Times of War Collection Page 8

  I had to prove myself. I had to prove myself to myself.

  Two days later, two days of parrying Mother’s many attempts to keep me from going, we all went off together to Eggesford Junction Station where Charlie and I were to catch the train to Exeter. Big Joe had not been told anything about us going off to war. We were going away for a while, and we’d be back soon. We didn’t tell him the truth, but we told him no lies either. Mother and Molly tried not to cry because of him. So did we.

  “Look after Charlie for me, Tommo,” Molly said. “And look after yourself too.” I could feel the swell of her belly against me as we hugged.

  Mother told me to promise to keep clean, to be good, to write home and to come home. Then Charlie and I were on the train — the first train we’d ever been on in our lives, and we were leaning out of the window and waving, only pulling back spluttering and coughing when we were engulfed suddenly in a cloud of sooty smoke. When it cleared and we looked out again, the station was already out of sight. We sat down opposite each other.

  “Thanks, Tommo,” said Charlie.

  “For what?” I said.

  “You know,” he replied, and we both looked out of the window. There was no more to say about it. A heron lifted off the river and accompanied us for a while before veering away from us and landing high in the trees. A startled herd of Ruby Red cows scattered as we passed by, tails high as they ran. Then we were in a tunnel, a long dark tunnel filled with din and smoke and blackness. It seems like I’ve been in that tunnel every day since. So Charlie and I went rattling off to war. It all seems a very long time ago now, a lifetime.

  FOURTEEN MINUTES PAST TWO

  I keep checking the time. I promised myself I wouldn’t, but I can’t seem to help myself. Each time I do it, I put the watch to my ear and listen for the tick. It’s still there, softly slicing away the seconds, then the minutes, then the hours. It tells me there are three hours and forty-six minutes left. Charlie told me once this watch would never stop, never let me down, unless I forgot to wind it. The best watch in the world, he said, a wonderful watch. But it isn’t. If it was such a wonderful watch it would do more than simply keep the time — any old watch can do that. A truly wonderful watch would make the time. Then, if it stopped, time itself would have to stand still, then this night would never have to end and morning could never come. Charlie often told me we were living on borrowed time out here. I don’t want to borrow any more time. I want time to stop so that tomorrow never comes, so that dawn will never happen.

  I listen to my watch again, to Charlie’s watch. Still ticking. Don’t listen, Tommo. Don’t look. Don’t think. Only remember.

  “Stand stall! Look to your front, Peaceful, you horrible little man!” …"Stomach in, chest out, Peaceful.” …"Down in that mud, Peaceful, where you belong, you nasty little worm. Down!” … “God, Peaceful, is that the best they can send us these days? Vermin, that’s what you are. Lousy vermin, and I’ve got to make a soldier of you.”

  Of all the names Sergeant “Horrible” Hanley bellowed out across the parade ground at Etaples when we first came to France, Peaceful was by far the most frequent. There were two Peacefuls in the company of course, and that made a difference, but it wasn’t the main reason. Right from the very start Sergeant Hanley had it in for Charlie. And that was because Charlie just wouldn’t jump through hoops like the rest of us, and that was because Charlie wasn’t frightened of him, like the rest of us were.

  Before we ever came to Etaples, all of us, including Charlie and me, had had an easy ride, a gentle enough baptism into the life of soldiering. In fact we’d had several weeks of little else but larks and laughter. On the train to Exeter, Charlie said we could easily pass for twins, that I’d have to watch my step, drop my voice, and behave like a seventeen-year-old from now on. When the time came, in front of the recruiting sergeant at the regimental depot, I stood as tall as I could and Charlie spoke up for me, so my voice wouldn’t betray me. “I’m Charlie Peaceful, and he’s Thomas Peaceful. We’re twins and we’re volunteering.”

  “Date of birth?”

  “5th October,” said Charlie.

  “Both of you?” asked the recruiting sergeant, eyeing me a little I thought.

  “Course,” Charlie replied, lying easily, “only I’m older than him by one hour.” And that was that. Easy. We were in.

  The boots they gave us were stiff and far too big — they hadn’t got any smaller sizes. So Charlie and I and the others clomped about like clowns, clowns in tin hats and khaki. The uniforms didn’t fit either, so we swapped about until they did. There were some faces from home we recognised in amongst the hundreds of strangers. Nipper Martin, a little fellow with sticking-out ears, who grew turnips on his father’s farm in Dolton, and who played a wicked game of skittles up at The Duke. There was Pete Bovey, thatcher and cider drinker from Dolton too, red-faced and with hands like spades, who we’d often seen around the village in Iddesleigh, thumping away at the thatch, high up on someone’s roof. With us too was little Les James from school, son of Bob James, village rat catcher and wart charmer. He had inherited his father’s gifts with rats and warts and he always claimed to be able to know whether it was going to rain or not the next day. He was usually right too. He always had a nervous tick in one eye that I could never stop looking at when we were in class together.

  At training camp on Salisbury Plain, living cheek by jowl, we all got to know each other fast, though not necessarily to like one another — that came later. And we got to know our parts, too, how to make believe we were soldiers. We learnt how to wear our khaki costumes — I never did get to wear the scarlet uniform I’d been hoping for — how to iron creases in and iron wrinkles out, how to patch and mend our socks, how to polish our buttons and badges and boots. We learnt how to march up and down in time, how to about-turn without bumping into one another, how to flick our heads right and salute whenever we saw an officer. Whatever we did, we did together, in time — all except for little Les James who could never swing his arms in time with the rest of us, no matter how much the sergeants and corporals bellowed at him. His legs and arms stepped and swung in time with each other, and with no one else, and that was all there was to it. He didn’t seem to mind how often they shouted at him that he had two left feet. It gave us all something to laugh about. We did a lot of laughing in those early days.

  They gave us rifles and packs and trenching shovels. We learnt to run up hills with heavy packs, and how to shoot straight. Charlie didn’t have to be taught. On the rifle range he proved to be far and away the best shot in the company. When they gave him his red marksman’s badge I was so proud of him. He was pretty pleased himself, too. Even with the bayonets it was still a game of make-believe. We’d have to charge forward screaming whatever obscenities we knew — and I didn’t know many, not then — at the straw-filled dummies. We’d plunge our bayonets in up to the hilt, swearing and cursing the filthy Hun as we stabbed him, twisting the blade and pulling it out as we’d been taught. “Go for the stomach, Peaceful. Nothing to get hung up on in there. Jab. Twist. Out.”

  Everything in the army had to be done in lines or rows. We slept in long lines of tents, sat on privies in rows. Not even the privy was private, I learnt that very quickly. In fact nowhere was private any more. We lived every moment of every day together, and usually in lines. We lined up together for shaves, for food, for inspections. Even when we dug trenches, they had to be in lines, straight trenches with straight edges, and we had to dig fast, too, one company in competition with another. We poured sweat, our backs ached, our hands were permanently raw with blisters. “Faster!” the corporals shouted. “Deeper! You want to get your head blowed off, Peaceful?”

  “No, Corporal.”

  “You want to get your arse blowed off, Peaceful?”

  “No, Corporal.”

  “You want to get your nuts blowed off, Peaceful?”

  “No, Corporal.”

  “Then dig, you lazy beggars, dig, ‘cos when you
get out there, that’s all you’ve got to hide in, God’s good earth. And when they whizzbangs come over I’m telling you you’ll always wish you’d dug deeper. The deeper you dig the longer you’ll live. I know, I’ve been there.”

  No matter what the officers and NCOs told us of the hardships and dangers of trench warfare, we still all believed we were simply in some kind of rehearsal, actors in costume. We had to play our part, dress our part, but in the end it would only be a play. That was what we tried to believe — if ever we spoke about it, that is. But the truth was that we didn’t speak of it much. I think we didn’t dare because deep down we all knew and we all trembled, and were trying to deny it or disguise it or both.

  I remember we were on exercise in the hills, lying there on our backs in the sunshine one morning when Pete sat up suddenly. “Hear that?” he said. “It’s guns, from over in France, real guns.” We sat up and listened. We heard it. Some said it was distant thunder. But we heard it all right. We saw the sudden fear in each other’s eyes and knew it for what it was.

  But that same afternoon we were back to play-acting, war games in full pack, attacking some distant “enemy” copse. When the whistles blew we climbed out of our trenches and walked forward, bayonets fixed. Then on a bellowed command we threw ourselves face down and crawled on through the long grass. The ground under us was still warm with summer, and there were buttercups. I thought of Molly then and Charlie and the buttercups in the water meadows back home. A bee, heavy with pollen and still greedy for more, clover-hopped in front of me as I crawled. I remember I spoke to him. “We’re much alike, bee, you and me,” I said. “You may carry your pack underneath you and your rifle may stick out of your bottom. But you and me, bee, are much alike.” The bee must have taken offence at this, because he took off and flew away. I lay where I was, propped up on my elbows, and watched him go, until my thoughts were rudely interrupted by the corporal.

  “What d’you think you’re on, Peaceful, a bloody picnic? On your feet!”

  In those first few weeks in uniform I hardly had time to miss anyone, not even Molly, though I thought of her often, and Mother and Big Joe. But they were only ever fleering thoughts. Charlie and I rarely talked of home — we were hardly ever alone together anyway. We’d even stopped cursing the Colonel by now. There didn’t seem any point, not any more. It was a hateful thing he’d done, but it was a done thing. We were soldiers now, and it wasn’t bad, so far. In fact, despite all the lining up and the bellowing, it was turning out to be a lark, a real lark. Charlie and I wrote cheery letters home — most of his were to Molly, all of mine to Mother and Big Joe. We read them aloud to each other, those bits we wanted to share anyway. We weren’t allowed to say where we were or anything about the training, but we always found plenty to tell them, plenty to brag about, plenty to ask about. We told them the truth, that we were having a good time — eating well and being good — mostly. But the moment we got on the ship for France the good times ended. Little Les James said he smelled a storm in the air, and as usual he was right.

  There wasn’t a man on board that ship that didn’t want to die before he ever got to France. Most of us, Charlie and me included, had never seen the sea before, much less the heaving grey waves of the English Channel, and we lurched about the deck like drunken ghosts longing only to be released from our agony. Charlie and I were vomiting over the side when a seaman came up to us, clapped us heartily on the back and told us that if we were going to die we’d feel much better doing it down below in the hold with the horses. So Charlie and I staggered down the gangways until we found ourselves deep in the bowels of the ship and in amongst the terrified horses, who seemed happy to have someone for company as we crawled in and curled up in their straw, too close to their hooves for safety, but feeling too ill to care. The seaman was right. Down here the ship seemed to roll much less, and despite the stifling stench of oil and horse dung we began to feel better almost at once.

  When at long last the engines finally stopped we went up on deck and looked out at France for the first time. The French gull that hovered overhead eyeing me with deep suspicion looked much like every gull I’d seen following the plough back at home. Every voice I heard on the quayside below was English. Every uniform and every helmet was like our own. Then, as we came down the gangplank into the fresh morning air, we saw them, the lines of walking wounded shuffling along the quay towards us, some with their eyes bandaged, holding on to the shoulder of the one in front. Others lay on stretchers. One of them, puffing on a cigarette between pale parched lips, looked up at me out of sunken yellow eyes. “G’luck lads,” he cried as we passed. “Give ‘em what for.” The rest stayed silent and their staring silence spoke to each of us as we formed up and marched out of town. We all knew then that the larking and the play-acting were over. From that moment none of us doubted the seriousness of what this would be about. It was our lives we would be acting out over here, and for many of us, our deaths.

  If any of us had any last lingering delusions then they were very soon dispelled by our first sight of the vast training camp at Etaples. The camp stretched away as far as the eye could see, a tented city, and everywhere I looked there were soldiers drilling — marching, doubling, crawling, wheeling, saluting, presenting arms. I had never in my life seen such a bustle of people, never heard such a racket of humanity. The air echoed with the din of barked orders and shrieked obscenities. That was when we first came across Sergeant Horrible Hanley, our chief scourge and tormentor over the coming weeks, who was to do his utmost to make all our lives a misery.

  From the moment we saw him most of us lived in dread of him. He was not a big man, but he had eyes of steel that bore into us, and a lashing snari in his voice that terrified us. We just buckled under and did what he wanted us to. It was the only way to survive. However much he doubled us up hills with stones in our packs, however much he made us throw ourselves down in the freezing mud and crawl through it, we did it, and with a will, too. We knew that anything less — to protest, to complain, to talk back, even to look him in the eye — would be to draw down upon us even more fury, even more pain, even more punishment. We knew because we saw what happened to Charlie. Charlie wouldn’t even go along with his little jokes. It was this that got him into trouble in the first place.

  It was a Sunday morning and we were being inspected before a church parade when Sergeant Hanley found fault with Charlie’s cap badge. He said it was crooked. Nose to nose, Hanley bellowed into Charlie’s face. I was in the rank behind Charlie, but even there I could feel the spray from Hanley’s spittle. “You know what you are? You’re a blot on Creation, Peaceful. What are you?”

  Charlie thought for a moment and then replied in a clear, firm voice, and utterly without fear: “Happy to be here, Sergeant.”

  Hanley looked taken aback. We all knew the answer Hanley was looking for. He asked again. “You’re a blot on Creation. What are you?”

  “Like I said, Sergeant, happy to be here.” Charlie just would not give Hanley the satisfaction of playing his game, no matter how often Hanley asked, nor how loud he shouted. For that Charlie was put on extra sentry duty, so that night after night Charlie hardly got any sleep. Hanley never let up after that, never missed an opportunity to pick on Charlie and punish him.

  There were some in the company who didn’t at all like what Charlie was doing, Pete amongst them. He said Charlie was stirring Hanley up unnecessarily, and was making things difficult for the rest of us. I’ve got to say I half agreed with them — though I didn’t tell them that, and I certainly didn’t tell Charlie. It was quite true that Hanley was giving our company in particular a lot of grief, and it was obvious this was because he had a vendetta against Charlie. Charlie was swiping at the wasp, and the wasp wasn’t just stinging him, he was stinging all of us. Charlie was beginning to be thought of as a bit of a liability in the company, a bit of a Jonah. No one said as much to him — they all liked and respected Charlie too much — but Pete and Little Les and Nipper Martin
did come to me on the quiet, and asked me to talk to him. I tried as best I could to warn Charlie. “He’s like Mr Munnings back at school, Charlie. Our lord and master, remember? Hanley’s our lord and master out here. You can’t fight him.”

  “But that doesn’t mean I have to lie down and let him walk all over me,” he said. “I’ll be all right, you’ll see. You look after yourself. You watch your back. He’s got his eye on you, Tommo, I’ve seen him.” That was typical Charlie. I was trying to warn him, and he just turned the whole thing around and ended up warning me.

  It was a little enough thing that sparked it off, a dirty rifle barrel. Thinking back now I know for sure Hanley must have done it quite deliberately, to provoke Charlie. Everyone knew by now that I was Charlie’s younger brother, and a year too young to enlist. We’d long ago given up the pretence of being twins. After we’d first met up with Pete and Little Les and Nipper from home, we’d had to come clean about it, and by then it didn’t much matter. There were dozens of others underage in the regiment and everyone knew it. After all, they needed all the men they could get. The other lads teased me about it, about having a chin like a baby’s bottom and about my not needing to shave, which wasn’t true, and about my squeaky voice, too. But they all knew that Charlie was looking out for me. If ever the teasing got a bit out of hand, Charlie would give them a little look and it would stop. He never nannied me, but everyone knew he’d stick by me no matter what.

  Hanley was nasty but he wasn’t stupid. He must have sensed it too, and that was why he began picking on me as well. I’d had plenty of practice at putting up with this kind of thing back at school with Mr Munnings, but Horrible Hanley was a tormentor in a class of his own. He found excuse after excuse to pick on me and punish me. Worn down by extra drills and sentry duty, I was very soon exhausted. The more exhausted I became the more mistakes I made, and the more mistakes I made, the more Hanley punished me.