At Some Disputed Barricade wwi-4 Read online

  She remained silent, accelerating the ambulance over the smoother road. The rain had stopped and there were rents in the clouds. The moonlight showed the summer trees, heavy boughed and glistening as the headlights caught the wet leaves.

  “I didn’t know that,” she said at last. “Poor devils. Do you think they’ll be executed?”

  He heard the pity in her voice, but no anger that he had shattered her illusion. He reached out his hand to touch her, lay his fingers on her arm, then changed his mind and withdrew it. He did not want to risk being rebuffed. He knew how it would hurt.

  “Only a few,” he answered her question. “Enough to make an example.”

  She said nothing. A few minutes later they pulled in at the hospital. From then on everyone was busy helping to unload the wounded. The amputee was still alive, but very much weaker, and in great pain. The only thing that Judith or Mason could think about was getting him out of the ambulance and into a bed as easily as possible.

  After the men were all unloaded, Judith was standing with Mason when Wil Sloan emerged from the side door of the hospital ward into the cobbled yard. He looked almost ghostly in the lamplight.

  Judith went over to him and locked her arm in his, leading him across the yard to the ambulance. “Let’s see if there’s somewhere open for a glass of wine and a sandwich,” she said.

  “It’s half past one in the morning,” he pointed out with a tiny smile.

  She gave a shrug. “So we’ll find someone who’ll let us use their kitchen to make our own. We’ve got to sleep somewhere. Can’t go back to the trenches until I’ve cleaned the ambulance and got some more petrol anyway.” Mason had followed her. “Do you want to go back?” she asked him.

  “Better than walking,” he replied. “Unless, of course, you’ll be shot for giving a civilian a ride?”

  She gave him a quick smile. “We can always poke you with a bayonet, and put you in the back,” she offered. “Then you’ll be genuinely wounded!”

  He was too tired to think of an answer.

  Mason woke at five to find Wil Sloan’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently. It was already daylight and the ambulance was clean and refueled. There was time for bread and tea, and then they were in the yard beside the ambulance and ready to go again.

  Judith looked tired. In the morning light, which was harder and colder than the dusk of yesterday, he saw the fine lines in her face and the shadows around her eyes. She was twenty-six, but she could have been ten years older. Her dress was plain gray and completely without adornment. The hem was still crusted with mud, but now he could see that the bloodstains were old and had already been washed many times. They were too soaked into the fiber ever to be removed.

  She saw him watching her and gave him a tiny, self-conscious smile.

  He remembered their first meeting with a catch in his throat that was as sharp as pain. It had been in 1915, in the Savoy Hotel. She had been dressed in a blue satin gown that had hugged her body and she had walked with a grace that had forced him to look at her. She had been angry, mistaken about almost everything, and utterly beautiful, enough to charm any man and stir forgotten hungers inside him.

  Now the feeling was quite different. It was nothing to do with laughter or conquest, but a need within himself for something tender and clean, and immensely vulnerable, still capable of pain, and hope.

  “Not quite the Savoy, is it?” she said drily, as if she had read his thoughts.

  He felt the heat in his face. He wanted to look away from her, and could not. She would be gone too soon!

  She was embarrassed also. “Come on!” she said quickly. “Get in!”

  They spoke of general things. She asked him more about other battlefronts he had seen and he found it easy to tell her. He felt no more need to hide his feelings or his knowledge of casualties. He tried to describe the ravaged beauty of northern Italy with its exquisite skies over Venice and Trieste; the courage of partisan fighters in the mountains of Albania, particularly some of the women he had seen, struggling to get medical supplies to the wounded.

  He even found himself explaining some of the moral dilemmas he faced as to how much or little he should tell the truth of certain events in his articles.

  She listened with interest—and understood enough to offer no solutions.

  It was a windy day with only a light rain. When they were two or three miles from the front, they saw a gun carriage on its side and a soldier standing beside it waving his arms in desperation. There were three others behind him near the gun and two horses harnessed to the gun carriage.

  Judith pulled the ambulance to a halt as close as she could and the soldier was at her side immediately.

  “Can you ’elp me, miss? Private ’Oskins is ’urt pretty bad. That bloody gun just pitched back into the mud and none of us could shift it, even with the ’orses. ’E’s gonna die if we don’t ’elp ’im. Both ’is legs is bust an’ ’is back’s gorn. I dunno ’ow ter move the thing wi’out makin’ it even worse. Please…”

  Judith turned off the engine. “Yes, of course we will,” she said, climbing out without hesitation. “Come on.” She gestured to Mason, then hurried around to the back just as Wil Sloan opened the door and looked out. “We need help, Wil,” she told him. “Man trapped under a field gun. You’d better get tourniquets, and splints, and a stretcher.” She turned to Mason. “You come with me.” It was an order. Without seeing if he would obey, she picked up her skirts and waded through the ditch, in water up to her thighs. With a hand from the soldier she climbed out, then floundered across the thick, plowed clay to the crater. There, the other soldiers were trying to hold the gun from sliding even deeper, keeping the weary, patient horses leaning against the harness.

  The injured man was almost submerged in the filthy water. Another man, who looked to be no more than sixteen or seventeen, held his head up, his eyes wide with terror. He was losing. He could feel the weight of the man slipping out of his grasp, slimy with mud and blood, and he was helpless to prevent it.

  Mason dropped in beside him without even thinking about it, and grasped them both. They were freezing. The shock of it took his own breath away. A moment later Wil Sloan appeared with the stretcher. Judith was giving orders. “Hitch it tighter, move forward, slowly! Steady!”

  There was a great squelch of mud and running water. Someone shouted, and the gun reared up. Mason put all his strength to pulling the wounded man, lost his footing, and fell back deeper into the crater himself. He thrashed around, suddenly terrified of drowning also. The clay held him. Water was in his eyes, in his mouth, over his head. It was vile, stinking of death. Someone caught hold of him and he was in the air again, gasping, filling his lungs. His hands still held the blouse of the wounded soldier. Wil Sloan was heaving on them both and one of the other soldiers as well.

  They scrambled up onto the bank. Without even examining the wounds, Wil was binding tourniquets. Judith still held the horses.

  “Hurry!” she shouted. “This gun’s going to slide backward any minute. I’ll have to cut the horses loose or they’ll go, too!”

  “Stretcher!” Wil bellowed. Mason staggered to his feet and grasped it. Together they rolled the wounded man onto it, and then raised it up. They were a couple of yards clear when Judith cut the harness. The gun and carriage both fell back into the crater, sending up a wave of mud and water that drenched them, even at that distance.

  “What the bloody hell are you doing?” a voice shouted furiously.

  Mason looked at the captain who stood on the side of the road glaring at them. He was a slender man, his wide, dark eyes seeming overlarge in his haggard face.

  “Whose damn fool idea was it to take a gun across a field full of mud?” he demanded.

  The corporal snapped to attention as well as he could, standing in the gouged-up clay and over his knees in mud. “Orders of Major Northrup, Captain Morel. I told ’im we’d get stuck, but ’e wouldn’t listen.”

  Morel turned to Judith. �
��Get that man to the nearest field station. Cavan’s only about a mile forward. Be quick.”

  “Yes, sir.” Judith waved at Wil to go on, then climbed into the ambulance, her sodden skirts slapping mud everywhere, and took her place behind the wheel. “Will you have one of the men turn the crank for me?” she requested.

  Wil slammed the door shut from inside with the wounded man. Morel himself turned the crank and the engine fired.

  Judith looked quickly at Mason and he shook his head. There was a story here he had to find, and perhaps to tell. He hoped she understood. There was no chance to tell her.

  She nodded briefly, then gave all her attention to driving.

  Mason stood in the road and watched them go. He would speak to Cavan another time.

  Captain Morel was tight with fury. His features were pinched and white except for two spots of color on his cheeks. His movements were jerky, his muscles locked hard.

  “Leave it, Corporal!” he shouted at the man with the gun. “Save the horses and get them out of there.”

  “But, sir, Major Northrup told us—”

  “To hell with Major Northrup!” Morel snapped back, his voice shaking. “The man’s a bloody idiot! I’m telling you to get the horses out and rejoin your platoon.”

  The corporal stood where he was, torn with indecision. Mason could see that he was terrified of what Northrup, who outranked Morel, would do to him for disobeying his order.

  Morel saw it, too. He made an intense effort to control his fury. His face softened into pity so naked Mason felt almost indecent to have seen it. He wanted to look away, yet his own emotion held him. He was involved whether he wanted to be or not. Equally, he was helpless. This was one tiny instance of idiocy in a hundred thousand times as much.

  “Corporal,” Morel said quietly, ignoring the rain running down his face. “I outrank you and I am giving you a direct order. You have no choice but to obey me, unless you want to be court-martialed. If Northrup questions you, tell him that. I’ll answer for it; you have my word.”

  The corporal’s face flooded with relief. He was no more than eighteen or nineteen. “Thank you, sir.” He gulped.

  Morel nodded. “Do it.” He turned away, then, realizing Mason was still there, he faced him. His eyes were hard and belligerent, ready to attack if Mason criticized him.

  Mason looked at him more closely. Everything about him spoke of a terrible weariness. He was probably in his mid-twenties, a public school boy, and later, judging by his accent, a student at Cambridge. A wounded idealist, betrayed by circumstances and blind stupidity that no sane man could have conceived of.

  Mason thought of all the Frenchmen, also betrayed and slaughtered. Would the man in front of him mutiny, too? There was a rage in him too fragile, too close to snapping.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” Morel demanded.

  “Richard Mason, war correspondent,” Mason replied. “Who is Northrup?”

  Morel let out his breath slowly. “Major Penhaligon was killed on the first day of Passchendaele. Northrup’s his replacement.”

  “I see.”

  “I doubt it.” Morel glanced up the road the way the ambulance had gone. “You’ll have to walk. Follow the stench. You can’t get lost. Although it doesn’t matter a damn if you do. It’s all the same.”

  “I know.”

  Morel hesitated, then shrugged and turned away back to his own men and the staff car still parked on the edge of the road. After the driver cranked it up, Morel climbed in and they drove off.

  Mason started to walk.

  How should he write up this incident? Should he record it at all? It was a classic example of the idiocy of some of the officers now in command and, as always, it was the ordinary men who paid the price. Thanks to Judith’s intervention, this one would only have two smashed legs. He might even walk again, if it hadn’t caught his back as well. Others would be less fortunate.

  He could see Judith in his mind’s eye, ordering the soldiers to lift, stand, hold. Her voice had been perfectly calm, but he had seen the tension in her. She knew what she was doing, and the risks. If one of the horses had slipped or she had lost control of it, the gun carriage would have rolled back into the crater and crushed the soldier to death.

  She had not seemed to give reason even a passing thought. Morel’s fury had had no visible effect on her. She could have been a good nanny watching a small child throw a tantrum, simply waiting for it to pass before she told him to pull himself together and behave properly. It had not entered her head to rebel against the madness.

  Why not? Did she lack the imagination? Was she conditioned to obedience, unquestioning loyalty no matter how idiotic the cause? Perhaps. John Reavley had stolen the treaty, and she was his daughter. Joseph Reavley was her brother. Maybe sticking to ideals regardless of pain or futility, in defiance of the evidence, was considered an evidence of faith, or some other virtue, in the family? She had been taught it when she was too young to question, and now to do so would feel like a betrayal of those she loved.

  Mason’s feet hurt in the wet boots, and he was growing cold in spite of the exertion of walking. Two years ago Joseph Reavley had followed him from the shores of Turkey right to Gibraltar, then out into the English Channel. After the U-boat had sunk the steamer, they had ended in the same open boat in the rising storm, trying to make for England.

  Would Joseph really have let them both drown rather than surrender his ideals to fight to the end? That one article, had Mason written it, might have ended the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of men, God knows how many of them dead in the two years since.

  Yes, Judith was probably just like Joseph.

  Mason remembered with surprise how he had believed Joseph then. For a brief time he too had understood the reasons for fighting. They seemed to embody the values that made all life sweet and infinitely precious. Indeed, was life worth anything at all, worth clinging to without them?

  How many more had given their lives, blindly, heroically, since then? For what?

  What would happen if he wrote that honestly, put quixotic sacrifice in its place? It was meaningless in the long run, no comfort to the hundreds of thousands left all over Europe, whose sons and husbands would never return, lonely women whose hearts were wounded beyond healing. Judith would think him a traitor—not to the cause, but to the dead, and to the bereaved who had paid so much.

  He realized only now, in the wind and rain of this Flanders road where the stench of death was already knotting his stomach, that her disillusion in time would be a pain he would never afterward be free from. It would be one more light gone out forever and the darkness would be closer around him than he could bear.

  Joseph came out of his dugout at the sound of Barshey Gee shouting almost incoherently. Gee swung around as he saw Joseph. His face was red, his thick hair sodden in the rain.

  “Chaplain, you’ve got to do something! The major’s told us to go back out there and get the bodies, roight now!” He waved his arm toward the front parapet and no-man’s-land beyond. “We can’t, not in that mud! In the loight. Doesn’t he know we’d do it if we could?” His voice was hoarse and half choked with tears. “Jesus! Fred Arnold’s out there! Oi’ve known him all moi loife! Oi got stuck up a tree—scrumping apples in old Gabby Moyle’s orchard. It was Fred who got me down before Oi were caught.” He drew his breath in in a gasp. “Oi’d go if there were any chance at all, but that mud’s deep as the hoight of a man, an if yer get stuck in it you’ve no chance. Jerry’ll pick us off like bottles on a wall. Just lose more men for nothin’.”

  “I know that, Barshey,” Joseph said grimly.

  Barshey was shaking his head.

  “Oi refused an order, Chaplain. We all did. He can have us court-martialed, but Oi won’t send men out there.” His voice was thick with tears.

  “I’ll talk to him.” Joseph felt the same anger and grief hot inside him. He had known Fred Arnold, too, and his brother Plugger Arnold who had died of his wounds la
st year. “Wait here.” He turned and strode back toward the officers’ dugouts where he knew Northrup would be at this time of day.

  All dugouts were pretty similar: narrow and earth-floored. There was room enough for a cot bed, a chair, and a makeshift desk. Most officers made them individual with odd bits of carpet, pictures of home or family, a few favorite books, perhaps a wind-up gramophone and several recordings.

  Entrance was gained down steep steps and doorways were hung with sacking to keep out the rain.

  “Yes, Chaplain?” Northrup said as Joseph answered the summons to come in. Northrup looked harassed and impatient. He was sitting in the hard-backed chair in front of the desk. There were half a dozen books on it, which were too worn for Joseph to read the titles. There was also a picture of a woman with a bland, pleasant face. Judging by the age of her and the resemblance about the set of eyes and the high brow, it was his mother.

  Joseph disliked intensely having to speak, but he had no choice.

  “Sir, I understand you ordered Corporal Gee to lead a rescue party to find the dead or wounded in no-man’s-land.”

  “Of course I did, Captain Reavley.” His voice was faintly patronizing, even if he did not intend it. “We can’t leave them to die out there. Or fail to bring back the bodies of those who have. I regret that the corporal refused a direct order. I’ve given him half an hour to get his courage back, but if he doesn’t, I’ll have to put him on a charge. This is the British Army, and we obey orders. Do you understand me?”

  Joseph wanted to tell him that the French command had driven its own men to mutiny, but he knew it would be disastrous to do that now. Northrup was thin-skinned enough to regard it as a personal insult and react accordingly.

  He kept his temper under control with difficulty. “Sir, I’ve known Barshey Gee most of my life, and served beside him since 1914. He’s one of the bravest men in this regiment, and if he could have gone out there without sacrificing his men pointlessly, then he would have. One of his closest friends was lost last night….”