Morton sighed. ‘Let’s hope so. I don’t want things to change between us, but I do want to discuss it.’
‘Let’s see what tomorrow brings, shallwe?’ Juliette said, gently stroking his hair. ‘Come on, let’s get somesleep.’
Morton put his night t-shirt and boxershorts on and slipped into bed beside Juliette. He switched off thelight, kissed her goodnight and began to replay all the information that he hadjust learnt about his great grandfather. In just a few short hours,Morton had learned a great deal about Charles. Having seen and read somuch about the Great War, Morton wondered at what horrors Charles had seen and,ultimately, what had taken his life on the 26th December 1914.
ChapterTwo
21st December 1914, Hazebrouck, Northern France
Justa few months ago, seven am in Hazebrouck, Central Square would have containedonly a handful of French men and women innocuously going about their dailylives, all unaware of the destructive war clouds looming in the distance. The heady aromas of fresh coffee and hot breads would have seeped into the airover the cobbled square, enticing passers-by on their way to work. Today,however, with most of the buildings overlooking the square solemn and all butclosed down, the lack of locals was compensated for by the full complement ofthe Second Battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment. They were standing,like a neatly sewn khaki blanket, in ordered rows waiting to board a fleet ofmotorbuses which had been requisitioned from England. The buses, withtheir hastily boarded-up windows and matching khaki paint, had been sent inorder to move troops quickly and efficiently to the frontline. It was thesecond time that the Battalion had been in Hazebrouck. On the firstoccasion, they had marched there in a blizzard, arriving on the 19thNovember. They had stayed there for the remainder of the month, whilstreinforcements were brought in. Such were the losses experienced by theBattalion in the opening weeks of the war, that Charles now barely recognisedthe Battalion of old.
‘Reckon we’ll get on this Ole Bill,’ Leonardwhispered to Charles.
‘Let’s hope so, I just want to get on withit,’ he answered quietly, as he watched one motorbus crammed with soldiersbeing replaced swiftly by an empty one.
‘Next lot, get a move on,’ barked SergeantBuggler.
The line surged forward and Leonard,followed by Charles, climbed the external steps to the open top-deck seating.
‘More, more!’ Buggler shouted. ‘Squash up—you’re not on a bloody sight-seeing tour.’
Charles took the next available seatbeside Frank Eccles, with Leonard shoved to his right. The bus filledquickly, with men taking every inch of available space.
Suddenly, the bus lurched forward and theywere on their way, returning to the front.
Some of the men around him used theopportunity to snatch a few minutes’ rest, others chatted quietly. Therewas something akin to a nervous ripple that had been quietly buzzing around theBattalion since they had been told that they were heading back to the front torelieve the Seaforth Highlanders. It was in stark contrast to their earlydays, when excitement and anticipation at finally seeing action had dominatedevery conversation. But their first days were filled with endlessmarching, day after day. In late August, the Battalion had spearheadedthe British Expeditionary Force’s retreat from Mons. More marching—awayfrom the enemy. Endless hours of marching. Men dropping by theroadside, exhausted. By the end of August, his comrades were beginning toask each other and their superiors when would they turn and fight the enemy, asthey had been trained to do? When the retreat was finally over, theBattalion had marched sixty miles in sixty-five hours. The men had beenbeyond shattered.
The Battalion’s first sighting of theenemy had been on the 10th September. On high ground near the village ofPriez, a line of German soldiers had come into view, sending a buzz ofexcitement through the men like a bolt of electricity, as they had marchedthrough the village with a newfound sense of adventure and purpose, seeminglyoblivious to the thick torrents of rain that had lashed down on them. They had been greeted on the other side of the village by unexpectedly heavyfire, subjecting the Battalion to its first substantial losses; the skirmishhad left seventeen dead and eighty-three injured. That night, sheltered in their billets in the town of Paissy,the four Battalion companies had been subdued; their initial bravado hadyielded to the realities of war: their comrades and friends were lying dead ina French field. Four days later and the Battalion was hit again by severelosses. Whilst occupying high ground above Vendresse, the Battalion hadmanaged to take a group of two hundred and fifty German soldiers by surprise. The Germans had quickly surrendered under a white flag and were takenprisoner. It was whilst being marched away that other German soldiersrandomly opened fire, killing several men, including their own. Thefighting had continued and the Battalion had been ordered to dig itself intotrenches and hold their position. Among the one hundred and fourteenmissing, wounded and dead of the Second Battalion was David Dowd, a closefriend of Charles’s. He had suffered a fatal bullet wound to the head andCharles had watched helplessly as he quietly slipped away. There had beenno time to bury him. No time for grieving.
‘What you thinking about, Charlie?’Leonard asked.
‘Nothing,’ Charles answered. ‘Justwondering what we’re going back to. More wet and muddy trenches. It’s not exactly the open warfare we trained for, is it?’
Leonard laughed. ‘I don’t know whatyou mean—it’s exactly like the gentle, rolling hills of Woking and the Englishcountryside.’
‘I just hope they train the poor blightersanswering Kitchener’s call-up,’ Charles said sombrely. The war hadchanged direction in mid-September. The shelling, sniping and artillerybombardment continued, but taking place in an ever-expanding warren oftrenches, stretching their way tentacle-like through the fields ofEurope. Sightings of the enemy diminished to the point that new recruits,drawn up from the territorials to replace the fallen, had never actuallyseen them. But the death and destruction had continued. More andmore familiar faces had disappeared into the French soil. There had
