by L E Pembroke
I had no access to war news, but common sense assured me that the recent entry of the United States would almost certainly bring about an Allied victory. How much I’d have appreciated books; but sadly my knowledge of the German language wasn’t up to reading. Guards took me to the exercise yard each morning and evening when the other prisoners were having their meals. I noticed the guards were increasingly despondent during that summer of 1918, and I had picked up enough German to understand that the war was going badly for them.
I believed that even the most stubborn German optimists would by now accept that further fighting was unsustainable. The Allies had lost almost a generation of young men, and I imagined that for Germany it would be far worse as their men had been engaged in ferocious fighting on both Eastern and Western Fronts.
The stone walls of my civilian prison were thick and even in the northern summer were always wet with condensation. I became obsessed by the thought of sunlight, for I was constantly cold in prison and always hungry – no Red Cross parcels for murderers. The thought of tender steak smothered with onions or just a cheese sandwich made with snowy white bread tortured me at times. My weight dropped to under ten stone. I’m a tallish sort of bloke, and I guess I did not present a pretty picture. What did that matter anyway? After all, I saw no one except the guard on duty.
As time passed I thought less about food and more about my need for warmth and companionship. Stuck at one end of the building, there was never any noise to stimulate my interest and certainly no conversation with the guards. The authorities were meticulous about ensuring that I did not encounter my fellow inmates. Probably that was wise as an enemy officer would be fair game for the worst types. However, the need for humans to communicate with others is a basic one and, given the opportunity, I might have been willing to risk being attacked just to have a little companionship. That was a stupid thought and just showed the depth of my loneliness. The prison governor would be aware that many prisoners were brutish types like Schmidt, and he wouldn’t take any risk of being called to account if I was murdered.
I tried to think of my gaol term as a much-needed time for introspection; there had been little enough opportunity for that over the last few years, so I began seriously pondering my future. When I joined the army I believed I had achieved my lifetime goal. I compared the relationship between me and the service with that of a couple in a successful and fulfilling marriage. From the beginning I threw myself enthusiastically into the study and discipline required at military college. For its part the army, in those days of training, gave me in return a constant sense of satisfaction.
Yet, as is not uncommon in marriage, there were bad times ahead, times on the Western Front, when I wondered how I could have possibly wanted to live my life within the protective but restrictive arms of my chosen profession. In prison I wondered whether these doubts would pass if and when I was freed at the end of the war. Would I ever regain my former enthusiasm and ambition? Somehow I doubted it. As in marriage, when the partners grow away from each other, what formerly attracted latterly repels.
As a younger man I was determined to get to the top of my profession – that was my unswerving ambition. In gaol I began contemplating another style of life. I thought about getting away from crowded cities and going on the land. Soldiers spend their lives training and planning for an eventuality that they hope won’t happen. Nevertheless, if it does happen, their job is to be professional, to think quickly, to act decisively and to outwit the enemy. But we were coming to an end of a world war the like of which had not been seen before. I was convinced that as a result of the immense suffering, enormous destruction and terrible carnage such a war would not occur again in my lifetime. Therefore, my logic told me, it would be futile to stay in the army and train soldiers for something that would not happen in the foreseeable future.
There was another factor; my wartime experiences had taught me that German soldiers, generally speaking, were probably decent enough chaps doing their duty just as we were doing ours, and I’d had enough of killing husbands, fathers and brothers who were little different from my own men.
I didn’t spend all my time sitting in my cell thinking about my future. In the morning and evening, within the limitations imposed by my three-by-two-metre cell, I exercised. Later, I played mental games, usually exercises in calculus until lunch; following that other forms of creativity.
With the pencil and paper they gave me I dreamt up crossword puzzles, made packs of cards and became an expert Patience player. My drawing improved with constant practice, although my poetry left much to be desired. I wrote trivial words extolling the virtues of summer back home. I envisaged scorching sun dazzling my eyes and burning my skin, sweat pouring from my body and the feeling of contentment while I camped by a creek drinking cup after cup of aromatic billy tea. On other occasions I wrote about my favourite things, including my dog, a red setter called Bess, last seen five years before. I waxed lyrically about the view from the balcony of my childhood home from which I could see all the way down Sydney Harbour as far as the city. I recalled gazing at the sapphire-blue water and the thousand glinting reflections of a blinding sun on its surface. A game of tennis on a Saturday afternoon had been one of my favourite pastimes – not to mention an icy beer at the end of a sweltering day.
*
Eventually the war did end and the Armistice was signed. I had been in solitary for a year. I felt horribly let down because nothing changed for me. It seemed no one cared about an Australian who murdered a guard. I envisaged the men of my company on leave back in England and later on the ship sailing home. I became depressed, my overall attitude to life apathetic. No longer was I interested in my exercises and hobbies. In that frightful winter following the Armistice I didn’t care about the state of my mind or body and whether I lived or died. The long and silent days dragged like weeks as I waited and hoped against hope for news of my impending release. How much longer did I have to wait before the British authorities discovered me? It could be months because the exchange of prisoners would be very low priority in a world where servicemen had to be repatriated, borders redrawn and all the apparatus of a return to normal civilian life put in place.
Would I end up serving my prison sentence of ten years in Germany? Would I be transferred to a gaol in England, or would I return to England, then be freed to go home? And what about Gwen, fiancée of Gareth – what details was she told about his death? If they did release me should I visit her, or would I only be reminding her of past pain that was better forgotten? Certainly I would never tell her the circumstances of Gareth’s death. Those were the depressing thoughts that dogged me daily until 8 June 1919.
A guard (not the usual one) stood at the door to my cell. ‘Get what you need. You’re leaving this morning.’
Dare I hope? In vain, I searched his impassive face for some clue to my future. Then an abrupt ‘Raus, raus’ to hurry me on my way. My eyes swept across my tiny abode. I had no need of poems, scraps of paper or stubby pencils if at last I was to be repatriated. Yet I must not allow myself to hope that this might be my last day of confinement. What if this was merely a transfer to another cell or prison?
We clattered along narrow cement corridors and stopped at a small office. He shoved a book in front of me and indicated that I sign it. Then together we walked through a bare, high-walled lobby. We passed through a steel-reinforced door, emerged into bright sunshine, the pain excruciating to my eyes. I closed them tight, stumbling when he pushed me into the rear of a vehicle.
We roared through the town and pulled up at a grand railway station. A guard took hold of me and led me into the office of the station master. A soldier stood by the desk (big fellow). He wore a uniform familiar to me, that of the British Military Police, three stripes on his sleeve. My heart leapt into my throat; difficult to speak, but I managed it. ‘Are you escorting me home, sergeant?’
‘Yes, sir,’ he said.
CHAPTER 16
GENEVIEVE
Madeleine spent most of her off-duty time visiting Charles’s mother in Surrey. And I gathered, from what she told me when she visited me in hospital, that Mrs Phillips held out very little hope that Charles had survived. What a bad time it was for her. Charles’s father had suffered a stroke and the doctors were not optimistic about his recovery so, with that and the probable loss of her son, life in the Phillips home must have been wretched.
Life was wretched enough for me. I relived that attack in Calais time and time again. I had no idea how I escaped from that terrible situation; someone must have been nearby and heard the rumpus. My jaw was wired, and I was still only able to handle fluids. They said I would not be going back to France. When I recovered I would work in London at another of the rehabilitation hospitals for Australian servicemen.
They were feeding me soup through a tube when I met Alistair Bear again. He bounced into my small, private hospital room with all his old pre-war joie de vivre. ‘I can’t believe it’s you, Genevieve. How are you, old girl?’
I shrugged my shoulders – even that hurt. I knew it would be many months before I would be able to talk and eat in a normal way.
Alistair stood beside the bed and examined my jaw and fractured cheek bone. ‘You’ll be as good as new in a few weeks, my girl. Then you can tell me all about it.’ He saw the expression of distaste that momentarily flickered across my face. ‘Of course you don’t have to spell out all the gruesome details if you don’t want to, although Dr Freud might suggest it would be therapeutic if you do so.’
He patted my hand, and I was comforted. Yet I knew there was no way I would be revealing to Alistair Bear details of the night I’d been attacked or my fear, humiliation and disgust at being pawed in that obscene way. That was an experience I had no intention of revealing to anyone – ever.
Of course there had been an official inquiry – there’s always an inquiry. Members of the board had come to my bedside hoping I would be able to identify my attackers. Theirs was a fruitless task. I was unable to make a positive identification. And, as I was unable to speak (only nod or shake my head), the inquiry was abandoned.
Alistair was superintendent at the rehabilitation hospital from which I was discharged at Easter, 1918, and he was my most regular visitor. What close friends we became, and we arranged to have the occasional meal together after my discharge from hospital. Nearly two years since his wife was killed and still he mourned her loss. ‘Although it gets a little easier as time passes, I’ll never forget her, Genevieve, but life must go on.’
Madeleine popped into the hospital two or three times a week, and my brother Tom looked in now and then. He was learning that life wasn’t so difficult with one arm. ‘Really, it’s just a matter of adjustment, and you’d be surprised at how well I can hold things between my body and the stump,’ he once said to me.
It became clear that Tom’s thoughts were often on Madeleine; rarely did he have a conversation with me in which, with studied nonchalance, he didn’t soon bring up the subject of ‘my English friend’.
It was April and I was just about to be discharged when Tom visited. He was looking particularly pleased with himself. He soon mentioned that Madeleine had agreed to accompany him to the theatre. Then he most untypically admitted that he was unable to get her off his mind.
I warned him. I said again and again that it would be foolish to imagine that Madeleine might marry him. And that going to the theatre with him was all very well. But I was afraid it didn’t mean that Madeleine cared for him. As far as I knew there was still only one man in her life. I told him not to have unrealistic expectations and that Madeleine still did not accept that Charles was dead.
Tom was adamant that she would have to accept the reality of Charles’s death. He said he was in this for the long haul and would never give up on Madeleine.
Time to change the subject. Andrew Osborne was frequently on my mind. Was it possible for Tom to find out his whereabouts? Andrew had promised to write, yet there had been no letter. Could I have been wrong about Andrew as I had been about Gordon McCann? It was almost impossible to believe.
‘Remember, Tom, while you were in hospital in Calais …’ Momentarily, ugly thoughts of that time, thoughts that I usually repressed, came flooding back. I did repress them. I asked whether he remembered the night Andrew visited him and I met him at the hospital. I explained that Andrew promised to write to me but that I hadn’t heard a word.
‘Oh, did I forget to tell you? Sorry, Genevieve. Andrew went missing, presumed killed, probably only a few days after you met him. No mystery there; he was on a raid and his men saw it all – killed instantly – body never found.’
‘Oh.’ A terrible, empty feeling engulfed me. I was shocked into speechlessness. Tom had, once again, been impossibly thoughtless, selfish and insensitive, and he was so matter of fact about what he must have guessed was very important to me.
I reproached him, partly to cover my intense shock. ‘I’d have thought you would be upset. After all, you were friends for years.’
‘Of course I was upset when I heard, but one has to put these things out of one’s mind or one would go mad. Andrew’s dead; nothing to be done. He’s just one of hundreds of thousands. He didn’t mean anything special to you, did he?’
‘There was hardly any time for that,’ I replied tartly. I wanted to be alone to take the news in. All those dreams, about a possible relationship with Andrew after the war, now shattered. Andrew had been killed months before! I wanted to go to sleep and not wake up until this whole miserable war experience was over. I told Tom that I was tired and asked him to go.
*
About that time I received a letter from my friend Rose. There had been very little news from home, my mother having never relented. My mother’s attitude was that I had disobeyed her and hadn’t shown any remorse for my behaviour. She wanted nothing to do with me. My mother, as ever, was implacable; I knew she would never forgive me or welcome me into the family home.
Rose wrote that she was now a widow. Douglas had been killed in that last charge to Beersheeba by the Australian Light Horse. She said that a fellow light-horseman had written to her praising her husband’s courage and describing the last minutes of his life as the Australian horses, scenting water and all nearly mad with thirst, raced like the wind for the enemy positions and overran them. Douglas and Billy, his horse, were killed by machine-gun fire.
So Rose was a widow and her two-year-old son had no father. Poor, poor Rose. She said she was certain it was just retribution for her marrying Douglas when she was carrying another man’s baby. She also said how much she had grown to love Douglas through the marvellous letters he had written during those two years before his death – letters she would treasure for the rest of her life.
Sadly, I sat for a long time with Rose’s letter in my hand. Again, I wondered when the tentacles of war would be cut away and when and if relatives of dead men would ever fully recover. It was hard not to cry when I read that letter, and I did. I wasn’t crying for Doug alone – I hardly knew the man – or for Rose, now a lonely widow. I cried because everything had been so terrible. Andrew was dead; so many others, patients clinging to my hands, terrified as they felt themselves slip towards oblivion. The indescribable wounds – would I ever forget? Of course I wouldn’t. No one could forget.
A few days later my grief turned to fury when I heard the latest news from home. ‘Yes,’ Tom said when we next met. ‘Yes, I recently heard from Mothe
r that poor old Doug was killed at Beersheeba. She had a bit of other news, too. Apparently old Mr McCann collapsed with shock on hearing of the deaths of both his sons within a few months of each other. He had a stroke and died soon after. Mother decided she’d make an offer to Rose for the property before anyone else did. She said the offer was fair considering the run-down state of the place.’
I disagreed. ‘Fair? I very much doubt that, Tom. I bet Mother took Rose to the cleaners.’
He was annoyed that I would even think such a thing and said so. He said that, by all accounts, Rose was glad of the offer and had no idea what she would have done with the place. Our mother told Tom that her offer enabled Rose to buy a small cottage in a better part of town, and she was taking in a boarder to assist her finances.
I stuck to my guns. ‘I see. Bellara has effectively doubled in size, and Rose has to take in a boarder to make ends meet. Sounds to me like Rose should have sought legal advice.’
*
They gave me two weeks leave after discharging me from hospital. When I met Madeleine for tea she invited me to Morton for Easter. She said that it was delightful in early spring in their part of Wiltshire and that the food was delicious. She said it was a big estate with lots of walks and riding, sheep, pigs, poultry and berries, so that we could eat our heads off. ‘You’ve lost so much weight. You’re too skinny for a tall girl; you don’t look like you, solid and dependable.’
I didn’t like being thought of as solid and dependable; I enjoyed the thought of being slender and lanky. I retorted, ‘You’re far too thin yourself.’ But then I accepted the offer graciously. She said that Tom could come also if he wished. I knew how much Tom would want to be there.