Alone In The Trenches (2 page)

Dad was a blacksmith, and he was always at his happiest working in the heat and sweat of his forge, bending hard iron to his will. His customers loved him.

“You’re a genius, Albert,” they would say. “Is there
anything
you can’t make?” And he would smile shyly, and accept their generous tips with a touch of
his cap.

After they married, my parents moved to the city of Antwerp, which is where we spent my happy early childhood years. Then, in 1913, it was on everyone’s lips that war was coming. I can
remember Dad saying to Mum as we sat at the kitchen table, “It
will
happen, Lizzie. It’s just a question of when. The Germans will want to get their hands on Paris, and
Belgium’s in the way. If we’re smart we’ll make our exit while we still can.”

“But where to, Bertie? Where?” she replied with big eyes, smoothing her long hair away from her face. “You’d never go back to England, would you now?”

And he’d looked up at her solemnly from beneath his dark fringe, shaking his head sadly in agreement. He’d always said he’d left England for good. It would be a total failure
to turn up like a bad
centime
in Witney, and have to start again.

In the end we
did
make a move, but a shorter distance to just outside the city of Ypres. My grandpa had died when I was very small, and my mum was his only daughter. Now Grandma had
become ill. She was just about surviving on the family farm, but it was going to rack and ruin around her. Her mind had gone.

“This place is disgusting,” Mum had whispered when we first arrived. “It’s more fit for an animal than a human.”

Grandma couldn’t even feed herself properly, and there was no one close by who cared enough to help. So we’d packed up our nice life in Antwerp and moved east to the little village
of Maninghem, five kilometres from Ypres. I didn’t like it there. Grandma was really very difficult, and my mother was usually tired and cross. She was always yelling, particularly at me.
Despite my small size, I’d been born with a strong will. I could never take “no” for an answer. I made up stories too. They entertained me, and I think I even half-believed some
of them. I would rattle on about ghosts I’d seen, or rabbit-sized rats, or unlikely people I’d met in the lane. The stories didn’t amuse Mum one bit.

“You’re a bad girl, Annette. And you’ll come to a sticky end. I can’t ever trust a thing you tell me,” she would shout, as she smacked my legs and bottom. Her
smacks stung and so did her words. I didn’t think I deserved them.

Dad wasn’t happy either. The farm was hard to organize and control. Every day he felt he was losing a battle with nature. There was precious little time free to spend in his workshop,
apart from mending tools that broke in the difficult ground. And all through the autumn of 1914 it seemed as if any minute we’d have to abandon the farm. Just a few miles away thousands of
soldiers from the German and British armies were digging deep trenches. During the previous few months they’d chased each other backwards and forwards over most of Holland and Belgium. But
now the ground was slowly becoming sticky with mud. Soon it would be hard enough just walking across the fields, let alone moving heavy guns over them or carrying a heavy pack.

“They’ll not go anywhere before the spring now,” my dad said. “Perhaps we’ll be all right for a while. And anyway, this war isn’t
about
anything.
Surely the politicians will see sense soon.”

I’m sixteen years old now. The nine-year-old Annette of 1914 constantly amazes me. She might have been naughty and a storyteller, but I think she was much braver and more confident than I
am. How on earth did I cope when Dad and Michel disappeared that dreadful October day? When I think about it, a wave of sadness washes over me.

It had been another horrible wet morning after a glorious early autumn. The two of them were soaked through before they’d even started, yet they still waved a cheery goodbye to Mum and me
as they traipsed off to help fix the fences in a neighbouring village. They never came back. I still hope that one day I’ll see them again, but in my heart of hearts I know I won’t. Not
unless the priest is right and we all meet again in heaven some day.

What happened to them? Well, I used to wonder if they’d been taken prisoner by the Germans. More likely they were shot by one side or the other. Maybe someone thought they were soldiers.
But how could anyone mistake my eleven-year-old brother, Michel, for a soldier? He could scarcely pick up a rifle, let alone shoot one.

So that’s how I came to be in the centre of Ypres, trying very hard not to get killed by the Germans. The driver of the wagon I’d climbed into was now pushing his
horse and cart along at breakneck speed, and who could blame him? The wagon pitched and rolled. The horse whinnied and bucked as it felt the whip bite into its flanks. The driver swore loudly and
often. I thought we’d end up in a ditch. Between the canvas covers at the rear of the cart I could see we were moving out of the town. From the direction of the sun I thought we might be
heading north-east. It was a part of Ypres I didn’t know, and a horrible thought suddenly struck me. I’d assumed that the driver was a true Belgian and on our side, but for all I knew,
he might be taking food to the
Germans
. I had no idea exactly where the front lines were, or if there were ways of crossing from one set of trenches to the other. I thought to myself that if
the wagon ever came to a halt, I should hop out and make a run for it, but nothing ever seemed to get in our way.

I can’t say how long it was before the pace slowed, the cart stopped moving and I began to hear the chatter of voices around us. It felt as if we’d been on the road for hours, but
thirty minutes was probably more like it. I held my breath and listened carefully. To my great relief the voices were speaking English. Then the canvas covers at the rear of the wagon were pulled
fully open, the sun streamed in, and someone said, “Well, bless my soul. What ’ave we got ’ere?”

My eyes were blinded for a few seconds, but then I found I could make out the shapes of two men. One was wearing a soldier’s uniform. The other was the driver.

The driver swore in French and said roughly, “What’s your game? You little rascal! Fancied stealing a few groceries, eh?”

He reached in and pulled me out of the cart. I fell into his chest and, probably because I was in a state of shock, completely lost my temper. I went at him like a mad dog, banging my fists
against him, screaming, scratching and biting. He tried to hold me back by gripping my wrists. The English soldier just laughed.

“Your daughter’s a bit fiery,
monsieur
. We should set her on the Huns and see how they like it.”

“She’s nothing to do with me,” the driver hissed. “I haven’t the faintest idea where she came from. She must have caught a ride somewhere in town.” He was
still fending me off. “Ow! You look after her!”

He threw me at the soldier, who caught me neatly and wrapped me up against his greatcoat, pinning my arms so that I couldn’t move.

The driver sucked at the wound on his hand where my teeth had sunk into him. He looked at me angrily and spat on the ground. Then with a bad grace he banged his boxes of produce down in front of
the soldier.

“That’s all for today, Corporal Warren,” he growled. “I’ll be back tomorrow and we can settle up then. I’m off to Ypres to see if the wretched Germans have
left one brick on top of another.”

“Bad up there today, is it?”

The driver shrugged his shoulders. “More shells than before. Bigger bombs. Even using one of those newfangled flying machines. We’re at their mercy, unless your lot can do something
about it. Why do you think I sell to you and not them?”

“What about the girl? You’re taking her back with you?” the corporal asked. The driver swore again. “You must be joking,” he said, with a coarse laugh. “Think
of her as part of today’s delivery. You deal with her!”

And before the soldier could argue, he whipped the canvas covers back across the back of the wagon, heaved himself into his saddle and kicked his old nag into a trot, waving a rude goodbye over
his shoulder as he went.

“Oh good,” said the soldier to himself. “So what am I supposed to do with you?” He called across the yard in which we were standing. “Oi, Perkins! You seem to have
time on your hands. I need you here. Now, private soldier. Not tomorrow morning.”

“What’s your name?” Private Perkins asked me gently. I told him it was Annette, and he said his was Charlie. “And how old are you?” I answered that I was nine.

Charlie was very young – too young to shave – and slimly built. A mop of unruly dark hair poked out from inside his soldier’s cap. He was the first person who’d smiled at
me all day.

“What about brothers and sisters?”

Thinking about Michel, I began to cry. And to my surprise his eyes filled up with tears too.

He took a handkerchief from his pocket. It was none too clean but he wiped my cheeks and then his own.

“Don’t let the corporal see,” he said with another smile. “That would never do. He’d have me cleaning the latrines for not behaving like a proper soldier. I know
all about missing family. I’ve got a wheelbarrow full of brothers and sisters. I write letters, but God knows whether they ever reach home. Leastways, they never write back, even those as
can.”

I looked around me. We were in the stable yard of what was probably a fine house. There were low buildings on all sides of the yard’s cobbled floor, some of them open at the front. We were
sitting on two low canvas chairs in one of the barns beside a stove which pumped heat out into the chilly morning. On the corners of the buildings rose bushes climbed the walls. Charlie saw me
looking.

“The house is called
Les Roses
,” he said, “Because of the flowers, I suppose. We call it ‘
Rosie
’.”

“Do the owners still live here?” I asked.

“Long gone,” he answered. “Took what they could carry, and fled to England. You speak very good English for such a little girl! How’s that then?”

I explained about my dad.

“So where are your family now?” he asked.

What I did next seems dreadful to me now. Without a moment’s hesitation I told the biggest fib of my life.

“They’re all dead,” I answered. “My dad, my brother, my mum. All of them. Our farmhouse was blown up by a German gun.”

Charlie looked stunned. “How did you escape?”

I thought quickly. “I was down the garden in the privy. And then I ran away.”

What a whopping, terrible lie! But can you see why I might have told it? Since the Great War ended, people know that soldiers sometimes become ‘shell-shocked’. Their minds get
scrambled by the awful things they’ve seen in battle and they go to pieces. Maybe that’s what happened to me in Ypres. Even as I was sitting there with Charlie I’d become more and
more cross with Mum every minute. Surely she’d known the city was too dangerous? The driver of the wagon had just made it perfectly clear. Ypres had been bombed before. And if Mum had known
that, what possessed her to send me in to buy bread? Even Madame P. had been surprised. I could have been killed. So now, if Michel and Dad were never coming back, what did it matter if I pretended
to have lost Mum and Grandma too? Hadn’t Dad run away from home when he wasn’t much older than me?