by John Wilson
“Then there will be bloodshed,” Sommerfield said, so softly we had to strain to hear him. He stepped forward, reached out to steady the officer’s pistol and aimed it at his face. “Let’s get to it.”
Beside me, Bob gasped. However grudgingly, I had to admire Sommerfield’s courage. He was staring unblinkingly at the officer, and I knew the power of those eyes. Slowly the pistol lowered until it was pointing at the ground. The tension eased.
“I shall arrange a meeting with the general to discuss this matter. Prepare a list of grievances.” He turned to face us. “Order arms.”
I was almost laughing with relief as I lowered my rifle to my side. The crowd on the bridge was rolling forward, everyone intent on congratulating Sommerfield. The big man who had spoken first grabbed him and, with the help of a couple of others, lifted him up to ride on their shoulders.
“Slope arms,” the officer ordered and we placed our rifles on our shoulders. “Left turn. Form column. Forward march.”
The mob parted to let us through, although several men jeered as we passed. Behind us I could hear ragged cheering. That night, for the first time in years, my dreams were haunted by the face of the dying deer.
Sommerfield got his meeting with the camp commander the next day. He presented a list of demands for greater access to the town, closure of the hated parade ground, removal of the Red Caps and better food and conditions. The general refused.
The mutiny at Etaples dragged on for a week and, although the men continued to control the camp, there was no repeat of the violence of that first night. Eventually the general caved and agreed to all of Sommerfield’s demands. It was a victory, but Sommerfield didn’t see it. He had slipped quietly away two days before.
I didn’t see it either, and only heard about the rest of that week much later. The day after that violent Sunday, Bob and I and hundreds of other men were loaded onto trains and shipped east to Ypres and Passchendaele.
Chapter 4
Disappointment
Outside Cassel, September 1917
“What in hell are you doing here, Allan?”
Those were the first words Ken said to me as I walked through the gates of the Canadian camp outside Cassel. The journey from Etaples should have only taken a few hours, but we had spent most of the past three days sitting in railway sidings watching endless lines of troop and ammunitions trains rumble by towards Ypres.
“I’ve come to fight,” I explained, taken aback by the harshness of his tone. I had never even heard Ken swear before.
I had arrived at Cassel, almost as excited as I had been on the train down to Vancouver to sign up. I was glad to get Etaples behind me, eager to be a part of the big battle that was obviously coming, and thrilled to be seeing Ken again. “Didn’t you get my letter?” I asked.
“What letter?”
“I wrote you in August from England saying that I had managed to get transferred to your battalion and that I would probably be over in France in a few weeks.”
“I never got it. Things go missing here. Oh Christ, Allan, why did you have to come? And now of all times.”
I stood in silence, wracked by doubt. One of the things that had got me through the endless, mindless training and the brutality of Etaples had been the thought that soon I would be beside Ken. We would be together just as we had been in the hills above the Nicola Valley, except now we would be united in fighting for a just cause. Now here he was at last, except that he was obviously furious at seeing me. “Well. You’re here,” he said. “Best go and find your billet. We’ll talk later.”
That was it. No welcome. No questions about people back home. I think Ken’s introduction to Cassel upset me more than everything that had happened at Etaples — and I had plenty of time to dwell on it. For more than two hours we twenty replacement soldiers stood around in the open waiting for the army to get around to assigning us to our new homes.
“That’s the army for you,” Bob said as we stood at the edge of the parade ground. “Hurry up and wait.”
Cassel was 20 miles from Ypres and showed few signs of the war except for the huge dumps of supplies dotting the surrounding countryside and the vast Canadian camp. The town itself was set on a hill that dominated the surrounding flat plain. At least for this part of the world it was a hill, although back home in British Columbia it wouldn’t even be a pimple.
“It’s annoying me,” Bob said, his brow furrowed.
“What is?”
“The name, Cassel. I know it from somewhere, but I can’t for the life of me remember where.”
I left Bob to his memories and looked around. The Canadian camp sprawled over the plain at the foot of the hill. Tents and rough wooden huts stretched as far as the eye could see. Groups of soldiers — some ten or twenty men, some several hundred — marched in all directions. Officers and sergeants barked orders and, in the distance, I could hear the pop of firing from the rifle range. I felt a surge of pride at being a part of this great Canadian contribution to the war.
“Oh, the Grand Old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men.
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.”
For a moment I thought Bob had gone crazy, reciting nursery rhymes, then he smiled and said, “That was Cassel.”
“What was?”
“The hill that the Grand Old Duke of York marched up. It was Cassel. That’s where I’ve heard the name before. One of my teachers at school told us where all the old nursery rhymes come from and that was one. More than a hundred years ago, the English army attacked Cassel. They failed; that’s why they had to march back down again.”
“What’s it like being in your mind?” I groaned. “With so much useless information, there can’t be any room for anything else.”
“You never know when things will come in handy,” Bob replied with a laugh.
“Attention!”
We snapped to attention and faced the major who stood before us. A sergeant holding a clipboard stood beside him.
“My name’s Major Fraser Carmichael and this is Sergeant Fairley. In a moment he will give you your company and platoon assignments.
“Welcome to the 2nd Division and don’t ever forget that you are here to do a job and in doing that job you will be representing the Dominion of Canada. Good luck.
“Carry on, Sergeant.”
Major Carmichael saluted, turned and strode away.
“A man of few words,” Bob said out of the side of his mouth.
“All right, you lot, listen up,” the sergeant’s voice boomed out. “When you’re dismissed, you will collect your kit and go straight to the Company billet. That will be your world from now on. You will stow your kit sharpish and report to the parade ground.”
The sergeant read out all our names and our company and platoon assignments. Bob and I were both in 2 Platoon of B Company — Ken’s Company.
“Private McBride. Report immediately to Captain Harrison in the Company command tent.”
The sergeant barked the order from the door of the billet and I knew enough of the army by then to jump to my feet, button my tunic and hurry outside. Bob and I had spent the afternoon marching back and forth, just as we had at Etaples, but with the difference that there were no hated Red Caps and no one talked of mutiny and revolution. In fact, there was a quiet confidence in the soldiers I talked to. Everyone knew that there would be casualties, probably very heavy ones, in the coming battle, but the entire Canadian Corps would be fighting together under a Canadian commander. We were proud. At B Company command tent, the sergeant announced me and stepped aside. I ducked in, stood at attention and saluted. Ken was sitting on a camp stool behind a folding desk, concentrating on a pile of forms. There was a half-empty bottle of whiskey and a glass beside him. It was dusk already and a gas lantern hissed in the corner. Ken finished writing something and looked up. He seemed weary and older than I remembered him.
“At ease, Allan,” he said. �
�This isn’t formal army business. I wanted to apologize for being so brusque earlier. It was a shock to see you. I thought you were safe at home.”
“I had to come and do my bit,” I said.
Ken tried to smile. “I suppose you did. Anyway, you’re here now, so we must make the best of it. I intend to request that you be transferred to the Canadian 5th Division. They are still forming and training in England. The request will take some time, but we have that. The 2nd Division is not scheduled to take part in the first phase of the upcoming battle. That honour has been allotted the 3rd and 4th Divisions. We will be held in reserve until needed. Meanwhile, I shall assign you duties around the camp. It will be dull, but it will keep you out of harm’s way.” He paused and stared at me.
Slowly the meaning of what Ken was saying sank in. He intended to shuffle me off to some new unit that wasn’t even in France yet.
“No,” I said. “I told you that I’ve come to do my bit and I intend to. I specifically requested that I be assigned to your unit. I’ve been through months of training and travel to get here. I’ve been through the riots at Etaples. I did all this just so I could get here and fight beside you. We’ll be together just like when we were hunting and fishing before the war. You can’t send me away. If you do transfer me out I’ll simply request a transfer back. If you don’t want me in your Company, I’ll ask to go to any other unit that is going into action.”
I hadn’t meant to launch into such a rant, but everything just burst out. Through all the endless marching and drilling in Calgary and England, the confusing harshness of Etaples, and the struggle to learn that I was no longer an individual with the power to think, but a tiny, mindless unit in a huge machine — through all that — I had kept going because every step took me closer to fighting at Ken’s side. Now he was sending me away. I wasn’t going to let him.
Ken tilted his head to one side and regarded me thoughtfully for a long time. When he eventually spoke, his voice was so quiet that I found myself leaning forward to catch what he was saying. “I suppose it’s my fault for not telling you what this damned war was really like, but then I don’t know if it’s even possible to tell someone who hasn’t been through it.”
I started to say that it wasn’t Ken’s fault, that I had made my own decision, but he held up his hand to silence me.
“Do you remember how enthusiastic I was when I volunteered back in 1914? God, it seems like an eternity ago. I remember being glad that the war had stalled so I would get my chance. I hadn’t even arrived at the war yet, but when the Germans used poison gas at Ypres in 1915, it only proved to me what monsters we were fighting against. All that changed one day just before I came home for that Christmas of 1916.” Ken poured some whiskey into his glass and took a drink before beginning his story.
“It was the tail end of the Somme battle and we’d been trying for days to take this German strongpoint. It was cold and rainy and the mud was dreadful. It seemed like every day the artillery would open up in the morning, we’d charge forward, only to find that the German wire hadn’t been cut. We’d try and find a way through while the machine guns shot us down, and then those who were still alive would struggle back, collect some reserves and try again the next day.
“One day a young piper from the unit beside mine played his men forward. When they reached the uncut wire he stood up straight and walked back and forth playing a strathspey reel. It was the bravest act I’ve ever seen. He was just a kid, with red hair. He stumbled a few times in the mud, but not a bullet touched him. It was a miracle if ever I’ve seen one. His courage inspired the men so much that they rushed the wire, broke through and stormed the strongpoint.” Ken lowered his head and massaged his temples with his fingers, his eyes tight shut. Eventually, he lifted his head and continued. “I met the piper later that day in no man’s land. He’d taken a wounded man back — that was a piper’s job after an attack — and was returning to collect his pipes. I stopped him and said how impressed I had been by his courage. ‘It were nothin’, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s ma job.’ He made light of it, but I could see from the faint smile that played round his mouth that he was proud and that my compliment had meant something to him. Then we parted.”
Ken again stopped telling me the story and rubbed his eyes. When he did continue, his voice was little more than a hoarse whisper and I had to lean over his desk to hear him.
“I heard the shell coming and threw myself down. I don’t know whether the piper didn’t hear the shell or hadn’t been out long enough to recognize when one was coming at you. In any case he kept walking. I yelled at him to get down, but he didn’t hear me.
“The shell must have exploded no more than a couple of feet from him. I had buried my face in the mud and felt the blast wash over me. When I looked up, the boy was gone, at least most of him was. His legs were still there, lying on the lip of the crater the explosion had made, but there was nothing above the waist.” Ken lifted his glass with a shaking hand and drained it.
“I must have been in shock, because I remember thinking that I had to help him. I reached over to push myself up and felt something. The boy’s head, still attached to his right arm and shoulder, was lying right beside me. A piece of the shell must have torn that part of him away from his chest. It was a hideous, grisly mess, but his face was completely untouched, exactly as it had been a moment before when I was speaking to him. His eyes were open and the smile was still on his lips. For a moment I stared at him, waiting for him to say, ‘It’s nothin’, sir.’ Then I screamed.”
I was horrified by what Ken was telling me, as much by his increasingly haggard look as by the story of the young piper.
“I don’t remember a lot about the days after that. Apparently I staggered into the Company command post talking gibberish. They sent me back to the casualty clearing station, where I was lucky to be seen by a doctor who realized that I was in shock. Somehow he managed to get me onto the leave roster and that’s how I came home for Christmas.
“It was a struggle to hide how I felt. The nightmares were bad and my hands would suddenly shake for no reason. But being in the Valley and seeing that you were safe helped. I figured that, whatever I had to go through, at least you would be all right.
“When I came back, I heard that they’d made me captain. Since then I’ve got by as best I can, and I’ve been lucky. We were part of the reserves at Vimy — ”
“But Vimy Ridge was a great Canadian victory,” I interrupted. “How can you think yourself lucky to have missed it?”
“Oh it was a great victory all right,” Ken said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “In four days, we had three and a half thousand men killed and another seven thousand shattered in body and mind to take a hill that you and I would have walked over in half an hour when we were deer hunting. We should all be proud — except maybe that Canadian soldier who deserted back in February and told the Germans we were coming.”
I recoiled at the anger and bitterness in Ken’s voice. He was so different from the friend I had known back home. Before I could think of anything to say, he continued.
“I haven’t been in battle since the Somme, but that doesn’t stop the nightmares. They come and go, as they do for most men who have been out here for any length of time. But the shaking has stopped and the whiskey helps a little.”
Ken nodded at the bottle on the table. He gave me a half-smile and shrugged apologetically. “I’m not the hero you imagine. There are no heroes out here, just the living and the dead. Let me put you up for that transfer to the 5th Division.”
I stood in silence for a long time, absorbing what Ken had told me. Was this tired cynic who hid from his nightmares in a whiskey bottle the friend I had admired more than anyone else? Could the war change someone this much? I was certain of one thing — it wasn’t going to change me.
“I don’t want a transfer to somewhere safe,” I said. “I came here to do my bit and I mean to do it. I know horrible things happen in war. I’m ready for it.”
I stood to attention and saluted. As I turned to leave, Ken said, “One moment.” I turned back. He was looking up at me.
“Do you still remember that deer you shot years ago?”
I nodded.
“I never understood what you meant when you talked about the nightmares you had afterwards. I thought you were just a kid who would grow out of it, but you never did, did you?”
“No.”
“I just want to let you know that I understand now. That’s all.”
Ken picked up the whiskey bottle and poured a large measure into his glass. I had no idea what to say. I saluted once more and left the tent.
I trudged back to my billet, deep in thought. I suppose I had always known on some level that the war would not be what I had expected when I was sitting in my bedroom back home reading the newspapers, but the revolutionary talk of Harry Sommerfield, the riot at Etaples and Ken’s collapse — what could I make of all that? Sommerfield I could dismiss as a radical crank, simply out to make trouble. And the riots did have a cause in the brutal conditions the men were under. But Ken’s despondency was a huge shock. He had been the one certainty I had clung to despite everything else.
That was my first clue that war wasn’t simply a question of fighting and surviving or not. War had the power to change people in frightening ways and, if it could change Ken, it might change me, too. I felt suddenly cast adrift.
“There you are.”
I looked up to see Bob approaching. The broad smile on his face was a welcome sight. “Now that you’ve been released by the high and mighty, it’s time to descend to reality. We’ve drawn guard duty.”
I hurried back to collect my rifle and followed Bob to the guardhouse to receive our instructions.