As the Crow Flies (5 page)

Alone,
he walked to the market and entered the baker’s shop for the last time. The two
assistants swore that nothing would have changed by the time he resumed. He left
the shop only to find another barrow boy, who looked about a year younger than
himself was already selling chestnuts from his pitch. He walked slowly through
the market in the direction of King’s Cross, never once looking back.

He
arrived at the Great Northem Station half an hour earlier than he had been
instructed and immediately reported to the sergeant who had signed him up on
the previous day. “Right, Trumper, get yourself a cup of char, then ‘any about
on platform three.” Charlie couldn’t remember when he had last been given an
order, let alone obeyed one. Certainly not since his grandfather’s death.

Platform
three was already crowded with men in uniforms and civilian clothes, some
chatting noisily, others standing silent and alone, each displaying his own
particular sense of insecurity.

At
eleven, three hours after they had been ordered to report, they were finally
given instructions to board a train. Charlie grabbed a seat in the corner of an
unlit carriage and stared out of the grimy window at a passing English
countryside he had never seen before. A mouth organ was being played in the
corridor, all the popular melodies of the day slightly out of tune. As they
traveled through city stations, some he hadn’t even heard of Peterborough,
Grantham, Newark, York crowds waved and cheered their heroes. In Durham the
engine came to a halt to take on more coal and water. The recruiting sergeant
told them all to disembark, stretch their legs and grab another cup of char,
and added that if they were lucky they might even get something to eat.

Charlie
walked along the platform munching a sticky bun to the sound of a military band
playing “Land of Hope and Glory.” The war was everywhere. Once they were back
on the train there was yet more waving of handkerchiefs from pin-hatted ladies
who would remain spinsters for the rest of their lives.

The
train chugged on northwards, farther and farther away from the enemy, until it
finally came to a halt at Waverly Station in Edinburgh. As they stepped from
the carriage, a captain, three NCOs and a thousand women were waiting on the
platform to welcome them.

Charlie
heard the words, “Carry on, Sergeant Major,” and a moment later a man who must
have been six feet six inches in height, and whose beer-barrel chest was
covered in medal ribbons took a pace forward.

“Let’s
‘ave you in line then,” the giant shouted in an unintelligible accent. He
quickly but, Charlie was to learn later, by his own standards slowly organized
the men into ranks of three before reporting back to someone who Charlie
assumed must have been an officer. He saluted the man. “All present and
correct, sir,” he said and the smartest-dressed man Charlie had ever seen in
his life returned the salute. He appeared slight standing next to the sergeant
major, although he must have been a shade over six feet himself. His uniform
was immaculate but paraded no medals, and the creases on his trousers were so
sharp that Charlie wondered if they had ever been worn before. The young
officer held a short leacher stick in a gloved hand and occasionally thumped
the side of his leg with it, as if he Thought he were on horseback. Charlie’s
eyes settled on the officer’s Sam Browne belt and brown leather shoes. They
shone so brightly they reminded him of Rebecca Salmon.

“My
name is Captain Trentham,” the man informed the expectant band of untrained
warriors in an accent that Charlie suspected would have sounded more in place
in Mayfair than at a railway station in Scotland. “I’m the battalion adjutant,”
he went on to explain as he swayed from foot to foot, “and will be responsible
for this intake for the period that you are billeted in Edinburgh. First we
will march to the barracks, where you will be issued supplies so that you can
get yourselves bedded down. Supper will be served at eighteen hundred hours and
lights out will be at twenty-one hundred hours. Tomorrow morning reveille will
be sounded at zero five hundred, when you will rise and breakfast before you
begin your basic training at zero six hundred. This routine will last for the
next twelve weeks. And I can promise you that it will be twelve weeks of
absolute hell,” he added, sounding as if the idea didn’t altogether displease
him. “During this period Sergeant Major Philpott will be the senior warrant officer
in charge of the unit. The sergeant major fought on the Somme, where he was
awarded the Military Medal, so he knows exactly what you can expect when we
eventually end up in France and have to face the enemy. Listen to his every
word carefully, because it might be the one thing that saves your life. Carry
on, Sergeant Major.”

“Thank
you, sir,” said Sergeant Major Philpott in a clipped bark.

The
motley band stared in awe at the figure who would be in charge of their lives
for the next three months. He was, after all, a man who had seen the enemy and
come home to tell the tale.

“Right,
let’s be having you then,” he said, and proceeded to lead his recruits carrying
everything from battered suitcases to brown paper parcels through the streets
of Edinburgh at the double, only to be sure that the locals didn’t realize just
how undisciplined this rabble really was. Despite their amateur appearance,
passersby still stopped to cheer and clap. Out of the corner of one eye Charlie
couldn’t help noticing that one of them was resting his only hand against his
only leg. Some twenty minutes later, after a climb up the biggest hill Charlie
had ever seen, one that literally took his breath away, they entered the
barracks of Edinburgh Castle.

That
evening Charlie hardly opened his mouth as he listened to the different accents
of the men babbling around him. After a supper of pea soup “One pea each,” the
duty corporal quipped and bully beef, he was quartered and learning new words
by the minute in a large gymnasium that temporarily housed four hundred beds,
each a mere two feet in width and set only a foot apart. On a thin horsehair
mattress rested one sheet, one pillow and one blanket. King’s Regulations.

It
was the first time Charlie had thought that 112 Whitechapel Road might be
considered luxurious. Exhausted, he collapsed onto the unmade bed, fell asleep,
but still woke the next morning at four-thirty. This time, however, there was
no market to go to, and certainly no choice as to whether he should select a
Cox’s or a Granny Smith for breakfast.

At
five a lone bugle woke his companions from their drowsy slumber. Charlie was
already up, washed and dressed when a man with two stripes on his sleeve
marched in. He slammed the door behind him and shouted, “Up, up, up,” as he
kicked the end of any bed that still had a body supine on it. The raw recruits
leaned up and formed a queue to wash in basins half full of freezing water,
changed only after every third man. Some then went off to the latrines behind
the back of the hall, which Charlie thought smelled worse than the middle of
Whitechapel Road on a steaming summer’s day.

Breakfast
consisted of one ladle of porridge, half a cup of milk and a dry biscuit, but
no one complained. The cheerful noise that emanated from that hall wouldn’t
have left any German in doubt that these recruits were all united against a
common enemy.

At
six after their beds had been made and inspected, they ah trudged out into the
dark cold air and onto the parade ground, its surface covered in a thin film of
snow.

“If
this is bonny Scotland,” Charlie heard a cockney accent declare, “then I’m a
bloody Dutchman.” Charlie laughed for the first time since he had left
Whitechapel and strolled over to a youth far smaller than himself who was
rubbing his hands between his legs as he tried to keep warm.

“Where
you from?” Charlie asked.

“Poplar,
mate. And you?”

“Whitechapel.”

“Bloody
foreigner.”

Charlie
stared at his new companion. The youth couldn’t have been an inch over five
feet three, skinny, with dark curly hair and flashing eyes that never seemed to
be still, as if he were always on the lookout for trouble. His shiny,
elbow-patched suit hung on him, making his shoulders look like a coathanger.

“Charlie
Trumper’s the name.”

“Tommy
Prescott,” came back the reply. He stopped his exercises and thrust out a warm
hand. Charlie shook it vigorously.

“Quiet
in the ranks,” hollered the sergeant major. “Now let’s get you formed up in
columns of three. Tallest on the right, shortest on the left. Move.” They
parted.

For
the next two hours they carried out what the sergeant major described as “drill.”
The snow continued to drop unceasingly from the sky, but the sergeant major
showed no inclination to allow one flake to settle on his parade ground. They
marched in three ranks of ten, which Charlie later learned were called
sections, arms swinging to waist height, heads held high, one hundred and
twenty paces to the minute. “Look lively, lads” and “Keep in step” were the
words Charlie had shouted at him again and again. “The Boche are also marching
out there somewhere, and they can’t wait to have a crack at you lot,” the
sergeant major assured them as the snow continued to fall.

Had
he been in Whitechapel, Charlie would have been happy to run up and down the
market from five in the morning to seven at night and still box a few rounds at
the club, drink a couple of pints of beer and carry out the same routine the
next day without a second thought, but when at nine o’clock the sergeant major
gave them a ten-minute break for cocoa, he collapsed onto the grass verge
exhausted. Looking up, he found Tommy Prescott peering at him. “Fag?”

“No,
thanks,” said Charlie. “I don’t smoke.”

“What’s
your trade then?” asked Tommy, lighting up.

“I
own a baker’s shop on the corner of Whitechapel Road,” replied Charlie, “and
a... “

“Ring
the other one, it’s got bells on,” interrupted Tommy. “Next you’ll be telling
me your dad’s Lord Mayor of London.”

Charlie
laughed. “Not exactly. So what do you do?”

“Work
for a brewery, don’t I? Whitbread and Company, Chiswell Street, EC1. I’m the
one who puts the barrels on the carts, and then the shire ‘orses pulls me round
the East End so that I can deliver my wares. Pay’s not good, but you can always
drink yourself silly before you get back each night.”

“So
what made you join up?”

“Now
that’s a long story, that is,” replied Tommy. “You see, to start with... “

“Right.
Back on parade, you lot,” shouted Sergeant Major Philpott, and neither man had
the breath to speak another word for the next two hours as they were marched up
and down, up and down, until Charlie felt that when they eventually stopped his
feet must surely fall off.

Lunch
consisted of bread and cheese, neither of which Charlie would have dared to
offer for sale to Mrs. Smelley. As they munched hungrily, he reamed how Tommy
at the age of eighteen had been given the choice of two years at His Majesty’s
pleasure or volunteering to fight for King and country. He tossed a coin and
the King’s head landed face up.

“Two
years?” said Charlie. “But what for?”

“Nicking
the odd barrel ‘ere and there and making a side deal with one or two of the
more crafty landlords. I’d been getting away with it for ages. An ‘undred years
ago they would ‘ave ‘anged me on the spot or sent me off to Australia, so I can’t
complain. After all, that’s what I’m trained for, ain’t it?”

“What
do you mean?” asked Charlie.

“Well,
my father was a professional pickpocket, wasn’t ‘e? And ‘is father before ‘im.
You should have seen Captain Trentham’s face when ‘e found out that I had
chosen a spell in the Fusiliers rather than going back to jail.”

Twenty
minutes was the time allocated for lunch and then the afternoon was taken up
with being fitted with a uniform. Charlie, who turnd out to be a regular size,
was dealt with fairly quickly, but it took almost an hour to find anything that
didn’t make Tommy look as if he were entering a sack race.

Once
they were back in the billet Charlie folded up his best suit and placed it
under the bed next to the one Tommy had setded on, then swaggered around the
room in his new uniform.

“Dead
men’s clothes,” warned Tommy, as he looked up and studied Charlie’s khaki
jacket.

“What
do you mean?”

“Been
sent back from the front, ‘asn’t it? Cleaned and sewn up,” said Tommy, pointing
to a two-inch mend just above Charlie’s heart. “About wide enough to thrust a
bayonet through, I reckon,” he added.

After
another two-hour session on the now freezing parade ground they were released
for supper.

“More
bloody stale bread and cheese,” said Tommy morosely, but Charlie was far too
hungry to complain as he scooped up every last crumb with a wet finger. For the
second night running he collapsed on his bed.

“Enjoyed
our first day serving King and country, ‘ave we?” asked the duty corporal of
his charges, when at twenty-one hundred hours he turned down the gaslights in
the barracks room.

“Yes,
thank you, Corp,” came back the sarcastic cry.