A Long Long Way (44 page)

Darkness fell and the guns continued to fire, the fierce yellow lights going away some kilometres behind. They were such big guns, they could fire back ten Irish miles if they wished. Perhaps that was why the Germans had stopped, because they were loath to leave their guns. Perhaps they had been forbidden to leave them. Perhaps they had no officers left and they did not know what to do, except fire and fight.

Then as the slight coin of the moon appeared above the hills, like something thrown in a game of penny-push, everything went quiet. He and Christy Moran and about three hundred other men were spread about, waiting for orders to come up from headquarters now so far behind. There would be a runner scurrying through the dark world, to reach the colonel and ask what to do. He could see the officers gathered in a little lean-to, like a shepherd’s hut. Maybe they would decide for themselves. No doubt they would wait for first light and push on then against the little bridge. Maybe they were bringing up their own artillery along the muddy roads.

A local owl sounded across the river marsh. Willie could see the rushes with their thick brown heads. They would be sinking now into winter soon, feeling the fingers of the frost touching them greedily. He could hear the human music of the river, and see the pleasing pewter of its colour as it pushed along between its incurious banks.

Then he heard singing from the German section. He found he knew the tune well, though the man was singing in German. Perhaps he was singing now in an ironical frame of mind, for the song was ‘Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht’. Silent night, holy night. The song of that first, far-off friendly Christmas truce in ‘14. It was not a night that was holy. Or was it? The voice was as simple as the river, it seemed to Willie. It came from the throat of a man who might have seen horrors, made horrors befall the opposing armies. There was something of the end of the world, or rather, he meant, the end of the war in the song. The end of the world. The end of many worlds. Silent night, holy night. And indeed the shepherds were in their hut and their flocks were scattered round about in these lovely woods. The sheep lay down in the darkness fearful of the wolves. But were there any wolves in the upshot? Or just sheep against sheep? Silent night, holy night. Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht. Heilige, holy, a word he had not looked at in his mind since Father Buckley was taken. Holy. Could they not all be holy? Could God not reach down and touch their faces, explain to them the meaning of their travails, the purpose of their long sojourn, the journey out to a foreign land that became a sitting still among horrors? So far, so far they had come that they had walked right out to the edge of the known world and had fallen off into other realms entirely in the thunder and ruckus of the falls. There was no road back along the way they had taken. He had no country, he was an orphan, he was alone.

So he lifted up his voice and sang back to his enemy, the strange enemy that lay unseen. They shared a tune, that was still true. A single shot marked its own note in the easy dark, hushing the busy owl.

Joe Kielty caught him. Joe Kielty didn’t want him falling to the ground, although a small man mightn’t have far to fall.

Willie saw four angels hanging in the sky. He did not feel it was unexpected. They might have been painted there, old Russian icons. Angels of God, of earth, or just extremity, Willie couldn’t know. One had the face of Jesse Kirwan, one Father Buckley, one his first German, whom he had killed, and one Captain Pasley.

Maybe in the passing drama of the earth some of them were given lesser lights. But all of them were captains of his soul.

A soul in the upshot must be a little thing, since so many were expended freely, and as if weightless. For a king, an empire and a promised country. It must be that that country was in itself a worthless spot, for all the dreams and the convictions of that place were discounted. There was nothing of it that did not quickly pass away. Nothing of worth to keep. Some thirty thousand souls of that fell country did not register in the scales of God.

Under that heaving swell of history was buried Willie and all his kindred soldiers, in a forgotten graveyard without yews or stones.

He saw four angels, but angels in those days were common sights.

Dublin Castle.
October 1918.

My dear son Willie,

I thank you for your letter of the last instance from the bottom of my heart. I liked to read your letter and what you said. I want to go and see Father Doyle now up in Wexford Street because I know I have done a stupid thing. I was forgetting that about the old days. My head was gettingfull of stupid dark thoughts. I was forgetting the easier things to think. How I love you, Willie, and what a good son you are. How you did go out to fight for Europe as you said, and how brave you are to be there. And if it was bad here these last years how bad was it out in Belgium? No one knows but you, Willie. I had no right to be getting cross with you. But that is all over now. I have read your letter over and over and Willie I have learned something from you. I will not be so stupid again and I will ask God to forgive me. Will you forgive me, Willie? Forgive an old man stuck in other days. I lived my life in the service of the Queen and when she was dead of the two kings that came after. I wanted to keep order in this old city but in answer to your question I also wanted to remember your mam and do what she bid me which was to look after you all. I cannot have the first thing make me forget the second thing. I must always as far as lies in my power look after you all though you are in your prime now and maybe I am not the man I was in those old days. When you come home Maud and Annie say they will make a tea for you you will not forget. Dolly will make the rooms look good she says. You won’t find us cold ever again. I am sorry Willie and there is not a man alive should not say he is sorry when he does wrong. So I am sorry. Keep safe Willie and I am so glad to learn you are over the trembling.

Your loving father,

Papa.

This letter was returned with Willie’s uniform and other effects, his soldier’s small-book, a volume of Dostoevsky, and a small porcelain horse.

When Dolly, some years later, emigrated to America, she brought the Dostoevsky with her as a keepsake.

Willie’s father’s world passed entirely away in the coming upheavals. In the upshot he lost his wits and died a poor figure indeed in the County Home at Baltinglass.

Somewhere in the earth of Flanders Christy Moran’s medal still lies. His medal for gallantry — ‘gallivanting, more like’, he had said. It had been seared black by the old explosion.

Maybe the helpful, acidic earth has eaten into the blackness and the quiet medal is clean and brown, showing, if only to the worms, its delicate design of a small crown, and a small harp.

They had to bury Willie as quickly as they could because now the Germans had broken away at last, and they were obliged to follow.

They put him in near the spot where he had fallen and got up a wooden cross with his details on it. Joe Kielty said a few heartfelt words. Christy Moran was anxious that the particu lars were correct, and for safety’s sake he made a note on his map of the position of Willie’s grave, in case everything got swept away.

Then they went on without him.

William (Willie) Dunne, Private,
Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
Killed near St-Court,
3 October 1918.
Aged 21.
RIP

Acknowledgements

The following books are part of a growing shelf of pioneering works on the First World War and Ireland, and this novel could not exist without them:

Ireland and the Great War
by Keith Jeffery, Cambridge, 2000

Irish voices from the Great War by Myles Dungan, Irish Academic Press,
1995

They Shall Grow Not Old by Myles Dungan, Four Courts Press, 1997

Orange, Green and Khaki
by Tom Johnstone, Gill and Macmillan, 1992

Ireland’s Unknown Soldiers
by Terence Denman, Irish Academic Press, 1992

A Lonely Grave
by Terence Denman, Irish Academic Press, 1995

Irishmen or English Soldiers?
By Thomas P. Dooley, Liverpool University Press, 1995

Ireland and the Great War
edited by Adrian Gregory and Senia Paseta, Manchester University Press, 2002

Dividing Ireland
by Thomas Hennessey, Routledge, 1998

Far from the Short Grass
by James Durney, 1999

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