A Whispered Name (47 page)

‘Herbert
calmed himself and quickly rejoined what was left of his Company, but it was
too late. A sergeant had seen him run. He was arrested at St Quentin.’ court-martialled
for cowardice and cashiered.

‘There
was a quite dreadful ceremony afterwards involving every officer in the
battalion, and one Private, its newest recruit.’ With one hand Sylvester made
motions in the air as if he held a knife. ‘The Private cut off his badges and
buttons — anything that showed rank or a connection with the regiment — and
then, starting with the lowest rank, all the officers turned around in silence,
showing him their backs, finishing with the Commanding Officer. Without giving
a salute, the Private marched away, leaving the door open. Herbert then walked
outside alone, forever an outsider. The family were so devastated by the
cashiering that they sold their home and moved out of the area. The Moores had
lived in Cumberland for two hundred years.

‘Herbert
had nothing to do with what happened next. He wasn’t even consulted. But the
family were well connected. And they weren’t going to accept the verdict or the
sentence without a fight. As far as they were concerned, the court martial
should never have taken place: Herbert had only been commissioned for three and
a half months and he’d gone missing for a very short time. It was unnecessary,
they said. So they wrote a few letters to people of influence. A London
barrister who did a lot of work for the government looked at the papers. “How
can you run away from a retreat?” he said. A General close to the family
concurred. So a petition was drawn up. For the King.’ Sylvester paused, as if
to give the monarch time to think. ‘Herbert received a pardon and was quietly
commissioned into another regiment. It was as though nothing had happened.

‘But
for Herbert it was a momentous conclusion. He felt he’d been saved in the wrong
way and for the wrong reasons. And then one day he had to judge a man for what
he’d done himself … only, of course, Joseph Flanagan hadn’t done anything of
the kind. He’d been innocent, whereas Herbert had been guilty. That was why he
wore young Doyle’s tags all his life. He’d felt he was no different. He’d
escaped, only he didn’t deserve it.

‘That’s
what Herbert told me, over there.’ Sylvester raised a bony hand, gesturing
towards the crowded aspens. ‘We were silent for a long while … and then I
noticed he was crying. I told him that was all over … that even Moses had
killed a man, with the hands that would receive the Law … but he became
distraught, as I’d never seen him before, or saw him since. And do you know,
Anselm, I sensed there was … something else … unrelated to Joseph Flanagan
or his own shame.’

‘Did
you ask him what it was?’ whispered Anselm, feeling the anguish of that
breaking down in Sylvester’s frail voice, sensing it in the awful stillness of
the trees that had witnessed Herbert’s only public collapse.

‘No,
no, no.” said the Gatekeeper, shaking his head.’ ‘that would have been
impossible … and wrong. From that day onwards, though, I often thought about
it. And I came to think this: there were two profound experiences at the centre
of Herbert’s life, each the opposite of the other. The first was Joseph
Flanagan.’ whose sacrifice transformed him. The second, this other … well, I
can only guess … but I believe it was a brutal memory of war, something that
bound him to all that was heartbreaking and meaningless. It could have
transformed him, too, but it didn’t. That, Anselm, is the magnitude of Herbert’s
faith. He’d looked into the abyss and still believed …’

The Gatekeeper stood up
and started checking his pockets with the look of confusion that settled upon
him whenever the phone rang. Finally he took out a small strip of leather and
two drawing pins, enclosing them in a shaking hand. For the first time since
Anselm had known Sylvester, the old fellow seemed charged with a quite
particular authority. His lines of age brought a lifetime of profound solitude
and silence into his trembling voice.

‘I said
I feared for you,’ he began.’ ‘but I feared for Herbert, too. He was a
wonderful man. He cared for everyone he met, as though he was meant to meet
them. He understood joy and sorrow, accepting both without clinging to the one
or complaining about the other. He never once condemned a man or a woman in my
hearing. He lived as if every moment were his last, investing it with love and
meaning. And as I’ve got older I’ve looked as much to the saints I’ve known as
to the names upon the calendar: He glanced around the hives, nodding at each of
them as though from long acquaintance. ‘Anselm, do you think Herbert might join
their number, if only here in this remote place seen by none but you?’

Anselm
took the leather strip. Written upon it was Herbert’s name in unsurpassable
copperplate. With the drawing pins he attached it to the bench, in the centre
of the backrest.

Anselm
didn’t know what to say. But it was a Gilbertine habit not to reply
immediately; to keep counsel for a while. He sat down, watching Sylvester leave
the aspens and find the trail back to the monastery.

This
was the end of Herbert’s Following, he thought; and the beginning of my
awakening. It was a numbing experience, permitting the clear—sightedness that
comes with vulnerability. He now profoundly understood Larkwood’s inspiration:
triumph out of failure, forgiveness over condemnation, light from dark. And
whatever Herbert had done or failed to do at the outset of his great journey,
he’d ended his life a shining, transparent man. And it was at this point, in a
stranded car, when neither of them was going anywhere, that Herbert gave to
Anselm two small gifts — an understanding of accidents and of fidelity to the
flame. He saw once more his lined, simple face: a love greater than himself had
burned there, and brightly. Quite suddenly, Anselm felt a flush of gratitude —
for all the good that had come his way ever since he’d opened his eyes on the
puzzle of living, the wanting to do it well.’ and the recognition that it was
an art to be learned, sometimes painfully. Running through the trees and
crosses, he called out to the old man who’d first met Herbert Moore at a ruin
by a stream.

The sky
was hard and bright. It was cold, and the pink and russet tiles of the
monastery sparkled with frost. Small birds floated round the bell tower.

‘Take
me back to Larkwood.’ Watchman,’ said Anselm, putting his arm round Sylvester. ‘I
want to go home.’

Acknowledgements

For steadfast guidance and
support I extend my warmest thanks to Ursula Mackenzie and Joanne Dickinson at
Little, Brown, and to Araminta Whitley and Lucy Cowie at LAW On Gaelic
translation and orthography, I am indebted to the kind and generous assistance
of Diarmuid Ó Giolláin at University College Cork. Various staff members of the
Public Records Office were enormously helpful and I thank them for their
professionalism and defining courtesy. A special word of gratitude goes to my
friend Lucy Crawley who made available to me the diary of her grandfather,
Major Leslie Peppiatt MC. His testimony, modestly written, exemplifies the
astonishing forbearance and courage of the men who fought in the Great War. I
hope something of his and their nobility has found its way into the pages of
this novel. No book is written without the extensive collaboration of one’s
family, the partnership that makes withdrawal to write a possibility. For this
and so much more, I thank Anne and our three children. As always, we are
grateful to the communities at Bec near whom we have the privilege to live and
work.

The statistical anomaly
regarding death sentences passed on Irish soldiers during the First World War,
cited in the text, was taken from
Worthless Men: Race, eugenics and the
death penalty in the British Army during the First World War,
by Gerard
Oram.’ (Francis Boutle, 1998). I doubt if anyone can touch upon the subject of
Field General Courts Martial during the First World War without recourse to the
work of J. Putkowski & Julian Sykes.’ G. Oram, and C. Corns & J.
Hughes-Wilson. I am indebted to them all.

Author’s Note

As the narrative makes
clear, once Third Ypres was underway operations came to a halt on the 28th
August and did not recommence until the 20th of September. During this period
the weather was, as one commentator puts it, ‘mercifully dry’. On either side
of these dates, during the fighting, it poured with rain. It is into this
haunting time of reprieve that I have situated the trial of Joseph Flanagan.

This
novel is not about FGCMs in general. It does not imply a comprehensive critique
of First World War executions from any perspective, be that historical, legal,
or moral. Rather, one might say, it is a parable of how a man found meaning in
death, and how another —on seeing that — found faith in life. And it is about a
fictional trial that cannot be compared with any genuine case. That said.’ the
details surrounding Flanagan’s FGCM and his subsequent execution are drawn from
myriad real events, gathered from memoirs, reports, published research,
Battalion War Diaries, Adjutant and Quartermaster General War Diaries, and the original
transcripts of the trials held at the PRO. As a matter of history then, one
might fairly say that Flanagan’s experience of military justice was not out of
the ordinary. Men and youths regularly appeared before a court without
representation. On the other side of the table, notwithstanding best
intentions, the court’s members were not always qualified to handle evidence or
procedure. Trials could be swift. A death sentence would be passed if a man had
absented himself from an important duty (the troops had been frequently warned
that this was the case). The review procedure involved not just an evaluation
of the evidence and the state of discipline in the relevant unit, but also the
weighing of a man’s life by its worth — always militarily. and sometimes
socially. Personal circumstances don’t seem to have carried much weight. The
transcripts carry the heavy marks of coloured crayon and the reader can almost
hear the thinking of that analyst from a very different time. Chaplains tried
to give a meaning to the dawn. Alcohol could be a last refuge. Twice a
monastery was the site of an execution. Less ordinary (perhaps) but nonetheless
true details are these: on at least one occasion.’ chits were sent to the OC
Companies of a battalion requiring them to organise a firing party, and they
all refused; a man did drive through the night to plead, unsuccessfully, for
the life of a condemned soldier; another did die in a gas mask; and a
handkerchief did fall as a signal to the firing party. There can, perhaps, be
little that is more painful to read than these last confessions. That is what
they read like, to me.

To such
happenings Herbert Moore is a kind of witness, as he is to the entire battle
for Passchendaele; a single voice for the reader to hear and follow throughout
the summer and autumn of 1917. Consequently, his battalion does not track the
movement or experience of any unit that actually fought for the Salient or saw
it surrendered. The numeration relating to Army, Corp.’ Division, Brigade.’
and Battalion is fictitious, as are the titles of key regiments and the numbers
of individual soldiers (save 4888.’ which belonged to my grandfather, a
Lancashire Fusilier during the Soudan Campaign).

The
Gilbertines were an English monastic order that did not survive the
Reformation. References in the text to ‘The Rule’ are to that of Saint
Benedict.

One
matter of geography: there are no islands facing Brandon Bay on the west coast
of Ireland: Inisdúr and Inismin are inventions.

The following is not a
bibliography, but the interested reader will be greatly assisted (as I was) by
the following references:

On First World War
executions:

Public
Records Office: WO 71/387-1027 (trials which ended in execution), WO 93/49
(Summary of Capital Trials), WO 2 13/1-34 (Courts Martial Registers, FGCM).

Shot
at Dawn,
J. Putkowski & J. Sykes (Leo Cooper,
1989, New & Revised Edition, 1992).

Blindfold
and Alone,
C. Corns & J. Hughes-Wilson
(Cassell, 2001)

Military
Executions during World War 1,
G. Oram (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003)

Worthless
Men, Race, eugenics and death penalty in the British Army during the First
World War,
G. Oram (Francis Boutle, 1998)

The
Thin Yellow Line,
William Moore (Leo Cooper.’ 1974)

Military
Law in WW1,
G. R. Rubin (RUSI Journal, vol 143, no
1, February 1998)

On
the Battle for Passchendaele:

They
Called it Passchendaele,
Lyn Macdonald (Macmillan,
1978)
Passchendaele, The Untold Story,
R. Prior &Trevor Wilson (Yale
University Press.’ 1996)

Ypres,
1917,
Norman Gladden (William Kimber, 1967)

On
Boy Soldiers:

Boy
Soldiers of the Great War,
Richard van Emden
(Headline, 2005)