Charles Todd - A Fearsome Doubt

The news had left Rutledge in emotional turmoil. Torn between an unspeakable relief for his men and an overwhelming weight of guilt for failing so many of them-the thousands who hadn’t lived to see this day-he moved in a fog of mental exhaustion. Faces, living and dead, seemed to crowd his mind, and the wording of the kind letters he’d written to parents of men he hardly knew, killed before they had had a chance to serve as more than cannon fodder, seemed to float in his brain. For more than two years, he’d seen himself as a dead man, like them; it was only a matter of time before he joined them. And now the war was ending. While he was still alive As watches moved slowly toward the appointed hour, the fighting never faltered. And then-without fanfare or flourish-it ended. Men were standing in the trenches, half dazed by the silence, uncertain at first, some openly weeping. Exhausted, weary beyond the ability of sleep to renew their spirit, they were wary of celebration, lest it lead to another disappointment, another grief. Numbed and unprepared, they had nothing to say.

Then one or two men climbed warily over the top for the last time, moving to stand by the first rolls of wire, staring across the devastated landscape that was once the rolling green farmland of northern France, before tons of shells and thousands upon thousands of bodies had been ground into the earth by the madness of war.

Men began to touch each other, began to laugh with nervous humor, began to acknowledge that they were alive, that they had survived-and then looked around as if half expecting to find the shades of the dead staring sadly back at them. Soldiers came to wring Rutledge’s hand and thank him for bringing them through. Others were hugging each other in a rising euphoria, and then stopping, as if not knowing what they should rightfully be doing. Ashamed of feeling at all.

A few Germans had come out of their trenches, staring at the English lines, their faces grim, their shoulders slumped with despair and relief.

Someone called across No Man’s Land; someone responded in the other lines. And then it was quiet for a time, as if men who had fought so long and so hard had nothing else to do with their lives, and felt the emptiness of nothing behind them, nothing ahead of them.

Rutledge began to issue orders, parroting the instructions he’d been given. A single voice pitched to normal levels sounded strange without the backdrop of battle or the silence of anxious waiting. One by one his men turned to listen to him. These soldiers who would, if the war had gone on for another week, another month, have died soon, and by his hand-led out to fight and suffer while he himself survived-were finally going home.

War was suffering. For the wounded, for the survivors, for their families at home, for the bled-out land around them and the dead horses and stark blasted trees that bore no resemblance to anything living.

As he spoke, it began slowly to dawn on him that he, too, was going to survive. After all, he would not die. It was such a horrific realization that he couldn’t cope with it. His mind went blank, and even the voice of Hamish MacLeod, his constant and unrelenting companion since the summer of 1916, was stilled.

He had no memory of what happened after that. Where he had gone, what he had done, how he had managed to simply walk away. This man, bleeding in his motorcar long after the war had finished, knew more than he did. Dr. Fleming at the clinic must have known a little about the blank days from official reports. There had been compassion in the doctor’s eyes, and it had hurt Rutledge more than the truth might have done. But Fleming had refused to tell him. It was, the doctor felt, far safer for his patient to come to it naturally…

The german was watching him. “I saw you at that ridiculous bonfire. And again on the road, when you tried to run me down. As a matter of interest, why did you leave me, back there in France? I was still alive!”

Rutledge said, holding on to reality with a grip that was iron, “I don’t remember the end of the war. I don’t remember you-or, yes, I do, a little, but only since the bonfire.”

“You don’t remember anything about ending up deep behind our lines? What the devil were you doing there? We looked up and there you were, standing within feet of us. Terrified us; we thought at first you were a dead man-some apparition out of hell! Someone spoke to you-”

Rutledge closed his eyes, and in the blackness there, like a flickering scrap of film, he found images. He had been walking-he had no idea where he was going, or why. And eventually he’d come to a road, for there were men all around him and voices buffeting him, making no sense He had stood there, waiting to be shot… waiting for oblivion.

The German beside him was saying something, but Rutledge couldn’t shut out the images now.

All he had wanted was for the pain to end. For the blessed release of a single shot. Instead, some half a dozen soldiers had turned toward him, a montage of faces with moving lips, defeated, tired eyes, and the filth of the trenches filling the cold November air.

One of the Germans had stepped forward, staring hard at Rutledge, then mimicking reaching for a cigarette to offer him. And then he took his hand back again with a shrug, when Rutledge made no move to accept it.

He didn’t want a cigarette-he wanted to be shot.

An officer came then, looking closely at his irregular visitor. And then he was saying something to his men.

The two of them were walking side by side, away from the rest. Rutledge thought, He doesn’t want to shoot me in front of them… and was content.

There were so many soldiers at first. And then the road seemed empty, and darkness was coming down. Not the darkness in his mind, but the early dusk of November. He found himself wondering if this was still the eleventh, and where the officer was taking him. One body lying along the road here would be anonymous, forgotten.

His sister would probably never know what had become of him. Just as well-it would spare her the shame He lost track of time. He couldn’t be sure whether he’d been following the German for a few minutes or for far longer. The only anxiety he felt was whether the man would lose his nerve and not shoot.

There was some sort of exchange-furious and loud-voiced. Unexpected, jarring. And as Rutledge struggled to make sense of it, there was a shot at close range.

In the split second after the report, as the echo faded, Rutledge gratefully waited for the pain, for the spreading agony and for the death that would end it.

But it didn’t come. There was nothing He turned toward the German officer, confused, unable to understand how the man had missed-and watched the German fall in slow motion to the ground, a dark red bloom opening on his tunic.

“No!” He had shouted the single word in disbelief. Somehow they had shot the wrong man And then with the swiftness of habit, he was on his knees, ripping open the buttons, fumbling in his pocket for a dressing, stuffing it into the bubbling wound. But before he could staunch the bleeding, the German officer sighed and went limp.

Rutledge became aware that there was someone standing over them. Rutledge looked up, seeing him clearly for the first time. A refugee-an old man “I need dressings-a doctor -un medicin-vite!”

“Il est mort,” the Frenchman said contemptuously. “Bien sur.” And then in rough English, “One less Boche.”

Rutledge looked down and saw that there was a pistol in the old man’s hand, still pointed at the German’s throat.

“You should be glad, Englishman. They killed enough of you. They killed my wife and my child in the bombardment, these bastards.”

Rutledge staggered to his feet, his mind suddenly clear and fury wracking him.