A Rose In Flanders Fields

by Terri Nixon

‘You have duties here.’

  ‘Your ambulance is attached to my division. You are my duty. Besides, you’d get nowhere near Will without me, you wouldn’t stand a chance of getting a pass.’ He touched my face with a large, gentle hand, and gave a rueful little smile. ‘You might be dressed like Tommy Atkins, but you’re far too pretty to pass off as him.’

  Despite everything, I found a watery smile. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Come on. We’ll take my car, it’ll be faster than the ambulance.’

  ‘I’d have crawled if I had to,’ I told him, and he nodded.

  ‘Aye, I know. He’s a lucky man.’

  ‘Archie –’

  ‘It’s fine, Evie, it’s sunk in, don’t worry.’

  I squeezed his hand, and together we left the hospital, heading for France, Will, and a single, snap decision that would change everything forever.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The roads were cluttered, but mercifully free from attention from the Teutons. Cars and buses carrying troops and equipment to the Front, and ambulances coming away, edged past each other on the pitted, broken surfaces, and all around was the sound of grinding gears and struggling engines, shouts, and orders to keep moving. I’d have recognised the grim signs of a push even if Archie hadn’t warned me.

  Will’s unit had been in reserve during the first battle at the Scarpe, but this time he was not so lucky. I waited in the support trench while Archie went into the command HQ dugout, ignoring the curious glances of those who hurried past, and trying not to resent every soldier I saw for not being Will. Eventually he came out, and told me what he’d heard. 33rd Division had gone over yesterday, with the Suffolks and the Seaforth Highlanders. Seeing my bleak expression, and unable to ease it, Archie took refuge in the familiarity of military details.

  ‘They had two objectives, d’ye see? One lot were sending hate down the Hindenburg Line,’ he gestured, ‘and Will was with those who were attacking in the open, towards the copse.’

  ‘I can’t hear any bombs.’

  ‘No, the barrage stopped when the first objective was gained, and the troops made it further in. Sent some prisoners back, but…’ He trailed away.

  ‘But what?’ My heart was as cold as my voice. ‘Where is he, Archie?’ He sighed, and tried to take my hand, but I wouldn’t let him. ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘No, not… They were cut off, that’s all. The Bosche got in between the copse and their jumping-off line. They’re digging in.’

  ‘So you’re saying they’re trapped.’ My hands shook and I thrust them into my pockets, trying to calm my frantically hurrying heartbeat.

  ‘For now, yes,’ Archie said, and went on quickly, ‘but the enemy fell back early this morning, and our boys secured the German front-line trenches. As soon as it was safe, they relieved the 1st Middlesex, and after nightfall it’ll be C and D company. Will’s turn.’

  I digested the information through a twisting mess of fear, and found something to hold onto. ‘So all he has to do is sit tight?’

  ‘They’re holding off well, they’ve even taken prisoners,’ Archie said, but I thought he sounded evasive.

  ‘But they’re still having to fight to hold the captured ground.’ It wasn’t a question, I could see it all too clearly but I needed to know every detail. ‘How well are they dug in?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘Look, I don’t have any more answers, I just wanted to tell you what I found out. We’ll just have to wait until nightfall and hope for the best, aye?’

  I looked up at the sky; it was hard to tell if it was darkening with cloud, or with the natural advancement of the evening. The journey had been long and tiring, and although we had started early it had taken the best part of the day. Night couldn’t come fast enough.

  ‘Let’s get something to eat,’ Archie said gently. ‘You must be half-starved.’

  It wasn’t until he said it that I realised I hadn’t eaten since I’d snatched a crust of bread before falling into bed last night. My stomach immediately growled, and I nodded. ‘So must you,’ I pointed out. I turned to look out towards where I knew Will lay entrenched, I hoped, and unhurt.

  ‘I could do with something,’ he admitted. ‘There’s a wee place in the town. If we hurry we’ll make it before curfew.’

  We drove back a few miles until we reached town, and Archie found the café, where we were able to melt into the background and accept thin, faintly greasy cottage pie and a bottle of Claret. I tried to eat, I honestly thought I’d have wolfed it down, but the first mouthful stuck in my tight throat, and I raised streaming eyes to Archie and shook my head. I replaced my fork and took a big swallow of wine, which helped, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat anything after all, not knowing Will was out there in the gathering dark, awaiting a rescue that might come to nothing after all.

  When we left the café I felt light-headed; drinking was easier than eating, and it had seemed to fill me up. But as soon as the fresh air hit me I knew it had been a mistake; I’d been exhausted, tense, I hadn’t eaten for hours and hours…the wine had been rich and comforting, but now I just felt queasy.

  ‘There’s one other thing you should know,’ Archie said, and he sounded hesitant now. ‘Will got your letter. It was delivered on the 22nd, they went over the top on the 23rd. I’m so sorry.’

  I nodded, feeling dry and husked out. It had been a faint hope that he hadn’t, after all. ‘We’ll go back to the dugout,’ Archie went on. ‘At least there we’ll get news on how things are going.’

  ‘Fine, yes.’ I swayed, and once again his hand was there to stop me stumbling. He eased me onto the seat of his car. ‘Just sit there for a minute, there’s no rush just yet.’ I let my head fall back against the leather, and closed my eyes, wishing the world would stop spinning, and awoke much later to a gentle touch on my shoulder. It was pitch-black outside, and only the dim pulse of light from a flare lit the night sky. I struggled upright, and ran my tongue across my fuzzy teeth.

  ‘Here,’ Archie said, and I jumped at the sound of his voice. He lifted my hand off my lap and put a biscuit into it, and I bit into it gratefully. It helped break the thickness of my mouth, and I washed it down with water from his canteen.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said hoarsely. Then I remembered, rather shamefully, how I’d fallen asleep. ‘I’m sorry,’ I added, and he chuckled. He sounded so much like Uncle Jack when he did that, it made me smile despite my worry.

  ‘No need to be. Are you ready?’

  I nodded, then realised he probably couldn’t see me. ‘Do you think he’ll be back?’

  ‘Let’s find out.’

  The car moved off, lights out, of course. I found it comfortingly familiar, and a welcome distraction from worrying about Will, to be peering through the darkness and feeling the car jolting over potholes and mounds of blasted earth. When we arrived back at the dugout it was just after 11 p.m., and there was a noticeable buzz in the air.

  Archie ducked inside, and after another agonising wait, during which I couldn’t remember drawing breath, he emerged with a grin. ‘They’ve reached the sunken road,’ he said, ‘they’re safe!’

  The relief almost sent me to the floor, and I sagged against the side of the trench. ‘Where?’

  He pointed out towards the roads in the distance, crossing the flat landscape but affording some shelter, where the rest of Will’s battalion waited. ‘I can’t believe they held out for forty hours,’ he added in a voice tinged with awe. I felt a massive surge of pride and love as I pictured a muddy, tired, but smiling Will, rejoining his battalion in a chorus of triumph and congratulations.

  ‘How long ’til they’re back?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m going back in to find out more details. Will you be all right out here?’

  I nodded. Archie squeezed my arm and handed me a tin hat. ‘Put this on. You’re quite safe back here, but you’ll attract less attention.’ He ducked back inside, and I walked a little further on, wanting to be first on-hand when any news c
ame back. No one challenged me, or questioned my presence, I felt as invisible as Lizzy had said she’d always felt at Oaklands; it wasn’t a sensation I was used to, but I welcomed it. My life had always been lived in the full glare of attention, both at home and in Flanders, and here I was just a shadow like so many others. It was extraordinarily liberating.

  Archie was gone a good long while, and I strained for any news among the muttering men who came and went along the trench, taking messages, delivering provisions and ammunition under cover of darkness…now and again a couple of stretcher-bearers would hurry past, returning a few minutes later, laden, to slip and slide in the mud on their way to the aid post behind me. I hadn’t realised I’d wandered so deep into the trench system, until someone shoved me in the back in their hurry to get past and I realised my surroundings had shrunk considerably. I had passed through the support trench, with its rows of dugouts and the sense of order, into the much narrower, forward-travelling communications trench. I stopped, a new fear worming its way through me at how close I had come to arriving, unchallenged, at the front line.

  I’d never been so far forward; it gave me a horrible, sick feeling to think of all the men who’d lost life and limb here, right where I stood. Boxy’s story of tripping over the remains of one such boy suddenly became more real, vivid and horrifying than ever. Now my mind was on poor Boxy herself, and relief for Will was tinged with, not sorrow, as I’d expected, but anger. I remembered writing to Lizzy that I could quite happily stride out into No Man’s Land and shake the Hun until his teeth rattled…but shamefully I had to admit the anger was not enough to quell the fear, and I turned back.

  Voices were drifting out of the dark, a constant mumble of different accents and tones, some warm with low laughter, some raised in annoyance…two of them came closer and brushed by me, still talking.

  ‘Not ’til daylight, orders say.’

  ‘Seems a bit…disrespectful though, given what happened.’

  ‘Can’t risk it.’

  ‘First light, then.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Half-listening, I followed the two men a few steps, eager to get back to the relative safety of the support trench, then froze.

  ‘Of course if that tall bugger hadn’t been so damn keen to get his souvenir it’d never have happened. His fault, I reckon.’

  ‘It’s the other one’s missus I feel sorry for. I mean, he’s well out of it, but she’s got to live with it. She’s one of them independents over near Dixmude I think. Landed gentry an’ all.’

  My heart was starting to race, fast and loud, and I tried to swallow but couldn’t. I kept step by trembling step with the two men as they reported to their CO.

  ‘Two men down, sir. Glenn and Davies.’

  I sank down onto my haunches, unable to support my own weight on legs that felt like twigs. Through the roar of rushing blood in my ears I heard the details.

  ‘C and D Company relieved, sir. Private Glenn went back to retrieve a weapon from a dead Squarehea…uh, German, sir.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He got hung up on their wire. Credit to him, sir, he didn’t shout, but Private Davies realised and went back to get him. They was got by a sniper, sir.’

  I moaned into my gloved hands, squeezing my eyes tight shut as if by blocking out the light I could block out the words.

  ‘Can’t get them tonight, Corporal.’ The C.O.’s voice was regretful.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘First light. Not leaving those boys out there for the bloody crows, not after that siege. Bloody heroes, the pair, even if Glenn botched it at the end.’

  Botched it. Barry Glenn had killed my husband. Botched it. The scream in my head did nothing to drown out those words, and I only vaguely heard the corporal explaining how the grenade had been thrown after the sniper’s second shot; that Will had, at least, lived long enough to take the enemy with him. My chest and stomach felt like rocks, my throat hurt with the effort not to let the scream loose, and all I wanted to do was strike someone. Hurt them. I didn’t even care who. The urge was almost overwhelming, but I fought to control it and as a result my fingers cramped, the pain sudden and breathtaking. It gave my mind the chance it needed to clear, to comprehend, but not to accept; I could not leave him out there alone.

  Somehow I rose to my feet, and stumbled away from the three men, back the way I had just come. A fragment of my mind skittered towards Archie, wondering whether I should go to him for help, but he would only stop me. The movement of troops was increasing, carrying me along in its wave towards the Front, meeting others coming the other way; shattered to the point of collapse, but relieved to have made it through another push alive.

  Unlike Will.

  Reality kept trying to force its way through; unthinkable numbers of men and boys, and serving VADs and nurses too, had died in this hideous conflict. Will was not a special case, he was just another in that awful number. Hundreds of thousands. Millions. I realised now, how innocently speculative had been my conversation with Lizzy: it wasn’t a question of whether it was better to die or to suffer; too many suffered, struggled, fought for every breath, experienced gut-wrenching fear of death, and then died anyway, with no more understanding of why than when they had joined up. But those who died quickly were no better off; bodies that had been full of life and energy, minds that had sung with intelligence, humour and kindness – snuffed out, destroyed and then left to rot. A job to be done at first light. A task to be performed “for decency’s sake”, but no one to hold their hand, no one to lie with them in the dark while the cold, wet ground stole the last of their warmth.

  But Will was special. He had died trying to save his friend’s life. As have others! He had taken down his enemy before he died. As have many! He was…he was my own Lord William. I wondered when the tears would come, and only realised they were already coursing down my face when they began to run into my hair as I stared upwards at the black night sky. I was not sobbing, my breath was coming evenly, clear and steady, but the pain was threatening to pitch me to the duckboards beneath my feet.

  We burst into clearer space, and the troops behind me dispersed in different directions. The trench was now running the other way, and with a cold sense of triumph that eclipsed my former fear, I realised I’d made it to the front line. The parapet rose in front of me, sandbagged and filthy, and I could see the tiny loopholes that permitted sight out into No Man’s Land. I was about to climb up onto the fire-step to look through one, when someone bumped me and I staggered against the side of the trench.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ the soldier mumbled, and hurried on. I levered myself off the wall, feeling my elbow sink into the mud, and began to walk. It didn’t matter which direction I went in; I couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead. My eyes had adjusted a while ago to the darkness, and whenever a flare rose in the distance it took just a few minutes blinking to readjust, but the trenches zigzagged and dog-legged across the landscape and I never knew what I would see when I rounded the next bend. Time and again I slipped on the wet boards, but I kept walking, my head down, thankful for the tin helmet although my mind kept hissing the savage question; whose was it, Evie, before?

  A sign hung, haphazardly, on one corner: “to centre of section”. An arrow pointed the way I was going, and every few steps I looked for an unmanned fire-step. But it was a clear night and there was an expectation of retaliation. Ladders stretched up the side of the parapet, and I saw the scuffs of countless muddied boots on them, and wondered how many of the men who’d made those marks had lived beyond the next few, unspeakably shocking minutes.

  I passed through the centre section, again unchallenged. The trenches were busiest at night in any case, and while I wasn’t trying to blend in, it seemed I had managed it anyway. My thoughts went back to the gas attack that had caused my clothing change, and the worry of an evacuation that had persuaded me to remain clothed and booted when I went to bed. It was all I needed to convince myself I was doing the right thing,
and I pushed on, acknowledging, but not accepting, fate’s apology for stealing my love, while providing me with the means to go to him.

  The further I went, the fewer people I saw, and the rougher the ground became. The overhead wooden struts that shored up the sides were sagging and off-kilter, and then the duckboards abruptly ended, leaving me floundering in mud almost to my knees. I realised this end of the trench was unoccupied now. There were a couple of dugouts but they were shallow and empty, and the ladders opposite were broken. Shattered, in fact. This had probably been the scene of an enemy attack – burst shells and discarded bayonets, evidence of hand-to-hand fighting, was everywhere I looked, and no attempt appeared to have been made to repair this section; it seemed the troops had consolidated their efforts where they could do most good, up near the centre.

  I eyed the ladders, trying to decide if one of them might bear my weight, and then, just up ahead before the solid wall of earth, I noticed another, very narrow, entrance running off at a right-angle. Another sign, broken but readable, pointed down it: “LP”.

  I took a deep breath, and it shook quite audibly. The listening post, abandoned or not, would be quite some distance out into No Man’s Land. I could feel my trembling getting worse, but the thought of Will lying there in the dirt was too much to bear and I glanced behind me; no one was in sight although I could hear voices, quite clearly, just around the bend. One of them made the breath catch in my throat. It was angry, low, and unmistakeably Scottish.

  ‘What the bloody hell do you mean, you don’t know? She’s a woman for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘Ain’t seen no women, sir,’ the nervous Tommy stuttered. ‘They don’t belong down here.’

  I melted silently down into the sap leading to the listening post, my heart pounding. If one of those people I’d passed was forced to think, they’d remember an extremely short boy, stumbling along as if the layout was completely unfamiliar, and, more tellingly, carrying nothing. That would be enough for Archie.

  I fought my way up to the sap-head, and it took forever for each step; pulling my foot clear of the sucking mud, and feeling my other foot slipping beneath me, finding no strong purchase in the waterlogged ground. My hands braced either side of me in the narrow space, pushing against the sides and sinking into the earth, and my gloves peeled off in turns, sticking there in the walls of the trench and leaving my hands icy-cold and filthy. I strained through the night to hear what was going on in the main trench, but professionalism had dampened Archie’s fury and there were no more raised voices.