"Wake up, private!"
A strong punch to my left shoulder brings me to my senses. Three seconds ago I was sound asleep and in the middle of a nightmare. In my nightmare state I was lounging in the middle of a scorching wheat field, in fact it was my family farm field. Near the old barn I could see someone fighting….It was Fleur my sweetheart, she was gesticulating frantically against the german invaders who managed to reach our mighty British Empire somehow. I couldn't stand that infamous sight so I ran with all my might to kill that bastard. "STEP ASIDE FROM HER YOU BLOODY COWARD!" I shouted, she saw me and began to eagerly smash her milk bottle holder on the german pig while his attention was turned to me and knocked him out instantly. Before I could reach her so I could have her in my arms. In a flash, a bullet hit my shoulder and of course that "bullet" was actually the fist of my corporal. Fleur was nowhere near me at this instant, because I came to my senses and she was still at the farm waiting for me to return safely.
My corporal hit me in mid-stride, and he's already walked another ten feet past me before I've sat up and readjusted my hat. "We arrive in ten minutes," he shouts, to nobody in particular. "Prochaine arrĂŞt Bertrand," which is not surprising, since I am in France, on my way to fight the Germans, and Bertrand has the misfortune of being right at the front.
It's 1916. The Great War is now into its second spring and there is no end in sight. The front has barely moved. The soldiers who marched away in 1914 have been replaced three or four times over, with new crops of infantrymen such as myself being rushed up to the fighting over battlefields that have moved only a few miles from where my predecessors fell. Like farmers planting their fields, so too the gods of war are seeding their gardens for a new harvest of death.
No matter. The corporal's shouts have had their intended effects on the train's passengers. What was a minute ago a sluggish rail car full of exhausted new soldiers in brown khaki uniforms is now a hectic hive of activity. The infantrymens are all up and making a final go through their equipment and gear. They're finishing up discussions, making last-minute adjustments to their plans, and giving their uniforms a last once-through. No one wants to be caught out looking like they can't carry their weight. Who knows when the wrong officer might spot me? The commanding officer and his squad are in the HQ preparing plans for the upcoming battle and they are waiting for us, their freshly new set of pawns.
Everybody anxiously prepares for arrival while trying not to look too nervous. It's a familiar routine to anyone who's done train travel. I removed my garrison cap and ran my wooden comb through my short black hair several times carefully to make sure everything was smooth.
Then one of the other guys standing behind me, a real plonker named Thedric, reaches over the seat and laughingly messes everything up again. "Looks like somebody's been posted to Malabar Coast a wee bit too long," Thedric says, in some insider's attempt at humor about the foreign service. Thedric family are connected.
You're being mocked as part of an overseas village constabulary simply minding your own business on the troop train. "This isn't the train to Calcutta?" you deadpan. The laughter carries on a few minutes before, mercifully, some other poor sod commits an equivalent faux pas and the carriage's attention turns his way. Eventually things calm down a bit, the soldiers get settled again, and the scene returns, more or less, to how it had been before my corporal walked past.
The train continues on its way. I spend a moment admiring the passing countryside, the noise of the wheels on the track the only thing vibrating through my ears. Then somebody gets my attention again. "Nice nap, eh?" It's the man seated across from me. The two of us have been sitting two feet apart for the last seven hours but I've barely spoken since I first got on.
"Not really, it was a wonky dream if I must admit," I say, as I run my hand through my hair. "Thank you for waking me up, I mean it." I was having these strange and yet horrible nightmares the entire time; it began since I left the farm for the front. My neighbor holds out his hand. "My name's Lymsey," he says, giving me a chance to do the same. "Dirk Fowley," I reply, service number 13629, and I shake his icy hand. That's all it takes. The two of us, silent for hours, fall into a short conversation. It turns out Lymsey has been with the 30rd Regiment, my regiment, for over a year, and is returning to the front after a well-earned week's leave at home. I was not surprised to hear this. I knew he was a veteran the moment I saw him. Obviously the blue overseas service stripe on his right sleeve and the wounded stripe on his left were telltale signs of a year or more spent fighting in France. Yet those official symbols were almost superfluous. Everything about that man – from his manner to his posture to his depressed and elderly-looking eyes – had the unmistakable look of a war veteran. On this train Lymsey carries himself like the only upperclassman in a room full of first years
For some reasons he's deigning to speak to me, one of the numerous lowly privates only just arrived from Blighty. From a soldier's perspective the two of us have almost nothing in common apart from a shared antipathy towards officers…cavalry…the French women…army food…a strong family spirit…well, perhaps we have a few things in common. In the here and now, though, me and Lymsey are voyaging together but going in different directions. He's going to his home away from home. I'm going to the front for the first time. "Bloody hell, I'm in France, the native country of ma chère et tendre amour for the first time and it's not for vacation but for focken war, I wish I could bring her back here after all of this" That was my exact thinking before Lymsey abruptly interrupted my thoughts.
Perhaps he's following the same train of thought. Lymsey pull a cigarette from his mouth, the veteran look at me intensely and offer an interrogation: "Why did you join up anyway, Dirk ?"
"To do my duty, of course. I wanna help to end this war, so me and my family can live in peace" I answer honestly.
Lymsey looks admirably. "I respect that," the veteran tells me. "I miss that sentiment. I wasn't sure anybody still genuinely felt that way, though I certainly got a taste of it back home on leave. It seems almost incomprehensible to me now but who am I to judge? Be careful, though, because you might find your convictions challenged. If things go south, it might shake your belief system entirely. I hope you're ready for that."
I'm ready, I will do anything in my power to end it.
What about Lymsey? I'm also interested to get to know him before we don't have the possibility anymore, he might have wiseful advice for me.
"How often do you have to engage in battle?" I ask curiously
Smirking, Lymsey puts me a little bit at ease. "Not as much as you thought," he reports. "It can happen out of nowhere, but they rarely last more than a few days. So be prepared." He answered strongly
"The fighting can be fierce and the front is a very dangerous place indeed, but one spends more time away from the battlefield than on it. If you manage to keep yourself in one piece during the periods of conflict, you'll be rewarded with more periods of relaxation than you were doubtless used to at home."
As his answer sinks in, Lymsey follows up with a question of his own. "What do you think of the Germans?"
"I'm not trying to think much about them…they are our enemy and we need to eliminate them."
I say frankly, they probably think the same for us.
"True…that's very true," Lymsey answers, like a schoolteacher who asked a complicated question and received a straightforward, technically correct, but short answer.
Lymsey simply says: "Sometimes we old soldiers like to look at the world a bit more profoundly. It helps with staying safe."
"What's the best way to keep oneself in fighting trim?"
Lymsey flashes a devil smile. "Don't worry," he tells me , "you'll get all the time you need. I take it you are a pragmatic one, you will know what needs to be done."
"You are right,I mean we all need to do what's necessary when the time comes."
"No hesitation, just action…I like it." Lymsey seemed satisfied by my answer.
Suddenly Lymsey looked around for a moment, carefully waiting until no one was looking at us. He put his hand in his pocket to retrieve something…It looked like a sort of silver pocket watch with a strange blue light at the center of it, he nodded at me to take it.
I take the object and put it in my bag. Before I could have the time to ask Lymsey about that object, A sharp whistle tells me Bertrand is close. The town comes into view from the window of my carriage, and the houses and churches and lanes all combine for a characteristically "French" look set against the surrounding countryside. It's like something out of a color postcard.
I start to see the silhouette of soldiers and materiel in the camp. Clearly this area is something of a staging point.
Finally the train stops. As if I needed any reminders, the train's final destination at Bertrand proves that being in the military isn't the same as civilian life.Along with at least a thousand of other soldiers, I noisily hop off the cars and into the adjoining field, which is now a cacophony of mustering soldiers. As I joined the others I caught sight of Lymsey hurriedly joining his men.
"We will see each other soon," he says waving at me.
"Until then," I say, and we wish each other luck.
I've been rapidly drilled into formation for a quick welcome by the battalion commander, I'm with "A" Company of the Asher Light Infantry (10th Battalion, 35th Brigade), assigned for the duration of the war General Regan's Second Army on the Northern Front under the overall command of British Field Marshal Sir Crane Raymond. None of those latter designations or names mean much of anything to me. For the moment my world consists of the 300 other men in my company and, to a lesser extent, the 700 or so men in the other three companies of my battalion. After that it gets too big to fully comprehend.
I'm going to spend the next month or so going through final preparations for the battle. I do not know precisely when or where such battle will commence, but commence it shall. Now that I am at the front it is merely a matter of time. The Germans and the French have been furiously bloodying one another at Verdun, not far from here, and the British Army will not be able to sit idly by too much longer, especially when there are German armies ominously digging in just over the hills to the west and the south. Artillery is being brought in, aeroplane squadrons are being formed, and regiments are being placed up and down the line, all in preparation for an upcoming assault of some kind. While I wait for this to happen, I will have my chance to refine my training, to get to know my officers and my fellow Tommies a little better, and perhaps to be selected for a specialty position.
Before long "A" Company is assembled and facing its corporal, a coldly looking man I've never met, he has a skull tattoo on his face. He's about to speak when a squad of British fighter-bombers passes by overhead, their noisy propeller engines drowning out even the loudest speaking voice.
"I'd love to get up on one of those," the man next to my right says as the flyers finally drift away,
"but I'm no pilot and they say my eyes aren't good enough to be a machine gunner or observer."
I respond with some self-deprecating humor: "But you see well enough to carry a rifle in the trenches, you foot-slogger!"
From here the soldiers start discussing poor vision among the troops, with a consensus that vision impairment and officer's rank are directly correlated. Finally a sergeant major sharp whistle puts an end to the circus. So the men instead start whispering about the corporal standing before me. I knew nothing about him, so I stood at attention and kept my mouth shut.
I'm well trained, I certainly did overhear a few other lads talking about how the caporal was a torturer back in the days.
"Men," the ex-torturer/soldier admonishes, " we must gird ourselves for the coming battle. It will not be clean. Yet if we do our utmost, and fight with honour and commitment for one another and for England, we shall achieve a great victory. The enemy is vicious but uncouth; he may take individual lives but he cannot kill us. He cannot kill our spirit. He cannot kill our devotion. He most certainly cannot kill our superiority. We shall hit him with all we have and we shall break him; we shall break his body, his mind, and his will to stand against us. I need each of you to give everything you have! For if that happens then I assure you we will vanquish and send the Huns screaming and crying back to Prussia. We will become heroes that brought this infernal war to a close. We shall be regaled as the victors of the most triumphant victory ever known to humanity in the war to end all wars!"
I wonder what Lymsey would think of that, I'm starting to remember that weird moment while Lymsey Lost the Plot and handed me that strange pocket watch. Suddenly a second-lieutenant steps forward and shouts "Three cheers for England? Hip, hip, hip, hooray!" The soldiers dutifully follow along. We're all celebrating, well, something exactly, and it makes for an oddly joyous scene. How many of these happy fella will still be happy a month from now?
The caporal steps down from his wooden box looking like he just won a close vote at Westminster.
[Visual]
*Pvt. Dirk Fowley(Mc)
*Fleur Madeleine(Sc)
*Thedric(Sc)
*Lymsey(Sc)
*Strange pocket watch(Artifact)