William Boyd - The New Confessions

“It’s a risk you take and a price you have to pay. At least I’m still alive.”

I don’t believe you, I said to myself. But I suppose you have to try and think like that. If you thought anything else, you’d go mad. Look at Kite, I thought; he cracked up and he only lost a hand. I’d be like that, like Kite, bitter and angry, full of resentment …

I filmed Teague later. I thought it might cheer him up. We had him being pushed in a wheelchair towards a camera down the length of a long airless corridor, passing through shafts of autumn sunlight.

The second meeting was less eventful, but curiously more significant for me. The officer whom I had filmed writing letters to next of kin was in fact Captain Tuck. The 13th had been re-formed, rumors of a transfer to the Italian Front had proved ungrounded and the battalion was back in its usual role of furnishing working parties for the artillery. There were very few faces I recognized.

After Tuck had obliged me with a few scribbles and a suitably somber face — he needed no persuading; the Aeroscope was an infallible seductress — he walked me back to my motorcar.

“Half a mo,” he said. “There’s someone you should meet before you’re off.”

He led me round behind a cowshed to where the field kitchens were situated. On the ground, gnawing a bone, was Ralph, the dog. He got slowly to his feet and wandered over to Tuck. He was hugely fat.

“Quartermaster spoils him rather.”

I clicked my fingers. “Here, Ralph. Here, boy.”

The dog did not budge. He looked at me, yawned and licked his chops.

“Doesn’t remember you,” Tuck said. “Strange.”

I felt my heart thump with joy and relief. “It always was a rather stupid animal,” I said, and walked elatedly back to my motor. I never saw Ralph again.

“They’ve censored it,” Donald Verulam said. He looked serious.

‘What?’

“ Aftermath of Battle. ”

“No! Damn.… Which bits?”

“The entire film. The whole thing. The chief censor is furious. You’re lucky you’re not cashiered. I had to tell him it was some sort of ghastly blunder. Fragments inadvertantly edited together. It won’t really wash. He wasn’t convinced.”

I swallowed. “Where is it?”

“I’ve got it back.”

“Thank God!” I paused. “What do you think about it?”

He looked at me and gave a thin smile.

“Well … it’s strong stuff. A bit grim and morbid for my taste. But I’m sure we can use bits of it. The early sections are good. We could cut them into Faithfull’s film.” He looked at me. “I wish you’d told me you were doing this, Johnny.”

“What’s Faithfull’s film?”

“It’s called Ypres , or possibly Wipers . We need another battle film like Messines. Another Harold Faithfull battle film. Not yours.”

I thought quickly. “Donald, will you give the film back to me? I’ll tinker with it. Film some more scenes. Change its tone.”

We argued for a while but I knew he would give in eventually. I saw a miraculous opportunity ahead of me. The decision of the chief censor was a minor impediment. What I would do next would force him to change his mind.

I retrieved Aftermath and ran it privately for myself several times when Faithfull and Nelson were away. As I plotted what to do next I saw that the merits of the film were clear: this was true; this was what really happened after a battle. Whatever I did next, I should not forget that fact. Unconsciously I was formulating a credo that would inform all my work. The truth was what mattered, unflinching verisimilitude. This was what made my film so different from all the others and this was what had to apply in the future.

One morning in the farmhouse, Nelson and I were breakfasting when an orderly runner arrived with instructions from Donald that I take some extra reels of film to Faithfull as quickly as possible.

“You take them to him,” I said to Nelson. “I don’t know where he is.”

“No can do, old chap. I’ve got Marshal Foch handing out medals at noon. I can’t go all the way to Étaples.”

“Étaples? What’s he doing there?”

“Making his film.”

With bad grace I motored off to Étaples. I arrived there about eleven o’clock. Ahead of me lay the town and, from the crest of this hill, a distant gray glimpse of the Channel. Nelson’s directions led me to a camp — a vast trampled field enclosed by a wire perimeter fence. Inside were row upon row of tents and a dusty parade ground upon which squads of men were being drilled.

I had no difficulty finding Faithfull — everyone seemed to know of the film — and I was directed along a track leading towards the rifle butts. As I approached I could hear the noise of firing and other explosions. I stopped the motor and, lugging my reels of film in a couple of sandbags, went in search of the famous cameraman.

As I arrived everything went quiet. I passed two companies of men, standing easy. Ahead of me were gentle grassy hills and a hundred-yard section of immaculate trench — revetted, zigzagged, with precisely angled firebays, clean sandbags and taut wire in front. It reminded me strongly of Nieuport.

Faithfull was in the trench, camera pointed at a platoon of men with fixed bayonets.

“Ah, Todd, thank God you’ve come. I’m down to my last two reels.” He introduced me to a couple of beaming officers, then ran about conferring with various men and checking details in his notebook.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“This is the rifle brigade attacking Glencorse Wood in August … something like that,” Faithfull said. He turned. “Captain Frearson? Smoke now, please.” He crouched behind his camera. “Remember your numbers, you men! Ready when you are, Lieutenant Hobday.… Smoke , Captain Frearson.”

Faithfull started turning the handle of his Aeroscope. A small smoke canister was lit and white smoke began to drift over the top of the trench. Lieutenant Hobday stepped forward and blew his whistle—“Don’t look at the camera, Hobday!”—and the platoon went smartly up the trench ladders.

“One! Two!” Faithfull shouted. Two men flung up their arms and fell back. Hobday stood on the parapet, revolver drawn, and waved his men over the top.

“Three!” Faithfull yelled. “ Three! Damn you!” Number three buckled and fell.

“Don’t move!” Faithfull bawled. “Absolutely still!” The dead men remained immobile while the rest of the platoon deployed and advanced in extended order through the uncoiling smoke, rifles waist high.

I stayed on long enough to see Faithfull mount the “attack of the second wave.” Here he used his two companies of men, much more smoke and plenty of explosive charges. I had to concede that the battle was efficiently stage-managed. My most grudging admiration was reserved for his final ploy, when two men held up a tangle of barbed wire in front of his camera as he filmed the backs of the advancing men. I had covertly read How I Film War and Battle and could imagine Faithfull’s caption to the scene: “From a shell hole in no-man’s-land I film the second wave attacking Glencorse Wood under heavy fire.”

By this time I had removed myself some distance away. At first I felt a hot, angry incredulity at Faithfull’s reconstruction and — I can think of no other way of expressing it — a sense of moral and aesthetic outrage. I knew how soon Faithfull’s simple, tidy version of the attack on Glencorse Wood would come to stand for the enormous chaotic horror of the real thing. It was not so much the gap between the film and the reality that offended me as the shock I felt when I saw how easy it was to falsify the truth. Only people who had actually fought in the trenches would recognize the grotesque fallacy of what Faithfull was producing — a tiny minority, whose protesting voices, in time, would dwindle and fade. But seeing Faithfull at work on Wipers , observing both the scale of the enterprise and its blatant factitiousness, had shown me what to do with Aftermath . The WOCC needed a battle film — well, they should have mine, and it would expose Faithfull and his film for the tawdry impostures that they were.