Home Fires

by Susan Cameron

  While taking her latest letters from Jim to reread at the kitchen table, Annie noticed that one envelope had unfamiliar writing and she realized she had accidently been given someone else’s mail.

  Mrs. Sarah Smith, Mile 225, New Ontario. Annie decided it was probably easiest for her to deliver the letter herself. She had heard there was a young English woman who had just moved into a house not far away, and Annie was keen to meet her. She decided to give Sarah her letter the next day.

  Sarah Smith’s husband was also overseas with the Canadian army, and she and Annie became fast friends. Sarah was from Cumberland, had strawberry-blonde hair and freckles and was not much taller than Annie. She began coming over to Annie’s house regularly when the older boys were at school. Sarah did not have any children, and she loved to fuss over Hal and Henry. The women enjoyed each other’s company, and Annie was often reminded of the lovely time she had had with Catherine in Toronto.

  In mid-February, however, a week passed without Annie seeing her new friend. Annie grew concerned. When Bobby, Jack and Georgie left for school one Friday, she bundled up Hal and Henry and walked the short distance to Sarah’s house. She knocked at Sarah’s door but there was no answer, so she entered, calling out Sarah’s name.

  The house was dark, and almost as cold as the outdoors. The fire was out in the kitchen stove. Annie called to Sarah again as she walked through the kitchen to the back bedroom. There she found Sarah curled into a ball on the bed.

  “Are you sick, Sarah?” Annie asked.

  Sarah shook her head. Her face was mottled and streaked with tears. Annie sat down on the bed and stroked her friend’s back. Sarah had a letter crumpled in her hand.

  “Has something happened to your husband?” Annie asked.

  Sarah handed Annie the note and Annie reluctantly flattened the piece of paper on her lap to read it. It was an official letter, reporting that Sarah’s separation allowance would be stopped temporarily as her husband was being treated for V.D. in the General Hospital in Etaples, France.

  “Sarah, he’s just ill or injured. If you’re short of money you know I’ll help you.”

  Sarah shook her head and sobbed. “Annie, he has V.D. I can never forgive him. He has abused my trust; he totally betrayed me. I’m going south to Toronto to stay with my sister until I figure out what to do. I know this: our marriage is over.”

  Annie was stunned by Sarah’s outburst. She also felt foolish for not knowing what V.D. was and was hesitant to ask her devastated friend. She convinced Sarah to come home with her and stay until she was ready to go to her sister’s.

  Sarah stayed with Annie for a week, and Annie helped her pack her belongings. They had a tearful farewell at the train station, and both women promised to write.

  Annie was lonesome with Sarah gone; she missed her friendship and company. She received a letter from her the following week, in which she let Annie know that she had arrived safely at her sister’s home. After that, Annie wrote regularly, but didn’t hear from Sarah again.

  A month after Sarah had left the North, a letter was finally delivered to Annie. She didn’t recognize the writing, and tore open the envelope. The enclosed note was from Sarah’s sister. She wrote that she regretted to inform Annie that Sarah had passed away.

  Annie sat down hard on the bench in the post office. She felt the blood drain from her face, and for a minute she was quite still. Then she summoned the courage to finish reading. The note said that Sarah had been despondent about the end of her marriage, and was inconsolable. Sarah’s sister did not give the cause of death, but it was not hard to conclude that Sarah had committed suicide.

  Annie felt a lump in her throat. Oh, Sarah, I’m so sorry, she thought. I should have helped you somehow. This terrible war has wasted one more young life.

  Annie still didn’t understand why Sarah would have taken her own life. Surely a husband’s illness did not warrant such an end to a marriage and suicide. She decided to consult a woman with whom she was acquainted at church. Mrs. Mitchell was a nurse who would be able to answer her questions, Annie reasoned. The next Sunday, after church services, Annie invited her over for tea the following day.

  Mrs. Mitchell arrived promptly at ten o’clock Monday morning as arranged. The woman was tall and had a matronly figure, and her dark hair was pulled back into two neat braids pinned around her head. The two women made a casual conversation for a few minutes before Annie told her about Sarah, and asked her directly what V.D. was.

  Mrs. Mitchell quickly swallowed her mouthful of tea, and looked at Annie. She was quiet for a few moments.

  “I’m sorry to be blunt dear, but V.D. is a disease that infects a man’s private parts, causing much pain and inflammation. A man becomes infected with this disease if he has had sexual relations with a woman who is already infected, most likely a prostitute. The treatment to cure it is almost as horrible as the disease. Patients are injected with arsenic and mercury, and their lesions are rubbed with iodine or mercurial ointment.”

  Annie felt the blood drain from her face as Mrs. Mitchell studied her.

  “Don’t be too condemning of Sarah’s husband. This war has taken our men away from the civilized world and dumped them into a brutality we can only imagine. The men assume they will die at any moment, and even the most faithful man can weaken at temptation while on leave. I’m sorry I didn’t get to speak to Sarah before she left. I blame the officer who sent her that letter. Her death is on his hands. I’ll be surprised if her husband survives the war when he hears of her passing. I wonder how many other women received such letters and acted as she did.” She continued that she had acquaintances in the higher ranks of the military, and that she planned to address the issue promptly.

  While Mrs. Mitchell fumed with outrage, Annie was still coming to terms with the nurse’s description of the disease. She was shocked at the information, and embarrassed when she realized how naive she had been. She finally understood why Sarah had been so devastated.

  God, she thought. What an innocent I was before this war!

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  England

  Spring, 1918

  The crossing to England was quick and uneventful, and Jim arrived in London more than ready for his hard-earned fourteen-day leave. He had been in France and Belgium for a year without reprieve, and was nearly a broken man.

  As soon as he arrived, he found a pub filled with other soldiers, quaffed a pint of Guinness, bought another, and ordered fish and chips. His dinner came wrapped in a newspaper; he peeled away the paper and inhaled the salty, greasy smell. This simple meal was nothing less than restorative, and when he was finished, he sat back for a few minutes to watch the other patrons. Some men tried to include him in their conversations when they saw his uniform, but he didn’t respond. They finally shook their heads and left him alone.

  After he had satiated himself, Jim walked to the railroad station, bought a return ticket to Newcastle, and boarded the train. The sound and movement of the train lulled him to sleep. He was surprised when a conductor woke him at the Newcastle stop.

  He stepped off the train and began the long walk to his mother’s house, but within five minutes an elderly man with an impressive handlebar moustache stopped his car. He leaned out the window, asked Jim where he was off to, and offered to drive him to South Shields.

  “I see that you’re on leave. Hop in. I have a son myself, fighting in Belgium now, and I would want someone to offer him a ride, too. I lost two of my boys in Ypres.” The old gentleman’s eyes grew moist.

  Jim thanked the man and offered his condolences, but then fell silent. The older man seemed to sense that Jim didn’t want conversation and allowed him a quiet ride for the remainder of the trip. He stopped his car a few streets away from Jane’s home and wished Jim good fortune.

  Jim bought a small bouquet of flowers from a little girl at the corner. He quickened his pace as he approached the house, and when he came up to the doorway, he called out to his mother.


  Jane threw open the door and wept, hugging him tightly, then stood back to get a good look. He could tell she was shocked by his appearance. He knew he had lost a lot of weight, but at least he was considerably cleaner that he’d been just a few days before. For a couple of hours, Jim allowed his mother to fuss over him and serve him his favourite foods. But finally he said, “I’m sorry, but I’m just tuckered out, Ma. I need to catch up on some sleep.”

  He woke up two days later.

  Jane was visibly relieved when he emerged from the bedroom. “I was so worried an’ I stayed by your cot tuh make sure ye were still breathin’. Then ye tossed an’ cried out so that I was afraid to wake ye. I borrowed clothes from Charlie fo’ ye, so I could clean your uniform. I put a hot iron on the seams tuh kill the lice!”

  “Thanks, Ma. Sorry to worry you.” He chuckled, “If you thought this uniform needed cleaning, you would have fainted at the sight of my old one!”

  “Never fainted a day in me life I’ll have ye know!”

  One day, when he was sitting at the kitchen table sipping tea and enjoying a large piece of cake, a lump of coal shifted suddenly in Jane’s fireplace and fell in the grate with a loud bang. Jim ducked and dropped his mug, which crashed to the floor and shattered, scattering broken shards and tea.

  Jane looked at his white face and trembling body and said, “Oh, hinny.” She held his head to her chest as she had when he was a boy. The two weeks passed quickly, filled with visits from Jim’s sisters and their children, each trying to outdo the other with treats for Jim. On the day he was to leave for the train to London, he said his goodbyes to his mother.

  “Thank you, Ma. You restored me. I truly believe that this leave saved me from insanity. But now I don’t know how I can face a return to the front. Maybe I would have been better off staying in France.”

  “Dinna say that, Jim. The war will be over soon an’ ye’ll be back tuh Annie before ye know it.”

  Jim returned the hug and kisses, bid her another goodbye, promised to write, and then reluctantly turned to leave.

  It didn’t take long for the memory of that pleasant time in South Shields to fade. Jim was soon returned to the front, working above the trenches, repairing lines damaged from shelling. He helped lay light rail to the front so the tons of rations and ammunition could be brought forward each day.

  In March, they began constructing a rear defence trench system with over a hundred miles of trenches in total. The hard labour helped Jim; being so physically exhausted at the end of each day encouraged a deeper sleep, and helped him to forget his misery.

  That spring almost everyone had bronchitis. Jim had to regularly put down his shovel and cough, often coughing until he felt weak. There was a frenzy of activity in spite of the fact that so many men were ill. The troops dug hundreds of kilometres of trenches, positioning barbed wire, laying telephone cables and burying water mains in preparation for an offensive attack.

  One evening, Jim was resting in a dugout that was supported by some scrounged steel. He had wrapped himself in a blanket as well as his coat, to keep out the icy fingers of a frigid wind. He felt revived after a meal of lukewarm stew and a strong brew of cool tea fortified with rum, so he pulled a few sheets of paper from of his greatcoat pocket. As was his custom, he gazed at Annie’s picture before he began to write his letter. He told her he’d heard that the German troops were malnourished and living on black bread and meatless sausages, which he hoped wasn’t just propaganda. He told her that much of his work now was similar to the jobs he had had when he first came to New Ontario, laying miles and miles of broad-gauge track.

  Jim stopped writing, put down his pencil, and reread his letter. He realized that he was recording sanitized, bland events that were completely separated from his reality. Like every other soldier in the war, he knew that any bullet could be destined to hit him. He could die with his most important words unspoken. He picked up his pencil again, but this time he expressed his love for Annie, his plans for their future and his dreams for their children. When he finished, he folded the letter and placed it in his Bible beside Annie’s photo. That night, he fell into a dreamless, healing slumber.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Late one evening, near the end of March - when the boys were asleep and the house quiet - Annie grabbed her coat and called to Spud to come for a little walk. She slipped out the door. Her footprints crunched on the snowy path. The air was fresh and clear with a promising hint of warmer weather to come. Spud pranced around her, and rolled playfully in the snow.

  There seemed to be electricity in the atmosphere and Annie raised her head to look at the stars. She was met with a vision of red, violet and green lights, dancing and shimmering across the sky. She was mesmerized for several minutes as she gazed at the swirling coloured ribbons undulating across the star-lit evening sky. She was comforted by the memory of watching the Northern Lights with Jim.

  Although the extreme winter temperatures in New Ontario persisted, the days were getting longer and Annie was eager to start planning her new vegetable garden. She had already mailed her order for seed catalogues and sketched out her gardening plans in her head. She knew now from experience what plants would grow in the short summer season and which root crops were the best, and she planned to get some topsoil and manure to build up her new garden. Oh, to feed the children fresh food again! She thought. Not to mention the money I’ll save.

  In his last letter, Jim had said he was in Belgium. She tried to read between the lines as he never complained or gave many details of his life in the field, but his writing was very shaky again and this worried her.

  She wrote telling him about the children and the latest northern news, to let him know everything was fine at home. She never mentioned any money concerns or told him when one of their sons was ill or misbehaving. She often wished that she could have travelled to England to spend time with him when he’d been on leave, but she was grateful that Jim’s mother and sisters had treated him so well when he was there.

  Annie tried to make the children’s lives as normal as she possibly could and was busy during the day with chores and caring for her two youngest, while Bobby, Jack, and Georgie were at school. It was in the evening when the house was quiet and the children asleep that she missed Jim the most.

  Her hopes for an early spring were soon dashed, however. A few days later, a cruel winter storm blew in from the east. The snow accumulated to incredible heights. To add to Annie’s disappointment, the temperature then plummeted. Thankfully, the extra insulation from the snow packed against the house and a good supply of firewood kept the family cozy. House-bound for a couple of days, the children managed to entertain themselves; the older boys found a deck of cards and Georgie helped Hal and Henry build structures with their wooden blocks.

  Annie knew there was something bothering Bobby. She patiently waited him out. Finally, he hesitantly spoke to her. “Ma, I want to start earning a wage. I know there are positions open at the mill. I’m ready to quit school and get a job.”

  Annie looked at her eldest boy and realized that at sixteen years of age, he was almost a man. She knew she had burdened him with many adult responsibilities since Jim had left.

  “Yes, son,” she said with a sigh, “I suppose it’s time. And the extra income will certainly help.”

  Bobby looked at his mother, not believing what he’d heard. Then he wrapped her in a tight hug. “Thanks, Ma.”

  “You’ll need to properly apply for a position, and ask for letters of reference from the high school principal and the minister and perhaps even the hotel manager. They can all attest to your good character. You want to aim high, son, and get an apprenticeship for a trade. They’ll probably make you a broke hustler in the paper mill for the first bit, but that’s how you’ll prove you’re a good, honest worker.”

  The following day after the roads were plowed and the boys had shovelled the walkway, Annie left Hal and Henry with Jack and Georgie and walked with Bobby to visit th
e principal, the minister and the hotel manager. All three men readily agreed to write a letter of recommendation for Bobby. It was public knowledge that the mill needed to replace employees who had enlisted or been drafted; the newsprint business was thriving during the war. Bobby made an appointment for an interview, and before the end of the week, he was hired.

  On his first pay day, he handed his wages to his mother. She was proud of him and could see that he was pleased with himself. It was a relief to have more money coming in as well. She put half of Bobby’s wages into a bank account for him and used half to support the family’s needs. She and Bobby both wrote letters to Jim to tell him the good news. She wondered if her other sons would be young men as well before their father returned. She shuddered. If he returns.

  Chapter Fifty

  Thoughts of her mother’s situation continued to haunt Annie. She was determined to find out where she was and somehow bring her to Canada, but she didn’t know how to accomplish it. Although Annie understood Norwegian, she couldn’t write a formal letter of inquiry to authorities in Norway. This problem nagged at her. She knew there were some Norwegian immigrants in the North, but she needed someone who could properly compose a letter.

  One Sunday, after church services, she approached the school principal to explain her problem and asked him if he knew of any Norwegian teachers she might ask.

  “Why, as a matter of fact, I do. There’s a high school mathematics teacher in Gold Creek. His name is Lars Nilsen. The poor man is blind in one eye, so he wasn’t drafted into the military. Write to him in care of the school in Gold Creek and he’ll be sure to receive your letter.”

  Annie wrote to Mr. Nilsen, explaining her need to locate her mother and requesting his help to write a letter to the correct authorities in Bergen. To her delight, Mr. Nilsen replied within a week and said he would be pleased to help. He wrote that he had many contacts in Bergen and was confident that they could find Annie’s mother, although it would likely take some time, because of the war. He regularly visited a distant cousin in Bear Falls and would be in town soon.