The Glorious Dead

by Tim Atkinson

  Move! Jack throws the flowers down. Petals sticking to his palm, he holds his rifle and moves forward. Smoke. Zzzpp, zzzpp! Bullets seem to brush his ears. He flicks his head from side to side as if avoiding flies. A sudden shower of mud and chalk sprays over him and he is spitting soil, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. Still that bloody poppy! He stops, and wipes his hands down his tunic. Move forward! A body. Someone’s body. Dead. Red. More poppies. Had he grabbed a handful too? No. Blood.

  Forward. The smoke is choking now. His lungs are burning, eyes stinging. Jack is hot, too hot, under the heavy pack, stumbling across the hard ground. The dust, the smoke. Zzzpp! Zzzpp! Zzzpp! Flecks of dust in his eye. The fog clears. He is stepping over more bodies, mouths move, cries, shouts. Jack looks at them. And carries on.

  Suddenly he’s spinning, airborne, flying, puzzling before thudding into the ground, his eventual fall broken by the bodies of men already in the shell-hole. A desperate, unbearable ringing in his ears. Then nothing.

  At last, when he can open his eyes it’s quieter. Someone’s mouth is moving, eyes are looking at him. But he can’t hear what they’re saying. He stares back. They shake their head. His eyes close. He feels the rough lifting and the bumping journey on a stretcher, feels it jolt as the bearers lower him to the ground. The sky above is blue, still. Small puffs of light brown smoke burst like birds appearing out of thin air. Soft summer clouds drift across a clear blue sky. His eyes close. And when he opens them again the sky is black and pocked with fierce stars.

  ‘Your wound is healing nicely, Jack.’ The young nurse smiles at him. One of the few that will. The younger they are, the more briskly efficient the nurses seem to be. ‘Roll over please, Mr Patterson. This won’t hurt.’ They knew it would. ‘There, that wasn’t too bad now, was it?’ But they knew it was.

  But this particular nurse … What was her name? Where has she gone? He can’t see her any more. But he can feel her in the darkness of his throbbing head.

  ‘Hold me, Jack.’ The girl is warm, but her warmth won’t last till dawn. ‘You won’t forget me, will you, Jack? Promise me you won’t forget.’

  ‘I promise …’ Jack says. I promise, he thinks. It won’t be hard. He has done it before. But still there is something, someone that he can’t forget, no matter how hard he tries, no matter what. You don’t forget something like that. You can’t. Because the hole where she used to be can never be filled. And the hole aches. The hole is cold. As cold as the grave …

  ‘You are going, Jacques,’ Katia whispers, her head beside his on the pillow. ‘Home. I know you are … to see her.’

  ‘No.’ He clenches his teeth hard. ‘No,’ he says as his jaw slowly relaxes. ‘I came here to get killed,’ he calls out. ‘I can’t go back.’

  Somewhere in the darkness, a whistle blows. The line of men begins to move forwards. A strange-looking crowd, each man in a long wet greatcoat, pockets stuffed with useful bits and pieces and carrying, not rifles now, but large, pointed shovels, pickaxes and a sheaf of empty sandbags. Watching is their occupation; watching and walking. That is what they are paid an extra half a crown a day for doing – watching mud, watching their own wet footsteps, watching the ruined ground and straining their eyes for the slightest signs of life. Or rather, death.

  Suddenly, something glistens in the wet ground. Jack stoops to look, but the uniform is wrong. French? It’s red, even after so long underground; the red of the uniform is clear, as is the blue. And suddenly the bleak landscape rolls back time as army after army marches on to the beat of the drum, following the flag, with muskets shouldered, fifes whistling like raucous canaries and with horses trotting and snorting and stamping their hooves.

  She allows him to undress her, sitting with her head bowed on the corner of the bunk as he gently unwraps her layer by layer, laces, ribbons, buttons, buckles and bows. Her small breasts pucker at the nipple in the cold air. He puts his arm around her and she hitches her bare bottom farther up the bed and lies down beside him. Her eyes close.

  Timor mortis conturbat me …

  The priest gently brushes the young girl’s eyelids with his thumb. The family says, ‘Amen!’

  27

  ‘Sir! Sir! Lieutenant Ingham, sir!’

  ‘What is it, man?’ Ingham fumbles in the darkness for his spectacles. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Sorry, sir. Spot o’ trouble, sir. Private Gilchrist’s been out looking for that fella you was telling us about …’

  ‘Fellow? What fellow?’

  ‘Chap buried at Tyne Cottage, sir. You know. The one …’ Jack looks left and right and checks he won’t be overheard. Captain Harris’s snores echoing from the opposite end of the otherwise empty barrack block confirm that he is fast asleep, and Ingham’s batman has long since been dispensed with. ‘Have to make me own tea now, what?’

  ‘The, er … fella you was suggesting we might want to dig up,’ Jack says in a hoarse whisper. By now Ingham is wide awake, swinging his legs out of his bunk and hurriedly pulling on his breeches.

  ‘Good Lord, what kind of bother? What in the name of God was Gilchrist doing anyway? I thought I had issued strict instructions—’

  ‘He thinks you wanted one o’ us to dig the fella up so he could be sent home. Dead fella, that is, not Gilchrist. Anyway, he’s gone out there to do the honours on his own.’

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘He seems to think there’ll be some money in it, sir. And what with his demob coming up and all that, I suppose …’

  ‘Money? Well, I … I mean I …’

  ‘I know, sir, daft idea. Bloody stupid.’

  ‘But what kind of bother is he in, Patterson? Not drunk, is he?’

  ‘No, sir. Got lost. Reckoned you wanted the body left at Shrapnel Corner and he was reburying it there for you to collect later when he hit an unexploded shell.’

  ‘My God! Is he badly hurt?’

  ‘Don’t rightly know, sir.’

  ‘Corporal?’

  ‘Yessir?’

  ‘How do you know any of this? I mean, if Gilchrist was acting alone as you suggest …’ Ingham rubs his eyes, then frowns. Jack suddenly sees the whites of his eyes in the darkness.

  ‘Followed him, sir. Didn’t trust him, sir.’

  ‘Well no, quite. Always been somewhat unpredictable, that man. Typical damned Aussie. I told the CO not to accept him when he was transferred. British mother, apparently. No wonder they got rid of him.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t know about that, sir.’

  Ingham is now pulling on his boots. ‘So, you followed him. Capital, man, capital! Shows initiative, that does. Well done!’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Yes, have to see if we can add another stripe to that arm of yours, Corporal.’

  Jack looks away as Ingham buttons up his flies. ‘Followed on that motorbike you keep, sir. Hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘No, no, of course—’

  ‘And I came across him digging this temporary ’ole in the middle o’ nowhere, like I said. Or rather, I came across him just afterwards. Sir, he in’t in no fit shape for digging now.’

  ‘Oh, my God.’ Ingham grimaces, pulling up his braces. ‘Patterson – no one else must hear of this, d’you understand? If Gilchrist blabs I’ll have him certified insane or else court-martialled. This incident … well, it never happened – understood?’

  ‘Don’t worry, sir. Private Gilchrist won’t blab.’

  ‘Yes, well … This nocturnal escapade of his is an aberration and we – you and I – are now merely going in search of an absent soldier, someone we believe might be in danger.’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘And, of course,’ Ingham’s buck-toothed grin flashes in the darkness as he ties his tie, ‘of course you’ll be, well … I’ll see to it that you are amply rewarded for your service.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  The two men climb into the RAMC ambulance. No one had noticed the noise of the old Albion lorry leaving camp an hour earl
ier amid the noise and clatter of the last train from St Omer. In the darkness, amid the routine noise and movement, no one took much notice of the space where the truck had been parked. And no one noticed the ‘souvenirs’ Ocker appropriated from the quartermaster either. No one, that is, except for Jack.

  The journey from Poperinghe to Ypres is largely silent. The night is dark and the dim yellow beam of the gig lamps offers little assistance in avoiding the potholes, but in the distance the silhouette of the ruined Cloth Hall campanile looms black on the horizon against the slowly lightening eastern sky. Half an hour later they are in Ypres, crossing the river and heading straight down Elverdingestraat towards the ruins of the cathedral. Turning east once more, the truck bounces across the smooth cobbles of the Grote Markt, shining in the pre-dawn darkness like the tops of a thousand skulls, worn clean by the march of a million pairs of boots. Heading out through the ramparts and along the Menin Road, Jack takes a sideways glance at Ingham and notices him biting at his bottom lip.

  ‘I thought you said that Gilchrist was at Shrapnel Corner?’ Ingham says as Jack turns left and the truck bounces off along the old corduroy road by the railway cutting. Jack says nothing. A short time later he is pulling the truck over to the side of the road and turning off the engine.

  ‘This’ll do,’ he says at last.

  The engine ticks down, slowly cooling. A slight breeze wafts the scent of wet mud into the cab. A sudden, slow flapping of wingbeats like the sheets outside the laundry room breaks the silence as a skein of geese slants low overhead. The two men sit in silence. Slowly, through the canvas screen separating the cab from the back of the truck, the cold nose of a service revolver pokes blindly towards a pulsing vein in Ingham’s neck. The steel muzzle meets flesh a fraction of a second before Ingham realises what is happening, but as he tries to turn his head the metal jabs hard into his trapezius.

  ‘What the—’

  ‘Shuush now, Lieutenant Ingham, sir,’ a voice from behind is saying. Jack is staring straight ahead. Ingham tries to turn again, but the voice urges him to keep his head still or else risk getting it blown off.

  ‘Gilchrist! But I thought … ? Patterson, you told me …’ Ingham takes a sideways glance at Jack without daring to turn his head.

  ‘Dig the hole, did you, mate?’ Ocker asks Jack, pulling back the canvas curtain with his free hand.

  Jack sighs, nods briefly, staring straight ahead, then turns to Ocker. ‘It’s all ready for thee, lad.’

  ‘Right-o, Jacko. Let’s just hope we don’t actually need it, eh?’

  ‘Look! I don’t know what the devil is going on here,’ Ingham hisses through clenched teeth, staring straight ahead into the darkness. ‘But mark my words I’ll have the both of you shot for this! This is an outrage!’

  ‘No, sir,’ Ocker interrupts. ‘If there’s any shooting to be done it’ll be done by me,’ he goes on. ‘Now be a good chap and shut yer clacker.’ An owl hoots somewhere in the darkness.

  ‘Everything’s planned,’ says Gilchrist, clicking off the safety catch of the Webley revolver he has managed to acquire. ‘And Jacko here’ – he nods his head towards the driver’s seat – ‘Jack’ll do the burying. Proper expert Jack is, y’know, at burying. Digging, burying, covering over … Why, he’ll have you six foot beneath this filthy Belgian shit in no time, “sir”, if you don’t play the game.’ He pauses.

  Ingham isn’t sure whether to answer or not, or even if it’s safe to try and shake his head. His mind is racing. He is staring straight out of the truck into the darkness. The stumps of shell-shattered trees punctuate the near horizon. They are facing north, Ingham calculates, with the faintest lightening of the eastern sky out to the extreme right in his peripheral field of vision. There is no moon; even the few stars visible on the journey seem to have slowly gone out, one by one, like blown-out candles. Ingham feels with his left hand for the latch of the door. His mind, working feverishly, calculates that he could dive over the top of the door if necessary, but opening it would make a quick getaway more likely to succeed. And these two clowns have let him keep his hands down. What the devil are they playing at?

  ‘If it’s money you want …’ Ingham reasons that the longer he can keep them talking, the more chance he has of reaching the door handle without them noticing.

  ‘Money? You hear that, Jacko?’

  ‘Aye!’

  ‘No need, mate …’ says Ocker. Ingham bristles, even with a gun at his neck. ‘We don’t want money, although if we did, I’ll wager you could supply us with a tidy sum given all the backhanders you’ve been getting from some o’ the locals.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Keep yer voice down, sir. D’you want to wake the dead?’

  ‘No, mate, he wants to dig ’em up and send ’em home – provided someone’s paying him, that is.’

  ‘You chaps have got this all wrong,’ Ingham is saying. The thought of them knowing quite as much as they seem to know has set his mind racing. ‘I couldn’t possibly sanction such behaviour. Why, it’s—’

  ‘Pretty lucrative, I’d say, judging from the size of them brown envelopes de Wulf keeps giving you.’

  ‘Ah.’ Ingham laughs nervously. ‘No, no, no. Those are merely payments for supplies – Monsieur de Wulf pays a good price for, er … scrap. You know how useful scrap is to the Belgians, after all.’

  ‘And guns. They useful to the Belgies too, are they, cobber?’

  ‘Decommissioned weapons, naturally.’

  ‘Still government property though,’ says Ocker, whistling through his teeth.

  ‘I think you’ll find—’ Ingham is struggling to contain his indignation.

  ‘I think you’ll find, sir,’ Jack says calmly, ‘that we’ve got all t’details written down right here.’ He turns on a torch, then holds up an envelope for Ingham to see. ‘De Wulf has told us the whole story,’ Jack continues. ‘Mind you, Ocker did ’ave to persuade him a little bit, didn’t you, lad?’

  ‘No trouble! In fact, it was a pleasure rearranging his fat face.’

  The bulging envelope is sealed, and even in the dim beam of the torch Ingham can see that it is addressed to Army HQ.

  ‘We do’ – Jack puts the envelope back in his tunic pocket – ‘we do have another letter.’

  ‘As well as several signed copies of that one, Lieutenant Ingham, sir, should you be thinking …’

  ‘Oh no. No, not at all …’

  ‘Good! ’Cos we’re one step ahead of you, yer snake.’

  ‘Now l-l-l-look here, chaps …’

  ‘This other letter, on the other hand—’ Jack brings out a thinner envelope, and Ingham notices a label in his own handwriting addressed to his mother in England.

  ‘You bounders! You’ve been through my … how dare you?’

  ‘Very organised, sir, I must say. Little white gummed labels with yer ma’s address on.’

  ‘Yeah, that was certainly a bonus, eh, Jacko?’

  ‘Aye, lad. Mind you, I bet you don’t send yer mam a typed letter normally, do you? Isn’t good form, is it, sir?’

  ‘Not that you’d know about form.’

  ‘Typed letter? What are you talking about?’ Ingham’s hand has crept along the door unnoticed. He has managed to shift position imperceptibly and his fingers are now tightly wrapped around the door handle, feet braced on the floor of the truck and upper body turned very slightly – tensed, like a spring.

  ‘Well, sending yer mam a goodbye letter and not writing it yourself … bad form, I suppose. But can’t be helped under t’circumstances. She’ll understand, I’ll be bound. Given the circumstances.’

  ‘Circumstances? What “circumstances”? What in God’s name—’

  ‘Don’t take that tone with us, sir. We’re doing you a favour, really. I mean … we could send a copy of this letter to the colonel.’

  ‘What bloody letter?’

  ‘Better read it to him, Jacko.’

  ‘Aye, right … Dear Mother—’

  ‘Co
uldn’t be quite sure about “mother”, could we, Jacko? Some of the others reckoned “mama”. I thought “Dearest Mother”, personally. What d’you reckon, sir?’

  ‘Others? Others? How many of you are in on this … this …’

  ‘Anyhow, we did a couple o’ versions just in case. Mama, sir, or mother?’

  ‘Oh, do get on with it, man!’

  ‘Come on, Jacko. The suspense is killing him.’

  ‘It’s not suspense that’ll do for him in t’end though, is it?’

  ‘No, mate. It’ll be the shock!’

  Jack starts again to read the letter. In the torchlight Lieutenant Ingham can see that it appears to be well typed – a professional job. He can’t help wondering whose work it is. But not for long – after the opening salutation, the letter gets straight to the point.

  ‘The fact that you are reading this letter, mother, will, as I am sure you are aware, confirm your worst fears.’

  ‘Worst fears?’ Ingham splutters. ‘What the devil—’

  ‘D’you want to hear the rest of t’letter or don’t you?’

  Ingham nods, clenching his jaw tight to stop his teeth from chattering.

  ‘Please do not grieve for me, dearest mother …’ Jack squints and moves both the torch and his eyes closer to the paper, ‘… for I know I have given my life in a good and righteous cause – the cause of—’

  ‘Fillin’ his fuckin’ boots with blood money from the folks who fancy buying a return passage for the WCs we’ve spent the last three years transferring to the rest camp.’

  ‘Can you not keep yer gob shut, Ocker? Even while I read his bleedin’ final letter?’

  ‘Sorry, Jacko. Carry on.’

  ‘Aye, right.’ Jack holds the letter closer and continues. ‘I have disobeyed orders—’