Chapter 13
‘This could be England,’ says Private Murray in an awed voice.
Danny and I turn away from the mule cart, where the boy sits like a vagabond prince, and follow his gaze across the rolling landscape.
Ollie is right. The country of the Somme might be a foreign field, but to tired men already homesick it strikes a chord.
Long folds of gentle chalkland, well-groomed woods, streams burrowing through valleys, meandering country lanes.
But there are differences here too: the fields are larger, the churches gaunter, while every few miles along the dusty road hangs a crucified Christ, His wooden eyes turned heavenward, as if to ignore the parade of doomed humanity marching by.
‘Beautiful enough to draw,’ Danny murmurs, and gives me a smile. ‘If only a poor squire knew an artist good enough for the job.’
I summon my own smile. ‘A decent squire might leave off with the nonsense and go and find his superior officer a bite to eat.’
This receives a dutiful salute before Danny strides away in search of the nearest field kitchen.
I watch him go, a powerful figure moving through the mass of troops that block the road.
It’s now late afternoon and, although the sun is less fierce today, the miles of hard slog have taken their toll.
Lieutenant-Colonel Gallagher has just called a ten-minute halt and men are standing propped against their rifles or else sitting in the scrub either side of the track.
Stunned with exhaustion, hardly a word passes between them.
‘Hey, that man!’ I call out. ‘Don’t touch your boots!’
From the roadside, a wiry soldier with a sun-baked face looks up at me, a sort of pleading in his gaze. ‘Please, sir, but my feet. My feet.’
‘I know.’ Though my back screams with the effort, I drop to my knees so that we’re eye-level.
‘If you don’t rip off those boots right now, you’ll lose your mind.
That’s how it feels, doesn’t it?’ He nods, despairing but grateful that someone understands.
‘Only listen to me, Private. We’ve still another couple of hours to go until we make camp for the night.
If you take off your boots now, your feet will swell and you’ll never get them back on again. ’
He sighs, then turns his gaze over my shoulder to where Ollie sits in the cart. ‘Can’t I take a turn up there?’ he grunts, his expression souring. ‘Why does Little Lord Fauntleroy get special treatment?’
‘Do you really want to know?’ I ask, a spike of anger in my tone. ‘Well then, come take a look.’
He begins to bluster. ‘Doesn’t matter, sir. I was only saying—’
‘Get up, soldier,’ I tell him. ‘That’s an order.’
Hobbling a little, he follows me over to where the fly-misted mule shuffles in its traces.
I lay my palm against the creature’s flank, feel the thick thud of its heartbeat.
Meanwhile Ollie looks back at us from the cart.
Pain has lined his face and he looks older than his eighteen years. Much older.
‘Private Murray, I wonder, would you be willing to show this man your feet?’ I ask gently. ‘I think he’d find it enlightening.’
Ollie looks between us before giving a tiny nod.
Then, as the bewildered soldier approaches the cart, Ollie slowly pulls aside the old bedsheet that has been covering his bare feet.
The wiry man stares for a moment, then glances at Ollie shamefaced, before shuffling back to the roadside.
As he passes me, he mutters: ‘Poor kid. Poor bloody kid.’ Lowering himself to the ground again, he folds his arms, leaving his boots well alone.
I step over the cart and take a deep breath before examining Ollie’s feet for myself.
It’s been only minutes since Danny and I removed the last dressing and reapplied the antiseptic iodine, so I’m not sure what I expect to see.
Some miracle cure conjured by one of those roadside Christs, perhaps. I ought to know better.
There are no miracles here.
‘How is it?’ Ollie asks in a shaky voice. ‘I don’t like to look.’
I keep my own voice level. ‘No worse,’ I tell him.
It’s a lie. And you don’t need to glance at the hot, fevered flesh of his feet, all mottled and purple, to see it.
Ollie’s face alone – his jaw so often clenched, his eyes bolting, his grey skin awash with sweat – tells the tale.
Despite my trying to reason with the colonel before we set out this morning, Gallagher had insisted that the boy march the first ten miles.
I argued with the colonel and Captain Beddowes as they looked down on us from the relative comfort of horseback.
The wheedling words of Beddowes: As the colonel has just observed, Lieutenant, the man looks well enough to us.
We can’t allow any idling or they’ll all be at it.
Now, get the fellow into line. It had taken a warning glance from me to keep an outraged Danny silent.
In the end I hadn’t asked permission. When Ollie fell for the third time, his face planted in the filth of the road, I took him out of the line myself, Danny and I lifting him into the nearest mule cart, making him as comfortable as we could.
But by obeying Gallagher’s original order, I may have left it too late. Now I cover Ollie’s feet with the old bedsheet again and pat my hand against his shoulder.
‘When Private McCormick returns, we’ll bandage them up again. It’ll be all right.’
‘Will it?’ Ollie looks confused, his eyes unfocused. ‘Good. That’s good then... I like Danny a lot.’
‘Me too. He’s a very good soldier.’
‘And a good singer. You should’ve heard him last night, sir. In the pub. His singing is so beautiful.’
I nod. Beautiful and unsettling. After getting back to the villa, I’d slept fitfully in my cot, my mind full of Danny’s performance at that seedy little tavern in the square.
Of course, I know what disturbed me about it.
The flamboyance, the femininity: it all felt too bold, too suggestive, too dangerous.
Especially after Captain Beddowes’ comments.
‘You rest as best you can,’ I tell Ollie. ‘We’ll get you seen by a medic as soon as we reach camp, I promise.’
I try to sound reassuring, confident, but inside I’m feeling overwhelmed and more than a little afraid for Ollie Murray.
A hand falls on my shoulder. ‘Lieutenant Wraxall, you need to come with me. A couple of the boys have landed themselves in some trouble.’
I turn to find Danny standing behind me, his face etched with worry. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m not sure. But Lieutenant-Colonel Gallagher is on the warpath.’
We leave Ollie and hurry into the chaos of the road.
Our current rest stop is not far from the Front, somewhere between the towns of Hébuterne and Auchonvillers.
In the fields around us sit vast ammunition dumps with chains of men ferrying crates into wagons.
Meanwhile orderlies on bicycles weave precariously through our mile-long column, ringing bells that seem to echo gunshots from a neighbouring field.
I only glance in that direction once. The sight of heavy-headed horses, lame from nails dropped by limbers and wagons, is sad enough.
I don’t want to witness the officer striding between them, revolver in hand, putting the poor creatures out of their misery.
As we stride on, I fix my gaze instead upon Danny.
I tell myself I have been overreacting. Effeminate music hall acts are common enough at home and rarely give rise to suspicion.
Or if they do, those suspicions are left unspoken.
Theatricals like Danny have always been given a certain freedom.
But we’re not at home, a tiny voice whispers to me.
Here there are other rules we must live by.
Still, I comfort myself that the men in the pub had seemed to enjoy the show.
I must stop worrying about such trivial things and focus on the important stuff: Ollie needs a doctor’s care before it’s too late.
And it seems Private Murray isn’t the only member of my platoon in danger.
We emerge from a crowd of soldiers to find Lieutenant-Colonel Gallagher and Captain Beddowes on horseback, towering over Percy Stanhope and Robert Billings.
The Toad is red-faced with fury while the Snake shakes a disapproving head at the cowering men.
The rest of my platoon stand in a circle around their comrades, all looking nervous as hell.
Even old Spud Pearson, that calm and fatherly presence, seems worried.
‘What’s going on here?’ I ask, stepping into the circle.
‘Ah, just in time, Lieutenant Wraxall,’ Beddowes croons.
Gallagher twirls his riding crop in my direction. ‘Wraxall, there you are. Did you know about this?’
I come to stand beside Percy, who either through fear or exhaustion is trembling in his boots. ‘I’ve been tending to one of my men, Colonel,’ I say. ‘Private Oliver Murray. He is in desperate need of medical attention.’
‘Oh yes, Colonel,’ Beddowes says, leaning over in his saddle. ‘A little bird has informed me that Wraxall has disobeyed your orders and placed Private Murray in a cart, for his comfort. A direct challenge to your—’
‘I’m not interested in some half-crippled boy,’ Gallagher bellows. ‘It’s this flagrant breach of military law that I want addressed.’
Percy turns to me, his eyes shining with tears. ‘We didn’t know it wasn’t allowed. All we wanted was to take a few snaps to send home. We ain’t neither of us been abroad, you see, and I said to my Ead that I’d post her a pic or two.’ He looks up at Gallagher. ‘I’m really sorry, guv.’
‘Guv?’ Gallagher blinks, as if the snivelling soldier has just slapped him with a wet haddock.
Meanwhile Danny leans over and whispers: ‘What’s this all about, Perce?’
In answer, Robert Billings hands me a small, black compact device.
I recognise it straight away and my heart drops.
To confirm what it is, I pull out the lens on its folding struts from the main body of the camera.
A Vest Pocket Kodak, possibly the worst thing these men could have been carrying.
I think back to that little encounter I witnessed last night in the square between Percy, Robert and the baker. So this had been their purchase.
‘Caught ’em taking pictures of the bloody scenery!’ Gallagher exclaims. He sweeps the immediate area with his riding crop, Beddowes ridiculously following suit with his own swagger stick. ‘Including every bloody platoon and piece of equipment we have here!’
‘I’m sure the boys acted innocently, sir,’ Spud Pearson puts in. ‘There’s not a bad bone between them.’
‘We didn’t mean any harm, honest,’ Robert murmurs.
‘Harm?’ Beddowes raises an eyebrow. ‘My dear fellow, ever since Christmas nineteen-fourteen, it’s been illegal for a soldier to carry a camera. What if your “holiday snaps” got into the hands of a German agent, eh? That would be vital information passed on to the enemy.’
‘By God, I could have you up on charges of treason!’ Gallagher fumes. ‘In fact... Yes, you men, follow me. At the double!’
The Toad turns his horse and begins to canter back along the column, Percy and Robert having to run to keep up. I exchange a quick glance with Danny before we start sprinting after them. Beddowes falls in alongside us, his mare snorting at my shoulder.
‘What’s he going to do to them?’ I call up to the captain.
That serpentine grin beams down at me. ‘Oh Lieutenant, can’t you guess?’