Kipling's Choice (6 page)

Young pups like John and Rupert can be quite sympathetic to most soldiers in spite of the military etiquette. The junior officers, after each exhausting day's march, must make sure that their men find suitable shelter, negotiate with the local citizens if necessary, see that rations are evenly divided, and take care that the feet of their troops are inspected and patched up. Only then can they pass the command to the noncommissioned officers and find beds for themselves.

The marching is hard on everyone in the Guards even after the rigorous training at Warley. They march up to forty kilometers a day with full packs. The young officers such as John and Rupert have great admiration for Captain Harold Alexander, their company commander, for he marches every mile with his men. "It's the same distance on foot as it is on horseback," he explains, dead serious. Alex would later be promoted to field marshal and "Duke of Tunis." He had been wounded in November 1914 at Zillebeke, near Ypres. "Oh, that little scratch," was his invariable comment about it. That attitude alone is enough to grant him a good deal of authority and respect among the men. His unbelievably sharp sense of humor, which is in such startling contrast to the stiffness of "the real Englishman," makes him hugely popular. Alex keeps the morale of his troops high. He promises the worn-out boys a surprise on one of those hot, wretched, dusty days. That evening the whole battalion sits exhausted on the ground around an improvised stage, amid bottles of beer and illegal French wine. Alex appears on stage wearing a crazy hat that goes quite well with his enormous mustache. The unexpected sound of accordion music turns all heads to the scene. In a few seconds the long, nasal wailing creates the same excitement as a drum roll does before a death-defying leap. Alex stands still and as stiff as a board. An accomplished Irish dancer, he begins to hop back and forth to the simple, monotonous chords of the accordian, with his upper body taut and his arms pressed to his sides. The whole crowd springs up in madness. The handclapping of the Irish Guards swells to a rhythmic ovation. Alex lets himself be whipped up by the foot-stamping and the Gaelic yells of his men, and in an instant they all forget about their fatigue.

John and Rupert also try to get through those difficult days by singing their misery away. Their fired-up marching songs acquire a few new racy lines each day.

 

Here's to the Kaiser, the son of a bitch,
May his balls drop off with the seven-year itch,
May his arse be pounded with a lump of leather
Till his arsehole can whistle "Britannia for Ever.
"

 

John is discreet in his letters home and doesn't write about this part of the musical repertoire.

"Oh, Rudyard will most likely find out about them," says Rupert. He is amused to see his friend lie on his bedding and fill up whole sheets of paper with his scribbling.

"I can't tell my father about things like that," John answers. He is well aware that Mummy will also be reading every word he writes. He also knows she shows off the letters to her chic circle of friends, women who probably all have a hero in the family.

"At home they'll be eager to read the
franglais,
" John adds.

Rupert chuckles in agreement. "Frenglish!"

The British soldiers speak a roguish kind of French and call out all sorts of things to the girls along the way. It provides some comic relief each day.

"Talking French they are screamingly funny," John writes to his family on August 20 from the small but comfortable village of Acquin, near Saint-Omer.

 

We are splendidly billeted here. There are about fifty men in every barn in the area. I myself have accommodations in the mayor's house, where his very attractive daughter lives, too.
Monsieur le maire
is a small-time farmer but he reads. He stood up to
Wel
come me as his guest, the son of "le grand Rudyard. " His daughter's name is Marcelle, Celle to her friends. It will be good for my French...

 

As
a member of the upper class, John has always been able to speak the language of Molière reasonably well. Daddo reads effortlessly between the lines and knows how smitten his dear son is. Head over heels in love, or even more. Perhaps a romance is blossoming. Daddo writes back, "The best dictionary for French is a dictionary in skirts."

John always receives a lot of letters from home; every day in the barracks at Brentwood, every four days in France, for the mail can't be delivered more often than that. Mummy and Daddo don't miss a day. And in addition to letters, they send him countless parcels. "John Kipling!" the courier calls when he empties his mail sack. "Lieutenant Kipling! For you!" John is buried under the wool pullovers, collars, underwear, and stockings that his overanxious mother sends him. And all the while northern France is groaning from the heat, dust, and flies.

"Surely our whole company is wearing something of yours," Rupert Grayson says with a laugh.

The parcels are getting to be an embarrassment. John writes to his mother and begs her:

 

Please, no more underwear or clothes. Send me some biscuits instead. (But not the digestive kind!) Also welcome are chocolate (for the food is rotten!), a refill for my Orilux lamp, Colgate tooth powder, tobacco, shaving powder, magazines, and a glass (in a box for traveling), writing paper (also for my men who can't write; I do it for them)...

 

Even in Acquin, the Guards barely get any time to sit around when the long day's march is over. There is drilling, shooting practice, hours and miles of marching, then more drilling. The worst marksmen have extra shooting practice.

On August 30 they kick up their heels and take the day off. The Second Battalion of the Irish Guards plans to rendezvous with the First Battalion—their equal—halfway between the two, in Saint-Pierre.

"Unbelievable, isn't it, Rupert? Just think: they fought at Festubert, Neuve-Chapelle, and last year they were even in Ypres!" John is practically floating when he thinks about meeting the First Battalion.

Rupert remains sober. "Don't forget Mons. That was last year, too."

"Oh, that was the beginning of the war," John says, waving the criticism away.

"Right. But then George Cecil and his best school chum, John Manners, of the Grenadiers, were there as well."

"In God's name, Rupert! What are you trying to say?" John snaps back. No one likes to talk about the British Expeditionary Force, for instead of freeing poor Belgium it was all but wiped out in an instant. This army of professional soldiers was sent to Belgium and northern France at the onset of the war, but it was too small and too inexperienced to stop the Germans.

The encounter with the First Battalion is a shock. The brave and seasoned soldiers don't seem like heroes. Most of them look drained and pitiful. Even their uniforms appear faded and weary; the badges on the sleeve and the glittering harp on the collar are often missing. While they march over the sunlit field by Saint-Pierre, John and the other boys of the Second Battalion watch them silently.

But the new recruits like John Kipling, Rupert Grayson, and their men are so keyed up for battle that they aren't put off. Everyone is impatiently awaiting the real adventure, the confrontation with the barbaric Huns, the exchange of gunfire, and, who knows, perhaps a chance to be a hero. They hang on the words of their colleagues. Powerful stories are savored with a few glasses of "plonk," French white wine, while Captain Alexander sits on a table under the sheltering trees and cheers up the whole crowd with tunes on his harmonica.

Some soldiers in the First Battalion are not cheered up by the festivities.

"Those boys all grew up together," a young captain says with a sigh. He has noticed that John is looking inquisitively at three silent young men who are sitting farther up in the grass and staring straight ahead.

"Oh yes, we have that in a couple of platoons, too," Rupert Grayson interrupts, a bit too cheerfully. "Are they chaps from the same district who reported for duty together?"

The officer nods, frowning.

"Fantastic, isn't it?" John exclaims. "True comrades, together in the fight."

"There were eight boys in that group on Wednesday." The captain presses his lips together.

There are no further questions.

 

That night, John tosses and turns in bed until very late. He sees his fallen friends George Cecil and John Manners standing beside him. "With waxen, freshly washed faces that were smiling at me," he will tell Rupert Grayson much later. "Their uniforms were full of bullet holes and bayonet cuts, and blood was everywhere."

John breaks out in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. Shivering, he takes some writing paper. He sees the glazed eyes the Irish veterans of the First Battalion marching back and forth in his head looking like porcelain dolls. "Some look like animated corpses," the young Kipling will later write home. "Real walking corpses, so exhausted and knocked about. From the beginning they've gone through an unbelievable number of battles—often with heavy losses. We're still brand-new to this."

***

Mummy? Is that you, Ma? Yes, that does me good, rubbing my forehead like that. I can't open my eyes very well, Mums. Wait. Ow, that hurts. Careful with my head, oooh. Steady with my neck. That's better, rub there a bit. My eyelashes are stuck together.

It is late in the afternoon on Monday, September 27, 1915, on the battlefield of Loos. The road that rises gently from La Bassée to Lens cuts the grand French-Flemish fields down the middle. The chalk pits are on the right, just past the hamlet of Hulluch. A little farther along is the village of Loos, with its church in the center. Next to the main road is the Bois Hugo, a forest on a hill. Between the road and the forest lies a wounded boy in a disheveled uniform. A gold-colored harp is sewn on his collar, but in the sinking afternoon sun this emblem of the Irish Guards is covered with blood. Lieutenant John Kipling opens his eyes with difficulty. He is awakening from a brief coma. Disoriented, he slowly regains his senses. He can barely move and he cannot speak.

"There you are, sir. You have lost a lot of blood," he hears a deep, friendly voice say.

Who is that,
John wonders in a daze.
Where am I? A cap, the army—France, the front, the attack.

The day's events come to mind like a festering sore that breaks open suddenly. At the same time a searing pain jumps from his leg up to his head. His body is racked with spasms.

"Quiet, sir. Don't move," the man says. His voice is soothing. His silhouette blacks out the low sunlight as he bends over him. John's gaze now falls on the man's white armband and a dim red cross upon it.

Could it really be bad? Oh, my face is burning. Dear God, man! Keep your white rags away from my face! Nooo, that fellow is stripping the skin off my head. Stop! Make him stop!

The army medic sees the pain and panic in John's eyes and the taut muscles in his legs. "Quiet, Lieutenant. I've got to stop the bleeding. You've lost too much blood already."

John tries to cry out but his vocal chords are gone. His faltering breath is barely audible and becomes lost in the pink air bubbles and brown froth that well up from his formless mouth and ravaged throat.
Don't let me die, please take me with you,
he begs with his eyes. He looks back and forth and follows each move of the medic with suspicion.

"Shhh. Above all else don't move, sir. We'll take care of you. Quiet now, please." The man drops his arms to his side and shakes his head.

John faints, but a voice rouses him instantly.

"We'll never be able to bring this one back," the medic calls out to someone nearby. "Impossible."

John listens intently. There are gunshots as always, in the distance. Men are groaning not far from him, voices that beg for help.
What are they calling out? Do I know that voice? Or not? My platoon—how are they doing? Have they made it?
Shells and grenades skim by overhead. There is cursing from the medics.
Is that why they don't dare move me? The ground is shaking a little underneath me. There, now I hear missiles exploding in the distance.

A second army cap turns and floats above John's face.

"Goodness gracious, no." A man with a higher voice speaks close to his ear. He sighs. "It's best for this one to stay here. We'll lay him a bit farther up, in a ditch."

"The nearest trench is on that side," says the man with the low voice. "At least he'll have a chance there. The poor devil will be hit with more shrapnel if we leave him here."

They're afraid,
John thinks.
They're going to let me die here.
He feels like a boxer who has fallen in the ring, knocked out by a double uppercut, down for the count. He closes his eyes and hears the din swell all around him.

The two medics begin to argue. They pay no attention to John, for they believe he is unconscious.

Hurry up, you amateurs!
John rages to himself.

"They're fast approaching now," calls the first medic. "Come on, man, grab his feet."

"Leave him, there's no point."

"Come on, man, this is an officer. We can't just ignore him."

"Officer, my arse," shouts the other.

The low voice becomes raised. "To the trench with him, I tell you! Quick, before it's too late!"

"And we'll put a gas mask on him, too," answers the second medic cynically.

John is becoming nauseated from their bickering. And from the pain. He tries to think about something else.
Trenches, gas masks...
The words reverberate through his head.

***

"My God!" John shouts. He has been blasted awake by a sharp bang and by his own loud voice. The straw mattress slips off his bed. For a second he thinks they are being attacked by German artillery. But that's impossible, he realizes, because the Fritzes are too far away. A long, drawn-out crack from a nearby bolt of lightning fills the small guest room. John gazes suspiciously at the beam above his head.
Boom!
Light flashes through the curtain just before a second clap of thunder shakes the room. Only now is he aware of the rain that is beating down on the tiled roof.