Regret to Inform You... (44 page)

‘Indeed, I think many find it a challenge to our very being; I know I do.'

‘But,' replied Arthur, ‘perhaps our beliefs, and I know little of your religion, should give us some solace.' Encouraged by the other's gentle smile and nod, Arthur went on; ‘I hope you won't mind me asking a question.'

‘Of course not, although I cannot promise a helpful answer.'

Arthur struggled for a moment to frame what he found himself wanting to know. ‘I'm sure your belief gives you the comfort we have just mentioned, but I find myself very ignorant. Can you tell me something of Buddhism? Please forgive me for being curious.'

‘I understand. To explore another's faith is good, for in doing so I am sure one can learn much. I have been fortunate enough to study some aspects of the Christian faith and I think there are some teachings that are common to both of us.'

‘
I'm sure that is so,' responded Arthur. ‘Please go on.'

‘One of our most important beliefs is that when one's body dies, that person's mind does not come to an end. Even though our conscious mind ceases, it moves into a deeper level of consciousness. I don't know whether I'm explaining this very well.'

‘Indeed, you are. Please tell me more.'

‘Everything we do leaves an impression on our mind so one can think of it as a garden with our actions and behaviour rather like sowing seeds in that field. Those seeds or actions can bring further happiness or future suffering. We know this as the law of karma; it's fundamental to our Buddhist morality.' How much like Eleanor, Arthur thought. He could have been describing part of her faith.

They continued to discuss each other's faith and both smiled when they agreed that a religious discussion was an unlikely occurrence on a Saturday morning train. The Buddhist monk, whose name Arthur found embarrassingly difficult to remember, explained that four years previously he had travelled from Ceylon and was now involved in the monastic order in London. It was to Arthur's disappointment when his travelling companion told him that he was leaving the train at Woking.

They said their farewells with much warmth and agreed that life was a journey for truth. ‘Perhaps,' said the monk, ‘truth or, as you would say God, is so great that no single religion can fully encompass it. I thank you for sharing our search together.'

As the carriage door was closed, Arthur realised what an unexpected fellow traveller had been with him. He smiled to himself when he realised that some would view this as divine intervention; he knew his own unsteady faith could not go that far.

C
HAPTER FIFTY

May - August 1918

He was haggard, listless and his six-foot frame had changed from his days as Boney, the fearless goalkeeper and the well-muscled young man who humped bags of grain at the brewery. He was a frightened soldier who trembled at every explosion. Private Albert Jones had lost all heart and cared little whether he survived the war or not. His final link with sanity had been shattered by the letter received two weeks earlier: Doris had ended their relationship.

Having built up huge forces the Germans had launched a massive attack to end the stalemate by punching their way through the Allies' defences before the American troops became established. Albert had been in a British division previously in Flanders which had been moved from the front line to recuperate after a lengthy duty. However, Duchêne, the French commander had overruled the British command and the fatigued troops, now firmly under his charge, became part of his plan of defence in depth. Albert was now one of thousands massed in front line trenches, targeted by great numbers of German guns. The first bombardment had been followed by a poison gas drop affecting many of the men; Albert had at least escaped this additional horror.

It seemed a lifetime ago that he and his friends had gathered
in
Rusfield, enjoyed a drink together and looked forward to the future; later, his time with the glorious Doris. Had that been before or after he was wounded for the first time? Surely afterwards, those moments had promised so much for the future once the bloody war was over. The leave back home and the discovery that his mate Jammy had been killed in the same explosion had begun his recurring nightmares which he had never previously known. He recalled a second period of leave, taking the younger family members to gather blackberries on Bramrose Hill. A faint smile came to his worn face when he remembered his own brown paper bag splitting open and all the berries spilling; George immediately boasted that he had now got more blackberries than his big brother. But when he had asked Doris to go for a walk over the same hill two days later, she had said she needed to do an extra day's work at Spinney Farm, but he felt it was an excuse. She had seemed reluctant even to hold his hand and their previous passionate embraces were not to be repeated. Albert found that when his parents asked him what France was like, he had to pretend it was not too bad; they just did not understand. He had been pleased to return to France, finding comfort alongside other men who shared this war although he hated every minute of the shelling and the trenches of dead bodies.

It was the companionship, the stories they swapped and the assumed common inevitability of being killed to which he warmed. They joked together and, in moments away from the front, they joined in choruses, often crude ones. There had been the time when writing a letter home Podgy and Heave-ho were nearby writing letters, too. When they had all finished Albert said he would pass them on for the first stage of the journey back to England. As he put them together he noticed that on the back of Podgy's letter was written:
Remember NORWICH
. ‘Podgy, you don't come from Norwich,' he said, looking across at the older man.

Podgy let out a great guffaw. ‘Of course not, I'm from
Newcastle,
that's not why I've written
NORWICH
on the back of the envelope. Don't you know?' He saw Albert's puzzled expression. ‘Well, it's what a lot of us write. Annie will know what it means: “Nickers Off Ready When I Come Home”.' He laughed again and Albert and Heave-ho joined in.

There might be different mates each time he returned to the front, but mates just the same. They only knew each other for a brief time, but most would willingly have given their lives for one another.

How could his parents, how could anyone back home know what it was like to stand for twenty-four hours up to one's waist in water? The rain was almost as bad as the shells, neither ever stopped. Rats abounded and open excreta had to be chucked out of the trench hoping that some poor devil would spread lime on it; if that did not happen the men would find themselves crawling out through it. The agonies of trench fever and trench foot became more and more common; trench fever gave severe diarrhoea and extreme weakness, and standing in the water all the men feared trench foot. Albert had one mate, Pokey, who had first felt numbness in a foot, then swelling and open sores and eventually gangrene. The toes rotted; the pain had been agonising.

Into 1918 it had got worse. After a rare advance, Albert and some 300 men had found themselves abandoned in a wilderness. The only shelter was shell-holes scattered across a stretch of destroyed and desolate wasteland. No one really knew what was happening, but the order came through that all were to stay in their position. Albert was there for three days; it rained incessantly. On first sheltering in the shell-hole, some five feet deep and thirty feet wide, he found he had three companions: a dead German, a dead horse and one fellow soldier. His new mate's name was Martin, a New Zealand private. When they realised they were likely to be there for longer than made any sense, he and Martin managed to bury the German and the horse in the stinking mud of the sloping
shell-
hole wall. For themselves they tried to dig cave holes into the side, but within hours their intended shelter had filled in with the slithering mud wall.

To both men the extraordinary thing was that their new sanctuary, and there were other men in similar shell-holes in this surreal area, became known and then accepted by a higher echelon in the military. Each day, minimal rations were brought to them by some poor devil struggling through the sea of mud; they really had no idea where he came from. Each day a two-gallon petrol tin of tea, further wrapped in a small box of straw attempting to keep it warm, had arrived; Albert could still taste the petrol-flavoured tea. This had been accompanied by bread, butter which was often floating in foul water and a tin of bully beef, for which Albert had a makeshift opener. The saving grace for Albert was the company of Martin Grayson who was twenty-four. His grandfather had emigrated to New Zealand as a young man from Camlachie in Glasgow. Albert had found his new mate's accent attractive and gently reassuring as he went on to speak of his time before joining the forces to defend the mother country.

‘After a while in Auckland, my grandfather moved near to Christchurch. He married the daughter from another farming family who had left Scotland around the same time. They had three children who worked on either the farm or in the timber industry. The youngest was my father and after working hard he managed to buy a small area of land near a place called Little River. It was there he met my mother and I grew up on this farm where sheep were the main thing. They never told me, but I think they just could not have any more children, so I was the only one.' He smiled, ‘And I didn't arrive until mum was nearly forty.'

‘Was the farm successful?' asked Albert.

‘Well, it was never easy, but dad got by and it slowly prospered and he added more land. I always loved helping dad on the farm and so when I finished at school there was only
one
thing I wanted to do. My mother had never enjoyed the best of health and by the time dad was sixty he found it quite hard. It was all right then because I was around, but when I left them for this,' he extended his arms, opening out his hands to indicate their location, ‘I knew dad would have difficulty. He managed to get old Zeb in to help, but I'm sure they both struggle as Zeb is around the same age as dad. I can't wait to get back home.'

This was the friendship between mates that Albert loved; it was the only good part. The two went on talking about their families and friends back home and the jobs they had done before the war. Albert listened eagerly to Martin's stories about his farm. ‘It's a beautiful place,' Martin said with great enthusiasm, ‘the rolling hills seem to go on for ever, we have a beautiful stone church and like you I enjoyed my schooldays. And then there's the sea, it's not very far away and we always loved messing about in the water. We even have a railway station that runs in from Lincoln, mainly carrying timber.' Amazing, thought Albert, that his mate had come all the way from the other side of the world to fight in this godforsaken place; for what?

It was the next day whilst they continued to swap memories that a furrow came to Martin's brow when he was talking about the excitement of shearing time. ‘There's only one thing that really worries me, Albert.'

‘What's that?'

‘Well, what will happen to mum and dad if I don't get back? Suppose something happens to me over here, how will they manage?'

They fell into a silence. The incessant gunfire from both sides continued, broken only by the savagely rhythmic sound of less frequent machine-gun fire, but all sounded a good distance away. Here in this filthy shell-hole they felt strangely distanced from the war.

‘Martin, your Little River sounds a wonderful place.
Before
the war I thought I might go abroad; some guys in our village went off to Canada and what I heard sounded good. I should think New Zealand is just as good.'

‘Or better,' smiled Martin.

‘I guess so, maybe I should go there when all this is over – if I survive.'

‘Albert, I'm sure you would love it. I wonder, I just wonder if you would think of going to work on my dad's farm if anything happens to me?'

On what turned out to be their last day in the shell-hole before they received the order to retreat, Albert found himself promising Martin that if the New Zealander was killed he would go and help his father. He was not sure whether Doris would accompany him; he thought not.

To Albert, the three days in the shell-hole had been an escape; strangely, a period of tranquillity. As soon as he had clambered out and joined in the plodding through the all too familiar mud for what seemed like miles, the trembling and fear returned; every sound from a gun caused another quiver to run through his body; both gunfire and shake became continuous.

He had been one of many who received brief care in the field hospital hastily constructed on a small hillside to escape the worst of the filthy mud and after treatment he was given six days' rest. With body marginally repaired, but his mind in turmoil, Albert had been examined by a young doctor and declared fit to return to duty. More than once he thought of ending his life; it was unfair that in the many attacks on enemy positions he was spared while others fell. Then, as the rains died and the warmth of spring and early summer promised some hope, Doris' letter had arrived. Whatever the confusion of the past months, he had a clear picture of Doris: engaging smile, tumbling hair, a lovely body and their shared times of passion. Now this was over. Perhaps she had found someone else; it did not matter, she had finished with him. All over.

Finding
himself huddled in this trench facing the fresh German onslaught, it was probably chance that he found himself next to Mike, an older man, that saved him from tipping right over the edge into madness. Albert realised that this slightly-built, balding man shared the same fears as himself; his trembling at each crash of gunfire and a face that was pale, emaciated and unsmiling. The enemy assault reached such a climax, retreat orders were inevitable.