Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel)

by B A Lightfoot

  He wanted to make his wife understand that he had reacted as a gallant yet outraged lover and that he still cared very deeply for her, but he dreaded inviting a sarcastic and scathing response. The three friends sat with their elbows resting on the table, their hands cupped round their chins, and stared distantly ahead waiting for inspiration to strike. They each had their view on how the wording of the letter should be approached, although Liam and Edward both agreed that it should have been done a long time ago.

  They watched as stretcher bearers, mud-spattered, heavy eyed and grey faced, their heads bent forward with resigned weariness, trudged past them. The first of their charges had a large, bloody pad pressed to his shoulder and a cigarette propped in his mouth. The second had a large gash in his side and a ripped and bloody leg. His white face lacked evidence of life. The bearers probably knew that there was little hope but at least they would know where he was buried.

  ‘Why don’t you just tell her that you know that you’ve been a bloody fool, but this might be the last letter that you can send and you want her to know how sorry you are,’ proffered Liam. ‘Tell her there is a show coming off and you don’t want to risk getting killed without having got this sorted out between you.’

  ‘Aye, and if I didn’t oblige by getting my head blown off, she’d just turn round and say I’ve let her down again,’ replied the terminally gloomy Big Charlie.

  ‘Surely the best thing is just to tell her how much you love her and you can’t live without her,’ suggested Edward.

  ‘Hmhh. Maybe. But I haven’t said owt like that for ten years. She’d probably laugh herself silly.’

  Eventually the letter evolved itself into a slightly pompous sounding apology that just avoided the distancing formality that Big Charlie preferred but it fell miserably short of the intimate plea for reconciliation that Liam had hoped for.

  Big Charlie felt safer with the slightly legalistic sound of ‘righteous indignation’ and ‘personal feelings’ suggested by Edward but recoiled away from ‘deep felt and abiding love’ proposed by Liam. He thought that ‘the unfortunate victim’ was a safer way to refer to the Dapper Man, Sidney Snelgrove, than the ‘scheming little scumbag’ offered by Liam. He conceded that just putting ‘Yours truly, Charlie’, but without adding his surname and regimental number, as he was keen to do, could manage to give the letter a personal touch without risking the burning fury of his wife’s acerbic tongue.

  Finally, the letter was sealed and given to the runner, accompanied by a threat from Big Charlie as to what he would do to him if he was careless enough to get himself killed whilst he had this important document in his safekeeping.

  ***

  Edward pursed his lips as he watched with morbid fascination the toe cap of a boot that was gradually emerging from the wall of the trench opposite. He adjusted his feet to avoid the muddy water that was beginning to creep over the lip of the flunk hole where he sat huddled at the side of Liam and screwed his eyes to focus through the rain onto the shiny, rounded leather. He had originally thought that it was another rock in the gradually eroding façade of the gleaming mud but now he could see the clean line where the sole met the upper.

  The hissing rain had been falling incessantly through the night and was now stifling the morning light. Rivulets, carrying floundering insects, small twigs and dead leaves, were flowing down the sides of the trench, accumulating into a thick slurry at the bottom. Along some stretches of the trench the mud was already over the level of the duckboards making any form of movement hazardous. The leaden grey sky was discharging its excessive load with unrelenting vigour, splashing noisily into the deepening water in front of them. Thunder rolled around the neighbouring hills and vivid, jagged lightning flashes slashed into the ground in a mocking, storming response to the humbler efforts of the warring factions on the ground. A sharp dank death smell, pounded out of the earth by the hammering rain, was pocketed in the flunk holes.

  Stretcher bearers clad in shiny oilskin capes struggled past, plodding mechanically through the mire with their groaning, often hopeless, burdens lying like a pile of sodden rags in their cradle. Runners, red and shiny with their exertions, occasionally splashed by on their way to the officers’ dugout further up the trench before returning, a few minutes later, to struggle their way back to Company headquarters. Their capacity for inventive cursing of the weather, the Germans and their own officers was an interesting, if fleeting, distraction. Distractions were always welcome in these numbing hours before the whistles would blow and they would be hurled into the oblivion of another attack.

  Liam, rifle propped on the seat at the side of him and his elbows resting on his knees, pulled his head back quickly as a stretcher party pressed into their flunk hole to allow two soldiers, swearing viciously at the trench mortar that they were relocating, to pass by. Liam stared at the inert body for a few seconds then peered under the rim of the helmet that was balanced protectively over the head of the injured man. ‘Well, blow me. It’s Billy Perkins from down Brindle Heath isn’t it?’ he asked, poking the waterproof cape that covered the still form.

  The sick man opened his eyes slowly and smiled weakly on recognition. ‘Alright Liam. Not seen you around much lately.’

  ‘No, well, we’re down on Goodiers Lane now. I still see your Elsie sometimes on Broad Street.’

  ‘Aye. She lives just off Frederick Road,’ the injured man replied feebly.

  ‘She married that Arnold with the red hair and a hair lip from behind St James’ Church, didn’t she?’

  ‘Aye. Daft sod put her up the chuff but she seems ok with him,’ Perkins said, coughing with the effort.

  ‘What happened to that mate of hers, Dreamy Doreen? Used to really fancy her when I was a lad.’

  ‘Our Elsie said you used to follow them everywhere like a lapdog. She’s done alright for herself. Has a greengrocer’s in Irlam now.’

  ‘She’ll be well admired for her big caulies then. How’ve you been, anyway, Billy? Must say you’re not looking too perky for a Perkins.’

  ‘Not too bad, I don’t suppose. It’s the arm. Shrapnel. Might have to lose it.’

  ‘Well, look on the bright side. That’s a sure fire Blighty. I wish we’d have known earlier. You could have taken a letter for Big Charlie’s missus that we have just posted. You might have been able to put a good word in for him.’

  ‘Postman. I suppose that’s a job you could do single handed,’ Billy said wryly as the stretcher party moved off.

  Liam returned to staring morosely at the wall of water falling in front of him.

  ‘He used to play on the wing at Swinton,’ Edward said. ‘Quite fast too.’

  ‘I know. It’s a bloody shame. We’re short of a winger since Frankie Hopkins got himself shot last week. Then you think that you’ve come across a good replacement only to find that he’s dying on you. You just can’t win for losing.’

  More of the toe cap of the boot had now emerged and its shape was quite distinct.

  ‘What do you reckon to that, then?’ Edward asked, nudging Liam into a grudging response.

  ‘Reckon to what? This bloody awful weather or that poor sod Billy Perkins.’

  ‘No, I mean over there,’ Edward said, directing his friend’s attention through the curtain of the torrential downpour.

  Liam peered through the flickering, shiny screen at the wall of running water.

  ‘It’s mud,’ he concluded loudly. ‘The same slimy, sodding mud that’s getting into every crevice in my body.’

  ‘I know that but look, there,’ Edward cajoled, pointing across the trench.

  ‘Oh, that. I can see it now. It’s a German boot.’

  ‘German? Why do you think it’s German? I was thinking that it’s English.’

  ‘Well, it’s obvious isn’t it? It’s probably some poor Fritz who copped one the last time that our lads were in these parts,’ Liam asserted.

  ‘But if that was the case then where’s the other? I reckon that it’s one of ou
rs. It was probably in a store that got blown up when we were here before.’

  ‘It’s German,’ the booming voice of Big Charlie interrupted decisively. Their large friend was sitting by himself in a flunk hole about four feet away. Nobody else was small enough to share the narrow seat with him.

  ‘So how do you know that, then?’ queried Edward. ‘There’s only a couple of inches of it showing.’

  ‘You wait and see,’ Big Charlie replied, giving them an irritatingly knowing wink. ‘But I’ll put tomorrow’s Woodbines on it.’

  ‘Right. You’re on,’ Edward said rising to the challenge. He patted his jerkin to ensure that he still had some of those sickly French cigarettes left. Better those than none at all, he thought, slightly disconcerted by Big Charlie’s apparent confidence.

  Edward stared at the boot that was emerging slowly from the mud in front of him. Two or three inches of the toe cap were showing now and the front was being washed clean by the heavy rain. There were no scuff marks so it could hardly have been used, if at all.

  Supporting planks had been fitted at intervals along the walls of the trench in the sections that were vulnerable to erosion, but these had only served to concentrate the flow of the water into the exposed areas. Edward looked up at the grey sky, streaked with the trails of the thousands of shells that were flying over from the British artillery guns packed into their muddy beds behind them. The screaming whistle of this barrage formed an orchestrated background to the rolling thunder of the German response. High explosive shells crashed into the already tormented countryside throwing huge plumes of soil into the air and scattering the slimy debris over the soldiers huddled in the trenches.

  ‘There’s my ten,’ said Big Charlie, proffering a small green packet. ‘Who’s going to hold the stake, then?’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ interrupted Liam. ‘I want a slice of this action. It was me that said that it was German in the first place. And there’s only two choices between three of us.’

  ‘Right then. We’ll make it a combination bet so that we can all have a go,’ Edward decided. ‘You and Charlie think that it’s a German boot and I say it’s English. The question is, when the mud has cleared away, will there be a person still inside it?’

  ‘A person? How can it be a person?’ Liam was incredulous. ‘If there was a person there would be two boots. The only thing that’s anywhere near it is a tree stump. What did he have, a wooden leg? No wonder he got killed, trying to run away in this mud.’

  ‘Well, I think that it is a German boot and there will be a foot inside it because he had his leg blown off,’ Big Charlie said decisively. ‘And there’s my ten Woodies to back it up.’

  ‘You know, since you’ve not heard from your Dorothy, you’ve become a right morbid sod,’ Liam observed with a sudden profundity. ‘I agree that it’s a German boot but Eddie’s right. There’s only one of them and it is completely and utterly empty. It is full of absolutely nothing, not one shred of human flesh. It has never, in its total existence, been occupied by a German foot. And there’s my ten that says so.’

  ‘I think that you’re both wrong,’ Edward said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think it has ever been used because there are no marks on it. So I think that it is an English boot and nobody is inside it. Look at the angle and the fact that it is by itself. There are roots round it so it has been here quite a while. We were round here for longer than the Germans so the chances are it is one of ours. I suppose that I may as well put my ten in even though I will be taking them back again in about an hour.’

  A shell exploded just above the ground about thirty yards in front of them flinging deadly shrapnel across the top of their trench. The sandbags above their heads, on the lintel of the flunk hole, were pierced by the flying metal and spilled the contents across the legs of Edward and Liam. Water began to drip through the exposed section and tapped noisily on their helmets.

  The rain had now washed the relatively new sole clean and he could see from the inscription that it was German Army issue. He reckoned that at the present rate of erosion, and provided that the rain kept falling with the same intensity, it would take about half an hour to reveal whether the boot still contained its owner’s foot.

  ‘Well it’s German anyway,’ Edward said, more than slightly irked. ‘So that means that I’m out and it’s down to you two.’

  ‘I told you that didn’t I?’ Big Charlie was being unbearably smug. ‘Do you want to pass those cigs over to me now, Eddie? There’s no point in waiting any longer.’

  ‘Well, you’re right so far,’ Edward conceded. ‘But why were you so sure that it was a German boot?’

  ‘It’s easy really. Look at the stud patterns. They’re different than ours. You could see it as soon as they started showing through.’

  Liam leaned out of the flunk hole in order to direct a fierce glare at the smirking big man but its intensity was diffused by the rain pouring off the front of his helmet. ‘Bloody wait, you sycophantic sod. Eddie might be out but there’s still a bet on between us two.’

  The water flowing down the trench wall had cleared more of the boot and Edward could now see the tightly bowed lace on the German boot. The foot was probably still in there. He pulled Liam back into the recess. ‘What’s this sycophantic got to do with anything? Where’ve you got that one from?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. But it sounded alright and it’s shut him up for a bit.’

  ‘Aye. But I don’t think that it will be for long. Look at the boot now. The laces are tied and there’s some sock starting to show. Somebody must have been wearing it.’

  ‘Oh, sod it,’ Liam groaned. ‘That’s it then. Have you got any of those bloody awful French smokes left?’

  ‘Aye. I suppose we might as well have one of these each now. We’ll save today’s Woodbines so that we can treat ourselves when this show’s finished.’

  Edward passed Liam a French cigarette and they lit them gingerly.

  Liam grimaced. ‘It’s going to be a long day tomorrow if we’ve got to depend on these things.’

  ‘I’ll have to play on Charlie’s good nature,’ Edward said, without much conviction. ‘Make him feel indebted to us for helping him with that letter to Dorothy.’

  ‘Good idea. And in the morning, all being well, I’ll be having a walk down to the hospital tent,’ Liam said thoughtfully.

  ‘Why? What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Do you mean other than that I am soaking wet, being bitten to death by sodding lice, I’ve got itchy arse and foot rot, I might get killed later and now I’ve got no cigarettes for tomorrow? All because bloody know-all Big Charlie knows how they put the studs in German boots. He should try talking a bit more, like any normal person does, then he wouldn’t notice so much.’

  ‘So which of those things are you going to have seen to at the hospital tent?’

  ‘I’m going to have a chat with those orderlies. They always have a private stock of cigarettes stashed away. Surplus to requirements, I suppose you could say. At least, they are for the poor sods that they took them off. Mind you, I don’t suppose anybody is gasping for a cigarette once they’ve handed over their ID tags and popped their clogs.’

  Occasionally, a shell would fall into the trench, wreaking destructive havoc as their deadly loads of shrapnel flew down the section, tearing into the bodies of the crouching men. Soldiers from the next section would then dash round the zigzag of the trench to do what they could for their injured comrades until the medical support arrived.

  ‘You know, the man who designed these trenches must have just finished saying his prayers,’ Liam suddenly observed, kicking out at a rat that was trying to scramble from the water into their flunk hole.

  ‘What? You think that he had divine inspiration?’ Edward asked.

  ‘No. Just put your hands together as if you’re praying. Not like that. That’s the girl’s way. Lock your fingers together like this,’ Liam said, clasping his wet hands together. ‘Right, now look inside your hands w
here your fingers come together. There it is. That’s the exact plan of a trench system.’

  Edward stared at the water that was dripping into his palms. ‘While we’ve got our hands like this, perhaps we should ask Him to turn this rain off for a bit. It drives you mad.’

  ‘That’s a good idea. Or even ask him just to drop it on the Germans.’

  The barrage had increased in intensity as the time approached for their attack and now it created a wall of deafening noise. The Battalion was in support for an attack that was to be launched on a strong German position on a farm just outside Frezenberg. In the last few days, there had been two attempts to take these positions and both had failed with massive losses. The feeling amongst the Salford soldiers was that, whilst a victory would be a feather in their caps, the chances of them succeeding in a mission where the dour but highly respected warriors of the Black Watch and the Gordon Highlanders had already been ignominiously defeated, had virtually no chance. But, as Major Fforbes-Fosdyke was so fond of telling them, it was not for them to question the decisions of their superiors. Liam had suggested to the Major the previous day that it wasn’t them who were getting killed but the Major had become apoplectic and threatened to put him on a charge. Liam had said that they had better wait to see if he got back in one piece or not before doing the paperwork.

  ‘I could just murder one of those billycans from The Cattle Market,’ Liam shouted above the din whilst bravely consoling himself with another French cigarette. Edward smiled as he remembered how, as young lads, they had both used to get up at five o’clock on cold winter’s mornings and carry a long pole between them threaded through the handles of steaming billycans. The hot coffee, with a bracing tot of rum added, was a service provided by The Cattle Market Hotel. The shivering cattle drovers, who warmed their frozen hands on the hot cans before enjoying the steaming contents, generally showed their gratitude to the boys with at least a farthing. Despite the cold and the early hours, he used to enjoy the lively, exciting atmosphere of the market. Sometimes there were around three thousand beasts herded into the pens, steam rising in clouds above them, and they grunted and grumbled and moaned complainingly as they pushed and shoved each other in the confined and alien pens.