“Quite,” said the Vicar. “I’ve heard it’s getting the better of many prisoners. One just has to hear the chatter about escape that seems to be on many officers’ lips.”
“Say, what about that, Vic?” asked Howie. “We agreed that escape was too risky while the war was on, but we’re less likely of being stopped now. Think of all the POWs, returning German soldiers, wandering civilians. And there must be occupying British forces here by now. Think anyone would notice if we were to simply not return one afternoon?”
“The difficulty,” I said, “is getting on the railways without a pass. Two weeks ago in Ingolstadt, I noticed numerous guards patrolling the railway stations.”
The Vicar looked troubled. “No, it’s not happening. Didn’t I just say it is better to be locked in here with patience than to be loose on German soil with no effective government? Besides, it’s too cold, too dangerous, and too stupid.”
Howie and I looked at the Vicar and grinned with acceptance of his sage advice. We knew it was good for us to debate such things, even if we had no intention of acting.
. . .
The cheering was loud and boisterous, not dissimilar from those attending a home football game. “Can you believe this day has come?” crooned Howie. On Tuesday, 17 December, the thirty-seventh day after the armistice was signed, the three hundred prisoners of Ingolstadt were settled in comfortable cushioned seats on a train headed to the Swiss border.
The march to the station through driving rain—similar to that encountered those few days after our forced landing—felt different. There we were in the comfort of first class. The Vicar took a long look, first at me and then at Howie. “You two look like you showered with your clothes on—hair plastered to your head and tunic to your miserable bodies.”
Dripping onto the upholstered seat, Howie beamed. “Perhaps it’s a good omen that the Lord cleanses us as we leave this horrid camp, eh?”
“You may have a point, Lieutenant Chainey,” the Vicar said aptly. “You may very well be on to something.”
“Listen to the two of you sounding like squawking school children let out for holidays,” I blustered. “I feel cleansed too, but I’ll feel a lot more absolved when we cross into Switzerland.”
“Isn’t it a relief that this is finally behind us? Back on English soil for Christmas, a wonderful feeling, wot?” said the Vicar.
I wanted to share as much excitement with my friends, but couldn’t shake thoughts of their being settled with their English families for Christmas, whereas I had many more hurdles to face. While feeling good about my coming freedom, I couldn’t escape a tinge of sadness about having to wait in England for my demobilization papers, queueing for passage across the Atlantic, then entraining out of Montreal for three days travel to Saskatoon. The Vicar interrupted my thoughts. “And you’re amazing, Bobby. Three and a half years absent without seeing family or friends, and you’ve survived well under those conditions. You, your fellow Canadians, the Americans, the ANZACS, the Indians, the South Africans—you’ve all given more than us.”
“Thank you for saying that, Vic. It means a lot. Now, are you going to share that package of Red Cross biscuits I saw you stuff into your tunic?”
“I surrender, gents. If only we could find some tea, eh?”
Howie had drifted into slumber with a contented look on his face. We were all exhausted, relieved but feeling drained after the surge of excitement. The anticipation that we held from the time of waking that morning until we took our seats on the train had ebbed. The motion and noise of the wheels clicking and clacking eventually silenced most in the carriage. Some of us fell asleep, and some were lost in thought as they watched Germany pass by the window.
. . .
The gentle rocking slowed as the steam whistle declared our arrival into Munich station. As we stretched our legs, we took humor in seeing so many of our Prinz Karl comrades walking along the platform with still-wet backsides, the rest of our uniforms dry after the two-hour journey from Ingolstadt. Those of us with a few deutsche marks had enough time to fetch a tea or a beer before re-boarding.
The run over to Stuttgart, then down to Konstanz on the German side of Lake Constance would take twice as long, so we were happy for the refreshment.
With the change in geography came improved weather as the sun burst through the carriage window, making a cold winter day feel warm inside. I looked out at the landscape, lightly snow–covered fields interspersed with forest, the Alps off in the distance. The wonder of this beautiful land made the kaiser’s decision to mow through Belgium to attack France more of a mystery. When there was so much richness to live for at home, why was it necessary to invade?
I was drowsy as the train gently rocked. How different my thoughts were compared with my arrival at Amiens those many years ago. Then, my fears were intense, full of anxiety about what was to come in a war so mechanized that it erased the traditional concept of individual valor in favor of mass slaughter. About army generals who had become so self-absorbed they could only see mass movement and massive machinery, blinded to the courage of those millions of individuals who perished.
The landscape passed in a blur as the train picked up speed, moving us along to our freedom. The sun felt soothing on my face as it lulled me again. Had I come any closer to understanding what courage was? It kept itself veiled, didn’t it? The killing of an enemy soldier was concrete enough; the mass spraying of bullets at great velocity onto troops marching along a road was real, but whether those acts of war were courageous remained obscure.
The train slowed along a branch rail as we slipped through Stuttgart, then picked up speed again heading south, the snow-laden fields on both sides glimmering in the sun.
I again wondered: Could I say I was courageous? I thought so, yet due to the arcane nature of the war, I realized that others might see the conflict differently based on their experiences. That was why one never spoke of it, a soldier’s dark closet. I had led my platoon with pluck; I had bombed targets in death-defying circumstances, and I had learned to remember Cissy in a positive way. Yes, it took all the courage I had to accept that she, and so many others, like Perce, who had affected my life, were gone. I would use that spirit to ensure memories of them lived forever.
I awoke with a start, sweat dripping from my forehead, this time not from a nightmare but rather because I had fallen asleep against a sunny windowsill. I cleared my head by quietly admiring beautiful Lake Constance, its alpine Rhine water shimmering in the afternoon sun. “Must be Konstanz coming up, lads,” I burst out in an unthinking manner as Howie and the Vicar were dozing.
“Hmm?” said Howie.
“Your auntie Constance is calling, Lieutenant Chainey!”
“Wha—I don’t have an Auntie Con . . . Oh, ha ha, very funny, Pitman.”
The Vicar and I looked at each other, then smiled at the waking Howie. “That’s one for us, Bobby,” he chortled.
“Howie, we are almost in Konstanz. You know, near the Swiss border,” I said. He sat upright, looking out at the lake through bleary eyes.
. . .
“Achtung! Zeig uns deine Unterlagen!” The uniforms worn by the German border guards were as extraordinarily neat as the men were well groomed. Even appearances shown by a surrendered country were being kept up, at least in front of foreigners. Well, they can demand Unterlagen, but we had little to show for documents, only the release handed to us by Hauptmann Fuchs as he had ticked off our names on his clipboard before we crossed the prison moat.
The process was a little ridiculous as a guard stood over us to check our papers. One would think our British uniforms and accents would be proof enough for permission to exit Germany.
Howie whispered as the guard moved along, “At least he has a job.”
We chugged forward ever so slowly, crossing the viaduct over the Rhine and through the southern part of Konstanz. We heard raucous hoots and hurrahs from the more forward carriages, revealing they were in Switzerland. We were right behin
d.
“Ah, the Swiss are incredible,” commented the Vicar as he accepted gifts through the open window. “Showering us with chocolates, cigarettes, biscuits!”
On the platform, Howie took on the look of a school chum, moving around, hugging any girl or woman he saw, men also. “They are so nice, such warm people!”
I bounced over excitedly. “And the coffee, lads. Try the coffee—it’s real, no acorns!”
A small boy of about seven ran up to us after leaving other soldiers, wrapping his arms around the Vicar’s legs. “Danke,” he murmured, “Danke fürs kämpfen.” His mother ran over, her English broken but easily understood. “Oh, I’m so sorry, but ever since his brother died, he has been thanking you soldiers for fighting.”
The Vicar’s eyes welled up, and I simply let it out, stood there holding my coffee and cried tears of sorrow for this little guy, but also tears of relief as we stood in neutral Switzerland. Howie knelt down and hugged the boy. “Danke back to you. Thank you, little one.”
It was then we felt some release, raw emotion escaping the core of our hearts, releasing pent up anguish, allowing ourselves to rejoice. Watching his mother lead him away, I realized that what that little boy had done could heal countries if they, too, were prepared to open up their hearts.
. . .
“Penny for your thoughts, Bobby?” Howie faced me from the opposite seat as I stared out the window into the darkness. The Vicar slept as he leaned slightly forward on the soft cushioned seat, rocking gently with the movement of the train. We were well on our way to Geneva via Zurich.
“Thinking of that young lad, how his innocence pierced our feelings, his inherent sensitivity to our grief.”
“Well, he got to us at that vulnerable moment when we crossed into freedom, but yes, he seemed to instinctively understand the sacrifice of soldiers.”
“Thinking about what his mother said, you know, losing his brother. That was obviously her other son. Yet she taught the youngster to love. That is something.”
The Vicar stirred in his seat, mumbled, then drifted away against the constant drone of our conversation. “Yeah, Bobby,” said Howie. “The things we’ve seen over here, how the people have survived under such terrible conflict, surrounded by death, destruction, and armed conflict, never knowing what might happen from one day to the next . . .”
“And to think that our families will never know what really went on over here,” I mulled.
“How’s that?”
“Well,” I justified, “even if we did explain, they would never truly understand, couldn’t possibly grasp, the horror that went on.”
Howie stared into the darkness at the eerie flashes as telegraph poles swept past before turning back to me. “True. I don’t know how I would explain the war to my family. How do you explain pieces of bodies rotting in the mud or bayonetting a Hun before he does that to you?”
“You don’t, because even if they believe those things happened, they will question why you didn’t do something to avoid such tragedy. They will believe we had a choice, because they simply don’t know any better.”
Howie again turned away to peer into the blackness outside the window. I watched him for a moment, thinking that the darkness was symbolic of the only way to move on from war. To throw all those experiences into a dark hole, not to be disturbed, as a way to move forward. I let him be as I turned my thoughts to my own family, the joy of seeing my beautiful sister Hilda, who had turned eighteen last January, now a young woman who would put on grown-up airs. When I last saw her, she was fifteen with the innocence of a young girl. What would she say, what would Ethel say, and what would I say? Would we still have the togetherness we had always had?
There would be fanfare for those of us returning home, and in spite of the lack of true answers, questions would be asked. How to explain the fear of flying in fierce weather at eight thousand feet to bomb an enemy target? Listeners would want to romanticize it as they had done in other wars, yet it was difficult for me to find romance in any of it. How did you justify strafing rows of marching soldiers from an aeroplane? Being told it was an ethical military command—protecting our cause the same as those young men in the German army were told—seemed glib. You killed because you had to kill, not because you wanted to.
The Vicar’s body did not shift from its relaxed state, but he turned his head to face me. “Were you scared, Bob?”
“Vic, you’re awake.”
“Quite. Been listening to you two. It occurred to me that after we force landed the Handley, I never asked you if you were afraid back there in the gunner’s slot.”
“Yes, I was afraid. Of not knowing what was happening, that was the worst. Afraid of not seeing my sisters again, my parents, and my school chums. And once we landed, I remember thinking it would be a terrible way to go, to be mowed down by an excitable Hun while on their soil. Yes, I was scared.”
“Yet you were the one who rallied us to that wooded area, encouraged us to take the action of walking away from the danger,” said the Vicar. “If we had remained, who knows what a fired-up Hun might have done?”
“Ah well, my mind just happened to be focused that night, that’s all.”
Chapter 57
21 December, 1918
High up on the hill, I looked past the Place d’Armes watchtower at the ship docked under the harbor lights, which would transport us across the English Channel to Dover the next morning. After traveling eleven hundred miles, the train that had delivered us from Ingolstadt in five days rested in the nearby Gare de Calais.
I would momentarily rejoin Howie and the Vicar in the dockside estaminet, which was teaming with soldiers returning from the front, all charged with excitement. As I desired a little time in the fresh wintry air to think, I strode up the long pathway that ended at the lookout.
On this first day of winter, peace was on everyone’s mind, yet my thoughts summoned the inevitable spring that would bring flowers, green grass, darling foals, warm air, and all the other new growth that refreshes our earth. For me this was a renewal by basking in daydreams while shedding nightmares.
The world was free; even those who had sought to bring evil were free of their horrific burden. It was true the British way of life had broken down, that England, France, Germany and others were nearly bankrupt. But choices would open up in a restoration after everything settled down to become normal in a new way. As mankind’s effort to build destructive war machinery transformed to building homes and workplaces and factories for the benefit of all, our world citizens would adapt to renewed lives. Even the losses would heal with time.
I struck a match to light my pipe as I leaned back against a man-sized rock, peering up at the waning moon that was full enough to brighten the night. The shadow of the wispy clouds passing across its surface reminded me of the many nights traveling high above in the open air. I was thankful for that moonlit image that would always be etched in my mind as a reminder of the people who had taught me how to face fear and embrace courage—Perce, Cissy, Wellsey, Hardy, and so many others.
The faint voice of the Vicar calling from below reminded me that he and Howie were also key influences in the shaping of my future. Oh yes, I would go back to Saskatoon to weigh my choices, knowing the university held open my seat at the law school. Yet I also knew I had a tidy sum of war-allowance savings tucked away at the Bank of Montreal, which would give me the freedom to travel, maybe to Vancouver to see my sister Ethel. Perhaps Hilda would go too. There would be choices that for the past few years I had not permitted myself to consider.
As I now pondered those options, the moon silhouetted a distant aeroplane passing through its brilliance as if proving for me the point about its image of courage. The distant hum of its engine propelling it through the night sky and its flickering wing lights had been transformed from images of war to one of peaceful passage. Perhaps Cissy was directing it as a signal of love—daydreams could happen at night too.
“Bobby, you out here?”
>
I had better go and begin living again.
Historical Note
The history depicted in this story follows an accurate timeline and is true to general events as they unfolded from the 1916 through 1918 portion of the Great War.
When the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was assassinated in Bosnia on June 28, 1914 the stage was set to ignite simmering tensions across Europe. Those agitating for war were to see it by August, although few expected it to last through the end of 1918.
The Triple Entente of France, Russia and Great Britain was formed to counterbalance the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Kingdom of Italy. This set up conditions for the first true world war, especially when sovereigns such as the Ottoman Empire, Togoland, West Africa, Japan and China became involved. Neutral Belgium was thrown into the fray by an aggressive German maneuver to invade it unlawfully.
Canada – alongside Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Newfoundland – was a Dominion of the British Empire and therefore integrated in its defence. Canada mobilized immediately after Britain declared war on Germany, its young men joining up in respect of ‘King and Country’. Its first field action took place by the Canadian Expeditionary Force at Ypres, Belgium in April, 1915, during which Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel John McRae penned the poem “In Flanders Fields” to honour a fallen friend.
Canadian participation grew, joining the Battle of the Somme which commenced on 1 July, 1916, a scene of horror and colossal loss of life. All of Canada’s divisions – with Newfoundland – participated and as noted in the story, the Royal Canadian Regiment joined that muddy battlefield in August, 1916. Taking count of both sides, the Somme accounted for over 1.2 million casualties (8,600 soldiers per day).
The Canadians participated in the other major WW1 battles such as Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele and Amiens. Out of a population of 8 million, 620,000 young Canadian men enlisted, with 425,000 serving overseas. Sixty thousand did not come home.
Seeking Courage Page 39