The Lost Soldier (42 page)

The sergeant’s voice hardened a little as he said, “What do you mean, Carter? Don’t know where they are. You deserted, have you?”

“Course not!” Tom was stung by the suggestion. “I was sent to carry this bloke to the dressing station.”

“Ain’t no dressing station round here,” pointed out the sergeant.

“No. I know. Then I came down with an ambulance to the casualty clearing station. I’ve come from there.”

“Why didn’t you go back up with the ambulance?”

“I had to get to Albert,” said Tom. He wondered if he should say he had a leave pass. They wouldn’t believe him and he couldn’t produce it. It had disintegrated with Sam Gordon. Tom blinked hard to banish the vision of Sam Gordon and his leg in the shell-hole.

“Why Albert?” It was the other MP who spoke for the first time. “Why not back to the front to find your mates?”

“My mates are strung out on the wire in no-man’s-land,” Tom said bleakly. “My mates are blown to smithereens by Jerry shells. My mates are ripped to shreds by machine gun bullets. That’s why I can’t go back to my mates.”

“Afraid, are you?” asked the MP.

“Course I’m afraid, we’re all bloody afraid. Anyone who says he isn’t is lying.” He looked at the MP red caps and said, “You wouldn’t know. You weren’t there. There were others like you there, standing back ready to shoot any poor bloke who held back.”

It was the wrong thing to say and the sergeant said abruptly, “Well, you’re coming with us. You’re under arrest, Carter, for desertion.” He prodded Tom with his rifle barrel and said, “Start walking.”

Weak though he was, Tom fell in between the two policemen and was marched down a track that ran past the far side of his barn to a road beyond. In the distance he could see the buildings of Albert, the cupola of its basilica standing defiantly against the guns, topped by the golden Madonna still leaning out at right angles above the rubbled square below.

Tom was taken to a command post where the MPs passed him over to an officer.

“Private 8523241 Thomas Carter, 1st Belshires, sir. Trying to desert,” said the sergeant. “Hiding in a barn.”

The nightmare began. The officer, Major Gyles of the military police, looked at Tom, standing to attention before him, dishevelled, unshaven, his uniform filthy. He took in the red-rimmed eyes and the grey pallor of his skin and knew that the man in front of him was on the point of exhaustion.

“Well, Carter,” he kept his voice even, “what have you to say for yourself, man? Were you deserting your comrades?”

The major was a young man, with smooth dark hair and a neat moustache. His eyes, dark brown and deep set, probed Tom’s face as he asked the question.

“No sir,” Tom said. “Never, sir.”

“So why were you hiding in a barn?”

“I wasn’t hiding, sir,” replied Tom. “I was resting up, before coming on to Albert.”

“Where had you come from?” asked Major Gyles. “Where is your regiment?”

“At the front, sir. Beaumont Hamel, sir.”

“So why aren’t you with them, Carter?”

“We went over, sir, on the first day. Most of my lot were blown away, sir.

“But you survived.” Major Gyles’s voice hardened. “How was that, Carter?”

“I was blown flat by a shell, sir. When I came round, I was half buried and I had to dig myself out. By the time I’d done that there wasn’t no attack any more.”

“So you just scuttled on back to the safety of your own lines.”

“No sir. It was getting dark by then. Stretcher bearers was coming out for the wounded. I found one bloke, Jimmy Cardle, in a shell-hole, both his legs broken. I carried him in, sir.”

“Back to your own unit.”

“No, sir. Everything was so confused out there, with the smoke and the shells and bodies everywhere. I didn’t know which way to go at first. I must have crawled round in a circle, because I saw Sid Johnson twice.”

“Sid Johnson?”

“A bloke from our unit, sir. He was dead in a hole, sir. I saw him and went on trying to get back and then I saw him again.”

“So what did you do then?”

“Followed a stretcher party, sir. That’s when I found Jimmy Cardle. I took him back to the trench. I kept shouting, ‘Bringing in wounded,’ so that they wouldn’t think we was Jerries, sir.”

“Who was in the trench?” asked the major. His face had relaxed a little as Tom told his story, but his gimlet eyes still bored into Tom.

“An officer, sir. A lieutenant.”

“What was his name?”

“Don’t know, sir.

“From your regiment?”

“No, sir, Irish I think, sir.”

“What did he say to you?”

“He told me to help a stretcher-bearer called Jones take Jimmy Cardle down to the dressing station. He gave me a shirt, sir and a tunic.”

“Why did he do that?”

“Mine was gone, sir, I was just in my shirt and that was in tatters.”

“So he gave you the tunic you have on now?”

“Yes, sir, and told me to find myself a tin hat.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No, sir. We took Jimmy Cardle down to the dressing post.”

“Then what did you do?”

Tom thought for a moment and then said, “Jones disappeared…”

“Where did he go?”

“Don’t know, sir, back to the front-line trench, I suppose.”

“And why didn’t you go with him?”

“I went to the ambulance line, sir.”

The major looked puzzled. “Why on earth did you go there?”

“I had to get to Albert, sir. I helped take an ambulance down to the casualty clearing station.”

“Why did you think you had to get to Albert, Carter?” The hardness returned to the major’s voice. “Why didn’t you make every effort to rejoin your unit, or what was left of it?”

“I had a pass, sir.”

“A pass?”

“A compassionate leave pass, sir.”

“Leave!” The major was incredulous. “Leave, in the middle of the greatest battle of the war?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who gave you this ‘leave’?”

“Company commander, sir, Captain Hurst.”

“I don’t believe you, Carter,” Major Gyles said shortly. “If you have a pass, where is it? Show it to me.”

“I can’t, sir.”

“And why not?”

“I haven’t got it any more, sir. It was blown up.”

“Blown up? How very convenient.” The major eyed him thoughtfully. “How was it blown up?”

“We was crossing no man’s land when a shell fell behind us. I was blown flat on my face.”

“I thought you said you were buried by the shell,” snapped the major.

“Not the first one,” Tom said.

“Oh, I see, there were
two
shells,” said the major, sardonically.

“There was shells everywhere, sir,” Tom said. “I dived into a shell-hole for cover and I heard someone crying out.” Tom paused, but the major said nothing so he went on. “There was a lad there, had his leg blown off. His name was Sam Gordon.”

“One of yours?”

“Same battalion. I did what I could for him sir, put a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. He was shivering and I put my tunic round him while I went for help.”

“You left him and went for help.”

“Yes sir, I couldn’t do nothing more for him, sir. I left a marker so’s I could find him again.”

“What sort of marker?”

“There were two other blokes in the same hole, sir. They were dead. I took one of their rifles and stood it up with a piece of the lad’s shirt tied to it.”

“And then you went for help.”

“Yes sir, I’d just crawled away, when there was another shell. That was the one that buried me, sir.”

“Go on, Carter.”

“When I came round again, like I said, I was half buried and I had to dig myself out. I looked back to where I thought I’d left Sam Gordon. There weren’t nothing there. He’d been blown away. Probably same shell as got me.”

“What has all this to do with your leave pass?” asked Major Gyles abruptly.

“It was in the pocket of my tunic, sir. I’d left that round Sam Gordon.”

“So you have nothing to prove that you were given leave, in the middle of a battle, to come to Albert.”

“I only had leave after the battle was over,” said Tom.

“But it isn’t over,” the major pointed out quietly. “It’s hardly begun!” he thought for a moment and then asked, “What made this Captain Hurst give you compassionate leave, Carter? And why to come to Albert?”

“He gave me forty-eight hours, sir, to get married.” Even as he said it, Tom realised how thin this sounded.

“To get
married
?” The incredulity returned to Major Gyles’s voice. “To get married… in the middle of the big push. Who the hell is this Captain Hurst to even dream of considering such a thing?”

“There’s a girl, a nurse. We was getting married as soon as we could, only now she’s expecting, so I wanted to marry her before she went home to have the baby.” Tom’s voice trailed away as he gave his explanation.

Major Gyles looked at Tom for a long moment before he said, “So to get here to marry this girl, you deserted your king, you deserted your mates, you simply walked away from the battlefield and left them to do the fighting.”

“No, sir, it wasn’t like that, sir,” protested Tom. “I had a pass, sir. I had leave to come. I’d never have left otherwise.”

“And this girl, this nurse, does she know you’re coming?”

“I didn’t have a chance to tell her, sir. Captain Hurst only changed his mind just as we went up to the front.”

“Changed his mind? You mean he had refused you once?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What made him change his mind?”

“Don’t know, sir.” Tom had never been quite sure what had made Captain Hurst change his mind, but he assumed that it was the letter from Sarah. He didn’t think that would be well received as a reason now, so he simply said, “Don’t know, sir.”

“You don’t know? You mean he just sent for you and said, ‘By the way Carter, I’ve decided to let you go and get married after all. Hope you’ll be very happy.’ ” Major Gyles’s sarcasm was heavy. “Good God, man, you must think I came down with the fairies.” He stared straight at Tom, drilling him with his eyes, as if trying to see what was written on his brain. Then he sighed. “You’re under arrest, Carter, for desertion in the face of the enemy. You will be held here while we try and verify your story, and then no doubt there’ll be a court martial. Take him away, Tucker.”

The sergeant marched him out of the room and round to a stone shed that had two cells in it. He gestured Tom into one without a word and then snapped the door shut, shooting the huge bolts behind him.

The cell contained nothing but a camp cot and a bucket. It had one high window open to the air, but barred against escape, and the sturdy wooden door. Tom threw himself down on the cot and buried his head in despair.

Surely, surely, he thought, as he lay there in the grip of panic, they’ll believe me. Surely Captain Hurst will tell them that he gave me a pass… but suppose he doesn’t.

It was clear to Tom from Major Gyles’s reaction that it should never have been given.

Captain Hurst’ll be in deep shit for this, Tom thought, and so am I. And what about Molly? What’ll happen to her now? I’ll never get to see her now, let alone marry her.

Sergeant Tucker appeared some hours later with a bucket of hot water, a minuscule piece of soap and some clean kit.

“Get yourself shaved and swilled down, Carter,” he said, and handed Tom a razor. He stood and watched as Tom stripped off the remains of his filthy clothes and dunked his head in the bucket. The soap was a luxury he hadn’t had for some time, and ignoring the rigidly alert sergeant beside him, Tom scrubbed himself from top to bottom, finishing with his hair and then picking up the razor. At once the sergeant moved towards him, but Tom managed to produce a lather on his face with the last scrape of soap and began to shave in the dregs of the water left in the bucket. Being shaved, clean and in the luxury of clean clothes was the most wonderful boost to Tom’s morale. He turned to the sergeant and asked, “What happens now, Sarge?”

“You go back in your cell, chum,” came the laconic reply. “Fall in.”

Tom was marched back to the cell, and the door closed with its echoing boom. It was a sound that Tom was to get used to over the next ten days. He was kept locked up almost all day, let out for exercise under guard, he was marched round and round a small courtyard for half an hour and then returned to his solitary confinement.

He had been allowed to write one letter, and in it he tried to tell Molly what had happened without alarming her. He didn’t know if she knew what he knew only too well; if he were found guilty of desertion, at best he’d get penal servitude and at worst he’d be shot.

10th July

My darling Molly

I am writing to you from near the town where we were going to meet, where I am under arrest at present. Sarah’s brother did give me a pass in the end, but I lost it in the battle, and so until they find out from him for sure I have to stay here. I am well treated and have exercise, but the rest of the day is a bit boring. But it won’t be for long, I am sure. It does mean that I shan’t be able to come to you as we’d hoped. You must go home, my darling girl, and I will come and find you as soon as I can. Look after our baby, it will probably be more than a baby by the time I see it. What will you call it I wonder? Choose whatever name you like best. I don’t know if I will get letters here, but write to me if you can and tell me what plans you have made for your journey and let me know when you are safely home.

I love you, my Molly.

Tom

Each day when Sergeant Tucker came in with his food, Tom would ask, “Any news yet?”

Tucker would shake his head. “It’s chaos out there,” he said once, but he wouldn’t say any more.

At the end of the ten days Tucker came for him and marched him back into the house where he’d first seen Major Gyles. The major was there again, but this time there was a colonel with him. Both men sat behind a table and Tom stood to attention in front of them. The colonel was older than the major, his hair greying at the temples, his face deeply etched with lines, but his bearing was erect and his grey eyes surveyed Tom coldly.

“Carter,” he said.