‘I don’t suppose you’re writing to your parents, are you, William?’ Pips asked him. ‘About Harold?’
Tight-lipped, William shook his head.
‘Then I will. They should be told what Harold said.’
‘I can’t stop you,’ he said stiffly. ‘But I’d be obliged if you don’t mention me. Don’t even say I was with him at the end.’
Pips sighed. ‘William, I have to. He wanted them to know about you.’
He turned away without another word.
Pips found it difficult to write to the Dawsons, but eventually she found what she hoped were the right words.
You will have heard from Harold’s superior officer by now, but I wanted you to hear this from me.
Here she paused and wondered how to tell the truth without causing them even more anguish. The usual way was to say that he died instantly and suffered no pain, and though Pips didn’t always agree with this tradition, when it came to writing about their son’s suffering, she found she couldn’t be completely truthful, and began to understand why officialdom adopted the wording it did. With a heavy heart, she wrote:
William carried him from the battlefield to our first-aid post, which is only yards behind the front line. We – and Alice too – were with him and he died only a few moments later. Please believe me that he didn’t suffer, but he wanted you to know that he and his brothers had been wrong about William. William is no coward. As a stretcher bearer he must go out into the battlefield, completely unarmed himself, to bring in the wounded. Harold asked me to tell you that William is ‘braver than the rest of them put together’. He said that this is one of Ma’s favourite sayings.
I am deeply sorry for your loss.
She felt the letter was rather stilted, but she didn’t know how else to word it.
When Pips’s letter arrived at the Dawsons’ home, Norah showed it to Ma and then burned it in the grate. She neither showed it to Len nor even told him about it.
‘When the whistle goes, Roy, you stick close to me. You hear me?’
Roy nodded. He dared not speak. He was afraid that his teeth would chatter with fear and be seen as cowardice. Roy, younger than his brother by six years, had always looked up to Bernard. He would follow him to the ends of the earth and into the jaws of hell. In fact, he probably was doing just that in this dreadful place.
It had been all right at first. But the night when they’d tried to rescue the Sherwoods had left its mark on Roy. Now, here they were, supposedly going yet again in support of the Sherwoods near a place called Longueval.
‘Do you – do you think we might see Boy this time?’
When they’d volunteered along with all the other Kitchener recruits, it had seemed like a merry jape, a chance to go abroad, to see a bit of the world and an opportunity to serve one’s country. Now, it was anything but that.
They were ‘standing to’ on the fire step, a long line of them waiting for the signal that would send them up the ladders and over the parapet of the newly dug trenches. Behind them were the stretcher bearers, standing quietly against the back wall of the trench with their first-aid bags and stretchers. The men about to go into battle studiously avoided talking to them, or even looking at them, as if by doing so they could ignore the reason they were there. The soldiers believed they wouldn’t be the ones to get injured or killed; that would be the other fellow. No, in a few hours’ time they’d be back in the trenches, sitting cosily in a dugout cooking up bully beef on a small primus stove and laughing and joking about how they’d routed the enemy, how they’d sent him packing . . .
The whistle shrilled all the way down the line and up the ladders they went, across the ground to cut their way through the barbed wire and then into the open ground between the two lines of opposing trenches. The enemy opened fire and the slaughter began again.
‘Come on, Roy,’ Bernard shouted. ‘Stay close, weave from side to side, firing as you go, like we was taught.’
They had as little chance as they would facing a firing squad. The hail of bullets mowed them down.
‘Bernard! I’m hit.’
Through the noise and the smoke, Bernard heard his brother’s voice. He stopped firing his gun and turned to see Roy on the ground, reaching out his hand towards him. Then he felt a thud in his back and fell forward, right beside his brother. Roy was crying, pulling at Bernard’s sleeve. ‘Bernard, help me. I’m hit.’
‘It’s all right, Roy,’ Bernard gasped. ‘I’m here. We’ll be all right. We’ll crawl back to the trench . . . Aah!’ His words ended in a groan of pain, but, stoically, he dragged himself to his knees and then to his feet. With a gigantic effort, he pulled Roy up and they staggered like two drunks back towards their own trench. But the earth gave way between them and they both felt themselves falling forwards, rolling down the sides of a shell hole. Roy cried out and Bernard felt the air knocked out of his lungs. They lay together in the bottom of the hole. Bernard moved his arm, wincing with pain as he did so, and put it over his brother.
‘We’ll be all right, Roy. Just hang on. The stretcher bearers will find us. You saw them all standing behind us, didn’t you? That’s what they were there for. When the shooting stops, they’ll come out looking for us. It won’t be long. Just hang on . . .’
Roy was whimpering. ‘I’m hit in the stomach, Bernard. I can feel the blood . . .’
‘Don’t, Roy. Don’t touch it. They’ll come soon.’
‘The pain, Bernard. I can’t bear it.’ There was a pause and then, ‘Will William come and find us, Bernard? I want William to come.’
‘He will, Roy. ’Course he will. He’ll come looking for us.’
But William was further down the line, waiting in the trench until he could begin to bring in the wounded from no-man’s-land. He had no idea that his two brothers were less than six miles away and desperately in need of his help.
As dusk came the guns fell silent and the stretcher bearers began their gruesome task.
Weak now, from loss of blood and the terrible pain, Roy was delirious. ‘William, William,’ he cried incessantly.
With still a little strength, Bernard began to shout, ‘Help, help. Over here.’
It seemed an age before they heard voices at the edge of the crater.
‘There’s two down here, Wilf,’ a voice said. ‘Let’s go down and have a look. I reckon I saw one moving.’
Two figures slithered down the side of the shell hole.
‘Nah, mate,’ a cheerful voice greeted them.
Roy reached out a trembling hand. ‘William – William, is that you?’
‘Sorry, mate. I’m Alf and this ’ere’s Wilf.’
But Roy didn’t understand. ‘I knew you’d come and find us. William, I’m so sorry about what happened . . .’
‘S’all right, mate, take it easy. We’ll get you back. Now, who’s going first, ’cos there’s only the two of us?’
‘Take Roy,’ Bernard gasped and winced in pain again.
The stretcher bearer who’d said his name was Alf regarded them both. ‘I reckon we ought to take you first,’ he said to Bernard. ‘He won’t last . . .’
‘Don’t say that,’ Bernard groaned. ‘He’s me brother. Please, take him.’
‘All right,’ Alf agreed and he and Wilf lifted Roy onto their stretcher. ‘We’ll be back for you as soon as we can, mate.’
‘I knew you’d come and find us, William,’ were the last words Bernard heard Roy utter as the two strangers struggled up the side of the shell hole with their casualty.
After they’d gone, Bernard felt himself let go. Believing that his younger brother was now in good hands, he slipped into blissful unconsciousness. When the two stretcher bearers, true to their promise, returned, it was to find Bernard in a deep coma and, although they took him back to their trenches, he died before they could even get him to a dressing station.
‘That’s a shame,’ Alf said to Wilf. ‘We did our best, though, didn’t we, mate?’
‘We did. Brothers, they said they were, didn’t they?’
Alf nodded. ‘It’ll be hard for their parents to hear that they’ve lost both their sons on the same day, won’t it? I knew the first one was a goner, but I did think this one had a chance. Oh well, come on, we’d best get back out there and see if there’s anyone we can save.’
The two bearers went back out into no-man’s-land and continued their daunting task. By dawn the following day, after a strenuous night of carrying the wounded and dying from the field of battle, the deaths of the two brothers had become just two more amongst the many losses they witnessed that night.