The First Casualty (4 page)

FIVE

A bath in a brewery

Just as Kingsley was watching Agnes disappear and Viscount Abercrombie and his young friend were dancing a waltz together in the tiny bar of the Lavender Lamp, across the Channel in the small Belgian village of Wytschaete a large group of private soldiers of the 5th Battalion East Lancs were awaiting their first bath in many weeks.

Wytschaete had been a tiny village with few comforts and amenities even before it had been engulfed by the various battles of the Ypres salient. Now, three years into the carnage, there was very little left of it. Its buildings were all ruins, its singled cobbled street no more than a muddy ditch, its church spire had been atomized and what trees and flowers had ever grown there grew no longer. The little village did, however, have one supreme advantage to recommend it to the men of the 5th Battalion of the East Lancashire Regiment. It stood (or had once stood and now lay) a whole two miles from what was currently the Wipers front line. This was why the regiment had selected it as one of the locations in which it attempted to provide brief respites from the line for its exhausted soldiers.

The Wytschaete army bathhouse was located, as was often the case with army bathhouses, in an old brewery. This one had been partially shelled out, but the sappers had done a decent job of putting in a replacement roof and the brewery plumbing within had been efficiently converted to provide a communal shower.

A group of about fifty men stood outside it amongst the shattered walls of the next-door building, their towels flung across the shoulders of their filthy uniforms. They smoked their fags and waited for the fifty men within to complete their wash.

‘I can remember when we went in only twelve at a time,’ one man grumbled, ‘and we had baths then, proper barrels filled with lovely hot water, and five minutes all alone to soak. Not like now where we stand on duckboards and the army pisses all over us.’

Might as well stay in the trenches and wait for rain.

‘Wouldn’t ‘ave long to wait,’ another man joked. ‘Not in bleeding Wipers. I reckon your Belgian civvie is part fish.’

‘
And
you kept your own clothes then,’ the grumbler insisted. ‘They was numbered before you went in and medical orderlies brushed ‘em and ironed out the seams for bugs while you were ‘aving your tub, and they give you back your own uniform when you come out again.’

‘You mean you got the
same
uniform back?’ a teenage conscript asked, aghast that such luxuries had ever been possible on the Western Front.

‘Yes, you did. That was before Kitchener died, of course. It all changed then, when the old man went down and yer conscription come in. Too many bleeding soldiers to give ‘em a decent bath
or
their own tunics.’

The fact that men who were detailed for showers were then expected to take pot luck and grab any supposedly laundered uniform when they emerged on the other side was a source of enormous resentment amongst the private soldiers.

‘I always hangs on to my own,’ said another. ‘There’s no less bugs in the one I got on than the ones they hands you back and at least I
knows
my lice. They’re family.’

‘It’s disgusting,’ an angry-looking soldier asserted, ‘expecting free-born men to put on any filthy old uniform the army hurls at us and then asking us to take pride in our units! Bloody generals should try it themselves and see how proud they feel.’

This soldier’s name was Hopkins and he was not a popular man. He was known to be a Communist and a follower of something he called the International, and although most of the men were always happy to vilify the much-despised General Staff they did not hold with Bolshevism.

‘Piss off to Russia then and see how you like it’ was the usual reply to Hopkins’s diatribes.

‘You’re all mad, bloody mad,’ Hopkins shouted to anyone who would listen. ‘Look at us. We’re sheep, that’s what. Sheep to the bleeding slaughter. We can’t win this war, not the poor bloody infantry. We just sit around hoping to cop a Blighty so’s we can stagger home crippled, grateful not to be dead.’

As usual Hopkins was stirring up more resentment than support.

‘What do you mean we can’t win? You lying bastard!’

‘I mean what I say. We can’t win it and
they
can’t win either,’ Hopkins insisted. ‘Not the common man.’

‘Who are you calling common?’

‘The only people who will win this war, who
are
winning this war, who have already
bloody won
this war are the people who make the shells and guns that working men lob at each other.’

‘Ay, that’s true enough,’ a man named McCroon who was the unit’s other Bolshevik chipped in. ‘Like the slogan tells you, a bayonet is a weapon with a worker at both ends.’

‘And we should lay down ours and refuse to fight,’ Hopkins cried. ‘That’s what we should do, vote with our feet like the Russians are doing. Tell those bloated capitalists we won’t die for their profits.’

‘Well, why don’t you then, you, Bolshie bastard?’ a voice cried out. ‘Piss off so’s we don’t have to listen to you bangin’ on no more.’

‘Because they’d bloody shoot me, that’s why, you Tory prick! Socialism doesn’t want martyrs, it wants solidarity. If one man goes or a handful they just shoot ‘em but if we
all
walked off they’d have to think again, wouldn’t they? Solidarity forever!’

‘Don’t you
ever
give it a rest?’

At that point Hopkins was forced to stop because bath time was called and the men took off their uniforms and undergarments and trooped naked into the brewery, where they stood on duckboards as the water was turned on over their heads. Some of them had managed to keep a bit of soap safe for the occasion.

‘I had a lovely bar of Pears my missus sent,’ a man said. ‘Fucking rat ate it. Just fucking
ate
the whole bar. Would you credit it?’

‘Won’t his shit smell beautiful!’

There was plenty of joking and some singing too, for bare though the arrangements were, to soldiers who had lived in ditches for weeks even this brief communal shower was a treat. The joking and singing was of course filled with the bitter irony which was the Tommies’ only real defence against the nightmare in which they had found themselves.

‘
If you want the old battalion
,

We know where they are
,

We know where they are
,

We know where they are
.

If you want the old battalion
,

We know where they are
,

They’re hangin’ on the old barbed wire
.’

The one drawback of rest periods for soldiers who lived cheek by jowl with death was that they provided unavoidable evidence of the unremitting bloodletting of the line. Men standing in a bath queue or assembling a team for a kick-about could not help but dwell upon who amongst their comrades had been present at the last rest and was not present at the current one.

All too soon the shower was over. Another fifty men were standing naked outside and it was time to go out once more and find a uniform.

‘Lovely, that. Just the ticket,’ men shouted as they slipped about on the soapy boards. ‘I almost imagined for a moment I was human.’

‘Just wait a few months,’ less cheerful souls warned. ‘Come December when you’re out there starkers in the snow and there’s ice on the duckboards, you won’t be imagining
nothing
then. You’ll just be hanging on to your balls to stop them disappearing altogether.’

Outside the bathhouse the men picked with disgust at the louse-ridden khaki threads that awaited them. Suddenly it was all too much for Private Hopkins. He had put on the underwear supplied to him but on inspecting the tunic that was offered he hurled it down in disgust.

‘I’m not wearing this!’ he shouted. ‘I want my own uniform back and I want it clean of lice! I am a
man
, not an animal.’

Some men cheered, others sniggered, many looked on with some sympathy. Hopkins was not popular but there was no denying he had a point. An officer of the Royal Army Medical Corps approached.

‘Private, pick up that tunic and put it on,’ he said quietly.

‘I will not put it on!’ Hopkins replied, standing shaking in his underwear.

‘Private, I do not wish to have to punish you for I am no fonder of the arrangements in which we must all live than you are. Now pick up that tunic which is the King’s uniform and put it on.’

‘Let the King wear it then! I want my own back.’

No one was sniggering now. Hopkins was refusing to obey an order, which was a capital offence. The forty-nine other men grew silent, pausing in their efforts to,find the best uniform available. The next group of men, who had already entered the shower, knew nothing of the drama going on outside and, as Hopkins and the medical officer stared into each other’s eyes, their joking and singing rang across the yard.

‘
We are Fred Karno’s army, the ragtime infantry
.

We cannot fight, we cannot shoot, what bleedin’ use are we?

And when we get to Berlin we’ll hear the Kaiser say
,

‘
Hoch, hoch! Mein Gott, what a bloody rotten lot are the ragtime infantry
. ’‘

‘What is your name, Private?’ the officer asked.

‘Hopkins, sir.’

‘Well, Private Hopkins, I shall give you one last chance to save yourself from a very great deal of trouble. Pick up the tunic you have discarded and put it on.’

Hopkins stared at the officer, his lip quivering. He said nothing. The officer could hesitate no longer: to offer further quarter would be to condone mutiny.

Hopkins was arrested and marched away, still wearing only his underwear.

SIX

A visit to the prison governor

Kingsley was sentenced to two years’ hard labour and dispatched in chains to Wormwood Scrubs. It was there that the violence which he had known awaited him since first he had been arrested finally began in earnest.

‘A lot of your old pals live here, Inspector
sir
. Isn’t that jolly?’ the warder gloated as Kingsley was stripped, searched and disinfected. ‘And they’s all most anxious to see you again. Oh yes they is. Most anxious. Planning quite a welcome party some of ‘em is, I’ve ‘eard,
quite
a welcome.’

Kingsley was kitted out in a filthy and flea-ridden prison uniform and told that he was to be brought before the governor.

In order to get there the warder conducted Kingsley on the longest possible route, parading him in chains across the floor of the main hall of the prison. At the sides of the huge hall numerous steel staircases rose up to connect the grilled walkways which were stacked up, tier after tier, towards the roof. It was a perfect amphitheatre in which a sacrificial beast might be displayed. Those prisoners who were out of their cells stared down and jeered; some spat, and one or two tin mugs were thrown. Some warders even unlocked cell doors to allow inmates with a particular interest a first glimpse of the new house guest.

‘Oh yes,’ the warder repeated, ‘all jolly old pals
most
anxious to reacquaint themselves with you, sir.’

Kingsley had not expected sympathy from any quarter but he was nonetheless taken aback by the venom he encountered. It seemed that the prison staff considered him as loathsome a figure as did the inmates, and with a shiver of fear Kingsley realized that he would not be able to look to them for protection against the vengeance he must now expect from those criminals who had once been his prey.

A voice rang out from the growing din.

‘They should have sent you straight to Passchendaele, you malingering bastard!’

Kingsley knew the name of course, who didn’t? Just one more obscure village whose existence for centuries had been known only to those who lived there and to the cartographers of the Brussels Bureau of Ordnance, but which now and for evermore was burned into the hearts of mothers, wives, sons and daughters the length and breadth of Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Just one more French village whose name, against all odds, would be written in stone in a thousand other villages and towns, on sombre monuments throughout Britain, the Empire and the Commonwealth. Passchendaele, that elusive prize which lay just a few hundred blood-soaked yards beyond the Ypres salient.

‘I did not send your brothers to Belgium!’ Kingsley shouted into the din and was rewarded with a slap across the face from the warder.

‘We have a policy of prisoner silence here,
Mr
Kingsley
sir
,’ the warder said, although he had to shout himself in order to be heard above the cacophony.

Kingsley’s mind reeled, and not as a result of the blow. Could it be that they were blaming
him
for the national tragedy that was decimating their communities? Kingsley was a shrewd judge of human nature and no stranger to the numerous hoops through which a man’s conscience will leap in order to apportion blame to anyone other than himself, but he truly had not expected this. It defied all logic. He wanted to scream that he
alone
amongst that crowd was blameless. That he
alone
was attempting in his own small way to stop the war. But Kingsley was fast learning that within the collective madness that gripped the nation any attempt at rational argument was useless. Worse than useless, for clearly it provoked rather than defused strong emotion. Now that he was brought so low he was discovering that his greatest asset, his intellect, was the thing most likely to see him torn apart by the mob.

Finally Kingsley found himself in the governor’s office, standing on the threadbare Axminster, waiting while the governor himself sat behind his great oak desk making an elaborate show of ignoring Kingsley and continuing to work through the papers that lay before him.

After a silence which lasted fully five minutes the governor spoke to Kingsley, although he still did not deign actually to look at the prisoner.

‘I see that this war ‘offends your logic’,’ he said, turning the pages of the court reports in an old copy of the
Daily Telegraph
. He held the pages by a corner, gripping them disdainfully between his thumb and forefinger as if the very newsprint itself might infect him with the bacillus of cowardice and effete intellectualism.

Kingsley was coming to regret having used the word ‘logic’ to explain his position at his trial. It had been widely reported and seemed to have had a particularly incendiary effect, being held up as clear evidence of the innate snobbery and moral corruption of the pacifist mind. On the other hand, how else could he have answered the damn-fool questions he had been asked? And why should he apologize for being right? There was no other word that so clearly summed up his objections.

‘Yes, sir. It offends my logic.’

‘You consider patriotism illogical?’

‘No, but neither do I think it a sufficient excuse to act in an obscenely illogical manner.’

‘In an obscenely illogical manner, SIR!’ bellowed the warder who stood behind him, bringing his nightstick down hard on Kingsley’s shoulder.

‘In an obscenely illogical manner, sir,’ Kingsley repeated, through gritted teeth.

‘You don’t think it a sufficient
excuse?
’ the governor parroted in exasperation. ‘What excuse does an Englishman need for patriotism? What the hell are you talking about, you bloody prig?’

‘Slaughtering millions of men in pursuit of no discernible strategic or political goal seems to me both illogical and obscene, no matter how honourable the sentiments behind it.’

‘Our goal is victory.’

‘That may well be our goal, sir, but I believe it is a deceptive goal.’

‘You believe we cannot win? Is that why you won’t fight?’

‘I do not think that ‘winning’ is the issue any more. To my mind it is self-evident that any so-called ‘victory’ will be as destructive for the victor as for the vanquished. Every nation involved will be left exhausted and crippled.’

‘Good God, man! You speak as if you believe it doesn’t matter whether we win or the Germans do!’

‘Logically I do not think that it does very much.’

The governor leaped to his feet, shaking with sudden rage. He scrambled around his desk, knocking over his inkwell in his haste. Coming before his prisoner, the governor suddenly raised his fist and Kingsley thought for a moment that he would strike him.

‘You swine! You bloody swine, sir! Pacifist is one thing, traitor quite another! You are a bloody traitor.’

Kingsley remained silent, knowing that once more he had provoked far more anger than was necessary. He had had his say and nobody had listened. Now he was in prison. Why keep saying it? Once more he had failed to shut up and was paying the price for his intellect and his ego.

‘My son fell at Loos,’ the governor spluttered. ‘He led his men into the teeth of the German machine guns. Those Hun bastards mowed him down at a distance of two hundred yards! Him and virtually every man that followed him! And you stand there and tell me that it doesn’t matter whether the Germans win or we do.’

Kingsley managed to resist the temptation to reply. It was a hard lesson for him to learn and he was learning it much too late. Only days before, even that morning, he would have been unable to resist answering. He would have been unable to stop himself from insisting that the death of the governor’s son was
not his fault
. It was the man’s own fault. It was the government’s fault. It was every person’s fault who failed to protest at the insanity of the war. The one person whose fault it was not, was him.

Now the governor was holding the photograph of his son in front of Kingsley’s eyes. Kingsley had seen the photograph before. Not that particular picture, not that actual son of that actual father but numerous other near-identical ones. It was the same as ten thousand photographs, a hundred thousand. Millions. You saw them everywhere, on people’s mantel shelves, in their lockets, on top of pianos, crowded together on occasional tables and in the black-edged pages of the newspapers. Always the same picture. A young man in a photographer’s studio, his expression held stiffly so as not to blur the image as the light entered the shutter. Officers would often be sitting, their gloves and sticks upon their knees; other ranks would stand, perhaps in pairs or groups of three, brothers, cousins. Pals. Sometimes the livelier souls would have placed their caps at a jaunty angle, and occasionally the figure might carry a gun or wear a sword. But despite these small differences, all the photographs were essentially the same. Young men frozen and stiff in life just as they would shortly be frozen and stiff in death.

Beyond the photograph Kingsley could see the governor’s face, contorted with fury.

‘Does my son’s death
offend
you, Mr Kingsley? Does it bother your
intellect?
Do you find its
scale
inappropriate? ‘

Kingsley did not reply.

‘Answer me!’ the governor barked. ‘Does it offend you?’

‘Yes,’ Kingsley answered. ‘As a matter of fact it does.’ Once more Kingsley thought that the governor would strike him but instead he retreated back behind his desk and began mopping up the ink he had spilt.

‘Take him away,’ he said, his voice faltering. ‘Get the bastard out of my sight.’