The Gunner

by Paul Almond

“So Borden’s going to get in,” I asked, “and pass that conscription into law?”

  Michel nodded. “She gonna come law maybe end of August. Then you just watch the smoke.”

  I shook my head. I had no idea why Canada needed it. Weren’t there enough of us prepared to come and fight for the country?

  “So what’s gonna happen to you, Michel, when you get home?” Harry asked. “They’re not going to like you coming over here to serve His Majesty.” Harry always found a way to say the wrong thing.

  “Sure. Listen, lots of men from Quebec, they fight, I tell you. Lots of us. You never hear of the Van Doos? Goddam brave. But I gonna move to Ontario anyway,” Michel pronounced. “Me, I like the English. For why you think I learn this crazy language? Lots of work in Ontario. You watch. They gonna treat me like hero.”

  And you know, I believed they probably would.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Passchendaele

  Nr Vlamertinghe, Nov 6th: At 4:30 this morning the enemy laid down a heavy barrage. It was a nervous time for Infantry and Artillery alike. Our barrage opened at 6 a.m. sharp. The attack went off without a hitch and by 8:15 the whole front was reported as captured. Several counter attacks were attempted but failed to reach our lines. 35th Battery, one killed and two wounded.

  War Diaries: 10th Brigade CFA

  “Michel! Back on with the mask!” I had to shout loud through my own gas mask.

  He complied, but he hated doing it. Frightening, though, this gas. “Damn eyepieces! They steam up.”

  Michel was right, it was hard to see. “Better blind than dead,” I tried to shout. Gas made the work of firing hell.

  Michel was our new Bombardier. A nice warm French Canadian, his square, bold face belied a human sensitivity. In spite of his arguing, he showed a welcome concern for others.

  We were keeping up a steady stream of shells toward the enemy. I guess we’d been a bit too sharp in our aim and they’d decided to quiet us down. So all our howitzers had been showered with gas shells and although we’d survived attacks before, this one threatened to finish us. I kept checking to make sure no skin was showing. Hopefully, the gas would blow away soon. But every shell hole around was saturated. Liquid chemical in the shells only changed to a gas when the shell burst. Often in cold weather, the mustard would stay on the ground and run into shell holes. We had to be darn careful where and how we walked.

  And today, cool still, the mist and the rain made it hard to achieve any real degree of accuracy. But we must have achieved it: why else would our enemy make such an effort to silence us?

  In the ten days since we’d lost Ed, the Infantry had attacked again on the 30th of October, and had achieved most of their second objectives. My God, I thought, don’t tell me we’re going to do it again, when everyone else has failed? Another, and hopefully the last, big attack was scheduled for tomorrow. That would tell the tale. I knew then that we were either going to smash right onto that ridge and capture Passchendaele village, or an awful lot of us would die in the failed attempt. So today we were hitting the last troublesome spots before next morning’s big barrage. But their guns were focussed on us and we’d be subject to an onslaught of treacherous gas.

  I saw Michel tie his scarf tighter round his neck; the gas had gotten to him. But he was making no complaints, getting shells and putting them in the breech, while I rammed them home. Harry would shut the breech and boom! Another high explosive shell would wipe out more enemy.

  ***

  I was awakened the next morning by a tremendous crash. A Jack Johnson had landed close by. But what had startled me out of my sleep was the sound of a big rock hitting our pillbox. I sat up.

  Fortunately, a stiff breeze and cold temperatures last night had cleared the gas so we were able to sleep without masks. That dreadful day wearing them had exhausted us — so very draining, being covered up, firing under such harrowing circumstances, so we slept well, even though that battlefield ruckus had not stopped for a second. But this explosion woke everyone.

  I looked at my watch: five o’clock. Our bombardment was due to start at six, so I thought I’d better get ready. We were all crowded in the little pillbox, but everyone got moving. Someone lifted the entrance curtain we’d hung to stop gas and in staggered a replacement Gunner, face all bloody, his arm hanging down.

  “Come in, come lie over here.” I ordered Michel to run for the duty signaller to call for medics.

  The soldier stumbled to the couch. “Only two of us, thank God.” Then he lay back, gasping. “The other... crossing to here... Could have been one of yours...”

  An icy feeling rose to throttle my insides. One of ours?

  Last night, I had sent Ralph Rideout back to the Wagon Lines for water and to bring up provisions. Jason the cook had asked me because the usual messenger had been wounded the day before.

  No, too much of a coincidence, I tried to reassure myself. Jim got up. “I’ll check outside.” He got his flashlight and I followed him out into the darkness, shells crashing around.

  We walked to the lip of a crater and looked down. My God, what a big hole! Jim shone his flashlight into it — already filling with water. So fast. We turned back. “Jim, did you hear something hit the wall of our pillbox?”

  “Yes.” He turned. “I thought it might be a rock or something.” We went to the wall, and he played his flashlight over the ground. A couple of feet from the wall, we both saw something. What on earth?

  He bent, shone the flashlight, and then stood abruptly, leaned against the wall and put his hand to his head.

  I went up myself and shone my flashlight on the lump.

  Yes, unmistakably round, like a rock, but mashed, and a hank of red hair.

  All that remained of Ralph Rideout. I stood in a trance. I couldn’t move. I felt like vomiting.

  Jim shook his head, and then turned and gestured helplessly. We exchanged a look and he went back into the pillbox. Soon, breakfast time. We were to be served before our six o’clock barrage.

  I just couldn’t absorb this. What should I do now?

  I turned to follow Jim and an awful thought struck me: leave this here? Oh no. But how could we ever give Ralph a decent burial? No clergyman around this firing line, that’s for sure. Last night, Ralph had said, “I’ll bring us back the best feast ever, never you mind. I’ll check with our scavenger — he’ll find us something.” What an infectious grin he wore — a grin no one would never see again.

  My God, what was this war doing to us? It got Edward, and now Ralph Rideout — all that was left of the first old team was me and Harry. No doubt, we’d get taken, too. And soon.

  I looked down again. Something had to be done.

  I couldn’t just leave this here for the rats. Not that there were so many: either they were up in the trenches feasting on the dead, or back at the Wagon Lines, because here we hadn’t been bothered too much. Too dangerous? Maybe they didn’t like all the gas being dumped around. And in any case, they always mysteriously left before a big barrage. Funny.

  I stood looking down at what remained of Ralph Rideout, and then I knew. I stepped forward, and tucking my flashlight into a pocket, I bent and picked up the messy head as gently as I could, and breathing a short prayer, I walked over to the lip of the crater.

  I stood, looked heavenward, and mumbled another prayer. And I threw. A splash told me the head had landed in the water and sank. With so much death around, I found I could not even summon up any normal feeling. I just turned and went back. But what lingered was the knowledge that I had sent a man to his death.

  Nov 9th: Casualties, 35th Battery, six wounded.

  12th: The Hun has been making a specialty of counter-battery work and has been pounding away all day.

  13th: Heavy strafing of the batteries continues. The weather which has been very misty of late has prevented the accurate locating of hostile Battery positions so that our counter-batteries have been forced to have recourse to area shoots and concentrations; this has so f
ar not proved effective.

  14th: The Hun continues to strafe. All 40th Battery guns knocked out, 35th have three left. The plank road running up by the batteries has been shot to pieces, and guns, limbers, and motor lorries have been piled up in hopeless confusion.

  15th: The 35th and 40th are working hard to clear their derelict guns for it is rumoured we move out shortly.

  War Diaries: 10th Brigade CFA

  The great gun slid sideways, righted itself, and then plunged into the crater. Bubbles rose through the murky yellow surface. The barrel still protruded, but now its former platform had been cleared. We stood looking down at its grave with a kind of sorrow. That howitzer had served us faithfully and, before us, the British. Destroyed by a shell, no longer salvageable. Thank heaven we’d not been firing when it was hit. We now were clearing its emplacement for another howitzer from the Wagon Lines.

  Demoralizing. We’d been under continuous fire and bombardment for ten solid days. Here it was, mid-November, the 15th to be exact, and I think all of us were at our wits’ end. I myself was completely washed out, finished, exhausted, I didn’t think I could even walk back along the line of howitzers, facing Passchendaele Ridge, to our little pillbox where we had lived the last month of torment. And what shape would I be in if I ever did get back to safety? My nerves were shaky, my mind barely functioning. My body, well, would it ever recover? How had I made it so far?

  “Right men, back we go, no firing until our new gun comes.” I was almost too tired to say the words.

  We turned and started back to our billet when Lieutenant Overstreet, looking a bit frazzled himself, came to meet us. He held out his arms wide. “Sorry men, we have to go forward and help an 18-pounder Battery. We’ve been ordered to clear their destroyed guns. Seems the boys need help.”

  “Mr. Overstreet, my men need rest. The other Battery has its own troops for such tasks.” I was stepping over the line in resisting the order, but I did.

  “Sorry, Sergeant,” he replied, nicely, “but for some reason, their own troops have been detailed elsewhere. They ask if we could pitch in. Not that hard if we weren’t so tired.”

  We looked at each other in disbelief. But an order is an order and we turned and started towards the 18-pounder firing line. I let the men go ahead. Dick Overstreet hurried to catch up and we walked beside each other in silence. Heads bowed, physically broken, we had little to say. But then he spoke up. “What may be a little consolation, Sergeant, is that there’s a strong rumour we’re being pulled back.”

  “Praise the Lord,” I mumbled. “But I’ll believe that when we get the orders.”

  “No, I was over at the switchboard and heard the Major talking. Seems like the rumour might be true.”

  Well, that was a blessing, I thought, as we wandered on.

  You might think we were crazy, walking so leisurely across this blasted ground in full view of the enemy not far off. But they had no Andy McNaughton. Anyway, Fritz was mostly blasting away at Passchendaele Ridge, which our boys had finally taken on November 10, right after the village itself. And we were beyond caring about their shells now.

  “You know, Mr. Overstreet,” I found myself saying, for it had been in the forefront of my mind for some time, “Gunner Rideout’s death has weighed on me.” We walked a few more paces. “You see, I’m the one who sent him back to the Wagon Line to get supplies. If I hadn’t ordered him to do that, he’d be alive today.”

  “Sergeant Alford, responsibility is the price of command. They teach you some of this in officers’ training. And I’m not supposed to say anything, but you might find yourself learning about that sooner rather than later.”

  He was right, I hadn’t learned. But what can you learn in officer training that will take away the guilt? You sent a man to his death...

  “You see, Sergeant, every command you give might have that result. Think of the Infantry. Their Lieutenant says, ‘Over the top, men!’ And leads the charge. And as a result of that, fifty might be dead in the next hour. How does he feel?”

  Well, Dick did have a point. I guess being an officer involved an awful lot of things you don’t think about when you’re following orders. If being a Sergeant meant that you had to give orders that involved nasty results, you still did your job. Then and there, I wiped it off my mind. Better to blame the war. Blame Passchendaele.

  We arrived at the six 18-pounders, many of which had been destroyed. Overstreet had come along in order to decide which should be removed for repair, and which dumped — presumably to meet the same fate as our howitzer.

  We set to work, exhausted though we were. Now an 18-pounder may not weigh as much as the howitzer, but it’s still damned heavy: twelve hundred pounds. Enough to give anyone pause. And we had to move a pile of them. We stood looking. Heavens! How many Batteries had been decimated!

  And not just the guns. Ten days ago when Ralph got killed, we had two others wounded, and only three days after that, six more. In fact, ten per cent of our Brigade had been casualties, and many units were much worse. Replacements had been sent up, but wouldn’t they just go the way of others?

  These 18-pounders could fire much faster than ours, easily four rounds to our one. Their shells included a cartridge and weighed under twenty-five pounds. But they wouldn’t elevate more than sixteen degrees compared to forty-five with our howitzers, so they shot pretty flat trajectories with less range. I would say the 18-pounder was probably the workhorse. Sad to see so many finished off like this. Closer to the front, they suffered more from counter-batteries. We got one of them that wasn’t too badly damaged backed up behind its now empty pit, and then started on the next.

  My God, I was tired. Nothing wrong in admitting it: like these guns, I really felt finished. I’d been in action eighteen months. For pity’s sake, something had to happen. I was beyond caring. Raine had gone on to a new life, and whatever hopes I had for getting to know Rene were unlikely to work out. Old Poppa had Earle to work on the farm, so I’d be no great loss there either. In fact — and now I was feeling thoroughly sorry for myself — no one would be greatly troubled by my demise.

  Well, didn’t we all wrestle this damn gun off its sandbagged platform? To keep them afloat on the mud, most guns sat on sandbags. All of us, pushing and lifting, tired as we were, hungry though we might have been, we managed to tip it over into the next shell hole. It splashed in. Another gun gone. The rest, I’m afraid, were a blur.

  That night as I lay on the cold floor of the pillbox, I couldn’t stop thinking about Ralph’s sister, and her brothers at home. Who would look after them now? Who would send them money for food? What would his destitute mother do?

  But then as I got even more depressed, I struggled to snap out of it. You’ve got to keep cheered up, you’ve got to encourage your men, you must keep going. Don’t let them see you like this. Just keep at it. And that’s what I did, until a few days later, we finally got word to retire, and we left this hell of death and damnation.

  Part Four

  England

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  February 1918

  I got off the train at Waterloo and walked down the long platform towards the gate. Finally I’d been brought back to Blighty for officer training at Witley Camp in Surrey. The artillery section, Milford, was on the slope of Rods Hill, surrounded by lots of rolling common land and space for manoeuvres. Good sandy soil, too. Close to London, but we’d been kept busy and I wanted to wait until my nerves quietened down before heading into civilization. So this was the first time I could arrange a meeting with Jack. Unfortunately, the day had clouded over, with rain expected. So like France. Boy, would I be glad to get back to the Gaspe where it’s mostly clear.

  I was excited to see London after all this time. Had it changed? Would Jack be waiting? If he wasn’t, he told me how to get to his offices in Mayfair, but thought he’d manage to come. Since we hadn’t seen each other for almost a year, I was hoping he’d come with his favourite drivers, the Gray girls, Leo and Rene.r />
  How long the platform seemed, as long as the darn train ride itself — less than an hour from Godalming, the station for Witley. Funny how time changes according to what you’re looking forward to. I was so looking forward to seeing Jack. But more especially, Rene.

  Over the past two months in training, the horrors of the firing line were slowly fading. I had been SOS, Struck Off Strength, from the 10th Brigade in early December, still a Sergeant, and transferred to the Canadian Reserve Artillery. These new courses I’d really been enjoying and I had thrown myself into learning with a vengeance. We’d been handed booklets and encouraged to read history. The more I learned, the less my brain was bludgeoned by recurring images from those eighteen months at the Front.

  But at night! Far from getting more peaceful, my dreams were worse: Ed Whitehead holding his entrails in his shitty hands; Ralph, well, what remained of him; and Howard, his torso bouncing after me across the chlorine-poisoned ground. I would wake up screaming. Other fellows had the same problems. Our barracks were often wakened by screams. What the war does to a man...

  At the gate I handed in my ticket, and who should I see waiting but Jack, and next to him, the most beautiful girl in the world, Rene Gray. I bust out in the biggest smile anyone ever saw. She waited demurely, even shyly, while I grabbed Jack’s hand and shook it vigorously, almost to his dismay, and then I turned to her, and she gave me a kiss on my cheek. Then she stood back and looked. “My God, Eric,” was all she said. “My God.”

  I frowned. “Is something wrong?”

  She shook her head. “Your eyes... They look so sad. Like the eyes of an old man.”

  I grinned. “As old as Jack’s?”

  “Come on, you two, let’s get back to the car,” he said. “Leo’s waiting. I’m going to take you to a good lunch. You see,” Jack grinned, “as head of the Chaplaincy Service, I get a bit more money, and I’m going to splurge on my kid brother today, for sure.”