When Shadows Fall

by Paul Reid

  “Lieutenant Adam Bowen,” he introduced himself. “I’m looking for my platoon. I understand Captain Blevins is inside.”

  “Sir.” The private saluted and stood aside to allow him entry.

  Several heads were bowed over the table. Fingers stabbed at lines on maps, voices growled and recriminated. The place stank of animal feed, tobacco smoke, and sweat. Adam stood patiently to the back until a head lifted and he was recognised.

  “Bowen? Jesus, Lieutenant, where have you been?” A man of about Adam’s age approached. Captain Blevins was slightly shorter than Adam, white-skinned with hair of mousy red. His blue eyes strained from his skull as though he hadn’t slept in weeks.

  “Took a knock on the first night of the bombardment, Captain,” Adam apologised. “I was taken back for dressing and only got out this morning. We’re on the run, I take it? Where’s my platoon, sir?”

  Blevins glanced back to the table, to the hunched figure of Colonel Mallory, his whiskered countenance glowering over the maps. “Yes, we’re on the run, and I haven’t the foggiest what’s going to happen next. I’d say he doesn’t either. But I’m going to send you back to work, Bowen, if you’re up to it.”

  “Damn right I am, Captain.”

  “Your platoon is in Villers-Bretonneux. If the Germans get hold of that town, they’ll bomb Amiens to ruins. I gather that the Australians are getting ready to put up a stand, and your lads can give them a hand with it. Jerry’s kicking the stuffing out of us at the moment.” Blevins sighed and rubbed his tired eyes. “Get over there, Lieutenant. For God’s sake, tell your boys not to let us down.”

  “I’ll need a new rifle and some ammunition, sir. And another helmet.”

  “Go to stores. The cattle byre, that is. Next door.”

  “Sir.” Adam saluted and left the room.

  He hitched a ride on a cart transporting mounted machine guns towards Villers-Bretonneux. About twelve miles from Amiens, it was a cramped little commune surrounded by woodland and razed pasture. Adam clambered off the cart outside the town hall and walked east of the village to where a stone bridge forded a river. Another enquiry led him to his platoon, encamped amongst a bundle of farm outhouses.

  “You lazy lot,” he thundered, spotting a gaggle of familiar bodies sitting on wooden crates, eating and smoking. He concealed his relief at finding them and shook his head. “A disgrace, you are. What’s this? The seaside on a summer’s day?”

  They stared, smiled, and hopped to their feet, crowding towards him.

  “Lieutenant, you’re alive!”

  “Welcome back, Lieutenant!”

  “We thought the Hun had seen to you, Lieutenant. Those nurses must have patched you up good.”

  Adam snorted and took a seat on a munitions box, laying his rifle by his feet. “The Hun had better try harder than that. I hear you’re building defences out here.”

  One of them, freckle-faced and lean, told him, “The Australians have taken over the show for now. We’re just waiting for orders. How are you feeling, sir?”

  “I’m good, Rourke. The captain says we’re to give the Aussies a hand, but I’ll have to speak to their officers first. Tell me, any lunch going about?”

  A dixie burned on a communal fire, and they gave Adam a bowl of vegetable soup flavoured with chunks of bully beef. He waved away the offer of a cigarette and asked, “Are we all accounted for? I heard half the Dublin Fusiliers were blown away the other night.”

  The group around him didn’t immediately answer. Several lowered their heads, and Rourke cleared his throat. “Yeah, we lost a good few, sir. O’Malley, Tully, and McCormack are dead. Blaney and Edwards are missing. The other platoons fared a whole lot worse. They say the First and Second will have to be amalgamated, seeing as there’s hardly any of us left.”

  Adam dipped a bread slice into his soup. “And where’s Private Hannigan?”

  Again the heads bowed. No answer was forthcoming.

  “Rourke?” Adam asked. “Where’s Hannigan? I spoke to him only yesterday.”

  Rourke looked to his comrades, as if urging them to address the question, then he shrugged in regret and said, “We lost Timmy too, sir.”

  “You what?”

  “I mean, not killed. But we lost him. He ran.”

  A half-swallowed gulp of soup curdled inside Adam’s throat. He spat it out. “What do you mean he ran?”

  “We were ordered into a rearguard action last night on the Crozat Canal, German storm-troopers all over it like flies. We tried to slow ’em down to allow time to get the gun carriages out. Timmy—Timmy lost it.”

  “What happened?”

  “There was heavy fire, all sides. We was outnumbered, too. We began to retreat back across the fields, and then I saw Timmy. He was acting strangely, crying, grabbing his head. Then I knew what he was going to do.” Rourke hesitated. “Christ, Lieutenant, I wanted to go with him, as scared as I was. But there were officers watching. I yelled at Timmy to come back. He didn’t listen, he kept on running.”

  “And?”

  “And they grabbed him in the next village. Captain Blevins and his men. They arrested him.” Rourke met Adam’s eye. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  Adam swiped the soup bowl off his knee and cursed. “Damn it. Damn it! Blevins? He said nothing to me earlier.”

  “It’s true, sir,” said one of the other privates. “I heard Timmy’s being held under arrest in Amiens, awaiting court-martial for cowardice.”

  Court-martial.

  For those who ran away in the heat of battle, punishment was swift and deadly. A final punishment. Adam had witnessed it already in the war. But not Timmy. Surely not Timmy Hannigan, who had saved his life.

  He leapt to his feet. “Damn that Blevins, the sneaky bastard. Amiens, you said?”

  “Yes. But, sir,” Rourke warned, “you won’t be able to help him. And he’s not the only one they’ve taken.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Adam snatched up his rifle and left the bewildered platoon of soldiers. He marched back into the village and was able to cajole a horse from a Welsh captain who was a little worse the wear for drink. Then he rode, hard, back along the twelve miles to Amiens.

  When he reached the command post, he snapped his fingers at the private on guard and demanded the whereabouts of Captain Blevins. He was then directed to another building two miles through the fields.

  “But I shouldn’t go out there if I were you, sir,” the private advised. “They’re about to—”

  Adam rode on.

  When he found it, he ditched the horse, brushed past the attentions of two sentries, and thundered through a side gate round the back of the farmhouse. There was a long yard, stubbled with grass and weeds. Several officers had congregated under the awning of an open woodshed and beyond, at the far end of the yard, were three wooden posts.

  The three accused had been bound fast to the posts with thick rope, securing them from their feet to their chests like stringed meat. A patch of white cloth blindfolded their eyes.

  Nearby, a priest intoned prayers, while twelve men stood with their backs to the targets, rifles by their feet. Adam let out an exhausted breath.

  “Jesus, no.”

  Some of the officers had noticed his intrusion. Captain Blevins moved from their ranks and grabbed Adam’s arm. “Lieutenant Bowen, in heaven’s name, man,” he whispered, “what are you doing here? Who let you in?”

  “You knew,” Adam hissed. “You knew earlier, when I met you. Christ, Captain, Timmy’s innocent. He was frightened, that’s all. I know he ran, but you don’t have to do this.”

  “Shh.” Blevins ushered him towards the gate. “This is a military procedure, Lieutenant. Remember your rank, damn it. You’re not allowed in here. The colonel’s watching.”

  “Damn the colonel,” Adam snapped.

  Now they had drawn attention again. Colonel Mallory sniffed in annoyance. “Might we not have decorum, Captain Blevins?”

  “Yes, sir,”
Blevins answered, trying to nudge Adam to the gate.

  “Can’t you control your own company, Captain?”

  “Yes, sir. Just about to, sir.”

  “Timmy’s no coward.” Adam addressed Mallory directly, trying to curb the panic in his own voice. “Sir, that boy’s been fighting for you for four years.”

  At his voice, one of the bound bodies twitched. A weak, high voice piped up. “Lieutenant? Is that you, Lieutenant? Oh, thank God. I can’t see—”

  Adam swallowed hard and turned back to Blevins. “Please, Captain. Please. For the love of God, don’t do this.”

  Blevins winced, pain evident in his eyes. “It’s not my call, Lieutenant. The colonel has to make examples. You know that yourself. Otherwise the whole army would—”

  “Ready!”

  Suddenly the twelve-strong firing squad stooped to their weapons, picked them up, armed the mechanisms, and turned.

  “No, Jesus,” Adam struggled against Blevins’s pinioning hands.

  “Aim!”

  The squad lifted the rifles to their shoulders and picked their beads.

  “Captain, please,” Adam begged, his eyes fixed upon the posts at the far end. “Captain, don’t let them—”

  “Fire!”

  Timmy’s body jolted under the sudden battery of bullets. The report echoed over the yard as his skull opened out in a fine spray behind his back. Silence followed, sudden and stark. Nobody moved. His white blindfold slipped and drifted towards the ground, delicate as a dust mote upon a spring zephyr.

  “Turn about. Quick march!”

  The twelve men shouldered their rifles and marched out, past the unblinking, untouched expressions of the gathered officers. There was no trumpet, no drum, no solemn afterword. Three unmoving corpses hung limply from the posts across the yard.

  Adam shoved Blevins so hard that the latter tumbled headlong over a row of wine casks. Colonel Mallory looked again, and this time glared directly at him.

  “You! Lieutenant whomever-you-are. You will conduct yourself in my presence. You are a disgrace and a—”

  “I’m going.” Adam pulled the Lee-Enfield rifle from his shoulder and tossed it at Blevins. “Keep it, Captain. I have no more need of it. I don’t think I can ever fire that thing in your favour again.” With recrimination in his ears, he stormed out of the farmyard, found his horse, and rode back towards Villers-Bretonneux.

  Timmy Hannigan’s diary was still in his haversack. Timmy’s last mark upon the earth. And Adam remembered his promise.

  He couldn’t let that diary out of his sight again.

  Despite his remonstrations, Adam did indeed fire his rifle in the service of Captain Blevins once more.

  At the end of March, the German divisions pushed into Villers-Bretonneux and drove out the Allies with artillery, mustard gas, and tanks. Adam was ordered to join the counterattack and follow the Australian brigades who were instigating a pincer movement to surround the German positions. The battered village was already a slaughterhouse as the German machine-gun nests took their pound of flesh from the advancing troops. Adam’s platoon soon found themselves pinned behind a ruined church tower, all of them half-deafened by the relentless gunfire.

  “I see the gun posts ahead,” Adam yelled to the men around him. “Christ, they’re making short work of us. We’re going to have to take out those damn posts.”

  “How, sir?” Private Rourke shouted back. “We’re hemmed in here like bloody sheep.”

  Adam laid down his gear and retrieved two Mills bombs, cast-iron grenades grooved like miniature pineapples. Rourke shook his head.

  “Sir, they’ll shred you before you can ever get close.”

  “Move yourselves across the square,” Adam ordered him, “and smother the bastards with as much lead as you can manage. The distraction will give me time.”

  “But sir—”

  “Just do it, for Christ’s sake. All of you. Go!”

  He waved them on and took a moment to watch them sprint to the cover of the overturned carts and stone walls. Then he looked up ahead and saw the flash of machine-gun fire where the German positions were. He began his charge.

  Nothing came near him for several seconds as the German gunners projected all their efforts towards the men in cover. Adam ran on, pulling the pin from the first Mills bomb, arching his arm high and watching the grenade sail through the air. He pulled the second pin, moved closer to the next gun post, and threw again.

  It proved to be his last ever action of the war.

  Two bright, violent explosions abruptly cut off the German guns. Both posts were blown to pieces, the men inside them ripped apart by the fragmenting grenades.

  But Adam was far too close.

  He was vaguely aware that he was hurtling through the air, lumps of wood and debris flying all around, before he saw a sheer wall of granite coming fast towards him.

  And after that, there was nothing.

  Germany’s Spring Offensive, begun in March, had been intended to end the war and ensure a final German triumph. Just four months later, however, after a crushing defeat on the Marne, that offensive was over and so began a series of Allied drives that would bring the German army to its knees. The kaiser abdicated on November 9, and slipped across the Dutch border into exile. On November 11, Germany surrendered, an armistice was signed, and the war was finished.

  By the time the armistice was announced across Europe, Adam Bowen was lying in a ward in the Second Eastern General Hospital at Brighton on the south coast of England. There was much cheer in the ward from those who were physically up to it. Others, less lucky, didn’t comprehend.

  Adam understood it well enough, but he felt no relief and declined a nurse’s offer of a tot of rum to join in with toasting the good news. Instead he turned on his side, spoke to no one, and recalled the day when he had left France forever.

  Captain Blevins had been in the casualty clearing station on that day, pacing about the beds, nodding at the wounded, throwing out a few hackneyed words of encouragement. When he came to Adam’s bed, his awkwardness was plain to see. Relations had been thoroughly soured after Timmy’s execution and Adam’s accompanying outburst. The colonel had pilloried Blevins over the incident, and Blevins in turn had promised Adam a court-martial before the week was out. But the subsequent German assault and Adam’s role in taking out the defences at Villers-Bretonneux meant that the court-martial was quickly discarded, and it was a humbler-looking Captain Blevins who next met him.

  “Good news, Lieutenant. You’re being invalided back to England today, I’ve had it confirmed. A chance for a wee rest and some decent grub for a change, eh? You’ll be back fighting fit before you know it.”

  Adam had received severe shrapnel wounds from the grenade burst. His eyes had been temporarily blinded, and weeks later, his vision still hadn’t returned to normal. Stitched rents and gashes covered half his upper body and most of his legs. Yet nothing stirred his anger more now than the sight of Captain Blevins’s idiotic nonchalance, his infuriating chin up, lad approach, as though nothing had ever happened.

  “I’m leaving the army, Captain.”

  “Ho, ho. You say that now, Bowen, but you’d only miss it.”

  “I’m leaving the army, Captain.”

  “Oh, did I mention? They’re going to recommend you for the Victoria Cross for what you did, taking out those German gun posts. Even Mallory was impressed. Well deserved, too. You’ll probably have to go to Buckingham Palace to receive it—imagine!”

  “I’m leaving the army, Captain.”

  “Well, that’s understandable. That you’d want to. But you can’t leave without being discharged, Lieutenant, and our battalion—”

  “Oh, get out.”

  Blevins frowned. “Excuse me?”

  “I said, get out. You’re a fool, Blevins. And a backstabber.”

  Blevins stepped back before taking a breath. “You’re out of line, Lieutenant, speaking to a superior officer like that. I’ve been nothing
but kind to you. I got you off that court-martial.”

  “Kind to me, were you?” Adam glared at him. “A pity you weren’t so kind to Private Hannigan.”

  Blevins shifted his eyes. “That’s not my responsibility. Nor my fault. But that young man—”

  “He wasn’t a young man, Captain. He was a boy.” Adam gestured towards the door. “That’s our business done with each other, I think. And you can tell them where to stick that VC medal, too.”

  Blevins’s face reddened. He bit his lip in anger before turning away and marching out of the station.

  The memory was still vivid, months later, lying here in Brighton. Adam closed his eyes, weary in every inch of his body. His hand slipped beneath the pillow and rubbed the rough, leathery surface of Timmy’s diary. Not once had he read it, nor even opened it. But the words within seemed to reach out and voice themselves, even through that merest touch.

  “I’m sorry, Private,” he whispered, remembering the wide-eyed youngster he’d taken under his wing all those years ago. “I couldn’t help you. I couldn’t bring you home. And I’m so sorry.”

  Around the ward, limp-legged men and rose-cheeked nurses hugged each other and sang and raised their glasses to victory and King George and empire forever.

  DUBLIN 1919

  The rain had fallen softly all morning, but now it turned to hail, spiteful and loud, skittering off the limestone headstones as she knelt on the cropped grass of the cemetery. It was late evening and the unsettled sky would soon give up its light. Though merely October, winter was upon the air, and the coldness pinched the soft skin of her hands as she placed the wreath upon the pebbled grave.

  Dock leaves and ragwort had resumed their dogged colonisation of the plot. She pulled them out and scattered them aside, knowing full well that their progeny was already conceived beneath the black soil. The wreath she placed was made of artificial flowers, for fresh ones would be in scant supply with the passing of summer, and she determined that the grave should have colour even through the darkness of winter.