Only Remembered Page 9

  They never again spoke of conditions at the front. Instead, they lived entirely in the past. It was always: ‘Do you remember?’

  The day his leave finished John refused to be seen off at the station. He had to catch an early train to link up with the troop train at Victoria.

  ‘I don’t want to be seen off. Just all come to the door. I’d like that.’

  So, as his taxi drove away, they were all there. The family, Annie, Hester and Spot. Perhaps he carried that picture to France.

  Five weeks later the telegram came. Victoria knew something was wrong when she came in from sawing logs and saw Annie, her apron over her head, sobbing behind the kitchen door.

  Her father called her into his study. ‘I don’t know how to tell you, Vicky darling. You are so young to face sorrow.’

  Victoria gently stroked her father’s hand. ‘It’s John. He’s been killed.’

  ‘Yes, Vicky.’

  She stared unseeingly out of the window towards the front gate.

  ‘I’ll be all right, Daddy. I think I knew it was going to happen. Grand-Nanny once said growing up came suddenly. I grew up all in one minute, the day John came on leave.’

  Noel Streatfeild

  THERESA BRESLIN – Author

  Much of what has been written about the First World War is for, and about, an older readership, so I am thrilled that this anthology is for younger readers.

  Doing research for the books and stories I’ve written about the First World War (Remembrance, Act of Love, Ghost Soldier), I read letters and diaries, and visited museums, memorials and battlefields.

  This article in The Times tells us that, under certain conditions, the army will now accept underage and illiterate soldiers.

  An officer’s diary reveals his compassion for his men and his awareness of the failure of the attack of 1 July on the Somme, where he notes the colossal loss of life.

  Compare this to the report of the same battle in the War Illustrated, which tells us:

  But we are advancing! I doubt if anyone who has not lived with fighting armies can understand the thrill of this phrase, the fresh enthusiasm that sweeps over the ranks, the triumphant emotion it brings. Losses seem to count for nothing . . .

  This was the inspiration for the character of Alex, the young lad in Remembrance, who lies about his age in order to enlist to seek revenge for the death of his brother; and for Jack, the shepherd lad who went to war, in Ghost Soldier.

  Ghost Soldier is a story of how the war affected young children on the home front – our youth who became the future. In the book Rob, a young boy searching for his missing father, climbs aboard a hospital train bringing the wounded into Edinburgh. Rob has heard adults talking positively about the progress of the war and has seen images of brave soldiers in magazines, such as War Illustrated. His father’s letters home tell of the camaraderie of the men and glorious sights of an army on the move, singing as they march along. Sending his little sister, Millie, to get on the train at the rear, Rob moves through the train from the front. He is shocked at the state of the men and their dreadful wounds: victims of gas attacks and those with limbs amputated. In a special carriage at the end of the train he comes face to face with a shell-shocked and traumatized Jack, who is holding a loaded gun to Millie’s head . . .

  FROM GHOST SOLDIER

  ‘Millie!’ Rob gasped.

  ‘Robbie,’ Millie whispered. ‘I knew you’d come to save me.’

  Rob stared at her, and then at the young lad with the pistol. The boy’s face was dirty grey with a mottled flush high on each cheek. His eyes were red-rimmed and they flashed about, never still.

  Rob had cared for farm animals all his life. Normally they were very biddable, but if the sheep were sick or lambing, or a cow was with calf, they became unpredictable, and therefore dangerous – sometimes extremely dangerous. His dad had told him it was because they were frightened and in pain, and the best way to handle them was to try to understand what they were suffering. One bleak night on the hills they had birthed a lamb from a sick ewe. Hunkered down, his father stroked the writhing creature, teaching Rob how to gentle her into allowing him to help: ‘Think how you would like to be treated if you were scared and didn’t know what was happening to you.’

  The lad in front of him was shaking, his whole body trembling so much he could hardly hold the gun steady. Rob felt fear rising in his throat as he realized that the gun might go off and his sister would be killed. And there was nothing he could do.

  Apart from what his father might have done.

  Rob stepped back, creating a space between himself and the lad. ‘It’s all right,’ he said softly. He held his hands out, palms up. ‘It’s all right,’ he repeated.

  He relaxed his body and saw the lad relax slightly too.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ Rob said in the same soft voice. ‘I’m not going to do anything at all.’

  Behind him the carriage door crashed open. A voice roaring a command. Chesney’s voice.

  ‘You! Farm boy. Out of here. At once!’

  Without turning round, Rob shook his head. ‘I’m not leaving my sister.’

  ‘I told you,’ Chesney said through gritted teeth, ‘not to get on the train. Now I’m telling you to move aside. Do it!’

  ‘He stays.’ The lad with the pistol addressed Chesney. ‘But you! You get out of here or I’ll blow your head off! I mean it!’ He pointed the gun at the orderly. ‘Get out or I’ll fire this gun at you!’

  There was a silence; then Chesney leaned forward and hissed in Rob’s ear, ‘If you don’t leave I’ll have your soldier father put on a charge and locked up for years.’

  ‘You can’t put Daddy on a charge and lock him up.’ To Rob’s astonishment, it was Millie who spoke up. ‘He’s missing in the war and that’s why we’re here. To find out if he’s on this train.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be on this train,’ Chesney snapped at her.

  ‘Medical orderly! Stand down!’

  An army officer and the nurse had appeared at the carriage door.

  ‘Sir,’ Chesney protested. ‘This boy disobeyed instructions.’

  ‘Stand down,’ the officer repeated. ‘That’s an order.’

  Chesney glared at Rob. When he’d gone, the officer leaned against the door, looked around, and then said in mild tones, ‘My name is Captain Morrison. I’d be obliged if someone would bring me up to date on this situation.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Anyone at all? Please.’

  The soldier tied to the metal rail stopped mumbling and spoke up without opening his eyes. ‘Soldier Jack the Lad here is really good at nicking things. Handcuff keys, guns, and such like. He’s been planning his escape ever since we got on at Folkestone. When the train stopped, he was ready to leg it when this little girl turns up asking questions about where the regiments are posted. So he decides she’s a German spy and—’

  ‘A German spy.’ The lad with the gun tightened his grip on the pistol.

  ‘I’m not a German spy!’ Millie squeaked.

  Nell’s tail was down. Until now she’d had the good sense not to make a noise. But reacting to the alarm in Millie’s voice, she crouched, growling low in her throat.

  ‘Quiet, Nell,’ said Rob.

  The lad with the gun gave a start and looked down at the dog. ‘Nell?’ he said. The gun wavered in his hand. ‘Nell?’

  Then the most startling thing happened. Nell stood up and wagged her tail.

  ‘Nell,’ the boy said again, more confidently.

  And to Rob’s amazement, Nell trotted forward to stand quite happily beside the young soldier.

  ‘I could look after that gun for you, son.’

  Captain Morrison was first to recover. He held out his hand. The young lad unclenched his grip on the pistol and the officer took it carefully from him.

  Rob looked at the floor. He didn’t want to see what happened next. He knew enough about the army to realize that a soldier who threatened an of
ficer with a gun would be arrested and shot at dawn.

  But the captain slipped the gun inside his tunic and said to the nurse, ‘Give our young soldier some of those knockout drops you reserve for emergencies. When he’s being assessed in Edinburgh, I’ll see if we can get him admitted to a psychiatric unit somewhere. Maybe some smart doctor can straighten out his brain. And – oh,’ he added, ‘I suggest you put a note in his record that he has a special skill for . . . how shall we put it? . . . appropriating unattended objects.’ He touched his cap to the nurse and left.

  The lad was kneeling beside Nell, stroking her coat as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

  The nurse and Bert came into the carriage. The nurse said, ‘Bert will look after you while I go and make you the best cup of tea you ever had.’

  Bert knelt beside the lad. ‘You seem to know this dog,’ he said.

  ‘It’s Nell,’ he replied. He kept patting the dog. ‘Rob’s dog. She’s a clever dog. The best sheepdog in the Borders.’

  ‘The dog certainly likes you, Jack,’ Bert said.

  Rob knelt down too. He looked the lad full in the face. In the stressed and worn features there was something he recognized. ‘Jack? Is that your name?’ he asked. ‘Do I know you? Are you from round these parts?’

  The boy didn’t reply.

  ‘It’s Jack!’ Millie exclaimed. ‘He’s the lad from the Otterby farm. We used to meet him on the hills at lambing time and at the sheepdog trials.’

  ‘Jack the Lad,’ the handcuffed soldier chimed in. ‘Told you so. Should we put on a show to entertain the troops? We’ve got him and the dog. All we need now is a cow and a beanstalk and we’re sorted.’

  ‘You’re all right there, Private Ames,’ Bert quietened him.

  ‘You reckon so?’ The private held up his handcuffed wrist. ‘I didn’t think this would happen when I joined up.’

  ‘We had to do that for your own protection. When we get to the hospital you’ll get proper care.’

  ‘Have they got magic beans there?’ Private Ames grimaced. ‘That’s what we need. Magic beans. A cow, a beanstalk, and some magic beans.’ He lapsed into mumbling to himself again. And all the while, Rob noted, he never once opened his eyes.

  The nurse returned with two mugs of tea. She set one down in front of the handcuffed soldier and handed the other one to Jack. He looked at it suspiciously.

  ‘I ain’t drinking that,’ he said. ‘They put stuff in your tea, you know’ – he partially covered his mouth with his hand as he spoke to Rob – ‘to make you fight. Don’t trust them. Don’t trust any of them. Tell you lies. Say the wire’s been cut. Land mines been cleared. Advance! Enemy trenches destroyed! Advance! Advance! In line formation. Walk slowly. Shoulder to shoulder. Enemy trenches empty. But they were waiting with machine guns to mow us down. Lies! Lies!’

  Bert and the nurse glanced at each other. It was obvious that Jack was becoming agitated again.

  ‘Would you like a plum-jam sandwich?’ Millie took the teacloth off her basket and held it out.

  Jack shook his head.

  ‘I made them especially for my daddy in case he was on the train. Plum is his favourite jam and they’re very tasty.’

  ‘I’d like one,’ the handcuffed soldier said. ‘I can smell home-made jam and fresh bread.’

  ‘My mummy made the jam and the bread, but I helped a lot,’ Millie told him. She went over and guided his hands to the basket so he could take a sandwich.

  ‘Oh, my,’ said the private. ‘That’s the best food I’ve had for twelve months and a day.’ He smacked his lips loudly with his eyes shut tight.

  On sudden inspiration, Rob said, ‘Don’t forget to give Nell some.’ He took a piece of bread and gave it to his dog.

  As soon as he saw Nell eating the sandwich, Jack peered into the basket and selected one for himself. Then he lifted his mug and began to drink the tea. Bert and the nurse smiled in relief. The effect was almost immediate. Jack’s eyelids drooped, and he slid sideways. The nurse rescued the mug from his limp fingers before it fell onto the floor. Bert went behind Jack and, placing his hands under his shoulders, pulled him along to the furthest part of the carriage. There he handcuffed his wrists to a metal pole.

  Theresa Breslin

  JILLY COOPER – Author

  When I was a child, my favourite possession was a beautiful bay pony called Willow. My days were spent feeding her, grooming her so her coat shone like a conker, and riding her all over the moors. When I was eleven, it broke my heart that I was sent off to boarding school and didn’t see my beloved Willow for thirteen weeks.

  When I came home for Christmas, the most blissful moment was when she galloped down the field whickering with delighted surprise to see me again. I hardly left her side for the entire holidays. So imagine how much more terrible it would have been, if she’d been taken forcibly away to fight in a war.

  A.M.D.G.

  IN GRATEFUL AND REVERENT MEMORY

  OF THE EMPIRE’S HORSES (SOME 375,000)

  WHO FELL IN THE GREAT WAR (1914–18).

  MOST OBEDIENTLY, AND OFTEN MOST PAINFULLY,

  THEY DIED.

  ‘FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH NOT ONE OF THEM

  IS FORGOTTEN BEFORE GOD’

  EASTER 1926

  Inscription on the war memorial to horses at St Jude on the Hill, Hampstead

  With the coming of the motor car and the bicycle, the horse population in England dwindled to such an extent that when war was declared in 1914, there was a huge dearth of suitable animals. Tillings, the London bus company, for example, who were already busy converting to horseless carriages, made a fortune selling a great many of their remaining horses to the army. Later, farmers in America, Argentina, Canada and Australia grew rich exporting horses to the Allies. But one of the cruellest ordeals for private owners in this country was when their family pets were called up. It seemed a kind of betrayal; you couldn’t explain to a horse why he was being sent away. John Galsworthy expressed unashamed relief when his chestnut mare was rejected as unfit, and there exists a touching correspondence between some children and the War Office. Poppy, Lionel and Freda Hewlett wrote on 11 August 1914:

  Happily Lord Kitchener’s heart was touched. His private secretary wrote back by return of post, enclosing a note from the Colonel in charge of remounts: ‘F.M. Lord Kitchener has decided that no horses under 15 hands shall be requisitioned belonging to the British family P., L. and Freda Hewlett.’

  The overjoyed Hewletts replied:

  EOIN COLFER – Author

  My most enduring childhood memories are those of waiting. I remember clearly lingering at windows and doors, watching for my father to return from wherever he might have been that day. I always had a pretext for being there – perhaps I had done well in school, or perhaps I was pre-empting a scolding by presenting my side of the story first – but really I was servicing that most primal of fears: that Daddy was never coming home. All children experience this fear to some degree or other, though we could never have expressed it aloud or even put a shape to it in our minds. But it’s there, every day. Waiting.

  I was one of the lucky ones in that my father always came home, most memorably with a little brother for me, which was a little anti-climactic as I had been expecting chips.

  War stories tend to focus on the war itself, which is fair enough as the fighting is horrific and needs to be represented so that one day we may finally get the message and give up on war as a futile exercise, but there is another side to all conflict: the waiting. For the ones left behind, there is little to do but find a waiting spot and endure the torture of one’s own imagination, and this is one of the themes of John Boyne’s Stay Where You Are and Then Leave.

  This wonderful book tells the story of nine-year-old London boy, Alfie, whose father went to war, leaving Alfie and his mum to play the dreaded waiting game. For Alfie there is no flood of relief at the end of every day with the sound of his father’s boots clattering up to the front door. Al
fie’s father doesn’t come home.

  Determined to do his bit for the war effort, Alfie sets himself up as a shoeshine boy in King’s Cross station, and during his shift one day he comes across a nugget of information that leads him to believe that his father is not quite as far away as he had thought.

  Because this is a John Boyne book, I knew it would be beautiful and powerful but I had not expected to be so affected by Alfie’s situation. I think there is something about Alfie that will bring any reader back to that time when they were nine years old and waited at the window for someone to come home. This is an agony that we don’t usually see played out in First World War books, so it is important that people read this lovely book and see that the other side of war is represented. The ultimate horror of war is experienced by the soldiers in the trenches, but there is a quieter agony being endured by the loved ones left behind, and this is what we feel so keenly in Stay Where You Are and Then Leave.

  FROM STAY WHERE YOU ARE AND THEN LEAVE

  They said it would be over by Christmas, but four Christmases had already come and gone, a fifth was on the way, and the war showed no sign of coming to an end.

  Alfie was nine years old now, and six mornings a week, his mum shook him awake when she was leaving for work. He still got a shock when he opened his eyes to see her standing there in the half-light, the white dress uniform of a Queen’s Nurse gathered close around her neck and waist, the pleated cap settled neatly on her head as her tight blonde curls peeped out from underneath.

  ‘Alfie,’ she said, her face pale and tired from another night with so little sleep. ‘Alfie, wake up. It’s six o’clock.’

  He groaned and rolled over, pulling the scratchy blanket over his head even though it meant his feet would stick out the other end, and tried to go back to sleep. He’d asked Margie for a new blanket, a longer and heavier one, but she said they couldn’t afford one, that times were too tough now for unnecessary expenses. Alfie had been having a dream where he set sail for North Africa but his ship was destroyed in a storm. He’d managed to swim to a deserted island, where he was living off coconuts and fish and having any number of adventures. He always had this dream whenever he read Robinson Crusoe, and he was halfway through it again, for the fourth time. He’d stopped reading the night before just as Crusoe and Friday were watching the cannibals arrive in canoes with three prisoners ready for the pot. A big fight was about to break out; it was one of his favourite parts.