The First of July(92)

“Of course they’ll go through the motions of a trial, they’re not barbarians, but, no, on reflection, I shall certainly be shot,” the doctor had said, in that last conversation. He had been drawing on his cigarette. “No matter what my sympathies are, no matter my service for France. In the end your country chooses you, not you your country. I’m a German by birth and medical training, and once a German always a German to your fellow warriors. They’ll shout ‘Remember Verdun’ as the volley rings out.” He looked contemplative. “I’ll have no chance to say ‘my good chaps, I do. I do. I have spent days and nights and my health and vigor reassembling your countrymen just to send them back there to be dismembered again.’” He exhaled a ring of smoke. “I don’t expect they’ll even let me wear my uniform.”

Jean-Baptiste hadn’t known what to say. Vignon was probably right.

“Why did you come to us? To Corbie?”

“It was nowhere. I liked that. And I liked fishing.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE


Frank, France,

June 30, 1916


I WAS WRITING A NOTE to Dad, full of jolly stories, when the major came to tell us that after all the chopping and changing, the big June push was in the morning. Which would be July, in fact. He said it tapping the side of his nose as if he was sharing a big secret, as if we didn’t know anything was in the air. There had been a long buildup, he told us (in case we were blind), and tomorrow we would take over German trenches. In case we were deaf too, he added that we might have noticed a heavy barrage—“Ha, ha, ha,” he said—well, this barrage would have torn the wire apart and, undoubtedly, most of the Germans too who might otherwise not be too happy to have us in their trenches slicing their Battenberg cake. This was a joke. The major was keen on jokes, although it turned out he had only another day to get them all out.

One of the lads made a noise—halfway between a snort and a laugh. The major gave him a hard look.

“There’s been a great deal of planning by a great many first-class military minds,” he said.

“Sorry, sir,” the lad muttered, but you could see by his face that he was trying not to laugh at the thought of this, and even Mr. Pierce wouldn’t catch anybody’s eye.

I often thought that when they’d run out of the right-size boots, or half the shells were duds, or they were short of medics or tea or plans or, basically, ideas, they tried to draw you into some big scheme in which fussing about small things made you seem less of a man. When I look back, the Reverend Mr. Tudor Williams was much the same. Once you were in search of salvation, wanting to hang on to a florin you were saving for a £9 17s. 6d. bicycle seemed niggardly.

Our big distraction was going to start with some pretty mighty fireworks, so they promised. The sappers were so excited, they couldn’t resist the odd hint, the odd wink. Not that, given it was war, given there was going to be an attack, there was much that would surprise anybody. All the sappers could do was produce more and louder of what they’d been doing all along. One of them crept up on another while his pal was drinking tea and clapped two metal plates together behind his head. The tea drinker threw tea all over himself. Oh, how the other sappers laughed.

First thing the next day, it was all going to happen. The sergeant major said the lads up front would be able to saunter over, Fritz would be jam and our boys could take all the glory. The newer men were all keen to up and go, and disappointed to be held back until the third wave, and comforted only by being told they’d be going forward soon enough. They were the ones going to win the war, they’d been told. But they knew that this time tomorrow, one way or another, some of them wouldn’t be here. That was a fact, although nobody said it. All they didn’t know was how many.

So, what was I thinking? I didn’t sit there knowing what was ahead. Not the whole measure of the thing. I didn’t care much. June had been a washout. So, one more month was coming; perhaps it would be drier. One more attack; perhaps we’d push forward half a mile. One more half-year of war; with any luck it would end by Christmas. Like they’d said last year and the one before. Fat chance. That was the future now: nothing like the plans that had once driven me on. The saving, the dreaming, the working hard in order to climb, all that “this time next year,” the finding a girl or a Sturmey-Archer gearbox, going to the Institute, keeping accounts and getting fit to cycle the length of the Thames with Dick. Now the future was always more of yesterday or it was nothing. Oblivion. A new word I’d learned from Lieutenant Pierce when he’d had a bit to drink one evening.