They were going towards the town of Feuvry. He could see a pall of reddish dust hanging over the buildings, from shattered bricks and shell.
Memorandum. Commanding Officer to 2nd Battalion
At Feuvry we shall be in close billets. Guards will be mounted at once. Great precautions must be taken with drinking water and sanitation.
Feuvry had been occupied by the Germans in the summer of 1914, and relieved by the B.E.F. and evacuated – and then shelled ever since, until it was almost derelict. It was disliked, the name of it was disliked by the whole army. A superstition had attached itself to Feuvry. The men groaned, glanced at one another uneasily, hearing that they were to stay there.
But when he had asked about it, Hilliard had shaken his head, for he had never been there himself. So they only knew what they had heard, what the men said. Barton was not sure what to expect. Perhaps something like Percelle on a large scale, red-brick buildings with roofs caved in, crumbling walls already overgrown with convolvulus. He had grown fond of Percelle even as it was, the village looked as though it had tumbled down after years of neglect, rather than been damaged by shell fire.
He was not prepared for Feuvry. As the column marched in and turned down what was left of the main street, going towards a square, Hilliard had ridden close by. Had seen that Barton was appalled by Feuvry, as he had not been by the sight of the dead pilot in the crashed plane.
The men were swaying on their feet, were seeing nothing, were not singing.
Feuvry.
This is a terrible place. How can I describe it to you? How would you ever be able to imagine what I can see? I do not think there is a building left intact and there are many which are just holes in the ground, or piles of rubble. All along the sides of the road, too, there is every kind of rubbish. But you would not have called it that if you had seen it in its original state. I mean, rubbish is not what most of it used to be, apart from the mess of broken brick and girders. These are all things from people’s houses. You see a chair sticking out, spring coils from sofas and they are all charred and rusted. There are bedsteads and mattresses and piles of bloodstained clothing, part of a smashed wash-basin, children’s toys. And then there is all the litter of the armies, of course. Before us, there were the occupying forces. Everything has been left in the most appalling mess. So much of the rubble is old, two years old, and has never been shifted, so that there are plenty of things you cannot recognize any longer.
Everything smells, reeks, of years of decay and shell-fire and burned wood. I find myself thinking all the time of how it must have been – though really it is hard to reconstruct a town out of all this: and of the people who lived ordinary lives here, who saved up for these things, owned and enjoyed them, and now they all mean nothing, they are rubbish, rolling about in corners, rotting in heaps. We have what they are pleased to call houses for our billets. The men are twenty or thirty to a tiny room, and they are in a bad state, dirty and everything broken. There isn’t a whole roof, and scarcely a whole floor. The water supply and all the sanitation system is hopelessly polluted, we have to look for rats everywhere. And then there are so many dead bodies, because the place has been in the direct line of fire for so long. Ambulances come through but they seem to have missed a lot and they only take away the possible survivors, now. They are too hard pressed fetching and carrying the wounded from the front lines.
I came across a man sitting upright in a doorway, with his bayonet fixed, but he was quite dead, he must have been on sentry duty. It was not apparent how he died, he seemed to have no injuries, only some terrible distortion of his face. It was as though he had blown up inside, but nothing had come out. He belonged to a regiment which was here two weeks ago.
The horses are better off than we are, they have gone into stables half a mile away, and we won’t have much to do with them from now on, as we go into the trenches straightaway. Well, I’m glad they look after them. As for us – I’m aching a bit but not tired. I cannot stop looking around me and seeing more ugliness and mess than I have seen in my life. John is quiet and a bit tense. He doesn’t say much and in any case we’re pretty busy. The men are getting rum issue, which they deserve, so I shall have to go and see to it in a moment. It comes up in a gallon jar, and must never be let out of the sight of an officer!
Actually, the men deserve long cool drinks of water even more than rum but it’s rationed here, so they get short measure and it tastes of the stuff they use to sterilize it. God knows if we’ll ever get a wash. I’m already beginning to feel the squalor of the army at war. My feet have sweated inside my boots and the rest of me inside my uniform. My hair feels dusty and sticky at the same time. Oh, you wouldn’t like me at all just now! John would say this is nothing, you wait and see, this is cushy compared to what will come later on. Well, he is probably right. But so often now have I seen him biting back that kind of remark. I suppose he wants to save me from knowing anything before I’ve absolutely got to. But I’ve got some imagination and eyes to see and ears to hear, I’ve a pretty good idea about what’s coming and that it won’t be anybody’s idea of a picnic.
I must say I shall mind being filthy and physically in a mess more than the thing I thought I should mind most of all – that is, the having no time or place or scarcely anything to call my own. Because, oddly enough, one does have a fair measure of all those – so far, at any rate. And I am happy being with our platoon, and with John. I don’t at all mind the idea that I’m doing this or that along with a few thousand other people. Perhap’s that’s the advantage of coming from a large family!
But really it isn’t at all fair to say what I do or don’t mind, I haven’t seen much yet except training camp and rest camp. Not until today, at least. This place is so frighteningly ugly, and the guns are still battering away at it the whole time. They have ruined the church here, which was apparently Romanesque and very beautiful, with a lovely tower. I hadn’t realized what a noise the guns make, though they are not really near to us and in fact a lot of it is echo from what buildings are left. I don’t care to think about the noise of the guns and shells when I actually come near them. It’s the one idea which really does bother me. I have never been very good with loud noises, have I? And it has been so quiet and peaceful at the camp. You wouldn’t have known there was anything much going on at all for a hundred miles. Some days I might have been at home, sitting down by the beck. Well, it’s going to be different for some while now.
I think I should like some fruit in a parcel, please, especially if we are going to continue to be rationed with our water. Apples or oranges would be nice. You will know what travels well, better than I do, as it takes a while for parcels to reach us. And longer now, I imagine.
But here’s the Sergeant with the rum jar …
‘What are you doing?’
‘Finishing a letter.’
‘Tell me, did you manage to get a dozen or two written while you were actually marching?’
‘Certainly!’
They were in the tiny back washroom of what had once been a tall, perhaps even rather stylish house – the wallpaper which was left was elaborate and expensive-looking. Now, the windows were boarded up, and the basin had gone: above their heads, the plaster and wood of the ceiling sagged down and when the guns vibrated they were showered with flakes and splinters. The room smelled stuffy, with the grease from their candle and with old dirt and dust. There was nothing in it at all, apart from what they themselves had brought except for an old stone flower-urn, ornate and quite undamaged, with a little, greenish soil still in the bottom.
It was late by the time they had seen Garrett, who was across the street in what had been a school. The cupboards hung open and, inside on the shelves, books were piled up, bundled with string and covered in dust. Names were written in pencil on the plaster at desk level:
Geneviève Maury. Marie Crêpes. Jean Bontin. Adèle P.
Barton wondered where they all were.
Coming back, a shell had soar
ed over their heads and they had raced for a doorway. Barton’s head and limbs were aching now. His eyes smarted, in the smoke from the candle.
‘For heaven’s sake …’
‘All right. Sorry.’
He had just written:
There is something all the men hate about this place. Now, I can sense it myself. Something old and bad and dead, a smell, a feeling you get as you walk across the street. It is not simply the bodies lying all about us, and the fact that the guns are firing, it is something else, something …
Hilliard had pulled his blanket half over him. Barton put the letter away. Footsteps on the stairs. None of the rooms in this house had doors.
‘Sir?’
Hilliard sat up at once. ‘What is it?’
‘I’d be glad if you could come, sir. It’s Harris.’
The Sergeant was invisible in the doorway. His voice sounded both apologetic and urgent. Hilliard was pushing off his blanket.
‘Let me go,’ Barton was on his feet. ‘You’ve been at it since we got here. You’d far better get some sleep.’
For he had seen John trying to work himself into a state of exhaustion, his face had been pale and stiff, and Barton had realized that he had had time to think all day, riding the horse, going back to the front, remembering. There had been no marching to tire out his body.
‘I’ll go.’
Besides, if there was something wrong, he felt in a mood to be at the centre of it, to see at once how bad everything could be. He was not tired, in spite of the physical aching. But Hilliard was behind him.
‘Harris?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s gone down into the cellar, sir. We’re not using it – but he’s in a bit of a state.’
They were going away.
‘You’d better stay here, Barton.’
He lit the candle again and watched the light flicker yellow through a gap in the ceiling. It was perfectly correct, John was in charge of the platoon, it was his job to go. All the same he resented it. ‘You’d better stay here.’ He had wanted to take charge. The idea was new to him and he thought about it, for he was not ambitious, did not want to lead, he had been perfectly content, was content. He had no illusions about himself as actual or potential soldier, no convictions about his duty in this war, no real desire to be here at all; except that he would not want to leave Hilliard, now. Yet he had wanted to go behind Sergeant Locke, down the stairs, to be responsible.
He reached over to his tunic for the letter and pencil.
I’ll send this off tomorrow, before we leave here. It’s very late now, but …
The room was filled with greenish light for a second, and then there was a whine and the crash of an exploding shell. He had no idea how close it had been but nothing had come as near as that before.
Now, it was quite dark again. He seemed to be all right. Much further away, guns boomed – a different sound.
‘Are you all right?’ Hilliard was in the doorway.
‘Perfectly, thanks. The candle went out.’
‘Do you think you could come down?’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Nothing – not really. It’s Harris.’
‘Yes?’
‘I can’t get him to move. Nobody can. The men have tried, I’ve said what I can think of, but he isn’t … he’s taken himself down there and he won’t come out. He doesn’t seem to hear us at all.’
‘What’s he doing?’
‘Nothing. He’s in a corner. He’s been there for a couple of hours apparently. They’ve been trying to persuade him to come out.’
‘Is he ill?’
‘I don’t think so. He won’t say anything.’
‘Can’t he be left there?’
‘Not in his present state, no. And he’ll have to come out in the morning. I shall have to get Franklin if he won’t budge for us.’
‘No. We’ll cope.’
They made their way down the unsteady staircase and along the passages of the house. Around them in the darkness the men lay, sleeping or listening. They picked their way between the blankets. Down in what had been the kitchen, the floor was stone and there were neither doors, windows, nor boards at the gaps. There was the whine of another shell and the sound of bricks crashing down, somewhere in the north of the town.
The other men of the platoon who had tried to help had now been sent away, only Sergeant Locke stood in the cellar, holding a candle. It smelt down here, a fouler smell, there might once have been latrines or rats. A stone ledge was let into the far wall, like a fireplace but without any chimney leading up from it. Harris was huddled inside like a foetus, his hands up near his face. He was not moving but making a continuous, agonized noise, a cry or a moan and yet neither of those. Barton remembered watching him play football in the orchard at Percelle. He was perhaps eighteen, stocky and red-headed. He had a harmonica, which he used to accompany their songs in the evening.
‘I thought you might know what to say to him better than I do.’
For a moment the three of them stood in the small pool of light in the dank cellar, looking towards the soldier, hearing him. The guns roared again and the boy’s voice rose a pitch higher. Barton remembered that Harris had come to the camp on the same train as Hilliard. Had taken scraps across the yard to the farm dog, each evening.
‘It might be better if I stayed with him on my own for a bit, mightn’t it?’
They hesitated.
‘If you can get him to go back upstairs, sir, he’ll calm down, he’ll be all right when he’s with the others again, they’ll see to him. If we can get him out of here.’
‘Yes,’ Hilliard said. ‘It’s no use crowding in on him, you’re quite right. I’ll go back. Call me if you want help. Sergeant, will you wait at the top of the stairs?’
‘Sir.’
Barton nodded. ‘I’ll bring him up.’ Hilliard’s face relaxed. They went away, out of the cellar and up the steps, to the noise of the guns in the distance.
Oh God, he is two years younger than me, he is Edward’s age, he knows no more about it than I do, we have neither of us seen anything, only heard, only heard. We can imagine it, that’s all. And I have to tell him that he must get up and go back, must pull himself together, and that tomorrow he must march on with the rest of us. In the end, he has to be ordered to do that.
He went forward quietly. The cellar floor was uneven. He stopped close beside the ledge, set down the candle. He could see Harris’s face, strangely altered with fear. He wondered how it would be with him when they got to the front line and into the trenches and into battle.
He put out his hand and found Harris’s wrist and held it. He I remembered the time when he had fallen out of a willow tree near the beck and lain on the ground and seen his own blood and cried out from fear at the sight, and Edward had held his wrist like that then, though he too had been afraid of the blood. Nevertheless, it had comforted them both.
For a moment the noise went on, the terrible, high moan. Harris’s pulse was thudding. Barton did not move his hand. He said, ‘I’ll stay here. It’s all right.’
He wondered what Captain Franklin would have done.
In a pause from the sound of the shelling, he heard a man bumping as he turned over on the floor overhead.
‘Harris?’
The boy’s teeth began to chatter. The skin of his wrist felt hot under Barton’s touch. For a long time neither of them moved. Then Harris lurched up, and forwards, his head touched his knees and he began to cry, not lifting his hands to wipe his face. Barton waited. The crying went on and on. Then, quite abruptly, stopped.
‘I can’t go,’ Harris said. Whispered. He looked up into Barton’s face. ‘I’m afraid.’
‘Yes.’
He wanted to weep, then, he felt old, he thought that he had seen and heard all that he ever needed to see, all the fear there could be, that he, too, could not go.
‘You wait, you don’t know anything
, you haven’t seen anything yet. Barton. You wait.’
Now, he had. And they were only here in Feuvry, three miles or more away from the front line. Only here.
‘What’ll happen to me, sir? What’ll happen to me? I can’t go.’
Barton stayed in the cellar for a long time with Harris, patiently hearing the tale of misery and fear, and there was nothing he could do about any of it, he was distressed at his own inadequacy, there was none of it that he had not felt or imagined himself. Harris had spent much of his time at Percelle listening to the stories all the men had been telling about that summer’s offensive, the tales of death and horror had lodged in his mind and bred fear, until today, after the march and the heat and his tiredness, he had broken under the strain of them.
But in the end, somehow, Barton got him to come out, to agree that he must go back upstairs among the others, for then nothing would be said or done to him, and that, tomorrow, he would march on again, up to the front line.
He heard his own words and they echoed in his ears and he wondered at them, for they were meaningless, false, they gave him no comfort – how, then, could they do anything for Harris? He was only certain that Franklin must not have to be informed. He said as much.
‘You do see that it would be better not, don’t you?’
Silence. Then, ‘Yes, sir.’
‘If you come up now, it’ll all be forgotten.’
‘Sergeant Locke ….’
‘Won’t say anything.’
‘I’m …’
Silence again for a long time. Harris still had his knees hunched up to his chest. It was dark in the cellar now, the candle had long since gone out.
‘It’s pretty late and we do have to get going first thing in the morning. We need to sleep.’
Harris still hesitated, shivering. Then, slowly, he got down from the stone ledge. The guns were still roaring. Barton wondered what was happening at the front line. There were rumours all over Feuvry, and their own Battalion repeated them. Nobody knew the truth.
They felt their way back up the steps, hands groping along the walls. It occurred to him that the best thing for Harris would be alcohol – rum issue had been hours ago, he would have to go upstairs for his own flask.