The First Casualty

by Ben Elton

  The train had halted in a pleasant field. The rain had stopped and all up and down the track fires were lit, fags rolled, pipes filled, tea brewed, a scratch made in the ground with a bayonet and the whole army settled down for a shit.

  Kingsley joined the group that had formed around his new friend. Fifteen or so men, grouped by a fire, squatted down with their trousers round their ankles, some leaning forward on their rifles for support. The men chatted idly, as if they were in the pub. Kingsley, who had expected to feel self-conscious, found it curiously convivial. Everybody smoked, of course, and Kingsley drew contentedly on his Players Navy Strength, listening as the talk turned to the origins of their current misery.

  ‘The question I always asks is, why did anyone give a fuck about this bleeding Archduke Ferdinand what’s-his-face in the first place?’ one fellow said. ‘I mean, come on, nobody had even heard of the cunt till he got popped off. Now the entire fucking world is fighting ‘cos of it.’

  ‘You dozy arse,’ another man admonished,’ ‘that was just a bleeding spark, that was. It was a spark. Europe was a tinder box, wasn’t it? Everyone knows that.’

  ‘Well, I don’t see as how he was even worth a spark, mate,’ the first man replied. ‘Like I say, who’d even heard of the cunt?’

  A corporal weighed in to settle the matter.

  ‘Listen, it’s yer Balkans, innit? Always yer Balkans. Balkans,’ Balkans, Balkans. You see, yer Austro-Hungarians — ’

  ‘Who are another bunch we never gave a fuck about till all this kicked off,’ the first man interjected.

  ‘Shut up an’ you might learn something,’ the corporal insisted. ‘You’ve got your Austro-Hungarians supposed to be in charge in Sarajevo but most of the Bosnians is Serbs,’ right, or at least enough of ‘em is to cause a t’do.’

  ‘What’s Sarajevo got to do with Bosnia then?’

  ‘Sarajevo’s in Bosnia, you monkey! It’s the capital.’

  ‘Oh. So?’

  ‘Well, your Austrians ‘ave got Bosnia, right, but your Bosnians are backed by your Serbs, right? So when a Bosnian Serb shoots — ’

  ‘A Bosnian or a Serb?’

  ‘A Bosnian and a bleeding Serb, you arse. When this Bosnian Serb loony shoots Ferdinand who’s heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, the Austrians think, right, here’s a chance to put Serbia back in its bleeding box for good, so they give ‘em an ultimatum. They says, ‘You topped our Archduke so from now on you can bleeding knuckle under or else you’re for it.’ Which would have been fine except the Serbs were backed by the Russians, see, and the Russians says to the Austrians, you has a go at Serbia, you has a go at us,’ right? But the Austrians is backed by the Germans who says to the Russians, you has a go at Austria, you has a go at us, right? Except the Russians is backed by the French who says to the Germans, you has a go at Russia,’ you has a go at us,’ right? And altogether they says kick off! Let’s be having you! And the ruck begins.’

  ‘What about us then?’ the first man enquired. The rest of the group seemed to feel that this was the crux of it.

  ‘Entente bleeding cordiale, mate,’ the corporal replied. ‘We was backing the French except it wasn’t like an alliance — it was just,’ well, it was a bleedin’ entente, wasn’t it.’

  ‘An’ what’s an entente when it’s at home?’

  ‘It means we wasn’t obliged to fight.’

  ‘Never! You mean we didn’t have to?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Why the fuck did we then?’

  ‘Fuckin’ Belgium.’

  ‘Belgium?’

  ‘That’s right,’ fuckin’ Belgium.’

  ‘Who gives a fuck about Belgium?’

  ‘Well, you’d have thought no one, wouldn’t you? But we did. ‘Cos the German plan to get at the French was to go through Belgium, but we was guaranteeing ‘em, see. So we says to the Germans, you has a go at Belgium,’ you has a go at us. We’d guaranteed her, see. It was a matter of honour. So in we come.’

  Kingsley could not resist interjecting.

  ‘Of course it wasn’t really about honour,’ he said.

  ‘Do what?’ queried the corporal.

  ‘Well, we’d only guaranteed Belgium because we didn’t want either Germany or France dominating the entire Channel coast. In the last century we thought that letting them both know that if they invaded Belgium they’d have us to deal with would deter them.’

  ‘But it didn’t.’

  ‘Sadly not.’

  ‘So what about the Italians, an’ the Japs, an’ the Turks, an’ the Yanks, eh? How did they end up in it?’ asked the original inquisitor.

  ‘Fuck knows,’ said the corporal. ‘I lost track after the Belgians.’

  For a while conversation lapsed as the soldiers concentrated on their bowels.

  ‘You lot make me laugh, you really do,’ said a man who had not spoken yet, a thoughtful-looking fellow in steel glasses who up until then had been staring at a book whilst he did his business.

  ‘Oh, that’s right,’ the corporal sneered, ‘cos you’d know better, wouldn’t you, Price?’

  ‘Yes, I would, Corporal. I most certainly would. This war, like all bourgeois wars, is the inevitable result of capitalism.’

  ‘Oh Gawd, here we go.’

  ‘A bayonet is a weapon with a worker on both ends.’

  Kingsley had heard this Socialist slogan before and had always thought it rather neat.

  ‘War creates new markets and generates new investment,’ Price continued. ‘It also provides a nice distraction to idiots like us who might otherwise notice that we live in a constant state of near-starvation while the owners of the means of production are too fat to get out of their Rolls-Royce cars. War is the last stage of the capitalist cycle and as long as we have capitalism we’ll have wars. If you want to get rid of war you’ve got to get rid of capitalism.’

  ‘What, and there wouldn’t be wars if your lot was running things?’

  ‘Course not. Why would there be? The workers of the world are all comrades. Truth is, you’ve got more in common with Fritz and his mates having a shit just east of Wipers than you have with your own officers.’

  Some men protested at this and angrily warned the Socialist to shut his mouth. Others looked more thoughtful.

  ‘You are a Marxist then, my friend?’ Kingsley enquired. ‘It’s just common sense. Why work for a boss when you can form a collective and work for each other in mutual cooperation?’

  ‘What if people don’t work?’

  ‘They don’t eat. To each according to his needs, from each according to his means.’

  ‘More like ‘What’s yours is mine and what’s mine’s me own’,’ the corporal sneered.

  A warning whistle blew and it was time to leave socialism and the origins of war behind. Men began grabbing clumps of leaves and grass to clean themselves with, grateful for the rain that had fallen, for it aided their ablutions enormously.

  Back on the train Kingsley asked the Socialist if he had any views on the death of Viscount Abercrombie.

  ‘What, you mean apart from being happy that there’s one less aristocratic parasite to leech upon the working man?’

  ‘Yes, apart from that.’

  ‘I heard he didn’t die in battle. That he was shell-shocked. Maybe he killed himself, who knows. One thing’s for certain, the army has something to hide.’

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  At home with the nervous

  Finally the troop train crawled into the railhead, which was the dispersal point for the whole Ypres salient. The men had arrived at the place they called Wipers, arguably the most loathed destination of any part of the British line, certainly the wettest, a place around which there had been nearly continuous fighting for the entire war. As the train approached, a fellow with a harmonica began to play a mournful tune. A number of the men took it up in gentle, sombre tones. Like so many soldiers’ songs,’ this one had begun life as a hymn but it was a hymn no longer.

  ‘Far,
far from Wipers I long to be

  Where German snipers can’t get at me.

  Dark is my dugout, cold are my feet.

  Waiting for whizbangs to send me to sleep.’

  On disembarking, Kingsley parted from the soldiers with whom he had entrained. They were heading directly up to the front, towards Ypres, whilst he must begin his investigation at the scene of the murder, the NYDN centre at Merville on the River Lys, some six kilometres from the front line.

  Despite the fact that the war was already some three years old and the areas of combat had not changed significantly since the early autumn of 1914, transportation and communications to the rear of the fighting remained primitive and highly inefficient. Kingsley watched, astonished, as men who had just been subjected to a day and a night crammed into horse trucks were formed up with full kit and ordered to march immediately to the front, over what he could see was the most appallingly broken ground. Like most civilians, Kingsley had grown used to the numerous photographs published at home of cheery Tommies loaded into double-decker buses, waving to the camera as if on a spree. The reality was very different. The army of Sir Douglas Haig,’ like every army before it,’ travelled up the line on its feet, and in this most modern of wars the armies of the great industrialized nations arrived at their trenches exhausted.

  Kingsley was more fortunate. He had put his red tabs and captain’s pips back on and was able, with the authority they gave him, to find transport to Merville. This was, after all, the dispersal centre for the whole line and Kingsley was heading for a Royal Army Medical Corps facility. It did not take him too long to find an ambulance that was heading his way.

  ‘Hop in the back if you want,’ the medical orderly at the wheel shouted down, ‘but don’t expect much conversation.’

  Kingsley climbed into the back of the canvas-covered truck and found a place amongst the patients. For a moment he almost wished that he had walked. The atmosphere was stifling but it was not the fug of unwashed men sitting about him caked in mud and blood that oppressed him so; it was their faces. It was their eyes.

  Kingsley had known instantly that things were not right when not a single man returned his greeting as he climbed into the truck. The silence that met him was far more intimidating than the sound of the guns, which had been clearly audible ever since he had got off the train. Kingsley should have been expecting it, of course; he knew exactly what kind of facility it was towards which he was heading and he knew that many shell shock victims were mute. All the same, these silent men who had withdrawn inside themselves, staring at nothing with their empty, startled expressions, unnerved him. It felt to Kingsley, as they bumped along the cobbled road in their ill-sprung vehicle, that he was sitting amongst the living dead. He was ashamed to realize that these poor wretches scared him.

  Suddenly, there was a scream.

  Kingsley nearly jumped through the roof. One of the silent men was silent no longer: he screamed and screamed, bawling incoherent commands at the top of his voice, scratching at his face with his nails before falling to the floor of the truck and writhing at the feet of his impassive comrades. In a moment the fit was over, the man lay where he had fallen, and there were no further disturbances for the duration of that most uncomfortable ride.

  When the journey ended, Kingsley had never been so glad to leave a truck in his life. The eighteen hours in the horse truck had been far preferable to the hour he had spent with these lost men, and he resolved that at the end of his investigations at the NYDN centre, when the time came for him to return to the railhead, he would either find a place in the front of a truck beside the driver or he would walk.

  ‘Warned you they weren’t very sociable,’ the orderly remarked as he dropped Kingsley off at the front of the château.

  It was a magnificent building, the first beautiful thing that Kingsley had seen in France and the first truly French thing as well. Even Boulogne, what he had seen of it as the train rode through, had been more like an extension of Britain than a French town, with its hotels bearing English names and signs offering fish and chips and India Pale Ale. Now, though, Kingsley felt that he was truly in France and he could not help his thoughts turning to Agnes,’ who had loved France,’ adored it, or at least she had adored Paris. Or at least she had adored the shops and cafés in Paris and of course the Eiffel Tower. She had quite liked the art galleries and could stomach Sacré Coeur but she thought Notre Dame simply the gloomiest place on earth and had declined even to ascend the towers, saying that she had no desire to seek out the company of gargoyles. Kingsley smiled at the memory of their trips together to that most beautiful of cities and how they would clash over the day’s itinerary at breakfast each morning. She would vote for shops and cafés,’ he for art and history. He missed her terribly.

  He looked about him. Two games of football were under way in the grounds of the château and a drill sergeant was taking a gentle PT class. Lawn tennis and croquet were being played, and a course in motor mechanics appeared to be in progress around and underneath a magnificent Renault limousine. In spite of all the activity, there was something strange and listless about it all, as if the participants, or most of them at least, were simply feigning interest whilst waiting for some other thing of which only they were aware. Kingsley watched a fellow in striped shirt and footer bags kick the ball to a similarly dressed team-mate: although the pass was good (if rather slow), the second man simply let the ball roll by without even attempting to block it.

  ‘Not what you’d call spectator sport, is it, Captain?’ a woman’s voice behind him said. ‘But then I imagine the very best players might be put off their game a bit by spending a year or two in hell before kick-off.’

  Kingsley turned to find himself facing a woman in her early twenties wearing the uniform of an RAMC staff nurse.

  ‘Murray. Staff Nurse Murray,’ she said, offering her hand as if challenging Kingsley to shake it. ‘I presume you are Captain Marlowe? ‘

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘We were warned to expect you. You’re here to speak to me about Captain Abercrombie, the famous hero who died in battle who didn’t die in battle, and Private Hopkins, who murdered him except he wasn’t murdered. Am I right, Captain?’

  ‘You are right. They were patients of yours, I believe?’

  She was not tall, in fact she was quite short, but she definitely had presence. What she lacked in height she made up for with a kind of tense energy that seemed to exude from her even in what one might have imagined were relatively relaxed circumstances. Her uniform was neat but she was not wearing her cap, which strictly speaking was an offence. Her hair was rather modishly bobbed, like a shiny black helmet with a severe fringe cut straight across her forehead about a half-inch above her eyebrows. She wore tortoiseshell glasses and had on not even the faintest hint of rouge. She was very pretty in a schoolgirlish sort of way. Both bookish and sporty at the same time, like a head girl at a seaside boarding school. The sort of girl who would think nothing of taking an early morning dip in the middle of January before rushing enthusiastically to her first Latin class.

  ‘Yes, we had them here,’ Nurse Murray said. ‘Like all these fellows they were NYDN, Not Yet Diagnosed but Nervous. Very nervous. Don’t you just love the army? They take a fellow who’s been turned into a catatonic mute by being shelled from here to Christmas and say he’s not yet been properly diagnosed but he seems a bit nervous. The army know these men have been driven crazy, the question we’re supposed to answer is how crazy. Or to put it another way, can they still hold a gun? The only diagnosis the army’s interested in is how soon can we shove them back in the trenches. No jolly wonder they’re nervous.’

  ‘And how soon would Abercrombie and Hopkins have been returned?’

  ‘Very soon,’ Murray replied. ‘They could stand, they could walk, they had regained sufficient speech to answer to and give a command. What more do you need to fight in this war? Most of the men you see here will be sent back to fight within a
month or so.’

  Kingsley looked once more at the desultory activities taking place on the beautiful lawns around him. These strange, abstracted men did not appear to have much fight in them.

  ‘Captain Marlowe?’ Nurse Murray said, a frown wrinkling her brow. ‘May I speak plainly?’

  ‘But of course.’

  ‘You will probably think me very rude but I must speak my mind. I always speak my mind and I make no exceptions for military policemen.’

  ‘I would expect nothing less, nor desire it.’

  ‘A lot of men seem to find it irritating when women speak their minds, intimidating even, but I can assure you that has never stopped me from speaking my mind.’

  ‘I am sure that it hasn’t.’

  ‘The woman who does not speak her mind is worse than the man who does not give her credit for having a mind in the first place. He merely lets himself down, she lets down her whole sex. Women have a duty to speak their minds and that is why I always speak mine.’

  ‘Uhm…right. So. Would you like to sit down somewhere?’

  ‘I am quite happy to stand.’

  ‘Right-ho.’

  ‘I am not a weakling.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Perhaps you are used to women who swoon in the presence of policemen?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Female stamina is in fact universally proven to be greater than the male’s. In some societies women not only produce and raise the children but also do all the work.’

  ‘Yes, I believe that is true.’

  ‘Do you know why women swoon, Captain?’

  ‘Well,’ I…’

  ‘It is because their corsets constrict their breathing. Imagine that, Captain, women abusing themselves in an attempt to change the shape of their bodies in order to be more attractive to men. How appalling. How pathetic. Only society women swoon; working women do not wear corsets.’

  ‘Mmm,’ well anyway, Nurse Murray, you mentioned that you wished to speak your mind. What was it that you wished to say?’