A Girl in Wartime (20 page)

He broke off as though respecting her innocence, while she gazed back at him, not knowing what to say.

She'd never been properly told about physical love. Married women kept that to themselves. She shared giggles with friends on the petting they'd sometimes enjoyed, but whatever else happened, that was private too. She'd never had any boy
come it
with her as some of her friends called it. Stephen would kiss her, had once eased her down beneath him only to lift her back to a sitting position, apologising profusely. And somehow she'd felt cheated.

Now he was asking what she knew about making love. As she gazed up at him, strangely embarrassed, he smiled gently, his embrace tightening about her a little. ‘No, of course you wouldn't. That's why I feel I mustn't take advantage of you, my darling. I love you. So very much. If you only knew how much. But I'd never take advantage of you. I want to marry you, Connie, if you'll have me. As soon as you're nineteen.'

His arms had tightened around her. His lips touched hers and then began to press hard. Automatically returning the kiss, she felt that familiar twinge inside her and, as always, instinctively felt that this was the love she had for him.

Suddenly he stepped away, releasing her as she tried to make the kiss linger. ‘Now I must take you home, my love. But remember, I love you more than anything. And I'm so sorry about the photos.'

‘It doesn't matter,' she said, her heart leaping in happiness. He really did love her. He had asked to marry her. She had meant to accept his proposal, sudden though it was, but his kiss had taken her words of rapturous acceptance right out of her head.

It was impossible to sleep. Stephen loved her, she was certain, he had asked her to marry him, but he had brought up their age gap. Was nine years' difference really a stumbling block to their happiness?

Then, as she lay staring into the darkness, came another thought: it could also be a stumbling block when Mum and Dad finally learned of the age difference between her and the man she had fallen in love with. Mum had often said, ‘When you meet a nice boy, Connie …' no doubt visualising her daughter with some likely young chap. But Stephen was a man almost ten years older than her. Her parents would both be appalled. She could imagine their response: ‘When you're forty, he'll be almost fifty. No, love, find yourself someone your own age. There are lots of boys around here.'

It plagued her and there was no one she could turn to. Maybe one of her sisters? Not Elsie, she'd scoff, rush off and relate it to Mum and Dad immediately. Lillian was more trustworthy: having been sworn to secrecy, she would delight in keeping it to herself until Connie found the courage to face them herself. She could trust Lillian.

‘Well I never!' Lillian burst out on Sunday morning when Connie paid her a visit and, over a cup of tea and a cake, told her about Stephen and her fears about their age difference. ‘If you love him, I don't think age would be that much of a barrier. Mum and Dad still live in the past but we live in a modern age and you can't just give up on a bloke just because they don't approve. It's your life, Con. Just go in there fighting. They'll come round.'

Connie didn't feel she was ‘going in there fighting' but she'd gained a lot from Lillian's advice and felt strong enough to face her mother and father.

But not yet. Not quite yet.

November 1916

Seven thirty a.m., a grey November day, hardly light. The artillery barrage had ceased.

Orders shouted to fix bayonets, whistles blew the order to go over the top, men climbed out of trenches to begin moving across no-man's-land towards the enemy. They moved at a slow pace – every man moved half-crouched, as if that were any protection here on fearfully exposed ground, their only cover the smoke from exploding shells.

Gone was the lush grass of a peaceful countryside. Rain and shellfire had turned it to mud. Barbed wire, broken tree stumps, dead horses, bomb craters into which a man could fall never to get out again, slowly suffocated by the thick mud at the bottom, had done a complete job.

Very aware of their exposure, as was every one of a hundred thousand or so soldiers, Albert and Ronnie negotiated the shell holes weighed down by seventy pounds of equipment: wire cutters, entrenchment tools, gas helmet, groundsheet – though why one needed that, Albert had no idea – sandbag, haversack, two Mills bombs and two hundred and twenty rounds of ammunition. Each man gripped his rifle, and each man gave the same silent prayer: ‘Please, don't let my number be up yet.'

The grassy meadows gone, churned-up mud clung to boots, impeding every step as each soldier had to drag each foot out by force. Barbed wire had barely been breached by the nightly barrage and had to be negotiated. Albert kept his eyes on the ground as he walked towards enemy trenches.

Then the machine-gun fire opened up and men began to fall. Instinct told him to lie flat, take cover, but that was against orders. Orders were not to dig in but to advance, and this they had to do. He looked across to Ronnie. Ronnie was bent double, ducking and flinching at each close wizz of a bullet.

‘Dear God above – don't let him be hit!' Albert prayed.

Few, he was sure, would come back from this advance. Officers too seemed to think so. Yet another attempt to gain enemy lines failed, just as previous attempts had. Officers now yelled orders to retire. A mad rush back, tripping over fallen comrades, no time to help them as machine gun bullets tore past, scoring hits in every direction. It was a relief as he and Ronnie fell down into the relative safety of their trench; men were being hit on the very act of leaping in, even as they breathed a prayer of thanks for deliverance.

Albert uttered his own silent prayer of thanks. No one put thoughts into words as each man slowly got his breath back, not to dwell on the chance that the next advance might be their last. Trenches had become busy: the wounded tended, borne off to the field hospital just behind the lines, worst cases hopefully to be transferred for proper treatment later. The dead laid out, though most were out there still, it was said later some sixty thousand.

Stretcher-bearers were already collecting as many wounded as they could, an unwritten truce honoured by each side not to fire on them. When some trigger-happy sniper did, it would raise a furore from both sides condemning such practice. Stretcher-bearers for the most part were considered neutral, though they put themselves at risk of death each time. Brave men, Albert thought idly as he tried to settle his own jangling nerves, feeling suddenly dead tired. He looked around for Ronnie. No sign of him.

He felt his heart give a jolt, followed by a sick feeling of panic. Where was he? He'd lost sight of him following the order to retire. But he hadn't seen him fall.

‘Ron! Ronnie!' His voice was urgent. ‘Ron, where are you?'

‘He's okay,' came a war-weary voice. ‘Your brother's over there.' The man jerked his head to where the trench turned a sharp corner. ‘But he don't look too well to me.'

A shell-burst overhead made everyone duck, but following the man's directions, he saw his brother crouched in the corner. Making for him as much as the crowded trench allowed, he burst out, ‘Ron, you orright?'

He saw him shake his head, heard him mumble, ‘Orright, just tired. Just wanna sleep.'

‘You can't sleep. We could be ordered over the top again.'

‘I ain't going.' The voice was drowsy as if he was already drifting off.

‘What d'you mean, you're not going? Are you hurt?'

‘Just get me pyjamas. Where'd you put 'em?'

This wasn't right. Albert shook him. ‘Get a grip, Ron. You've got to pull yourself together.'

But all he got was, ‘Stop shaking me. I just need a good sleep. Where's me pyjamas?'

‘Where you going to find pyjamas here?' he tried to chide. No reply.

He felt goose bumps run across his skin and shook Ronnie violently. The last few days he'd become aware of a blank stare in his brother's eyes as if he was somewhere else.

‘Pull yourself together, Ron,' he snapped now. ‘You just need some rest. We all need some rest. Write to your Dorothy, ask how your daughter is. Maybe it'll stay quiet for a few hours.'

No need to be told to sleep. Ronnie had already dozed off. Albert would try and do the same, sitting beside his brother. But sleep eluded him and instead he found a sheet of paper in his breast pocket and wrote to Edith. The field post office sent letters off the very next day after the odd word had been pencilled out by their officer in charge of the censoring. There were no more calls to attack but no real chance to relax and sleep with shells from their own artillery keeping up a continuous bombardment. The full-throated scream of their own shells passing overhead and the resounding explosions over enemy lines did bring a sort of lulling effect until they seemed to retreat into nothing, hardly heeded. Huddled in his greatcoat, Albert slept, his letter to Edith only partly finished, the one to his parents laid aside. Most men slept, except those on sentry duty.

He hadn't even remembered falling asleep when he awoke to several men negotiating their way between the legs of the weary, bearing buckets of bread and hot soup from the kitchen bunker, the aroma waking men as instantly as if they'd been kicked.

Fishing for his and his brother's mess tins, he held them out as the cooks came abreast. Ronnie amazingly was still asleep, twitching and jerking every now and again as if in the midst of a disturbing dream.

Albert gave him a shove. ‘Ron, wake up!' he said as the two mess tins were filled and two big hunks of bread handed out.

Ron stirred, groaned and opened his eyes. But what Albert saw made him go cold. Wide and staring, his eyes seemed to have no life in them, replaced with a sort of distant look as if he wasn't in this world.

Albert pushed the mess tin towards him. ‘Ron – eat this! You need to eat! Come on now.'

The eyes slowly turned towards him but there was no real focus, no recognition. He seemed to be staring into the distance.

‘Ron, bloody wake up, will you. Soup – better 'ave it while it's hot. And there's bread to soak it up with. Good, eh?' he said as if coaxing a child. But Ron wasn't a child. A sense of horror flooded over Albert. He'd seen men like this after a bombardment. Shell shock – the words sent a shudder through him.

Thinking back, there'd been indications of it after days under continuous enemy bombardment, but he'd assumed it to have been the normal reaction any man might display. But this was different.

Putting the mess tins on a sentry step cut into the trench between the wood shoring that helped support the mud walls, he took his brother by the shoulders and shook him. He seemed to come out of his trance, jerking to a sitting position to stare wildly about. ‘We've got to go,' Ronnie burst out. ‘This ain't right. We 'ave to leave. I'm going 'ome!'

Before Albert could stop him, he'd leapt up, knocking over one of the mess tins, and began to push his way along the crowded trench, tripping over men's feet to angry shouts, their food almost knocked from their hands.

Albert was after him instantly, yelling for him to come back. But Ron was already clambering up the roughly cut steps leading away from the lines and was quietly, purposefully walking off. Albert ran after him, up the uneven steps, yelling at him to stop.

Someone caught hold of him, gripping him by the shoulder, but he shrugged the hand away, running several yards before managing to bring his brother down with a rugby tackle. Ronnie fell flat on his face and lay there in the mud, Albert on top of him. But now he laid quiet and unresisting as if all the stuffing had been knocked out of him.

Someone was standing over the pair of them. ‘Deserters, eh?' came a voice.

Without letting go of his brother, Albert looked up to see an officer, a major, immaculately attired, standing with legs slightly apart, against one of which he was tapping a swagger stick rhythmically. He might have been on some parade ground, though fortunately for him the ground here leading away from the trenches sloped downhill, shielding him from enemy eyes.

‘Deserters, are we?' he repeated as Albert got to his feet, dragging his brother up with him. ‘Decided to leave the rest of your comrades while they lay down their lives for such as you?'

‘Sir, not deserters,' came a voice. ‘I told them if they wanted to shit to go well away from us in the trenches, while things are calm. There's enough shit down there already and the latrine's full, not been emptied, sir.'

‘Then what were they doing lying on the ground, Lieutenant?'

‘I saw this chap slip and knock his companion flat on his face. It is awfully slippery here, sir, the rain and slime, you know.'

The major thought for a bit while the others waited. Horror had taken hold of Albert. If Ronnie gave the officer the look he'd given him a short while back, one of half-crazed vacancy, the major would know straight away what Ronnie had been about, walking away from the fighting as if he had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Shell shocked? A mind snapped? A balance tipped over the edge?

The major thought for a moment, then an acid smile curved one corner of the thin lips. ‘An extra few bits of shit won't make any difference, Lieutenant, I should imagine, to what's already there. Send them back, man, and let them get on with their …
business
.'

Pleased at his little pun, he touched his cap with his swagger stick, was smartly saluted in reply, and moved off to where a soldier was holding the reins of his horse just behind the shattered wall of what had once been a cottage.

He'd totally ignored the two soldiers who'd scrambled to their feet and, with an effort, at least on Albert's part, had come to attention and thrown up a salute. But the crackle of rifle fire a short way off caused the man's measured steps not to be quite so measured as he hurried to his horse.