Ned’s first letter from France arrived by afternoon post on Christmas Eve, with a whole batch of Christmas cards. To Meriel’s disgust it carried a large red label on the envelope, EXAMINED BY BASE CENSOR, and at the top of every page an intrusive purple stamp,’ Contrôle par I’Autorité Militaire’.
Confounded busybodies!
Base Camp, Étaples.
Tuesday, December 19th 1916
My darling girl,
Here am I lying on my stretcher bed in this chaotic place, trying to make love to you by candlelight with the stub of a copying pencil!
As a matter of fact I’m dog-tired; half asleep already in spite of the guns and the motor lorry convoys.
I can still hardly conceive myself to be a soldier, and quite feel that I’ll wake up at any moment to find myself back home in bed with you. And darling, how I wish that I could! Everything’s so disorganised and unreal, and so totally different out here, that England already seems light years away. It barely seems possible that only two days have passed since we were all together on Seaford station.
Simmie came to see me off at Victoria as arranged. But there was such a mob of officers around us that we really weren’t able to say goodbye properly; although I was at least able to give her a wire to send you. Did you get it all right?
Our crossing to Boulogne was a fairly good one I think. But I felt bilious anyway. No one seemed to be expecting us at this end. So we spent the entire afternoon being passed from one weary-looking official to another, filling in forms and being told to go away and come back in an hour or so. Eventually we put up at the Hôtel du Louvre, with instructions to proceed to The Base at Étaples next morning, and await further orders there. ‘Proceeding’, as we later discovered, consisted of jerking by stages down the coastal railway, often sitting for ages quite stationary in a freezing compartment and literally taking hours to travel a distance of no more than twenty miles. I tell you if it hadn’t been for the other officers in our first class compartment (all of them good sorts) I think I would have gone quite mad with boredom. As it was we played ‘nap’ and took it in turn to read the Strand Magazine – and of course I talked a great deal about you. So somehow the time passed.
Things were no more organised here at The Base when we finally reached it. In fact nobody seemed to have heard of any of us. And as I write this I’m still ‘awaiting further orders’. I haven’t yet been able to get any news at all of my battalion or its whereabouts. So when, or even if, I’ll be allowed to join it remains a mystery. Who knows, perhaps I’ll still be here for Christmas? In the meantime, I’ve been allocated a tiny corrugated iron shanty like an allotment hut all to myself. Just the kind of place you’d like to sleep in I think, with any amount of fresh air available! There’s a bitter north wind blowing now, and it’s all I can do to keep my candle going. I wonder if you’ve got your snow over there yet? Everything’s frozen solid here, including all the outside taps and most of the drinking water.
The Base is an absolutely vast place outside Étaples town and slap on the Boulogne-Paris railway – about ten times as big as South Camp at Seaford I should say, although quite as dreary to look at. The Tommies call it ‘Eat-apples’ in honour of the various hospitals here, which have wards in dozens and dozens of huts and tents for wounded of all nationalities, including Germans. It seems so pointless, doesn’t it, that we should do our outmost to kill the blighters in any way we can at the Front, and then try just as hard to nurse them back to life again behind it!
Have you forgiven me yet, my darling, for joining up? If I don’t fully understand my own motives for doing so, I know I shouldn’t expect you to. But please try! You know that whatever comes, I love you more than anything; and whatever I have to get used to out here, I don’t ever want to adjust to not having you physically near me. Nothing and no one else will do. My weaknesses need your strengths, Meri, just as my body needs yours (and just now that’s a very great deal!). It helps to write, makes me feel that I’m talking to you, and in a way that brings you closer.
I will write as often as ever I can. But I’m afraid you must be content with very few details of what I’m actually doing – because that’s all the censors out here will allow. I’ll write a postcard each to Patrick and to Robbie as soon as possible. (I find that I’m allowed to send picture postcards of Étaples town, since no one supposes the Boches to be ignorant of our Base positions.) I will also try to get some lines off to Gran and to Simmie. It was good of her to come and see me off, wasn’t it? Although upsetting naturally for both of us.
I live in hopes of hearing from you tomorrow, or the next day at the latest. It would be such bad luck to have to go on without more mail. The way things are (or aren’t) organised over here, goodness knows when or where it would catch me up!
Goodnight now, sweetheart. Please give those two little imps hugs and kisses from me (yours are all being stored up), and tell them not to forget their Dad.
I know I don’t have to tell you to be brave – it’s your second name, isn’t it? This is a very wretched business. But perhaps it won’t be for much longer after all. They’re saying over here that the war will be over by the spring – quite the latest rumour! Meantime, take care of yourself and those two little ducks; and don’t overdo things on the farm. The land will survive, it always does – ask old Bat.
I do so wish I could have you in my arms just for a minute. Or for an hour, or for a decade or two. Then I’d give you the rest of my news all right!
You know you’re as much loved as you possibly can be, by your own absolutely devoted and adoring – and lonely old
xxxxx Nednoggin xxxxx
P.S. Do you realise that it’ll be exactly ten years ago next Monday that I set out on another momentous journey, back across the Plain of Tolima and thence home to England? But what a difference. We were together then weren’t we, for the first time in a way. Now who knows when we shall be again?
The Bury, Sellington.
January 16th 1917
My dear old frozen old exile,
The only mail from you this morning, sad to say, was a card to Patrick (and you know I had to go all yesterday without as well!). Never mind, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for this afternoon’s post. I only hope to goodness your letter hasn’t gone astray like that one last month. I have to tell you that they’ve let some moron loose out there with a little rubber stamp – insists on plonking his blessed ‘Army’ and ‘Field Post Office’ nonsenses bang on top of my name and address, as if it isn’t quite bad enough having them nosey-parkering through the contents! I really don’t know how you can bear to do it for your men. Not that your letters have ever been censored yet (other than by Second Lieutenant E.C. Ashby, that is!!). Now I know you’re not allowed to tell me where you are or anything like that, Ned. But I do think you could give me a few more details. It’s quite impossible to get any real picture from the little scraps you’ve been dishing out since you left Étaples. Your letters really aren’t a patch on mine to you from South America. (Oh yes, I know they’re written under difficult circumstances and all that. But then so were mine!!) By this post I’m sending you two writing blocks and some envelopes anyway. So make good use of them!
Patrick was over the moon with his card. Honestly Noggin, you should have seen the look on his face when I handed it to him. Words utterly failed him! And after he’d finished reading it he stuck it up his school jersey (having no pocket in his knickers), where as far as I know it still resides.
The last thing I heard from you was that your outfit will be moving again soon, which I suppose could account for the delay with the mails. You make no mention of it in your card to Pat (do try to be more helpful, dearie). But of course we’re all hoping it won’t be anywhere too lively. And remember, Ned, whatever happens, take no risks. I should hope I don’t have to remind you that your first duty is to yourself and your family. It seems to me that there are a great deal too many people sounding off about self-sacrifice and the common good nowadays; and I wouldn’t want anyone to take them too seriously.
It’s cold as charity over here, with snow frozen into ruts and icicles hanging from all the gutters. So no more ploughing I fear. The cowshed is just about the warmest place on the farm, as you can imagine. So I spend as much time down there as I can. We can’t ever have much of a fire in the house now; coal really is too dear for words, and we need all we can get for the threshing tackle. Although you talk so fondly of ‘home comforts’, I can assure you that they’re not much in evidence at The Bury!!
In one of your letters last week you said that you wished I was more affectionate in mine to you, and I’ve been wondering ever since how best to reply. The truth is, Nog, that if I once started being sentimental I’m afraid that I might lose control – and I just can’t risk that. I’m a PIG I know. But never mind, I’ll make up for it all one fine day soon. See if I don’t! And for what it’s worth I can tell you that every time I see the post-boy with a telegram, my heart simply stops. I’d go crazy if anything happened to you. No I mean it!
Talking of going crazy, you should see your father now! The War Effort really has given him a new lease of life, everyone says so. He dashes about all over the farm, puffing and panting and red in the face, but happy as Larry all the same. He was down at the barn all yesterday morning to supervise the men on the steam thresher. Then in he came to luncheon, right into the dining room, Ned, absolutely smothered from head to foot in dust and briffen-chaff! Talk about a row! For a moment I quite thought G.M. was going to put him across her knee!!
Well that’s about it for today. I’m enclosing with this a letter I had from Simmie yesterday morning (wonders will never cease!). You see even our mails over here must be pretty hopeless, since I wrote her a good long letter last Friday, which she clearly hasn’t received. I can’t spare the time to traipse up to town, of course, and she refuses to come down here, although naturally she’d be much safer in Sussex with all those beastly Zeppelins buzzing over London. But you know Simmie, she won’t be told!
Keep your tail up old bean and take good care of yourself, and write, write soonissimo!
I do love you,
Meri xx
The post-corporal had sent her letter up to Ned’s billet half an hour earlier, and he’d already read it three times. He known it was from Meriel the moment he caught sight of the Ridouts Economy Label (‘Not to be used on foreign correspondence’), which she habitually pasted over his own field service envelopes with her usual scorn for regulations. As always, he deliberately postponed the moment of opening for as long as he could bear it. That was the best moment of a letter from Meriel, the act of breaching the illegal Ridouts label – like the act of love itself, when you felt her need reach out for yours. But afterwards, always, there was anti-climax. She admitted it herself. She was afraid to be sentimental, and the endearments he so badly needed to hear were precious few:
My dear… dearie… old bean… Oh Meri!
I’d go crazy if anything happened to you… I do love you… That was something to hold on to at least. And of course he knew what she was like. Love letters simply weren’t Meriel’s style. If you wanted emotional support from her – well then you just had to fall back on those old memories, the things that the war couldn’t spoil. You had to snuff the candle and open the shutters, as he’d just done. You had to stand at the window in the darkness and force yourself to face the war that was waiting for you out there beyond Arras, while you groped for the images that would help to see you through it.
It was a tall window, tall and narrow, with heavy lace curtains and a dim view of the crossroads below. He could see the shadow of a cat crossing between the houses, black against the frosty stairway…
… Meriel bounding down the hacienda steps, tearing down the hill – crying out her love for him…
A black-robed curé on a bicycle turned the corner from the church, bumping home across the frozen cobbles…
… Meriel in a cycling outfit with her boater all skew-whiff – and, ‘Listen you great noggin. I already love you more than any woman in her senses, or out of them for that matter, has ever loved a man. You are my world. I can’t make sense of life without you…’
Meriel in the orchard, on her back amongst the cuckooflowers – and a pulse, a heavy pulse, and bursting brightness!
He was listening to the ponderous muffled thumping of the artillery at the Front somewhere to the east of Arras. He watched a parachute flare curve high above the grey slate roofs of Wanquetin, to burst and bathe the landscape in a ghostly greenish light; then another, crimson this time like a blossom, with the drifting red smoke of exploding shells beneath it. The windows of the estaminet below him were blacked out. The men at the bar down there couldn’t see the flares – and might even have been singing loudly enough to miss the shells as well.
‘Auprès de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon – auprès de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon dormir…’
He thought of Meriel asleep beside him in the lotus bed from Heal’s with her brown hair spread across the pillow; Meriel relaxed, compliant in a way that she never was awake; nestling, fitting to the curve of his own body, warm against him…
But then another soaring white flare burst high into the sky; and for a moment at the wavering climax of its arc, its light was bright as day. He could see every strand in the lace curtains, every tile and brick and cobble in the village street, and the white ribbon of the road that crossed the downs to Arras. It was the way they’d march tomorrow to the Front.
Ned closed the shutters and re-lit the candle, tucking Meriel’s letter away with the others in his valise, to be read later when he needed her again. After the weeks of waiting and exercising at Sibiville, the prospect of action came almost as a relief. He’d endured the brass-polishing and parades and all the pompous petty militarism of the rest camp in the knowledge that he was witnessing a resurrection; the painful reconstruction of a battalion that had lost more men on the Somme than it could call on now, despite continuous infusions of recruits. But none of that had made the waiting easier.
‘Funny thing; it never does, Mister A. Never does get easier,’ his platoon sergeant, Davey, confided on the strength of a proffered Woodbine. ‘Though after all this bollock shakin’ you’d think we would be glad to get back to the shootin’ gallery, if only for a bleedin’ rest!’
They finally left Sibiville in late afternoon, for a fifteen mile route-march over treacherous, icy pavée – pausing for ten minutes in every sixty to rest at the dark roadside in huddled groups of glowing fag ends. The billets at Wanquetin had been cramped and overcrowded for the most part, and although Ned was fortunate to secure a single room in the estaminet for himself and his batman, it had been at the cost of interminable choruses of ‘Auprès de ma blonde’ and ‘When this bloody war is over’ from close beneath his bed – not to mention a hostile ménagère in carpet slippers, who patently cared more for the polished surface of her hall tiles than any of the greater issues of war or peace.
‘Messieurs! Ça ne vous dérangerait pas de vous essuyer les pieds!’
The front line settlement of Arras, when they reached it, was surprisingly much quieter. For a city under siege the place seemed strangely empty. Many of the houses were still undamaged. Others had been patched with canvas and iron sheeting, yet seemed abandoned, with drawn curtains and snow across their door sills. The shop windows had all been boarded up or stuffed with mattresses – and although they had tramped noisily along the Rue Gambetta, there were no grateful citizens to welcome their battalion. In the Place de la Gare a couple of tattered posters advertised the delights of the Côte d’Azur and Bruxelles Historique. But there were German trenches now a bare mile away across the Brussels line; and but for a single military policeman, the station was deserted.
The flares and Very lights were up again soon after dark. One or two loud detonations shook their billet near the station, but no one seemed concerned. ‘Only the night shift signin’ on. Jerry’s got the ’ump see, same as us,’ Davey remarked after the second explosion. ‘’E’ll send over a couple more ‘friendlies’, Mister A, then pack it in as like as not.’
Which was exactly what he did. By the time they’d sent a runner down to summon Ned and the other platoon commanders to an operations briefing in the square, the German trenches in the eastern suburbs were entirely silent.
In the town centre the reverse applied. Quite suddenly it seemed, its previously empty pavements thronged with soldiers and civilians. Convoys of hooded motor lorries shuddered out of side streets to converge on the five cobbled acres of the Grande Place, where they disgorged their loads. Houses which looked empty now showed light discreetly through their curtains, while queues outside a number of blank-faced estaminets and shops suggested that their business was still very much alive. The Grande Place and the Petite Place that joined it were both surrounded by arched colonnades which must once have looked magnificent, but now were cluttered with the impedimenta of modern warfare: sandbags, A-frames, trench revetting, screw pickets; and barbed wire wound into tight ‘gooseberries’, or heaped in tangled loops that threatened to spring out on the unwary.
‘Barbed Wire Square, that’s what we call it,’ said their runner as he led them through an archway to the sandbagged entrance of what appeared to be an old wine cellar. At the foot of a stone stairway, an N.C.O. of the Royal Engineers was waiting to receive them..
‘That’s it, that’s the way; ’urry along gentlemen if you please; we ’aven’t got all night.’ A brassard identified the fellow as a ‘Caves Officer’, and although he only ranked as sergeant, Ned and the other subalterns were sufficiently disconcerted by his manner to file down the stairs obediently and form a circle round him.
‘That’s the ticket; all ’ere then are we? Well gentlemen, I suppose you’ve bin told you’ll be bringin’ your chaps in to sweat it out in commy trenches an’ the like?’ He raised an enquiring eyebrow in Ned’s direction, but didn’t wait for him to answer. ‘Well of course you ’ave. Couldn’t ’ardly be otherwise, ’cos Jerry ’as big ears big, an’ Caves is ’ush-’ush, see?’ He pointed at a crude picture of an owl painted on the wall beside the stairs, with the words: ‘THE MORE HE HEARD THE LESS HE SPOKE’ neatly printed underneath it.
‘That’s where I come in, for briefin’ on the spot. Jerry ’asn’t cottoned onto us as yet, an’ Staff aims to keep it that way ’til we’re ready to shove our Third Army right up ’is teutonic arse.’ He smiled benignly.
‘You see gentlemen, in a manner of speakin’ these ’ere Caves are the commy trenches to the Front. We don’t ’old with none of yer rabbit-scrape runs. Not down ’ere we don’t! Close on twenty miles of tunnels an’ quarries, all through solid, blinkin’ chalk. That’s our communications, from Barbed Wire Square all the way to Jerry’s line – electric lights, runnin’ water, ’ospital, telephone exchange… you name it, an’ you may be sure we got it in the Caves – an’ livin’ accommodation besides for twenty ’fousand Allied troops!’
The sergeant nodded. ‘I’ll tell you gentlemen, there’s never been nothin’ like these ‘ere Caves of Arras, not even in ’istory!’