The First Casualty

by Ben Elton

  Mr Bartholomew knew Captain Abercrombie, of course — or Viscount Abercrombie as he had been in civilian life — for the young captain was a celebrity, a published poet and decorated soldier, a famous wit and bon viveur and a highly valued patron of the club. As were the friends with whom Abercrombie was sharing magnums of Veuve Clicquot ‘06 and dishes of cold partridge with water biscuits and chutney, all being consumed in an atmosphere of the greatest hilarity.

  ‘I think I shouldn’t mind a bullet very much,’ Abercrombie remarked as he busied himself pouring champagne. ‘It takes you either straight to heaven or back to Blighty, which surely must be nearly as blissful. Unless of course one was hit in the tool shed.

  That I simply couldn’t bear. If ever young Private Abercrombie was unable to come to full attention I think I’d stick my head above the parapet and let Fritz finish me off there and then.’

  ‘Well, don’t go waving it about at the front,’ one of his companions remarked. ‘From what I recall it would make one a devil of a target.’

  ‘It would, my dear, it would,’ Abercrombie replied with mock sorrow. ‘Fearfully easy to hit, I’m disgustingly proud to admit. When brother Boche finally throws in the towel I intend to run a flag up it!’

  The laughter was loud and the champagne flowed. Abercrombie was not the only soldier whose leave was up that night and the party had a determined wildness to it, as any party might when a number of the guests present are well aware that it may be the last party they ever attend. Guests who in the morning would venture forth to do their duty by, and perhaps give their lives for, a country which despised them.

  ‘I say, do you suppose,’ a major in the Blues and Royals in a gown of emerald and turquoise enquired, ‘that after the war, what with them talking about giving women the vote and Home Rule to the Paddies and God knows what kind of autonomy to the wogs, they might start going a bit easier on us poor old queens? Eh? Any chance, d’you think?’

  ‘Not a bit of it,’ another replied. ‘If there’s one thing the average Englishman cannot abide it’s a sodomite and there’s an end to it.’

  ‘Which is most puzzling,’ Abercrombie added, ‘when one considers how many average Englishmen are sodomites, or damn well wish they were.’

  This sally provoked more laughter, more bottles were ordered and one or two younger men who were not the viscount’s guests but were known to Mr Bartholomew joined the group, and there was dancing and flirting and cuddling in corners and one or two couples began to drift towards the staircase that led to the rooms above.

  ‘Play ‘Forever England’,’ a young man called out to the piano player.

  But Viscount Abercrombie was not happy with the request.

  ‘Damn it, anything but that! I forbid it!’ he said firmly.

  The young man looked crestfallen.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he stammered. ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘My dear sweet boy,’ the Viscount replied, in a softer tone, ‘have you any idea how often I have to suffer that wretched dirge? It follows me about the place like some jilted lover. Everywhere I go it’s a step or two behind me and I have to smile and nod and pretend I’m delighted. A nightmare, dear boy. A bloody nightmare.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I had no idea. Don’t you like being famous then? ‘

  ‘Well, I like being lionized and admired and petted, of course, but you can’t turn it off, you see. I dread to dine out because I know that by the time my soup’s arrived there will be a giggling gaggle of moon-faced flappers hovering behind the pastry trolley and I shall have to smile and write my name on their menu cards until my food has gone stone cold.’

  Viscount Abercrombie pressed a glass of champagne into the young man’s hand and called for cognac and sugar to make a proper drink of it.

  ‘It’s worse for me, being a bachelor,’ he added, taking the man’s hand and leading him to a velvet divan. ‘All the fat mamas push their revolting skinny little darlings on to me, hoping to make a famous match. Little chance of that, I fear, despite the pleadings of one’s own mama.’

  Abercrombie laid his hand upon the young man’s knee.

  ‘So who are you then, young scout,’ he enquired, ‘apart from a charming boy who has no taste in music but looks delightful in silk? ‘

  ‘I’m Stamford,’ the man replied, his voice shaking with nerves. ‘Well, Stamford, what brings you to Bartholomew’s Private Hotel?’

  ‘I heard about it from a fellow I fagged for at Harrow…We kept in touch and he told me that I’d be…welcome here.’

  ‘And he was right.’

  ‘We were…‘friends’ at school.’

  ‘You mean he used you shamelessly, the beast.’

  ‘I didn’t mind.’

  ‘I’ll bet you didn’t, my primrose pal. And here at the Lavender Lamp we can all pretend we’re still at school, eh?’

  Abercrombie leaned over and kissed Stamford on the cheek. The young man went red and smiled brightly.

  ‘I was so hoping that I’d get a chance to meet you,’ he said. ‘We’re to be in the same regiment, you know.’

  ‘Well, darling, what a coincidence! Perhaps we shall share a puddle together. You can massage my trench feet and I shall rub yours.’

  ‘Is it truly terribly awful? I’ve spoken to other fellows who say it’s pretty grim.’

  ‘And they were honest men, young Stamford, pretty grim is exactly what it is except grimmer.’

  They were closer now. Abercrombie had his arm around the shoulders of the younger man and had poured them both another champagne and cognac.

  ‘It’s all right for you,’ Stamford said, ‘you’re so terribly brave. ‘Terribly, darling. I drip with medals. I’d rather thought of having a couple made into earrings. Wouldn’t that look smart on parade?’

  ‘You see, you can even joke about it. I’m sure I never shall. I’m scared that I shall funk it and let everybody down.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ Abercrombie said, ‘let’s not talk about it, eh? Let’s pretend that there is no beastly rotten war at all and that the only interest we need take in soldiering is cruising for a compliant Guardsman outside the palace when we fancy something rough.’

  Abercrombie kissed Stamford again but this time on the mouth. When their lips separated the young man grinned nervously and took up a little leather manuscript bag that lay on the velvet cushions beside him. Abercrombie’s face fell instantly.

  ‘Sweetums, please, please don’t say that you have poems in that satchel.’

  Now it was the turn of the young man’s face to fall.

  ‘I…Well, yes,’ he stammered. ‘I’ve written one about…’

  ‘Your feelings on going off to war?’

  ‘Yes, exactly!’ the young man replied, looking pleased again. ‘Just like poor old Rupert Brooke, silly Siegfried Sassoon and brave Viscount Abercrombie with his simply thrilling and stirring ‘Forever England’?’

  ‘Well, I would never class myself in — ’

  ‘Are you proud, young Stamford? Do you hope to do your best? Shall you miss the country of your birth but nonetheless are content to go and die for it if needs be?’

  The young man was crestfallen.

  ‘You’re laughing at me.’

  ‘Well, come on, am I right?’

  ‘That’s what I wrote about, yes.’

  ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘It’s called ‘England, Home and Beauty.’

  ‘Good. No need to read it then, eh? Put away your satchel, little schoolboy, and dance awhile with me instead.’

  ‘I think you’re very cruel,’ Stamford said, tears starting in his eyes. ‘I’m a poet, just like you. I thought that you might respect that.’

  ‘I’m not a poet, darling. Not any more. Bored with it. Such a yawn, don’t you know. Haven’t written a thing in months. Not a bean. And by the way, have you any idea how many people come up to me and want me to read their silly stuff? They send it to me in the bloody post! Simply everyone’s a poe
t these days, darling! I think that’s why I’ve chucked it in, just too, too common for words.’

  ‘So you won’t read my work?’

  ‘No, little poet, I will not.’

  ‘I see.’

  Stamford put his satchel aside.

  ‘Can we still be friends?’ he enquired. ‘Even though you think me contemptible?’

  ‘Darling! Contemptible? Whatever gave you that idea? I think you’re sweet and lovely and very, very beautiful and honestly if I were ever again to read anyone’s poems I should read yours first and only yours but, you see, I shan’t, ever…and tonight, well, wouldn’t it be more fun to dance?’

  The pianist was playing a waltz and Abercrombie took Stamford by the hand.

  ‘Come along, sweetie,’ he said. ‘I’ll be Albert, you be Doris.’

  Together they waltzed as best they could in the limited space available in front of Mr Bartholomew’s little bar. Two or three other couples shared the floor and they all danced together until, one by one, they drifted towards the staircase.

  FIVE

  A bath in a brewery

  Just as Kingsley was watching Agnes disappear and Viscount Abercrombie and his young friend were dancing a waltz together in the tiny bar of the Lavender Lamp, across the Channel in the small Belgian village of Wytschaete a large group of private soldiers of the 5th Battalion East Lancs were awaiting their first bath in many weeks.

  Wytschaete had been a tiny village with few comforts and amenities even before it had been engulfed by the various battles of the Ypres salient. Now, three years into the carnage, there was very little left of it. Its buildings were all ruins, its singled cobbled street no more than a muddy ditch, its church spire had been atomized and what trees and flowers had ever grown there grew no longer. The little village did, however, have one supreme advantage to recommend it to the men of the 5th Battalion of the East Lancashire Regiment. It stood (or had once stood and now lay) a whole two miles from what was currently the Wipers front line. This was why the regiment had selected it as one of the locations in which it attempted to provide brief respites from the line for its exhausted soldiers.

  The Wytschaete army bathhouse was located, as was often the case with army bathhouses, in an old brewery. This one had been partially shelled out, but the sappers had done a decent job of putting in a replacement roof and the brewery plumbing within had been efficiently converted to provide a communal shower.

  A group of about fifty men stood outside it amongst the shattered walls of the next-door building, their towels flung across the shoulders of their filthy uniforms. They smoked their fags and waited for the fifty men within to complete their wash.

  ‘I can remember when we went in only twelve at a time,’ one man grumbled, ‘and we had baths then, proper barrels filled with lovely hot water, and five minutes all alone to soak. Not like now where we stand on duckboards and the army pisses all over us.’

  Might as well stay in the trenches and wait for rain.

  ‘Wouldn’t ‘ave long to wait,’ another man joked. ‘Not in bleeding Wipers. I reckon your Belgian civvie is part fish.’

  ‘And you kept your own clothes then,’ the grumbler insisted. ‘They was numbered before you went in and medical orderlies brushed ‘em and ironed out the seams for bugs while you were ‘aving your tub, and they give you back your own uniform when you come out again.’

  ‘You mean you got the same uniform back?’ a teenage conscript asked, aghast that such luxuries had ever been possible on the Western Front.

  ‘Yes, you did. That was before Kitchener died, of course. It all changed then, when the old man went down and yer conscription come in. Too many bleeding soldiers to give ‘em a decent bath or their own tunics.’

  The fact that men who were detailed for showers were then expected to take pot luck and grab any supposedly laundered uniform when they emerged on the other side was a source of enormous resentment amongst the private soldiers.

  ‘I always hangs on to my own,’ said another. ‘There’s no less bugs in the one I got on than the ones they hands you back and at least I knows my lice. They’re family.’

  ‘It’s disgusting,’ an angry-looking soldier asserted, ‘expecting free-born men to put on any filthy old uniform the army hurls at us and then asking us to take pride in our units! Bloody generals should try it themselves and see how proud they feel.’

  This soldier’s name was Hopkins and he was not a popular man. He was known to be a Communist and a follower of something he called the International, and although most of the men were always happy to vilify the much-despised General Staff they did not hold with Bolshevism.

  ‘Piss off to Russia then and see how you like it’ was the usual reply to Hopkins’s diatribes.

  ‘You’re all mad, bloody mad,’ Hopkins shouted to anyone who would listen. ‘Look at us. We’re sheep, that’s what. Sheep to the bleeding slaughter. We can’t win this war, not the poor bloody infantry. We just sit around hoping to cop a Blighty so’s we can stagger home crippled, grateful not to be dead.’

  As usual Hopkins was stirring up more resentment than support.

  ‘What do you mean we can’t win? You lying bastard!’

  ‘I mean what I say. We can’t win it and they can’t win either,’ Hopkins insisted. ‘Not the common man.’

  ‘Who are you calling common?’

  ‘The only people who will win this war, who are winning this war, who have already bloody won this war are the people who make the shells and guns that working men lob at each other.’

  ‘Ay, that’s true enough,’ a man named McCroon who was the unit’s other Bolshevik chipped in. ‘Like the slogan tells you, a bayonet is a weapon with a worker at both ends.’

  ‘And we should lay down ours and refuse to fight,’ Hopkins cried. ‘That’s what we should do, vote with our feet like the Russians are doing. Tell those bloated capitalists we won’t die for their profits.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you then, you, Bolshie bastard?’ a voice cried out. ‘Piss off so’s we don’t have to listen to you bangin’ on no more.’

  ‘Because they’d bloody shoot me, that’s why, you Tory prick! Socialism doesn’t want martyrs, it wants solidarity. If one man goes or a handful they just shoot ‘em but if we all walked off they’d have to think again, wouldn’t they? Solidarity forever!’

  ‘Don’t you ever give it a rest?’

  At that point Hopkins was forced to stop because bath time was called and the men took off their uniforms and undergarments and trooped naked into the brewery, where they stood on duckboards as the water was turned on over their heads. Some of them had managed to keep a bit of soap safe for the occasion.

  ‘I had a lovely bar of Pears my missus sent,’ a man said. ‘Fucking rat ate it. Just fucking ate the whole bar. Would you credit it?’

  ‘Won’t his shit smell beautiful!’

  There was plenty of joking and some singing too, for bare though the arrangements were, to soldiers who had lived in ditches for weeks even this brief communal shower was a treat. The joking and singing was of course filled with the bitter irony which was the Tommies’ only real defence against the nightmare in which they had found themselves.

  ‘If you want the old battalion,

  We know where they are,

  We know where they are,

  We know where they are.

  If you want the old battalion,

  We know where they are,

  They’re hangin’ on the old barbed wire.’

  The one drawback of rest periods for soldiers who lived cheek by jowl with death was that they provided unavoidable evidence of the unremitting bloodletting of the line. Men standing in a bath queue or assembling a team for a kick-about could not help but dwell upon who amongst their comrades had been present at the last rest and was not present at the current one.

  All too soon the shower was over. Another fifty men were standing naked outside and it was time to go out once more and find a uniform.

&
nbsp; ‘Lovely, that. Just the ticket,’ men shouted as they slipped about on the soapy boards. ‘I almost imagined for a moment I was human.’

  ‘Just wait a few months,’ less cheerful souls warned. ‘Come December when you’re out there starkers in the snow and there’s ice on the duckboards, you won’t be imagining nothing then. You’ll just be hanging on to your balls to stop them disappearing altogether.’

  Outside the bathhouse the men picked with disgust at the louse-ridden khaki threads that awaited them. Suddenly it was all too much for Private Hopkins. He had put on the underwear supplied to him but on inspecting the tunic that was offered he hurled it down in disgust.

  ‘I’m not wearing this!’ he shouted. ‘I want my own uniform back and I want it clean of lice! I am a man, not an animal.’

  Some men cheered, others sniggered, many looked on with some sympathy. Hopkins was not popular but there was no denying he had a point. An officer of the Royal Army Medical Corps approached.

  ‘Private, pick up that tunic and put it on,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I will not put it on!’ Hopkins replied, standing shaking in his underwear.

  ‘Private, I do not wish to have to punish you for I am no fonder of the arrangements in which we must all live than you are. Now pick up that tunic which is the King’s uniform and put it on.’

  ‘Let the King wear it then! I want my own back.’

  No one was sniggering now. Hopkins was refusing to obey an order, which was a capital offence. The forty-nine other men grew silent, pausing in their efforts to,find the best uniform available. The next group of men, who had already entered the shower, knew nothing of the drama going on outside and, as Hopkins and the medical officer stared into each other’s eyes, their joking and singing rang across the yard.