Not any more.
We stand, dusting off our knees, and begin to walk back to the camp.
‘How have you found your first morning in France?’ I ask.
‘Not too bad, although the breakfast leaves a lot to be desired,’ he says. ‘I spotted you earlier, by the way. In the cookhouse, trying your best to swallow down the porridge. Then that chap with the funny little ’tache came over and you had to up and leave. Was that thing real, do you know, or did a slug lose its sense of direction and crawl onto his upper lip?’
‘Careful, Private,’ I whisper. ‘We’re in the camp now and there are ears everywhere.’
‘Well,’ he says. ‘Noteverywhere.’
It’s accompanied with such an innocent grin that I have to smile. ‘You really are a cheeky little sod. I might even have to rethink my idea of you becoming my servant.’
He stops dead. We’re now in the tented heart of Étaples, the chaos of the camp buzzing around us. It’s funny but we’ve been so caught up in our conversation that I think we had both forgotten that I had sent for him.
‘It’s why I asked you to meet me. You see...’ I pause midstride and turn back to him. ‘What is it?’
There’s an expression on his face I haven’t seen before. A sullenness that doesn’t suit him.
‘I’m not anyone’s servant,’ he says.
‘No,’ I shake my head. ‘You don’t understand. It isn’t like that. Well, not really. I mean, yes, a soldier-servant’s duties include things like looking after their officer’s uniform and preparing food, but that isn’t why I want you to take on the role.’
‘Then why do you?’
I can’t speak the words out loud, but in my head, I rehearse them:Because if you’re close to me, Danny, maybe I can save you from turning into what I have become. Hard, bitter, hollowed-out. Mad as it sounds, maybe I really can help to preserve something of your spirit in the face of all this death and horror. And perhaps by doing so, I might make amends to a boy I once loved. A boy who followed me into Hell and who paid the price for it.
7
8th June
In the end, my explanation for choosing Danny as my servant had to be postponed. We’d reached the area where his company had been billeted when one of those sadistic training sergeants came storming over to us, demanding to know where this ‘sorry excuse for a soldier’ had been hiding all morning. Danny tried to explain that he and his company had been told they were to enjoy a rest day before training recommenced, but the sergeant was having none of it. He ordered Danny to join the other men at the barracks for an hour of square-bashing followed by an afternoon of bayonet practice under the blistering sun.
I tried to intervene, but as I hadn’t yet received the paperwork from Captain Beddowes to have Danny reassigned to my regiment there was nothing I could do. I watched him march away, the still-barking sergeant at his heels, Danny giving me a cheery wave before they disappeared from view. I wondered if he would still be smiling after a day in the Bull Ring.
I didn’t see him for the rest of the day, which I spent locating my new platoon and giving them the news that we’d soon be making our way up the line. This was met with a mixture of relief and apprehension – relief that they would soon be away from the infamous base camp; apprehension that their time in the trenches was to begin a little earlier than expected. Thirty-three men in all, they appeared at first glance to be a good bunch. I took them out to the rifle range in the afternoon and found that most were fairly decent shots.
When one of them – a skinny, sandy-haired grocer’s boy from Salford called Percy Stanhope – managed a clean headshot, his mates erupted with loud cheers.
‘That’s it, Perce, blow that fucking Jerry’s brains out!’ Private Robert Billings cried, slapping Stanhope on the back.
Rifle butts slipped from the crooks of their shoulders as they turned to look up at me. They were all laid flat on their stomachs on the summer-hard earth. As my gaze passed between them and the tattered paper target now flapping in the breeze, all I could think of was the men who had come before them, laid out in pieces in a winter trench.
I managed an encouraging nod. ‘Good work, that man.’
They all seemed pleased with the compliment, especially Stanhope and Billings, who grinned at each other like kids celebrating a hattrick on the football field. Right now, it was still a game to them, their enemy impersonal. No more real than that tattered target or the bloodless dummies they plunged their bayonets into. It’s easy to kill a man when all he amounts to is paper and straw.
In any case, the men seemed to like me. Just as with my old platoon, I was years younger than most of them, but my war wound counted for a lot. Whereas when I had first arrived at the Front, I had been just what I appeared – a green schoolboy with only a few months’ training under my belt – now the evidence of a missing ear gave me credibility. At dinner in the cookhouse that evening, I overheard hushed whispers that I’d been awarded the MC.
Fought off a Hun raid on one of our trenches, Percy Stanhope confided to his mates, while I sat at the head of the table, picking at what the chef claimed was a ‘meat pie’.Drove the bastardsback all by himself.Part of me wanted to stand up, right then and there, and set the record straight. I had played dead for while, then taken a soldier by surprise and shot him. If there was honour in that, I didn’t want it.
But I knew men must have confidence in their officers. Both in the grinding tedium of the trenches, where nerves can easily snap, and in those heart-stopping moments during a gas attack or a raid, one steady presence can mean the difference between life and death. I had learned that from the late Captain Phillip Danvers. And so I allowed my unearned legend to be passed among them without correction. Even when Stanhope called out a question from down the table, I didn’t put him right.
‘Begging your pardon, Lieutenant, but is it true what they say? That you took on a whole Boche platoon by yerself? And that they... Well.’ His gaze skated around the long table, looking for encouragement. ‘I mean, the story goes two of ’em pinned you down and used a bayonet to—’
I treated him to a stern look. ‘What the hell are you talking about, Private?’
Stanhope flushed red and the rest of the men suddenly became fascinated by their portions of pie.
