, in the long hours after midnight while the sun rises over the battlefields of the Somme. They are asleep when it is nine in the morning in France, when Captain Ben Porter and Private William Bradbury and all the rest – eight hundred of them – hear the order to go over the top, onto the fields of Beaumont-Hamel.
Back home in Missing Point, the first weeks of July alternate between warm sunshine and a cold, damp drizzle. The news from the Labrador fishery is the first thing on everyone’s mind, the war a distant second now that the patriotic fervour of the WPA concert has ended. As long as no new casualty reports appear in the papers, as long as no telegrams arrive at houses on the Point, the war remains something for old men to discuss in the evenings, smoking pipes as they mend their nets, or for women to shake their heads over while they knit socks.
The news reports are slow in coming. At first they report that the great Somme offensive is a success. It is July 8 before they first see the name of Beaumont-Hamel in a newspaper story brought in from St. John’s.
That Forgetful Shore Page 16