Jim stretched his legs and tried to force sensation down to his calves and feet. In the last two days there had been times when he’d moved so quickly, so hunched over with back muscles clenched, his heart had raced wildly.
The body remembered the wild heart. The body remembered slick and treacherous footing, shallow trenches, the danger of Blighty Bridge, mats and duckboards laid over the worst places, ooze seeping through the cracks. The body remembered the lurch and roll of the dead. Feet and legs had memories of their own. In Belleville, he had learned from Dr. Whalen that nerve messages from the legs were sent to the spine and up to the brain. Now, he knew that brain was solid greyish matter that came out of split heads like chunks of dirty sponge. It came out of nostrils and mouths blown open from inside and out. He knew, too, that the knowledge would be kept inside the matter of his own brain—forever.
But he wanted to tell Grania about the hands. She would understand. He would lie close beside her, and they would speak with their own hands. If it were dark, she would place her fingertips over his lips and she would gather his words into the place of their shared understanding.
He wanted to tell her how sorry he was that he’d left. He had been so hopeful, so filled with desire to help in the war. He wanted to do his bit like everyone else. But no one at home could have any idea of what this stretch of earth in the Salient now contained: scar, and death, and the memory of impossible acts. The terrible thing was that no one at home would ever know. Because what was happening was impossible to be told. Young faces, set and worried as the boys marched forward—soon to receive the ration of rum that would brace them before they went over the top—were seized in pale grimace only hours later, when regimental bearers and field ambulance bearers tried to clear the battlefields. Many of the dead were never brought in.
Jim shook himself and tried to force images that were more hopeful than leaking brains. A few weeks ago, on a trip to the line, it had been dark when he and his squad were led to a small treed area and told to catch a few hours’ sleep. At sunrise, he had wakened in a shaft of light shining through the leaves. The warmth on his eyelids had been an unexpected gift. He’d opened his eyes inside a network of sandbagged structure and zigzagged tunnel with corrugated-iron roof, and dugout underground. The trees had not yet been blasted to pieces, although the remains of one shattered stump pointed to the sky, not a foot away from the place his head had been resting. It was easy to see that only the day before, the stump had been part of a living tree.
Birds were singing in that copse. He’d heard their songs, and extended the moment as long as he could. With eyes closed, it had been possible to listen to the singing and believe that war did not exist. He had opened his eyes, and squinted. Narrowed the opening between his lids and narrowed it again and found that he could look straight up to a soft warm sky without letting in hurt or damaged branches, or pock-marked trunks of trees. But stray bullets had begun to whiz overhead and a branch in open leaf fell beside him. He stayed flat to the ground and, with the others behind, crawled to safety.
There were images of Ypres, too. He had stored those after his memorable first trip by horse ambulance through the City of the Dead. All the boys wanted to see the place, even though anyone who’d been there spoke of it with sadness. He had listened to words like grandeur, splendour, magnificence, but those words referred to its former state. In its present state, the city was in ruins.
Bricks and rubble were heaped as they’d fallen. A road had been cleared over broken cobblestones and debris. A middle-aged man in ragtag uniform was sitting by himself beneath a jagged arch, staring blankly. Much of the population had left or had been removed but, astonishingly, people emerged from holes and underground basements as the horse ambulance rattled past. Columns inside destroyed churches stretched up into Belgian sky. Between columns, rows of misaligned chairs in the open air were coated with powdered stone and debris. It was as if civilization had one day been caught off-guard and frozen in a single moment of destruction. He thought of the tableaus he and Grania had seen at Naylor’s Theatre. “They all fall down,” he muttered under his breath, as the horses’ hooves clattered over the improvised road. “Husha, husha, they all fall down.” For hours, he could not get the chant out of his mind.
The Conciergerie was no more than a chimney reigning over a hill of brick and crushed stone. Irregular-shaped metal and twisted gears of a giant clock lay beneath a tower, and he remembered his hands oiling the gears of the giant clock in Deseronto. He had climbed the ladder behind Grania, up into the tower, and she had shown him the scraped-away portion of the clock face, and they had peered through and looked out over the bay. He’d stood behind her and put his arms around her, resting his palms against the front panel of her skirt and over the softness of her belly. They had stayed like that, and all had been peaceful there, above the town.
In Ypres, he saw the former hospital, easy to recognize, now an upright front wall with no building behind. Two statues had survived in their niches but a bell lay dented on the ground. In the main square, the majestic Cloth Hall and the once beautiful cathedral were in ruins from direct hits, or destroyed by fire. As proof that at least two more inhabitants had refused to leave and were still in hiding, a woman came out from behind a shattered building. She was pushing an elderly man in a makeshift sling that had been painstakingly attached to two wheelbarrows. The woman was young, dressed in black from head to toe, including a kerchief that came down over her forehead and was tied under her chin. The old man, thin and frail, was bundled in blankets and lying inside a hammock-like arrangement that had been strung between the strapped-together barrows. The hammock was tightly suspended over the top of the front wheel. Bundles of belongings were resting between the handles of the first barrow, the one the woman had lifted and was pushing along. The entire makeshift carrier had only two wheels, and though it was long and awkward and obviously heavy, the woman was able to propel it forward as a sort of hammock-barrow-cart. To Jim, the fact that she could push it at all was a sight of amazement. She did not look up as the horse ambulance clattered past in the opposite direction but she kept on determinedly, staying out of the way, heading towards the western outskirts of town. She seemed to know her direction with surety, and was trying to leave by pathways that had been cleared through rubble along the edge of the road. The main road was used by troops moving in and out of the line at night.
It was that picture, the one of the young woman gripping wooden handles and pushing the roped-together barrows, that stayed with Jim now. She had been wheeling her father, or grandfather, or maybe a sick and elderly neighbour, out of the destroyed City of the Dead.
Irish and I carried sandbags all day. I tried to exhaust myself so that I could drop off to sleep. We reinforced huts with sandbags and even scraps of iron. Day runs to night and back to day again. In the night, everything moves: horse, mule, watercart, motorcycles, guns, soldiers, ammunition, jars of rum. Stash and Evan are working with us, and this makes things easier. Between carries last night, the four of us sat in a close circle on the ground with a boy from Number 8 Field Ambulance whose name is Christie, and we ate bully beef and bread—five to the loaf. We had honey that Irish scrounged and shared out and squeezed onto the bread. We are always hungry. Everyone I know tries to put his hands on extra grub. But having someone to share it with is more important than having the food itself—there isn’t a man who doesn’t know that. Irish reminded us of how he found nine dozen tins of marmalade when he whipped open the oven door of the old mill the day we were sent to clean up. Tins galore were lined up inside the oven, row after row—someone had taken the time to be neat. Irish pulled them out four at a time with his big hands, and found more tins stacked on the floor behind boards leaning into a corner. Someone had left in a hurry. Or forgot the hoard and moved on. We pocketed two each and opened two more and ate the marmalade out of the tins, with our fingers.
After the five of us finished our bread and honey, we were on our way again and
that is when three shells burst around us in rapid succession. It was the closest call yet. Evan and Stash were a slight distance behind, and Evan hit the ground in a hurry. We all did. But Evan is nervous and there is a worrying tic in his cheek. He rolls his fingers when he’s upset or afraid. He says that what will be, is written. It is what the boys here say and believe, but I am not so certain. What Irish and I know is that when we are carrying the wounded, if one of us gets it, we both will. We work closely together and that is the way it will be.
In the evening I was sent out after dark to get rations from a truck but machine guns started up and I had to lie on the ground. I hate the sound, the pecking away. When it was safe, I moved again but my boots made a loud sucking noise in the mud and I was certain that I could be heard by everyone on both sides. There is a terrible whispering in the night that never goes away. Sound is always worse in the dark.
At night I helped a CMR man who told me his name was Oak. We put him in a motor ambulance that was headed back to the Asylum. He had been buried by falling earth and had shrapnel injuries, and I bucked him up with spirits of ammonia. A corporal with a splinter in his eye had brought him as far as the dressing station. We heard later that the ambulance driver had a finger shot off during the trip. A colonel who was in the same vehicle as young Oak died before arriving at the Clearing Station. The colonel was badly cut up.
When we hear about the dead, Irish and I nod. There is nothing to say, no energy to say it. One moment a boy is alive, the next moment he is dead. We’ve heard the news now, too, of Lord Kitchener drowning. The ship he was on was sunk by a mine off the Orkneys, and he went down with it. Death is surely everywhere and all around.
The last night before being relieved, Jim and Irish were called up to the aid post. There were few men around, and the M.O. sent them out to try to bring in a boy who had been reported injured. Regimental bearers were in another location, picking up wounded. A soldier who had crawled in by himself had given the boy’s location. The boy, they were told, was propped against a low mound of mud, a long piece of metal embedded in his body.
It was dark, and shooting had settled down and things were quiet enough, though the lull might not last. There were no stars, no moon. Jim and Irish were given explicit directions and went out as silently as they could, avoiding unspeakable entrapments. Boots were everywhere, and tin lids embedded in the mud. Jim tried not to ask himself if they were attached to the living or the dead. They quickly found the boy and they stooped, one at each side. The boy was breathing rapidly, barely responding. Jim saw at a glance that they had no choice about how to do the carry. A projectile had passed through him, a long jagged piece that entered near his collarbone and protruded at an angle midway down his back, on the same side. The metal object—they did not know what it was—had been hit itself and then somehow propelled through his body. Jim groped for telltale dampness, but if the boy had lost blood, it had already seeped into the earth. They did not dare to lay him down—the metal could shift and penetrate a vessel or a major organ. Judging from his breathing, it might have passed through one lung. They abandoned the stretcher, and the drill kicked in.
Throw the patient’s arm over your head.
The boy’s arm was tucked like a stranglehold in the neck of Irish’s tunic. His hands were soft; Jim had felt them, the fingers unclenched.
Patient sits on bearers’ hands.
He and Irish looked at each other across the boy’s shoulders. They could scarcely see the whites of each other’s eyes.
Bearers rise together and step off: right-hand bearer with right foot; left-hand bearer with left foot.
Jim signalled and they pushed off, up quickly, from stooped position to standing. The soldier’s head flopped sideways and knocked against Jim’s helmet. Jim had to stay tilted to support the head, his own neck protesting as they started out. An explosion erupted to the right. Fritz was angry, retaliating. The explosion had been some distance away, but it forced them down more quickly than they had come up. Their knees hit the ground but the soldier between them stayed upright, just as he was. Jim caught the look on Irish’s face when a Verey light lit up the sky in the distance.
“We’ve done this before, Irish.”
The order is given by bearer No. 2. Ready! Kneel! Lift! March, taking short paces.
As they rose, Jim heard a crack, a whip snapping behind him. His legs gave out and he found himself on his knees again—one knee; his other leg was twisted behind. Irish was down, too. Miraculously, they had refused to drop their patient. It struck Jim how they must look out here, not knowing where to set a foot, ignoring the scurry of interrupted feeding rats under a starless sky.
“We’ll have a good rat hunt,” he’d heard a boy say one morning before dawn. Jim had been standing outside a dressing station as the men moved forward. “After the battle. See what they’ve been feeding on over on Fritzie’s side.” Shortly after that, the rum ration had been poured. Jim saw the empty jars being carried back down the line. The boy had not returned. Few of the boys had returned that day.
Another Verey light, closer this time, and then another, illuminated the horizon as if a town fair was beckoning across the countryside.
Half up, half down, Jim counted under his breath. They rose together, but the same split-second found them down for the third time. They sank to the rotting earth. Jim could hardly believe what had happened. He saw himself and Irish, both on their knees, the half-conscious boy between them still upright, the arm tangled in the neck of Irish’s tunic. Jim felt a sudden surge of laughter—nothing could suppress this. He began to shake as if a low howl inside him was working its way out. There was a rapid response of gunfire. Knowing that his laughter had been silent, he wondered if it had been aimed at him.
“What the hell?” Irish whispered. “Keep quiet.”
Maybe he’d made a noise after all. But now he heard laughter coming from Irish. The two began to shake uncontrollably and they stayed on their knees for what seemed like a long time, until they were wheezed out, muscles heaving in their chests. Through the darkness, Jim could see the gap between the whiteness of his friend’s front teeth.
The human chair. The body between. The firing stopped. Jim realized, with relief, that it had not been aimed at them at all. When flashes come, when flares and fireworks are all around, you see sudden silhouettes, men walking, both sides, out here in No Man’s Land. Working parties. Some carrying rolls of wire. The figures freeze until the blanket of darkness falls again. And then, movement starts up once more.
Unwiped tears rolled down Jim’s cheeks and he prayed that the boy did not understand what was happening. He whispered, “Lift, Irish, for God’s sake, when I give the word.”
This time the boy’s body did not threaten to topple. They had the balance of it from the start and they stood on four legs like a single machine. If they were shot at, Jim did not know, because he stopped hearing. Nor did he think of the weight of the carry. He concentrated only on placing one foot, the other foot, one foot, the other foot. They stumbled, corrected, moved forward. Left, right, left.
Avoid lifting over ditches or walls.
The training line brought him close to hysteria; he might start laughing again. Don’t think. If you do, God knows, you’ll give permission for something else to break loose. Instead, he started his chant, Infirtaris…
He and Irish got their patient down and into the trench, and suddenly Jim felt more exposed here than he had out in the open. Arms and legs, backs and hands, were numb when they brought in their man. It had taken them forty minutes. The M.O., sleeves rolled up, arms and shirt splattered with blood, looked at the two of them, looked into their faces and nodded. His glance took in the projectile sticking out of the soldier’s collarbone and back, and he sucked air between his teeth and called for assistance. He reached for the morphine and the carbolic acid and he went to work.
My Love
I am sending this letter from our new location. After breakfast and without w
arning, our section was told to pack up and get ready to march. Irish and I did not march, as it turned out, and travelled by motor ambulance all the way. We camped in a large field and now we are billeted in barns and lofts and tents. I am in a tent. I am not permitted to name the nearby town. Censor’s strokes may already be through this letter. One of my first jobs was to sort through a hill of equipment that belonged to wounded men who were sent back to Blighty. Whenever possible, the kit follows along behind. It was a mess of a job but I managed to get things straightened out. It is queer to see the keepsakes the boys squirrel away: a rabbit’s foot; a ball-bearing; a tiny pocket light; a length of coloured cord; a calendar diary no more than an inch square; a spent bullet casing with a pencil cleverly stuck into its end; a photo—everyone has a photo.
The boys we look after here are in a room crowded with three rows of beds. It is somewhat of a hospital and rest station, and both Irish and I will be here for CENSORED. The injuries are not severe enough for Blighty, and once the boys are healed, they are sent back up the line. Some have infections; many have joints swollen from arthritis. Every ailment you can think of. I am learning the meaning of things I did not know when I worked for Dr. Whalen. DAH means disorderly action of the heart. PUO means pyrexia of unknown origin, a fancy way of saying fever. But you probably know these things from your work at the school hospital.
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