Andrew Wareham - The Death of Hope

Out of the showers, they towelled themselves dry and walked through a stores shed, collecting new uniforms, all of it roughly sized and their responsibility to sew up to fit, but new and clean. There were boots as well, needing to be worked up but clean and solid.

They completed the circle, picking up their personal possessions under the eye of the Sergeant Major and collecting their rifles before forming up into companies and marching to their tents. A group of defaulters from another battalion was piling up their uniforms, pitchforking them into a cart and taking them off to firepits, to be soaked in petrol and burned.

There were medical orderlies observing as they dressed, running their eyes over the men for boils and rashes and festering cuts and scratches, unnoticed at the front by the men themselves.

“Healthier than permitting them to be louse-ridden, sir. Waste of uniforms, maybe, but the only way of keeping the men clean. Can never get all of the lice out, no matter how much you try.”

Richard had seen the men sat in their dugouts, ‘chatting’ – running a candle flame along the seams of their trousers and tunics, listening to the lice pop and knowing that a few would survive and breed into hundreds within days. They did their best, could never succeed. It was said that some forms of typhus were spread by lice or other bugs. They had to try to keep them down.

“What’s the word on work parties, Hawkeswill?”

“One week on, two off, sir. Not so much coming up at the moment and a labour battalion to hand as well. We should have Christmas week completely free, sir, which is lucky. Poor sods up in the lines won’t be so pleased.”

“Neither they will. It won’t kill them.”

“No, sir. The Hun will do that!”

Richard did wish that Hawkeswill would not try so hard to be funny.

“One thing, sir. We have got a Mess to use this leave. Brigade has taken over a pair of barns and converted them for the officers’ use. Not entirely luxurious, shall we say. A lot better than tents.”

They retired to the building as snow began to fall, found a large room with a fire in the middle and chairs and tables set out. A row of cabins had been built down the far wall, graduating in size from colonel’s office and bedroom to second lieutenant’s hutches.

“Paraffin stoves as well, sir, keeping them warm, if a bit smelly.”

There was a substantial bar, thinly laden with bottles, and a door through to kitchens behind it.

“Up to us to buy in anything we want to drink, sir.”

“Step into my room a moment, Hawkeswill.”

Paisley was there, had his personal belongings arranged already. Richard picked up the small and heavy attaché case, dug out a large drawstring bag, tipped it out on the desk on the side of the room that was his office.

“Let me see… Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty.” He set out five piles of shiny sovereigns. “Should be sufficient to keep us going for a week, do you think? Arrange a whip round if we need any more. Don’t make any fuss about where this money has come from.”

Hawkeswill glanced at his watch and grabbed the coins and ran.

“Time enough to get to town and back, sir, before dinner, if I can grab transport.”

Richard was disturbed as he changed for dinner, hearing yells of approval from the big room.

“Sounds as if the Adjutant’s back, sir.”

“So it does, Paisley. Let’s see what he’s got.”

Even at wartime prices, fifty gold sovereigns went a long way, the French shopkeepers being willing to give a hefty discount for gold rather than paper.

Hawkeswill was more than pleased with himself.

“Good brandy and bad, sir – most of this lot won’t be able to tell the difference. White wine and red, some of it good, all of it palatable with dinner. Belgian beer, being as a refugee has established a brewery. Not comparable with an English pint, to my mind. Drinkable, though. Sufficient of everything to keep us going up to and over Christmas. If we start to run out, there’s more where this lot came from, provided there’s cash to buy it!”

Some of the officers had private incomes, none had been able to spend their pay in many months. A mess fund was organised on the spot and Hawkeswill promised to show them the way round in the morning.

Major Vokes gave his measured approval.

“Get them all pulling together, sir. What a Mess is all about!”

Vokes had his suspicions about the source of the first funds, said nothing. It was in no way out of tradition for a wealthy colonel to subsidise his Mess, though less common in recent years. The young men would enjoy themselves far more with a glass to hand and he would ensure that they did not go too far, drink too heavily for their own good.

“Have to say that I am pleased to be back in a Mess again, sir, even if only for a few weeks. Feels more like the proper Army. Haven’t enjoyed pigging it in a trench. Mind you, it’s not too much unlike conditions in the Peninsula on occasion, from what I have read in the Regimental History. Not what an officer wants for years on end, however!”

Richard agreed. It was not what he wanted at all… It was doing him a deal of good, he had to admit. His life had been turned upside down by this war. He had been made prosperous and must expect to continue to flourish when peace eventually came. If he remained as a soldier, he had a certain career ahead of him; should he choose to leave the Army, he could almost make his pick of occupations, walking into virtually any boardroom that he chose. Add to that, he would have a wife – not the least of his rewards, by a long way. It was a lousy war, literally so, yet he was profiting from it.

He sat with a glass to hand after dinner, removed a little from the mass of his officers, as was correct, quietly thinking, musing over his immediate past and looking to the future.

Provided Haig did not manage to kill him – and French had not achieved that and Haig was probably brighter than him – then he was a made man.

Ridiculous, was it not?

He smiled a welcome to Vokes and Caton as they came across, thinking that the colonel should not be left without company, that it was only courtesy to sit with him.

“The boys are letting off a bit of steam tonight.”

There was a lot of noise coming from the end where the youngsters had congregated, distant from their superiors.

“They are alive, Vokes. Just coming to appreciate the fact and aware that six of their number are not. Eighteen and nineteen years old, most of them – too young to be made aware of mortality and needing a drink or two to dull the edges of that realisation.”

“Very philosophical, Colonel?”

“Sat back like this, one can think of those who have not made it, Vokes. I left a good few of the Third Beds behind and have seen too many of these youngsters go down. I can afford an hour of memories. Not two, however!”

They agreed – there had never such a sustained level of losses in the history of the Army. The junior officers especially had been killed off wholesale.

“Too many youngsters who volunteered in August are not here now, Colonel. A lot of families have lost all of their sons, have been effectively wiped out. Letters from Home tell me of estates coming on the market every week, their men all gone.”

All three had heard of military families – father a major or colonel, sons gone as subalterns – who had been lost, all of them falling to the machine guns. It seemed likely that every family of the aristocracy had lost at least one young man.

“Not quite,” Richard corrected them. “I have memories of being told that the passenger lists on the Cunard and Union Castle and White Star and P and O liners were absolutely full in the months before the war broke out. When it became obvious that there would be a war, a good few chose to take a holiday in South Africa or Australia or to visit relatives in the United States.”