Alone In The Trenches (6 page)

I threw open the bedroom door and ran across the house down to the kitchen as fast as the flickering flame of the candle would allow. I opened the cellar door and hurled myself
downwards, twisting my ankle as I misjudged the last steps to the cellar floor. Even below ground level, the dull explosions were loud enough to rattle the wine bottles in the racks that surrounded
me. It was Ypres all over again. I huddled myself against the damp wall. I thought about the poor soldier and his revolver. “
This time,
” I said to myself, “
you really
are going to die, Annette. And down here, they’ll never find you.
”

After a few minutes in the shadows of the cellar, I slowly pulled myself together, and started to count the bottles of wine by candlelight. If I remember rightly there were
three hundred and thirty-one. Well, I had to do something to take my mind off the gnawing fear which gripped me as the explosions continued overhead! I took some of the bottles out of their racks,
and blew off the dust. I looked hard at the labels and tried to memorize each one. I put the bottles back and then tried to say out loud a list of the French villages where the wine had been made.
I counted the rows of the bricks from the floor to the top of the cellar vault, and down the other side to the floor again. I paced up and down the length of the cellar to try to keep myself warm.
End to end it was a hundred and twenty-five paces. I sang myself songs at the top of my voice. And at long, long last the explosions above me stopped. Suddenly I felt very hungry and thirsty. The
second of my candles was burning down, and I thought that I couldn’t bear to be alone down there in the dark any longer.

The cellar door at the top of the steps was still ajar, so I crept out into the house, terrified about what I might see. The kitchen at least still seemed to be in one piece. The broad sunny
daylight streaming through the window caught thousands of speckles of dust in its beams. The clock said ten o’clock. I watched it for a few moments to see if the hands still moved. They did,
but how could I know if the clock was right or not? I was beginning to lose all sense of time. I wasn’t even sure now how many days I’d been at
Rosie
. I took a glass, ran the
kitchen tap into the sink for a few moments, and poured myself some water. Even after the bombing, a blackbird was singing joyfully in the sunshine of the kitchen garden. Some things stayed the
same, despite the war.

I plucked up courage and made my way through the house to the stable yard. It was a mess. The buildings to one side, where the food had been served and the horses shod, were now just a pile of
rubble. By the gateway the road had disappeared into a gaping hole. Judging by the spades and picks which lay beside it, a start had already been made on its repair. Across the yard an officer
faced a line of maybe forty soldiers. They were a sorry sight, dirty and exhausted, but they were standing to attention as best they could. I could pick out Ginger by the hair poking out from under
his army cap, but I couldn’t see Charlie. One by one, in alphabetical order, the officer was shouting their names.

“Mountford…”

“Sir,” the private soldier answered.

“Newell…”

“Sir!”

“Perkins…”

No answer came. The officer looked along the line of men, and then back at his list. I looked across at Ginger. His head was bowed. My heart missed a beat. In that moment, I knew something was
badly wrong.

“Pickles?”

“Sir!”

“Rogers…”

The officer continued with the list. Other soldiers failed to answer to their names too. Smithson and Varley were both missing. At “Wainwright”, the captain dropped his voice to
finish the roll-call. His eyes avoided his men’s, and he said sombrely, “I think I should ask the padre to say a few words.”

A tall stooping man came forward. He wore army uniform, but no hat. A clergyman’s collar was visible at his neck.

“Today your company has lost some of its best men,” he began, “And you have lost some of your best and most faithful pals.” My chest and stomach tightened. My eyes began
to fill with tears. This was going to be about Charlie. I knew it. “They volunteered to fight for their King and Country in a foreign place when they could have stayed at home in safety. They
laid down their lives for their friends. They have done a great thing, and now, lads, we know we must honour their names by continuing to fight the Hun with all our might, so that these brave men
will not have died in vain. I call them men, but like some of you they were really just boys of eighteen or nineteen years. But by their courage and comradeship they showed themselves to be truer
men than most. Let us now bow our heads and pray that God will give us strength for our tasks as he takes them into His Eternal Kingdom.”

The soldiers took off their caps as the padre prayed. I couldn’t hear what he said for all the sad, confused thoughts buzzing around in my head. As they finished by reciting the
Lord’s Prayer together, I let out a wail of anger and despair which echoed around the yard.

They must have let Ginger fall out of line, because the next thing I knew he was kneeling beside me.

“Let’s you and me find somewhere quiet for a mo’,” he said softly. Taking me by the hand, he led me round a corner to a private spot where an old garden seat still caught
the morning sun.

“Is Charlie dead?” I asked.

“You’re a big brave girl, and I’m not going to tell you no fibs,” said Ginger, kneeling in front of me. “Charlie’s not coming back.”

He stopped. His chest heaved. For a few moments he was unable to speak.

“I’m sorry,” he said eventually. “Charlie was the dearest friend to me.”

He wiped a dirty sleeve across his eyes and nose.

“What happened?” I said in a small voice.

“We don’t know … not the whole story,” he answered. “We were taking the boards and supplies up to the boys in the front line all last night, backwards and
forwards, trying to make ’em a bit more comfortable. It was bloomin’ hard work, I don’t mind telling you, because it was so dark. We were stumbling around and falling over and
hitting each other on the head with the planks.” Ginger had a spectacular black eye. “Then the cloud cleared. We didn’t know the dirty Hun had been planning to hit us so
hard.”

“The Zeppelin…” I began.

“Well that was probably part of it,” Ginger answered. “Just before first light, while they were giving you hell down here at
Rosie
, what seemed like the whole Jerry army
came over the top and through the wire straight at us. I was one of the lucky ones ’cos I was well on my way back home at the end of the shift. Corporal Warren says Charlie was still up near
the line. He reckons a grenade caught him at the top of the communication trenches, and probably Smithson too. They know Varley copped a sniper’s bullet. The silly so-and-so never could keep
his head down. We told him a thousand times that if you’re six foot and something tall in your stockinged feet, you’ve got to bend your knees or you’ll be a certain goner. Up the
line, ‘C’ company lost half a dozen lads, and another ten wounded. The miracle was, between us all we gave the Hun a very bloody nose. They’ve been clearing Jerry corpses out of
the way all morning.”

“Where’s Charlie now?” I asked.

Ginger looked away and said nothing.

“So I can’t see him?”

“Best not to ask,” he croaked. “Truth is, there might not be anything of Charlie left to see. Even if there was, you wouldn’t want to go upsetting yourself.”

I began to cry again.

“Try to remember him the way he was,” Ginger said gently. “That’s what I’ll do. He was a lovely lad was Charlie. We were the best of pals. We joined up together,
and we trained together on Thetford Heath. Shared a night out on the beer more than once in better times. And then we ended up serving together…” Ginger broke off, turning his face
away from me so that I wouldn’t see his tears.

“He thought the world of you. Said you were a real bobby-dazzler, and nothing bad could happen because of you turning up the way you did. You’d think we were all hard men what with
the things we do and see. But then, underneath the King’s uniform, we’re all as soft as putty.”

I let him be for a few moments, and then I spoke up in a strong voice that even surprised me, “I want to see where it happened. Will you take me there?”

Ginger turned back towards me, startled.

“I can’t do that. They’d have my guts for garters.”

“I want to see,” I repeated more loudly.

“It wouldn’t be safe. Not for you or me.”

“It’s not exactly safe here, is it?” I sulked. “Life’s not very safe. It’s only luck I wasn’t killed in the house last night. I’ve lost everyone
important to me – my dad, my brother…” I caught my breath. “…my mum and grandma. And now Charlie too. I’ve got to say goodbye. To him at least.”

There was silence. The engine of a lorry revved into life. Somewhere, miles away, the heavy guns kept on rumbling. By the corner of the building there was a large flowerpot with one of the rose
bushes that had given the house its name. Against the odds so late in the year, a single stem of red roses showed its face to the sun. I went over to it, and cupped one of the flowers in my hand.
Ginger watched me silently.

“All right,” he finally agreed. “Look, don’t get your hopes up. I’ll have a word with the sergeant. We’ll see what he says.”

In half an hour he was back.

“Sergeant Oliver says we can do it, but he’s coming too, and so is Corporal Warren. They all had a high opinion of Charlie. The sergeant major’s going to turn a blind eye. But
if we go, we go now. It’s all quiet up there at the mo’. The Germans are having a kip after their early start. And once we’re done we come back sharp-ish. You understand,
Annette?”

I said I did.

“Can I borrow your knife, Ginger?” I asked.

He pulled it from his waistband, and gave it to me. I went and cut the stem of roses from the little bush.

What happened next sometimes now seems like a dream, but I promise the four of us really did walk out of
Rosie’s
main gate, and up the road towards the lines. It felt good to be
outside in the real world again. We strode briskly between fields studded by muddy shell-holes. The trees in the fields and at the roadside were mostly just burned, twisted stumps. Soldiers coming
the opposite way gave us the oddest of looks. I was beginning to resemble a street urchin. My brown boots were covered in mud, and the dress of my skirt and my petticoat were grimy with the dirt of
three days. Where the road bent away sharply to the right, we dropped down into the field on the left and into a ditch which began to zig-zag its way forward. Sergeant Oliver went first with
Corporal Warren in the rear. I walked between them and just in front of Ginger.