Chapter 24
In spring, the Surreys returned to France to fight at the Forest of Nieppe. By the end of that campaign nothing at all would be the same: Blake was presumed lost, Captain Davies was sent to Blighty with burns to his torso and extremities, and everything else in their lives had gone to hell.
Then Stewart, Tom, and Chapman were transferred to the Ninth Battalion, escaping the draconian nightmare Captain Hawkins brought to bear. The fracturing of their company took its toll on those who remained.
After the Somme, Ash had made herself numb to the machinations of the war.
It wasn’t personal, it was only tactics.
Feelings had no place in the forward line.
But now she was exhausted beyond reason, with no reserves left to tamp down her fury at the way Hawkins seemed to contrive any excuse to torment Rook.
It was plain as plain the whole regiment was brittle and close to cracking. Davies would have made it clear the Surreys needed rest, while Captain Hawkins was merely chasing his own glory.
Dusty was especially aimless without his job as captain’s right-hand man, but he slid into the void left by the others, swapping cigarettes with Rook and reading material with Ashley.
“Where would you go if you could go anywhere for as long as you wanted?” he asked late one evening as they played cards.
“Just… away,” Rook said.
Billy Merle’s expression was blank as he leaned his head against the wall. “I’d get a transport home. See my baby girl.”
Ash exchanged a glance with Rook. “How old is she?”
“Thirteen months,” Merle said, voice cracking.
“How long since you’ve seen her?” Rook asked sympathetically.
“Thirteen months,” he whispered. “Hawkins just rejected my leave request because it’s too soon since the last and I got that one nine months early.”
The angry flame in Ashley’s chest flared hotter on his behalf. She was spoiling for a showdown with their new captain.
Rook clapped Merle on the shoulder and offered him a smoke, which the other sniper gratefully accepted.
“Months don’t matter any more. I’m overdue,” Dusty told them. “Heard he’s rejecting all requests as a matter of principle.”
“Do you ever hear from the Old Man?” Ashley asked, meaning Davies.
“No.” The one clipped word sounded so despondent, she wished she hadn’t even brought it up.
“Too bad they couldn’t have promoted the sergeant major,” Merle muttered sadly.
The other three nodded in silence because the walls had ears. It wouldn’t do to say aloud what they were thinking—that Hawkins’s promotion seemed like some sort of cosmic joke.
As if speaking his name had summoned him, their new captain approached the dugout bellowing, “Merle! Patrol! Now!”
“I’ll go,” Rook offered, probably because the dead look in their companion’s eyes unnerved him as much as it did Ashley.
“Did I ask for volunteers?” Hawkins rebuffed, and Ash could see the muscle in Rook’s jaw pop with anger, though he kept his temper in check.
“No, sir. I only thought Private Merle looked a bit under the weather—”
“Then the fresh air will do him good. Merle!” he barked again, making the man jump.
“Yes, sir,” Merle replied, his voice as dead as his eyes.
Rook shook his head. “He should’ve let me go,” he complained once both captain and sniper were safely out of earshot.
“Look there. He’s forgotten his tin hat. I better try and catch him,” Ash said, snatching up the helmet, but Dusty stopped her.
“If he wanted it, he’d have taken it. If you go looking for him now, you’ll only invite trouble.”
Ash turned to Rook, annoyed that Dusty was right. If Hawkins caught her, he’d punish Merle for forgetting or both of them for disobeying orders.
Rook nodded and held her gaze till she sat back down.
“What would you eat?” Dusty asked. “If you could have anything and as much as you wanted?”
“Franzbrotchen,” they both replied, their stomachs rumbling in unison at the memory of happier times.
Merle didn’t return from patrol that night or in the morning either, and Ash couldn’t help feeling her best friend had dodged an unlucky bullet.
A few days later, they marched to the forward line under a cold, grey, rainy sky, and there, Captain Hawkins rode Rook beyond exhaustion, demanding he stand double shifts on sniper duty night and day.
As he grew quieter and more withdrawn, Ash worried the captain was trying to break him, and she feared if it went on much longer, he might succeed.
She took to keeping watch alongside Rook, claiming insomnia now plagued her, and during those long nights she recounted Dickens tales from memory.
She couldn’t tell whether he was listening to her words or just her voice, but it was the companionship that mattered at times like those.
In the rare few moments between duties, they slept sitting back to back, heads lolling on each other’s shoulders, in the shade. It went on for days, Ash lost track of quite how many, until at last they were released to billets in a barn some miles away.
There they slept and ate and slept some more. Though Hawkins threatened calisthenics to ensure the regiment didn’t grow soft, he must have known he’d risk a full-on mutiny if he actually tried.
On the fourth day of rest, the weather was especially fine, one of those perfect spring mornings that could remind a person they were human. The whole company sat lazing in the sun like feral cats, soaking up the cozy warmth as though storing it to see them through another winter.
Raised voices drew Ashley’s attention, and she lifted her head to see a soldier held prisoner between two tall MPs.
His head hung low as Hawkins lambasted him with relish.
She couldn’t make out the words the captain yelled, but the soldier’s slouch and vacant expression sent a tingle down her spine, before they hustled him into the barn and away from prying eyes.
She glanced at Rook beside her, who had pushed up on his elbows. “Steady on,” he whispered. “I saw him too.”
Billy Merle.
“Perhaps he was captured? Or injured?” Dusty suggested. “And he’s only just returned from hospital today?”
“Then what are the MPs for? Suppose even Hawkins couldn’t blame him for being hurt…” Ash argued.
Rook didn’t say anything at all, but his posture was tense, his expression grim.
They ate their evening rations outside, no one going near the stuffy barn.
An uncomfortable pall had fallen over the sunny day.
While they were eating, Captain Hawkins finally emerged to walk among them, and Ashley braced herself for whatever he had planned.
No matter what unpleasantness he might rain down on her and Rook, she was determined to bite her tongue against retort.
“Privates.” He offered a stiff nod to her and Dusty.
“Captain,” they replied with all due grace.
“Lance Corporal,” he added, turning his attention to Rook.
“Sir.”
“You’re on special assignment. Report to the field behind the barn thirty minutes before dawn, sharpish. Don’t be late.”
Rook’s face went ghostly pale. “Sir?” he repeated, his voice barely more than a growl.
“Is there a problem?” Hawkins asked, almost gleeful.
“Special assignment, sir?” Rook echoed, setting down his stew and pushing it away.
“Did I stammer?”
Rook stared at the ground. “Is it a firing squad, sir?”
Ashley’s stomach wrenched, threatening to toss up the meal she’d only just eaten, as the captain’s self-satisfied smirk turned big and righteous.
“It is an order, Lance Corporal.”
“No,” Rook said softly.
Ash braced for the inevitable explosion, but Hawkins continued to smile the horrible smile of an adder about to launch upon its prey.
“Private Merle has been tried and court-martialed. He will be executed for cowardice and desertion as defined in the Field Service Regulations. It is your duty to carry out that execution.”
“It’s customary to pull guns from a neighboring regiment,” Rook replied.
“If you refuse my order, I shall have you up beside him,” Hawkins snapped, daring Rook to say no just one more time.
“Then have me up beside him,” Rook said, refusing to meet Ashley’s eye, as though he knew she was pleading for him to hush. “Merle’s not right in the head. He’s a broken kid who needs to see his kid.”
“Then he must wait until his kid joins him in the hereafter.”
“I won’t do it,” Rook said.
“If you refuse, then Ashley shall be blindfolded at dawn as well.”
“What?” Dusty demanded. “Why?”
“For being a spy and fraternizing with the enemy.”
“Sir?” Ashley asked, her head spinning as she grew faint.
“Did you, or did you not, receive a parcel of German baked goods last December?” Hawkins demanded, playing the card he must’ve kept tucked up his sleeve for months waiting for the perfect moment to throw it back in all their faces.
“Ash can’t help what’s sent through the mail,” Dusty argued.
“I’m inclined to disagree. I believe those baked goods were hiding secret intelligence, which you used your position as runner to distribute behind enemy lines. What’s more, I suspect the MPs can be persuaded to my way of thinking.”
“You can’t be serious,” Dusty said.
“Secret messages? I never did,” Ash protested, panic pushing bile up her throat and making it difficult to breathe.
“Then perhaps you should be more careful of the company you keep—” Hawkins began.
“I’ll do it,” Rook interrupted, jaw set, utterly defeated.
“Good,” Hawkins replied, though their fight had made him somewhat less smug than when he’d first arrived. He marched swiftly away, and Ash stumbled towards the latrine to expel her dinner.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Rook. Not sorry she was spared, and even less sorry that he was, but sorry to be a pawn against him in Hawkins’s unfair game of chess.
“Don’t be sorry, Little Bird.”
“Doesn’t make a lick of sense,” Dusty grumbled. “He can’t afford to shoot his best runner and both his best snipers too.”
“He knew it wouldn’t come to that. It was only ever about the threat. The power. He has it all and we have none. He needed me to admit as much and demonstrate it in front of everyone tomorrow.”
“Will you shoot wide?” Ashley asked.
“No. It will be done, one way or another. I can make it instant.”
The next morning the regiment assembled in the darkness before the dawn.
Some of the chosen twelve arrived, a jaunty swagger in their bearing, but steely Rook was grim-faced and resigned.
Ash hovered close behind him, with Dusty at her side, ignoring the coals that burned deep in her gut.
She wanted to fly at Captain Hawkins—all wings and teeth and claws—and scream until he admitted this was wrong, but she couldn’t bear to be the reason Rook had to shoot another soul, and so she crossed her arms and vowed to hold her tongue.
Two MPs dragged Merle between them, a blindfold covering his eyes. He was pale and seemed to tremble with each step. They stood him before a hitching post and bound his hands on the other side, while the quartermaster issued freshly loaded guns.
Hawkins preened and strutted. He was relishing his role. When an all-too-cheerful gold lit the horizon, “Squad attention!” he fairly roared, as though commanding the very sun, far too eager to carry out the execution.
The men snapped into a rigid posture, rifles tight against their sides, like marionettes in the captain’s morbid show.
“Ready!” Hawkins called, and Ashley chewed her cheek to shreds. How could any of them be prepared to shoot a friend?
“Take aim,” he ordered.
Twelve weapons were raised in a long, straight line as Merle’s lip quivered beneath his folded mask. Forgive me, my darling Alice, he seemed to pray.
“Fire!”
They might as well still be in trenches. A murderous thunder rent the dawn, and Ash was grateful to be cloaked by the veil of acrid smoke that enshrouded her and burned her watery eyes.
A chaplain and a medic were called to examine him where he sagged against the post and confirm at least one shot in twelve had found its mark.
Then Hawkins toed the grassy meadow, counting shell casings, one two three, to ensure each man had carried out his oath.
Ash held her breath and watched him, eight nine ten—if he didn’t spot all twelve there’d be no saving Alex Rook.
Two others stepped forward to untie the body and carry it away, and, satisfied, Hawkins dismissed the Surreys back to their rest. But Rook still stood, shoulders slumped and staring blindly at the saccharine sunrise until he wept.
Ash was there to catch him as he crumpled to his knees. “May God have mercy on my soul,” the sniper cried.
They crouched for ages in the dew-damp grass, while Rook quaked with silent sobs, Ashley’s own heart splintering and thorny at his side. She cradled him and stroked his hair, assuring him every way she could think of that it would have been someone else if he’d declined.
Ash could forgive a great many things in life.
But witnessing one friend cut down in cold blood and the other brought to his knees, the selfsame blood upon his sacred, gentle hands—hands that knit socks and played the organ and held her heart—no indeed.
She would never spare an ounce of mercy for Captain Hawkins.
Not one hundred years from now and not in the eternal hereafter.
Not for the life he’d taken nor the lifetime of torment he’d forced upon her dearest friend.
But she would do everything in her power to make sure Rook forgave himself.