Field Service

by Robert Edric

  ‘He was executed on General French’s personal recommendation,’ she said. ‘It seems a second charge of Dishonouring the King’s Regulations was dropped for the sake of expediency. I don’t even know what that means.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Reid said.

  ‘But you know what they say it means?’

  He nodded. ‘Besides, French was notorious for never considering appeals. Everyone out here knew that he had become a bloodthirsty embarrassment to the War Office. It was one of the reasons he was replaced by Haig.’

  ‘I had no idea,’ Caroline said.

  ‘Of course you didn’t.’

  ‘He was a volunteer, Etherington,’ she said. ‘William. He’d been hospitalized on three separate occasions.’

  ‘What, really, does any of that matter?’ Reid said.

  She waited a moment. ‘At least now his family will have somewhere to come and to remember him,’ she said.

  ‘And all the time they’re grieving – all those years to the end of all those other lives – they’ll know every detail of what put the man in his grave. It’s likely that the men who were called upon to take part in his execution are now dead and mourned and grieved over themselves. Or, if they’re not dead, then they’re men living with what they did for every day of the rest of their own lives.’ He stopped talking, aware that his voice was raised and that he was being watched by others at the tables.

  Caroline folded the sheet of paper containing Etherington’s details and put it back into its envelope.

  Reid took it from her and slid it into his pocket.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Please, there’s no need. I knew Guthrie had come for a reason. Alexander refused even to sit with him. Will you manage? With Etherington, I mean. Without your workers.’

  ‘With a solitary coffin?’

  They sat in silence for a moment, Caroline continuing to pick at the bread, Reid considering the following day. The noise of the playing children grew briefly louder as they ran from the remains of the lost building out on to the empty street.

  ‘Did Alexander receive bad news?’ Caroline said eventually.

  ‘His wife has been admitted to hospital with suspected scarlet fever. He’s concerned for his daughter.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, avoiding his eyes.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked her.

  ‘Scarlet fever. It has a nasty habit of turning into rheumatic fever.’

  ‘Is it …?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  Neither of them spoke for a moment.

  Finally, Caroline said, ‘Last winter, I worked at Le Havre. There was an outbreak of influenza. A local man stood at the hospital entrance selling canvas pomanders filled with lavender and spices.’

  ‘I imagine they were as effective as anything else,’ Reid said. ‘Or certainly no worse.’ He realized only then how critical this sounded.

  ‘Better in some instances,’ Caroline said. ‘Or at least the outcome was pretty much the same.’

  ‘At Béthune, in the middle of winter, I saw men scoop up wet stable manure to use as poultices to protect against frostbite.’

  She poured the last of the second bottle into their glasses.

  ‘Should it really be this sour?’ she asked him.

  ‘Perhaps we should have asked Guthrie to perform another of his miracles for us.’

  ‘Cheers,’ she said, pulling a face the instant the glass touched her lips.

  22

  THE NEXT MORNING Reid arrived at the station to see both Caroline and Lucas sitting together on the sunlit platform. He had gone there earlier than usual in the hope of getting some assistance from Benoît in unloading what little was due to arrive.

  Upon seeing Reid, Benoît came out of his office and walked with him to where Caroline and Lucas sat talking.

  As the two men passed the open doorway of the goods depot, Reid looked inside and was surprised to see Drake and a dozen of his workers also waiting there.

  Drake came out to him.

  ‘We heard,’ he said simply. ‘The bloke from Neuville.’

  ‘How?’

  Drake smiled at the question. ‘We live in a barracks,’ he said. He motioned to the men starting to congregate around him. ‘More of them volunteered, but I said we’d only need the dozen.’ He nodded his greeting to Benoît.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘There were one or two who objected, but not that many, not considering.’

  ‘Of course,’ Reid said. He thanked the gathering men.

  ‘We’ll wait on your word,’ Drake said.

  ‘They are all soldiers,’ Benoît said to Reid as the two of them returned to the platform. ‘It’s natural.’

  ‘I know that,’ Reid said.

  ‘I called on a couple of my neighbours, but then sent them away when your men arrived.’

  ‘You knew, too? About the body, I mean?’

  Benoît nodded. ‘Our own generals …’ he said and then fell silent.

  They arrived beside Caroline and Lucas.

  ‘It seems the world and his dog already know,’ Lucas said.

  ‘So I see. I still wish Wheeler had seen fit to deliver the man as part of a normal consignment instead of all this.’

  Caroline rose, put her arm through Benoît’s and drew him with her further along the platform in the direction of the coming train. She talked with him of his work and then stood with him beyond the shade of the buildings in the full glare of the rising sun.

  ‘Have you heard any more?’ Reid asked Lucas. ‘From home, I mean.’

  Lucas sat with his feet apart, his hands on his knees. ‘Since yesterday? No. How did the work go?’

  ‘All done. I left a few spaces in case any more turn up.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ Lucas said. ‘Besides, according to Jessop, there’s soon to be a change in policy and men are going to be buried wherever there’s room, closest to where they’re found. I suppose it makes sense.’

  ‘It makes his kind of sense, you mean. Jessop’s. Ours still not to reason why, eh?’

  It was clear from Lucas’s lack of enthusiasm, and from the lack of his usual resistance to Wheeler and Jessop’s ill-considered decisions, that his thoughts remained elsewhere, and so Reid stopped talking.

  It was his intention, if the waiting men agreed, to take more of the engraved headstones out to the cemetery. He was keen now, especially knowing what Wheeler planned for the place regarding the arrival of the nurses and the gathering newspapermen, to replace as many of the temporary markers as possible with the stones to suggest a greater degree of completion and permanency. The stones for the men from Prezière would not arrive for some time, but there were sufficient others already stacked and waiting at the station for a considerable difference to be made to the appearance of the cemetery.

  Left to his own devices and schedules, he would have preferred to have waited until all the burials were completed before planting the stones, but he understood that other considerations now held sway. Besides, perhaps Lucas was right – perhaps the time had come to stop fighting Wheeler and to finish the work and then simply leave.

  It had been Commission policy until now to salvage all the temporary grave markers and then, upon a small payment, to deliver these to the families of the dead.

  As far as possible, photographs had been taken of all the known graves, and these too had been sent, also for a small charge, to the next-of-kin. The practice had been stopped only when greater and greater numbers of grieving relatives expressed the desire to visit the actual graves.

  In the months immediately after the Armistice there had been a great demand for the replaced grave markers, and they had been retrieved, dismantled, sent, reassembled and then replanted back at home. Sometimes this had taken place in local churchyards with small ceremonies attached, but more often than not the crosses – most little more than two simple pieces of crate-wood with a name and number roughly scraped or scorched into them – had been erected in family gardens and allo
tments, and on farmland and village greens.

  There were still those in the War Office who believed that ‘home soil’ cemeteries and a national memorial ground would have been the better option from the very start of the retrieval and burial work.

  On one occasion, early in their meetings, Wheeler had declared his support for the plan for a separate cemetery for the three hundred executed men. Afterwards, when the plan was vetoed by Parliament, Wheeler had continued to insist that it was how many in the Army Graves Service had felt at the time.

  Lucas nodded towards Caroline and Benoît.

  ‘He’s been here since before six. He and his wife went to their son’s grave before he came to work.’

  ‘Because of what’s happening today?’

  ‘Perhaps. They go together three or four times a week, although I imagine his wife goes every day and keeps it to herself. He was telling me that she still cries every time she sees the stone.’

  ‘He was their only child,’ Reid said.

  ‘I know. He told me she argues with him. She wants to know why he isn’t grieving for the boy as painfully as she is. She accuses him of being unfeeling.’

  Reid looked at the man. ‘She’s wrong,’ he said.

  Caroline was still holding Benoît’s arm, pointing something out to him on the far side of the tracks.

  ‘He thinks that when the cemetery’s finished there’ll be no more use for the station and the government will close it,’ Lucas said. ‘Have you heard anything?’

  Reid shook his head. ‘Only the same rumours. It’s just as likely that they’ll keep it open and running for the visitors who’ll come.’

  After that, neither man spoke.

  Close to seven, the whistle of the approaching engine sounded, and both men turned to see the plume of smoke rising above the flatness.

  Caroline and Benoît came back to them.

  ‘I make it ten seconds late,’ Reid said, causing Benoît to smile and shake his head.

  ‘Would you prefer me to leave?’ Caroline asked Reid. She motioned to Drake and the others, who were emerging from the depot and forming themselves into a line between the doorway and the platform’s edge. She reached beneath the bench and picked up a small bunch of wild flowers from the shade there. ‘I thought …’

  ‘Please, stay,’ Reid told her, aware what her presence would add to the occasion, surrounded by all these men.

  The train appeared, slowed and drew to a halt.

  Drake came to Reid, saluted and said they were ready.

  Reid wondered what to tell him. He took the documents concerning the man from Neuville from his case. ‘Business as usual, I suppose,’ he said.

  ‘The cart’s at the far side,’ Drake said. He indicated the cart and its waiting horses at the rear of the station.

  ‘Take him straight through,’ Reid said. He realized only then that it was unfair of him to order the men to return to take out the stones, and so he said nothing of his original plan for the day. ‘Then you can tell them to go.’

  ‘That was my intention,’ Drake said.

  A few minutes later, the solitary coffin was manhandled from the floor of the wagon at the rear of the train, and Drake and five others lifted it on to their shoulders and carried it into the depot, pausing only to allow Caroline to reach up and lay her small bunch of flowers on its lid.

  Reid, Lucas and Benoît stood to one side as the casket was carried away.

  Eventually, Reid saluted the coffin, and Lucas followed him.

  Caroline and Benoît both bowed their heads and muttered separate prayers.

  The pall bearers and their load were lost for a moment in the deep shadow of the depot before reappearing at the waiting cart a moment later.

  Reid heard Drake calling to the man holding the reins, and then telling the men to return to the platform and whatever else waited to be unloaded and carried into the depot.

  After this Drake came back.

  ‘Thank you,’ Reid said to him.

  The other men came through the shed singly and in pairs and started in their usual desultory manner to unload the remainder of the day’s sparse cargo.

  Caroline returned to Reid. ‘I had a note from Colonel Wheeler,’ she said. ‘My nurses will definitely be here in a fortnight’s time.’

  Wheeler had never guaranteed specific delivery so far in advance before, and Reid guessed that the promise now had more to do with whatever else he was planning for the ceremony than with any need for expediency on her or the nurses’ behalf.

  ‘I see,’ he said.

  ‘I imagine he has a great deal else to consider,’ she said, letting him know that she too was aware of Wheeler’s as yet unformed plans.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘He promised me their stones will arrive between now and then so that they might be put in place at the ceremony itself,’ she said.

  ‘Of course.’ It was customary to allow the freshly filled graves to settle for at least a month before they were topped up, levelled, and the stones and concrete foundations added. Any stone-laying at the actual arrival of the women’s coffins would be done solely for the benefit of the watching crowd. Again, Reid revealed nothing of the contrivance. ‘I’m pleased,’ he said, ‘that you’ve finally got a date after waiting for so long.’

  Something distracted her, and she turned away from him to look along the platform. ‘Look,’ she said.

  Reid turned too and saw Benoît wiping his face with his handkerchief. Ernaux had climbed down from the train and stood beside his friend, his arm clasped across Benoît’s shoulders.

  ‘He’s remembering his son,’ Reid said absently, as though the man’s behaviour needed some explanation.

  ‘Of course he is,’ Caroline said.

  Lucas came to them and said he was leaving. He told them he intended riding on the train back to Amiens, where he hoped to pick up more of the paperwork regarding the retrievals at La Chapelette. He, too, paused to look at Benoît and Ernaux still standing at the platform’s edge.

  Closer by, the driver of the train climbed down and walked alongside his engine, tapping the shining wheels with an iron bar, creating a loud clanging sound which echoed all around them in the early-morning quiet.

  23

  AT THE START of the following week, Reid travelled again with Lucas to Amiens to attend a Commission meeting there.

  According to the agenda Wheeler had sent out in advance of the gathering, it now appeared that the building of the larger cemeteries further afield and the plans for the giant memorials to the missing were now of greater consequence to the Commission than the completion of the numerous smaller burial grounds already underway. It was equally obvious to anyone who knew Wheeler, and of his personal ambitions, that these larger sites and their monuments were of far greater interest to him as he continued to manoeuvre himself for promotion.

  Reid and Lucas arrived at the designated hotel, however, to discover that neither Wheeler nor Jessop were present. A note was handed to Reid by the concierge, explaining that the two men had spent the previous evening in Paris and would be at least an hour late. It was hoped that the proceedings would await their arrival.

  Others congregating there were given the same sparse information. It angered Reid that Wheeler had not seen fit to let them know of the delay sooner, but Lucas, as usual, was unconcerned by the news, remarking only that it gave them time to go to a nearby bar for a drink. When Reid pointed out that it was not yet mid-morning, Lucas only laughed and told him to please himself, just like Wheeler and Jessop clearly did.

  The two men went together to a bar they had visited before, where Reid ordered coffee, and Lucas cognac.

  Reid asked about the retrievals at La Chapelette, but nothing Lucas said of the place and its bodies revealed any of his usual concerns or commitment to the work. And when Reid asked him again if he had received any further news of his wife, Lucas simply shook his head, emptied the glass he held and returned to the bar.

  When Whee
ler and Jessop did finally arrive – closer to two hours late than one – Wheeler drew everyone together and told them of the work proposed for the monument at Ypres, in Belgium, and over which, therefore, he had no control or influence whatsoever. But both Reid and Lucas guessed by the way he spoke of the monument that he was already convinced of his own elevation within the Commission. Morlancourt and all the smaller cemeteries surrounding it had clearly become something of a backwater as far as Wheeler was concerned, and he was determined not to allow himself to be caught there.

  He spoke of progress in most of the cemeteries as though the work on them was all but completed, and when Reid attempted to interrupt him and question these assumptions, Wheeler said there was no time for such discussions. He spoke as though Reid and not he had been the cause of their delay.

  Lucas, Reid noticed, said nothing during Wheeler’s hour-long speech. He sat low in his chair, his arms across his chest, his head bowed, and at times seemed half asleep in the warm and airless room.

  Wheeler never once mentioned Lucas or his work, and this, Reid also saw, suited Lucas perfectly.

  Prior to Wheeler’s arrival, as Reid had watched Lucas rise unsteadily from where he was sitting in the bar – he had laughed and said he was exhausted – Reid had again suggested to him that he should apply for compassionate leave, but Lucas had insisted that he preferred to stay and complete his work. Reid knew not to persist in the matter, and knew too that he should certainly not intercede with Wheeler on Lucas’s behalf.

  Upon returning to the hotel, another of Wheeler’s aides had taken the completed Prezière paperwork from Reid. When Reid had asked the man to sign for the documents, he had been told that this would not be necessary, and the man had walked swiftly away from him.

  Now, sitting in the stifling atmosphere of the hotel room, and sensing that both Wheeler and Jessop were already guessing at the extent of Lucas’s intoxication, Reid knew not to draw any further attention to him. All he wanted now – all either of them wanted – was for the meeting to come to an end and to leave Amiens.