by S C Worrall
They jump from the lorry, grab a pile of sacks from the back and enter the farm building where the men sleep on two floors of lofts.
‘I’ll start here.’ Martin points down the first loft. ‘You two take the other end.’
Martin starts to move along the loft, turning over mattresses, shaking out pillows, rummaging through the men’s belongings. But it’s not contraband he is looking for. It’s letters. The battalion has to be prepared to move at a moment’s notice. All extra weight has to be jettisoned.
‘Well, look what we’ve got here!’ Cripps holds up a pile of French pornographic postcards. He stares at one, dumbstruck.
‘Blimey!’ says Jenkins. ‘Talk about contortions!’
‘Down, boy!’ Martin comes over and takes the cards, glances at one, pulls a face, then tosses them into a sack.
They go on searching, rifling through knapsacks, turning out cupboards, searching under mattresses like detectives at a crime scene, except the only crime the soldiers have committed is to be loved. Martin hates having to do this. The men’s letters are their last tangible link to home. Their most precious possession. But war spares no thought for sentiment.
There are letters stuffed into socks or boots; inside ammunition boxes or cubbyholes meant for food; taped behind beams. Some men have only a few letters; others have dozens. Some are wrapped in newspaper. Others are bundled up inside the men’s dirty underwear. One soldier had even cut a brick out of the wall and stuffed a bundle of letters wrapped in wax paper into it. After an hour, they have filled four sacks.
They throw the sacks into the back of the Panopticon with the ones they have already collected from other billets, then drive to the main square. On a piece of waste ground next to it, they pile up broken wooden crates, cardboard boxes, branches.
A group of soldiers, on their way back from exercises, stops to watch them. Cripps douses the pile with petrol, tosses a match. They stand in a circle, their faces glowing in the light of the bonfire. Waiting for Martin to begin.
He has more than one hundred of her letters, wrapped in two bundles and tied with a red ribbon. They weigh less than a Sunday newspaper but in his hands now, as he stares into the fire, they feel like a hundred tons. His stomach churns. His feet are rooted to the spot. His hands won’t obey him. But he is their leader. He has to go first.
He steps forward and lobs the first bundle onto the fire. Letters from when they first met. The story of their early trysts. Their first chapter. Now, flames lick at the ink and paper, obliterating her version of their story. Their past. Their memories.
Cripps steps forward next. He has wrapped his letters in newspaper, and tied them with garden string. He drops the bundle into the fire, bows his head and walks back to his place in the circle. Jenkins only has half a dozen letters, but he too must drop them into the fire. Topper kneels theatrically, like a priest, in front of the blaze, feeding each letter singly into the fire, waiting for it to burn before dropping in another.
They return to the Panopticon to fetch the rest of the sacks. As well as letters, there are photographs and newspaper cuttings, children’s drawings and magazines. So many, they have to use a wheelbarrow to transport them to the fire and, with each load, the flames leap higher.
‘It’s like Guy Fawkes,’ says Jenkins, as more soldiers come and join the circle.
‘Without the Guy.’
The sun begins to sink behind the trees, making the outlines of the men glow, so they look to Martin like fire-worshipping Zoroastrians. The men carry bundles of letters. Some say a few private words. Others kiss their packages before releasing them. Some cross themselves or kneel at the fire’s edge. Most move in silence, like automatons, drop their letters into the embers, bow their heads then stand stock still, like mourners at a graveside.
By the time Cripps has dumped the last barrow load in the fire, night has fallen. The mountain of burning paper glows and flickers in the darkness, like a beacon, sending out a message of alarm. The flames are so intense that Martin can feel the heat on his face.
He glances down at the bundle he still holds in his hand. The top letter has a London postmark: 5.15 p.m., 20 August 1939. Addressed to the training camp at Newbury Racecourse. The next one is postmarked 22 August. Blythe Cottage, Beaconsfield. In Germany, it is said they are burning books. Is it any less sacrilegious to burn letters?
He brings the bundle to his lips then drops it into the fire. The wax paper flares, bursts open, like a wound, the blue envelopes singe to black, glow red around the edges. Flare. Many of her letters are more than twenty pages long, every one animated by her hand, her voice, her heart. A funeral pyre of love. The flames are pale green at the base, yellow at the tips, the colour of daffodils. Spumes of acrid black smoke rise into the air. The paper writhes and crumples, collapses in on itself, breaks into wafer-thin chunks that float upwards on the column of smoke.
His eyes sting with soot and tears. He ties a handkerchief over his nose and mouth, watches as the fire consumes the last packet of her letters.
Through the flames and smoke, snatches of her handwriting, a word, a phrase, the description of a place or mood, are momentarily illuminated, then wiped off the face of the earth. In the core of the fire, embers glow, like miniature volcanoes. The paper shrivels, turns grey, the colour of a pigeon’s wing, then white, until all that remains is the ghostly shrouds of love. How will he remember everything now? How will he hear her voice? Feel her at his side? The last letter bursts open, like a black flower. Martin turns away, so the men cannot see he is crying.
Beloved . . .
It’s night now and Martin has slipped off to his little office room at HQ to write to Nancy. Outside, the leaves of the chestnut tree rustle in the breeze. The sound of off-key singing floats up from the mess. The light of a gibbous moon shines through the window.
He lifts his pen, considering what to say next. Naturally, he cannot tell her the latest military situation. It would only alarm her, anyway. But perhaps he can find a form of words to suggest it?
This is the time to write you a long dramatic letter but I won’t.
He considers what he has written. Will she understand the meaning behind the word ‘dramatic’? Probably. But by the time she gets this, she will know from the wireless that the war has well and truly begun.
An owl hoots in the tree outside his window. He brings the nib of the pen back to the paper, lets it hover for a moment, like a dragonfly above a pond, as he waits for the magical chemistry of ink and paper, and love, to begin.
I shall just tell you that spring is turning into summer, that orchards have taken shape, that the sky is beautifully blue though sometimes disfigured by shell bursts and bombing planes, that all men must move to keep abreast of the times including ourselves, and that you must never worry about me because I am buoyant and my love and yours would not lead me into danger . . .
12 MAY 1940
Wahagnies
Six days later, the battalion lines up in the main square for the last church parade before it marches out. German Panzer divisions have crossed the River Meuse and are pouring into northern France. Martin and his men could see action at any moment.
In preparation, Martin has been intensively training his platoon, going over their weapons drills, preparing for gas attacks, improving their times and performance in constructing roadblocks or marching. They can now cover twenty miles in full battle order, at one hundred and forty paces per minute. And as the padre steps forward and addresses the men, Martin feels a surge of pride.
The entire village has turned out to watch the battalion march out. The English soldiers who have shared their lives for five months are leaving. There are tears and hugs. Children hoisted on shoulders in their Sunday best, babies rocked in creaking prams. The mayor and his family are lined up under the Tricolor outside the village hall.
There will be no music to march by today. Last night, under cover of darkness, Martin had driven the Panopticon, with Topper and Sergeant Fowler
, to hide the instruments. Ballast they could no longer keep.
‘It’s here.’ Fowler pointed to a house off the main square. ‘My landlady said she was willing to keep them.’
They knocked at the front door. No reply. Next door was a garage. They tried the door but it was locked. They were about to leave when a door cut into the garage front opened. An elderly woman beckoned them inside. Fowler’s landlady.
‘Mettez-les ici.’ She pointed to the back of the garage. ‘Put them here.’ Martin opened the back of the Panopticon and helped Fowler and Topper unload the instruments, each carefully wrapped in its cover.
The garage was full of bric-a-brac: a broken chair, chicken wire, wine bottles, garden tools. They cleared a space and began to stack the instruments.
‘Au revoir, cherie.’ Topper lifted his trombone case to his lips and kissed it. ‘Don’t go letting anyone else’s lips kiss you.’
Now, Martin and the rest of the men stand in the square, waiting for the service to begin. ‘Let us pray.’ The padre bows his head and begins to intone a prayer. ‘O Almighty and most merciful God, of thy bountiful goodness keep us, we beseech thee, from all things that may hurt us; that we, being ready both in body and soul, may cheerfully accomplish those things which thou commandest; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.’
A muffled ‘Amen’ echoes round the square. Coughing. Boots shifting on the cobblestones. The padre clears his throat and announces the first hymn. Martin catches Gibbens’ eye, a few rows along from him, then squares his shoulders and sings: ‘Stand up, stand up for Jesus/Ye soldiers of the cross.’
Normally, the men are bored to tears at parade. Some of them have never been to church, most are not believers. But the hymns are a link to home and loved ones and, as they get to the last verse, the square reverberates to the sound of six hundred men singing as one: ‘Stand up, stand up, for Jesus/The strife will not be long/this day the noise of battle/the next, the victor’s song!’
The next morning, Martin leaps out of bed and throws on his clothes, shoulders his kitbag and rifle, then races down the stairs. Even though it is not yet light, the chateau is a hive of activity: runners going out to company commanders, field telephones ringing, documents and maps being packed up ready for departure. After all the months of waiting and wondering, the tedium of training and trench-digging, they are finally leaving Wahagnies and heading for Belgium, where the Germans have opened a front. The Phony War is over. The real fighting is about to begin.
Outside, in the Panopticon, Cripps and Jenkins are waiting for him. The square is full of troop carriers and lorries, their camouflaged sides warming in the sun. Clouds of exhaust fumes puff into the sky. Transport officers race about giving each driver his route card. Behind them, stretching for nearly half a mile down the hill, the soldiers from each company are lined up in columns. A line of children and parents from the local school stand outside the curé’s house waving French and British flags.
The battalion’s route takes them east through the village of Thumieres. At first, the land is flat, fields of wheat and maize mixed with woodland. But, as the road climbs towards Mons-en-Pévèle, the Panopticon’s temperature gauge starts to edge into the red. As the village square comes into sight, Martin remembers their days working on the hilltop in the sun; their picnic at the Pas Roland. Now, a fierce battle is raging to the east.
In the town of Orchies, they join the divisional column: the 48th South Midland Division, a First Line Territorial Division totalling nearly fifteen thousand men. They are a stream flowing into a larger tributary. Crowds line the streets, waving flags and cheering. Most of France still moves by horse and the spectators are awed by this display of mechanized British military might: the camouflaged lorries and water tankers; the batteries of field guns and Bren carriers; the motorcycle outriders on their camouflaged Nortons. Farmers hoist their sons on their shoulders. Children hang out of windows pointing excitedly. Old crones in felt slippers and black dresses lean on their brooms, muttering curses at les sale Bosch, filthy Germans. As they pass the war memorial, girls toss flowers into their lorries. ‘Vive l’ Angleterre! Vive la France!’
As the crowds fade in the rear mirror, Martin watches as the landscape changes again. On either side of them a wide, flat plain stretches to the horizon. Fields of low, green plants spatter the dark, fertile earth, like dots in a pointillist painting.
‘What’s all that, sir?’ Cripps points across a field.
Martin follows his gaze. ‘Endives.’ Martin rhymes it, British-style, with the word ‘dives’.
‘En–—what?’ Cripps scratches his ear.
Martin smiles. ‘The Belgians pronounce it on-deeves. Like “leave”.’
‘How come the Belgians speak French, sir?’ Jenkins, the driver, turns to Martin then looks quickly back down the road. ‘Don’t they have their own language?’
‘They do.’ Martin takes out a packet of Player’s and lights a cigarette. ‘It’s called Flemish. They speak it mostly in the north. Here, in this part of Belgium – Wallonia – they speak French.’ He stares across the fields. ‘The two halves don’t get along very well, either.’
‘Like us and the Welsh?’ Cripps grins.
‘A bit like that.’ Martin pauses. ‘Not that I have anything against the Welsh. My uncle is part Welsh.’
Cripps grins. ‘Load of sheep shaggers, if you ask me.’
‘Oi! I’ve got family in Pontypool!’ Jenkins cries.
They pass a group of women working on their knees in the field. Each has a hooked knife and a basket. A horse stands at the edge of the field cropping the grass.
‘What are they up to, then?’ Cripps asks.
‘They’re cutting the tops off.’ Martin watches as one of the women expertly slices off a bunch of green shoots. He’s read up on the process in his Michelin. ‘Then they cover the roots in straw.’
‘Like strawberries?’ Cripps looks puzzled.
‘Yes, that’s it. The bit that’s eaten are the new shoots that sprout from the roots after they’ve been cut. They turn white under the straw, like asparagus.’ He pauses. ‘It’s a speciality around here.“White gold” they call it.’
‘You ever ’ad any, sir?’ Topper asks.
‘I have.’ Martin’s voice is enthusiastic. ‘Some people find them too bitter, but I like them.’
‘How d’you eat them then?’
‘You can use them in a salad in summer. In winter, they cook them a bit like leeks. In a casserole, in the oven. With a piece of ham wrapped around them, and a cheese sauce.’ Martin licks his lips. ‘Endives au gratin, washed down with a good Belgian beer. Delicious!’
Cripps points at the women kneeling in the field. ‘They don’t seem too bothered about the war.’
‘They’re used to it around here.’ Martin takes a canteen and drinks. ‘You know the old joke: the reason God created Belgium is so the Germans can invade France.’
Cripps points up into the sky. High above them, Martin can just make out the contrail of a plane. ‘Hope it’s one of ours.’
Cripps watches the plane dip in the sky. ‘He’s droppin’ lower, sir.’
Martin watches the black dot move slowly down the sky, like a fly crossing a whiteboard.
Jenkins spits out of the driver’s side window. ‘We’re sitting fuckin’ ducks!’ He shakes his head. ‘They could ’ave at least ’ad us move at night!’
Martin stares up at the sky. ‘It will soon be nightfall.’
They cross the border into Belgium as the light begins to leach from the sky. They have been ordered east towards Waterloo, where the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon two centuries earlier, and where the Germans are now attacking. Flemish place names replace French ones. At the historic city of Tournai, they take the Grande Route de Bruxelles, skirting south round the town’s medieval walls. In the distance, Martin can just make out the historic belfry, rising above the city centre.
Every invading German army has rumbled along this broad avenue l
ined with plane trees as they headed west into the heart of France. But tonight it belongs to the battalion. A mood of optimism and courage floods through the men.
At the village of Leuze, the land rises to a hill. The Panopticon chunters to the top then stops with the rest of the column for a rest. Martin jumps down and lights a cigarette. The night air is cool and refreshing. Bats flit across the darkening sky. In the distance, Martin can just make out flashes of artillery fire flickering to the east, like fireflies. ‘Looks like we’ll be in for a bit of excitement later, sir.’ Cripps comes and stands beside Martin, and lights up.
‘That must be over by Hal?’ Martin peers into the night. ‘Another fifty miles or so. How’s your nephew doing?’ Martin draws on his cigarette.
‘He’s OK.’ Cripps pulls on his cigarette. ‘But, you know, at that age, they think nothing can harm them.’
Martin considers the remark. ‘I’m not much older than him.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Cripps nods. ‘But I think you’ve got a bit more sense in your head, being an officer ’n’ all.’
‘I think the person who really has some sense around here is you, Cripps.’ Martin looks over at the older man, who is now beaming proudly from ear to ear. ‘I suppose that’s what being a master carpenter teaches you.’
There’s another flicker on the horizon, followed by the report of a howitzer. The two men follow the sound with their eyes.
‘I suppose it does, sir.’ Cripps says, squaring his shoulders. ‘You can’t be too high-strung when you’re working with wood.’
They cross the River Ath shortly before midnight, the column of men and vehicles funnelled across two small bridges. The Panopticon’s lights are masked for safety, with small holes for side and rear lights. A metal mask over the headlamps has a narrow slit in it. To stop it being rear-ended by another vehicle, Jenkins has painted the centre of the back axle white, and placed a small light under the body to shine down on it. The road is marked out every few hundred yards with paraffin route-marking lanterns, which have been set out by the military police.