1917

by Kelly Gardiner

  Nellie Melba sang louder.

  Miss John did too.

  I didn’t raise my son to be a soldier,

  I brought him up to be my pride and joy:

  Who dares to put a musket on his shoulder

  To kill some other mother’s darling boy?

  ‘My money’s on Cecilia,’ said Dad. ‘Old Nellie’s got no hope.’

  Madame Melba may have been more famous, but Miss John’s voice was louder and she had all of us to help.

  Miss Goldstein joined in first, then Adela and Ma and all the Peace Army ladies. Dad chimed in and soon everyone was singing, voices loud and clear.

  It’s time to put the sword and gun away,

  There’d be no war today if mothers all would say

  I didn’t raise my son to be a soldier.

  It was the best riot of all time.

  October, 1917

  Station Street,

  Coburg

  Silly boy,

  Are you really all right or are you just being brave? I read your letter and thought my heart had stopped. But then we realised you had written it yourself, and you’d already been released from hospital, so you must be on the mend. Did it hurt terribly? Dad is sending you new boots immediately.

  Please take more care of this pair.

  Just this morning we were reading in the newspaper about poor battered Ypres and the Australians in action near there. Everyone’s had a go at breaking through the Line, haven’t they? Dad reckons if Monash and the Anzac Corps can’t do it, nobody can.

  I showed Flossie and Bertie yet again where you are on the map of Belgium, and they realised for the first time how very close you are to the fighting. They have joined the Children’s Peace Army, which seems to consist mostly of singing songs with Miss John on Saturday mornings. But she told them about the Evil of War yesterday, and Flossie cried herself to sleep because you are In Its Grip. I know how she feels.

  I wish I was still living at the orchard. It was easier being there. Here at home, missing you is a family concern. At every meal we are dreadfully aware of your empty chair. We keep your little sleepout on the veranda just like you left it, because we know that one day you’ll need it again. One day soon.

  All my love,

  Maggie

  PS Bertie says please don’t get shot any more. So pass that on to the Red Baron and his henchmen, will you?

  It was always gloomy in the Officers’ Mess. They called it that, as if it was a bar in some flash London club. But it was just a wooden hut like all the others, except with a stash of bottles on a shelf in one corner and a pile of last month’s newspapers on the table. A couple of busted propeller blades hung on the wall, alongside a German bayonet, shell fragments dug out of one of our planes, and bits of junk people had picked up in the village or by the side of the road: a French circus poster, a clock that chimed at random hours, and a teddy bear with one eye.

  Planes droned overhead and always, off to the east, was the sound of the guns. I wished I was in the workshop with Len and the boys, chatting quietly while we worked, making broken things whole again, setting things right. But I’d been told to wait in the Mess for orders. Hours ago. Everyone who wasn’t already in the air was there, waiting to fly or just back from a job. There was more waiting than flying. It was like that most days.

  Charlie stretched out on a sofa, nicked from a nearby chateau, staring at the wall. He had a book in his hand— The Man with Two Left Feet, which usually made him laugh out loud—but he wasn’t reading and he certainly wasn’t laughing.

  In the corner, three chaps from C Flight argued over a game of darts. Somebody’s dog scratched and snuffled. The gramophone played the same record, over and over.

  If you were the only girl in the world,

  And I was the only boy …

  Some of the new arrivals sang along.

  ‘Shut up, will you?’ Charlie snapped.

  They fell silent.

  ‘Go easy on them, mate,’ I said.

  ‘You’re on active service now,’ he shouted across the room. ‘You have to learn how we do things around here.’

  ‘Speaking of which,’ I said, waving a postcard in front of his face, ‘I heard from some of our boys in 3 Squadron.’

  ‘We should have stayed in England with them,’ said Charlie.

  ‘You couldn’t wait to get over here,’ I reminded him.

  ‘I was an idiot.’

  ‘Well, they’re all here now,’ I said. ‘At an airfield just outside Arras. I thought we might borrow a car and drive over to visit them one day soon. Hear some voices from home. Catch up on the news. And we could teach them a few tricks, maybe. Help them out. Remember what it was like when we arrived?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Charlie threw the book into the corner. ‘I barely remember yesterday.’

  ‘What d’you reckon?’ I said. ‘The boys’d like to say cheerio.’

  ‘Look at them,’ he said. He pointed at the noticeboard where, alongside official memos and the odd silly cartoon cut out of a newspaper, were photos of rows of men, posing with their aircraft or in front of the hangar. Me and Charlie, in those first few days, grinning in our spotless new uniforms. Burke, with his hair hanging down over his forehead, smiling into the camera. Jimmy Grady fooling around with the Squadron’s pet goat. Three days before, Grady had managed to land his aircraft in spite of two bullets in his legs. He got carted off to hospital. We hadn’t heard if he was still alive.

  Dozens of men, all gone.

  ‘I don’t remember their names,’ said Charlie. ‘Any of them.’

  ‘You can’t have forgotten Jimmy,’ I said.

  ‘I do remember him.’ Charlie’s voice sounded as if he was miles away. ‘He got shot.’

  ‘Got you back here safely, though, didn’t he?’ I said. ‘And there’s good old Burke.’

  ‘Who?’

  I didn’t say much more. Instead I went to the CO and asked for a few days off for both of us, to go visit our Australian mates.

  ‘Sorry, lad,’ he said. ‘There’s a big Push planned. It’s all hands to the wheel for the next few weeks. Maybe after that.’

  I nodded miserably. Another big Push. Another few weeks. I hoped Charlie lasted that long.

  September, 1917

  7 Squadron,

  Royal Flying Corps

  Proven, Belgium

  It’s time I told you what it’s really like, Maggie. Enough of the stiff upper lip. Odd things happen to a man here. I’ve seen it over and over. It’s happening to Charlie now. Perhaps it has been for months and I never noticed, never realised. We fly together now—me as pilot and Charlie in the back as observer. So maybe it’s just that now I can see how he is in the air as well as on the ground.

  He’s twitchy. Shy. Shell-shocked, they call it, but in our case it isn’t shells that do the damage. Not usually.

  It’s the waiting to die.

  Those poor beggars in the trenches sit under shell fire for days on end. Then they have to charge out of their holes as if they mean it, and I suppose they do. They get mowed down like grass by machine gun fire. Or if they’re lucky they get to take another man’s life. Some luck.

  They see things—we all do—that have never been seen before on this earth. Things that nobody should ever see. They crouch in a wasteland of mud and wire, and they quiver and wait to die.

  We do the same. We sit about on the airfield where, most of the time at least, we’re relatively safe. But then the call goes out, and they chalk the sectors up on the board and off we go. And every day we think: will it be me this time? Will it be flames or plummeting or a quick bullet? Or if not me, then who? My best mate? My Wing Commander? That boy who just arrived this morning? (Probably him.)

  It changes us. It has to. We try not to let it happen, but there’s no way out. Some fellows pray, some have little rituals they follow for luck, some go out all the time and try to forget, some dwell on it and talk about it all the time. It doesn’t matter what we do. We
all get nervy, forgetful, angry. We unravel.

  It’s not cowardice, although I hate to think how many men have been charged with cowardice when they should be sent to a hospital, or just home. Some of the twitchiest fellows we ever see are the bravest, because they get foolhardy, you see. They stop caring. They just want to get it over with, as if death is an enemy who will one day, inevitably, beat you. They want to bring it on. They become cruel and perhaps careless, because it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

  Charlie doesn’t have anybody like you to talk to. His brothers are both in Palestine with the Light Horse, and his father sends letters that sound like they’ve been dictated by General Haig—do your best, boy, and don’t disgrace us. He throws them straight into the fire and asks if he can read your letters instead.

  So write to me, as fast as you can, and tell me it will be all right. Tell me it will all be over soon, and then I can come home.

  Please. I can’t ask anyone else, can’t tell anyone but you, Mags. Tell me—this time it won’t be me.

  Alex

  Dad worked in the garden every night after he finished at the station. He always had, but now it was more important than ever. With the food shortages, we couldn’t survive without the vegetables he grew. It was hard work, but no matter what the weather, and no matter how dirty the job, he always wore his tie and collar and special gardening hat. He always said there was no need to let standards slip just because you were in the garden. The most he ever did was roll up his sleeves to keep his cuffs from getting muddy, but usually he wore an old jacket over the top of his clothes to keep himself clean.

  I helped him, just as I had when I was younger, turning the soil and getting it ready for the new crops. I always got dirty. Honestly, that was half the fun. We pulled out the turnips and chopped up the leaves for composting, then sowed lettuce seeds in little pots for planting out later in the season.

  ‘You’re good at this, love,’ he said. ‘You must miss the orchard.’

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘I even miss getting rained on and muddy. I miss wearing my boots every day, and driving the truck, and seeing my friends at the market.’

  Dad stopped digging, took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. His hair was thinning on top. This war had made all of us older.

  He gave me a sad smile. ‘Sorry you had to come back.’

  I shrugged. ‘I like being here with all of you too. I missed you. But I did love that feeling of being so tired at the end of the day I feared my arms might drop off, and then waking up the next day to a clear sky and the roosters crowing.’

  ‘And a big breakfast? With fresh milk on your porridge?’

  ‘Especially that.’

  He grinned. He’d lost weight lately too, I noticed. His waistcoat buttons no longer strained to meet their buttonholes. ‘Pity we can’t fit a cow in the backyard.’

  ‘Imagine that,’ I said. ‘But it’s important work here too, helping with the food parcels. If only I could do both.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ he said. He bent over and stuck the spade into another clod. ‘I wonder …’

  There was a big meeting at Guild Hall the next Monday. The speeches were a bit dull, because Miss Goldstein was touring the countryside and Adela was in jail after trying to storm Parliament again, but we all clapped loyally at the end just the same, and sang ‘God Save the King’ very loudly in case anybody dared accuse us of treason. As we were walking out, Ma waved over one of the committee members, Miss Higgins. She was older than Ma, with a hook nose and her dark hair swept up under an enormous hat.

  ‘Is this her?’ she asked.

  They both stared at me.

  ‘That’s her,’ said Ma.

  ‘I hear you’ve been working out at Cartwright’s orchard,’ said Miss Higgins. ‘Your mother says you can drive.’

  ‘She can,’ said Ma. ‘A truck, and all sorts.’

  ‘Pruning?’ said Miss Higgins.

  Ma nodded. ‘And milking. Good with cows.’

  I looked from one to the other, feeling a bit like I was in a cattle auction myself.

  Miss Higgins nodded. ‘She’ll do.’

  Then she walked off.

  ‘What was all that?’ I asked.

  ‘You,’ said Ma, ‘are the luckiest girl in the world.’

  The Women’s Peace Army had bought a farm. It was meant to be for young women who were poor and homeless, as so many were nowadays, with the menfolk away. Miss Goldstein thought that farm work would be good for them, and keep them fed as well. So the Peace Army took over fourteen acres at Mordialloc, and employed Cecilia John and her friend Miss Higgins to run the first ever Women’s Farm in the whole country.

  And that was where I went to work. Ma said it was only to keep me out of trouble. But I didn’t mind. Not a jot.

  It was good land, already farmed and producing flowers and asparagus. By the time I started, the women had planted thousands of bulbs for the flower market, and there was a vast area set aside for vegetables of all sorts. Miss Higgins was an expert in growing flowers, I learned. She’d even been to college and studied horticulture. Miss John was excellent with chickens and geese, and could drive. She used to run her own farm in Deepdene. ‘As good as a man,’ the newspapers said.

  Miss John met me at the railway station in her automobile. I’d never been in one before—not a real one, only Mr Cartwright’s truck. Miss John’s automobile had windows you could put up and down and a proper roof, just like the ones you saw driving around town.

  ‘Is this one of those new Fords?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, indeed, a Model T,’ she said. ‘Twenty horsepower. I did have a Buick, but now we’re on the farm we need something tougher.’

  ‘You sound like my brother,’ I said. ‘I’d rather have twenty horses.’

  She smiled. ‘He’s a pilot, I hear?’

  ‘In Flanders,’ I said. ‘But when he comes home, he can fix your automobile for you, if it ever breaks.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Usually I fix it myself.’

  Of course she did. I imagined Miss John and Miss Higgins could do almost anything they set their minds to.

  ‘I can drive a truck,’ I said.

  ‘Then I’m sure we’ll get on famously,’ she said.

  ‘And ride a bicycle.’

  ‘That’s more than I can do,’ she said. ‘Here we are.’

  She swung the car off the road and into a long driveway edged by wire fences and rows of newly planted fruit trees. A flock of rainbow lorikeets swooped low overhead and settled down to screech in a gum tree. The farmhouse was small, but on one side a timber frame for a new section stood raw and unfinished. Behind it was the kitchen garden, circled by a paling fence, where Miss Higgins bent over a hoe, weeding. She took off her hat and waved.

  We pulled up in front of a row of low sheds.

  ‘Stables,’ said Miss John. ‘I’m afraid we don’t have a truck for farm work. We don’t have twenty horses, either. Just two. D’you think you can handle them?’

  ‘It’s probably not very modern of me,’ I said, ‘but I’m really quite fond of horses.’

  ‘Modern or not, it’s what we’ve got.’

  ‘It’s all we’ve ever had,’ I said. When I was little, Dad delivered parcels for the Post Office in his old buggy. He wouldn’t let me take the reins out on the road, but I used to harness old Zelda, fill up her feed bag and brush her down at the end of the day. She was the slowest horse that ever lived, but strong.

  They were golden days, I realised now. No war, no protesting. Bertie was the sweetest little baby. Flossie toddled around the garden in bare feet. The sun seemed to shine all the time, there was plenty of food, and Alex and his friends played football in the streets after school. Now half of those boys were gone and some would never come back.

  Miss John stood, waiting, holding my bag.

  ‘Welcome,’ she said, ‘to our secret sanctuary.’

  I nearly cried from happiness.

  B
etween them, Miss John and Miss Higgins had already built chook sheds and fences, planted rows of trees, and tried to teach the girls in their care how to sow seeds and plant bulbs and prune berry canes and harvest asparagus. The berries and asparagus did nicely. The girls … well, that was where I came in.

  I was to be a role model for the younger women, Miss John explained. She had so much to do, and so did Miss Higgins, that it was tricky to be both teacher and farmer at the same time. They’d realised that they were also just a little bit scary—and they were. Fiercely intelligent, well educated and outspoken, they were like people from another world to the poor girls who found themselves on the farm.

  ‘You will be the bridge between us,’ said Miss John. ‘But I warn you, it won’t be easy.’

  She was right.

  September, 1917

  The Women’s Farm,

  Mordialloc

  I am quite convinced, brother dear, that you will come through this horrible business—if not exactly happy, then at least whole. I feel it deep in my bones. You are so precious to us all. We pray for you every night. I hope you can feel it all the way over there on the other side of the world.

  You will come home to us. It will not be you or your dear friend this time, or the next, or the next. I promise.

  I have knitted a little kangaroo for your friend Charlie too, since it sounds like he could do with a good luck charm. I am so happy to hear how you look out for each other. Dad has collected some books for you both, which are coming by parcel. We thought that Sherlock Holmes and Huckleberry Finn might help distract you from your heavy burdens, and Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, which everyone is still mad for. It might remind you of home and make you smile again.

  I don’t know what else I can do except write and hope and send you all the love in the world.

  Maggie

  PS D’you see my new address? I’m a farmer lass once again. I’ve been brought in to be a Good Influence on Certain Young Ladies, and to help about the place. Let me tell you a bit about it, to take your mind off gloomy things—if that’s at all possible. Perhaps it isn’t. But I’ll try anyway.