Thursday, April 11th, 1918.
Chapter 37
ALEX PULLED OFF his gas mask and stopped walking. Eric Kidd’s hand was on his arm. ‘C’mon, laddie,’ he said. ‘Remember what I told you. Keep moving.’
‘Where are we going?’ said Alex.
Eric laughed out loud. ‘Dunno. But if we stay here we’ll get killed.’
Shells were bursting near to them and the air was filled with smoke and gas.
‘Put your mask on,’ Eric told Alex gently. ‘They’re using mustard and that’s filthy stuff.’
Beside an abandoned piece of artillery they came across a captain of the Royal Engineers.
‘Go back!’ he shouted at them. ‘Go back! We are overrun.’
Although seriously wounded, he was trying to organize the retreat and direct the men towards Brigade Headquarters. But the gun position was attracting enemy fire and he urged them to leave him. Eric stuffed wadding into the officer’s wound and left him, moving back the way they had come.
Among all the other noise Alex did not hear the bullet that killed his friend. He only saw Eric Kidd’s head snap forwards and his body fall like a puppet with its strings cut. Alex ran to help, but there was nothing he could do. The bullet had gone through the back of Eric’s neck. His eyes were closed and there was blood around his mouth. Alex moaned and fell to his knees. He knelt there for a while, rocking backwards and forwards, talking to himself. Through the smoke and fog he could still hear noises; machine-gun fire, and men shouting. He would have to move on, but he did not want to leave Eric lying there, alone and cold. Alex took off his tunic and wrapped it around the head of his friend and then he stumbled away, tears coursing down his face. There was a thunderous roar in his ears and a shell exploded in front of him, throwing up a great fountain of mud. Alex got up, walked a few paces, staggering as he went, fell over, managed to get to his knees, crawled forwards, then collapsed into the mud.
When he came to it was almost daylight, a clean bright dawn forcing its way through his slitted eyes. His eyelids seemed glued together and when he raised his hands to his face he realized it was because there was mud caked and congealed across it. He had to spit from his dry throat onto his hands to try to loosen the pale clay and ease his eyelids open with his fingers. He sat up.
In a shell-hole directly in front of him were two German soldiers, and they had seen him. The nearest to him raised his arm and picked up an object which lay beside him. A stick grenade! Alex grabbed the Mills bomb at his belt and pulled the pin off. He stood up and threw it. With a great roar of earth and metal the two men were blasted into the air. The force of the explosion also caught Alex and he stumbled, painfully drawing breath into his raw lungs. When the dirt settled he saw that one of the men was still alive. He had his back to Alex and, although hit in the leg, he was slowly getting to his knees. The man facing him was dead. Alex crawled forwards. The dead German in the shell-hole was a man much older than Alex’s own father. His helmet had come off and his hair was as white as any grandfather’s. Alex had been told that the enemy was so desperately short of manpower that they were drafting old men and children. He was obviously one of their home guard militia, with the black and gold button of the Landsturm on his cap. A great surge of elation went through Alex. At last! He had done it, he had killed a Hun! And he was going to kill another. And this time he would see his enemy, face to face, as he did it. He looked for his rifle as the other German rolled round towards him. Now he would be able to say that he had killed one of them with his own hands. He thought of John Malcolm. One Dundas dead, one Dundas to avenge him. His brother’s blood was on this soldier’s hands, and Alex would make him pay its cost.
The German soldier half turned, and then, crippled by the wound in his leg, he slumped against the side of the shell-hole. Alex could see his face clearly. He was a boy of no more than sixteen years.
Alex grabbed his Lee Enfield rifle, but it was useless, clogged with mud. He would have to stick this soldier with his bayonet. He held his rifle out, the bayonet rigid, as they had been taught in training.
The boy gave a terrible groan and opened his eyes.
Alex thrust his bayonet under the German’s throat. The eyes of the two boy soldiers met.
Alex tightened his grip on his rifle. He knew what would happen now. He had heard stories from his fellow soldiers who had captured enemy trenches. The enemy would recognize his uniform and try to beg for mercy. ‘Kamerad,’ he would plead, ‘Kamerad.’
Alex braced himself. As soon as the German spoke he would jab him in the throat. Like sticking a turnip, the training officer had said: ‘A turnip, remember. Not a tomato, or an orange. The Hun has a lot of bone and gristle. Put your shoulder behind it, hard as you can. Straight in and straight out again.’
But the boy said nothing. He looked at Alex, turned his head to the side and closed his eyes.
His neck was exposed. Alex swallowed the bile from the back of his own throat. He stared at the boy awaiting death by his hand. Then with a quick movement Alex flung his rifle from him, crouched down onto the earth and put his head in his hands.
After a time, Alex pushed the German with his foot. The boy opened his eyelids slowly. His eyes swivelled round to look at Alex, but still he did not speak. Alex took his water bottle and held it out. The boy looked at it without interest.
‘Water,’ said Alex. ‘Are you thirsty?’
The boy didn’t reply. Alex took a drink himself and offered his water bottle again. The boy’s eyes were dulled. Alex knew that look; he recognized the blanked-out expression of a soldier who had given up. Eventually Alex shuffled across the space between them. He put his arm around the boy’s shoulder to support him, cupped the water bottle to the boy’s lips and helped him drink. Then he lay back down on the earth and fell asleep.
Chapter 38
HUGH KANE’S MOTHER turned the small package over and over in her hands before eventually opening it. She looked at the contents in complete bewilderment. Then she went to the kitchen cupboard and took down the box of African ebony wood. She placed the regimental badge of the horn surmounted by a crown, and the scraps of torn and blood-stained letters inside, closed the lid, and returned the box to its place on the shelf. It was still in her thoughts later as she prepared to go out. The pram, which she used to collect her daily washing, stood ready in the hall and she had to squeeze past it to gather her outdoor clothes from the peg behind the door. Hat and coat in hand, she stared at the empty pram. Then she went back through to the kitchen, took the ebony box from the cupboard, and sat down heavily in her chair. Minutes passed. The fire burned and she watched the coals shift and settle. Then she lifted the lid of the box and began to look for the birth certificate of her child, Kenneth, who had died before he was two. The birth certificate which she knew would not be there.
* * *
‘Soldaten.’ Alex heard an urgent whisper in his ear. The German boy had shaken him awake. Alex started up and the boy put his finger to his lips and pointed. Beyond the edge of the shell-hole was a road, and the road was busy with German troops and armoury streaming westwards. The German boy pointed again, this time to a deep ditch a few yards away. Alex started to crawl towards it. To his surprise the boy followed him.
From his hiding place Alex watched the road. The Allies must have fallen right back, as nothing seemed to be hindering this rapid German advance. Alex decided it would be safer to move away from here, and, as it got dark began to crawl along the ditch. The German boy followed. Eventually they reached the outskirts of a tiny ruined village away from any main road. Alex had no idea where he was, or in which direction he should go. He knew that he was somewhere near the river Somme. This was the same area where John Malcolm had been killed, and when he’d first heard that he was coming here he had been glad, thinking at one time that he might even kill the German who had killed his brother. Weeks ago they had passed through the British base in a French town which had a cathedral with a broken statue of the Virgin
Mary. He remembered vaguely that it was a man’s name, and by the movement of the sun in the sky he thought that it lay west of here. But if the German Army had moved forward so quickly then that town was probably taken by now. It would be better, Alex decided, to remain where he was.
In the remains of the little village he found a ransacked army billet. Most of the stock had been plundered but there was clothing and enough stores for both him and the boy to live on. Alex thought that the village itself might be unsafe and decided to make a base in the ditch. All his play acting in the woods around Stratharden proved useful as he constructed his den. The German boy’s name was Kurt and despite his injured leg he tried to help as much as he could. Alex went foraging, dragging materials from the fields, some corkscrew barbed wire supports, a rubberized gas curtain, and any wood that he could find. He had to concede that, despite not being able to move about much, Kurt was better at making the actual shelter than he was. When it was finished they piled earth on top. Spotter planes came over at regular intervals and although the ditch was fairly deep Alex wanted to make sure that their hide would attract no attention. He took everything he could carry from the abandoned billet, including a bottle of whisky and some cigarettes which he found under a pile of rubble. They opened army rations tins and ate the food cold.
Summer began to creep across the devastated land. The weather became less cold, but at night the boys still huddled together for warmth. Alex found English magazines and books in the village and he read these in the evenings, often out loud to Kurt. He didn’t think the German boy understood much but he seemed to like the sound of Alex’s voice, and it helped him fall asleep. As the weeks went by Alex began to think that he could stay here for ever; he might learn to trap rabbits, even find a river and fish. The rest of the world had lost its reason and this place was pleasant, the sun was now hot during the day and they spent a great part of it sitting outside. Alex felt his mind begin a slow release from agitation. He slept a great deal and as he slept his dreams became less troubled by images of death and killing. The sound of guns and gunfire was ever present, but Alex shut off any thoughts of reality beyond his immediate survival. Perhaps he could just wait until the War ended and go back home?
And then Kurt became ill. Alex had known for some time that there was something wrong with the German boy’s leg. He had tried to dress it as best he could, but the one thing that he had not found anywhere in the village was medical supplies. The bleeding had stopped, but the wound had never healed, and as time went on a trickly red rust discharge leaked from under the bandage. Kurt was also becoming slightly delirious. Alex didn’t leave his side, forcing him to eat and drink, washing his face, and changing his soiled clothes. One day Alex woke to find the boy pallid, his breathing faint, his eyes rolling back in his head.
‘I am going to find medicine,’ he said loudly in Kurt’s ear, and he ran off to the village.
There was nothing there of any use to him. Alex searched through each ruined building looking more thoroughly than he had done previously. No first aid pack, no disinfectant, nothing. Alex became desperate, scrabbling about among the rubble. He had seen the effects of gangrene on wounded soldiers. Without antiseptic Kurt would die. Finally in the billet Alex lifted another bottle of whisky. It would be useful to help clean out the wound, or Kurt could drink it and it might ease the pain. He was just about to step back into the street when there was a clatter of an engine and a lorry with troops came lurching towards him. The soldiers were in a uniform which he didn’t recognize, although he knew it was neither British nor French. One wore a hat which fluted to a point at the top. Alex’s stomach flipped over. It must be the famous and terrible Prussian Guards! He crept into the shadow of a wall and watched them. They were too far away for him to hear what they were saying, but by the drift of the voices he knew they were not English. Alex’s throat tightened with fear. Another van arrived and he could see clearly what they were doing. This vehicle had a red cross on the side. They were setting up a medical aid station.
Alex padded silently backwards and crouched low. In a moment he would slip away and get safely back to his den in the ditch. He thought about the German boy lying there. He, Alex, could live for another month or so, or even longer, out of doors, but Kurt would not survive. Kurt’s best hope was with the German doctors whom Alex could see unloading their supplies. But Alex knew that if he gave himself up he might be shot. At the very least he could be taken prisoner. He might become one of those soldiers who disappeared and were never found. His parents would read his name in the casualty lists … Missing, believed killed.
Alex thought again about Kurt. Without medical help Kurt would surely die. Should he let this happen? It would be revenge for John Malcolm’s death. Once it had been his sworn vow to kill a German and avenge his brother. But he had already killed a German, the older man who had been with Kurt in the shell-hole, and it had only made him feel scared and unhappy. Eric Kidd had been right when he’d said that revenge wasn’t an answer. It prevented him from remembering his big brother in the way that he should. And now he had seen the effects of war; on soldiers, on civilians, on animals, and on the land, and he was sick of it. And Kurt wasn’t just a German, he was a German with a name, a person.
Alex carefully placed the stolen bottle of whisky down onto the ground and stood up. Then he walked out from his hiding place with his hands above his head.
Chapter 39
IN AUGUST 1918 Maggie received a letter from her father.
Maggie had to go to her room and lie down. Alex, the baby of the family, was almost certainly dead. Everyone in the hospital knew what had happened in the months of the German breakthrough. The Front around the Somme had almost broken and only by swift retreat had the Allies managed to recover and regroup. Thousands of soldiers had been caught behind the enemy lines. She stared at the ceiling above her bed and raged against the War and those who had caused it. This collective madness had destroyed her two brothers.
With the letter still in her hand Maggie went to see the Matron. She knew that now she must go home. She said a tearful goodbye to Charlotte, wrote quickly to Francis care of his mother, and set off for England.
At the ports on both sides of the Channel the sight of so many soldiers in different uniforms, and the tons of supplies waiting to be sent to the Front, should have cheered her, but it didn’t. She now only thought of the thousands of American young men who would die before the War was over. It was clear that it was to be fought to the finish. Both sides seemed determined to wear each other down until there was no-one left. It would be complete attrition, as Francis had predicted in 1916. On her long journey home everyone had a story about the War. They said that in Germany the people were dying of starvation and strikes and riots were commonplace, that their navy would soon mutiny and their army rebel against the Kaiser. It would only be a few weeks and then it would be over and the Allies would win.
If it could be called winning, Maggie thought sadly.
In Stratharden everything was strange, and yet she had been away for little more than a year. Life in France had the harsh reality of groaning wounded men and the constant smell of blood and death. But Maggie now felt as though she had been protected from the reality of another life. Here there was the day by day coping with restrictions and rations, the ever-present sense of controlled grief and the anxiety of grief to come. Neither of her parents spoke openly of the loss of their two sons, but Maggie’s own mind echoed with thoughts of her brothers. Alex’s boots still stood by the back door, John Malcolm’s letters were a crumpled package on the sideboard. Their bodies now lay in the soil of a foreign country and she had no-one to speak to, nowhere to go to grieve for them. Her lack of communication with Francis had created a cavity within her. She felt incomplete. Without the hospital routine she was unsettled, and unable to relax. She better understood Francis’s reluctance to take leave and, when he did, his impatience to be back with his unit.
Within her own home there had b
een a subtle shift in the balance of the household. Had her father changed so much, or did she now view him differently? Her recollection of him was of an opinionated, almost pompous, dapper man. He seemed nearly completely broken down and worked mainly in the back of the shop away from any contact with his customers. He was less voluble, less assured in his observations on the state of the world. Her mother, although still physically frail, still self-effacing, seemed more quietly in control. She spoke to Maggie’s father firmly, encouraging him to dress and shave every day. In the morning her mother did up his collar studs for him, her father standing passively while this was done. And once, Maggie saw her mother use the flat of her hand to brush down the front of his suit, as she had done to John Malcolm before he set out for school each morning – her twin as a little boy usually having bits of his breakfast scattered on his pullover. Maggie turned away quickly before the ache in her heart began to swell again.
Maggie knew that she must make some purpose of her future. The shop was being more than adequately run by Willie, with some part-time help. The barefoot boy from the poorer end of the village was now a young lad who could manage the daily sales. He was obviously relieved when Maggie told him she had no intention of returning to work there full time, that she would help with the book-keeping, but intended to do volunteer work at Stratharden House until all the patients were ready to go home. Later she went into Edinburgh and made enquiries about courses in further education. The War did indeed seem to be drawing to a close, and she had no intention of returning to the life she had lived before it began.
In late October, as Germany’s Allies collapsed and Britain prepared for victory, a letter came from Francis’s mother in London.
Maggie curbed her instinct to reply that she would see Francis in any state he saw fit to present himself. Instead, she wrote to say that the sea air would do him good and she looked forward to seeing him.
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