The Promise

by Lesley Pearse

  Blessard hadn’t been back since that day, but she had made sure she was never again alone in the shop. Garth had said he’d wring the man’s neck if he came to the Railway. Yet Miranda’s remark about him being stimulated by her past niggled at Belle. She knew what it was to have men becoming obsessive about her. However, as Miranda had pointed out, now she could ride a bicycle she could whizz past him if he tried to waylay her.

  Chapter Eleven

  1916

  Etienne leaned back against a tree stump, lit a cigarette, closed his eyes and savoured the warm May sun on his face. It was so good to have a few days away from the front line at Verdun, to be able to sleep, eat, and mend his tattered uniform and his frayed spirits. The stench of dead bodies lying in No Man’s Land had become ever more sickening since the weather grew warmer, men were going down with dysentery, supplies of drinking water got held up, often they had no time during the endless assaults even to eat their rations.

  For now all he wanted was to imagine he was at home on his small farm near Marseille, but the constant sound of gunfire in the distance prevented that.

  He had first come to Verdun when he was twenty. It had been a jewel of a place then. The medieval city with its narrow, winding streets had enchanted him, and when he stood on the old city walls and looked down, there was the sparkling River Meuse meandering through fertile green pastures and woods. When he saw the ring of stone forts on the surrounding hills, twenty small ones and four big ones, the history lessons he’d had as a small boy came back to him. It was the last place to fall in the Franco-Prussian war, and had held out for ten long weeks before surrendering.

  Because of its history and the courage of the people who fought so savagely to keep it in French hands, it held a special place in the heart of every Frenchman. This of course was exactly why the Germans wanted to take it. They knew the French generals would send every man they could to defend the city, and then with their formidable army and firepower they could bleed France dry, thereby knocking Britain’s ‘Best Sword’ out of its hand.

  Those green pastures he remembered were now barren wasteland, peppered with bomb craters, the trees uprooted by enemy fire or cut down for fires and trench props. No birds sang there, and whether that was because of lack of trees for cover, the sound of guns, or soil that must be soaked in soldiers’ blood, he didn’t know. But if he had been a bird he wouldn’t want to stay in such a sorry place either.

  Dotted all around him were other French soldiers, doing exactly the same as he was, savouring a few days’ rest and respite from the front. Back behind him in what once had been a small village, still more men were getting a meal and a few drinks at an estaminet, a simple café with rough wooden tables and benches.

  There was also the sound of splashing and raucous laughter coming from somewhere close by. Whether it was at a pond, stream or merely a crater full of rainwater, he didn’t know, but he thought he might go and join them in a while. The opportunity to strip off his filthy clothes and wash all over was not to be missed.

  When Etienne had marched here as a raw recruit back in October 1914, it was believed Verdun was invincible, as it was virtually surrounded by hills and ridges on both banks of the Meuse and guarded by rings of forts, Fort Douaumont being the strongest and most dominating. And so it seemed right up to the New Year of 1916, as they had held their ground despite heavy bombardment from the enemy. Fort Douaumont could and should have held fast, but General Joffre in his wisdom removed most of the guns to use them elsewhere on the front.

  Etienne still winced with horror when he thought back to dawn on 21 February, when the Germans attacked again, this time with unbelievable force. It transpired they had been secretly bringing in men and heavy guns for some time, but their reconnaissance planes had intercepted any English or French aircraft that might have reported back on the intense activity.

  Along the entire eight-mile front, fire rained down on the French, uprooting trees, tossing them into the air, and killing and wounding many thousands of men. The German guns destroyed French communication lines and effectively blocked reinforcements coming in.

  Etienne was one of Lieutenant-Colonel Driant’s Chasseurs, and under his command they offered stubborn resistance, but it was to no avail. Gallant Driant was killed later that afternoon as he was attempting to pull back to Beaumont with the remnants of his battalion. A substantial part of the front line had caved in, and the French losses were horrific, but Etienne felt they had managed to give the enemy a bloody nose as their casualties were very high too, especially amongst their valuable storm troops.

  On 24 February Samongneux fell to the Germans before dawn. The 51st and the 72nd Divisions lost two thirds of their men and were at breaking point. Beaumont was next, and the Moroccan Trailleurs and Algerian Zouaves who had only recently arrived were fed piecemeal into the battle without any prepared defences against either the bitter cold or the relentless German bombardment, and soon Fort Douaumont fell too.

  Every Frenchman here could appreciate that the fall of Fort Douaumont would send shock waves all over France, not only because it was a source of national pride, but because it left the way clear for the enemy to take the city of Verdun.

  Yet abandonment of the city so dear to France was unthinkable, and it was General Pétain who prevented it. Maybe this hard-headed man would have opted for controlled withdrawal if he had had the choice, but knowing he had not, he became set on defence. Pétain had two priceless qualities: a real grasp of the nature of modern firepower, and command of the respect and trust of front-line soldiers.

  Etienne remembered how his appearance at Verdun had immediately restored confidence and boosted morale. He played the Germans at their own game by ordering his artillery to inflict the maximum casualties on them. As the rail links to Verdun had already been severed, he took care to ensure supplies were brought in on a single-track road, which had now become known as the Voie Sacrée, or Sacred Way. Daily this road was one constant stream of vehicles bringing in reinforcements and supplies.

  Yet even before Pétain had made a real impact on the battlefield, it seemed that the Germans were running out of steam. Etienne, like so many others, relished watching their struggle to haul their guns forward over shell-cratered ground, and enjoyed even more gunning them down remorselessly.

  The battles had raged on and on, both sides never getting a moment’s respite from awesome artillery fire. Each enemy attack was followed by a French counter-attack, and by the end of March it was said that the German casualties were almost as high as their own. But 88,000 French casualties were far too many.

  Now, in May, things were looking even worse, for General Pétain had been promoted and General Nivelle had taken over command, with General Mangin as divisional commander. Mangin was said to be one of the old school officers, all for attack without regard for the cost to his men. Already he had been dubbed ‘The Butcher’, or ‘The Eater of Men’, and Etienne could only see more misery ahead.

  He had lost every single friend he’d made when he first joined the army. As he was moved along the line, new soldiers had taken their place and become friends, but he had lost most of them too. Now he was reluctant to get to know anything personal about the men he fought with. In quiet times he would play cards and drink and joke with them, but he knew that if he got to know about their wives, children, family background, what they believed in, what their dreams were, their deaths would hurt far more.

  Each day he was in the front line he knew that it might be his last, and his only prayer was that he should be killed outright. He knew he couldn’t live the rest of his life with the terrible injuries he’d seen inflicted on other men.

  Sometimes he asked himself why his luck had held out this long. Was it because he’d learned survival skills at an early age? Or because he was quick, decisive and fearless, as Capitaine Beaudin had said when he promoted him to Caporal back in January? He’d also stated at the time that he was a fine soldier, a born leader and an asset to the
regiment. Etienne had smiled to himself, wondering whether the Capitaine would have put so much faith in him if he knew how he’d once lived.

  Etienne was roused from the reverie he’d sunk into by the sound of raised voices and got up to look back towards the village estaminet. He could see a truck and four men in English army khaki, in the midst of a bunch of French soldiers. Even from a distance of some 500 yards he could tell by the Englishmen’s demeanour that this was a situation which could turn into a fight.

  Relatively few English soldiers came this way, as they were busy defending the front line up around Ypres. Etienne thought they must be asking for directions to wherever they were bound for, but as the French soldiers were probably drunk, and few, if any of them, would be able to speak English, they had probably resorted to baiting them.

  Etienne didn’t want to see any bloodshed, so he felt he must intervene.

  As he got closer and could hear what was being said, he knew he was right about the situation. The Tommies were trying to get directions to the French army headquarters, and the French clearly did understand that much, but because they were so drunk they were enjoying being deliberately obstructive and making insulting remarks.

  Etienne was around a hundred yards from the estaminet when one of the Tommies strode up to the most vocal of the French soldiers and caught hold of his shoulders. It was clear he was about to punch him.

  ‘Don’t hit him, he’s just a drunken idiot,’ Etienne called out. ‘I can help you.’

  The English looked round in surprise. Etienne addressed the French soldiers then, saying they should be ashamed of themselves for not helping their Allies, at which they all shuffled back off into the estaminet.

  ‘Can I buy you all a drink?’ Etienne asked the English soldiers. ‘I’d like to make amends for my countrymen’s rudeness. I can give you directions and draw you a map.’

  The four men looked at one another, then the small, dark-haired corporal thanked him and said they’d like that.

  As the men weren’t keen to go inside with the men who had been insulting them, they sat down on the ground outside and Etienne bought a bottle of wine and shared it with them.

  ‘No beer here,’ he said as he handed round the glasses. ‘And the wine isn’t too good either.’

  He asked them where they were from, and explained roughly where the French headquarters was.

  The men referred to the short, wiry corporal as ‘Corp’. A fair-haired lad of no more than nineteen was called ‘Donkey’, for reasons Etienne could only guess at, and the big man who had been about to punch the French soldier was nicknamed ‘Bin’. The fourth man, whom they called ‘Red’ on account of his red hair, laughingly told him Bin had got his name because he’d always ‘Bin’ everywhere.

  As Etienne made a sketch of the route they needed to take, they asked him a few questions about Verdun, and how long he’d been at the front. In his reply he told them something of the horrors there. They had their own horror stories of Ypres too, but said that lately it had been fairly quiet, and they spent most days improving the conditions in the trenches.

  ‘You speak bloody good English,’ Red remarked. ‘Have you lived in England?’

  ‘I did once for nearly two years,’ Etienne replied. ‘I was in London, and you are from there too, aren’t you? I recognize the accent.’

  ‘I thought us Tommies all sounded the same to you Frenchies?’

  ‘Not once you get your ear in. If you lived in France for a while, you’d get to know the difference between someone from Paris and someone from the south,’ he said, looking hard at the Londoner. He seemed familiar, but Etienne couldn’t think why. He didn’t think he’d ever spoken to a red-headed Englishman, not here or anywhere else.

  ‘How are your lot holding up?’ the corporal asked. ‘We heard it’s been a massacre, over eighty thousand dead.’

  ‘So it has been said, perhaps even more,’ Etienne sighed. ‘But then the Boche have lost almost as many. What are you going to French headquarters for?’

  He noted the way they all exchanged glances.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me just because I bought you a drink,’ he said. ‘Only curious.’

  ‘Actually we’re picking up a couple of our men,’ Red said. ‘It’s not clear whether they deserted or just got lost. Your lot picked them up.’

  ‘But you’re not Red Caps, are you?’ Etienne despised military police and if he’d known these men were that he wouldn’t have bothered to help them.

  ‘Hell, no. This isn’t an official trip. Our captain’s a good man, and these two that went missing are old hands and good soldiers. We all thought they were on the wire when they didn’t get back after going over the top; we lost so many that night and some of the bodies just got buried in the mud. But then Captain got the message they’d been picked up and he remembered that there’d been thick fog on the night in question. It’s easy to lose all sense of direction in that. So he felt they should be brought back for him to question. If he’d sent the Red Caps after them they wouldn’t have a prayer.’

  Etienne raised one eyebrow. He’d never before heard of any officer, French or English, giving anyone the benefit of the doubt where desertion was concerned. He’d been told French soldiers were shot as they ran away at Ypres, but they weren’t deserting, just trying to escape poison gas. ‘Then they are very lucky,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think deserters, whether intentional or accidental, should be shot,’ the red-headed man said heatedly. ‘It’s a waste of life. If they’re windy, they should be given jobs as base rats – they need men there just as badly as in the trenches.’

  ‘Our Little Red Reilly would stick up for the rights of a rat if it was about to bite him in the balls,’ the corporal said with a wry grin. ‘Good job we know he’s not a windy bastard.’

  The name Reilly gave Etienne a jolt. All four Tommies laughed, but he could only stare at Red in astonishment.

  It couldn’t be Jimmy, surely? Not just because he was a Londoner, called Reilly and had red hair. It was too much of an outlandish coincidence. Besides, Belle’s Jimmy was a publican, he wouldn’t have enlisted, not until it was compulsory. And even if he had, was it likely that fate would bring two men who loved the same woman together at a wayside estaminet in France?

  He had only seen Jimmy once, that day he went to Blackheath, and fleetingly and from a distance. All he really remembered about the man was that he was tall and had red hair; he hadn’t got a good look at his face. As for thinking he looked familiar, it could be that his mind was playing tricks on him and all these months of hell were finally making him crack. Reilly was a common enough English name; there must be hundreds in London alone.

  ‘What’s up, mate? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!’

  Etienne was jolted again by the corporal’s remark and forced a smile. ‘Just thinking how I’d react if a rat bit my balls,’ he said.

  Conversation resumed about the poison gas attacks. ‘We was lucky we’d been stood down that day,’ Bin said. ‘Their faces went black, they was coming out of the trenches tearing at their throats, ’orrible it was.’

  The corporal spoke of how they were told to cover their mouths and noses with a cloth soaked in water or their own urine, and said their captain had told them that the men who had died from it had actually drowned from the foam in their lungs.

  ‘You had any of it here?’ he asked.

  Etienne was just about to say that he hadn’t experienced it himself, but he’d heard a great deal about it from men who had, when the corporal’s attention was diverted by the sight of a man just inside the door of the estaminet with a plate of food.

  ‘They’ve got egg and chips,’ he exclaimed. ‘Gotta have some of that!’

  The corporal leapt to his feet, quickly followed by Bin and Donkey. Red asked them to get some for him too, and stayed with Etienne.

  Being suddenly alone with Red seemed the perfect time for Etienne to scotch his daft idea.

  ‘Wer
e you called Red back home, or did you get the name here?’ he asked.

  The man grinned. ‘At Etaples the drill sergeant called me carrot head. Once he saw I could shoot straight it became Red. It stuck with the other blokes, but my name is really James, known always as Jimmy.’

  Etienne felt a chill run down his spine and his mouth went dry. ‘What did you do before enlisting?’ he managed to ask.

  ‘Ran a public house with my uncle,’ Jimmy said. ‘Mostly I think I must’ve had a screw loose to join up. My wife was expecting, and I was still at Etaples when I got the news she’d lost the baby. I got sent home because she was so ill, and I can tell you, I was tempted not to come back.’

  ‘Is that why you are sympathetic to deserters?’

  ‘Maybe. Belle was in a bad way, she’d been attacked and robbed in the shop she ran, and I felt I shouldn’t have left her when I did. But she pulled through, even went back to her shop for a while. But she’s given that up now and she’s doing voluntary work at the Military Hospital.’

  Etienne wished he’d stayed sitting against the tree stump and hadn’t intervened with these men. That way he could have gone on believing that Belle was living the kind of happy life she deserved.

  ‘Nursing?’

  ‘Well, she’s the ward dogsbody, but she’s made of the right stuff to nurse. She’s got the crazy idea that if she gets some experience at the hospital, she can join the Red Cross after a bit and come out here and drive an ambulance.’

  ‘That’s no job for a woman,’ Etienne said. He’d only seen a couple of female ambulance drivers, and they’d been hatchet-faced women with nerves of steel. ‘It’s dangerous, they often come in quite close to the front line. Don’t let her do it.’