Lord of the Nutcracker Men

by Iain Lawrence

  The ambulance stopped at the trench. “Any wounded?” the conductor shouted. “All wounded aboard.” Then he pressed his little bell—“Ding, ding!”— and the driver started up.

  I heard a laugh, and Sarah was there at the wall. “That's silly,” she said. “They don't do it like that.”

  “They might,” I said.

  “They carry the wounded,” she said. “How can you climb on a bus if your arms are shot away? How can you walk if you haven't any legs?”

  “Maybe they were only a little bit wounded,” I said.

  “You're funny, Johnny.” She shook her head, just like my mum might have done. “No one's a little bit wounded. When the shells explode it's like the air's full of razors. Just the sound can kill you, if it's close enough. My dad says he's seen people blasted into so many pieces that he had to pick up the bits with a dustpan.”

  “Stop it,” I said. I didn't want to hear about that.

  “You can even die from a scratch,” she said. “If a rat bites you, it might—”

  “Stop!” I shouted. “I told you not to come here.”

  “I brought you something.”

  I still hated her, but I didn't mind looking at her present. I parked the ambulance and stood up.

  Like the sergeant, she kept her hand behind the wall. “It's a present,” she said. “Because I'm sorry your soldier broke. It's an aeroplane, Johnny.”

  She lifted her arm, the aeroplane zooming up as high as she could reach. It banked and swooped down, did a loop-the-loop in her hand, then landed on the wall. “It's yours to keep,” she said.

  It was hardly more than a block of wood, the sort of thing my dad would have mocked as “utter rubbish” and wouldn't have been caught dead even selling in his shop. I couldn't tell what type it was, or even which side it was on. But it was better than no aeroplane at all, and I said, “You can bring it into the garden.”

  She clambered over the wall and stood straddling the German trench, towering like a giant above my nut-cracker men. The aeroplane swooped in her hand, straight at the soldiers, then twisted along right on top of the trench.

  “It wouldn't do that,” I said, pleased to know more about something than Sarah. “It should stay up high. It's on reconnaissance.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Germans are going to attack.” I looked her straight in the eye. “I don't care what you say. They're going to attack. You be the British, and you have to fight them off.”

  “If that's what you want,” she said. “I suppose it might happen sometimes.”

  As we changed positions, the aeroplane became a German. It flew lazily over the battlefield until my nut-cracker men were lined up and ready. Then I took out my brass cartridge and whistled. “Over the top!”

  “I thought they were Germans,” said Sarah.

  “Over ze top!” I screamed, and whistled again.

  Up swarmed the nutcracker men. They rose in a flood from the trench, pouring onto no-man's-land like the river of gray that my father had written about. They charged across in a rippling line as I pushed them along, two and three at once.

  “Start shooting,” I said. “You have to fight them off.” The aeroplane landed. Sarah took a metal machine gunner and swiveled him back and forth. “Boppaboppa-boppa.”

  Six of the nutcracker men fell flat in the mud. The rest kept going. Already they were halfway to the British trenches.

  “Where's the barbed wire?” asked Sarah. “They're supposed to tangle up in the wire.”

  “Just pretend they've passed it.” I didn't have any barbed wire. “Keep shooting, Sarah.”

  “Boppa-boppa-boppa.” A dozen more men fell in a row. “Arrrgh!” they shouted.

  My hand was on Fatty Dienst. “Fight on for Cher-many.”

  “Boppa-boppa-boppa.”

  The nutcracker men were coming up to the British trench. I told Sarah, “You'd better fix bayonets.”

  “Fix bayonets!” she shouted.

  My whole German army balanced on the edge of the British parapet. I stepped across them to help the British. The messman ran up with his pots; the sleeping man woke and leapt to his feet. Little Cedric, far behind, said, “Send me reports. Tell me what's happening.”

  “The Huns are here!” shouted Sarah. She picked up the tiny lieutenant and charged him up to no-man's-land. He battled there, hand to hand against the nutcracker men.

  “Ratta-tatta-tat.” I worked the machine gunners, slamming the Germans down. Then I saw my wooden dad toppled in the trench. He got up and fired his rifle, and Fatty Dienst—the last German standing—crumpled into the mud.

  “Oooh,” said Sarah, panting. We grinned at each other, and I was sure she felt just as I did, that we'd fought a battle as real as real could be. My no-man's-land was covered with bodies, the earth torn up by the bullets. Like a pair of old soldiers, we talked about the battle as we gathered the dead and stood them back in their places.

  “It gave me chills when you whistled them over the top,” said Sarah. “That was so true.”

  I smiled, too proud to speak.

  “Can I see your whistle?”

  She was disappointed as soon as she touched the cartridge. “It's just a bullet,” she said.

  “It's not a bullet. It's a casing,” I told her. “And it came straight from France.”

  “Then how did you get it?”

  “From a soldier,” I said. “I don't know his name.” Sarah tried to whistle with the cartridge. But the only sound she made was a fizz of air.

  “Blow across it,” I said. “Not right into it.”

  She tried again, then passed it to me, and I wiped off her spit and blew that wonderful shrill. Sharp and clear as the cry of a bird, it tingled right through me.

  “Over the top!” shouted Sarah. “Johnny, let's fight them again.”

  We had another battle that was even bigger than the first one. The nutcracker men stormed over no-man's-land. One fell, and then another, but nothing would stop them. They came right to the trench, right over the parapet, spilling down in a shouting mass.

  But the British trench was nearly empty. Only my dad and the little lieutenant were there to fight them off. Back to back, the wooden men battled with the Huns. Then General Cedric shouted, “Counterattack!” And I whistled, and the Tommies charged.

  They leapt from the rear trench. The messman, the drill sergeant, all the lead soldiers, went bounding over the mud.

  “Gott in Himmel!” cried the Germans as the machine guns opened fire.

  “Ratta-tatta.” “Boppa-boppa-boppa.” Sarah's sounds mingled with mine, as though guns of all sizes were shooting. The nutcracker men fell in great swaths, and the ones that were left went fleeing across no-man's-land.

  “Ratta-tatta-tatta.” Bullets pecked the mud at their feet.

  “After them!” shouted Sarah. The lieutenant jumped up. Always the hero, he went like a fiend after the Huns.

  I took the model of my dad and hopped him up onto no-man's-land. I shouted a battle cry and started to run him forward. But he got only a few feet before I stopped.

  He was changing. He looked old and pale, not right at all. I lifted him up from the battlefield, a thousand feet up in his scale of little men. I cradled him in my hands.

  “What's wrong?” asked Sarah.

  “He's sort of broken,” I said.

  “Well, I didn't break him,” said Sarah. “Don't say that I broke your man.”

  I didn't say anything. My lip was pinched in my teeth. All my nutcracker men, all my Tommies and Frenchmen, looked as bright as they had on the day they were made. But the model of my father was changing. The khaki paint of his clothes had dulled to a moldy green. It had washed away from his knees and his arms, and was fading everywhere else. I could see the grain of the wood through his tunic and his trousers, the black swirl of a knothole starting to show in his chest. His mouth had once stretched in such a broad grin, but now it was small and grimly straight. A thin little crack—just as thick
as a hair—had opened down his middle.

  “Are you going to keep playing?” asked Sarah.

  She was still on her knees in no-man's-land. The lieutenant stood by her, facing the nutcracker men, who seemed frozen in their mad rush toward safety.

  “Johnny, are we going to finish the battle or not?”

  I didn't care about that, or anything else. I felt as though I was looking at my real father, as though I was seeing him old and sick.

  “Johnny!” Sarah stamped her feet. Mud sprayed from her shoes, and the wooden soldiers trembled. “Answer me!” she said.

  I shook my head.

  “Then I'm going home. And I'm taking my aero-plane with me.”

  She snatched it up and stomped across my no-man's-land. Her feet were like big Jack Johnsons, shaking the earth, flinging up dollops of mud. Specks of black shrapnel smacked against the nutcracker men, against the little lieutenant. The wooden soldiers stumbled and fell. The lieutenant cartwheeled into a crater. But Sarah kept walking, and she didn't look back.

  CHAPTER 10

  November 28, 1914

  Dearest Johnny,

  Just a short note this time, as I'm rather tired from all the events of the last few days.

  Yesterday, late at night, we were taken out of the line and moved to the rear for a bit of a rest. The Huns were shelling us, of course, though not too heavily. We kept our heads down and moved along smartly, except when an incoming shell sounded particularly close and we flattened ourselves against the walls or the ground.

  The fellow ahead of me was a blacksmith once. His name, oddly enough, was Harry Black, and he was my very best friend. We spent the last three days side by side, as close as newborn puppies. At breakfast yesterday he gave me half his plum-and-apple jam, and I let him share a little cake that your mother so kindly sent me. We planned to go for a very long walk tomorrow, until we learned that our officers had already lined up some amusements. Our period of rest, we learned, would be spent repairing a mile of shelled-out road and digging all sorts of new trenches.

  About a week ago, before I really knew him, Harry Black made a forage into no-man's-land one night and returned with one of those pickle-topped helmets that are worn by the Prussians, the type that is standard for your nutcracker army. He was the envy of us all when he put it on last night to make the trek to the rear, looking proud as Punch with his shiny new trophy. The mud that was tossed up by the shells rained on us all. But it rattled on Harry's head like pebbles in a tin cup, and he grinned at the rest of us, who could only cradle our arms across our cloth caps.

  There's one spot on the way where the communication trench meets a stream. We have to rise to ground level, dash across the stream, then descend again into the earth. The sappers have built breastworks there, but old Fritz likes to watch that particular spot through the sight of his telescopic rifle. We call it Charing Cross, like the underground station, as it's surely the quickest route to the hospital.

  Harry Black was nipping across when the Huns fired off a star shell. It fizzled right above us, making those ghastly shadows that they always do. Harry froze, but old Fritz must have seen the sparkle of light on his pickle-top helmet, for a bullet whizzed past me, and poor old Harry slumped to the ground. It was awful luck that the sniper missed his helmet and got him in the throat.

  But I am fine and, as I say, enjoying my change if not my rest. I wouldn't pretend it's quite like Brighton Beach here behind the lines, but let me tell you that it was grand to sit and watch the sun go down. I'm only sorry that Harry couldn't see it. This morning he died of his wound.

  He was such a good fellow that I've decided to enlist him for your army. You will find him, enclosed, just as I remember him.

  Well, my little note has become a book. I'm so tired that I can hardly keep my eyes open.

  All my love,

  Dad

  Neither Auntie nor I spoke for a long time. She stared at the letter, and I stared at her, hoping she would suddenly laugh and say there'd been a mistake, that the letter had been written by some other Dad, to some poor Johnny other than me. It wasn't at all like the letters he'd written before; it was hopeless and sad, as though he wasn't sure himself whether he should laugh or cry because his friend had been killed.

  But Auntie didn't laugh. She put the letter down very slowly, and just as slowly picked up the one my mum had sent. “Are you going to open your parcel?” she asked.

  It sat exactly between us, battered by the post, its paper stuffing spilling out through a slit. I knew what was in there: Harry Black, once my father's friend but now a dead man.

  “Would you read Mum's letter first?” I asked.

  She nodded. “‘Dear Johnny,’ it says. ‘The war touches us all.’” Her eyes kept straying to the parcel, and her voice, stopping and starting again, made my mum sound frightened too.

  “‘Kindly Mrs. Vincent is now a widow, her sons— your chums—left fatherless. My heart goes out to them all. I heard the terrible news yesterday, and it was the last straw for me. I closed up our flat and took the train to Woolwich, back to my old position at the arsenal. Almost nothing has changed here since the day I left so many years ago. I felt sick at heart to see the pall of smoke and hear the din of machines. In the factory the people are still bending over their endless rows of shells. The only difference is that there are so many more of them now, shells and workers both.

  “‘My job will be stuffing artillery shells. My hands can reach right down in the casings. It means I'll be working all day with sulphur and cordite, which is not the best thing to do. But at least I'm helping the war, and doing what I can to get the dreadful thing finished as soon as possible. I can hardly wait until the day that the three of us are together again, you and me and your dear, sweet father.’”

  Auntie Ivy got up and put the letters in the box. She wobbled on the chair as she reached for the shelf, looking older than ever just then. “Now open your present,” she told me.

  I did it quickly, holding the parcel no nearer than my arms could stretch. I widened the slit with my fingers, reached through the wrapping, and pulled out the man by his head.

  As soon as I saw Harry Black I knew why Dad liked him so much. The little man looked as jolly as anything. His legs were spindly but his chest enormous, his head dwarfed by a shining black helmet. He was doing a dance on one foot, his arms spreading out, one high and one low. The helmet covered his face, but I was sure that underneath it he was smiling.

  Right away I felt happier. I danced like Harry danced, spinning across the kitchen floor. I danced down the hall and across the garden. I put the man down in my communication trench.

  Suddenly, he didn't seem to be dancing. He looked out of balance, his arms and legs flung up to catch himself. He seemed to be falling.

  I told myself not to think like that. The man was only dancing, I told myself. I said it aloud. “He's dancing, not dying.”

  I didn't really play with the soldiers. I moved them about, putting my father to work digging a trench. It pleased me to see that his paint hadn't faded any more, that the crack in his body wasn't getting any bigger. It was a silly thought, but I hoped that he might brighten again when my real dad felt rested and healthy.

  Every day that week I went straight to the garden after school. I hurried home to see if the wooden model was brightening, but it wasn't. Then I sat and talked to the little man, pretending he was my real dad. I told him about Cliffe and about the boys, and how I was starting to be friends with some of them. I didn't tell him about Mr. Tuttle because I thought it might make him jealous. I talked in a whisper, looking only at my dad, trying not to see the dancing man. I was troubled by that figure, by the thought of what his face was really like below the big spiked helmet. I couldn't decide if it was happy, as I'd thought at first, or twisted into shock and pain. When Saturday came, I took the man with me. I didn't want him in the garden anymore.

  Mr. Tuttle always smiled when he opened his door. But this time he looked down as I
held the dancing man toward him, and his smile changed to a puzzled look. “You brought a toy,” he said.

  I blushed. “I brought it for you.”

  “You did?”

  I nodded. “Yes, sir. I thought you might like it.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Johnny, thank you so much.” He took the man from my fingers. “Why, it's magnificent.”

  “My father made it,” I said.

  “Did he? At the front?” Mr. Tuttle let the figure stand on his palm, in his fingers. He studied poor Harry Black from every angle. “It's—it's beyond words,” he muttered. “It tells a whole story, doesn't it?”

  “What story?” I asked, desperate to know if he would think the man was dancing or dying.

  “It scarcely needs saying. He's one of the fallen,” said Mr. Tuttle.

  I shivered inside. “I thought at first he was dancing.” “Hardly,” said Mr. Tuttle. “He was caught in the moment of death; anyone could see that. I don't know how, but your father's given a soul to this wooden soldier.” He closed his fingers round the man and lifted it up to his face. “I can smell the mud on him, Johnny.”

  “Well, I put him in the garden,” I admitted.

  “The figurative mud,” said Mr. Tuttle. “The corned beef, the cordite. The rigors of war. Tell me: has your father made any others?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Lots.”

  “Do you think I might see them?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “I was going to ask you to come.

  ” Mr. Tuttle was very pleased. He put Harry Black on his mantelpiece, among his Pickwick jugs and his statuettes. He didn't stand him upright, but set him on his side, and the little blacksmith suddenly looked more comfortable. Mr. Tuttle sighed. “‘There lies a dead man, unwept …' ”

  I recognized the quote and finished it for him. “‘Unburied.’”

  Mr. Tuttle's eyebrows arched. “Johnny, you surprise me at every turn. You must be reading the Iliad.”

  “I'm nearly finished,” I said. “It's rather good.