War & Words Read online

  The top ten entries from Surrey Libraries short story competition.

  The top ten entries from Surrey Libraries short story competition.

  Summer 2014

  Summer 2014

  Introduction

  Earlier in 2014, as part of Surrey Libraries’ commemoration of the First World War centenary, we launched a short-story competition and I'm delighted to be able to present Surrey County Council's Library Service's eBook, containing the 2 winning and the 8 highly commended entries. We had an excellent response to the competition with 55 entries. The themes varied greatly, focusing on a range of different characters who were impacted by war. Some writers focused on the women left behind and their struggle for equality, some on the men going to war, whilst others focused solely on battle and life in trenches. There were also a couple of stories about the long term impact of the war on families and relationships, and stories about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The judging panel were very impressed with the way the stories were written and it gives me great pleasure to introduce these stories to you.

  Helyn Clack

  Cabinet Member for Community Service and Cabinet Lead for Continuous Improvement.

  Contents

  Page

  The Winning entry:

  Scraping graveyards from the land by Roy Peachey 4

  The Runner Up:

  Homecoming by Katherine Edwards 7

  Reggie’s boys by Heather Mason 10

  The last dance by Alexia Lavender 13

  Surrey lion by Richard Vidal 16

  Another morning came by Richard Todman 19

  The trench by Malcolm Pate 22

  The searcher by Nina Hilton 24

  A home for heroes by Peter Dillow 27

  Regimental aid post by Jeff Patrick 31

  The Winning Entry

  SCRAPING GRAVEYARDS FROM THE LAND

  By

  Roy Peachey

  The Great War began in 1919. That, at least, was when I left the comfort and comparative safety of the headquarters of the Chinese Labour Corps in Noyelles-sur-Mer and was transported to the dead fields of Belgium. I had come to France from Shanghai as a translator but even translators were obliged to clear the land of death’s detritus when hostilities came to an abrupt halt.

  A great age of rebuilding was about to begin: that was what they told us. But it wasn’t how it seemed to me or to the hundreds of men I worked alongside. Rather than rebuild, we were forced downwards into the broken land, our job being to clear the fields of their unwanted debris. While others concentrated on clearing munitions, spent or otherwise, we were ordered to find and remove the unclaimed dead. Our job was to create cemeteries for the white devils to mourn in.

  Already Belgium was a country of cemeteries, though they were unlike any I had seen before. The ones I knew were noble refuges that I visited dutifully as a child, the places where my ancestors were buried. They were great pilgrimage sites where hundreds of families gathered to offer roasted piglets, to burn incense and to chant prayers, places of memory and belonging built into the sides of bold hills, overlooking the sea.

  The Belgian graveyards weren’t like that. They weren’t even like the graveyards I had seen in France, full of black granite, fresh flowers and fading photographs. They weren’t attached to towering village churches, whose doors opened to reveal a strange red light burning at the holy end, the end I never dared approach. They weren’t attended by old women, their heads covered with black shawls and their hands full of rosary beads. Belgian graveyards belonged to no one.

  Where men had fallen in desperate attacks on pathetic ridges, small squares of remembrance were fenced off by rope, but no one ever came to visit them. The cemeteries that cluttered the fields of Belgium merged with the flatness of the land and were indistinguishable from it. Only a few rough wooden crosses, huddled together in artificially straight rows, marked the spot where soldiers were said to have died. But we knew better. Beneath the serried rows was a clutter of body parts, confusion covered by two or three feet of soil. And the reason we knew was because creating such desperate places was what we were paid to do.

  Sometimes we were lucky: the Germans, for all the stories that the British told about them, did at least bury their enemies and mark their graves. Even so, we wasted many hours digging where no body had ever been and, no doubt, sometimes missed places where others still were. But, as the months passed, we grew used to scouring the ground for true signs of death: rat holes and tiny traces of discarded bones; small pieces of uniform protruding from the ground; blue-green grass and green-black water. The lingering colours of death. The inevitable signs of decay. We marked these sites with flags – blue for larger burial grounds and yellow for smaller ones – and then removed the corpses. In the early days we worked as quickly as possible but, as one shovel after another plunged through the soft flesh of the dead, as one labourer after another vomited on the remains he revealed, we began to slow down.

  We worked, if not with the skill of the archaeologist, then at least with his speed. Painstakingly we dug around the resting place of the dead soldiers, ensuring that nothing was missed, before laying out canvas, soaking it with cresol and carefully digging down and under the remains. As we lifted body parts onto the sheet we detached any personal items – identification tags, letters, photographs – and passed them onto the Exhumation Officer who always accompanied us. The British watched us like eagles in case we stole watches or money but little was ever taken. There were few of us who wanted anything to do with the possessions of the dead.

  As the weeks passed the ground softened but our job grew harder. Hasty battlefield burials became more difficult to identify – grass and nettles now covered much of what had once been battlefields – and so we trusted to luck and intuition. A line of darker grass or a flush of nettles might denote the site of a shallow grave but, equally, it might not. We dug anyway and hoped we wouldn’t find anything that would blow us sky-high. But, however careful we were, we soon had dead men of our own. Tang Qianyue and Bai Weiqi were blown up by a bomb they spotted too late. You Ma, Yan Fanbao and Li Shuping lit a fire on a cold morning but were unlucky enough to pick the site of an old German ammunition dump for their improvised breakfast. All that was left of them was Yan’s hand still holding his mug for tea. Zeng Zengyou was shot by one of our own sentries when he went outside one night to relieve himself. Wu Kaiyang lost his leg in an explosion, seemed to recover but then contracted gangrene and died three weeks later. Rui Boda and Wei Xuanyao were killed by Spanish ’flu. I used to wake up each morning surprised to find myself still alive.

  In Belgium I gave myself to the flat earth as an old man does to death, scraping graveyards from an ungrateful land. Then, when my contract expired in 1921, I tried to leave Europe behind for good. Repatriated with scarcely a word of thanks, I tried to throw memories aside, but even here in Shanghai – an old man now myself, waiting for the Great War to end – I see crumpled corpses reaching out to reclaim me. Each slow day I recoil from their embrace.

  The Runner Up

  HOMECOMING

  By

  Katherine Edwards

  Reverend Francis Sidwell is one of the last to be demobbed and the summer of 1919 is in weary retreat by the time he walks, diffidently, almost apologetically, up the path, towards the churchyard.

  Sidwell – known by the men as Sid - has imagined this homecoming so many times: amid the daffodils of March; with the April carnival of cherry blossom mingling with Saturday's confetti; with the June cascade of bluebells. Now the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun warm the stone bell tower but the flowers have mostly gone to seed.

  This is a scene that his memory has turned over and over, smoothing, misting, ref
ining, like waves on a piece of glass. When he forced himself onwards through a fog of exhaustion, the groans and stench of the dressing station occasionally became less real to him than this scene. When he held the hands of those boys, feeling the tightening grip of their fingers as their wounds were seen to, seeing the beads of sweat form on their foreheads and talking rapidly, desperately, to them about football teams, the memory of it sustained him, gave him strength. For one needed strength to bear the look in young Chilcott’s eyes when he was told he’d lose that leg. It was the day before he turned seventeen and Sidwell knew that he would not make it through the operation.

  He grew used to the men asking him why he was there, why he wore the dog collar. He had his repertoire of droll replies, but the honest answer lay here in this churchyard. It was here where he hid and read as a boy, where the old rector listened kindly to his childish observations, where he caught butterflies and found those swallow’s eggs. A far cry from Blundell's boyhood in the backstreets of Manchester, or those Glasgow boys he was with at Vimy who joined up for the same reason they'd done most things in their sixteen years in the slums, as the best chance of a decent meal. It was here in this churchyard one summer evening as a young man of about the age Chilcott never quite reached, that Sidwell had that vivid experience which he described, with a tightening of the throat, in many an ardent conversation in his rooms at college, back in that other life, that earnest, innocent, irrelevant time before.

  Yes, absurd though it is, he still feels that somehow he was sent forth by this place – sent out there to pray with those boys, to write their letters. (And what letters – what brave lies were mustered from those cracking lips: ‘Dear mother, I’m doing splendidly…’.) When his duty was done and he closed their eyes, it was often to this place that his mind retreated.

  Perhaps the only way he avoided the fate of all those nervous cases was by a habit he developed of walking slowly around this churchyard in his mind so as to seal himself from the din of war, make himself deaf to the shells. He would pause by every lichen-aged headstone, recalling the way some of the older ones were partly sunk, received into the sheltering earth. He would remember the inscriptions, would lean on the bark of those gnarled yews; where death smelt benignly of moss and sap and cut grass. He would then make his way into the cool, dark interior of the church where polished wood and lilies and a trace of incense would almost mask the sweat, vomit and chloroform.

  His mind would travel to the back of the church, where the beloved face, the carved figure of Christ, would be waiting for him, arms outstretched to receive him, to reassure him, to tell him that there is still truth, there is still justice, that gas and shrapnel wounds and ripped bodies are not the end of it. He would store in his memory its gentleness, wisdom, love, let it breathe conviction into his prayers, to gather himself for the next time he repeated Psalm 23 to the men about to go over the top. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.... He held this face in his mind like some of the men held the faces of their girls. The gash in Christ’s shoulder – said to have been inflicted by one of Cromwell’s men in the Civil War – moved him curiously. Once he had dreamt it was turning gangrenous, was flooded with relief when he woke and was immediately ashamed and unsettled by this relief. Gangrene did for Chilcott. That look when they told him he would lose his leg...

  But all that is now over. He is home.

  He looks steadily at the sight before him but is deaf to the sounds around him- the stirring of leaves, the tender call of woodpigeons. Those graves are sinking slowly into the mud, being dragged down. There is nothing anyone can do. The dead are all around. Why do they go on calling to him?

  He tries to wake himself up to this moment. The end has come, those selfish prayers answered. Be thankful. You have survived. But something essential is not responding, is not functioning. He can only hear the sound Evans made when his lungs gave out; Griffiths shouting for his mother out in No Man’s Land, and the guns.

  He continues into the church now, with the dogged air of a sleepwalker. He passes leaflets, pews, hymn books, other remnants. Wreckage from some abandoned operation. He remembers something the old rector said about youth and sacrifice.

  His legs take him automatically to where he stops. The air is still. He sees in front of him a small piece of wood carved into human form. He notes that at some point someone saw fit to take a swipe at it in anger. He acknowledges that anger passively but finds that, as so often nowadays, he feels nothing.

  REGGIE’S BOYS

  By

  Heather Mason

  Reggie sat at his desk and looked at the list of names in front of him. A list he had been adding to gradually over the past four years.

  “So many,” he said out loud. “So many of my boys.”

  He remembered them all. Samuel Sweet, one of that first group that had come to him about ten years ago and said they were going to be Scouts. They had read Baden Powell’s booklets and wanted Reggie to be their leader. As Curate of St Matthew’s he knew them well and readily agreed.

  Samuel had recently been added to his list.

  As one of his Scouts Samuel had been a quiet lover of nature and gentle pursuits – not the sort to ever want to be a soldier. And Edwin Keen: Reggie remembered him as the most talented when they did their woodwork classes: Arthur Godwin led them on their hikes and Jack Patten was a wonderful singer when they sat round their camp fires of an evening.

  All the boys with names on the list had been there at that wonderful rally at Windsor when thousands of Scouts had gathered in honour of King George. They had even seen Baden Powell that day. What a day to remember for them all.

  Only now they were gone.

  Reggie thought of some of his other Scouts. Joe Ratcliffe had been too young to join up but had done his bit working with “The Specials”. Night after night he and others had guarded the railway and carried messages. Every night some of them had camped in the Vicarage gardens, ready to jump on their bikes and call “The Specials” if air raids were imminent. Then later, the buglers had been there to sound the All Clear. The residents of Tolworth knew well the keenness they put into those notes.

  Then there was Jack Butler, another one who was thankfully too young but also played his part. He took over the Church Warden’s duties and did them so well. He taught himself to ring their bells too and he was so proud when he finally rang the Victory Peal.

  Reggie read again what he had already written. The war was over at last and he was moving on to be a Vicar in his own parish. He had done his job as Curate at St Matthew’s to the very best of his ability but he now had a further calling to attend to. The St Matthew’s Vicar was taking over the Scout Troop and Reggie hoped he would do well.

  But Reggie wanted to leave a small reminder of those first ten years. He didn’t know how much longer the 1st Tolworth Troop would carry on – he didn’t know how much longer Baden Powell’s Scout movement would carry on but it was all going well so far.

  So he had written about those small beginnings with Samuel and his friends forming that first Patrol of Boy Scouts. He had written about their woodworking classes, their hiking, their boot mending sessions and the camps they had enjoyed. He had also proudly written about their efforts during the war when the men had all been sent off to fight for King and Country.

  And now he wanted to do justice to those whose names were on his list. All his 1st Tolworth Scouts who had gone to fight and would never be coming back.

  For how long, he wondered, would people actually remember them? Of course their families would never forget but who else, in even a few years’ time, would know what sacrifice some of “Reggie’s Boys” had made?

  He took up his pen again. “The pride of the Troop lies with those seventy Scouts who volunteered for the fields of Flanders.” He named the thirteen wounded, the two who were still missing and the three who had been prisoners. But he wrote most importantly of the eleven who would never return – the ones who had made
“the supreme sacrifice.”

  But how long, he wondered again, would those names actually be remembered?

  Heather sat at her desk and looked at the tiny, well-worn booklet that had come into her possession. As Group Scout Leader of the 1st Tolworth (St Matthew’s) Scout Group she was keeper of the Group’s memorabilia – some dating back to the very earliest days.

  And now someone had sent her a copy of a booklet written back in 1918 by the very first Scoutmaster, one Reggie Bullock. Troop Leader Joe Ratcliffe had been hand-written on the front and it was Joe’s son who had found it in his father’s effects and sent it on to become a part of the Group’s history.

  She read his words with interest and looked carefully at the list of names of those who had not returned from fighting in World War One.

  She smiled. It was only a few weeks ago that she had been at the District Camp Site and had been pointing out those very names on the war memorial that took pride of place on the main field. She had been reminding her 21st Century Scouts of what had happened to some other 1st Tolworth Scouts one hundred years ago – trying to make the national commemoration of the War more relevant to them.

  Reggie had finished his story of 1st Tolworth with the words – “It is a story we hope will long be continued into the days of Peace.”

  I wonder if he even considered that we would still be here one hundred years later? She thought. I guess he would be proud that we are – and prouder still that his “Reggie’s Boys” names are remembered on the memorial that still has wreaths laid by it each November. Yes, I guess he would be pleased, she thought.

  She smiled again.

  “We will remember them,” she said out loud. “We will remember them.”