To End All Wars Page 5

  They both lapsed into silence. Forrester pondered what the second man had said. By he , had he meant the officer? But of course, he would not want rumour spreading through the trenches, loose talk of a new German superweapon that could incapacitate entire sections of the front like some fairy-tale plague. They would have seen the light, but there was bound to be a cover story—something, perhaps, in line with Forrester’s own speculations of flares or shellfire. Anyone who’d read a newspaper these last three years knew how easily the truth of the war could be manipulated.

  An insubordinate urge made him want to attempt a conversation with the two bearers, not to reveal any secrets but simply to countermand the officer in a small way. It was a useless impulse, for speaking would reduce him to another fit of coughing. Forrester lay back instead, trying to relax against the bearers’ relentless stumbling.

  Then he opened his eyes to lamplight and realised they had reached their destination. The bearers were carrying him down shallow stairs, into the earth. There was an excruciating jerk as they unloaded him from the stretcher to a camp bed, followed by the relief of stillness. The dug-out was clearly a dressing station, and likely not far from the front. Maybe their journey had been shorter than it seemed. From his prone position, Forrester strived to look around. He took in a narrow space ribbed with beams of wood, low-ceilinged and claustrophobic. The vast majority of the room was occupied with cots, and on all of them were wounded men. He could hear their muted groaning like a resonance rising out of the bedrock.

  A couple of orderlies were bustling between the cots, and a man that Forrester picked out as a medical officer was currently talking to his two bearers in the cramped porch of the entrance. Even viewed from the side, it was apparent that he wasn’t much older than Forrester himself. As the bearers disappeared up the stairs, he turned fully, and Forrester saw a rather implacable countenance, with alert eyes gazing back at him. The medical officer came over and said, “How are you feeling, lieutenant?” He knelt and began to undo the bandaging that enveloped Forrester’s leg.

  While he did so, Forrester mentally enumerated his symptoms. But reeling off the list out loud seemed unconscionably self-pitying. “Not so bad,” he lied. However, his voice was fraught with the exertion of not coughing, and that was an answer in itself.

  “I’m not worried about the leg,” the MO said, talking as he worked. “The bullet passed through quite neatly, I don’t believe it’s caught the bone. In that regard, you’ve been lucky. But it looks as though you may have breathed in a dash of gas. Did you know you’d been exposed?”

  To which one? Forrester almost asked. But the question had not been phrased in the tone one would employ to discuss some unprecedented terror of a new weapon. “They chucked over phosgene,” he croaked. “I thought I’d got my mask on in time.”

  “The bearers said you didn’t have it on when they found you,” the MO noted.

  “I took it off.” Forrester felt suddenly idiotic. Why had he removed his mask? Because it had been uncomfortable? Now here he was, with gas acting on his lungs, and possibly he was going to die.

  “Well,” said the MO, “we’ll know better in a couple of days. But...” He glanced toward the entrance, from which the two bearers had departed. “I don’t think they’ll be letting us hang on to you for that long. The orders passed with you state that you’re shipping out before evening.”

  “Shipping out?” Was this the news that each man on the front spent their every waking moment furtively craving? Had Forrester been fortunate enough to secure himself a Blighty wound? Yes, the hit to his leg would certainly warrant it. But, to the best of his knowledge, they didn’t move gas casualties unless they strictly had to.

  “I don’t know where,” the MO replied. Then, perhaps reading the hope in Forrester’s face, he added, “Maybe the CCS at first, but after that I’d imagine it’s probably back to England for you. You needn’t worry, though. I advised them that it’s a bad idea to cart you off prematurely, and they said someone will be along to look after you. Special care. You must be important, lieutenant.”

  I’m nobody , Forrester thought, not here or at home, no one to warrant any ‘special care.’ The Forrester family might be known for a few miles around, and his father had a friend or two in parliament, but none of that was the least distinguishing so far as junior officers went. Here at the Front, he had done his duty, they’d even pinned a medal on him for that business at Loos, but he was not so naive as to suppose that his performance had been in any way exemplary.

  The only thing that could conceivably distinguish him was the events of this night. He recalled what the officer in No Man’s Land had said, that either he or another would have more questions. Yet in their concise exchange, Forrester had told all he had to tell.

  Already the medical officer was finishing up. “Here’s something for the pain,” he announced, “and to help you sleep.” The something came in the form of a needle. With that done, the MO said a hasty goodnight and moved off to attend his other patients.

  Forrester wondered what he should do with himself. After his grogginess throughout the journey, and despite whatever the MO had given him, he was now almost uncomfortably awake. The leg hurt less, and, out of the rain and unseasonal cold, his breathing was better. He wished he had a book. Would it be inappropriate to request one? A small, disappointingly timid voice protested, You can’t have them thinking you’re too well . Was a man who was capable of sitting up and reading really deserving of being shipped back to Blighty?

  Then he remembered that there was one task he must do without delay. He called over an orderly and said, “My name is Forrester, Lieutenant Rafael Forrester, and I have an urgent errand that needs seeing to.” He explained to the man about Middleton’s letters, gave the trench address of their dugout, and had him repeat it.

  “Don’t you worry, sir,” the orderly assured him. “We’ll get that taken care of. Why don’t you catch some sleep? There’ll be all havoc here come the morning. ”

  Declaring how incapable he felt of sleep would be churlish. Instead, Forrester nodded and muttered a thank you.

  He lay back. Watching the staff of the dressing station work through half-closed lids offered a temporary distraction. If there was nothing entertaining in their performance, it was nevertheless a novel horror: three men bustling about, their efforts entirely inadequate to dealing with even this tiny cross-section of the war’s consequence. There were sixteen beds, with two more casualties on blankets on the floor, and it didn’t take Forrester long to judge with a degree of confidence who would survive to be moved elsewhere and who’d be dead by the morning. He had no doubt that the MO and orderlies knew as much, and still they did their best to divide their energies democratically.

  Forrester was woken, having never marked the moment he finally drifted into sleep, by a cough from the end of his cot. When he opened his eyes, two men were standing over him. One, from his uniform, was evidently an RAMC captain. He was the older of the pair, and in fact appeared old enough that it was hard to believe he’d qualified for frontline service. The younger man, who might have been in his thirties, bore a sergeant’s chevrons on his shoulder.

  It was the officer who spoke. “My name is Captain Timperley,” he said, “and this is Sergeant Torrance. I’ll be keeping an eye on your condition during the trip back, and the sergeant will accompany us.”

  Forrester wasn’t certain how he was meant to respond. It didn’t help that a slight hesitation in the captain’s speech had made him unaccountably sure that the name he’d given wasn’t his true one. The thought was absurd, and Forrester sought to convince himself it was a delusion, but in the meantime, everything sensible had gone from his head. He settled for attempting to look weary and grateful at once, as though pleased at the attention but too frail to express the sentiment .

  “I see you’re not yet up to talking,” Timperley acknowledged. “We shall be moving you in a little while. Try to make yourself ready.”

&nbs
p; Then he and the sergeant ambled off together, leaving Forrester briefly to his own devices. He wished that the MO from the dressing station was the one who’d be accompanying him, if it must be someone. There was an off-putting quality to this Captain Timperley. Perhaps it was merely his tone: he spoke with the suggestion of an Irish accent, but one that was harsh and grating, giving each word an aura of recrimination.

  Forrester had no idea how he should prepare for a journey. He considered making a bid to smarten his clothing, but his boots and trousers were filthy, his shirt was rank with the odour of stagnant water, and there was nothing he could do about any of it. If the army was determined to cart him off like this, his failings of decorum must be regarded as their problem rather than his.

  A minute later and Timperley was back, with two new stretcher bearers. They carried him out of the dugout and up a short portion of trench. It was morning, dull and grey, the night’s rain still falling in piercing slivers. Though the shelling remained cacophonous, the sound seemed fractionally more distant; that made Forrester think they were in the reserve lines. Sure enough, an incline brought them out on a road, where a lorry was waiting, its engine running. With much huffing and muted cursing, the bearers manoeuvred him into the rear. He hadn’t noticed a red cross, but within, the vehicle had been modified for moving the wounded, with padded frames affixed to either side. They laid him on one and then Timperley and Torrance clambered in to sit upon the other. They’d barely settled before the vehicle was in motion.

  The road was atrocious there, as it was everywhere in the vicinity of the front. How many tires and hooves and ill-fitting boots had scraped its surface? How many shells had gouged the packed earth? The army would be always making repairs, but its facility to destroy inevitably outweighed its capacity to mend.

  Forrester was already missing the little underground dressing station and its imperturbable personnel. To divert himself, he thought of hazarding a conversation. His lungs and throat felt better for the interlude of fresh air, and while they ached fiercely, the incessant urge to cough had diminished.

  However, when Forrester looked over at Timperley, the captain misread his expression. “I’m sure you must have questions,” he said. “I am not, unfortunately, the one to answer them. I do have an order for you, from on high: you’re not to talk to anyone about the last twenty-four hours. Not to me, nor to the sergeant. Is that clear? This is a matter of the strictest military discipline. If you understand, please make some sign.”

  “I understand,” Forrester said.

  “Ah, so you do have your voice,” Timperley remarked.

  “Though it seems that I’m not to use it.”

  “Don’t exaggerate, lieutenant. You may talk about any other topics you wish, to the sergeant and me and to anyone else you like. But nothing to do with the front. Actually, it’s probably best if you avoid the subject of the war altogether. Regardless, I’d think that leaves you a great deal of latitude.”

  Timperley’s apparently genuine belief in this claim compounded one of Forrester’s suspicions: that he had never served in the trenches. Anyone who had would tell you that it was difficult indeed to speak of anything besides the war. Confronted by the incongruence that was the recollection of peacetime life, one’s mind had no choice but to withdraw, or else to make of home a sacred keepsake, jealously guarded and shared only with intimates.

  “In any case,” the captain continued, “you’ve had a dose of gas. As your physician, I’d advise that you’re better off resting. So perhaps you should consider this dictum a part of your treatment.”

  If doing so meant an end to his lecturing, then Forrester decided he was willing to accept Timperley’s advice. As he’d noted earlier, the man had a talent for making anything sound like a reprimand. And it seemed Sergeant Torrance had received similar orders to Forrester’s own, since he was yet to utter a single word. He was, in fact, looking thoroughly uncomfortable with his lot, which was enough to make Forrester conclude that he was the more sympathetic of the pair.

  It was beginning to register on him that he was stuck with these two for the foreseeable future. Recalling that he didn’t know their destination, he wondered if that was among the questions Timperley had prohibited. For the first time, Forrester felt irritated. The army had their ways of doing things, of course, but did they really have to be so bloody-minded? He’d been gassed and wounded. He had lost men, lost friends. Didn’t there come a point when one had earned a modicum of decency?

  Seemingly not. And the journey was interminable. He was frustrated to discover that he had no means to measure time; somewhere between his going over the top and now, his army-issue wristwatch had vanished, most likely into the pocket of one of the stretcher bearers. There was an open section at the back of the lorry, but all he could see was a patch of rain-swept sky, across which the cracked stubs of buildings or wavering slivers of trees sometimes flitted. He was stuck with his own thoughts, and with Timperley and Torrance. The world’s worst music hall act , Forrester quipped to himself, but even that absurdity couldn’t cheer him.

  It might have been around lunchtime when they came to Doullens. At any rate, he was served sandwiches by a flustered corporal, in a one-room brick building furnished with ancient wooden benches that was near the station. But the MO at the dressing station had been wrong. They were not taking him to the CCS. A train stood ready at the platform, and as soon as he’d eaten, Torrance and Timperley escorted him on board.

  There had been crutches in the ambulance, for which Forrester was thankful. It was good to move about under his own steam, however awkwardly. They meant, though, that his concentration was wholly on walking. He took in nothing of Doullens and, as seemed more important once he was settled in a seat, little impression of the train itself.

  What struck him forcibly as they pulled away was that he’d counted a mere four cars, two of those for freight: one closed, the other a flatbed bearing some large mass secured by a tarpaulin. Moreover, the carriage they’d taken was otherwise vacant. When he’d arrived in France, the men had been crammed like chickens in a coop, and officers hadn’t fared that much better. This small and almost-empty train was an extraordinary waste of resources. Could the army be so desperate to get him wherever they wanted him? Yet that was ridiculous. Perhaps they’d simply been fortunate, in which case he should be grateful for any accident that hastened this torturous journey.

  Only then did it sink in that he was leaving the war. He had got out before the big show, and with a perfect Blighty wound. If his leg healed well, he would be gone for weeks. If it healed badly, maybe there’d be a desk job waiting for him. He ought to have been relieved. Wasn’t this what he’d longed for? But the circumstances were so strange, and it was hard to feel confident about anything with Timperley and Torrance sat in front of him like two sphinxes.

  In a mood of sudden impudence, Forrester blurted, “Look here, am I under arrest?”

  He had addressed the challenge to Torrance, but Timperley was the one who responded. “Not that I’ve been informed,” he said. Then, surprisingly, “Would it make a difference?”

  He had a point. Either way, Forrester belonged to the army, and it wasn’t as if he could opt to liberate himself. But not wishing to give Timperley the satisfaction, he replied instead, “Where are we going? To England?”

  “The sum total of my orders is to get you safe and sound to Southampton,” Timperley said. “As I told you, Lieutenant Forrester, I’m not the best man to be answering your questions.”

  It was a blatant rebuff, but Forrester wasn’t quite prepared to give up. “If we’re going to sit in silence, might I have something to read?”

  Though Timperley scowled, he said to Torrance, “Why don’t you ask around in the next carriage?”

  Torrance returned inside of five minutes and handed his finds to Forrester. “Here you are, sir. The lad I took the magazine off would like it back when you’re done, but the book is all yours.”

  Forrester was s
o startled to hear the sergeant speak—he had a rather pleasant, melodious voice—that he forgot to thank him. The magazine was a copy of The War Illustrated , which he had no desire to read. The book was a recent one by Nat Gould, a tatty yellow-back: The Wizard of the Turf . Not substantially better, but it would have to do.

  Forrester made himself as comfortable as he could upon the unyielding carriage seat and read, pausing often to gaze out of the window. Away from the war, so much of France was beautiful. He could scarcely reconcile this summered land of picturesque villages and fecund woodland with the scorched, naked earth they’d left behind. They would be heading south, toward Abbeville and on to Rouen and ultimately to Le Havre, last gateway between the front and home. He couldn’t remember how long the journey had taken in the other direction. In any case, that train had crawled through the French countryside, as though the war was the very least of its concerns, whereas this one appeared to be in a distinct hurry.

  As the afternoon drew on, he fell into a doze, and woke feeling muddled and lightheaded. His leg had stiffened and hurt more than ever. When Forrester attempted to bend his knee, he couldn’t restrain a groan.

  Noticing, Timperley said, “I think it’s time I had a look at that.”

  He undid Forrester’s boot, rolled up his trouser leg, and stripped off and replaced the bandage. Then he rummaged in the black leather case he’d brought and produced a syringe in a padded metal case. Forrester would have protested, but the pain was nearly insufferable. He said nothing when the doctor asked him to remove his jacket and pull up his shirt sleeve. He gritted his teeth when the needle went in.

  Afterwards, Forrester resumed the Gould book, but it had hardly held his attention before, and now the words seemed to jerk and slither. Resignedly, he bundled his jacket into a pad that he propped against the window and settled down again, as sleep descended over him by slow degrees.

  Only, it was impossible to relax. The carriage was so damned claustrophobic, and so dark. Not the dark he was accustomed to, the familiar and reassuring kind, but a cloying sort that made him helplessly afraid. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t cry out; there was no one to hear. And the more he tried and failed, the more frightened he became, until the fear was almost overwhelming...