His life was changing. Events were occurring rapidly, one eclipsing another. He had been caught up in a great, moving, humming machine such as the world had never seen, and he knew and felt this. He stood and stomped his feet and flexed his fingers and once again faced the direction of the coast. There was only silence to be heard. Not a sound. Yes, one—the birds hidden in hedge and scrub around him.
On Sunday after Church Parade, after rumour and speculation, after endless preparation, the men of Number 9 were told that they were leaving for France the next day. They were officially part of
the Third Canadian Division. From that moment, no one was permitted outside camp lines.
Jim and Irish fought off their usual hunger and fatigue, and hauled beds, straw mattresses and tables to QM Stores. Kit bags and surplus kit were sent to Shorncliffe to await their return. When given these instructions, few remarks were made. None of the boys joked about leaving belongings behind. No one wanted to be the one to jinx what might be set to unfold.
Jim went back to the rapidly emptying canteen and purchased chocolate and biscuits and tinned salmon. He and Irish folded their extra blankets and turned them in. They were permitted to keep and carry one. They went to the writing room provided by a local church and sat with paper, pen and ink and wrote letters to Grania and Clare, and left them for posting. In the morning, after an early breakfast of beans and porridge, they were issued two thick sandwiches of bully beef. By eleven o’clock they had travelled by train to Southampton and were standing next to a cattle boat. The horses were loaded and, after the horses, the men. Number 10 Field Ambulance was also aboard. The boat eased out of its moorings and into the harbour and dropped anchor. It stayed there, no reason given for the delay. No one bothered to explain and, as always, rumour and speculation started up. Awaiting escort? Mines? Submarines? Jim had listened to constant offerings of uninformed opinion back at camp, and he listened to more of the same now. No matter how many times one of the boys said he was certain they were about to depart, the boat remained where it was, anchored fast.
He began a letter to Grania in his head, one of the many that could never be sent.
Sometimes I can’t remember what I have actually written and what I have told you from the mind’s eye. We are not allowed to keep diaries. Even if this were permitted, there is so much weight to carry, an extra sheet of paper would be too much to
add. If I could scratch a note to you now, this minute, this is what I would tell: the fear in the eyes of the horses as they were led up the ramp; the darkness of their coats, the warmth of their bodies; the skittishness of some. My own jostling comrades, as tightly packed as the horses. The good humour and bad jokes. The stench of being close together inside heavy clothes and under heavy packs. The feeling of stagnation as we sit, lean, or stand. We are ready to go but we are squashed onto a cattle boat that keeps us in England and brings us no closer to the shores of France.
A monoplane appears out of nowhere. The buzz in the sky hovers overhead like a portent. It is a wonderful machine to see. I try to imagine the thrill of freedom a man unknown to me must feel up there, sailing through the sky, looking down on us, a luckless clump of men trapped within the confines of an old cattle boat.
There was nothing to do but wait. Listen to endless chatter. He found Irish and sat with him, leaning against a stack of wooden crates. Irish was full of stories; he never ran out. “There are stories galore in everyone’s family,” he’d told Jim shortly after they first met. “Stories just waiting to be told.”
“Will we sail or won’t we, Jimmy?” he said now, and moved over to make room. “Patience is a virtue according to my late grandmother, though she wasn’t a patient woman herself. Did I tell you how good she was with needle and thread? The skill came in handy when my grandfather fell off a rafter in his own barn and scalped himself on a hay knife. There was no doctor in the area at the time, my dear Jimmy, so Grandmother rallied her young sons and together they dragged him into the house and laid him on the kitchen table he himself had built, and she sewed the lifted scalp back on. She never stopped scolding him throughout the procedure. And Grandfather is alive and well today, though Grandmother is not.”
Jim wondered, with his new knowledge of bacteria, how Grandfather had managed to escape infection, or even blood poisoning. But Irish, reading his mind, laughed and said, “It would take more than germs to knock over old Grandfather. He’s a fit man today.”
The boys around them were playing cards in close, small groups. Some at the far end of the boat were singing; a lieutenant held a miniature notepad in his palm and, with a pencil, was sketching nearby ships. The noise level was high because they were still inside the harbour. But a hush fell over everyone at the same moment, and there was a sudden rush to the side.
A large hospital ship had pulled into harbour and now approached, and slid by the cattle boat like the majestic vessel it was. The murmured information that went around said that it was loaded with wounded men from the Eastern theatre, men brought to England from the Mediterranean. The feeling of respect, pride and emptiness that Jim felt as he looked on was mirrored in the faces of the boys around him. He could see stretchers that had been carried up from between decks. Uniformed men and nursing sisters moved among them, preparing serious cases to be offloaded to a waiting hospital train and into motor ambulances that could now be seen lining up along the dock.
The wounded boys on that ship have done everything, and we have done nothing. They have fought and served and have been part of the show and now they are injured, and deserve to be looked after. So far, I have not cared for a single wounded man in flesh and blood. So far, I have not seen the enemy.
In the early evening, after five endless days of lying idle, the cattle boat hauled up anchor and slipped out of the harbour. Lights were extinguished and silence fell over all, broken only at the beginning by the order to put on lifebelts. Jim sucked in his breath. The boat was met by two ominous dark shapes and escorted across the bleak
waters of the open Channel. Jim’s heart was pounding, his mouth dry. Hours later, on the other side, the cattle boat slid into the dock at Le Havre in the waning part of the night. It was still dark on a Saturday morning. It was April 8, 1916.
I have seen a Hun. It was not quite dawn when we left ship and there he was—Fritz, a prisoner—working on the dock alongside the Imperials. I couldn’t help but stare, and tried to get a closer look. The Imperials were loading heavy crates but they were the ones who looked glum. The Hun was the happiest of the lot. This surprised me but what was I expecting? A monster, a poster Hun like the ones I’ve seen back home? Thick neck, square forehead, evil glaring eyes? At the least, I expected a sullen prisoner. But the boys say the German prisoners are happy to be out of it. Their war is over. It was something though, seeing Fritz. He was my height, fair haired, fit and healthy looking. He stared right at me, and he was laughing. An ordinary human being. It is hard to believe that in appearance he is so like us.
Right away I was put to work on guard duty, not guarding Fritz, but our own boys in case they tried to go out of bounds. We’ve been issued waterproof capes, hat covers, flasks, Red Cross bands, spirits of ammonia, mitts, and gas helmets, which we are required to carry at all times. We’ll be given more gas training soon. During my first gas course I spun out of the choking hut, eyes inflamed and so full of tears I was blinded. I stumbled down the outside step and collapsed to my knees and then I caught hell for blocking the exit. The thing to remember is to stop breathing the second the order is shouted. Even half a breath already taken, and you’re done for. There were many besides me who suffered that day.
There are things I cannot say in my letters. Things that go through my head. I want to tell you everything, but the censor’s
eyes are now inside my own. Every time I sit before a piece of paper, four eyes instead of two stare at the blank sheet. I will store what I can in memory.
There had been an early and violent thunderstorm and they marched in high winds, in its aftermath, away from the busy docks and away from the houses of the town where women worked in the streets. They passed an elderly man who was trying to hitch up a frail and limping horse. A hand plough leaned against an outhouse wall. Jim glanced over at the tiny patch of wet and soggy earth, and wondered if the horse could manage at all—or the man, for that matter. One was caved in, the other stooped over. He’d thought it too early in the season to work the earth, even though the larch buds were open all along the way.
A bundled-up young woman, perhaps the elderly man’s daughter or granddaughter, stood in the doorway of a second outbuilding. Her face was expressionless as the Canadians marched past. A grey-haired woman was making her way on a bicycle, parallel to the Ambulance men, on a wet path below the road. A band of headscarf partly covered her hair; her coat was buttoned to the neck to keep out the dampness and the cold. She was steering the handlebars with one hand and held a propped hoe over her shoulder with the other—the way the boys had been trained to carry their empty stretchers. She ignored the men’s presence, and did not turn her head as they marched on the road above her.
They marched as they’d trained, 120 paces to the minute. After fifty minutes they rested for ten, and during the ten they plunked themselves down and grabbed for their cigarettes.
Jim pulled the smoke into his lungs, savouring the first taste as it rolled over his tongue. Everything was new, every sight a wonder. And the stories continued during the break. So many stories, passed from man to man. Not surprising, with millions of men from the Empire milling from place to place, picking up stories as they went. Irish settled beside him on the ground and they were quickly joined
by Evan and Stash. Stash began to tell them about a Canadian he’d been told about who had been issued two left boots and was forced to walk through twenty-two miles of clinging mud. The soldier tried to complain but no one would listen, as there were no extra boots to be had. At destination, when the march was over, he shot himself through the head. Jim could not shake the story from his mind as they got up and continued their own march.
Stash swore that the story was true but it is hard to hear this. It is one more story of a war we have seen only from the edges.
When they arrived at the overnight camp, no one knew for certain how many nights they would be here. Rumour was circulating again. A stack of printed postcards was distributed, one card to a man. Jim accepted his, looked it over, took a pencil from his pocket and began to stroke lines across the surface.
In icy winds, he led an advance party back to Le Havre for rations, a long and bitterly cold walk. While his own feet suffered, he could not stop thinking about the boy who had been forced to wear two left boots. How could the corporal, the sergeant, the officers have allowed this? He thought of the boy all day, and again in the evening when he was squashed into the back of a cattle car next to Irish. Evan and Stash had stayed together but were nearer the door. On the outside, a sign had been fastened—“33 Men to the Car.” As there was no space to lie, the men were pressed shoulder to shoulder, body to body, most of them in sitting position, grumbling and cursing throughout the night. One of the boys managed to loosen a board to let in air and there was more grumbling about the cold. In the morning, they got out at Abbéville and stretched, and had their hot tea and bread.
Jim stood shivering in the drizzle, the tea scalding his throat, though he welcomed the liquid sliding down. A French woman
approached from behind, selling cakes from a broad flat basket supported by straps looped over her shoulders. She was young and had a small thin face and her hair was covered by a kerchief. Her skirt, too long for her, was frayed along the bottom from brushing the rough ground. She looked into Jim’s face and said only, “Monsieur,” and he pulled out a few French coins to purchase a square of cake that fit inside his palm. It was yellow and sticky but not sweet, and he bit into it slowly, trying to make it last. The young woman smiled at him from under the kerchief and later, after he climbed back up into the car, he remembered her smile and her small, thin face. Squashed beside Irish, Jim pulled his own silence down around him when the grumbling started up again.
The train pulled forward and paused frequently, chugging slowly through Boulogne and Calais, stopping to take on coal and water. Far off and in no discernible pattern, long, low booming sounds were heard, again and again. The train passed through miles of low country, and it was four-thirty when the men finally detrained at the busy station in Poperinghe, Belgium. Jim and Irish were detailed to help offload ambulances and trucks from the flat cars, and they worked steadily in the rain. By the time they were finished, the station was dark and unlit, and the men were soaked through. From all sides, as they kept their bodies moving to stay warm, they heard about the shelling of the town the night before. Six had been killed. Jim tried not to be dismayed by the matter-of-fact way the news was passed on and received.
His own sense of urgency increased during the march forward to rest camp, where they were to stop overnight. Ammunition carts and trucks and motorcycles were clattering past in both directions, a steady commotion all around. The road was narrow and chaotic, but there was a sense of purpose to all of this movement. At times, traffic was so dense, the road was completely blocked and they were forced to wait along the side. Jim realized only later, much later, as he was shown where to bunk down, that the sound of the big guns had accompanied them all the way.
I wish I could write these things to you. I am close behind the line, and have been assigned to a small hut. It is crowded, but for a change no one is grousing. I think the men are glad to have a place to rest their heads. Irish and I have vowed to stick together. We’ve known each other only a short time but I feel as if a brother has entered my life after a long separation. I think he feels the same. I was first up this morning and sewed a pocket in my tunic for my gas mask. Irish was still asleep. I’m learning to tell when he is awake and when he is asleep, because he can sleep standing up. In standing sleep he has a puzzled look, as if daring our superiors to question his ability to stay alert. When he is awake, he never stops telling stories. As for today’s events, this is what I know so far: we are heading up to Ypres to relieve Number 1 Field Ambulance. No other information is given until the last minute. This is the way things work. We’ve been told only that four of us will be chosen to go to the trenches, the rest to the dressing station in groups of eight to learn the ropes. We are to start out at a march. No one is to sing. No one is to smoke.