Andrew Martin: The Somme Stations

When not drunk, I realised, Dawson was a different proposition, even looked different. His scrubby little moustache was more of an amusing error rather than anything, and the crumples of his face all added up to good humour. I couldn’t believe this was the same man as had been rated by the Chief in the Bootham Hotel.

‘The Chief talked you into enlisting then?’ I said.

‘What?’ said Dawson, examining his bacon. He looked up. ‘Fact is, I’d been asking myself… Am I more use to the country scrounging for tips in York station or getting killed in France?’ He took a belt of his tea. ‘Crikey,’ he said, and all his face crumples became evident. He was squinting down into his cup. ‘Talk about stewed,’ he said.

‘Mine’s practically water,’ I said.

‘That right?… Versatile, these army cooks.’

He was looking all around the hall, taking it all in.

Someone called out, ‘Silence for the sergeant major!’

A bloke stood on a form at the end of the hall, and announced that, after the after-breakfast parade, there’d be a five-mile route march for the whole company.

‘Nice,’ said Dawson, grinning at me.

This march, the SM announced, was to be in ‘extended order drill’.

‘What’s that when it’s at home?’ Alfred Tinsley asked me, and a high voice came from across the table.

‘You ought to know.’

It was the other kid, Harvey, and I realised that his had been the voice raised the night before against Tinsley’s reading of the Railway Magazine.

Evidently, the boy and the other boy did not get on.

Five minutes after emerging from the dock, the ‘march at ease’ had sounded, at which everyone began walking more or less normally, most of the blokes smoking at the same time. Young William had called it a lovely day. Well, it might have been a lovely day for Hull. It wasn’t raining much . The town was unfolding in a series of long wide streets, endless tram lines, and hoardings bigger than the houses, many of them advertising B. Cooke and Sons, whoever they were. In the gaps between the hoardings, the grey sea came and went, and I thought back over my interview with Butterfield.

His office was a cabin of the SS RievaulxAbbey , and behind it were two oil paintings: one showing the crest of the North Eastern Railway Company, the other some Northumberland Fusiliers of a different, older battalion. (They looked to be out in India, or somewhere.) Oamer had marched me in, and my heart sank at Butterfield’s first words.

‘There is at present no vacancy within our regimental police…’

(I had not asked whether there was.)

‘… but I would be happy to recommend that you be transferred to the corps of Military Mounted Police, who are the elite of the force. You would seem an excellent man for the job. I have good reports of you from both your section and platoon commanders and of course you were a policeman in civilian life.’

Of course I was, I thought… but why couldn’t everybody leave off about the military police? It wasn’t proper soldiering as far as I was concerned. I wondered whether the same pressure had been applied to Scholes and Flower.

I said, ‘If it’s all the same, I’d rather stick with the battalion, sir’ and he’d said, ‘It’s all the same to me, Stringer, but it may not be all the same to you.’

When I came out, I said to Oamer, ‘I didn’t seem to get any points for loyalty to the battalion.’

‘But you may do in time,’ he said.

‘When?’

‘When the penny drops that you have been loyal.’

He was perhaps saying that Butterfield was rather dim, which didn’t help me at all – and I had an inkling that the path to promotion would now be blocked as long as I said no to the Military Mounted Police.

For a while, the blokes at the back of the troop had been singing ‘Another Little Drink Wouldn’t Do Us Any Harm’. It was all about the Prime Minister, who liked a drop. Now they switched to ‘Watkins of the Railway Gang’, and this they kept up manfully as we passed a never-ending cemetery, but when another, still bigger cemetery came into view… Well, it seemed to knock the heart out of them, and they gave it up. The only exceptions were those odd boys, the Butler twins, marching a little way ahead of me, who sang to each other a private song: something about ‘a mistake’s been made’ or, as they had it, ‘a mistek’s bin med’, and ‘He’s got no eyes, cos he’s got no head’ and ‘He’s got no feet, cos he’s got no legs’, and this did tickle them.

Our troop was a quarter mile long. The Hull citizenry could see we were soldiers from our ragged formation and the officers riding alongside but, not having any guns, we didn’t command respect, and the looks that came our way… they were half amused, as though people were thinking: ‘You mugs !’ After we’d turned a corner in a somewhat disorganised manner, Alfred Tinsley, the railway-nut, was chattering away alongside me, talking shop.

‘Would you break up the coal while riding?’ he enquired.

‘No time for coal trimming on the road,’ I said. ‘I’d do it beforehand, while my mate’s going round with the oil can.’

‘But wouldn’t you want to supervise your mate as he oiled up?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’d trust him.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ said Tinsley. ‘It’s a job that has to be done right.’

Presently, we came to a closed level crossing gate, and this threw us out of formation. When we were rearranged, I found myself alongside the bulky figure of Oamer, who was puffing away on his pipe. He was a dark horse, Oamer. He was a good shot, and he’d been in the Territorials, but his red hair was surely longer than regulation army length, and the sweat was prickling on his forehead. He was overweight, and not quite in A1 condition. Young William Harvey was on the other side of him, and our supposed ‘four’ was completed by Scholes. It was odd to see Scholes without his mate, Flower, but Flower was in another ‘four’ and there was nothing either of them could do about it. Scholes’s face looked especially droopy as a result. ‘You seen the North Eastern Railway Journal ?’ he asked me. ‘The latest number of it, I mean?’

‘I have not,’ I said.

‘They’ve opened the bloody roll of honour,’ he said, ‘for all those company blokes who’ve gone out already, with other regiments.’

He didn’t half sound depressed about it.

‘You mean for the blokes who’ve won medals?’

‘ Some of them have won medals,’ he said. ‘They’re all bloody dead.’

At this, Oamer took his pipe from his mouth.

‘The term roll of honour is used in two senses,’ he said, in his slow, thoughtful way that sat so oddly with the two stripes on his arm. (He ought to have been a major on the Staff, ought Oamer.) ‘Firstly, as a record of certain notable new recruits, transfers and so on – ’

‘How are they notable?’ I cut in.

‘They are notable in the sense that they have come to the attention of the compiler of the roll of honour. Secondly, it is used as a record of men who have – ’

‘ – had their heads blown off in France,’ said Scholes.

‘ – those who have suffered in the cause of liberty in the field.’

I looked sidelong at young William. He had no time for this morbid talk.

‘Why are you called Oamer, Corporal Prendergast?’ he enquired.

I watched Oamer smoke for a while. Every time he put his pipe in his mouth, his red bushy moustache cleaned the stem. It was a highly convenient arrangement. At length, he answered the kid’s question.