At Some Disputed Barricade (30 page)

“So you are going east after the eleven men?” the Frenchman asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me give you a good dinner and a night’s rest first,” he offered. “Then if you wish to proceed, may I suggest that you change your attire? You appear to speak French at least adequately.” He pulled a slight face. “Not enough to pass for French, unless you claim to come from some other region—Marseille, perhaps?” His tone suggested that to him Marseille was barbaric, barely French at all. “Have you any other language? German, perhaps?”

“Yes. And rather better,” Joseph admitted. “But I don’t think passing for German would be very clever.”

The Frenchman gave a particularly Gallic shrug.

“Of course not. I was thinking German-speaking Swiss,” he said. “That would account for your accent. A Protestant priest, Swiss, and therefore neutral.”

The idea was very appealing, except that if he were captured out of uniform he could be shot as a spy rather than held as a prisoner of war. He pointed that out.

“Indeed,” the Frenchman conceded. “I was considering your chances of success in traveling unnoticed, and finding your eleven men. We can get you some suitable clothes. Stay as far back as the supply trenches, or even farther, and you are unlikely to be taken by Germans. Do what you think best.”

When Joseph set out in the French staff car the following morning he was well fed, by trench catering standards, and well rested.

It was not raining and the late summer air was soft and bright. He was so accustomed to the smells of overcrowding, open latrines, and too many dead to bury that he barely noticed them. He thought instead of the sun on his face and—at least to the south—a land that held some echo of its prewar glory. Farms were ruined, villages bombed and burned as everywhere else, but on the horizon there were trees and the hills rolled away green in the distance. He could even see cattle grazing here and there when he veered farther away from the trenches and the incessant sound of guns.

Just as in his own lines on the Ypres Salient, there were men returning to battle after brief leave, often because of injury. There were columns of wounded making their painful way back to field dressing stations, and there were supply trucks, munitions, and ambulances on the crowded roads.

The car took him another thirty miles. After that he had to walk.

He stopped only to ask directions or seek information of anyone who might have seen a group of men together who were going along the lines rather than back or forward to fight. He was appalled how easily it came to him to invent lies to explain his errand. The only part that did not vary was his physical descriptions of the most noticeable of the men, particularly Morel, the one he was sure could speak French fluently and would be the natural leader.

He slept where he could. Men were unfailingly willing to share the meager rations they had. Any thanks he offered were inadequate, but gratitude was all he had.

When he finally found someone who seemed to have seen them the day before, he was dubious. The description he received in return could have been almost any soldier.

That evening the sighting was much more positive. Crouching in one of the rear support trenches, Joseph listened to a group of French soldiers describe someone lost and badly frightened. Apparently the man had admitted considering mutiny, which they sympathized with wholeheartedly. The man had divulged that he had an idiot for an officer, that he had rebelled against his orders. As a result he was now a fugitive, cut off from his friends and all his connections with home. Worst of all, even if they won the war, he could probably never go back. He had stuck with it for three years, gone through hell, and one stupid useless officer had ruined it all.

Since Joseph was pretending to be Swiss, they did not think he had any serious interest in the issue, so they were prepared to talk about it to him, and he did not disabuse them. He set out again with quickened hope and moved more rapidly than before, believing the escaped men were not far ahead of him.

Directly to the east was the German border. He was past the field of Verdun, where 350,000 Frenchmen had been killed or wounded the previous year, and still the battle raged on. Joseph had no idea how many Austrians and Germans had been killed there, but he knew it must be at least as many. The Russian Front he had only heard about, and the Italian, and the Turkish fronts, and the arenas of war in Africa, Egypt, Palestine, and Mesopotamia. He refused to think about them. All he could do was this one tiny contribution: give Morel and the other fugitives a chance to come back. Even that might be beyond him, but trying had become almost as important for his own sanity as for their survival. It would mean that in this endless destruction there was something within his control.

In the end, he found them in the ruins of a bombed village, so little of which was left that even its name was obliterated. He had followed a rumor: a joke about someone’s French being notoriously bad. Some young men, worn out and with several days’ beard, had asked for directions to a farm where he and his friends could sleep. Only he had mispronounced it as
une femme
—a woman. He had met with much bawdy laughter, and remarks about all ten of them.

The joke was told with pity for their desperation but then everyone was desperate. It was not that they were unwilling to share what they had, but they too had nothing. They were gaunt-faced, exhausted young men with eyes that stared beyond the mark, seeing a hell they would never forget. The images lay inside the eyelids, waking or sleeping, and coiled into the brain, pounding in the blood. The sound of guns never stopped; even in the rare silences it was still there in the head.

The escapees saw Joseph at the same moment he saw them. He knew Morel instantly, even in silhouette against the sunlight on a stretch of wall still standing. He was thin, and his uniform was filthy—perhaps on purpose to disguise its markings. But the way he stood was characteristic. Even now the grace had not left him, the natural elegance he had always had. Trotter and Snowy Nunn were sitting on piles of rubble. Snowy was drinking from a tin can. The others were out of sight, perhaps asleep somewhere.

Morel saw Joseph and froze, his hand on his revolver.

Joseph stood motionless. He did not have a weapon, but even if he had he would not have used it. He took a step forward experimentally.

Morel raised the revolver.

“That would change everything,” Joseph said quietly.

Morel stiffened, recognizing him now, even though Joseph was wearing borrowed French civilian clothes, and Morel was facing the sun.

“Would it?” he asked. “Who would know?”

Joseph stood still. “You would,” he answered. “You might forget shooting me, although I doubt it. In hot blood now, it might be all right, but peace will come eventually, of one sort or another….”

“I can’t count the number of men I’ve killed,” Morel told him wearily. “Most of them were perfectly decent Germans doing no more than I’m doing, fighting for their country. What choice do they have, any more than I?”

“None,” Joseph said honestly. “I expect it hurts them just as it does most of us. But you know me. I’m part of your peacetime as well as your war. But even if you can live with it, can Snowy? Can he ever go back to St. Giles, to his family and his land, if you kill me?”

Morel gave a sharp burst of laughter. “What the hell is so special about you? You’re ridiculous!” There was deep, wounding pain in his face. “A million Englishmen are dead. God alone knows how many French and German. Why should it make any difference if you’re dead, too?”

“Not
because
it’s me,” Joseph corrected him. “As you say, that’s nothing. It’s the circumstance. To shoot an armed soldier is one thing, albeit he’s a mirror image of yourself. To shoot your priest is different. Ask Snowy.”

Snowy rose to his feet slowly, the sun catching his pale hair. He looked older, his young face etched with tragedy.

“Stand still,” Morel ordered him.

“Or what?” Snowy asked, lifting his shoulders and letting them drop. “You’ll shoot me, too?”

“Because I damn well ordered you to!” Morel snapped.

“What’s the matter, Captain?” Snowy said quite casually, although his voice shook a little. “Don’t you approve of men thinking for themselves when it’s a moral issue? What’s that, then—mutiny?” He took a step forward, then another.

Morel raised the gun a little higher. “Don’t be stupid!” he warned. “Whatever he’s come for, he hasn’t deserted. He’s here to get us to go back, and you know as well as I that if we do, we’ll be court-martialed and shot. There’s no way on earth they’ll let us get away with killing Northrup.”

“Did you kill him?” Joseph asked, doubt in his voice.

“No, I didn’t!” Morel said with sudden anger. “But it’s academic. I arranged the mock trial and I was in charge. It’s my responsibility. That’s how the army works. It’s how life works. You want to lead, then you take the glory—
and
the blame.”

“True,” Joseph conceded. “To do less is without honor. Did Snowy shoot Northrup? Did Trotter?”

Trotter was still sitting in the rubble, staring from one to the other of them. There was a bandage on his arm, but it had bled through.

“No,” Morel replied.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m bloody well sure!”

“How can you be?” Joseph persisted.

“Don’t be idiotic!” Morel’s patience was shadow thin. “You know Snowy. He fires high at the bloody Germans. He couldn’t kill anyone except by accident.”

“And Trotter?” Joseph’s voice wobbled a little with fear of failure, now that success might be so close. It was hot here in the sun, and quiet. They were miles from the guns; they could hear them only in the distance.

“Are you sure about him?”

“Yes, I am! It was Geddes who killed Northrup.”

“Why?” He had to say something, and he wanted to know, to be certain.

“I’ve no idea, and I don’t care,” Morel replied, still holding the gun steady. “And the court-martial won’t care, either. Don’t soil your dog collar by lying, Captain. I’d rather take my chances in Switzerland than come back and be shot by my own. Can’t go home anyway, so it’s all pointless.”

Snowy took another step toward Joseph.

“Stand still!” Morel snapped at him, jerking the gun toward him. “Think, Snowy! It might be all very heroic and honest to go back, but if they shoot us, what do you think that’s going to do to morale, eh? Do you want a real mutiny? All along the line?” His voice caught and there were tears on his face. “The Germans would make mincemeat of us—those of us that are left of the Cambridgeshires. Is that what you want?”

Snowy froze.

“They’ll shoot Cavan anyway,” Joseph pointed out. It was so quiet now that they could hear birds singing in the summer sky.

Snowy Nunn walked slowly over to Joseph. Not once did he turn to look at Morel. “I want to go home,” he said simply.

Joseph waited.

Morel put the revolver away. “They’ll shoot all of us,” he said again, but there was an exhaustion in his voice so intense that pity gripped Joseph like a vise.

“General Northrup wants to reduce the charge,” Joseph told him, his own voice gravelly, slipping out of control. He explained what the general had said.

Morel shrugged. “It won’t make any difference. What a bloody fiasco. We must be the stupidest people on earth. You won’t get Geddes back so easily, supposing you ever find him.”

“Where are the rest of you?” Joseph asked.

“I’ll tell them what you said,” Morel smiled bleakly. “They can make up their own minds. You go for Geddes; he’s the one you want.”

“Did he go on to Switzerland?”

“That was his intention.” Morel hesitated. “Look, Reavley, you’re a decent man, but you haven’t a ghost of a chance of bringing Geddes back. You aren’t even armed, for God’s sake! He’ll shoot you if he has to, to get you off his trail. I’ll come with you. That way you’ve a chance.”

“No—” Joseph began.

“Snowy and Trotter can put your arguments to the others,” Morel cut across him bluntly, all the old respect and acknowledgment of seniority gone. “They’ll get back. You’ll give your word, won’t you?” He turned to Snowy, Nunn, then to Trotter.

“Yes, sir,” Snowy said immediately. Trotter agreed also, rising stiffly to his feet at last. Only then did Joseph notice that his left leg was hurt as well.

“I’d give you my gun,” Morel went on, looking at Joseph. “But I don’t suppose you would know which end to fire.”

“Actually I nicked the tail of the plane of the Red Baron,” Joseph said with some dignity.

Morel stared at him.

“From another plane, with a Lewis gun,” Joseph added. “How do you suppose I got here so quickly?”

Morel began to laugh. It was a wild, hysterical sound, very nearly out of control.

Joseph came to a decision immediately, although possibly not a sensible one. He stuck out his arm, pointing.

“Right. Snowy, you and Trotter go and find the others, or as many of them as you can. Get them back to the regiment. Make sure you give yourself up and aren’t taken!” He looked at Snowy closely, his eyes hard. “Do you understand? It could all rest on that!”

“’Course Oi understand, sir,” Snowy said gravely. “It shouldn’t be too bad. Nobody’ll be looking for us going the other way. Good luck, Chaplain. But you watch for Geddes, sir. He’s a hard one, an’ he’s got nothing to lose now.”

Joseph and Morel turned south and made the best time they could. Joseph managed to persuade Morel to change clothes with a middle-aged man invalided out of the army and now mending shoes in a small shop. They continued with Morel looking less like a British officer on the run. Joseph also convinced him to speak German, and say that he too was Swiss, heading back home. No one was interested enough to challenge them seriously. They all had their own troubles.

Joseph and Morel were tired and hungry. They were within thirty miles of the Swiss border when the trail they had been following petered out. The village they arrived at had not suffered as much as many, and they were treated with courtesy, although less than the profound kindness that Joseph had received earlier when he was still in uniform. The people were war-weary, robbed by circumstance of almost everything they had. Still, they faced the possibility of invasion and occupation, and the loss of the only thing they still possessed: the physical freedom to be themselves—Frenchmen who owned their own land, blasted and burned as it was. Joseph did not blame them if they were less than wholehearted friends to men going back to a land that chose to fight on neither side.