The next morning was a grey one for Alfie. The weather was sunny, but all his thoughts were of his deceased brother. As the platoon practiced their morning drill, Alfie let his mind wander over the example his brother had set him. James had been good at everything, not in a way that Alfie was jealous of, but a quietly competent and efficient way. Alfie knew James had been a successful soldier, passing through training in his 'Pals' battalion, quickly and effectively. Every step, the model soldier, nothing like the misfit Alfie was.
Even months into training, Alfie still did not fit the mould of the regimented soldier, neatly presented, competent in all his tasks. How could he live up to the expectations of his family when he could not even meet the basic expectations of his country? He was far from a competent soldier. How would he achieve revenge on an enemy that was resisting the best that the British Empire could throw at it? He worried that he would let his mates down, he would put them at risk and would struggle to survive the maelstrom himself. He would not be able to achieve revenge for his brother, thereby failing his family.
These worries had been building for some time as he struggled through training. However, it was the letter from home that had brought them to the fore.
'Marsh! You're out of step.' Yelled Corporal Simpson.
Alfie checked his step, falling back in time with the rest of the squad. His mind restarted the loop that it had been playing all morning.
After the routine of drill, a dull routine that had allowed Alfie too much time to think, Alfie sat with Joshua Wells. The canteen had put on some kind of stew with spotted dick pudding. One good thing about training was that the food was always generous and you could go up for more if you were still hungry. You did not really care what meat was in the stew either as exercise was always the best sauce. For some recruits, this was the first time their bellies had been full in their lives. This was despite the successful health reforms of David Lloyd George and the Liberal Governments in the lead up to the war, a response to the scandals of the Boer War. In the midst of that brutal war, it had become apparent that nearly two in every five British recruits were unfit for service due to illnesses caused by poverty, such as rickets. The Liberals had set about a program of health insurance for workers, free healthcare for children, and a massive program of the replacement of unsanitary housing.
'You see, I never had any kind of expectations from my family. Sure, there was an expectation that I would fit in.' Wells said thinking about his own upbringing in the poorer areas of East London, 'My parents had escaped the pogroms in Russia and come to England, so they wanted me to grow up to become a good Englishman, but other than that, there was no expectations. I suppose it was because anything that happened to me was going to be better than what happened to them as Russian Jews.'
'My family didn't really have any expectations for me.' Being a middle child, it was the older, James, who had all the family expectations such as taking on the family trade, continuing the family name and striking out into the world. Alfie had been expected to do well, but was not the focus of the family attentions, receiving the cast-off clothes, coming second in attention and support from his parents.
'I got into trading this and that, finding things that were hard to find. You know what I mean? A bit of a fixer of issues.' Joshua explained, 'You have to be about your wits to survive in the East End.'
'Well you always seem to have a stash of chocolate and cigarettes.'
'It pays to get to know, and help out, the quartermaster. You wouldn't believe how easy it is for things to disappear from the stores.' Wells boasted, 'Even the quartermaster is at it.'
'He is probably at it. So things quite easily disappear from the stores when you're around? Only way you can manage the roaring trade you do.' Alfie replied good-naturedly.
'Well, if you ever need anything, you know who to ask. Besides, my career path is why I didn't volunteer for this war, I had a good scam going with this well-off widow. Between the two of us, we was comfortably off.'
'So do you have anything that's going to help us survive this war then?' Alfie asked, 'What do you have that can help us with that? I'm a useless solider, but I want to do my family proud.'
'We just keep working at it. Doing the best we can.' Wells replied, 'Not got any magic tricks up my sleeve.'
'But I've been doing the best I can and I'm still useless.' Alfie complained, the despair again threatening to overwhelm him.
'I'll help you with what I can. After all I've been helping you with your kit for ages. Besides, the others will help out, especially Taff and Davies. If we all stick together, we'll increase our chances of surviving this war.'
'I suppose so.' Alfie replied, 'Watch each other's backs and look out for each other.'
'Oh, and one other excellent piece of advice, never volunteer for anything. That's the sort of behaviour that'll get you killed.' Wells grinned.
'I thought that would be the best chance for me to prove myself though.' Alfie said.
'No, best way for you to end up as worm food. There are no brave soldiers who get to grow old, you know.' Wells explained, knowing that the way the war was going, there would be no soldiers of any kind who would survive long enough to grow old.
That night, Alfie lay in bed trying to sleep, mulling over his worries. His body was hardening in response to all the exercise and he was no longer instantly falling asleep with exhaustion, as he had at the start of his training. His consciousness ran over the expectations that were now being thrust upon him by his family. In their patriotic fervour, they expected him to go and make the family proud by his brave exploits on the battlefield. In their bereavement, his parents expected him to go and get revenge. They probably had in mind some patriotic and heroic endeavour such as those printed in the London Illustrated News in which the chiselled hero would overwhelm the inferior Hun, rescuing helpless Belgian civilians. Pure jingoistic propaganda. However, Alfie knew his new responsibilities were far deeper than a simplistic vendetta against the enemy. It was not just the good name of the family that mattered. He would now be expected to continue the family line, something that Alfie had not thought of. He would be expected to marry and have children. This was something he had never even considered, children of his own and the responsibility that such fragile young lives would bring. Marriage had been a consideration at times, especially with some of the girls he had spent time with before being conscripted, but starting a family during a war, when he was going to be away at the front for months on end, was just not possible. The whole idea of family was something that he would have to file away until the end of the war, assuming he survived, something he truly doubted with his inferior soldiering abilities.
What was worse for Alfie was that he would no longer see his brother James. They had been great friends, James always looking out for his brother, frequently rescuing him from fist-fights that had gone wrong. Alfie may not the best soldier in the world, but he was certainly very good in a scrap, while being on the receiving end of a few beatings had certainly toughened him up. Alfie had been so proud of his brother when he had volunteered for the army with the first wave of recruits who had responded to the patriotic call of General Kitchener. James had joined with many from the community, enough, as it turned out to create a Pals battalion exclusively recruited from their neighbours. Although Alfie had been old enough to join at the time, he had held back, feeling that putting one son at risk was more than enough for the family pride. Besides, Alfie was not taken in by the patriotic fervour that had washed over the country in August 1914. He was certain there was more to things than a simple clash of heroic allies against the militaristic Prussians who had invaded defenceless Belgium. He also knew about the traditional tactics that were employed by the armies of all nations and had wondered how they would stand up to the vicious new weapons of the twentieth century. It was an experiment in which he had no desire to
participate. The advent of the machine gun was sure to cause havoc with the neat rows of soldiers all the nations insisted in fielding. The French were still not even using camouflaged colours. At least Britain had dealt with that issue in the Khaki Election and the response to the failures of the Boer War. There was also the matter of artillery that had put him off volunteering. Finally, the War Office had issued large numbers of tin helmets, and Alfie knew his may be a lifesaver. At the start of the war, the troops had routinely entered battle with cloth caps. This was a particular disadvantage when the warfare descended into the trenches with head wounds readily received from shell sprinters hitting heads. The vast casualties of 1914 and early 1915 had therefore come as no surprise to Alfie, and he had felt justified in his avoidance of the army. The recent casualties that were being reported from the Somme were also of no great surprise. At this rate, the nation would burn through the available manpower, chewed up by modern industrialised warfare.
Despite his disapproval of an ill-planned war, Alfie had still completed work that was beneficial for the war effort, working the land, ensuring that there was enough food