Innocence To Die For

by Eidinow, John

  ****

  Curiously, although he’d not joined the ELR willingly, once his ribs and bruising began to heal, Peter fretted at not finishing his training with the platoon.

  He’d come to with a blinding headache, finding it difficult to breathe as well as aching in every joint. In hospital, in his early, nightmare-laden stupor, he thought he saw Potts crouching at the end of his bed, grinning at him. After he came round and could sit up, he found a packet of 40 De Reszke Minors cigarettes on his locker.

  ‘Mrs Potts left them for you,’ said the nurse, ‘before Rifleman Potts went for rehabilitation. She said how he was being invalided out.’

  ‘Invalided out?’

  ‘A problem walking. He was in a wheelchair when he come to see you. You was right out of it.’ Badly contused, he’d been, and they’d been worried how a rib might have pierced a lung what with his difficulty breathing. Now he had to let the ribs mend and the bruising die down. ‘Did you know Rifleman Potts well? He said to look him up if you was in Finsbury or Stoke Newington.’

  A police constable, notebook in hand, appeared at his bedside and asked if he’d been struck at? The doctor said the marks on his upper back looked like it. An iron bar? He had no memory of it. Just a motorbike revving and revving out of the dark.

  Then, one afternoon at visiting time, he looked up from his Edgar Wallace, The Ringer, to see Nick Harry bearing down on him, smoke curling up from the stubby pipe.

  ‘In the neighbourhood and had time to spare.’ He waylaid a passing nurse. ‘Any chance of a cuppa?’

  ‘I suppose it’s pointless my asking how you knew I was here.’

  ‘Not at all. Any problems with our references have to be reported. Anyway, how’re you getting along? Food all right?’

  He was interested in the details of the accident, anything Peter could recall. The bike, where it had come from, the rider. ‘Did you see a passenger?’ The police thought he might have been attacked, hit. ‘Any recollection to support that?’ How he came to be separated, at the very back. His sergeant? ‘Been with the ELR long, has he, d’you know?’ And a bit later, ‘Oh yes, Bill says he’s sorry you’ve been knocked about and sends his best wishes. He asks if there’s anything more. Anything you’ve remembered.’

  ‘Any more people, you mean?’

  Nick Harry put his cup on the locker and his pipe in the gunmetal ashtray. He leaned forward slightly. ‘Besides the names you mentioned. John and Guy, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Was it? Guy?’ Peter did his best to look thoughtful. ‘And John?’ They held each other’s gaze for a long moment. Peter broke the silence. ‘Guy and John. Or perhaps Walter and Lachlan?’

  ‘Walter and Lachlan?’

  ‘Walter Thomas and Lachlan Davidson.’

  Harry took his pipe and relit it, his eyes not leaving Peter’s face.

  ‘I met Thomas when he’d been visiting the professor. A Canadian or American, but originally from some Slavonic-speaking country, I think. And just after the professor was detained, he popped up and made a rendezvous at Gloria’s’ – he couldn’t restrain a smile – ‘to ask if I knew where Dinah had got to. Davidson had private German lessons from the professor. I bumped into him when I arrived there early for supper. I recognised him from a House reunion.’

  ‘Government service, isn’t he?’

  ‘Diplomatic.’

  ‘Bill must have confused the inquiry. Please forget the other names I mentioned. Anyway, nothing more? For Bill.’

  ‘Nothing more for Bill.’ He waited for a moment. ‘Not beside them and the unknown BBC chap Thomas had asked me about when we first met. Also Eton and Cambridge. Often drunk and no lover of the ladies, he said. Could be quite a number.’

  ‘Right.’ Harry pulled on his pipe. ‘How’s life in the ELR? Not quite the Coldstream, I imagine.’

  ‘1917 helmets and 1918 rifles. My father would feel at home. With the kit, at least.’

  Harry had brought some books from Foyle’s. ‘I don’t suppose the library’s got much in it for your taste.’ Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Ann Porter; Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout; the prize-winning After Many a Summer by Aldous Huxley. ‘I must be off in a moment.’

  ‘Before you go, any news of Dinah?’

  ‘Dinah?’ Harry got up, taking his hat and coat. ‘News of Dinah, you ask me?’ He looked down at Peter, impassive. ‘Toodle-pip, old son. I’ll look in again if I’m in the neighbourhood. Get well soon. I’m sure the ELR miss you.’ He turned away.

  Peter spoke to his back: ‘Lachlan Davidson is a Cambridge Apostle. And so is your friend Bill. By the way, Davidson read modern languages.’

  Halfway down the ward, Nick Harry halted, thought for a moment, and came back. ‘If I ask you to keep this to yourself, you won’t let me down, will you? We think Dinah Altschuler crossed to France the day before the professor’s hearing. If it was her, she had a French passport in the name of Kuttner and an American visa.’ He took a page from Peter’s writing pad and scribbled a number. ‘If you do hear from her, any contact, you will let me know, old son, won’t you?’

  Chapter Eleven

  Back in the barracks, he tried to give himself over to the present.

  She had gone. Gone under another name to the US, to say “scram” and “beat it”. Judgement had to be reserved on her flight – with a passport he’d probably collected from Madame Gerstina in the buffet at Victoria. What other life had she been living, artfully concealed from him? She’d certainly used him. Had she just been using him? What part had he played in her secret life? He hadn’t thought twice about the sergeant’s sending him to the rear. But now?

  For all that, if he glimpsed Dinah across the street, if the dark eyes met his, then his heart would still turn over, as it was turning now, thinking about her. For all that, he had a war to fight.

  He was placed on light duties, in succession runner, clerk, officers’ mess waiter (thank God he wasn’t an officer with that lot), stores, clerk. Then he joined a training platoon at the point, more or less, where he had left the old one. New faces, similar characters, equally lost souls filling the barrack room. His former platoon sergeant had been posted away, no one knew where. His new sergeant was on loan from the Guards; that the move had not been the sergeant’s choice Peter knew from his days as a clerk. The sergeant had a fresh line in invective – ‘When you was born, they threw away the baby and kept the afterbirth’ – and a roguish look under heavy eyelids.

  They went to harden up in battle camp on the Yorkshire moors. Almost none of his platoon had been outside east London before. They found the great spaces, the wide rolling moorland, the harshness of the terrain, the lack of protection and creature comforts totally discomforting.

  Shortages plagued them – transport, guns, ammunition, even useable rifles and light machine guns. They travelled by civilian charabancs, with overweight drivers in ties, blazers and grey flannels who treated their trips like any day excursion. A crate of brown ale in the luggage compartment and a smouldering cigarette between nicotine-stained fingers as they wrestled the coaches round the narrow moorland roads.

  Wet and cold, footsore and perpetually hungry, stiff from sleeping on damp straw, nonetheless Peter felt at home there. He led his platoon off the moor when their young officer, who had joined the Terriers in search of social improvement, lost his way in rain and mist and looked on the verge of a breakdown. Peter saw in the platoon’s eyes that he had broken the footslogger’s first commandment: “Never Be Helpful”. They nicknamed the officer “Bo-Peep”. The sergeant took “Bo Peep” under his wing – like a sixth-former and a pretty new boy, Peter thought – and promptly sent Rifleman Hill as a runner to company HQ. Shortly afterwards Peter was given one stripe, promoted to lance-corporal, and ordered to support the company sergeant-major. The sergeant grinned, with a wink of his roguish eye.

  Battle camp done, they returned to barracks to rest, clean up and learn its lessons before returning to the moors for a full, battalion-scale exercise
. Their general came to watch and judge, appearing out of the blue and always, it seemed, at a difficult moment. Calling the officers together afterwards, he declared himself flatly dissatisfied. ‘Nowhere near ready. Peacetime attitudes. Half-trained troops, unsteady leadership.’ He pronounced his judgement: ‘Defensive role only until sorted out.’

  Their luck was in (as the cheerful barrack room saw it). They would immediately take up a defensive position at a little seaside town on the east coast where they would prepare to meet and repel any attempt by German forces to stage a diversionary raid from fast launches or a landing to pave the way for invasion.

  ****

  Under vast skies, they looked out over a wide expanse of cold grey waters, empty but for the occasional inshore fishing boat. For many of them, this was their first sight of the sea. The sandy tussocked beaches, eternally wind-swept as generations of holidaymakers could testify, were fenced with barbed wire and decorated with warning signs for mines. Hastily built pillboxes stood guard along the front and at road junctions; some had been built facing the wrong way, inland, by the unemployed labourers recruited when war was declared. Defensive positions were hastily created on roads and fields, with machine-gun nests and light artillery pits for the yet-to-be-delivered machine-guns and light artillery.

  Lance-Corporal Hill was designated company liaison with residents and local organisations and given another stripe, promoted to corporal. He fell into conversation with the vicar, also a Cambridge man, and was invited to take a room in the vicarage, with the run of the vicar’s books and record collection—discreetly shelved lest parishioners glimpse his beloved Richard Strauss and Wagner.

  Peter repaid him by attending Sunday matins and staying on for tea with the regular parishioners, some of whose sons were in France. From these encounters sprang further invitations to local events. After a liaison meeting with the parish council in the town library and institute, the adjutant said ‘Keep up the good work’. He agreed with the librarian that the corporal should have a table in the library entrance hall where he could be available for complaints (mostly drink and thieving) and questions (as well as conversations on books and authors). The company bicycle was put at his disposal for visits to inland villages and hamlets.

  From London, from a previous world, Rutherglen Stanley sent him some submissions to read and Eliot’s East Coker in the New English Weekly. Although he lived with the immensity of the East Anglian skyscape, Peter felt the spirit of time and place was right; he read and re-read it.

  ****

  When the vicarage telephone rang, he was sitting in the homely drawing room, having tea and listening to the gramophone.

  The vicar’s wife lifted the needle from the record – Caruso – and went to answer. She was not away long. Peter was wanted at headquarters, ready to move.

  He knew at once. “Like a blind man’s dreams on the sand by dangerous tides”. The tide had come in.

  ****

  As winter gave way to spring and spring to early summer, the war news had grown worse and worse. First, the Norwegian débâcle, Britain outfoxed and outfought by the Wehrmacht. Now the British army in northern France was in full retreat. German forces, brilliantly generalled, were sweeping through, unstoppable, their battle tanks splitting the allied forces, bottling up the British troops.

  “Defensive role only” no longer mattered. The East London Riflemen were to be thrown into the battle to plug a gap in the line. At company headquarters, activity was frenetic, just the operating side of panic. Coaches were on their way. One of the lance-corporals in his old platoon had gone to hospital. Corporal Hill would replace him.

  Part Two: Dawning

  Chapter One

  Nothing. He strained his eyes into the dark. Nothing out there.

  Silently a signal light rose into the sky, fired far over to the left, low on the horizon, followed by a second.

  Red over green.

  Somewhere, he thought, other men were now standing down or moving out, limp with relief or gripped by fear; perhaps one checking his kit, another patting his neighbour’s back in reassurance or as a signal to go, go.

  A star shell replied, a vivid arc of frozen white. Then night, more intense. “Sombre the night is”, he quoted under his breath. True.

  He stared on into the blackness, or rather into shades of starlit black, as the eyes traversed the ground ahead: a field, a hedge, further still a possible line of trees, perhaps a wood; above it the mottled blue-black sky. In the dark, said the field manual, you should look just to one side of the object, not directly at it. But in the dark, everything is shaded, he thought. You see shadows, masses, blocks. On them you print your own impressions. By night, your fears. By day, your hopes. He laughed to himself.

  ‘Corp.’ A hoarse whisper somewhere to his left broke into his thoughts. ‘Corp. I’m fuckin’ starvin’.’

  ‘Quiet.’ Whispered back.

  The dawn was coming, but slowly. At last, shades of grey, a perceptible lightening. With the dawn, a wind. Long grasses revealed themselves, swaying and heaving like waves just beyond a beach, a faint rustling coming across the field. With the dawn, shouldn’t there be birdsong? As in Returning We Hear The Larks.

  “But hark! Joy – joy – strange joy.

  Lo! Heights of night ringing with unseen larks …”

  Another whisper from the left. ‘I’m starvin’, corp. My fuckin’ belly thinks my throat’s been fuckin’ cut.’

  “Music showering on our upturned listening faces …”

  What else might have come showering? There, in the trenches. As his mind wandered, he was finding the shallow depression, hastily scraped out in the dark, curiously comfortable to lie in, supported by ammo pouches and respirator. His elderly .303 rifle was pushed out, his toecaps were scraping in the hollow to give purchase as he raised his shoulders cautiously for a better view across the field to the hedge.

  In the still colourless division between night and day, the grasses swayed like the sea, the wind in the leaves was calling up memories of normalcy. Across the field nothing human or mechanical caught the eye.

  With the dawning light comes cheeping. ‘Eat your chocolate and shut up.’ Lying down we hear the birds’ cheeping and chirruping.

  ‘I’ve ate it.’

  ‘Shut up. Do you want Jerry to give you something to bite on?’ Still grey. Some ancient chocolate was squashed in his battledress trouser map-pocket. He crawled across. ‘Here.’ The rifleman was only 17, very likely 16. ‘And not another word.’

  ‘Thanks, corp. Where are we?’

  Lighter now. Some green-grey colour in the grasses. The hedge and trees still black. ‘No idea. France. I think those were trenches from the last war where we came up last evening.’

  ‘My pa and uncle were out here.’ A voice from the right. ‘My uncle was a sniper. Shot loads of Jerries.’

  ‘Let’s hope you take after him.’

  ‘’ope not. ‘e got his packet at Wipers.’

  Sniggers from either side.

  ‘Quiet now.’

  The manual said standing-to at dawn. That was when attacks were launched. Why? If everyone expected them? ‘Keep your eyes skinned.’ He felt absurd. Even in these circumstances.

  The hedge was now plainly visible; the trees beyond, straight, upright, spaced, looked as if they were lining a road, a French road. Another fine day promised. The wind played softly in the ear. No human or mechanical sound.

  Lying down we hear the warbling. He must make sure the section were all still there and awake. Roll-call by passing the word along: all nine present. Was someone doing the same along the hedge but in German? No sight. No sound.

  Except behind the slight ridge on the edge of which they lay, up the dead ground, unmistakeable breathing and scrabbling—and at dawn.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Fuckin’ friend. Stand easy.’

  Three figures crawled over the brow of the ridge. The platoon sergeant, thin moustache on a full face, kno
wing look, former Grenadier Guards NCO; behind him, the platoon commander, slight and palely vacant; and behind him, a company runner hanging back, ready to be first away. Four men, two each from the other sections, were waiting below the ridge.

  ‘Get these men properly dug in! Fuckin’ idle bags of idle shit.’ The sergeant’s voice was hoarse. ‘Corporal Hill, your stripes are hanging by a thread.’

  They came with orders. The sergeant delivered them, speaking deliberately but with a note of – yes – excitement. Well, this was what they’d trained for. The sergeant’s pinkish tongue flicked round his mouth with each pause, while the lieutenant kept his eyes on him, listening and nodding.

  Information: Part of rearguard. The corporal’s is the point section, other two spaced out right and left, platoon HQ in rear. Area: Field of fire indicated from left to right across the grassy field. Intelligence: Enemy advance imminent. Objective: Part of cover for withdrawal of main force. Required to hold position. And that means hold. Delay Jerry advance for as long as possible. Make the bleeders fight for every fuckin’ inch.

  The lieutenant intervened. His lips were red in a pale, beardless face. Stay put. His eyes constantly darted to the horizon. Stay put and fight to last round. Vital. His speech died away. The sergeant picked up roughly. ‘And dig fuckin’ in. Properly.’ Corporal Hill would detail two men to return with the runner to company HQ to bring up rations and extra ammo.

  The sergeant and the lieutenant looked each other in the eye; some understanding existed in their gaze. ‘Good luck,’ the lieutenant said passively. ‘And get these riflemen dug in.’

  The sergeant wetted his lips. ‘Your chance for regimental glory.’ They turned and crawled back over the ridge. Peter sent two of the section to follow. Around him he could feel the others’ fear and animosity.

  As the party entered the dead ground, the sergeant looked back. He caught Peter’s eye, bared his teeth in a grin and made a mock salute.

  ‘You heard what the officer said. We’re here to stay. Now dig!’ He had to say something more. ‘If we stick it out, we can give the rest a chance. We’ll be doing our bit.’