There was more training in the afternoon which the men turned to with a bored shrug. How could training improve the chaotic moments of trench encounters? It was supposed to improve the overall tactics of set-piece battles. Except that those often did not go to plan, so any new tactics were quickly dispensed with as men were cut down by machinegun fire yet again or reached for entrenching tools in bludgeoning desperation if an attack was interdicted by the enemy before new tactics could be employed.
Cello did not take part in the lunch or the training. He was held in the ‘guardroom’, while due process gathered its materials. If they were behind the line, battalions always maintained a guardroom; a point of entry to their piece of territory when they were not in the trenches. Guards were needed to patrol the billets at night and stop vehicles which approached the area. A duty team led by an officer, with NCOs and junior ranks doing the patrols and other working parties used the guardroom as the point of control.
In this case the guardroom was a house at the end of broken terrace of unoccupied properties. In the front room the duty Corporal sat with books, including a diary recording the men on duty and any incidents that might take place. One important incident recorded was the taking into ‘custody’ of the ‘prisoner’ Cello. They used his real Name; Private Marcus Harris. The time of the incident was recorded as zero nine thirty.
The room he was held in was an upstairs bedroom. The stairs were creaky, the floorboards upstairs not sound. There was no furniture, no bed, unlike the school and the windows were boarded up with rough planks; nails, heads bent over, hammered swiftly and left. It was a bare, small room.
The guarding of Cello was in the hands of the Military Police, though the duty personnel were also used to add numbers and do tasks for him. There was only one way out of his bedroom and the stairs were guarded and the downstairs was occupied by the duty Corporal and other duty personnel.
Cello was not entitled to rum. But he did have to be provided with food and water. This was the task of those on duty. The options were for him to be taken to the canteen under escort or for one of the guard to collect his food and bring it to him. The RSM had given orders for complete isolation, so the latter option was chosen.
On bringing a mess tin full of stew and powdered mash potato, which was cold by the time it came to the still barefoot Cello, along with an enamel mug of water; the food bringer looked at Cello and his stare elicited speech. “Do you know Sergeant John Thomas Wall?” Cello asked.
“Sergeant Wall…” He said the name automatically so Cello knew the answer to his question. “He was one of our platoon sergeants.”
“Yes? What happened to him?”
“They said he died in the bombardment.”
“He didn’t… I found him and rescued him but then he died. I buried him with some Germans… Didn’t you want to find him after the bombardment?” He looked into the man’s eyes, which were dull and after a moment they were diverted. “They said he had died,” he repeated.
“But you didn’t know that he had died.”
“There were rumours,” said the man, holding the food but this time looking up at Cello who was standing barefoot on the bare boards.
“Rumours, about what?”
“Well… that he had deserted.”
“How could that judgement be made?”
The man looked strangely at Cello. Then he shrugged, but it was not a submissive shrug because Cello was a prisoner and a deserter himself. So he had no right to question. “Could you get me some clothes and boots?” asked Cello changing the subject.
“Corporal will need to agree that, I can’t.”
“Can you ask him?” Cello took the food. He needed strength. His anger was not enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Colonel’s orderly room
Men under punishment who were not employed in working party tasks, were put to their punishment without delay. If that involved detention they would be sent back to a suitable place for that to be done, at higher formation level, division or Corps level where facilities could be made available. After a term in detention they would be returned to the front.
Perhaps they would be sent home to England. But that was a reward. Everybody wanted to get home, to a peaceful existence. If that required a term in prison first so be it, they would be free eventually and they would be safe. So as far as possible few were held in detention. The alternative was to face the firing squad. But that was for exceptional offences. Crimes which could be deemed treacherous to the cause.
Cello’s guards changed every day. He didn’t see the same men twice. But the question that was to be faced was; what was to happen to Cello when the Battalion moved on, moved back; to the front? He could only go back to his section while due process took its course. If he deserted again of course it would go against him when he returned. All did eventually return.
So the decision would come to the RSM to make because he was the senior one to whom the duties of the guardroom fell. When a battalion returned to the front there was no need of it. All the men were effectively guards, all the company positions had their own sentries at the entrance to the Company Commander’s, Platoon Commander’s or Section Commander’s trench. There was no rest and relaxation, no school dining room to congregate and smoke and laugh.
Every day the question; could he have boots and uniform, was left unanswered or just ignored. Eventually a decision had to be made. “What shall we do with him, you know… the prisoner… Sir?” asked the duty sergeant as the battalion was preparing to return to a reserve position at the front? “Do you want me to get him kitted out and returned to his section?”
The RSM had been unable to arrange for Cello to attend the Commanding Officer’s orderly room as the Colonel had been away at Brigade conferences most of the three days they had spent at the school. So due process had been interrupted and he didn’t know when it would continue. It would only be a matter of a couple of days. But in that time… “No the man is not to be given a rifle. He will be kept with the QMs party. Hand him over the HQ Sar-Major. Let them give him uniform, no weapon though. Is that understood?”
“Yes sir, very well.”
Cello had his blanket, but nothing else for his bare cell. He had been accompanied to the outside lavatory and his food had been brought to him. He had not bathed. He was still barefooted and his underwear had some undignified stains about it. Holding his rolled blanket, he was marched to the wagon lines where the logistic elements of the battalion were forming. Every company and sub-unit had its horse drawn wagon and there were some old lorries for the ammunition and other supplies. They looked pitifully wanting maintenance even after the three-day period of rest. Men busied around them pulling tarpaulins down, feeding and watering horses, looking suspiciously into the engines of some of the tenders and cranking others into life; to start their whining and rattling. There was a tiredness about the engines as if they were on the point of breaking down permanently, as there was with the uniforms of men, the colour of mud, the black unkempt horses. Straps were frayed and tied where buckles had long given up. Webbing packs and boxes and crates were the commodities of the logistic area hefted by exhausted men, helmets tilted to the back of heads, rifles slung over backs; unheeded.
They were drawn up in a small farm square behind the street where the houses had ended with the guardroom. Cello stood as the rain started, on the periphery of the activity as the Orderly Sergeant, performing his final duty before returning to his platoon to prepare them to move, went in search of the HQ Company Sergeant-Major. They emerged together from a low hovel to conduct a consideration of the prisoner.
Cello stood there a bit like Jesus might have stood against his accusers. The simple blanket now wrapped around him like a Kaftan as a partial protection from the rain. On seeing him the Sergeant-Major paused in his stride, sort of tripped and coughed. Other soldiers had paused to stare. They all stood, semi-circular around him, but at a distance. Cello was discomfortingly alien. He knew
that gave him strength, of a sort.
The Sergeant-Major didn’t like the unsettling nature of it. It offended him greatly. “Get inside, get inside, SMUGGER,” he shouted to an unseen man, “get some uniform for this man now.”
Suddenly a man rounded the corner of the farmyard. He was a Military Policeman. “Hey, hey, RSM says the prisoner is needed for the CO’s orderly room now.”
Everybody froze. “Well he still needs uniform. He’s not going to appear like that is he?” The Sergeant-Major swivelled on the man, and talked into his face.
Cello had followed the man detailed to get him uniform into the hovel.
“Like what?” asked the MP.
“Dressed like that.”
“The dress doesn’t matter. The Colonel wants to see him, he’s back now and he wants to see him.”
He can’t appear in front of the Colonel dressed in a blanket. Its undignified,” retorted the Sergeant-Major.
“Undignified?” echoed the MP. “What do you mean?”
The Sergeant-Major paused and opened his mouth but nothing emerged. He couldn’t put into words what he meant. “He must be in uniform,” he merely replied.
They waited and soon Cello did emerge from the shed. When he had the blanket he was tall and straight and not short of pride for all that. Now he was uncertain again. It was just a loose uniform and boots. He wore no puttees. They could be used for some nefarious purpose. The RSM had specifically forbidden them.
“Right, now Private Harris RSM’s orders. You are going for COs orderly room. It will be at the CO’s office before the battalion sets off. So fall in. Sar-Major could you detail one more escort please?”
When being marched, a prisoner had two escorts and they would straddle the man front and rear very close so he was trapped between them. An escort was provided and the three having shuffled together, set off. The MP in the front giving the orders and leading. “Prisoner and escort by the left, QUICK MARCH, LEFT… LEFT… LEFT RIGHT LEFT!” They disappeared around the side of the farm buildings.
The Sergeant-Major shepherded his men back to work.
But it was not destined to be.
The Colonel on returning had been ambushed by the RSM into a rushed type of kangaroo court. He hadn’t appreciated what was being set up for him. He turned around from putting his equipment down behind his temporary desk set up in the house next to the guardroom and was confronted with the RSM, Cello in the middle and the MP soldier. There was shouting outside as sub-units formed up combined with the noise of vehicles and under this cover they had sort of snuck into his office.
“What’s this… RSM?”
“As I told you sir, the deserter, Private Harris. Thought you would need to get this done before we strike camp sir.”
The Colonel slowed down. His actions seemed a little confused as if he had forgotten something at the location from which he had come. “Umm, well I… I can’t do an orderly room here and now, I haven’t the right… Do you have witnesses?”
The RSM coughed. “The case is clear cut. I know what happened and I will tell you sir.”
The RSM was in command of the ‘due process’. He stood at attention and looked out above the Colonel’s head, way above his head as he was seated.
But the pauses in the room and the sweating expectation suddenly seemed to crack the atmosphere like the only window in the front of the building finally giving up. The Colonel was the only man to move and he shifted in his chair awkwardly. “Well RSM you know I must examine the evidence myself. And… where is the Adjutant?”
The Adjutant was the filter for all disciplinary matters. They went through his hands before reaching the Colonel and he prepared the orderly rooms, reviewed the cases and ensured the witnesses were available and present.
This adjutant was indisposed. He could not face the return to the trenches. His hands had shaken uncontrollably the night before after a bottle or more of whisky. He was curled under his blanket, curled like a foetus. No one dared to try to uncurl him. There would be tears and madness.
Better for the battalion to leave without its adjutant and let him catch up with excuses of illness.
“I… I believe he is sick sir,” said the RSM
“Sick oh… well, then we have to wait. I can’t see this man until the evidence is gathered and properly presented.”
He did not look at Cello for one instant.
“Very well SIR.” The RSM returned to his parade ground self, with everything corrected.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The evidence
The Battalion marched ten miles that day. They marched through Arras like ghosts. Although the town was the ghost. There were no people there, only soldiers passing and stopping in awe and moving on. There was nothing here for them, not the buildings or the supposed tunnels under them. Structures tilted and yawned emptily open, torn and hanging, as if apologising for still trying to stand, without their insides and legs blasted to nothing so that they were bowing over the devastation. Nothing survived the heavy bombardment intact. Apparently civilians darted in and out of the ruins trying to stagger on in a sort of life.
“What have we done?” asked Jack, surveying the carnage. But he had a sort of sneer on his face.
“Nothing,” replied the Corporal who was a shadow of his former self having lost his pipe. He had lost hope as well and spent time sitting in any available shelter. The rest and time out of the trenches had diminished rather than recuperated him.
“You call this nothing?” said Ben suddenly in a flare of anger.
“Yea but we did nothing in this battle,” pointed out the Corporal.
“The price of victory,” said jack. He spat bitterly in the dust, a desert of rubble dust at the side of the road leading into the town centre.
“There was an attack of sorts, but the victory is not complete,” said a voice from the line of soldiers.
They sat in a line looking, not at each other, but towards the town, towards buildings, houses, streets. A huge slab of one stood up like a rock out of the desert. Piles of rubble and dust lay at its foot. Other buildings teetered on the edge of the square. What square had it been? What was its fame and worth now?
It shook men, seeing this.
“Why was this done?” asked Ben.
“Just like I said, it’s the price of victory.” Jack was angry.
“What’s the victory when everything is gone though,” questioned Ben?
“We fight for land, territory. Whatever is built on it – doesn’t seem to matter,” said the Corporal with a shrug in his voice though his shoulders had given up.
“It does matter though doesn’t it,” Ben wanted to know? “What are we fighting for, to preserve this land for its people? To defend the land?”
“It’s gone mate hasn’t it?”
“So what the fuck… is the point?”
The question fell swiftly to the ground. It had an exasperation about it. It voiced something that men couldn’t face. They didn’t look at it, didn’t have to look at it.
Jack picked up a rock, which may or may not have been part of a building and threw it out from where they were sitting resting on the side of the road. Their boots had picked up the sand-like colour of the rubble, in contrast to the mud of the fields and trench land.
It seemed that only the army now inhabited this broken town. Trucks trundled by, horses and carts loaded with goods and supplies and ammunition presumably. Men who had been part of a so-called victory marched back. There seemed little jubilation in them. “How was it?” asked Ben as they passed.
“Bloody awful,” was the sole reply.
This was only the beginning. They were set to go for miles, advancing. That was what they were told.
They marched on, skirting the heaps of rubble and the empty buildings and the centre of the city that seemed to echo a former bustling nature, but gave no justification in its ghostliness for the punishment it had received; or the impending ‘victory’ that was about to be visited
upon it.
“Victory is ours is it,” asked the Corporal?
“Not yet, not yet. Big push still to come,” responded Jack who had taken over as the mouthpiece of reportage on the progress of this bogged down assault still in its early April stages.
There was no optimism in their trudging steps, kicking dust as they went. The dried boots would no doubt soon get wet again. They would soon be in the land of mud again.
It was getting towards evening as they stepped into the fields again away from the town. The land was no different; flatish, less damaged than the city. But it wouldn’t stay like that for long, they considered. They moved further away from what had been a sort of civilisation across what had been a battlefield.
The Battalion was met by guides and taken off to their trenches which seemed strangely similar to the ones they had occupied a few days before when the whole Cello incident had been triggered. But they were in reserve. Other battalions had moved ahead and driven the Germans back but they had then withdrawn, leaving the reserve in a kind of front line. The gains that had put them there might soon be reversed though, as was customary.
There was a rumour of an attack to come which would involve them, the next day. But being bored by the whole Arras affair now and with their minds questioning the legitimacy of the destruction of the city they had passed through; they fell into a relaxed trench routine with minimal sentries.
Behind them on the main road, trucks and supplies and horses moaned wearily up and down.
It grew colder in the night and they missed the real beds of the school. When you allowed humanity to creep back it was harder to take back the mantle of the animal. But sleeping could be done to hopefully forget everything; though that hardly ever happened.
They awoke to snow. Someone tried to gather a fist full and throw it at Jack. But it was mostly mud. Snow in its pristine form had a cleanliness which could never survive in the trenches. But clothing and equipment had a stiffness about it which somehow tricked the water out of it, or tricked the wearer into thinking it was dry. But when the temperature rose above freezing everything became wet again. It had frozen during the night and the snow had come lightly on the cold air. Now if you shook the snow off your equipment carefully, you could live with the illusion that your equipment was clean. Above the bunkers and sand-bags the light covering could be left like an extra coat; another illusion.
A Cellist Soldier Page 15