The sun had taken many, many hours to riseand when it had, it refused to penetrate through the dense clouds sitting justabove the treeline.
As Charles stood, rifle at the ready, analarming thought recurred in his mind, whose seed had been sown back when theBattalion had taken the two hundred and fifty German soldiers prisoner, onlyfor them to be fired upon by their own men: the inanity that such evolved sophisticationand industrialisation could result in the complete and utter destruction ofhumanity. Borderless, nationless madness.
Charles tried to clear his mind, knowingthat such thoughts were highly dangerous. Yet they persisted, waiting inthe recesses of his mind, with faces—real faces: dead and foreversilenced. The faces of his friends. The faces of enemies.
He recalled an attack on the evening of 1stNovember when, back in Château Wood, just outside Ypres, the Germans hadunleashed a determined attack on the trenches held by the SecondBattalion. They had fought hard and had held their position. Thefollowing day, Charles had been one of the men sent out to assess thedamage. He had discovered four German bodies within the Battalion’sprotective wire. Something had compelled him to do what he knew heshouldn’t; to look the men in their eyes and to see them—really seethem. They had all been young, no more than eighteen years old. Hehad pulled out their papers and had read their names. Ernest Eucker. Kurt Fischer. Rolf Tomczyk. Hartmut Kern. Names he wascertain he would remember for ever. He had thought of their parents,still blissfully unaware that their boys were lying dead with horrendous woundsand gaping holes in their bodies in a forgotten Belgian wood. Men whowould likely be denied a dignified burial. Men whose flesh would be takenby animals and insects, and whose bones would be taken by the very Belgian soilon which they had fought and died.
‘Souvenirs?’ Stoneham had called over witha large grin on his face when he had seen Charles with their papers.
‘No, not souvenirs,’ Charles had respondedangrily. ‘Leave them be.’ Charles knew that Stoneham was ascavenger of the dead, amassing a horde of war memorabilia.
Stoneham had scoffed. ‘What do youthink Fritz is going to want to do with this?’ He lifted up Rolf Tomczyk’s limparm, aiming his watch in Charles’s direction.
Charles had watched incredulously asStoneham had bent the arm forwards, holding the watch in front of Rolf’s deadface.
‘Vot iz zee time?’ he had said with ahollow laugh. ‘Time to die!’
‘Stoneham, that’s enough!’ Charles hadshouted, knowing that he had held no authority over him. But it seemed towork; Stoneham had let the soldier’s arm fall back down to his side.
‘This is in pretty good condition,’Stoneham had said, turning the dead soldier’s head from side to side as heexamined his Pickelhaube.
‘Stoneham!’ Charles had shouted, as he watched him wrest the helmet fromthe dead soldier’s head.
‘Oh shut up. You got a thing for Fritz or something?’ he said,letting the German’s head fall back to the ground.
Charles had looked on in disbelief.
‘Shit,’ Stoneham had exclaimed.
‘What now?’ Charles had demanded, walkingover to the protective wire where Stoneham stood. Then he had seenit. Just in front of the woods, lying as they fell, were more than ahundred dead German soldiers, their grey corpses lying twisted and distorted,like slumped marionettes denied life from a puppeteer.
The two men had stood side by side, takingin the spectacle. A sudden eerie silence had descended upon the field andwoods; the only sound came from the soft inquisitive scurrying of three brownrats, excitedly exploring the fresh corpses.
Charles had turned and observed the smuglook on Stoneham’s face, as if he were personally responsible for everyextinguished life now in front of them. Charles had searched his beingand tried to find some part of him that could share in the nationalisticelation that he knew those deaths should bring, but he just hadn’t been able tofind it. They were soldiers, men just like him. Men desperatelyhoping for an end to the war.
But the horror had continued. More shelling, more death and destructionhad occurred in Château Wood before the Battalion had at last, on the 15thNovember, been relieved from Ypres. Rest and recuperation had finallybeen granted at Hazebrouck for the rest of the month.
Finally,at six pm, the water-clogged arteries of the frontline trenches began to berelieved. It was several hours later when Charles Farrier was allowed toleave his post. His mind and upper body were prepared to go, but hislower body was not. As he went to leave, his legs refused to move and hefell headfirst into the freezing water. With deep, searing pain spikinginto every muscle and joint in his legs and feet, Charles agonisingly liftedeach leg, one in front of the other, slowly wading his way through the trench.
When at last he set foot on the cleanduckboards at the base of the communication trench, he broke. Previouslystifled hot tears rolled down his cheeks, unstoppable until he breathed thefirst breath of air outside the trenches.
The eyes of his comrades peered out fromunder their caps with knowing and understanding looks engraved on their faces.
ChapterEight
15th August 1974, Westbere, Kent, England
NellieSageman, clutching a small posy of orange lilies freshly cut from her garden,gently pushed open the black iron gate to the burial ground directly oppositeAll Saints Church in the village of Westbere. It was a still, humid day;Nellie pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and ran it across her brow, thenover the nape of her neck. She had decided to make this a short visit andto get back as quickly as possible to the shaded canopy of the two elder treesat the bottom of her garden. If she felt so inclined later, she might cutdown some of the elderberries for jam-making.
She had aged well and, despite being inher eighties, Nellie had the strong well-defined features of a woman ten yearsyounger. Her hair had whitened and her skin had thinned but inside shewas still the same woman as in
