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Copyright © Patricia Corbett Bowman, 2011
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
About the Author
For the late retired Sergeant Victor Frederick Corbett
Acknowledgements
Annette Corbett for being my first reader and vocal supporter; Helen Webb for always asking, “What have you written lately?”; Retired Corporal and Acting Sargeant Thomas Marshall (Marsh) Hall of the 8th Army, who shared his stories of the Liri Valley; Christina Volkher for the German translations. Any errors are mine. Jane Charlton for those early years of editing my attempts; and Jack for being my friend and partner.
Chapter One
Screaming. Everyone is screaming. Falling down, running away. That snobby cheerleader, Janine, tripped over something. Is that a body? She’s trying to get up and is making handprints on the stairwell door as she shoves it open and crashes down the stairs. Red handprints? Everything is surreal.
Taylor blinked her eyes open as a firecracker flashed overhead, blinding her for a second. A strong, pungent smell rose from the ground around her. Urine? She scrambled to her feet, but a strong hand shoved her down.
“Where do you think you’re going, soldier?”
“What?” Taylor looked up into a familiar face. Her grandfather? Something was wrong, here. “Pops?” she asked the unlined face.
“Pops! You young kids. Look what they’re sending me,” said the soldier with three stripes high on his uniform arm.
“Pops. You’re so young —”
“Incoming mortars!” yelled a voice.
Taylor ducked down like the soldier, pulling her hard hat down on her head. Hard hat? What the heck? Where am I? Soldiers? It isn’t a hard hat, it’s a helmet. I’m not at school. I’m in a bloody war!
Taylor clicked her tongue stud against the roof of her mouth as she always did when she was nervous. Nothing. It’s gone! How did I lose it?
“Here, take a sip,” said Pops, as they sat up, the bombing directly overhead finished. He handed Taylor a canteen.
Taylor drank slowly, trying to figure out where she was and how she got here. The night sky was lit like the Canadian National Exhibition, with shell explosions all around. Taylor looked down at her dust-encrusted uniform. Uniform? What the hell? Where’s my black t-shirt and jeans? She scratched her arm with her bitten fingernails, where the khaki-coloured material rubbed against her. Wool. It always made her itch. Was this a dream? Pops was sitting right here, young and healthy. What the hell is going on?
Fingering her face for her eyeglasses, Taylor realized they also were missing, but she could see perfectly. Examining her hand, Taylor looked in vain for her EVIL finger tattoo. Where’s my friggin’ tattoo? Glancing at the older soldier’s name label, she read: “Wm. Taylor.” That was her grandfather’s name, all right. The sergeant snatched the canteen back and took a long swallow, not caring about trench mouth. “Where’d you come from, Junior?”
“I don’t know,” said Taylor. And she didn’t. Wasn’t I just standing by my locker with Dieter? It all seems dream-like.
The sergeant grasped her shoulder, “Junior, are you with me?”
“Pops, where are we?”
“I’m asking the questions, Junior. Where did you come from? What platoon are you?”
“I don’t know,” said Taylor, a frown creasing her forehead. She rubbed her hands across her face. Acne still there.
“Are you hurt? Hit anywhere?” The sergeant examined Taylor’s face. “Take off your helmet. Any bruises, bumps?”
Taylor gingerly removed her head protection. That’s it, she thought. I’ve hurt my head. She brushed her fingers over her scalp. Nothing. Same as usual. No, it feels stubbly like a brush cut she sometimes saw boys wear. It should be smooth. Didn’t Dieter and I shave our heads this morning? Why is everything about home foggy?
“Well?”
“What? Oh, my head? It feels okay, but I’ve got a headache,” Taylor said.
“Hmm. Till we know more about you, you’d better stay close to me,” said the sergeant.
“Sure, Pops,” said Taylor. She wouldn’t leave her grandfather’s side until she figured out what was happening.
“And don’t call me Pops again, Junior. I’m not your gawd-darned father. Hell, I’m only twenty-four. What are you, baby face? Eighteen?”
“Seventeen.”
“Oh, great. I’ve got an underage, underweight, by the looks of you, supposed soldier who doesn’t even know where he came from.” The sergeant narrowed his eyes, “What year is it?” he asked.
Taylor looked around the rocky dirt-and-mud floor. It couldn’t be the twenty-first century. “I’m not sure,” she said. And why is he calling me a “he”? It must be my short hair.
“It’s 1944. You must have suffered a concussion, Junior. Strange, no bumps.”
Holy smokes, as Pops would say. It’s 1944! I’m back in time with my grandfather, in World War II, and he doesn’t even know who I am. How do I explain this to him?
Chapter Two
A lieutenant, crouching down, picked his way over the sprawled soldiers’ legs. Jabbing a finger in the air, he mouthed, “Moving down the line.”
“Look smart, Junior,” said the sergeant as he thrust a rifle into Taylor’s hands.
“I can’t go to war,” said Taylor, staring down at the Enfield .303.
“Keep moving, Junior. I’m watching you,” said the sergeant as he too moved forward.
“What are you, one of those zombies?” said a voice behind him.
Zombie? Geek is what they usually call me. Or bug-eyes. Dimly, Taylor remembered Pops talking about Canadians who received postponement of overseas service. A conscientious objector, that’s it. Turning her head, she saw a soldier about her age. “No, I’m just not sure how I got here,” mumbled Taylor, eyes downcast.
“We all know that feeling. One minute you’re at home minding your own business, next you’re in a trench with Kraut planes dropping screaming mimmies all over you.”
“Yeah, whatever. Hi, I’m Taylor.” Taylor adjusted the canvas sling attached to her rifle, turned and started to put out her right hand to shake the boy’s hand, but thought better of it. Do male soldiers shake hands? Will he think I’m a geek, here, too?
“Your name isn’t Taylor anymore, Junior. The Sarge renamed you. I’m Whitey. Guess you can figure out where I got my name,” said the boy as he scratched his short, white-blond hair under his helmet with the barrel of his rifle. “Watch that mess there,” he said, averting his eyes, as he pointed his rifle at something on the ground in front of Taylor.
Too late, Taylor stepped on a mound in front of her. She stared at the pulpy face of a dead soldier.
“It’s Mac and Red’s turn to look after casualties. Keep walking,” Whitey said.
Taylor felt bile rising in her throat. She swallowed hard, fighting the nausea.
“Just keep moving, Junior.” Whitey patted her on the back.
Taylor lifted her heavy boots, noticing for the first time how wet her feet were.“Gawd, I’d like to change my socks,” she said.
“Check your pack next time we stop,” said Whitey. “Maybe you have a dry pair.”
Taylor touched a strap crisscrossing her back with a little backpack attached. It wouldn’t hold my high school books. Taylor forgot about her wet feet when she realized the gear was attached to webbing in front containing ammo, grenades, and a bayonet that hung from the belt. Hey, where did this stuff come from?
The line of soldiers trudged through the mass of slit trenches, like rats in a laboratory maze. Taylor watched how the soldiers marched so she could imitate them. Dieter always told her she walked like a girl, wiggling her ass. It wasn’t hard to clog along like the heavy-booted soldiers in her wet socks, blisters rubbing.
Taylor was deep in thought. How did this happen? What will I do if I have to fire this gun? Would I even know how? Could I kill another human being? Dieter, back home in Toronto, is of German descent. Could I shoot a German boy? Whitey would call Dieter a “Kraut.”
Taylor examined the rifle she carried. It did kind of look like the one Pops kept at the farm where he lived just outside of London, Ontario. Perhaps she could fire it. Hadn’t she hit pop cans behind the barn? She was twelve when Pops talked her mother, Margaret, into letting her use it. (Her mom didn’t care anyway. All Margaret cared about was where her next drink was coming from.) What was it Pops had said back then when he handed her the rifle?
“You’ve got to practise, kid. You’re going to need to know how to use one in the war.”
“In what war?” Taylor had asked. Was Pops thinking there would be another war, one that Taylor would have to fight in? Like Afghanistan? Would women be called up in a draft like men were in wartime? Pops always talked about war, saying things like, “Remember when we were at the Liri Valley? You really showed the enemy. We got through it, Taylor.”
Taylor had tried to talk to her mother about Pops and his war rants, but Margaret was never sober enough, and her grandmother had never wanted to hear a bad word about her husband. The old fellow was probably having memory lapses, remembering his days in WW II when he was a young man. Taylor must have reminded him of an old friend back then. Perhaps it was the first stages of senility; or worse yet, Alzheimer’s.
That was it! Pops knew she would come back in time, to this war. But Pops didn’t recognize or know her — yet. How the heck was she going to convince this twenty-four-year-old sergeant that she, Taylor, was his future adopted granddaughter from the 2000s?
Chapter Three
Pops had known this day would come! Why hadn’t he told me? Warned me? Pops would have got locked up in a psychiatric ward, that’s why. If it was so difficult for Pops to tell her, how was Taylor supposed to explain it to Pops now? After all, she was just a teenage girl. Nobody listens to me back in Toronto. Why should this be any different?
It was blurry now, but Taylor was starting to remember the future like it was her dim past. She had taken the bus to London one weekend to see the old guy, who was sick with pneumonia. “Go up to the attic and fetch the old box camera. You know. The one you took off that German. You remember, it’s brown leather, about this big,” said Pops in a weak voice as he formed a square with his gnarled hands. “It’s in that fancy French Provincial dresser with the bowed legs. Bottom drawer. Hurry.”
Of course, Pops would have explained it all to her then. He was going to tell her. But, Taylor had paused up there in the hot, dusty room, poring over the war mementos in the drawer. There she had found Pops’s tarnished, coin-like medals resting on a strip of cotton, like the kind used to top off prescription bottles, in a little blue cardboard jeweller’s box, and some black and white pictures of groups of young soldiers, standing in front of tents and wooden buildings, like at the “Y” camp. The men who smiled in the tiny snapshots weren’t much older than Taylor. Two soldiers, arms around each other, smiled for the camera in one picture. One looked like her, the other a younger version of her grandfather.
She had run down to show her grandfather, but the old man was sleeping again. At her grandmother’s insistence, Taylor had returned to Toronto, the weekend over. She had taken that one picture with her. That was all Taylor remembered until she woke up in the slit trench, with her young grandfather next to her. Wait. I went to school with Dieter. Why is that all foggy?
Here in the past, Pops would think Taylor crazy if she told him that she was from the future. And a girl. Just like Taylor had thought Pops was crazy back at the farm. Taylor’s head hurt with all these thoughts pounding her grey matter. Maybe travelling through time did cause a concussion. Taylor needed to explain this to Pops. How long am I here for? I can go back, can’t I?
Pops had been dropping clues to Taylor for years about this. Think, think! What had he said? If Taylor had only listened to the old guy, this would be a lot simpler. Pops had probably been waiting a long time to tell her. Pops had had to wait until she was born. That was over forty-five years after the war was over! When Taylor’s mom and dad couldn’t conceive children, it must have been worrisome to Pops. That’s right! On one of her better days, before Dad had left for good, Mom had said Pops was their biggest supporter when they went to adopt her. She had laughed when she told the story.
“Your Pops said we must adopt a girl, not a boy, and name her Taylor for our family name. We thought it was a good name, and it went well with Wilson. When we finally brought you home, he was ecstatic. You should have seen his eyes widen when he saw the birthmark on your little chest. He said you were the perfect girl.”
All along, Pops had been waiting to warn Taylor about their time together during World War II. It made sense now. But, how could Taylor explain all this to Pops, here and now?
Maybe … Taylor had looked at a few of the history books around the farmhouse when she went visiting and was bored with nothing to do. No friends at the farm, just like in Toronto, except for Dieter and the Goth crowd. It would help if she could just remember a few facts. If she could predict a few skirmishes, the soldiers here would either think she was lucky, psychic, or plain nuts. It was worth a try.
Now, what facts can I remember? What towns had been the site of battles or fights? Of course, the history books mostly reported when the Canadians and Americans won at different places, not when the Germans won. That’s what Mr. King, the history teacher always rambled on about. History books were full of the conqueror’s side, not the loser’s. If Taylor could remember a couple of noteworthy encounters and how many soldiers were wounded, killed, and taken prisoner, that would get Pops’s attention. Do I even have the guts to fight? Maybe I’m just a nothing, like those cheerleaders and jocks back in my time always say at school. Would they listen, here, to a seventeen-year-old girl, who they think is a boy, who doesn’t even know what platoon she’s supposedly from? What if I change history?
Careful consideration would have to be given so
she didn’t screw things up for her future. What if her grandfather got shot and killed? Then her mother would never be born, and she wouldn’t have been adopted by her parents. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.
This could get tricky. Taylor would really have to watch out for Pops and herself.
First, she would have to come up with a regiment name and explain how she happened to be in the trenches with her grandfather’s platoon. The more believable she was, the more they’d trust her. They mustn’t find out she was a girl, either. Girls weren’t in the line of fire back in WW II. Just nurses. Women were just seeing action now, in the Y2 years. She’d have to be very careful. She had to pee right now, but she’d have to hold it until she found some bushes. That would give it all away if they found out.
* * *
Right now, she felt like a spy, and Pops looked at her as if she were. At least Pops had handed her a gun, even if the magazine was empty. She did have ammo in her web pack, though. It was a start.
The soldiers marched through the night, leaving the comparative safety of the trenches behind for the open fields. A squadron of Lancasters flew overhead, surging the tired men forward to the next front. Taylor trudged along on autopilot while she tried to think of places her grandfather had fought during the Second World War. She would have to make Pops believe who she was. To be successful, for them both to exist in the future, she must do the right things.
Taylor wracked her brain. I’d better come up with a regiment name for myself. She scratched an itch on her upper arm, brushing off dirt.
“Hey, Whitey. Look,” said Taylor pointing to the coloured flash on her sleeve.
Whitey turned around. “A Highlander, eh? Sarge will be happy to know it.” Whitey smiled, showing two rows of crooked, yellowish teeth. “What I’d give for a smoke,” he said.
Taylor instinctively checked her pockets and felt a soft package. She pulled out the cigarettes. I smoke here too, I guess. Dieter and I always smoke in the pit around the back of the school.
Back in her time Page 1