by S C Worrall
They have promised to wait for each other, for as long as necessary. And he trusts her implicitly. But sometimes pangs of jealousy make his imagination run riot, as he imagines her, in a low-cut evening dress, in the green room of a West End theatre, chatting and laughing with Michael Redgrave and his thespian crowd, fantasies he immediately feels ashamed of and tries to banish from his mind.
It’s not just Nancy. He keenly misses Aunt D. and all the family at Whichert House, above all his sister, Roseen; and, of course, Scamp, the dog. Sometimes, he imagines he is back in his attic room, the grandfather clock ticking on the landing, surrounded by that feeling of total safety, and happiness, he knew as a child when he came home for the holidays.
If he were doing something worthwhile, it would be easier. But he’s not. It’s the paperwork he hates most. When they arrived in France they were told that nearly all office paperwork would cease. Instead, it has quadrupled. To keep the officers busy, HQ demands a constant stream of reports, suggestions, and schemes: how to attack a German position or ward off a tank assault; how to make an amphibious landing; how to improve the men’s marching capabilities. War breeds paperwork, like maggots.
He pulls a letter from the pile and opens it. It is addressed to a woman named Maureen, in Princes Risborough. The writer, a private from C Company, prints in large, childish letters. So it’s easy to read. Martin strikes out the word ‘French’ and blacks out some details of the convoy’s journey from Le Havre.
The men’s missives home are subject to another, more personal kind of censorship. Like Martin, when he writes to Nancy, they censor their feelings, concealing anything that might cause alarm or worry for their loved ones back in England. Honesty is the first casualty of war. Their letters are unfailingly cheerful. They never complain. They say how much they miss their wives, the football, and proper English beer, not this ‘foreign muck’, as they call the rich, amber ales from Belgium, many of them brewed in ancient monasteries to recipes handed down over generations.
Martin sighs, takes his stamp, presses it into the ink pad, and brings it down hard on the envelope. ‘Passed by Censor 1450.’
‘How’s the homework going?’ Hugh Saunders’ face is silhouetted in the lamplight.
Martin rolls his eyes. ‘You off to bed?’
‘Yes. James thrashed me three times. I think that’s enough.’ Hugh yawns. ‘Heard from Nancy?’
‘Day before yesterday,’ Martin says. ‘But the post is abominably slow at the moment. How about you? Everything all right at home?’
‘The usual. My sister bellyaching about her job, Mum worrying . . .’ He laughs, then turns to leave. ‘’Night then.’
‘’Night, Hugh.’
When Hugh has retreated, Martin pushes the pile of letters aside, lays out a sheet of writing paper, unscrews the top of his pen and brings it to the paper.
My Only Love,
I am sitting in the mess. I’m almost the last one up. If I close my eyes, I am there with you again, on that blissful afternoon when we drove up to Penn and lay in each other’s arms on a rug, under the lark-filled sky. The sunlight is falling across your face. Above us, that gnarled oak tree spreads its branches. Remember the rainbow? I can hear your voice. Feel your lips on mine. Our bodies pressed together. In the very white of love.
Here, a mass of things to do has fallen upon us from the higher authorities: hiring furniture for the canteen, arranging for a laundry, fetching coal, visiting the field cashier, mending the roads cracking under the thaw, organizing a concert, getting material for electric lighting, interpreting, acting as HQ mess secretary (HQ, a glorified housekeeper), placating every other officer who wants something made for his own company, training the platoon whenever it escapes trench digging and road mending, blacking out countless windows, laboriously working out how to operate the hot water system for a school where C Company is billeted, acting as office boy for the company commander, and generally wasting my time in unpleasant weather and surroundings, either very cold or heavy with damp and mud, by day or night.
Today, I’m orderly officer so I have to do odd jobs like inspecting the billets and hanging dirty laundry. A useful skill for a future husband, I am sure you’ll agree. Companies are scattered about the area so we don’t see much of the other battalion officers. But I visit them to listen to their complaints and demands about ‘improvement of billets’. The little diagram below will give you an idea of this place . . .
He starts to draw, then covers the sheet, as Elliott Viney and a group of other officers walk by. Including maps of any kind in a letter is strictly forbidden, something he should know better than anyone, as one of the battalion’s censors. But this self-censorship is one more thing he hates about this war: the way that it disfigures the insides of people, not just the outside. When he writes to Nancy, he wants to tell her everything, be honest with her, share his fears and frustrations, so that she can feel what he is really going through. Their relationship had been built on trust. They have promised each other that, whatever happens, they will tell each other the truth. They did not want to live the way their parents lived, where everything was hidden behind a veneer of manners and tact. Now, the Army has forced him to erect a new kind of barrier. And this makes him feel even further from her.
His pen hovers above the paper. To hell with it, he thinks. Moving the pen a few lines down, he sketches a few lines on the page, indicating the main streets and the main square, careful not to name any of them and omitting any details that could be useful to the enemy.
It takes about ten minutes to walk up the cobbled street across the muddy dirt square, past empty shops and slovenly houses down to the billets of my company and the Battalion HQ. The countryside is flat and fairly fertile and every now and then slag heaps and mines appear to relieve the horizon but not the monotony. At night when I’ve been out I’ve seen the lights of the buildings all round shining faintly – there is no complete blackout here, everyone uses blue distemper on windows, and the glare from the vast furnace at the gas works combines with the whistling of the wind, the distant shunting of train engines and the clatter of hobnailed boots on the cobbles.
All the platoons in HQ Company have fixed up their own little storerooms and cubbyholes. We have a cosy little room with a homemade stove, a home-made desk, and electric light put up by the sergeant major and excellent racks and shelves. We have collected a good set of tools.
If only all this activity actually achieved something. The M.O., Trevor Gibbens, says, ‘I think half the trouble is that we get up too early for no apparent reason, and don’t drink enough water.’ I like Trevor a lot. He just finished his training at St Thomas’ and was at Cambridge before that where he did some acting with the ‘Mummers’. He reads and loves music and is still young at heart. Amongst his jobs as the medical officer is the chlorination of all the water the troops drink. Mostly, though, we drink vin rouge ordinaire and quite passable beer, blonde or brune. Whisky doesn’t feature more than one evening a week.
No one wants the war to begin in earnest but at least if it did it would bring out the best in the battalion, instead of dulling and demoralizing so many fine men. People may say that living as they do the men are hardened and smartened, but deep down they must hate this endless wait, full of irritations and entirely empty of those things which they enjoy and love.
This evening I censored forty-nine letters, most from husbands to wives. From them I glean news of hardships, longings, sadness, but also great cheerfulness and determination to put up with anything. They cannot even find a good pint of beer. And to feel their own willingness and good nature smooths away my own frustrations. Above all, the fact that I can’t see you.
Outside, an owl hoots. He’s alone in the mess now. Everyone else has gone to bed. It’s so quiet that, when he closes his eyes, he can almost imagine her standing beside him.
The mittens you sent are so soft I keep them with me all the time. The beautiful sweater and humourless braces – ‘she gave us t
o you, we know she loves you, we will rest on your shoulders while her arms are not there’. Your socks banish the cold, your fancy blue slippers always wait for me upstairs, the photographs of you hang, three of them above our dressing table, in a garish frame which used to hold coloured views of Lake Geneva. The other photo I wear around my neck. The ring shines on my finger.
Thank you so much for your wonderful letters. I keep them under my bed and when the others have fallen asleep I take them out and read them. It’s like having you lying next to me, talking. They bring back our time together. The train to London. That little Italian restaurant, where you told me about Munich. Rowing on Christchurch Meadows. Kissing with the blinds drawn in that railway carriage. The early chapter of our love. Then all this ugliness disappears and beauty can open her eyes and smile.
I won’t become brutalized. I promise. Although this place is dreary as hell I still find some light. I have time to read and to remember. My French is coming back to me. I find I can speak more fluently than any of the other officers.
I could go on writing to you for ever, my love, about the humorous side of Army life: the effort to keep one’s toes warm, the length of my hair, the jokes I have with the men, so many things. What makes me sad is to think of the waste of this time: learning destruction (and wanting you the whole time) and preparing for something beyond imagination (but always longing for you and hoping that it won’t be long before I see you).
Now I am writing rather loosely and sleepily. I shouldn’t use brackets except (I love you so much). Please thank your mother for the warmest and friendliest scarf I’ve ever had. It reminds me of the drawing room at Blythe Cottage and the armchair with knitting needles hidden under the cushions.
Goodbye for the moment, my infinite love. More scraps of news will follow soon. Don’t feel worried yet. Martin.
10 MARCH 1940
Wahagnies
The Phony War, as everyone calls this protracted period of waiting, is in full swing. An attack by the Germans on France is expected, and could be imminent, but no one knows when. So Martin and the rest of the battalion wait for the action to begin, digging trenches that they will probably never use because, as all the officers agree, the Germans will almost certainly attack from a different direction.
But at least, the spring is coming. Water drips from the roof above Martin’s head. Sparrows twitter in the branches of the plane tree outside his window. This sound is drowned out, though, by the roar of Hugh’s snoring, recently replacing Gibbens as his room mate. Every morning, they have the same argument: Martin says he can’t sleep because of Hugh’s snoring, Hugh says, ‘You should hear yourself, sounds like you are sawing logs!’
Martin swings his legs over the side of the bed, dresses, crosses the room to Nancy’s photo on the mantelpiece, puts his fingers to his lips, then touches the glass.
‘Morning, sir!’ Cripps beams. ‘Perfect day for a game of footie, eh?’
There has been talk of nothing else for days: a friendly match between a French Army team and the Ox and Bucks, to be played at the rugby stadium in Lens, a mining town of several hundred thousand inhabitants crammed into cramped, brick houses, which even the spring sunshine cannot cheer. Black smoke belches from chimneys, slag heaps claw the sky.
‘It’s like Port Talbot.’ Jenkins points at an abandoned house as he steers the Panopticon through the streets.
‘Only worse.’ Topper lights a cigarette, stares blankly out of the window.
Spectators have been transported to the match from all across the Pas de Calais. The streets are choked with French families, the men are in dark blue overalls and caps, the women in floral skirts and scarves. As the teams run into the stadium a huge cheer goes up. The French are in blue shirts and white shorts, with red socks. The Swans, as the Ox and Bucks team is known, is resplendent in a black and gold strip. Martin would have loved to have played. But the battalion has one of the best Army teams in the country. Several of their players were professionals before the war. They would make mincemeat of a toff like him, from Oxford.
In the First World War, the generals frowned on football. They thought it made the men ill-disciplined and too tired for battle. They all played the public school game, rugby. Football was working class, vulgar. Then they discovered its healing properties: that for men facing the trauma and horror of the trenches, kicking a leather ball around when they were in reserve raised morale and kept them healthy. Footballs were ordered from England, leagues were created, one recruiting poster showed a group of British soldiers kicking a German helmet around in the mud.
Martin knows that, in their own, small way, they are doing something similar: strengthening a fragile alliance at a critical moment in Europe’s history. Many in France secretly feel they should not be supporting the British. A few weeks ago, reports reached Martin and the rest of the officers that a pro-Nazi rally had been held in the town. Mostly just a few nutters and extremists. But the match today is being staged as a show of solidarity and patriotism. As a French regimental band strikes up ‘The Marseillaise’, the home team square their shoulders and look skywards, as though seeking heavenly benediction, while their supporters bellow out their revolutionary anthem.
The battalion’s band is up next. They spent all yesterday evening shining and polishing, and, as they lift their instruments to their lips, a ripple of flashes goes down the line, like lightning. Cripps leans over to Martin and points out Topper, his trombone held perfectly horizontal in front of him. The bandmaster raises his baton and they launch into the first bars of ‘God Save the King’. Up in the stands, Martin and the rest of the British fans pull their shoulders back, puff out their chests, and sing till it feels the roof will come off the stadium. The French might beat us at football, but there’s no way they are going to win a singing contest.
As the anthem comes to a close, the players sprint out onto the field. A BBC commentator, who has been sent out to cover the match, talks animatedly into his microphone. Martin wonders whether the Whelans are listening, imagines them grouped around the big, brown wireless they heard the declaration of war on.
‘Come on, you Swans!’ Hugh Saunders bellows, as the referee blows his whistle and the game gets underway.
The two teams’ tactics perfectly mirror the nations they serve. The French are smaller, but full of Gallic trickery and elegance: neat passing, intricate triangles, tricky footwork, a tendency to over-elaborate in front of goal. The British are all hustle and bustle, tackling like lions, never giving up, but lacking in skill and technique what they so abundantly possess in physical prowess and guts. Within ten minutes, a sea of Tricolours turns the stadium red, white and blue, as the French score from the penalty spot: 1–0 to France.
The Ox and Bucks battle their way back into the game, nearly scoring ten minutes later. But the centre forward, a tall, broad-shouldered striker with a shock of black hair, collides with one of his own players and they end up getting entangled in each other’s arms.
‘Come on, fellers!’ Jenkins screams. ‘This isn’t effing dance classes!’
The French are soon screaming, too, as the Swans central defender, a short, boxy man with blond hair and a lantern jaw, who has spent most of the first half fouling the opposition, scythes down the French winger with an outrageous tackle, tearing a nasty gash in his opponent’s shin.
‘Envoyez-le au large!’ an incensed Frenchman in a beret shouts next to Martin. ‘Send him off!’
‘Get up, you French tosser!’ retorts Cripps.
A scuffle breaks out, a few punches are thrown, then the referee blows the whistle for half-time. Martin pulls a wad of francs from his jacket. ‘Joe, go and buy the men some drinks, eh?’
For the second half, Hugh moves back a row, so he is standing next to Martin. They are both chugging down beers. The Swans start at a frenetic tempo, bombing down the wings to the dead ball line, hitting crosses to the giant centre forward. Most fly high or wide. But the thud, as his head does finally connect with the he
avy leather ball, sending it arcing into the goal, can be heard throughout the stadium: 1–1.
Hugh and Martin dance up and down, punching their fists in the air, like pistons, and singing. The delirium is short-lived. Within minutes, the star of the French team, a lissom midfielder with exquisite technique, spins away from a challenge near the centre circle, shifts the ball from his right to his left foot, accelerates and, with the balance of a dancer, weaves his way through a throng of British players before rounding the goalkeeper and sliding the ball gently into the net: 2–1 to France.
‘Ça c’est le foot!’ the miner next to Martin shouts. ‘That’s football!’
It is. And for most of the rest of the half, the Swans chase shadows, outplayed and outclassed by superior opposition. They never give up, though. They are rewarded for their efforts when the centre forward receives a long, booming kick from the goalkeeper that lands close to the opposition’s penalty box. He brings the ball down on his chest and, screening it from the French defender, spins and fires the ball into the roof of the net: 2–2.
The last ten minutes are played at a frantic pace as a wave of red, white and blue sweeps across the pitch towards the Swans’ goal. But they fail to convert their chances. Then, against the run of play, with only a minute to spare, the Swans’ resilience is rewarded when one of the French defenders tries to be a little too fancy and back-heels the ball to the goalkeeper from twenty yards out. There is no pace on the ball, though, and, as it rolls invitingly across the grass, the Ox and Bucks centre forward pounces, weaves round the goalkeeper, then fires the ball into the French goal: 3–2 to England.