A Cellist Soldier

by Robert J. Fanshawe

  The Germans he had met did not see him as a threat, more a strange Englishman who knew nothing about ‘Das Krieg’. Probably an insane deserter that his comrades were happy to be rid of.

  When he crouched he was still in the open. He didn’t find the ditch again. He didn’t search for it. He found a small crater which smelt of death and sat in it.

  The smell bothered him not at all. Getting his cello bothered him; nothing else.

  He was going in the direction of his instinct, unburdened by his Sergeant. The gradient of the ground was negligible, which bothered him a little. The route away from his previous trenches had been uphill. There was a wind in his face which gave him a sort of direction. He would head into it.

  But should he sleep? There was no decision making like that in the trenches. You slept because you were exhausted not because you had decided to. You slept because no duty called, no order needed obeying.

  He did feel free. Why not just fuck off then? Try to move between lines until he came to an end of it, an end of the battle lines. There he could find peace and beautiful farmland, untouched by all this. There must be an end. Was it in France or Belgium?

  Or was there some monstrous ungod sealing the end to keep everybody fighting. Was it the Canadians, who had done well at fighting? Now they had taken up the role of; Guardian of the gate of battle.

  He wrapped himself in the apron and lay on the ground.

  A patrol might find him and stick a bayonet in him, like Jack had done, ‘just to make sure’.

  He just laid his head on earth. He had nothing except his uniform and boots and this bloody apron. He was lucky he had his boots. Some casualties removed them or had them removed along with the leg attached to them. Had he not kept his on he would not have been able to run.

  Some men did run, without boots, feet or lower legs. They ran on torn stumps of legs. Cello hadn’t seen this. He had seen a horse hit while they waited in the logistic area, the hit was in the back and crippled the animal’s back legs but it dragged itself around in circles on its front legs screaming horribly, until someone shot it.

  Injured horses were not taken to hospital and treated. They were just dispatched, however small the injury. If they couldn’t walk and move on their own they were no good. Moving their bodies afterwards was difficult because of the sheer weight. The carts and other horses all had jobs.

  In some ways men also became animals, impossible to save when terribly injured, so killing them was the only thing to do. It happened, not just to the ‘casualty’ they had found. That was wrong, he had decided. It led to his ‘desertion’. Who would agree it was wrong. Such is war. ‘Das ist der krieg.’

  Then he had met his Sergeant.

  It had stopped raining. He had drunk a little of the rain.

  He dozed and woke and re-dozed.

  Thoughts drifted. In the trenches exhaustion brought deep sleep wherever the head could be laid. At other times thoughts and fears, noises and rummaging rats kept the head full and awake. Out in No Man’s Land rats did not congress but scurried aimlessly and meeting them was a surprise unless they were having business with a corpse. Cello was not aware of corpses in his vicinity, except the smell ever lingering.

  He also smelt rain and mud and something of himself, something of his fear.

  It was not a fear of the enemy, or battle, or even death.

  The fear was beyond, where humanity existed somewhere at the end of the line where the trenches ran out and farmland began again, and music inhabited the villages and the voices of children were raised, though not of the children who had died. When his hand was not shaking, he would be able to play his cello. His hand had power in it again. Music was power. It was more powerful than war. Though nobody here knew that.

  His fear was that his world was no longer there. There was nothing beyond these trenches. They went on for ever and ever.

  There was another fear, of what he might face; injustice.

  John Thomas Wall seemed to die from shame. He did not rail against the injustice, if there was any, in the situation he might have faced. In his mind he already faced the shame, which might have been worse.

  Cello did not feel that. In stronger moments when a little plug of anger caught at the back of his throat he wanted the injustice so that he could challenge it. There was no shame in what he had done. He had given a decent burial to a dead man…

  Who he failed to keep alive. Failed…

  He had failed? But why should he take the failure upon himself. Was this whole war not a failure? It wasn’t his failure.

  The rebellion came from music. He knew that. But music was dying in his mind; that was why he needed his cello so.

  John Thomas Wall had been a soldier for five years, a regular of the line, proud and the making of pride in his dress uniform no doubt. Any potential rebellion had been drilled out of him, especially in his rising to sergeant, the responsibility which seemed to sit heavily. But then he had greeted Cello in a strange manner; “Sergeant John Thomas Wall at your service,” for a sergeant.

  He was the one in need of service… help.

  So the greeting was an admission of his service, to whomever. His first thought, I’m here to serve.

  His failure to provide service was a cause of shame.

  Cello drifted in and out of dozing. His knees at one point began to shake and he could not really feel his feet. He thought of standing and trying to shake them back to life. It was not cold enough for trench foot, of which they had been warned in the training, another failure. If men’s feet succumbed – it was your own fault.

  A breeze moved his hair. Dawn must be approaching.

  Dawn was decision time.

  He waited for the grey dull light and began to shake from head to foot.

  Who was doing that? No bombardment crossed over him. No attack was imminent.

  The world was waiting for him; Marcus Harris, the apprentice master cello player and failed soldier, to stand up.

  He did not fear standing and walking to his own side.

  Still he did fear injustice.

  Suddenly he wanted to stand up to try and stop the shaking in his body. He did so but then sat down again. It was stand too time. Every soldier would be pointing their rifles out into No Man’s Land. That would virtually guarantee him being shot.

  A challenge from a Corporal. Who’s that out there? Who the fuck is it? That would be enough to set some recruit off with his shaking finger to loose one away.

  I thought you wanted him gone Corp.

  Well now he has gone, silly bugger and what the fuck was ’e wearing!

  Wait a bit, have you got ’im or just winged ’im?

  It would then be a turkey shoot. He would be wallowing, struggling and bobbing. That would excite. Yes the bobbing about would attract and encourage, there might even be cheering.

  First man to make him stay down.

  Take his fucking head off, the silly fucker.

  Perhaps then he would place his hands above his head and start screaming. No no, it’s me Private Harris. He would start to run, where, away or towards them in the desperate hope that they might come to their senses and stop.

  Cease firing?

  Would they?

  Finish him you buggers, finish him, someone would shout.

  Who would know whether he was German or French or some streak of nothing, not human.

  He would run this way and that, perhaps being hit several times but not going down, still with the arms up, or outstretched, pleading, running to his mother. And with each fresh hit there would be a fresh scream accompanying his refusal to go down and surrender to death.

  Until finally a head shot would bring a whoop whoop as his head burst like a pineapple.

  Why a pineapple?

  His mother’s not gonna recognise him now. See that fucking head go, like a pineapple.

  Pineapple. Who even had seen that? Did they have pineapples in the trenches. Never. You could get them the size of heads perhaps.
It had stiff leaves sticking out of the fruit at the top, like a mad man’s hair. Pineapple chunks came in cans. They never saw them here in the trenches.

  Here in the trenches! Suddenly a sense of responsibility seized Cello. Yes it was his responsibility to go back, right now. Now that he was close and he had done his duty with his Sergeant. What was left.

  Face the music!

  Ha ha yes. He was in a state of mad hilarity in his shaking heart, face the music and create the music and take the injustice, when it came.

  Instead of a rat, an absurdly small mouse came into his vision, came near his face. This mouse was lucky as rats generally disposed of mice very rapidly. This one was tiny, a sort of field mouse who lived on tiny grass seeds and other micro plant life instead of rotting flesh. It knew how to survive and keep out of the way of the larger rodents, the very much larger rodents.

  The mouse did not see him, Cello, as a threat to its life and so rummaged carelessly searching for his elusive food. Searching among the million cells of plant life in a square yard of soil. Did that plant life survive the devastation it had been subjected to? The worm he and the Sergeant had partly eaten, the shit of that worm, the blood of that worm, these were part of those million cells. The bodies of men were not.

  So with the courage of this mouse he must go and meet his destiny.

  He stood again and this time was not shaking. The dawn had hardened a lot more, though there was no sun. There was a silence above and beyond Cello. The battlefield was waiting for his moment. This was his moment. So he began to walk slowly, very slowly towards his own line. He knew where his own line was. He walked over the mud through wire and a few shallow craters. He walked across them as if they weren’t there.

  Fear had fallen away though he kept himself tense with a strange passion which would have normally shaken his hand, shaken him into the music he played. Now it merely tensed his body to await the first bullet.

  Instead, after stumbling into more solid wire, a loud voice came, a calm English one. “Halt who goes there?”

  He did so. He raised his arms.

  He had made his return.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Back to the regiment

  Cello’s disorientation prevented any feeling of home coming, despite the English voice. Was this his regiment, the regiment he had joined seemingly a few days before and left? “Private Harris.” His speech sounded strange as it does when unpractised. It had been unused except when he had been whispering to his Sergeant, John Thomas Wall, for… two days. It seemed an eternity. His voice came out low.

  “Speak up man. What regiment?”

  He gave it

  There was a pause

  “Advance, Private Harris.”

  Cello could not advance. The barbed wire was well concealed but thick around his feet and the mound which he thought was a mud bank was in fact the wire in front of the trench. Any German attackers would be lured by a well-concealed trench behind the bank which, once plunged into would hold your legs, the upper body ready for the concealed machinegun.

  “Path to your right. Move right, keep your hands high,” he was commanded.

  Cello found the path. It dropped down, then up and there was a bank up to the trench. The voice had come from higher than he had thought. They had probably seen him from way back.

  He relaxed a bit. But it was not the time for relaxing. “Just stay right there where you are.” He was in the pit just outside the trench. He looked straight ahead and saw an aperture with the small barrel of a Lewis gun pointing through it and behind it the thick cooling shroud; then part of a face. The sand-bags surrounding the opening were mud brown and caked with mud in between the sides of the bags making the wall look very solid, like sandstone.

  He didn’t know how long he would wait or what he should do. The feeling of stupidity about the white apron was gone at any rate. The orders given indicated an acceptance that at least he was a soldier, of sorts.

  “Turn around!” What. He froze. “Turn around you soldier.” Yes he was a soldier. This was someone else’s voice, a Corporal perhaps.

  Cello turned slowly around on the spot where he stood, keeping his hands in the air. Someone might have come with some ghastly German grenade in the back of their apron, a stick grenade with the handle conveniently sticking out ready to pull and throw. He didn’t have such a weapon. He had nothing and anyone looking could see that.

  He faced again the small opening and waited. No question about his apron came, no comment or laughter, only silence. Then a voice; “Private Harris, advance.”

  He advanced until the Lewis was pointing at his chest. “Look to the left.”

  Cello looked. A few yards away was a hole where the dip disappeared. “Take the steps!”

  He turned and walked or stumbled towards the steps. Down below the base of the trench they went, until a gap in the sand-bag trench wall was revealed by the extraction of a tightly coiled bunch of barbed wire. Cello scrambled through.

  As if it had been waiting, the rain chose that moment to deluge down onto the scene inside the trench. Unlike the supposed order of the sentry position and the intricate entrance into the trench system, this was chaotic and unordered. Three men lay asleep in the bottom of the trench within a few yards of the doorway. They were covered with groundsheet capes and could have been dead bodies. They did not move as the rain started, though one hand did draw its cape further up the face and helmet. Another prone figure lay on the fire-step some yards along, perilously teetering on the edge over which one leg hung. Two men huddled over a stuttering little cooker, trying to boil a mess tin of water. They looked up with a sort of scowl. Everything was covered in earth which was now rapidly taking on the sheen of mud with an exhausted, bedraggled look.

  Cello waited in the rain. The sentry who had called him in, continued to look out. Cello was not his responsibility any more but a Corporal standing behind the sentry, moved into Cello’s lowered vision. He advanced to within a few inches of Cello’s face then moved his head backwards before jutting it forward. “So Private Harris, can you explain, what you are, were, doing out there; a special mission was it? Lost were we? Or… And where if you could enlighten us, is your rifle and your equipment?”

  The regimental badges stood out. Cello was home, with his people and comrades in arms.

  “I found Sergeant John Thomas Wall,” said Cello. “I went out to find him. Well I didn’t know that. I… we went to find a casualty and found him. But he died. I made sure that he was buried.” He stood with head bowed, completely bowed, as if defeated; not home with friends.

  The Corporal was fixated on the rifle. “Where is it then… your rifle?”

  “Well I couldn’t exactly have carried Sergeant Wall while carrying it could I?” He spoke to the ground, his head still bowed. But something was rising within him though not yet raising his head. He needed water and food.

  “Company and platoon then? Come on?”

  “Alpha, number three.”

  “Ahh.” The Corporal acted as though he had extracted some vital piece of intelligence. “Now we know.”

  “Not exactly keeping it secret.”

  “What was that,” demanded the Corporal?

  “I’m not trying to keep it a secret, I said,” replied Cello.

  “No well you had better not do that, don’t have any secrets around here.” The Corporal puffed his chest out.

  The two men trying to boil water looked up. They had a vacant sort of look and didn’t react to the apron, or to anything. They were pre-occupied. The water was refusing to boil.

  Something was in the Corporal’s eyes, a tiny pinpoint of nervousness. His men were not reacting to him taking control of the situation with this man in the apron, this extra-ordinary soldier who was not a soldier like him, that much was obvious. But there was still a strange power to him, which he the Corporal would have liked to have himself, but he didn’t. His soldiers lounged around in a disinterested way.

  Cello was
not finished yet, despite his seemingly resigned posture. “Don’t you want to know about Sergeant Wall?” His voice was steadier than he could have imagined. “And could I have some food and water.” Then he did raise his head and looked directly at the Corporal. He brought his dark eyes, pushed deep into his skull by fatigue, to bear. In fact they met the Corporal’s eyes.

  The meeting of eyes of two men cannot be monitored by a third party. It is a very private meeting, however long or short. In this meeting Cello saw the flicker of uncertainty in the Corporal’s eyes. That gave him hope.

  “You will need to wait, wait for the Sergeant. He will say, what food and water you can have… If you can have it.”

  So that was it. The Corporal hung his head, not his place to even give a drink. Cello looked beyond the head and he could see equipment lying around the trench. There were water bottles there. “… So could I have just a sip of water then?” he pressed.

  The rain had been a bit of a cloud-burst but had now settled into a monotonous heavy drizzle, of the sort that could not be caught in a mug placed under the crease of a cape to drain into. It was all brown mud water. So the Corporal would need to physically give him a bottle. His soldiers seemed very loath to offer any of theirs.

  “Don’t move, stay just where you are.”

  Cello did move, as the Corporal turned away perhaps to extract his own water bottle, he sat slowly down and put his head in his hands. It was not a motion of resignation but a bodily need for rest, rest in relative safety. He could not avoid the scene around him. The looks became more insistent. Eventually a soldier’s curiosity has to be satisfied. “So where did you get that fucking stupid apron then?” The water had finally boiled and the two non-sleepers were sipping their tea.

  “It’s a German medics apron.”

  “Of course it is, silly question.”

  Cello’s desire overcame him. “Could I perhaps, have a sip of tea.”

  “Come and join us mate, Looks like you need it.”

  Cello went to where the two were half-sitting against the back wall of the trench, against some revetting. He crouched and took an offered steaming enamel mug. “Thank you.” The first sip gave him some life back. But it may have been the simple generosity as well as the actual tea that did it. He could not hold the mug. Its heat was not much but the shaking caught him again and he feared he might spill it.