An End of Poppies

lost the house in Whitefriars Drive anyway. It was 'commandeered' by the war office; for the war effort they said. They did that once mother was sent away. I have no idea why and I have no idea who lived there. I felt cheated. That house belonged to my family, but I had no choice or say in it. This is why I stay with Aunt Gracie near Brighton when I am back in England. The last I heard, and I am not sure if this is true, was that the house next door to our old house was bombed, number 120 I think. Perhaps you know if this is true?

  Information is scarce here at the front, so my picture of what is going on and what has happened to my mother always feels like I am guessing in the dark; grasping at straws with a blindfold on in the deepest of fog. I keep writing to the ministry asking them to let me know the whereabouts of the hospital she was sent to but to no avail. It no longer comes as a surprise that they do not reply. All I know is that she boarded a train for Newcastle. It could be that if I get a leave I may have to see if I can travel up there to see if I can find her. That is if I get a leave, which, as usual, doesn't seem very likely at this point. That could mean that I may not be able to visit you, especially if the leave is only for a week. Although I would be sorely disappointed to miss seeing you if I were in England. It would be my first desire upon setting foot on English soil; for my eyes to rest again at last upon your pretty face. I suppose we will have to cross that bridge when we come to it.

  Anyway, as you have probably gathered, to receive a parcel from you was most joyous. I have pinned the delightful picture of you and Dulcie on my small patch of the wooden wall next to my hammock. We don't have beds or bunks down here; there isn't the space, or the wood to spare for it. They can cram twenty or so sappers hanging from the ceiling in a wood and mud room no bigger than an ordinary garden shed. Perhaps it is slightly taller. Jones calls it our 'stink pit' on account of the latrines which are simply holes in the bare earth in the wide corridor outside. I have lost count now of the weeks we have spent underground. Increasingly our appearance gets worse; we look like grimy thin moles of men, pallid dirty skin and dull lank hair. At least that’s what the others look like so I suppose I must look the same. I feel very thin. Jones says that the M.O. thinks the men underground suffer from a lack of vitamin D. Apparently it softens the bones. When we march through the tunnels I find myself looking at the legs of the man in front and wondering if they have rickets in their bandy legs. I wonder if I have it.

  I haven't had a haircut or a shave for at least four weeks. The regiment barber doesn't make down this far that often. And we are so dirty, always dirty. If we were a surface unit we would all be on a charge for being so slovenly. I am sorry that I have no picture for you but I am sure that you would think my current appearance frightful.

  I have placed your picture next to the only one I have of my mother, the only other picture I have. I try to keep them dry and clean as best I can, but mouldy water drips down the planks while we sleep. I must say that you and Dulcie are such a fine sight in your summer clothes. I disagree with your summation; I don't think I have ever seen anyone as beautiful as you, your hair and eyes positively shine. Please understand, I do not mean to be flattering Esme. I simply, humbly, wish to describe the effect you have had on me. And you do have such an effect Esme. I hope my faltering description of my feelings does not embarrass you; but it is true to say that I am sure that if I had ever encountered a beauty so startling that it moves me in the way that your beauty does I would surely have remembered it. The memory of it would stick inside me like a constant shining beacon in my thoughts. This is how you stick in me. Deep inside me. I know it sounds awfully gushing and sentimental to talk in such a way but it really does gratify me greatly to look at your picture every night and every morning.

  Not that there is much difference between the day and night down here amongst all the grey and khaki and mud. You are the thing that brings colour to my day. It is almost as if before I had your picture there was nothing to look at down here, so I sort of stopped looking. Stopped seeing what was around me.

  Some of the boys have collected all sorts of pictures to look at, French girls they have met in the make-shift dance-halls and Yank movie starlets and such like. Jones had a picture of the Kaiser that we used to throw darts at, but that didn't last long. His faced destroyed in an avalanche of pin-holes.

  Private Hendricks is in the hammock above mine; he has to climb the slats in the wall to reach it. He, like you, has a map of the Front. He has pinned his map onto the couple of feet of planking wall above me, next to his hammock. If I lean from my hammock now I can see it. He has drawn a small pencil star at every point on the Wall, and every town and village in France and Belgium that he has visited. There are a lot of stars. He is one of the few who isn't an officer who has been here a long time. He is 48; an incongruous old man amongst us callow boys. Although some might say we all look old down here. He says that perhaps if he can survive another ten or fifteen stars on his map he will make it to fifty-five and then he hopes he will get a discharge; a retirement. Time off for good behaviour.

  Apparently it said on the sign-up papers that fifty-five is the retirement age. Or so Hendricks says anyway. I, like most young boys, didn't read those papers. I simply signed on the dotted line; signed up for the big adventure.

  Privately, I am ashamed to say, that I don't hold out much hope for Hendricks getting a retirement. I once met a soldier who was sixty-two. I couldn't believe it when some of the others pointed him out. Sixty-two and still shovelling gravel on the top of the wall. I tried to talk to him, ask him what it was like being here so long, but he just grunted and carried on shovelling. I can't imagine it. All those years; they said he was in the army before the war even started. He looked so very old, I don't think I have ever seen a man with such rivulets of wrinkles covering every inch of his tired skin. I remember my Granny when I was small and she always seemed impossibly old in her rickety bath chair, but even she had a sprightly smile, not at all like this ravaged old soldier.

  Hendricks, like me and all the rest of us, came to the war when he was sixteen. He has been here thirty-two years. So many years, a whole life lived on and around the Wall; seems like an eternity to me. So obviously I didn't tell Hendricks about the old man on the wall; who would want to burst a man's bubble of hope?

  In the mess I asked Hendricks if he had ever thought to try for a Corporal's stripe; maybe try and work his way up the ranks. He just said that it 'wasn't for the likes of us' and continued spooning his soup. He is an intelligent, thoughtful man and I wonder what he would have been in a different life. Maybe one in Victorian times; that golden pre-war age. Maybe he would have driven a steam engine or worked in an office. Yes, I can see him there in my mind's eye, in an accountant's office, totting up the figures in some great leather-bound ledger. A humble, but awfully nice Dickensian character.

  In my most foolish romantic mind's eye I can see myself too in that bygone age. Me as the writer; sat by a fire in some quaint lodgings, thick black waistcoat and heavy sleeved, high necked white shirt, my quill pen in hand. Scratchy ink blotting the paper with my latest imaginings. Sometimes I have to stop myself dreaming such dreams. It is foolish and makes my heart ache for things that can never be. Perhaps that is why I sometimes shut down and no longer see the reality that surrounds me. Do you think me terribly foolish and self-indulgent to dream such things Esme?

  I did try for the Corporal's stripe myself. It was when I had been here less than a year, and many of my school chums had bought it already. I naively thought that the higher up the ranks you go the further back from the wall you might get to live, and I saw it as a way out. The unit Captain, Albright is his name, lives down here with us and you need to rise to Major or Colonel before you get to live a few miles back from the wall. Being a Corporal wouldn't have been much different from being Private; apart from a few more shillings to send back to your family. They say the Generals live in faraway chateaus dining on goose and fine wines. I took the examination for Corporal but all I got w
as a rejection slip. I thought I had done quite well but they never told me my score. I suppose Hendricks was right.

  I am wearing the jumper you knitted me as I lie here now. It certainly keeps me warm during the day, squashed underneath between my tunic and my rough shirt. That was so kind, thank you. They are lax about our uniform and appearance underground so it is fine for me to wear it. When the regiment moves back up to the light of the real world the officers top-side won't be so lenient and I will have to keep the jumper for special occasions and rare time off.

  I ate the chocolate you sent me as a special treat on New Year’s Day. Sort of a way of marking the day, to have a treat. One day runs into another down here. They gave us the day off from digging on Christmas day; there was some talk of going up top, but instead we ate fat-laden corned beef and mashed potatoes in the underground mess. The cooks had even laced the beef with brandy for Christmas. They said it would be like having Christmas pudding but I thought it tasted distinctly odd. Some of the men, including the old hand Hendricks, have taken to collecting weevils and