30 Week after week, Robert wrote with unnerving formality to MR AND MRS THOMAS ROSS, 39 SOUTH DRIVE, TORONTO, CANADA and to MISS MARGARET ELIZABETH ROSS and to MASTER STUART MONTGOMERY ROSS and he even sent field cards to BIMBO ROSS, his dog.
All these letters, neatly folded and tied, were laid in an oblong lacquered box beside the silent, booted icon of ROBERT ROSS, SECOND LIEUTENANT, C.F.A. in the silver frame on the black walnut table in the parlour. The box itself was lined with velvet—scarlet newly fading to maroon. The letters to MARGARET ELIZABETH ROSS, Peggy kept separate in a drawer upstairs—separate in their drawer and separate in their packet—laid aside from other packets, neatly folded and tied from Clifford Purchas—Roly Powell—Garnett Hughes and Clinton Brown from Harvard. Bimbo was always encouraged but always failed to sniff her master’s scent on the overfingered cards she received of pale brown cardboard. Master Stuart made his letters into paper darts and launched them page by page from the roof of the house—watching them descend and fade into the green ravine below while he muttered rat-a-tat-tat! Boom! Boom! Rat-a-tat-tat! Boom! Boom! Karoom! Some he saved to trade at school for other artifacts of war sent home by other elder brothers like his own—but only the letters mailed from France were worthy of this exchange. They had to have the smell of fire.
Two
1 There is no good picture of this except the one you can make in your mind. The road is lost at either end in rain. Robert’s perception of it is limited by fog and smoke. On either side, the ditches are filled with fetid water. Everything is waterlogged. Even bits of grass won’t float. In front of him the road is apparently empty. Behind him, there are forty horses—every fifth horse bearing a rider. Only one of these riders is visible. Far to the rear there are seven wagons drawn by mules and carrying ammunition. Robert is in charge of this convoy. It is February, 1916. He has been in France for a month and two days; since Monday, 24 January.
At the centre of the world is Ypres and all around the centre lie the flats of Flanders. To its rear—which is to say South West—is the only physical landmark worth mentioning: Kemmel Hill. This is three hundred and fifty feet high. Nothing in Belgium rises higher. To the east and to the north there is a ridge of land that anywhere else would not be the least exceptional. Here, the ridge was what you fought for. If you could gain its heights, you had the advantage. So far the Germans had maintained this advantage and almost two years of fighting had failed to dislodge them. The plain on which Ypres stands stretches like a broken arm through Europe from the Russian frontier to the border of Spain. This is the one way west into France that does not encounter mountains. (Once, in Napoleon’s time, it had been the only way east.) Because of its flatness this alleyway has been the scene of battles since the time of Caesar. All the great armies of modern history have passed this way and through this mud.
The mud. There are no good similes. Mud must be a Flemish word. Mud was invented here. Mudland might have been its name. The ground is the colour of steel. Over most of the plain there isn’t a trace of topsoil: only sand and clay. The Belgians call them ‘clyttes,’ these fields, and the further you go towards the sea, the worse the clyttes become. In them, the water is reached by the plough at an average depth of eighteen inches. When it rains (which is almost constantly from early September through to March, except when it snows) the water rises at you out of the ground. It rises from your footprints—and an army marching over a field can cause a flood. In 1916, it was said that you ‘waded to the front.’ Men and horses sank from sight. They drowned in mud. Their graves, it seemed, just dug themselves and pulled them down.
All this mud and water was contaminated. Dung and debris and decaying bodies lay beneath its surface. When the rivers and canals could no longer be contained—over they spilled into clyttes already awash with rain.
Houses, trees and fields of flax once flourished here. Summers had been blue with flowers. Now it was a shallow sea of stinking grey from end to end. And this is where you fought the war.
2 Sometimes the roads were shelled. It depended how far forward you got. The trick was, at nightfall, to lag behind your schedule and find some barn or blasted house to rest in. Nothing is worse than shellfire in the dark. Running was pointless at any rate, except to find some cover for your head—but here in the open any attempt to run in darkness led to drowning.
Robert’s destination was a place called Wytsbrouk, now entirely emptied of its civilian population and occupied by the forward supply depot for the 18th, 19th, and 20th batteries of the 5th Brigade. This was about a mile from the front.
They were coming from a town called Bailleul, which was known to the men as ‘the last place in civilization.’ There, you could actually sleep in a hotel—though you were rarely accorded the opportunity. Also at Bailleul there was a large, now emptied school for girls where the troops were often billeted. On the outskirts of town there was an asylum for the mad—(Van Gogh had been one of its patients)—and it was here the officers bathed in black iron tubs under high glass windows filtering sunlight down through a century of cobwebs and dust. This place was called Asile Desolé, which means desolated or devastated refuge. This was because it had been shelled in some previous war. Its proper name was Asile d’alienés aux Bailleul et Ploegbeke. All of the place names were either French or Flemish but the further you got towards Ypres, the more Flemish they became and the more unpronounceable to anyone whose mother tongue was English. Robert had had an encounter with the language problem only that morning when he was approached by a Flemish peasant who had lost his cows. More than likely he suspected Robert of having commandeered them for his soldiers so he was naturally excited. He spoke in Flemish. Robert first of all thought it was gibberish. The scene had taken place on the road in the rain and the man’s incoherent words and waving arms made Robert think he’d possibly escaped from Desolé.
When his tale had been told and the farmer saw that Robert didn’t comprehend, he began it again in French. Robert knew it was French because he recognized that vaches were cows. But that was all.
‘Can’t you speak English?’ he asked politely.
This was the wrong thing to say. The man threw down his hat and began to shout.
‘Enklesh! Enklesh! Vous êtes anglais? Maudit anglais!” he screamed.
Robert became alarmed. He backed his horse away, but the man pursued him. ‘Maudit anglais!’ he kept shouting. He picked up his hat and threw it. ‘Ce sont tous des assassins!’ he cried.
Robert did not understand a word of this but he imagined he was being accused of something he hadn’t done. He thought if he could identify himself, it might explain his innocence. So he mustered the only coherent sentences he knew in a foreign language and shouted them back at the man: ‘Monsieur!’ he said. ‘Je ne parle pas français! Je suis canadien!’
The words rang out through the fog.
They did not seem to help.
The man just looked at Robert—sneered—and repeated: ‘Maudit anglais.’ Then he picked up his hat and walked away.
Well, Robert thought; I tried.
3 Riding beside him was his batman, Bugler Willie Poole. Bugler was really an out-of-date rank and fairly meaningless but sometimes it was given to men whose age was suspect. In other wars they might have been drummer boys. Willie Poole was proud of his rank, however, because the fact was he actually played the bugle. ‘Why,’ Robert had asked, ‘didn’t you apply to play in the band?’ ‘Oh,’ said Willie, ‘if I was playing in the band I wouldn’t be here.’ He was that uncomplicated. He carried his bugle on a string across his back. Unlike Regis, Poole was not under-age—but he looked it. He was in fact nineteen like Robert but he didn’t yet shave and his voice still wavered, not completely broken. He was covered with freckles and his hair was the colour of sand. He’d been assigned to Robert two days after Robert’s arrival—his previous officer having been killed when he’d stepped outside one evening ‘for a breath of air.’ The breath of air had blown his head off.
‘Do yo
u remember any barns or houses along this road where we could bivouac?’ Robert asked.
‘No, sir,’ said Poole. ‘But I could ride ahead and see.’
‘No,’ said Robert. ‘No one’s riding ahead.’ He turned in his saddle. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if anyone’s riding behind. Maybe we should stop and let the others catch us up.’
They reined in their horses.
Poole said, ‘I have to get down, if that’s all right.’
Robert nodded.
Poole gave over his reins into Robert’s hand and swung down onto the road. By the time he’d reached the edge of the ditch he’d already started to disappear. The air was foul with thick green fog. There was a smell that Robert could not decipher.
‘What’s that smell?’ he said to Poole.
‘Prob’ly chlorine,’ Poole replied. His back was to Robert—with his coat elbowed out like wings. Robert could hear him urinating into the ditch.
‘You mean you think there’s a gas attack going on up front?’ Robert had not yet had this experience. Poole had had it twice.
‘No, sir. But the groun’ is full of it here. There’s some that says a handful of this clay could knock a person out.’
‘I believe it,’ said Robert. The smell was unnerving—as if some presence were lurking in the fog like a dragon in a story. Poole was quite correct; the ground was saturated with gas. Chlorine and phosgene were currently both in use. Mustard gas was still to come.
They were joined by the rider behind them with four horses. The horses were nervous and as soon as they were halted, they laid their ears back and started to skitter.
Robert did not get down himself, but he told the rider to dismount. He was nervous. He didn’t know why. They waited.
Poole came back doing up his buttons. They stood there like that for fully five minutes—Robert on his horse, leaning forward to rest his stomach muscles, and the two men down in the road with the horses. The fog was full of noises. They were ill defined and had no perimeter. Distance had been swallowed whole.
‘What if we’ve gone the wrong turning?’ said Poole, whose innocence allowed him to make remarks like that—even to an officer.
Robert thought it was possible but didn’t say so. He asked what the others thought the noises might be.
‘Birds,’ said Poole. The other man remained silent.
‘I’d be very surprised if any birds had survived in this place,’ said Robert.
Just as he said so, something flew out of the ditch.
The horses shied and one of them snorted. Robert stood in his stirrups trying to see what it was that had flown. More and more of whatever it was flew up after it. A whole flock of something. Ducks? He couldn’t tell. It was odd—how they’d sat so still and silent till that moment.
‘What can be keeping those blasted others?’ he said. ‘Orderly, maybe you’d best go back.’
‘Yessir.’
‘Poole and I will hold down here.’
The man got into his saddle.
‘Give him your bugle, Poole.’
‘Yessir.’ Poole handed over the bugle from his back.
‘Now—use it,’ Robert said to the orderly. ‘Keep on counting to fifty and every fifty give us a blast. Let me hear one now, just to see you know what you’re doing.’
The man put the bugle to his lips and made a ragged noise with it. All at once the air was filled with shock waves of wings—sheet after sheet of them, rising off some marsh they could not see. The wind and the sound of their motion sent a shiver down Robert’s back. Nothing could be seen except the shape of movement.
‘All right. Go back,’ Robert said. ‘At a walk. And a blast at every fifty.’
‘Yessir.’
The man turned his horse and was gone as he did so.
Robert muttered one to fifty. So did Poole.
There was a muffled shout from the trumpet.
‘He’s not very good at it,’ said Poole.
‘Well—he hasn’t had your practice,’ said Robert. ‘Give him a week or so…’
They were both trying to joke. But they couldn’t. There must be something terribly wrong and they knew it but neither one knew how to put it into words. The birds, being gone, had taken some mysterious presence with them. There was an awful sense of void—as if the world had emptied.
Robert leaned forward. Even Poole was beginning to disappear. He was cold. He had never been so cold. The fog was turning his greatcoat to mush. It was as if the rain had boiled and turned to steam—except that the steam was frigid. Robert tried to remember what it was like to bathe in hot water. He couldn’t.
They waited.
The trumpet wailed and hooted further and further off in the green. The fog was full of light. Robert heard wings above them and around them. The birds were coming back. There was also the sound of lapping—of movement out in the field—and the sound reminded Robert of the early morning slap-slap-slap from the diving raft at Jackson’s Point. Something floating in the water. All he could see was the shape of Poole and the heads and rumps of the horses—their lower parts obscured. The rain had stopped. An occasional chilly breeze blew through the fog—intimations of another world and other weather. These breezes carried the smells of smoke and ashes—bitter and acrid. The trumpet fell silent.
Poole led the horses back in Robert’s direction. Warmth might be had by clustering. Neither man spoke. The horses didn’t like being made to stand still. The wings had alarmed them.
‘Name all the birds you can think of,’ said Robert.
‘Storks,’ said Poole.
‘I’m being serious,’ said Robert.
‘So’m I,’ said Poole. ‘I’m sorry, sir; but I just can’t think of any birds but storks. I’m too damn cold…’
Starlings, Robert thought; they don’t go away in winter. But these, whatever they are, are bigger than that. Ducks. They must be ducks. They’re flying north and they need some place to rest so they’ve chosen these fields. That’s what it is. They’re resting.
The trumpet sounded. Close. Very close.
Poole was so startled he jumped.
‘Ha…loooo!’ Robert shouted. ‘Good,’ he said to Poole. ‘They’re here.’ And then he shouted ha…loooo! again.
The trumpet replied.
Robert and the trumpet kept this up for six exchanges and after Robert’s last haloo a voice came back from the fog.
‘Don’t move,’ it said.
‘All right,’ said Robert. His voice thickened.
Poole stopped shivering. ‘What can be wrong?’ he whispered.
‘We’ll soon find out,’ said Robert.
Each turned to watch where the voice had been. A man came floating through the fog. His collar was turned up. His hat was missing. This was not the man they had sent away. He was walking.
‘Where’s your horse?’ Robert asked. ‘Who are you?’
‘Me,’ said the voice.
‘Who the hell is me?’ Robert said.
‘Me,’ said the man. ‘Levitt.’
Levitt was a new junior officer who’d joined the convoy at Bailleul that morning. He’d just come over from England.
‘Where’s the other chap?’ said Robert. ‘And why aren’t you riding a horse? You shouldn’t come up here without a horse.’ He was angry. Levitt was supposed to be officer at the rear. This meant there was now no one of rank with the wagons and two of the wagons carried rum.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Levitt: ‘but I had to come forward. The other chap was soaked to the skin. He and his horse…’
‘What happened?’ said Robert, cutting him off.
‘They went through the dike, sir.’
‘What dike?’
‘This dike,’ said Levitt.
Robert blinked. Levitt stared through the fog. Robert looked over his shoulder. Birds.
Levitt said: ‘I can’t tell how far, but somewhere back there you took the wrong turning and you’ve come out onto this dike and the dike is slowly collapsing.’ R
obert now perceived that Levitt himself was soaked to the skin. ‘I didn’t like the thought of sending one of the men,’ Levitt went on, ‘since there were all those horses and someone who knew what they were doing had to stay with them, so I came up myself. The corporal’s in charge.’
‘Thank you,’ said Robert. Levitt’s sense of detail was practical, if nothing else. ‘All right,’ Robert said. ‘What’s our situation?’ He was trying not to shake—trying to sound like the C.O.—stiff and unmoved.
Levitt said there was a break in the dike and perhaps the break was a hundred to a hundred and fifty yards behind them. When the rider had gone through, the break was only about six feet across. When Levitt had come through it had widened to ten feet. By now, it might be fifteen or twenty.