STONEHENGE, WILTSHIRE
A weird place, Ess, qt like the pic on reverse, but less colourful. A gt sense of the insignificance of it/us all. It may be some time before I am in postn able to write. With affection.
Jack
There was no telling where they were now. Rumour on the lower ranks had it that this was France, which, as far as they were concerned, was as good a general name as any to give territory which lay across the English Channel.
From Hampstead to training-camp on Salisbury Plain, from training-camp to a billet in a coal-mining village, from the village to the Front Line.
Until they embarked for France, time had been a slippery thing, slithering over anonymous days. But, once in the war zone, it set into spans of days at the Front and days behind the Lines.
Before that? For Jack, days of drill. Of inflamed muscles, blistered toes and heels, calloused soles. Night-times of oblivion. Arousal at first light with the rank odour in his nostrils of himself and other men whose tobacco and armpits were equally rank.
Drilled, paraded, sweated, hefted.
Elation, fulfilment, camaraderie and unreasoning dislike.
Enthusiasm, futility, acceptance.
Jack rammed a bayonet into the guts of sacks of sawdust and straw; aimed inaccurately at targets and learned to clean his rifle with the same pernickety care with which he tended his boots. He obeyed commands unquestioningly and submerged his ego.
The loyalty that developed was unique to the rag-tag raw group as it became unified and changed.
In the course of three weeks the amorphous parcel of ingredients that had made up John Clermont Moth were crushed into the mould of Private Moth which was quite unsuited to his old accent and manner. On the way to becoming Private Moth he learnt to roll a cigarette, to perform hitherto private ablutions without privacy, and to expect food to provide nothing but sustenance and exercise no satisfaction.
Like his fellow greenhorns, Private Moth learned to submit individuality for the betterment of the group wherein one laggard demeaned the unit and endangered its existence. And, like his fellows, he made friendships of a kind that might, in their previous existence, have taken years to become forged and enduring.
Over cobbled roads, the unit marched into a coal-mining village.
‘Have you ever known the like of it? Take a man away from his own valleys, and put ’im down in another’ undreds of miles away.’
‘Et’s what et’s all abowt, boye.’
Taff from the Rhonda and Farmer Giles from Norfolk. They had civilian names, and they had army numbers, but whilst they wore khaki they were, to their close companions, known only by the names that welded them to one another – Taff, Farmer Giles, Chalky, Ginge, Cully and Lofty. Except only briefly and on rare occasions, they kept them uninvolved with one another’s domestic existence.
The shallow sentiment of a myth that called itself ‘Hearth and Home’ called its sacrificial young men by the name ‘Tommy’, but Tommy knew himself to be ‘Taff’, ‘Farmer Giles’ and ‘Lofty’. Jack’s family had never much used ‘pet’ names or names of endearment, but, having been given the name ‘Lofty’, he felt himself to be a more loyal member of their particular circle than he had ever felt as a member of his college teams and clubs.
As a youth, Jack had been on the Continent several times. He spoke French fluently and so, as well as being a wonder to his friends, he was useful during the long cross-country march. When it came to the price of a round of drinks in a town or a dozen eggs from a farmer, Lofty was their negotiator.
Two days before they marched to their encampment on the boundaries of the coal-mining village, they heard their first guns, a rumble that gave no greater surge of adrenalin than if it had been the sound of thunder which it resembled. A cheer went up and somebody played ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ on a mouth-organ for the singing of a blasphemous version of the hymn.
It was probably the last cheer that this raw platoon was likely to give, for they were soon to be in terrain where orders were not heard clearly as on a parade-ground, neither would they carry as in clear Wiltshire air, but would be half-heard through machine-gun rattle and cut short by shrapnel.
Food-scraps not scavenged by dogs but by rats.
Blankets not shared by a few nibbling mice, but by lice that even with familiarity never ceased to cause disgust.
The plunge of a bayonet would not be into homely-smelling sawdust, nor its withdrawal accompanied by a hiss as it passed through straw. Here, beyond the mean houses, pit-tips and railway lines, would be snapping bones, stink, and slurping human viscera.
Here was the place to which Hearth and Home closed its mind.
Here was where few of those who got away would ever find the courage to speak of, but would never be rid of.
Here was where ‘Tommy’ ceased to exist.
‘Men’, ‘Lower ranks’, ‘Casualties’, ‘Dead’.
But, thankfully billeted, Jack, like his companions Taff and Farmer Giles and the rest of their platoon, did not let his thoughts run further ahead than something hot inside him and his head down for a few hours’ rest.
Wally Archer, as a single man of the right age, was one of the first to be called after Conscription was introduced.
He waited until he and Nancy had clocked off their late shift and were walking through the chill, January streets of Bethnal Green to tell her that he had received his papers. They were late because of the fog, a sodden, yellow cheesecloth that hung like curtains before their faces. The damp coalesced into drops on their uniforms and Nancy’s hair, the chemicals from the gasworks and factory chimneys choked them, and the coal-smoke from domestic fires stung their eyes and throats.
‘Gawd, Nance, nobody don’t need to go to France tonight to get gassed, you can stop home and cop it.’
Because the sounds were deadened or distorted, cabs and other vehicles loomed suddenly upon them. Passers-by tumbled along, guided as well as they could manage it by railings and walls.
Wally’s arm held Nancy Dickenson firmly as they made their way in the direction of Nancy’s lodgings. ‘I shan’t go.’
‘We could get married, Wally. It’s only single men they’re conscripting, isn’t it?’
‘If we get married, Nance, we’ll do it because we want to. It’d be like a shotgun wedding. I shall go before the Tribunal.’
‘I heard that they’re making objectors go to France and collect bodies.’
‘They’ll have to carry me then, I don’t want nothing to do with their bleedin’ war, what’s war got to do with people like us? Nothing! Our class hasn’t never got nothing out of war except pain and death. Let them that wants a war fight it. Let some of them what’s making millions out of munitions get out there with one of their own guns. Fat chance of that!’
‘Then they’ll put you in prison, won’t they?’
‘Not without a fight.’
‘What about your mother?’
‘Ma will be all right. If I was to join the army, she’d kill me before I even got there.’
Nancy smiled behind the scarf tied about her face. May Archer was a thin, brown-speckled, fierce little lady who would do anything for anybody so long as they didn’t try to make a fuss about it. It was she, rather than his lighterman father, who had lit the fire of dissent in her only son. Yes, thought Nancy, May will be all right.
Wally knew that his activities as a union man and a leader in the bitter strike last May would not help him; he had even been on the front page of the Herald. A known follower of Marx, it was a chance for Them to get back at him.
The walk to Nancy’s flat that usually took twenty minutes after any other late shift, had tonight taken them almost two hours. Usually Wally would go up with her for a cup of cocoa, and perhaps a pie or a plate of stew and a talk about his great passion, The Union, and then do the walk to where he lived with May.
Nancy let them in, and with exaggerated carefulness they mounted the stairs to her room.
There were people who would have wondered how on earth Nancy managed to live in such cramped space, but it was in a room not much bigger than this that most of the Dickenson family had slept. Being used to small quarters, Nancy knew exactly how to keep on top of things, so that it appeared always neat and clean. Most of the space was taken up by a single bed, a small table, and a cupboard which served also as a larder. A minute gas-fire beside a coin-in-the-slot meter and a primus stove were the only facilities.
An outside lavatory shared with other tenants was two flights down, and water needed to be carried from the ground floor. Routinely, Nancy carried her bits of rubbish down when she was leaving, and her water up when she returned.
Nancy pumped up the primus and put on the tin kettle, whilst Wally fed the meter, lit the gas-fire and laid their wrapped suppers on top to keep warm.
‘It’s this I shall miss as much as anything, Nance.’
‘The good life never lasts. It comes and goes, but it never lasts.’
‘Don’t say that. You don’t have to let them bleeders get us down. If they puts me in choky, it won’t be for ever.’ He put his arms round her waist and pulled her to him: she well-formed, he fleshless and wiry like May. They were almost the same height. ‘We shall have good times like this again.’
She kissed him fondly. ‘I love you, Wally Archer, you’re the best man ever stepped foot in a pair of boots.’
‘Now then, Nancy, you’re only saying that because it’s true.’
‘I couldn’t bear it if they were to put you in prison.’
‘You’d bear it all right. And you must. I won’t be the only one. There’ll be other blokes like me and they’re going to need help.’
‘I don’t know what I could do.’
‘Plenty. You showed what you can do with your birth control.’
‘Wally! You should call it Family Planning. You always have to call a spade a spade.’
He grinned at her. ‘And a johnny a johnny.’
‘Wally! I still don’t find it too easy to say things out aloud.’
‘I heard that you’re damned good. Talks plain and don’t make women feel embarrassed about it, is what I heard.’
‘It’s easier with the women. And I’m getting better at it. The main thing is getting through to people so’s they can help theirselves.’
She made a strong brew of tea and he laid out their pie, peas and mash, which they sat to eat on the one chair and a chintz-covered apple-box at the small table.
He pulled aside the net curtain that covered the window. On the other side of the glass, fog like dirty yellow plush pressed against it. ‘I’d best make tracks. It’s going to take me a time to get home.’
‘Wally? It’s a bad night. You don’t have to go.’
He looked up at her from beneath his arched eyebrows and long curling lashes. ‘You propositioning me, Nance?’
To hide her shyness, she collected the plates, put them in a bowl with a bar of soap and poured in water from the kettle. ‘It seems awful you having to go out in this. You could have kipped down at the depot, if it hadn’t been that you insisted on seeing me home.’
He took the kettle from her and kissed her long and firmly on the mouth. ‘Lord help us, Nancy Dickenson, I thought you’d never ask.’
They stood face to face, enveloped in one another’s arms. ‘You haven’t got room to talk, Wally Archer. I was beginning to think I should stop a virgin for ever.’
‘You’re a virgin, Nance? You ain’t never had nothing?’
‘Never.’
He hugged her hard. ‘Lord, there’s a turn up for the book.’
‘I always thought I’d wait till the right man came along.’ And if she was entirely truthful, she had always been afraid of finding herself with a baby and going down the slippery slope. But now she had the knowledge and the means to prevent that happening.
‘And who is he then? This right man?’
‘I don’t know that I should tell you, might make you vain.’
He rasped her cheek with his day’s growth of whiskers.
‘Why not? It’s something to be vain about when a gel tells you you’re the Mister Right she waited twenty years to find.’
‘Oh Wally, you are a nice, good man. Not only the right man, the best one as well.’
Before February was out, Wally’s case had been heard by a tribunal consisting of men who were out of sympathy even with appellants whose pacifism sprang from religious conviction. It had no compassion at all for a man who, as the inquisitors told one another, was fighter enough when it came to leading a rabble of strikers, but had no belly to fight like a man for his King and Country.
He requested an appeal, but was turned down.
Walter Archer, known striker and agitator, had been a thorn in the flesh for too long so, with thirty other objectors, Wally was locked up in Reading gaol and later shipped to France.