‘Well, I do remember us linking up with other captives, plenty of civilians and soldiers mixed together. We slept rough . . . barns, sheds, open fields, and at some point through the coldest weeks I caught a fever so maybe I was muttering in English, I don’t know; I was put with the English soldiers. From what I can gather, by the time we arrived here there might have been one other Frenchman left, who was from my division but not from my unit – I mentioned him earlier. Your German need for records wanted a name to be given to me. It was clear I wasn’t English, only that I spoke the language. Even though I had only a ragged shirt and had somehow acquired a blanket to wrap around myself, I was wearing the blue trousers of the French army.’ Jacques touched the scar on his head where no hair would grow back. He wished he could remember receiving this wound and the others that had changed him forever. ‘The British officers called me Corky.’
‘Corky,’ Rolf repeated, confounded.
Jacques pulled out the cork he habitually carried and was grateful not to have lost. ‘Because of this,’ he said.
‘What is that? A champagne cork?’
‘One day maybe I’ll remember. But I keep it close. It was in my pocket. As no one could put a name to me, the prison orderly wrote the word cork, translating to French as “bouchon”. I must have nodded or simply accepted it, but either way it was never corrected. I truly cannot remember when I acquired the name Jacques, but it was likely on the long march to Germany.’
Rolf whistled. ‘So you still don’t know who you are, in truth?’ The guard sounded full of wonder. ‘Maybe the woman in your dream gave you that cork. Perhaps before the war you had been with her . . . celebrating . . . you know . . .?’
Jacques watched Rolf’s face flush pink at the innuendo. ‘Maybe.’ He winked, hoping to end the painful conversation, and won a conspiratorial laugh from the friendly guard.
They heard a shout and both turned at the sound. Another guard was beckoning angrily at Rolf.
‘I must go,’ he sighed. ‘I’ll see you around, Jacques.’
Jacques dissolved into a fit of coughing. Damn that gas, he thought, wondering yet again whether his ailment would slip into the dreaded tuberculosis that killed so many with weakened lungs. Finally finding his breath, he raised a hand to Rolf. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he quipped, making the younger man grin. ‘What’s the rush up there, anyway?’
‘We’re preparing for some visitors,’ Rolf said.
‘Berlin coming here?’ he said in a wry tone.
‘No, no, nothing like that. A team of doctors from the neutral zone.’
Jacques frowned. ‘What for?’
‘I don’t know. I am not told these things, but I shall get my backside kicked if I don’t go and help tidy up the space for them.’ He waved farewell, flicking his cigarette butt away.
Doctors from the neutral zone, Jacques thought. Well, that might be something to take to the English officers over tonight’s gruel and bread.
It was two days later he was hunted out. Jacques looked up, frowning as the guard yelled his name.
‘Here,’ he called, standing, hoping he wasn’t in trouble.
‘You’ve been summoned.’ It wasn’t one of the friendly guards.
‘Why?’
‘Don’t ask questions.’
Jacques looked back at the men he shared quarters with. A couple gave jeering but affectionate whistles.
‘Give ’em hell, Jack,’ Captain William Jones said, still finding it easier to anglicise the French pronunciation. They joked all the time that they’d made him an honorary Englishman.
‘Ask them if we can get some more wood – it’s bloody freezing in here,’ another senior officer, Major Hugh Blackman suggested.
He grinned, offering sarcastically: ‘I’ll ask for some fresh stocks of tea too, shall I?’
‘Yes, please, old chap. Make sure it’s Vickery’s Darjeeling – second flush, mind. Best bloody tea on earth.’
Everyone laughed as he saluted.
‘And I’ll have a tin of caviar, thanks,’ Captain Jones said.
He followed the loud click of the German guard’s boots on the grey flagstones. They travelled from one end of the castle to the other, where the administration and the enemy were housed. He had never seen this part of the castle, and the further they went, the plusher it became. There were tapestries and other soft furnishings, and the sinister clack of the guard’s boots was intermittently deadened by thick rugs. Armchairs were grouped around carved stone fireplaces, and in the distance he could hear music. It was a new world echoing the old one.
Finally, he was escorted through double doors into a vast room where three men with sombre expressions sat behind a large table with paperwork strewn on it. Behind them to their left sat a stenographer with thick-rimmed glasses; she was the only person who greeted Jacques with any hint of a smile.
The man in the middle spoke first. ‘Thank you. You may leave him with us.’
The guard glanced at Jacques, his lip slightly raised in a sneer, and departed.
As Jacques regarded the panel of strangers he helplessly dissolved into a fit of coughing. He couldn’t focus on their awkward silence for his cough was wet and all-consuming. To his surprise and gratitude a tumbler of water appeared and there was a gentle hand on his back. The tone was friendly too. ‘Here, drink and find your calm.’ It was one of the men, and close up he could see only sympathy in the fellow’s gaze. The man spoke in English but with a European accent he couldn’t guess at.
‘Thank you,’ he struggled to get out, and continued coughing, unable to drink for at least another half-minute.
They waited patiently until his struggle subsided.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, clearing his throat a few times. He drained his glass and awkwardly shook the hand of the man who had assisted him, and remained silent but nodded again as the European in civilian clothes returned to his seat. Jacques cradled the empty tumbler in his lap and regarded the trio once again.
‘May we conduct this meeting in French?’
He nodded.
‘Thank you. Mr Bouchon, may we call you Jacques?’
‘You can. It is the only name I have.’ It sounded sarcastic, which he hadn’t intended. ‘I mean, you’ve probably been told I have lost my memory? It is the name I go by – one given to me.’
The lead man nodded. ‘Yes, we do understand. Let us introduce ourselves. I am Dr Anders Keller.’ Keller spoke the names of the others; Jacques paid little attention to them but graciously accepted their nods and brief smiles. It was only now, as Keller gestured towards the fireplace, that Jacques noticed a man, not in uniform, with a pencil-thin moustache and a neat razor-like parting in his oiled hair. ‘Dr Kurtz is German, but he is here simply to ensure we make wise choices.’
Choices? He waited, baffled.
Keller continued in his kind tone. ‘We are one of ten delegations from neutral countries who have the responsibility of selecting imprisoned soldiers in Germany to be transported to Swiss internment camps.’
Jacques gave a low scoff but turned it into a sniff and then an embarrassed cough when he realised no one in the room was jesting. ‘H-how has this come about?’ he stammered, unsure of how else to react.
‘Switzerland, in conjunction with the Red Cross, is working hard for humanitarian reasons to help those imprisoned in German jails to be sent to several camps in Switzerland to improve their health.’
Jacques wanted to pinch himself. Was this a joke? He hadn’t realised he’d spoken this thought aloud.
‘This is not a joke, Lieutenant Bouchon, but I can understand your bafflement.’
‘After years in prison, you can imagine how odd this is.’ He began to cough again, struggling momentarily to regain some ease of breathing.
‘We realise it is surprising for prisoners. We are committed to this aid, and I hasten to add,’ he said, glancing at the German in the room, ‘you will not be a free man but you will be free to come and go within the confines of the town or city t
o which you are sent.’
The man peered at him over rimless spectacles, and the message conveyed in that look told Jacques that the term ‘prisoner’ would be considered loosely in Switzerland. Was this really happening? He needed to focus on what the man was saying.
‘. . . and it is our understanding that you suffered a poison gas attack in 1915.’
He nodded. ‘At Ypres, yes. That was where I was taken captive.’
‘And you have no memory from before then?’
‘I remember the green mist. It invades my dreams to this day, but of the hour – even the moments before I first saw that killing mist – I have nothing. The memory of that mist brings on a sort of panic and I find it hard to breathe, my pulse races and I feel like my heart is going to explode.’ He looked back at the man helplessly. ‘I have tried, sir. I’ve spent the last two years of captivity feeling like my brain is bleeding, I’ve pushed it so hard to recall. I have small, er, how shall I say . . . images – vignettes, even – that unfold now and then. There is a woman and there are other people whom I don’t know, should know, but are strangers still. I don’t know if I’m a lieutenant. All I know is that I am French, rather than specifically Breton, and was fighting in Ypres by 1915.’ He stopped talking, realising he had been speaking too fast, sounding perhaps a little aggressive through his frustration. Jacques scanned the panel of doctors with appeal in his expression.
‘The cough you display is a result of the chlorine gas we see in your file.’
‘I am not a doctor,’ he admitted with a shrug. ‘But I feel sure I had strong lungs before the war.’
‘May we examine you, Lieutenant Bouchon?’
‘Am I being chosen to go to Switzerland?’
‘Quite possibly,’ replied Keller amiably, and the other Swiss doctors smiled as they stood. ‘Perhaps you would remove your shirt for us. Do you need help?’
Jacques looked down at his arm, which had been poorly amputated at the elbow. ‘No, I’ve learned how to manage, but thank you.’
‘You are tall – you must have been strong,’ Keller observed as he ran through his prodding and listening checks.
‘I suppose so, sir.’
‘I notice your handshake is extremely firm – more powerful than most.’
Jacques looked back at him queryingly.
‘Makes me think you worked with your hands, perhaps? Something repetitive that strengthened the grip.’
He shrugged.
‘Keep it in mind when those flashes of memory hit.’
The German joined in, speaking in clipped French. ‘It is intriguing that you are French, but you are with the English officers.’
Jacques looked towards Kurtz. ‘It is, but I suspect all known details are noted in the files. It changes nothing, for all of my company as I understand it are dead, mostly from the effects of the gassing.’
‘And yet you survived.’
‘I survived. I don’t know how or why.’
The German gave him a slit-eyed nod and seemed satisfied.
The doctors gave him a thorough examination, listening to his lungs, tapping his back, checking his blood pressure and nodding and whispering to each other in Swiss French, which he mostly understood.
‘Thank you, Lieutenant. You may dress. And you shall hear news soon.’
‘How soon, Dr Keller?’ he risked as he pulled on his shirt and dexterously buttoned it with one hand as he’d taught himself.
‘By week’s end,’ the man assured him. He turned to the stenographer. ‘Thank you, Lena.’
Lena tinkled a bell and within a moment the unfriendly guard returned to escort Jacques back to his dormitory.
‘Thank you for the opportunity,’ he said, not entirely sure which day of the week it happened to be or in how many days the week would end.
After some cooler days, the weather had ‘fined up’, as his fellow prisoners termed it. They were taking advantage of it: one of the inmates was a doctor who urged them to get the sun on their backs whenever they could, especially those like Jacques with respiratory problems.
He had just finished a meagre midday meal of rough bread with jam in the courtyard. Everyone shared their parcels from home. He was one of only two officers who received no packages from relatives.
As usual he declined anything extra because he couldn’t reciprocate.
‘Come on, Corky, you know we don’t care,’ Captain William Jones remarked. Jacques didn’t mind the nickname. Most seemed to have one. Jones was known as Ducky but Jacques never understood why; something to do with the English sport of cricket, he’d gathered, but it still made no sense.
‘Even so, I feel, how you say, awkward,’ he said to Ducky, whose blackberry jam it was.
‘Well, don’t. I want you to taste my village in this jam. I used to pick blackberries from these same bushes when I was a little tacker and used to go fishing at the local stream. We never caught much more than tiddlers.’
Jacques didn’t bother asking what a tiddler was.
‘I hope I see that village again.’
‘You will, Captain,’ Jacques assured him.
‘You might see it before me if you get out of here. Switzerland, eh? Taking that with you?’ He nodded at the cork that Jacques had been absent-mindedly turning over in his hand.
‘Given this is all I have that connects me to my past, I would weep to lose it.’
‘That’s dramatic, old chap. You might have just drunk some old plonk during rotation. It could be meaningless.’ His companion stared at it. ‘What does that say?’ He squinted.
‘Ancre,’ Jacques said. ‘Means anchor.’
‘Who names a bloody champagne Anchor? You’re nowhere near the sea in Champagne country.’
As the captain said it, something snagged in his thoughts, tried to reach out to him and he to it, but at that moment two guards stomped up; one was Rolf.
The other guard addressed Jacques. ‘Lieutenant Bouchon? You must come with us.’
‘What’s happening, then?’ Ducky asked, standing.
‘We need a French translator. We’ve got two new prisoners and can’t make sense of them,’ one said to Jacques.
Jacques nodded, told the captain what was happening and left with the guards, amused that they’d sent a pair, both armed. Where would any of them run to in Germany, anyway? He’d asked his fellow prisoners that question and it was a major who’d replied that, for the British, it was every soldier’s duty to try to escape.
‘Old Fritzy knows that,’ Major Blackman had explained. ‘So they’re careful.’
‘Where are the new captives from?’ Jacques asked the guards as they entered the building.
‘No idea. One’s an Arab. Moroccan, perhaps. The other is short and hairy, so from the south, we think.’
They showed him into an office where two men sat with their heads hung.
‘Ask them for information. We need names, ranks, division.’
The Arab looked up first. He wore a greenish mustard-coloured uniform. Jacques spoke to him, unable to fathom the fizzing sensation at the back of his mind that this man seemed to prompt. He couldn’t know him. He was a native of Algeria, and Jacques explained this to the fellow’s jailers, giving the name and rank they demanded.
‘. . . and they’re called Tirailleurs. He’s from Constantine, to the east of the capital, Algiers.’
The man recording the information looked at the other fellow, who was yet to raise his head.
‘Capitaine?’ Jacques prompted. The man looked up and focused the far-off gaze of his rheumy eyes. Jacques introduced himself. ‘We just need to mark your arrival down, sir, so we can enter your name into the lists. Your family . . . other soldiers will be looking for you.’
‘I am Jerome,’ the man said.
Jacques felt the fizz in his mind boil and spill. He didn’t hear the man speak his surname but soon felt Rolf shaking his arm.
‘Bouchon!’
He blinked several times in confusion. His breathing wa
s shallow and a coughing fit erupted. Mercifully it was short, but it had distracted everyone. He staggered slightly and Rolf caught him.
‘What is wrong with you, Bouchon?’ he growled in German.
‘My name isn’t Bouchon. It isn’t Jacques, either.’
Rolf looked at him, perplexed, and cut a glance to the other Germans.
‘We’re aware of that,’ snapped Otto, another guard, taking a step forward.
‘Yes,’ he wheezed. ‘Except I’ve remembered who I am.’ He looked into Rolf’s young face with wonder. ‘I’m Jerome.’
‘Yes, I said Jerome,’ the new prisoner insisted.
Rolf looked between them and then back at the man whose arm he held. ‘Your full name?’
He pulled out the cork from his pocket with helpless excitement. ‘It’s not ancre. It’s Delancré! Most of the name has been rubbed off.’
‘Jerome Delancré?’ Rolf asked.
And Jerome shook his head. ‘No. But I know why I carry this cork now, and the house that made the champagne it once belonged to. My name is Jerome Méa,’ he said triumphantly, his voice breaking as he spoke his name for the first time in three years. He swung around to the man recording the prisoners’ details. ‘You need to change my details. Now – it needs to be done now! They will be looking for me.’
‘Calm down, calm down,’ Rolf urged, whispering, ‘I’ll sort it out. Get this man’s details.’
With his mind scattering, and still holding his triumph in his throat, Jerome Méa gained all of the information that was required from the new inmates. As he was being escorted back to the prisoners’ courtyard, he grabbed Rolf’s arm.
‘You have to help me, Rolf.’
‘Be quiet!’ Otto warned.
‘Oh, come on, Otto. He’s going to Switzerland, anyway.’
Rolf won a glare from his elder.
‘I’m definitely going?’
Rolf nodded. ‘Tomorrow.’
‘All the more reason. I have to get a letter out, Rolf. Please.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Rolf said, glaring straight back at Otto. ‘Don’t worry, he’ll speak kindly of us to those doctors. Maybe we’ll get a cushy transfer.’
The Champagne War Page 21