October,” said Charlie.
“Both of you?” asked the recruiting sergeant, eyeing me a little I thought.
“Course,” Charlie replied, lying easily, “only I’m older than him by one hour.” And that was that. Easy. We were in.
The boots they gave us were stiff and far too big — they hadn’t got any smaller sizes. So Charlie and I and the others clomped about like clowns, clowns in tin hats and khaki. The uniforms didn’t fit either, so we swapped about until they did. There were some faces from home we recognised in amongst the hundreds of strangers. Nipper Martin, a little fellow with sticking-out ears, who grew turnips on his father’s farm in Dolton, and who played a wicked game of skittles up at The Duke. There was Pete Bovey, thatcher and cider drinker from Dolton too, red-faced and with hands like spades, who we’d often seen around the village in Iddesleigh, thumping away at the thatch, high up on someone’s roof. With us too was little Les James from school, son of Bob James, village rat catcher and wart charmer. He had inherited his father’s gifts with rats and warts and he always claimed to be able to know whether it was going to rain or not the next day. He was usually right too. He always had a nervous tic in one eye that I could never stop looking at when we were in class together.
At training camp on Salisbury Plain, living cheek by jowl, we all got to know each other fast, though not necessarily to like one another — that came later. And we got to know our parts, too, how to make believe we were soldiers. We learnt how to wear our khaki costumes — I never did get to wear the scarlet uniform I’d been hoping for — how to iron creases in and iron wrinkles out, how to patch and mend our socks, how to polish our buttons and badges and boots. We learnt how to march up and down in time, how to about-turn without bumping into one another, how to flick our heads right and salute whenever we saw an officer. Whatever we did, we did together, in time — all except for little Les James who could never swing his arms in time with the rest of us, no matter how much the sergeants and corporals bellowed at him. His legs and arms stepped and swung in time with each other, and with no one else, and that was all there was to it. He didn’t seem to mind how often they shouted at him that he had two left feet. It gave us all something to laugh about. We did a lot of laughing in those early days.
They gave us rifles and packs and trenching shovels. We learnt to run up hills with heavy packs, and how to shoot straight. Charlie didn’t have to be taught. On the rifle range he proved to be far and away the best shot in the company. When they gave him his red marksman’s badge I was so proud of him. He was pretty pleased himself, too. Even with the bayonets it was still a game of make-believe. We’d have to charge forward screaming whatever obscenities we knew — and I didn’t know many, not then — at the straw-filled dummies. We’d plunge our bayonets in up to the hilt, swearing and cursing the filthy Hun as we stabbed him, twisting the blade and pulling it out as we’d been taught. “Go for the stomach, Peaceful. Nothing to get hung up on in there. Jab. Twist. Out.”
Everything in the army had to be done in lines or rows. We slept in long lines of tents, sat on privies in rows. Not even the privy was private, I learnt that very quickly. In fact nowhere was private any more. We lived every moment of every day together, and usually in lines. We lined up together for shaves, for food, for inspections. Even when we dug trenches, they had to be in lines, straight trenches with straight edges, and we had to dig fast, too, one company in competition with another. We poured sweat, our backs ached, our hands were permanently raw with blisters. “Faster!” the corporals shouted. “Deeper! You want to get your head blowed off, Peaceful?”
“No, Corporal.”
“You want to get your arse blowed off, Peaceful?”
“No, Corporal.”
“You want to get your nuts blowed off, Peaceful?”
“No, Corporal.”
“Then dig, you lazy beggars, dig, ‘cos when you get out there, that’s all you’ve got to hide in, God’s good earth. And when them whizzbangs come over I’m telling you you’ll always wish you’d dug deeper. The deeper you dig the longer you’ll live. I know, I’ve been there.”
No matter what the officers and NCOs told us of the hardships and dangers of trench warfare, we still all believed we were simply in some kind of rehearsal, actors in costume. We had to play our part, dress our part, but in the end it would only be a play. That was what we tried to believe — if ever we spoke about it, that is. But the truth was that we didn’t speak of it much. I think we didn’t dare because deep down we all knew and we all trembled, and were trying to deny it or disguise it or both.
I remember we were on exercise in the hills, lying there on our backs in the sunshine one morning when Pete sat up suddenly. “Hear that?” he said. “It’s guns, from over in France, real guns.” We sat up and listened. We heard it. Some said it was distant thunder. But we heard it all right. We saw the sudden fear in each other’s eyes and knew it for what it was.
But that same afternoon we were back to play-acting, war games in full pack, attacking some distant “enemy” copse. When the whistles blew we climbed out of our trenches and walked forward, bayonets fixed. Then on a bellowed command we threw ourselves face down and crawled on through the long grass. The ground under us was still warm with summer, and there were buttercups. I thought of Molly then and Charlie and the buttercups in the water meadows back home. A bee, heavy with pollen and still greedy for more, clover-hopped in front of me as I crawled. I remember I spoke to him. “We’re much alike, bee, you and me,” I said. “You may carry your pack underneath you and your rifle may stick out of your bottom. But you and me, bee, are much alike.” The bee must have taken offence at this, because he took off and flew away. I lay where I was, propped up on my elbows, and watched him go, until my thoughts were rudely interrupted by the corporal.
“What d’you think you’re on, Peaceful, a bloody picnic? On your feet!”
In those first few weeks in uniform I hardly had time to miss anyone, not even Molly, though I thought of her often, and Mother and Big Joe. But they were only ever fleeting thoughts. Charlie and I rarely talked of home — we were hardly ever alone together anyway. We’d even stopped cursing the Colonel by now. There didn’t seem any point, not any more. It was a hateful thing he’d done, but it was a done thing. We were soldiers now, and it wasn’t bad, so far. In fact, despite all the lining up and the bellowing, it was turning out to be a lark, a real lark. Charlie and I wrote cheery letters home — most of his were to Molly, all of mine to Mother and Big Joe. We read them aloud to each other, those bits we wanted to share anyway. We weren’t allowed to say where we were or anything about the training, but we always found plenty to tell them, plenty to brag about, plenty to ask about. We told them the truth, that we were having a good time — eating well and being good — mostly. But the moment we got on the ship for France the good times ended. Little Les James said he smelled a storm in the air, and as usual he was right.
There wasn’t a man on board that ship that didn’t want to die before he ever got to France. Most of us, Charlie and me included, had never seen the sea before, much less the heaving grey waves of the English Channel, and we lurched about the deck like drunken ghosts longing only to be released from our agony. Charlie and I were vomiting over the side when a seaman came up to us, clapped us heartily on the back and told us that if we were going to die we’d feel much better doing it down below in the hold with the horses. So Charlie and I staggered down the gangways until we found ourselves deep in the bowels of the ship and in amongst the terrified horses, who seemed happy to have someone for company as we crawled in and curled up in their straw, too close to their hooves for safety, but feeling too ill to care. The seaman was right. Down here the ship seemed to roll much less, and despite the stifling stench of oil and horse dung we began to feel better almost at once.
When
