Alone In The Trenches (7 page)

“From now on, talk quietly,” he whispered. “No point alarming Jerry. Just follow the sergeant.”

It was just about possible to pass someone coming from the opposite direction, but sometimes only with difficulty. We were walking on boards similar to ones I’d seen stacked in the yard,
presumably the same kind that Charlie had been carrying up to the line last night. We quickly came to a point where one side of the trench had fallen in. Some men were shoring the sides up where
they could, and hacking with their tools at the earth to widen the space, or perhaps to start a new trench running at an angle to the old one. As if it were the most natural thing that I should be
there, one said, “Hello, me old darlin’. How’s it goin’?”

“Am I dreaming,” said another, shaking his head, “or are the nurses getting younger every day?”

“Just keep your thoughts to yourself, private soldier,” the sergeant muttered gruffly. “And concentrate on the job in hand.”

A few yards further on the sergeant ducked down to the left, and I found myself in a small underground cavern. On one side of the floor was a mattress. Two men sat on it, while another lay
sprawled with his knees drawn up towards his chest, apparently sleeping. A billy-can of water was boiling on a stove. Some shelves had been cut in the mud and chicken-wire walls, and on them sat a
row of dirty mugs and some bottles.

“Welcome to the dug-outs,” Ginger said. As he spoke, a rat scurried out of a dark corner across his feet and into the trench outside.

I must have looked surprised, but rats don’t worry me. I’ve spent my life in old barns and workshops.

“Say good morning to Heinrich,” laughed one of the men. “Or maybe it’s Heinrich’s brother. I thought I’d got rid of him for good last night.”

“Right,” whispered the sergeant. “It’s just a few more yards now. Outside is what we call Shaftesbury Avenue, after the street in London. Then we get to a place where
lots of trenches run into each other, so we call that Piccadilly Circus. About there is where we reckon Charlie was hit.”

We left the dug-out and moved forward to the place the sergeant had described. As we stood there, grim-faced, worn-out soldiers passed by. My three companions removed their caps. Ginger produced
a small book from his pocket.

“It was Charlie’s favourite,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “
A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens. He only lent it me yesterday. He said he read it every
December, regular as clockwork.”

Taking a scraper from the corporal, Ginger hollowed out a space on the edge of the trench, level with his head.

“Keep your arms and head down, private,” hissed Corporal Warren. “I don’t want to lose another good man.”

Then Ginger placed the small book in the hollow and filled earth in on top of it, pressing down with the flat of the scraper until the ground was level again.

“Here, Miss Annette. Let me,” he said. And he took the rose stem I was clutching and placed it over the spot where the book now lay hidden.

“Charlie Perkins. We’ll never forget you,” he said carefully.

And as if we’d rehearsed it we echoed his words. “Charlie Perkins. We’ll never forget you.”

And I never have. I don’t think a single day passes without me remembering him. Charlie. My hero.

If I were you, I’d be hoping for a happy ending to this story. Even now, I occasionally see a figure on the street or in the market and my heart skips a beat. Just for a
second I think it’s Dad, or Michel, or Charlie, but it never is. None of them are ever coming back. Dad always used to say that every cloud has a silver lining. Somewhere up in the sky the
sun still shines even if we can’t see it. So let’s be sunny for a while and not dwell on the sad things.

*

I spent one more night at
Rosie
, and then early the next morning a woman called Miss Bell announced herself in my room. She wore a khaki-brown jacket and a khaki riding
skirt under her greatcoat. With her cap planted on top of her solid square head, she looked just like a woman soldier, but she wasted no time in telling me that actually she was a FANY, a member of
the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. Miss Bell was a lot kinder than she looked or sounded. With her she’d brought a suitcase. Inside was a selection of clean clothes, some of which fitted me. She
insisted I had a bath, and when I’d changed she sat me down and started her questions.

She looked at me very directly and said quite gently, “So, Annette … your family … they’re all dead or missing?” I thought hard, and made my
decision. I looked her straight back in the eye and said they were. I couldn’t help swallowing hard as I spoke, and wondered if I’d given myself away.

“And I gather you still have relatives in Oxfordshire … in Witney?”

“Yes ma’am,” I answered with the greatest politeness. “22 Starmer Street.”

My memory has always been very good. I’d only seen the address a handful of times on the back of letters from England.

“And their names?”

“My uncle is Herbert Martin, and he’s married to my Aunt Emma.”

“And how well do you know your uncle and aunt?”

This time I was honest.

“I’ve never met them, ma’am.” And then I added hopefully, “But I’m sure they’d take me in. They’ve always said how much they’d like to meet
me.”

That was true. They’d said so in their letters.

“And do you think of yourself as Belgian or English?” Miss Bell suddenly asked in French. Without missing a beat, I answered, also in French,

“I’m half and half. But what’s the point in staying here? There’s not much left of Belgium now.”

“You speak both languages very well,” she replied. “And you seem very mature for your age. How old are you exactly?”

“Nine years and four months.”

She thought for a while, and then said, “OK. My instructions are to take you to the English Channel at Le Havre, and then for us to catch a boat to Portsmouth. Once we reach England
I’m to leave you with another nurse while I come back to France. How do you feel about living in England, at least for a while? Lots of Belgian people have done the same thing this
year…”

“I should be very pleased,” I said and as I spoke it felt as if an enormous weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

Two days later, after a painfully slow journey across France by train, I was standing in a wintry but peaceful Oxfordshire. No guns. No soldiers. Just the sound of the wind in the trees and the
grass. Was there really a war going on four hundred miles away?

Uncle Herbert and Aunt Emma were happy to take me in, though life with them was very strange at first. They already had three children of their own, all younger than me, and so
I had to learn to be an older sister for the first time, looking after the others and teaching them to read. For a few years I went to school too, and then when I was twelve (by which time the
family had grown by one) I spent my time at home helping Aunt Emma. I’ve become an excellent cook, and a good gardener. In a few years’ time I think I should like to become a
teacher.

Two years ago, after the end of the War, I had a great shock. A letter arrived. It was from my mother, asking if Herbert and Emma knew anything of what had happened to me. Grandma had died the
previous summer. The farmhouse was in ruins. The land around it was an unworkable mess. My mother was more or less penniless and at her wits’ end.

In the following months, she eventually sold the farm for far less than it had originally been worth, and now she lives in Witney too, in a small thatched cottage she rents from a farmer.
She’s always been a clever dressmaker, and that’s how she makes a living now. She and I live together, and these days we seem to get on with each other, more or less. We don’t
talk about why I ran away: she never asks and I don’t say. Maybe some day we’ll be able to share our feelings a little more. Uncle Herbert and Aunt Emma know the truth, but they keep
their thoughts to themselves.

Last Sunday was Remembrance Day. There was a big noisy parade outside the church with local part-time soldiers and the Boys Brigade band. At eleven o’clock we all
gathered silently in front of the new War Memorial. As the stone monument was unveiled, a single trumpet sounded the Last Post. It reminded me of the trumpet I’d heard the day I was caught up
in the bombing at Ypres. Uncle Herbert had been chairman of the committee which had seen to the building of the Memorial so he read aloud the list of fifty-three names that were written on it. The
thirty-seventh name was:

“
Private C.H. Perkins M.C.
”

I was so proud. For his gallantry that day in rescuing Captain Garvey, Charlie had been awarded the Military Cross after his death. For my sake, Uncle Herbert had seen that Charlie was included
in our War Memorial, even though he’d been born and lived in Oxford. And now, because I too had been there at Ypres, I stood on a box in front of the whole crowd and read the famous poem by
Laurence Binyon: