Chapter 8
Dark green woodland, rivers rushing under railway bridges, fields dotted with farmers and their families, toiling beneath the hard summer sun.
My platoon and I glimpse them from our carriage window as we rumble past. Occasionally one will catch my eye: a wild-haired boy cradled in the arm of an immense oak, his toy rifle trained upon us; a woman straightening up from her work, wiping her brow on her apron and gazing back at the train with dull, lifeless eyes.
I know that look. I’ve seen it here and at home. She has lost someone to the meatgrinder.
Together with a couple of other platoons from the Manchester Regiment, we are squeezed onto a train that looks like it was constructed not long after Stephenson’s Rocket.
Belches of oily smoke gust against the windows and blot out the view.
There are no comfy compartments here, only slatted wooden seats that make you feel each sway and jolt.
Forcing you, despite your tiredness, to stand every thirty minutes in order to ease aching bones and weary backsides.
We’ve been stuck inside this sweltering, slow-moving box for approximately eight hours, trundling our way south into the Somme Valley via Calais, Dunkirk and Béthune.
It will be another hour before we finally arrive behind the lines at the main administrative town of Albert.
Taking my five-minute ‘arse break’, as Private Robert Billings has poetically put it, I sidestep between the knees of my platoon and go to stand with my back to the window.
There I take a breath of hot air, scented with the sweat and farts of over a hundred men.
A gas attack in the trenches is a terrible thing, of course, but at least there you might have chance to strap on a respirator.
I take out my grandfather’s watch to check the time, my fingers brushing carefully against the Turner drawing Danny gave me.
It’s just after two. If we keep going at this rate, I should be able to get my men billeted somewhere in Albert before dinnertime.
We can then continue the seven-mile march east to our sector near Maricourt tomorrow.
Snapping the watch shut, I look up at a crowd of faces.
My platoon occupies four sets of benches, their bulging kitbags and equipment webbing – containing water canteens, haversacks, ammunition pouches, entrenching tools and other necessary gear – all stuffed onto the luggage racks above their heads.
Given that they have only sips of warm water in their canteens and half a box of dry biscuits to share, they’re holding up pretty well.
Danny sits between Percy Stanhope and Robert Billings, chatting away as if they’ve been friends since boyhood. I almost envy his ability to fit in, whatever the company.
‘So Danny boy, are you ever going to tell us how you got that shiner?’ Billings asks.
Danny circles a finger around his black eye. ‘What, this? A girl back home gave it to me. And quite right she was too.’
Billings laughs. ‘I don’t believe a word of it. I swear I saw that mug of yours on the boat over and there wasn’t a mark on it.’
‘My bet is you had a run in with one of them mad bastards at the Bull Ring and couldn’t stop that mouth of yours running on,’ says Percy Stanhope.
‘Am I right?’ He elbows Danny in the ribs and they start up a playful wrestle until the men on either side complain.
In the end, Danny releases Stanhope from a loose headlock.
‘Fine, I submit,’ Stanhope says, with a final gentle shove.
‘My, but you’re a strong bugger for such a little lad.
Seriously though, have you got a girl back home or what? ’
Danny blushes and, for a fraction of a second, those perfectly blue eyes glance in my direction.
‘He’s not got a girl. Not that one. Never in a month of Sundays.’
The speaker is Private Reg ‘Taffy’ Colston, a man mountain who takes up almost two seats and whose face is weathered by a lifetime working on fishing trawlers.
As is the slightly baffling way with a platoon of men, Colston has been rechristened ‘Taffy’ because he happened to mention a Welsh grandmother.
He hates the nickname but that just means it has stuck all the harder.
Danny’s smile slips. ‘What do you mean by that, Taff?’
The rest of the chatter in the carriage subsides.
In the hush that follows, all I can hear is the tread of wheels on rail, the groan and creak of the wooden benches, the thud of my heart.
If necessary, I can put down a fight between the men under my command.
A word alone should do it. I just pray that I won’t have to.
‘I’m sure Taffy didn’t mean nowt by it, lad,’ says Private Donald ‘Spud’ Pearson.
An unkind nickname (‘Fella has a face like a tatter,’ as Robert Billings observed over breakfast yesterday), though unlike Private Colston, Pearson has the sense not to bleat about it.
At fifty, the old man of our platoon is a grandfather twice over and knows that, if he simply nods and smiles, he won’t be having to live with ‘Spud’ for longer than a week or two.
‘Listen to the old-timer, Danny,’ Billings says good-humouredly, breaking the tension.
‘All Taff meant is that you’re far too smart to tie yourself down to just one lass.
Not when there are young French widows here aplenty, am I right?
’ The carriage echoes to the too-loud laughter of the men.
Colston grins and slaps Danny’s shoulder while Spud Pearson looks on paternally.
Billings goes on, ‘He’s a handsome young pipsqueak, this one. Ain’t that right, Lieutenant?’
As Billings leans over and ruffles his hair, Danny looks up at me again.
He is handsome, yes, but more than that.
Shafts of sunlight glance through the train window and burnish those chestnut curls.
His lips part, as if to ask a question. Then he closes them, swallows hard, and turns his head to join in with some joke of Colston’s.
I realise in that moment of him turning away from me that he is beautiful.
Maybe on some level I’ve realised this before but now it almost winds me.
Danny is beautiful, and not in the academic, artistic way in which I’ve appreciated beauty before, in the paintings and sculpture I’ve admired.
His beauty is immediate, present and powerful.
‘Here,’ Percy Stanhope says, ‘that’s my girl.’
I blink. His voice isn’t loud, in fact he speaks in a shy, hesitating way, but still it’s like a gong waking me from a dream. He hands over a tiny photograph to Danny. I can see from here that it’s shiny and new, the photographer’s stamp still fresh on the back. A keepsake to take away to war.
‘She’s ain’t much to look at, I know,’ Stanhope says. ‘But then nor am I. Still, we’ve been sweethearts ever since we met outside the school gate twenty years back. Her name’s Eadie. Edith.’
Danny cups the photo in his hand as if it is something rare and fragile. From my position, I can make out a small woman with a bony face, her dark hair scraped back.
‘She’s beautiful,’ Danny says gently. ‘Really beautiful, Perce.’
Stanhope takes back the picture and looks at it, as if for the first time. ‘She is... My beautiful girl.’ He raises his head, beaming. ‘Hey Robbie, Spud, Taffy, take a look at my Ead.’
I’m not sure what they might have said about the girl in the photograph had they been offered a glance before Danny’s appraisal.
Tired men living on their nerves can be short-tempered and cruel words can trip thoughtlessly from their lips.
In fact, the photo is passed between them with the same kind of respect with which Danny handled it.
The men congratulate a blushing Private Stanhope; Colston even sounds a wolf whistle.
Meanwhile Danny stands up and, sliding nimbly past the others, comes to join me at the window, his back planted like mine against the glass.
‘Hello, Lieutenant,’ he says. ‘Anything your squire can get for you?’
‘Nothing, thank you, Private McCormick.’
‘Bit cramped in here, innit?’ he mutters.
‘Well, we can always make more room by stowing you away on one of the luggage racks. I reckon you’ll just about fit.’
‘Short jokes,’ Danny nods. ‘Very grown-up of you, sir. You know the lads call you “the old man”? They say you’re wise – and grumpy – beyond your years. I’ll have to tell them that you can crack a joke occasionally too.’
I smile. ‘You seem to be fitting in well, Private. I hope you’re not missing your old platoon too much?’
He takes a look over his right shoulder, at a billowing canopy of trees and the lonely church spire that breaks through them, like a sailboat lost on a vast green sea.
‘I do miss them. I made some good pals during my training. But honestly?’ The smallest pause. ‘I think I prefer being here.’
If I turned towards him now, we would be face to face, a hair’s breadth separating us, our mouths so close that a single jolt from this rackety old train might bring our lips together.
For a moment I imagine kissing him; drawing my fingers through his hair, as he had drawn his through the sand of étaples, searching for pebbles.
It takes all my willpower to keep facing forward.
A scream of brakes, the squeal of the train whistle, wheels shrieking against iron.
Danny bumps against me and I have to shoot out a hand and grasp a luggage rack to stop us tumbling across the benches.
Kitbags and equipment do tumble, striking the men seated beneath.
Beyond the window, the forest has come to a halt.
Steam from the train rises like smoke amongst the trees, making it appear as if the wood is on fire.
‘Everyone all right?’ I shout into the clamour of shocked voices.
‘Is it a Jerry shell?’
‘Have we been hit?’
‘Jesus Christ,’ groans Taffy Colston. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Men, keep your heads,’ I order.
Danny stands beside me, a reassuring presence, not a trace of the panic that has gripped most of the others. After a couple of weeks at the Front they won’t be so easily shaken, but to see Danny like this, calm and in control, tells me that I made the right choice in my soldier-servant.
‘We’re too far from the German lines for it to be a shell,’ I tell them. ‘Even their Big Bertha guns can’t reach this far. And anyway, you wouldn’t mistake an explosion like that. So just let me through and I’ll see what’s going on.’
I don’t need to ask him to accompany me – Danny is at my side as we push past the men, some standing, some still splayed across the seats, others crawling out from under fallen kitbags.
I reach for the carriage door but the handle is stuck.
The sudden braking must have jammed the mechanism.
I wrench at the brass ring but it’s no good.
The thing won’t shift. A bead of sweat skates down my brow, drops from the tip of my nose, bursts against my boot.
The men behind me are muttering, that senseless panic washing back over them.
Only now I can feel it myself. It’s so hot in here, so airless, so filled with bodies.
An elbow jostles me, a foot kicks out and catches my shin.
If they all begin to lose their heads, then I might well be buried under them again. ..
No. Not them. New bodies this time. A new platoon that I will have failed.
Danny reaches over me and eases my fingers from where they have become frozen around the handle.
Then he takes the brass ring in his own strong grasp and gives the thing a single hard twist and shove.
The door flies open, swings wide on its hinges, and smacks against the side of the train.
I take a deep breath of fresh summer air.
The mutters settle and I feel my own panic subside.
‘Thank you,’ I murmur.
From the corner of my eye, I see him nod and we step down from the train together.