The First Casualty (9 page)

FIFTEEN

A shot in the night

That evening, across the Channel in France, near Merville, at a grand old château close by the beautiful River Lys, other men lay in hospital beds, suffering no less anguish of mind than Kingsley was doing.

Each evening these men retired to their beds but found that no rest or peace was to be had in the long watches of the night. Everywhere in that big old French house there were screams and shouts as men gave conscious and unconscious voice to the nightmares that besieged them whether they slept or were awake. Some men writhed about, others lay still as corpses, eyes wide open but seeing nothing. Some slept but while they slept they ducked and dodged the shells that in their dreams rained down upon them. Some men railed against the Boche, others pleaded with him for mercy, some conducted quiet conversations with comrades who had been blown to pieces years before. Some said nothing at all and made no sound while all the time, behind their open, staring eyes, they screamed.

All nights were the same in this place where each day more and more men arrived, shattered by battle, in search of peace that could not be found, and after the first two terrible days of the Third Battle of Ypres the grand old château was filled to bursting point.

In one room Private Hopkins lay, and there amongst a group of other men he shouted that he would not wear lice-infested clothes that were not his own. He told the night that he was a soldier and a man and he would die wearing his own tunic. Then in his mind policemen lashed him once more to the wheel of a gun limber and once again the flies sat upon his eyes in clusters, crawling on his mouth and in his nose.

In another room two men lay together, holding each other in a lovers’ embrace. They kissed each other urgently and passionately. Once, not long before, the older one had been in charge, the wiser one, the stronger and the more experienced, but now all that had changed. The younger man spoke most between the kisses, offering comfort and love, whilst the older man could only whisper in reply.

A little later in that house a shot rang out. Nobody heard it. A million shots rang out in each man’s head that night. Another million could be heard for real up and down the length of France and Belgium and in Turkey, Greece and Asia Minor, the Balkans, Persia, Mesopotamia, Africa, Italy, deep in the heart of Russia and upon the dark waters of the Atlantic. One shot more or less could hardly matter and nobody paid it any mind.

SIXTEEN

Bad news at the Carlton Club

Lord Abercrombie had breakfasted at the Carlton Club, as was his custom on days when he was scheduled to attend the House of Lords. He had eaten heartily, having worked up an appetite earlier that morning riding in Hyde Park, and had now repaired to the reading room in order to digest his sausage and kedgeree over several pipes and the morning papers.

Lord Abercrombie did not like being disturbed and when first the club servant had appeared at his elbow, bearing a silver tray on which lay a card of introduction, his lordship had waved him angrily away.

‘This is the
reading room
, damn you,’ he hissed, for there was a strict code against speaking in such a place. ‘I come here to avoid people, not have them chase me about with their bloody cards!’

The servant looked as if he wished the ground would swallow him, for Lord Abercrombie’s temper was legendary. Nonetheless he stood his ground, refusing to move until the angry lord was forced to read the card. Having done so, Lord Abercrombie grunted angrily, cast aside the copy of
The Times
in which he had been reading news of the current bloodbath at Passchendaele and stumped noisily from the room.

‘Well, what is it?’ he demanded rudely of the young man who awaited him in the grand entrance hall of the club. ‘What does the Home Office want with me that’s so important it requires the sending of an undersecretary, no less, to interrupt my morning pipe?’

The young man was about to speak but Abercrombie gave him no opportunity. Like all good parliamentarians, he was accustomed to answering his own questions. ‘If I am to be lobbied once more over these damned engineering strikes then you have disturbed my digestion for nothing. Mr Bonar Law has made it quite clear that the Conservative Party does not negotiate with strikers, particularly a gang of bully-boy shop stewards who do not even have the backing of their own leadership! Let them return to work and then perhaps we might…’

There was something in the undersecretary’s face which made Abercrombie pause. He was not the most sensitive of men but even he could see that the young man was deeply troubled.

‘It’s Alan, isn’t it?’ he asked suddenly. ‘You have news of my son.

‘Perhaps we might adjourn to…

‘Damn adjourning, you bloody fool! Is he dead?’

‘Yes, my lord, I am afraid that Captain Abercrombie is dead.’

The old man gripped at the porters’ desk for support. The shock was terrible, although in many ways he had been expecting it. Like millions of other parents up and down the country and right across the globe, he and his wife lived in daily fear of receiving the news that their son had been killed.

For a few moments the two men stood in silence in the hallway whilst Lord Abercrombie attempted to collect himself.

‘How did he die?’ he enquired finally.

‘It is stated that he died in battle, ‘sir.’

‘It is stated?’ the old man said sharply. ‘What the devil do you mean by ‘it is stated’?’

The undersecretary seemed to study the carpet.

‘It is stated, sir. The army has released a statement that your son died at Ypres. He is a hero fallen.’

A cloud of doubt began to creep across the old man’s grief-stricken features.

‘Follow me,’ he ordered and led the unfortunate undersecretary into a private smoking room.

‘I spoke to my son last night,’ his lordship said when the door had been closed and he and his visitor were alone. The undersecretary did not reply.

‘He was not at Ypres,’ the old man continued. ‘He placed a telephone call to me here at the Carlton Club from a French château. He had been sent there to recover, having temporarily lost the power of speech.’

Still the young man remained silent.

‘Ypres is in Belgium,’ Lord Abercrombie insisted. ‘The château from which my son telephoned was in France. He was anxious that his mother should know that he was all right. He was convalescing.’

Once more the room fell silent. The wretched undersecretary refused to meet the old man’s eye.

‘How can a man who was convalescing in a château in France have been killed in action at Ypres? Did he put down the telephone and rush across the border into Belgium and up to the front in order to take part in a night raid?’

‘Your son is dead, sir,’ the undersecretary reiterated. ‘It is stated that he died in battle. He is a hero fallen.’

SEVENTEEN

A slow recovery

‘He shall be treated by the book, Mr Jenkins, which means those cracked ribs must be bound and he must be observed.
Observed
, I might add, Mr Jenkins. By the book.’

The doctor placed his hand upon Kingsley’s chest, causing the patient to cry out in pain.

‘Please, doctor, my lungs!’ he gasped.

‘The beating he took’s done more damage than I thought,’ the doctor continued. ‘I don’t think your prisoner is likely to survive very long in your cells and I fear I must formally notify you that it is my opinion he should be kept in solitary for his own safety.’

‘Is it necessary that you put that warning in writing?’ Jenkins asked.

The doctor considered this for a moment.

‘Well, I should have to check the book but it seems to me that a verbal observation will suffice to cover my responsibilities.’

‘And you would only make mention of that verbal observation if you was approached? By the authorities, so to speak?’

‘Certainly it is no part of my dutie’s to go pestering my superiors with unasked-for observations. Of course if I were to be
approached
…’

‘You will not be approached.’

So that was it. There was to be no paper trail to implicate those who were clearly intent on shirking their duty of care and allowing him to be quickly beaten to death. The sadistic Mr Jenkins, who was responsible for his safety, wanted him dead and the doctor did not mind in the slightest as long as his own back was covered. A nod and a wink were to be his death warrant.

‘Patch him up, like I said, to within the limits prescribed in your blessed book, doctor, and when he is well enough to stumble to the door, hand him back to me.’

In fact Kingsley was already well enough to return to the cells but for want of a better plan he had, since his failure to enlist support from the IRB, been dissembling wildly and had managed to convince the doctor that his ribs had been cracked.

When Jenkins had departed, the doctor, aided by a medical orderly, began the work of changing the bandages on Kingsley’s chest. Kingsley could see by the light at the window and the fob watch that hung by a chain across the doctor’s portly stomach that it was morning. Despite the earliness of the hour, the doctor still stank of brandy; clearly it was not only after supper that he was half-drunk but all day as well. Kingsley gasped loudly in pain as the hapless doctor struggled inexpertly with the bandages, at one point even resting his weight on Kingsley’s chest, which gave Kingsley an excuse to cry out all the more.

‘Be quiet, man!’ the doctor snapped. ‘These bandages should not be wasted on you but sent to the front where they might be of service to a soldier not a coward.’

‘Doctor,’ Kingsley whispered through clenched teeth, ‘I have not read your book but I do not believe that forcing damaged ribs into the lungs of your patients is described there as part of your duty of care. If you continue in this manner I may die here on your bench and what would your book say about that?’

The doctor stood back.

‘Damn you then for an ungrateful swine! I am not in any way obliged to dirty my hands with you! The book requires that I attend your sickbed and make my diagnosis. So much have I done, sir! And done damn well. You have three cracked ribs and each has been duly noted, annotated, listed and written up with the required copies made and filed! I have done my duty, sir, and no man may say I haven’t! Your treatment I may now legitimately leave to an orderly. I do not think that it is any part of the Home Office Code of Practice pertaining to the duties of HM Prison Medical Officers that I be submitted to slurs and insults from conscientious objectors such as yourself. I bound your wounds as an act of Christian charity but if my ministering does not suit you then the devil may take you, for I wash my hands of you. Orderly! Attend this prisoner!’

With that, the doctor withdrew his bottom from the bench on which it had been resting and marched self-importantly from the room.

EIGHTEEN

The Carlton Club once more

Lord Abercrombie’s face looked as if he had been struck a blow.

Whatever explanation he had expected when he lobbied the War Office for further information about the death of his son, it had not been this one.

‘Murdered? It can’t be,’ he insisted. ‘Who could possibly wish to murder my boy? He was loved. Loved by everybody.’

There were no undersecretaries present now. The Secretary of State for War himself had hurried to speak with Lord Abercrombie the moment he had discovered that the Opposition Chief Whip was refusing to accept the official explanation for the famous poet’s death.

‘I’m afraid he was murdered, my lord,’ the minister insisted. ‘The Prime Minister has asked me to convey his deepest sympathy and…’

‘Damn his sympathy!’ the old man spluttered. ‘This can’t be true. Alan’s a soldier. What am I to tell his mother? There’s been some appalling mistake and I shall see that whoever is responsible never — ’

‘I’m afraid there has been no mistake,’ the minister interrupted. ‘We have the news directly from the Military Police and it has been confirmed by the Secret Intelligence Service. Captain Abercrombie was most certainly murdered.’

‘The SIS? What the hell have that gang of thieves and snoopers got to do with it?’

The Minister for War sighed. When first he had heard the news of the murder of so famous a man he had understood instantly, as had the other senior ministers who had been informed, that this was a matter of the highest delicacy.

‘Lord Abercrombie,’ he said, ‘I am afraid that I am going to have to ask you to give me your word that what I tell you will go no further than this room.’

‘I will give no such assurance, sir!’ the old man thundered. ‘How can I? I have no idea what you are talking about except that my son is dead and it seems that for some reason you have sought to lie about how he died.’

‘We believe that your son was murdered for political reasons. His killer was a revolutionary. A Bolshevik.’

‘A Russian! A bloody Russian shot my son!’ Lord Abercrombie barked and for a moment his astonishment appeared to overcome his grief.

‘No, sir. An Englishman, an enlisted man but nonetheless a disciple of Lenin.’

Lord Abercrombie sank down on to a leather couch, the fight all knocked out of him.

‘What am I to tell her ladyship?’ he almost whispered. ‘What will his mother say?’

‘Sir, I do not believe that you
should
tell her ladyship. Your son was a hero, he has the right to be remembered as such. Imagine what effect it would have upon morale if it were to become known that he was murdered by a fellow countryman! Viscount Abercrombie fought with distinction for two years, and wrote often of his desire to die in action. Surely his mother has a right, surely the
people
have a right, to believe that wish to have been fulfilled? It’s not the viscount’s fault that he was cruelly murdered whilst honourably recovering from battle, a battle in which he could quite easily have died. Is it not best for everybody, and particularly for your son’s memory, that the truth of this dreadful incident should never be known?’

The old man sat in silence, looking tired and defeated.

‘Yes,’ he said finally. ‘Yes. You’re right. It wouldn’t do for a man like Alan to be remembered principally for the grubby manner of his parting.’

The minister readily agreed.

‘His songs and poetry would never be seen in the same light again. His legacy would be forever tainted.’

‘I shall not tell his mother. Better she should think he died as he lived. A hero.’

‘I am grateful to you, my lord,’ the minister said. ‘Our nation is currently going through a period of greater industrial unrest than at any previous time in the war. The man who has been arrested was a fairly prominent trades unionist. A scandal such as this one, should it ever become public, could only be horrendously divisive. There will always be those who wish to think the worst of the government, of the army. An aristocrat has been murdered by a working man, what is more, a Communist. In this year of all years, with Russia going all to hell, we do not want this incident to become an issue of class division.’

‘What will you do with the swine?’ his lordship enquired.

‘He’ll be tried in camera and no doubt shot,’ the Secretary of State replied. ‘His family will be told that he too died in action. That is the army’s regular custom with those who have been shot for cowardice.’

‘Just so long as he’s shot,’ his lordship replied, despair and anger etched in equal measure on every line of his fierce old face.