“Yes,” I said.
Then after a long silence he went on: “You still love her, don’t you? You still love Moll?” My silence was enough. He knew already. “Good,” said Charlie. “And there’s something else I want you to look after too.” He lifted his arm away from behind me, took off his watch, and strapped it on my wrist. “There you are, Tommo. It’s a wonderful watch, this. Never stopped, not once. Don’t lose it.” I didn’t know what to say. “Now you can go back to sleep again,” he said.
And in my sleep I dreamt again my childhood nightmare, Father’s finger pointing at me, and I promised myself even as I dreamt that when I woke this time I would at last tell Charlie what I did in that forest all those years ago.
I opened my eyes. Sergeant Hanley was sitting across the dugout from us, looking at us darkly from under his helmet. As we waited for any others to come in and for darkness to fall, the sergeant sat there not saying another word to Charlie or to anyone, just glaring unwaveringly at Charlie. There was cold hate in his eyes.
By nightfall there was still no sign of Pete, nor of a dozen others who’d gone out with the sergeant to join that futile charge. The sergeant decided it was time to go. So in the dark of the night, by twos and threes, the remnants of the company crawled back to our trenches across no-man’s-land, Charlie half dragging me, half lifting me all the way. From my stretcher in the bottom of the trench I looked up and saw Charlie being taken away under close arrest. It all happened so fast after that. There was no time for goodbyes. Only when he’d gone did I remember again my dream and the promise I’d made in it, and had not kept.
They did not let me see him again for another six weeks, and by then the court martial was all over, the death sentence passed and then confirmed. That was all I knew, all anyone knew. I knew nothing whatever of how it had all happened until yesterday, when at last I was allowed to see him. They were holding him at Walker Camp. The guard outside said he was sorry, but I had only twenty minutes. Orders, he said.
It is a stable — and it still smells like it — with a table and two chairs, a bucket in the corner, and a bed along one wall. Charlie is lying on his back, hands under his head, legs crossed. He sits up as soon as he sees me, and smiles broadly. “I hoped you’d come, Tommo,” he says. “I didn’t think they’d let you. How’s your head? All mended?”
“Good as new,” I tell him, trying to respond in kind to his cheeriness. And then we’re standing there hugging one another, and I can’t help myself.
“I want no tears, Tommo,” he whispers in my ear. “This is going to be difficult enough without tears.” He holds me at arm’s length. “Understand?”
I can do no more than nod.
He has had a letter from home, from Molly, which he must read out to me, he says, because it makes him laugh and he needs to laugh. It’s mostly about little Tommo. Molly writes that he’s already learning to blow raspberries and they’re every bit as loud and rude as ours when we were young. And she says Big Joe sings him to sleep at night, Oranges and Lemons of course. She ends by sending her love and hoping we’re both well.
“Doesn’t she know?” I ask.
“No,” Charlie says. “And they won’t know, not until afterwards. They’ll send them a telegram. They didn’t let me write home until today.” As we sit down at the table he lowers his voice and we talk in half-whispers now. “You’ll tell them how it really was, won’t you, Tommo? It’s all I care about now. I don’t want them thinking I was a coward. I don’t want that. I want them to know the truth.”
“Didn’t you tell the court martial?” I ask him.
“Course I did. I tried, I tried my very best, but there’s none so deaf as them that don’t want to hear. They had their one witness, Sergeant Hanley, and he was all they needed. It wasn’t a trial, Tommo. They’d made up their minds I was guilty before they even sat down. I had three of them, a brigadier and two captains looking down their noses at me as if I was some sort of dirt. I told them everything, Tommo, just like it happened. I had nothing to be ashamed of, did I? I wasn’t going to hide anything. So I told them that, yes, I did disobey the sergeant’s order because the order was stupid, suicidal — we all knew it was — and that anyway I had to stay behind to look after you. They knew a dozen or more got wiped out in the attack, that no one even got as far as the German wire. They knew I was right, but it made no difference.”
“What about witnesses?” I ask him. “You should have had witnesses. I could have said. I could have told them.”
“I asked for you, Tommo, but they wouldn’t accept you because you were my brother. I asked for Pete, but then they told me that Pete was missing. And as for the rest of the company, I was told they’d been moved into another sector, and were up in the line and not available. So they heard it all from Sergeant Hanley, and they swallowed everything he told them, like it was gospel truth. I think there’s a big push coming, and they wanted to make an example of someone, Tommo. And I was the Charlie.” He laughed at that. “A right Charlie. Then of course there was my record as a troublemaker, ‘a mutinous troublemaker’ Hanley called me. Remember Etaples? Had up on a charge of gross insubordination? Field Punishment Number One? It was all there on my record. So was my foot.”
“Your foot?”
“That time I was shot in the foot. All foot wounds are suspicious, they said. It could have been self-inflicted — it goes on all the time, they said. I could have done it myself just to get myself out of the trenches and back to Blighty.”
“But it wasn’t like that,” I say.
“Course it wasn’t. They believed what they wanted to believe.”
“Didn’t you have anyone to speak up for you?” I ask him. “Like an officer or someone?”
“I didn’t think I needed one,” Charlie tells me. “Just tell them the truth, Charlie, and you’ll be all right. That’s what I thought. How wrong could I be? I thought maybe a letter of good character from Wilkie would help. I was sure they’d listen to him, him being an officer and one of them. I told them where I thought he was. The last I’d heard he was up in a hospital in Scotland somewhere. They told me they’d written to the hospital, but that he’d died of his wounds six months before. The whole court martial took less than an hour, Tommo. That’s all they gave me. An hour for a man’s life. Not a lot, is it? And do you know what the brigadier said, Tommo? He said I was a worthless man. Worthless. I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, Tommo, but none of them ever upset me, except that one. I didn’t show it, mind. I wouldn’t have given them the satisfaction. And then he passed sentence. I was expecting it by then. Didn’t upset me nearly as much as I thought it would.”
I hang my head, because I cannot stop my eyes filling.
“Tommo,” he says, lifting my chin. “Look on the bright side. It’s no more than we were facing every day in the trenches. It’ll be over very quick. And the boys are looking after me all right here. They don’t like it any more than I do. Three hot meals a day. A man can’t grumble. It’s all over and done with, or it will be soon anyway. You want some tea, Tommo? They brought me some just before you came.”
So we sit either side of the table and share a mug of sweet strong tea, and speak of everything Charlie wants to talk about: home, bread and butter pudding with the raisins in and the crunchy crust on top, moonlit nights fishing for sea trout on the Colonel’s river, Bertha, beer at The Duke, the yellow aeroplane and the humbugs.
“We won’t talk of Big Joe or Mother or Moll,” Charlie says, “because I’ll cry if I do, and I promised myself I wouldn’t.” He leans forward suddenly in great earnest, clutching my hand. “Talking of promises, that promise you made me back in the dugout, Tommo. You won’t forget it, will you? You will look after them?”
“I promise,” I tell him, and I’ve never meant anything so much in all my life.
“You’ve still got the watch then,” he says, pulling back my sleeve. “Keep it ticking for me, and then when the time comes, give it to Little Tommo, so he’l
l have something from me. I’d like that. You’ll make him a good father, like Father was to us.”
It is the moment. I have to do it now. It is my last chance. I tell him about how Father had died, about how it had happened, what I had done, how I should have told him years ago, but had never dared to. He smiles. “I always knew that, Tommo, So did Mother. You’d talk in your sleep. Always having nightmares, always keeping me awake about it, you were. All nonsense. Not your fault. It was the tree that killed Father, Tommo, not you.”
“You sure?” I ask him.
“I’m sure,” he says. “Quite sure.”
We look at one another and know that time is getting short now. I see a flicker of panic in his eyes. He pulls some letters out of his pocket and pushes them across the table. “You’ll see they get these, Tommo?”
We grip hands across the table, put our foreheads together and close our eyes. I manage to say what I’ve been wanting to say.
“You’re not worthless, Charlie. They’re the worthless bastards. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, the best person I‘ve ever known.”
I hear Charlie starting to hum softly. It is Oranges and Lemons, slightly out of tune. I hum with him, our hands clasping tighter, our humming stronger now. Then we are singing, singing it out loud so that the whole world can hear us, and we are laughing as we sing. And there are tears, but it does not matter because these are not tears of sadness, they are tears of celebration. When we’ve finished, Charlie says: “It’s what I’ll be singing in the morning. It won’t be God Save the ruddy King or All Things bleeding Bright and Beautiful. It’ll be Oranges and Lemons for Big Joe, for all of us.”
The guard comes in and tells us our time is up. We shake hands then as strangers do. There are no words left to say. I hold our last look and want to hold it forever. Then I turn away and leave him.
When I got back to camp yesterday afternoon I expected the sympathy and the long faces and all those averted eyes I‘d been used to for days before. Instead I was greeted by smiles and with the news that Sergeant Hanley was dead. He had been killed, they told me, in a freak accident, blown up by a grenade out on the ranges. So there was some justice, of a sort, but it had come too late for Charlie. I hoped someone at Walker Camp had heard about it and would tell Charlie. It would be small consolation for him, but it would be something. Any jubilation I felt, or any of us felt, turned very soon to grim satisfaction, and then evaporated completely. It seemed as if the entire regiment was subdued, like me quite unable to think of anything else but Charlie, of the injustice he was suffering, and the inevitability of what must happen to him in the morning.
We have been billeted this last week or so around an empty farmhouse, less than a mile down the road from where they’re keeping Charlie at Walker Camp. We’ve been waiting to go up into the trenches further down the line on the Somme. We live in bell tents, and the officers are billeted in the house. The others have been doing their very best to make it as easy as they can for me. I know from their every look how much they feel for me, NCOs and officers too. But kind though they are I do not want or need their sympathy or their help. I do not even want the distraction of their company. I want simply to be alone. Late in the evening I take a lamp with me and move out of the tent into this barn, or what is left of it. They bring me blankets and food, and then leave me to myself. They understand. The padre comes to do what he can. He can do nothing. I send him away. So here I am now with the night gone so fast and the clock ticking towards six o’clock. When the time comes, I will go outside, and I will look up at the sky because I know Charlie will be doing the same as they take him out. We’ll be seeing the same clouds, feeling the same breeze on our faces. At least that way we’ll be together.
ONE MINUTE TO SIX
I try to close my mind to what is happening this minute to Charlie. I try just to think of Charlie as he was at home, as we all were. But all I can see in my mind are the soldiers leading Charlie out into the field. He is not stumbling. He is not struggling. He is not crying out. He is walking with his head held high, just as he was after Mr Munnings caned him at school that day. Maybe there’s a lark rising, or a great crow wheeling into the wind above him. The firing squad stands at ease, waiting. Six men, their rifles loaded and ready, each one wanting only to get it over with. They will be shooting one of their own and it feels to them like murder. They try not to look at Charlie’s face.
Charlie is tied to the post. The padre says a prayer, makes the sign of the cross on his forehead and moves away. It is cold now but Charlie does not shiver. The officer, his revolver drawn, is looking at his watch. They try to put a hood over Charlie’s head, but he will not have it. He looks up to the sky and sends his last living thoughts back home.
“Present! Ready! Aim!”
He closes his eyes and as he waits he sings softly. “Oranges and Lemons, say the bells of St. Clements.” Under my breath I sing it with him. I hear the echoing volley. It is done. It is over. With that volley a part of me has died with him. I turn back to go to the solitude of my hay barn, and I find I am far from alone in my grieving. All over the camp I see them standing to attention outside their tents. And the birds are singing.
I am not alone that afternoon either when I go to Walker Camp to collect his belongings, and to see where they have buried him. He would like the place. He looks out over a water meadow down to where a brook runs softly under the trees. They tell me he walked out with a smile on his face as if he were going for an early-morning stroll. They tell me that he refused the hood, and that they thought he was singing when he died. Six of us who were in the dugout that day stand vigil over his grave until sundown. Each of us says the same thing when we leave.
“Bye Charlie.”
The next day the regiment is marching up the road towards the Somme. It is late June, and they say there’s soon going to be an almighty push and we’re going to be part of it. We’ll push them all the way to Berlin. I’ve heard that before. All I know is that I must survive. I have promises to keep.
POSTSCRIPT
In the First World War, between 1914 and 1918, over 290 soldiers of the British and Commonwealth armies were executed by firing squad, some for desertion and cowardice, two for simply sleeping at their posts.
Many of these men we now know were traumatised by shell shock. Court martials were brief, the accused often unrepresented.
To this day the injustice they suffered has never been officially recognised. The British Government continues to refuse to grant posthumous pardons.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Part One: Ring of Truth
1
2
3
Part Two: Ring of Fire
1
2
3
Part Three: Ring of Steel
1
2
3
Part Four: Ring of Bells
1
2
3
O TELL THE TRUTH, I DON’T THINK LIZZIE WOULD EVER HAVE told us her elephant story at all, if Karl had not been called Karl.
Maybe I’d better explain.
I’m a nurse. I was working part-time in an old people’s nursing home just down the road from where we live. It was part-time because I wanted to be home for Karl, my nine-year-old son. There were just the two of us, so I needed to be there to see him off to school, and be there for him when he got back. But sometimes, at weekends, they asked me to do overtime. I couldn’t always say no – we all of us had to take our turn to do weekend duties – and if I’m honest, the money helped. So at weekends, if Karl hadn’t got anywhere else to go, or anyone else to look after him, they let me bring him into work with me.
I was a bit worried about it at first – whether anyone would mind, how he’d get on with all the old folks – but he loved it, and as it turned out, so did they. For a start, he had the whole park to play around in. Sometimes he’d bring a few friends. They could climb the
trees, kick a football about, whizz around on their mountain bikes. As for the old folk, the children’s visits became quite a feature of their weekends, something for them to look forward to. They would gather around the sitting-room windows to watch them, often for hours on end. And when it was raining, Karl and his friends used to come inside and play chess with them, or watch a film on the television.
Then, just a couple of weeks ago, on the Friday night, it snowed, and snowed hard. I had to go to work at the nursing home the next day – I was on morning shifts that weekend – and so Karl had to come too. But he didn’t mind, not one bit. He brought half a dozen of his friends along with him. They were going tobogganing in the park, they said. They didn’t have a toboggan between them. They simply brought along anything that would slide – plastic sacks, surfboards, even a rubber ring. As it turned out, bottoms worked just as well as anything else. The nursing home was loud with laughter that morning as the old folks watched them gallivanting out there in the snow. In time, the tobogganing degenerated into a snowball fight, which the old folks seemed to be enjoying as much as Karl and his friends were. I was busy most of the morning, but the last time I looked out of the window I saw that, much to everyone’s delight, Karl and his friends were busy building a giant snowman right outside the sitting-room window.
So I was taken completely by surprise when I walked into Lizzie’s room a few minutes later and found Karl sitting there at her bedside in his hat and his coat, the two of them chatting away like old friends.
“Ah, so there you are,” Lizzie said, beckoning me in. “You did not tell me you had a son. And he is called Karl! I can hardly believe it. And he looks like him too. The likeness, it is extraordinary, amazing. I have told him also about the elephant in the garden, and he believes me.” She wagged her finger at me. “You do not believe me. I know this. No one in this place believes me, but Karl does.”
Times of War Collection Page 13