Pat Barker - The Ghost Road

12 October

Parcels arrived today. Shared out fags in parcels intended for the dead and wounded. Tempers immediately improved. A lot of niggling administrative jobs connected with feeding men from the new draft into the companies. Get flashes from the battle while I'm filling in forms. The man I bayoneted. What worries me is that he was middle aged. Odd really — it's supposed to be golden youth you mourn for. But he was so obviously somebody who should have been at home, watching his kids grow up, wondering whether brushing his hair over the bald patch would make it more or less obvious, grumbling about the price of beer. And yes, you could see all this in his face — with some people you can. Some people do look exactly what they are. Fuck it.

Meanwhile more exercises. Route marches. We feed our faces on precisely adequate quantities of horrible food. Bread now has potatoes in it. (Makes an interesting combination with the wood chippings.)

15 October

Last night we were entertained by The Peddlers, the whole battalion, and a few officers invited over from our neighbours on the left. Among whom was Marshall-of-the-Ten-Wounds, now acting Lt Colonel, who applauded every turn with childlike glee. Exactly what you wouldn't expect him to do. At the end of the evening, when things are allowed to get a bit slushy, somebody sang 'Rose of England':

Rose of England breathing England's air,

Flower of liberty beyond compare.

Not a bad voice — it soared over the privies and the tents, the columns of smoke from the fires — and I looked along the row and there was Marshall with great big fat tears rolling down his cheeks. I envied him.

16 October

Bainbrigge's dead. I remember him in the oyster bar in Scarborough a couple of nights before we left. We were all pissed, but Bainbrigge was pissed enough to quote his own poems (than which there is no pisseder). He was talking to Owen, saying real antiwar poems ought to celebrate what war deprives men of — wait for it—'Beethoven, Botticelli, beer and boys.' Owen kicked him under the table, for my benefit, I think. A wasted kick.

More new arrivals from England yesterday. And I've been transferred to a tent, just as the weather's laying on the first real taste of winter. The misery of sleety rain under canvas. Not that we spend much time under it. We're out all day doing route marches, column into line, consolidation, etc., etc. And gas drills.

But now it's evening. The men are leaning against their packs or each other's knees, aching legs allowed to sprawl at last, writing to wives, mothers, girlfriends. Perhaps even one or two to Beethoven & Co. I said I wasn't born to the delusion that I'm responsible for them. True. (True I wasn't born to it, true it's a delusion.) But I wouldn't like it to be thought I didn't care. So. Going round the group nearest to me. Wilson's got a fucking great nail sticking up through the heel of his left boot. We've all had a go at it: hammers, pliers, tent pegs, God knows what. Still it sticks up, and since it breaks the skin he's quite likely to get a septic sore, unless I can find him another pair of boots. Which ought to be easy, but isn't. Unfortunately, the septic sore won't be enough to get him out of the line if we have to go back there. It'll just exhaust him, make every step a greater misery than it need be.

Oakshott, who's sort of on the fringes of the group — he's taken to not talking to people — is well on the way to cracking up. (I should know.) The thing is he's not windy, he's a perfectly good soldier, no more than reasonably afraid of rifle and machine-gun bullets, shells, grenades. (Let's not ask ourselves how afraid that is.) He isn't even windy about gas, though inevitably it comes across like that. He's just terrified of the mask. I don't know what to do with him. Once or twice recently I've noticed him lagging behind in gas drills, and I've noticed myself letting him get away with it. Which I mustn't do. If he gets away with it, they'll all start.

Next to him, in front of him rather, is Moore. Moore's wife spent the evening of the Friday before last in the lounge bar of the Rose and Crown (I know it well) in the company of one Jack Puddephat, who has a good job at the munitions factory (same one Dad works at) and brings home five quid a week. Moore's sister-in-law, a public-spirited soul, was kind enough to write and tell him about it.

Heywood's kid has tonsillitis and the doctor's all for whipping them out. Heywood's all for leaving well alone, but the letter he's writing now won't get there in time.

Buxton's missus is expecting their first. The birth doesn't seem to worry her, but it terrifies him. His own mother died in childbirth, and he's convinced himself the same thing's going to happen to her.

Jenkins writes the most incredibly passionate love letters to his wife. They've been married since before the Flood, but obviously nothing's faded. I get erections reading them. Nothing else I've done sexually has filled me with such shame. In fact it's the only thing that's ever filled me with any shame. He must know they're censored, and yet still he writes, page after page. Perhaps he needs to say it so much he somehow manages to forget that I read them first? It's the mental equivalent of the baths. Here I sit, fully clothed as it were, knowing my letters to Sarah won't be censored. I suppose random checks are carried out on officers' letters, but at least it's done somewhere else, and not by people you have to see every day.

Peace talk goes on whether orders forbidding it are promulgated or no. On the night we heard the Germans had agreed to peace talks there was a great impromptu party, officers and men together. Everybody sang. And then next day in John Bull there's Bottomley saying, No, no, no and once again no. We must fight to the bitter end. (Whose end?) I don't want any more talk about not being out to destroy the German nation — that is just what I am out for…

But it doesn't wash with the men. Not this time. In fact some of them have taken to going to the latrines waving copies of John Bull.

Nobody here sees the point of going on now.

18 October

But others do. We leave here today, going back into the line.

October rain spattered the glass. Outside in Vincent Square golden leaves were trodden in the mud. Rivers stopped coughing, put his handkerchief away, and apologized.

''S all right,' Wansbeck said. 'I should be apologizing to you. I gave it you.'

'At least I can't give it back,' Rivers said, wiping his eyes. 'In fact you and I are about the only two round here who can't get it.'

Things are getting pretty bad, aren't they? I mean, on the wards. I don't suppose I could do anything to help?'

Rivers looked blank.

'Lifting patients. It just seems bloody ridiculous a great big chap like me sitting around doing nothing while some poor little nurse struggles to lift a twelve-stone man on her own.'

'It's very kind of you,' Rivers said carefully. 'But I really don't think the authorities would allow it. In any case you're not doing "nothing".'

Silence. The hint was not taken up. Rivers forced himself to open his shoulders, knowing his tension was communicating itself to Wansbeck, though it was only the tension of driving himself through a long day while still feeling very far from well. 'How have you been?'

'Smell's gone.' A flicker of amusement. 'I know it wasn't there, but it's still nice to be rid of it.'

'Hmm, good.' What pleased Rivers even more than the vanished smell was the hint of self-mockery. The one expression you never see on the faces of the mentally ill. 'When did that happen?'