The Beauty and the Sorrow (70 page)

        
Loved and were loved, and now we lie

        
In Flanders fields
.

        
Take up our quarrel with the foe:

        
To you from failing hands we throw

        
The torch; be yours to hold it high
.

        
If ye break faith with us who die

        
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

        
In Flanders fields
.

McCrae died yesterday of something as banal as inflammation of the lungs. Cushing writes in his journal:

We met at No. 14 General—a brilliant sunny afternoon—and walked the mile or so to the cemetery. A company of North Staffords and many R.A.M.C. orderlies and Canadian sisters headed the procession—then [McCrae’s horse] “Bonfire,” led by two grooms and carrying the regulation white ribbon with his master’s boots reversed over the saddle—then the rest of us. Six sergeants bore the coffin from the gates, and as he was being lowered into the grave there was a distant sound of guns—as though called into voice by the occasion.

FRIDAY
, 1
FEBRUARY
1918
Elfriede Kuhr’s brother receives his call-up papers

It does not sound like a very pleasant experience. Elfriede’s brother Willi is upset when he tells her how they all had to line up naked in a freezing barrack room. Willi has been exempted from military service so far for medical reasons: water on the knees and a weak heart “resulting from scarlet fever.” But this has now been reconsidered. The German army,
like all the other warring European armies, is suffering an acute manpower shortage. A doctor presses his stomach and listens to his lungs before announcing: “Sound as a bell!”

Willi spits and snorts: “The self-important fool! All he wants to do is to scrape together some more cannon fodder for Kaiser Wilhelm!” Elfriede and Willi’s close friend Hans Androwski tease him and laugh: “What a magnificent sight you must have been—naked! A model of divine Olympian youth!” Then the tone of the conversation changes and they start discussing how Willi should handle the situation. Androwski, who is excused from service because of poor eyesight, says that whatever happens he must avoid the infantry. The air force is best—behind a desk, of course, not at the controls of a plane. “Tell them that your handwriting is fantastic!” Willi rejects everything they say and looks on the dark side: “Prussian military service. Now I’m right in the shit.” Elfriede says that he had better not let their mother hear him say that—she still believes in the war and when Willi falls, Elfriede says ironically, she will see him as
a hero
.

Then they start talking about the war. Elfriede asks the same question as so many other people are asking: why, why have all these people died? “Millions dead for nothing, for nothing at all.” Androwski does not agree. It has not been meaningless. By their deaths, all these fallen Russians have paved the way for the great revolution in their country. Elfriede becomes angry. “By their deaths? If that’s the price I don’t want any more revolutions.” Willi does not say anything, just bites his nails.

FRIDAY
, 8
FEBRUARY
1918
Olive King contemplates her lack of eyebrows

It is winter but it is unusually warm. Some Italian officers have apparently already been hardy enough to bathe. Olive King is no longer living in the little house on the edge of the burnt-out city of Salonica and has moved instead into a cabin improvised from an enormous wooden crate that once contained an aeroplane.

Bathing? Perhaps it is for lack of anything better to do. There is nothing new in Salonica. In spite of significant reinforcements joining the Army of the Orient, very little has happened. Critics of the
operation—and there are many of them these days—refer to the fortified city as Germany’s biggest internment camp. There were attempts to break through the Bulgarian lines to the north during 1917 but any advances have been painfully small. (Sarrail himself, though, was replaced as commander some months ago.) Part of the problem is that disease is rampant. Nominally the Army of the Orient can reckon on 600,000 men, but once malaria, dengue fever and other afflictions have done their bit there are only about 100,000 of them fully fit for service. The hospitals are swamped.

Olive King, however, has not been suffering from any lack of activity. Recently she has been making repeated trips to Corfu or, more accurately, to Santi Quaranta, the port right opposite the large island. The American Red Cross has donated twenty-nine ambulances to the Serbian military medical service and she has been one of the people driving the new vehicles to Salonica. The round trip takes eight to ten days and by this point King knows the road well.
^‖
The journey along these narrow, precipitous mountain roads is often troublesome and sometimes dangerous. King has endured both snowstorms and breakdowns. She has noticed that she often bears the hardships better than the male drivers, “who hate the discomfort, the rain & mud & cold.” For her own part she says she lives “the gypsy life.” Her health is excellent apart from occasional toothache and the colds she always treats with a mixture of boiling water, rum and masses of sugar.

It is quite clear that she is devoting herself to her work with the kind of obsessive dedication shown by someone in need of distraction. To her great disappointment her love affair with the Serbian captain Jovi has come to an end. The last time they met was in October when, just after she had been decorated with a Serbian medal for bravery shown during the great fire, she met him on Corfu. (He was about to go to London on an official mission.) They spent several days together and then said their goodbyes at the boat back to the mainland. She cried a little—she would actually have liked to sit down and howl. A period of loneliness and depression followed, a depression that became severe when she received a letter from Jovi telling her he had met someone else.

So now she is sitting in her wooden cabin writing to her father once
again. He wants to have a photo of her and she promises to send one all in good time. It is not that there is any shortage of opportunities—there are a number of street photographers in the city and they have plenty of customers: “You nearly always see a Tommy standing up with a shamefaced defiant smile, surrounded by critical & jeering friends.” But there are cosmetic reasons for delaying the photograph. When her stove would not light she poured in a sploosh of petrol and “whizz went my eyebrows and lashes and front hair, the second time this year.” King does not want to have her photograph taken until they have grown back. She has already told her father in an earlier letter that she will probably never be able to return to an ordinary family life:

O, Daddy, I often wonder what you’ll think of me when we meet after these five long years. I’m sure I must have got awfully rough & coarse, always being with the men, & I’m not a bit pretty or dainty or attractive.

On Monday she is off to Santi Quaranta again. Nothing, not a thing, is happening up at the front—as usual.

MONDAY
, 18
FEBRUARY
1918
Willy Coppens flies over occupied Brussels

Coppens has done everything it is possible to do: tested the new engine, made sure the tanks are full to the brim, got hold of a small map, packed an automatic pistol and a box of storm matches (to set light to the aircraft if he is forced down behind enemy lines), and taken his best uniform cap with him (to wear if he is taken prisoner, since one cannot just be dressed anyhow in that situation). It is a beautiful, clear winter’s morning with a blue, cloudless sky.

At 8:35 he takes off in his machine. His destination is Brussels. The city is over sixty miles away, deep inside German-occupied territory.

The purpose of the flight? There is no real purpose—as the Belgian generals have recognised, which is why they have imposed a ban on such long flights. Technically speaking, what he is planning to do is against orders and could lead to a court martial, but Coppens is prepared to
take both that risk and the risk of flying so deep into enemy territory. To some extent it is just a matter of dash and élan, with the added attraction of doing something that is both dangerous and remarkable. During the night the very thought of this flight made him tremble with excitement. The flight is not just an enjoyable but empty gesture, however: the showing of the Belgian colours over a city that has been occupied for three and a half years is also a way of demonstrating defiance and a will to win—qualities that are needed at a time when weariness, uncertainty and doubt are more prevalent than ever.

Because how is it all going to end? There are probably not too many people who would bet on an Allied victory, and even the optimists coldly calculate on the war continuing into 1919. The French army has still not fully recovered from last year’s mutinies, nor the British from the bloodbath at Passchendaele, nor the Italian from the catastrophe at Caporetto. Admittedly, the Americans are on the way, but there are still far too few of them. And Russia? Well, Russia has descended into revolutionary chaos and is to all intents and purposes out of it. There are, moreover, rumours of a massive redeployment of German troops from the increasingly quiet Eastern Front to the Western.

There is also something else drawing him to Brussels—his family. He corresponds with them by letter via Holland so he knows they are alive but he has not seen them since 1914. The simple fact is, he wants to see his home town again.

Just after nine o’clock Coppens passes over the front line at Diksmuide at an altitude of 5,400 metres. Beneath him he can see two French SPAD planes flying in the opposite direction. He is in luck. The French aircraft attract the attention of the German anti-aircraft batteries. He sees how they are surrounded by clouds of smoke from the detonating shells while he is allowed to continue untouched and apparently unseen. He is by no means an expert navigator so he is intending to stick to the usual procedure and fly by well-known and obvious landmarks, which is why his route does not make directly for Brussels. He steers a course up towards Bruges until he catches sight of the mass of red roofs in the distance, and from Bruges he follows the railway line that goes down to the capital via Ghent. Immediately south of Ghent, Coppens resists the temptation to launch an attack on a German two-seater that unexpectedly appears off to his right.

Now he suffers his first tremors of apprehension. When he looks behind him he can no longer pick out his own lines, and a little while later the River Yser and even Diksmuide are no longer visible. He is utterly alone. “Alone in a fragile craft” are the words that accompany him on his way. The feeling of isolation that comes over him is so strong that he ceases looking around him and fixes his gaze on the horizon ahead—even though this seriously increases the risk of becoming the victim of an unpleasant surprise.

When he is over Aalst, Coppens catches his first glimpse of Brussels. Leaning forward and screwing up his eyes, he can pick out the huge Palace of Justice, its colossal dome sticking up above the clustered roofs of the southern part of the city. Happy but confused, he begins to sing loudly, though the words are drowned by the drone of his engine.

Coppens passes over a train chugging along down there—the first sign of life.

At 9:52 he flies in over the city.

At the Gare du Midi he goes into a steep dive and sweeps low over the roof. At that height and at that speed his flight breaks down into a series of impressions of lightning. There, on the Avenue Louise, two trams are passing each other outside a couple of light-coloured buildings; there, at the market on Place Sainte-Croix, some stallholders are throwing vegetables into the air in joy; there are the trees in the Parc Solvay and the rippling mirror of the water reservoir; there, his parents’ house, a tall white house with a red roof. Home! Coppens pulls his aircraft into a sharp turn to the right and inside one window of the house he sees the silhouettes of two women and instantly concludes that one of them
must
be his mother. At the rear of the house he sees the window of his own boyhood room. Through the gleaming glass he thinks he sees red curtains and something makes him think of the model aeroplane he hung on his ceiling perhaps eight years ago—it is probably still hanging there, somewhere in among the shadows.

After flying for thirteen minutes back and forth over Brussels, Coppens turns away from the city’s tangle of roofs and lanes, palaces and avenues and makes for Ghent, and then from Ghent direct to Diksmuide and the front line. In the distance the North Sea is glistening in the sunlight. He knows now that he will almost certainly get back and he feels relieved, although the feeling is short-lived:

But when I thought of what I had just done and thought of my parents I was filled with despair yet again—despair that made me shrivel up inside. I have never again experienced such spiritual pain, almost impossible to bear.