Brett shrugged on his jacket and shouldered his rucksack, glancing up at the clumped-together church with its odd-shaped tower. The other places had been more like it: trenches, tunnels, that huge bomb crater. Mr Wade had told them to imagine themselves as young soldiers about to go over the top, and yeah, he really could. But this…
“Fierce fighting took place around here from the autumn of 1914 and all through the war,” Mr Wade was saying. “And see Messines Ridge there? Not a spectacular height, but it gave the Germans a commanding position. We’ll get a better view from the bell tower.”
Brett clumped down the steps behind Trudi. He wasn’t about to get excited at the thought of tramping round some dismal old church.
As the young priest left his lodgings, he wondered, as he wondered every morning, How long can it go on, this war? How much more can we take?
Winter would soon be here, the long dark days, and now the armies had dug themselves in as if no one expected to move far. Months ago, at the start, it had seemed the Germans would sweep right through Belgium, into France and down to Paris, but they’d halted here, brought up against the British and Belgian armies. Stalemate. But it had come at a terrible price.
Already the shelling had battered the town of Messines and the priest’s beloved church. It grieved him, gave him a physical pain, to see it damaged, surely beyond repair. When the war is over, he thought, we must build anew: build an even more splendid church, to stand against brutality and suffering.
And, now that the Germans had taken Messines, he was on the wrong side of the line. He could have fled, but Father Antonius said it was their duty to stay. They had to give help wherever it was needed. The farmers and their families couldn’t leave; nor could the people in nearby villages. The young priest had travelled in Germany before the war and spoke the language, so had been sent by Father Antonius to comfort and pray with the wounded soldiers who straggled back from the front line.
Soldiers! Some of them were hardly more than boys. They hadn’t chosen war, any more than the Belgians had, or the French, or the British. He prayed now as he walked, for these innocents caught up in the fighting, pitched against the deadly new machine guns that ripped flesh to pieces without even pausing for breath.
Now that the Germans had discovered the church crypt, they were using it as an aid post. The priest crossed himself as he approached the ruins and picked his way through the rubble of the cloisters. What would today bring? How many young men were up there on the ridge, healthy, full of vigour, who would tonight be groaning in hospital beds? Or, worse, lying in a makeshift morgue, awaiting burial? He shuddered. It seemed beyond human endurance.
God must have some purpose in this, the priest thought; he clung to that belief.
Down in the crypt, with its stone arches, the air struck cold. A morose group of Bavarian soldiers huddled there, drab and dirty in their field grey. Two sergeants – one on a camp bed, another shrouded in a blanket – were being tended by nurses, while the others waited. A young lance corporal, slightly built, dark-haired, sat on the steps, drawing in a sketchbook by the dim light from above. Only the man on the bed, who was groaning and barely conscious, seemed seriously injured. The nurses had only basic equipment: jugs of water, bowls, bandages, disinfectant.
The priest made his enquiries, expressed sympathy, offered help – though what could he do?
The elder of the two nurses seemed resentful of his intrusion. “They’ll be moved back to the field hospital,” she told him, “as soon as there’s transport.”
He nodded, understanding that space would be needed here for more casualties later in the day. He moved towards the young man on the steps, noticing a bloodstained bandage around one ankle.
“Good day, my friend,” said the priest. “You do well to occupy yourself, and take your mind away from your injury. May I see?” He leaned closer.
At first the lance corporal looked inclined to snatch his sketchbook out of view, but then, with a slight shrug, he offered it to the priest. In pencil, with a delicate touch, he had drawn the arches of the crypt, and the countess’s grave.
“Very fine!” marvelled the priest. “Fine work indeed! Are you an artist in civilian life?”
“Yes. I am.” There was something wary and guarded about this lance corporal. In his glance, shyness was mixed with arrogance.
“That’s Leo, that is,” said a corporal with a gashed head, wincing as the nurse dabbed at it none too gently. “You hardly see him without he’s drawing something.”
“Remarkable!” said the priest, handing back the sketchbook. “Well,” he added to Leo, “I hope you’ll soon be able to return to your artistic calling.”
The young man nodded, and thanked him. The priest was struck by the steely blue of his eyes. A fire burned there, a longing. And the priest’s heart filled with compassion for these young lads whose lives were being taken from them, to be gambled in this huge game of chance.
“And here,” said the guide, “you see drawings and paintings by wounded German soldiers.”
This wasn’t Brett’s idea of a museum – junk shop, more like. Just a shabby collection of letters, bits of uniform, rusted grenades, ancient black and white photographs. The paintings weren’t much either: fussy drawings and splodgy watercolours. Churches, graveyards, trees. The only one he liked was a drawing of a dog – flop-eared, rough-coated, bright-eyed. It reminded him of Bobby, his nan’s fox terrier.
That night, in the hostel near Ypres, he sat with the other Year 10s for the daily writing-up of their journals. We stopped at a church, he began, and that was about all he could think of. He glanced across at Trudi, who was writing busily. Leaning across, he read: The best bit was when Joel found the grave of his great-great-grandfather in the German cemetery.
Yeah. He could put something about that. The grave of Gefreiter Samuel Goldstein, ranked among countless others like soldiers standing to attention, was the only one marked with a star.
“What’s that for?” Brett had asked.
“It’s a Star of David,” Joel said. “To show he was Jewish.”
“So are you Jewish then?”
“Course. Didn’t you know?”
Brett shrugged. Didn’t matter one way or the other.
“So you’re German?” Trudi asked Joel.
“Half. My dad’s family have lived in Berlin ever since eighteen hundred and something. They own a whole load of jewellery shops.”
“Cool,” said Trudi.
“So, wait.” Brett was trying to keep up. “If we were in the war – like, now – you’d be on the other side?”
Joel grinned. “You got it. Faster than a speeding bullet.”
Joel’s great-great-grandad was killed in 1914, Brett wrote, and added, copying Trudi: His name was Samuel Goldstein.
Next day, returning to the crypt, the priest found no patients at all – just the two nurses, cleaning and tidying, making ready. High on the ridge, the guns had been rumbling since first light. It was bitterly cold. The priest wished the nurses good day, and asked after yesterday’s casualties, the Bavarians. They’d been sent down to the field hospital, he was told. The younger nurse, the pretty fair-haired one, coloured up; he guessed she’d taken a fancy to one of the soldiers. It would be the blue-eyed boy with the intent gaze, he felt sure.
As he wasn’t needed here, he decided to walk the three miles by road to the hospital, well back from the German line. Words of comfort and cheer, a prayer, might do the men some good. Sometimes he was called upon to deliver last rites, or hear a confession. But he did not reach the field hospital that day. Father Antonius intercepted him in the ruins of the town square and directed him to a nearby farm, where a local woman was dying from pneumonia.
Next day, he set off into the biting wind. The hospital was a cluster of tents, the ground much muddied. Someone was groaning horribly; another voice pleaded for morphine. The sister, too busy to be interrupted, frowned and shook her head at the priest.
Then a ma
n recognized him and called out; it was the corporal who had spoken to him in the crypt. His head and arm swathed in bandages, he propped himself up painfully in his truckle bed.
The priest hurried over. “How are you, my friend?”
“As well as can be expected,” said the corporal with a grimace. “We lost Leo, though.”
“What?”
“He died this morning.”
“Died?” The priest was aghast. “But I thought his wound was only slight!”
“Sepsis, they said. Took hold very quickly.”
The priest crossed himself, and prayed silently. Although he’d seen Leo only once, the thin face and yearning blue eyes had seared themselves into his memory.
“He started raving,” the man went on. “Insisted on being moved away from the bloke in the next bed – reckoned he’d be contaminated. The nurses moved him along the tent just to give us all a bit of peace. Then they both died, anyway.”
“It is God’s will,” said the priest.
The corporal nodded without much conviction. “He was a funny chap, Leo. Brave as a lion – rescued his officer last month, dragged him in under heavy fire, cool as you like. But he kept himself to himself. His drawings, though… He gave me one.” He gestured towards his pack, which lay near by on the tarpaulin floor. “Have a look. That pocket there.”
The priest unfastened the flap and took out the folded paper inside. It was a drawing of a dog – a flop-eared terrier, rough-coated, bright-eyed.
“Loved animals, Leo did,” said the man. “That stray dog turned up near our lines. Foxy, Leo called it. Wouldn’t be separated from it. Fed it from his own rations.”
The priest looked at the pencilled signature. “So his name wasn’t really Leo, then?”
“No!” The man laughed. “That was just my nickname for him. Leo, short for Leonardo. Our own little Leonardo da Vinci. Why don’t you take it? You’ll look after it better than I will.”
In Ypres the three teachers were rounding up the Year 10s, who were investigating the marketplace’s cafes, bars and chocolate shops. Chocolate could wait till tomorrow, Mr Wade insisted, shooing them along. Tonight they were heading for the Menin Gate, and the last post ceremony.
Arriving early, they had time to look at the Memorial to the Missing, a massive arch of brick and stone that spanned the road, each face carved with thousands and thousands of names.
Mr Wade gave the usual lecture about behaving respectfully during the short ceremony: no chewing, pushing, shoving or even talking. “It takes place at eight every evening, and it’s a solemn occasion. Yes, Trudi, I know it’s ancient history to you. But it’s important to remember the World War. The War to End All Wars, people called it; and, well, there have been wars since, of course – Vietnam and Iraq to name just two – but none that involved as many countries as the World War. Not since the peace treaty of 1918.”
A small crowd gathered by the arch; police on motorbikes stopped the traffic. Then uniformed buglers, three of them, sent out into the spring evening their plaintive notes, which seemed to lodge in Brett’s chest, and wrench at him. Tears sprang from his eyes; he blinked them away before anyone saw.
It was over in minutes, then the crowd dispersed and the traffic flowed again.
“Is that it?” said one of the girls. “That’s why we’ve come all this way?”
Mr Wade made himself tall and took a deep breath, ready to explain all over again.
Brett nudged Trudi and Joel. “Come on! Let’s make a dash for it.” If they were quick, they’d find a chocolate shop that was still open.
The funeral was conducted by an army padre. There were three to be buried, in simple wooden coffins, and only three other mourners besides the priest: the young nurse and two patients from the hospital, one on crutches. The corporal was too ill to attend. It was a brief, almost businesslike service. There were so many burials that this was a routine event. A chill wind cut in from the east, beneath a cloudy sky. Up on the ridge, the guns boomed. Prayers were said, responses mumbled. Tears coursed down the cheeks of the young nurse.
Afterwards the priest stayed by himself to meditate for a few moments on these three latest losses.
Gefreiter Samuel Goldstein.
Unteroffizier Heinz Schneider.
And Lance Corporal Leo.
Of course, his name was not really Leo, but the priest thought it suited him, with his slow-burning fierceness.
It was so heartbreakingly sad, the priest thought, to see the youth and strength of Europe sacrificed to the vast indifference of war. All the talents and potential of these young men, their futures, their children: thrown away, lost. He couldn’t put faces to the other names, but to this last one he could. He recalled the brightness and passion of those blue eyes, the penetrating gaze. He’d seen pride there, single-mindedness, and driving ambition.
Standing by the graveside, head bent, he wondered what this man’s destiny would have been had fate not dealt him such an early death. Who could tell how much had been lost? Who could guess what he might have achieved, in ten, or thirty, or fifty years’ time, this Leo, this – to give him his real name – Adolf Hitler? He might have become a great artist; the whole world might have recognized his genius.
The workings of God, the priest reminded himself, cannot be known to mankind. We cannot begin to understand; we can only have faith.
As he walked away, he looked back at the three stark crosses, and rain started to fall.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler was treated for an injury in the crypt of Messines Church, Belgium, in the winter of 1914. Shortly after this he was awarded the Iron Cross for bravery, for rescuing an officer under heavy fire. Hitler is known to have produced many drawings and paintings during his time as a soldier, one of which shows the ruined cloisters at Messines.
ECLIPSED
Matt Whyman
The nuclear stand-off between the United States of America and the Soviet Union, part of what was known as the cold war, dominated global politics for more than four decades after the end of World War Two. By the 1980s, people lived with the very real fear of a nuclear Armageddon…
I missed the moment that the moon exploded. Like so many people, I was fast asleep when it happened. According to my friend Maisie, whose neighbour works a night shift, it looked just like a mothball fragmenting into the void.
The morning after, I discovered my father staring out of the kitchen window. He was barely blinking. On the radio a news report claimed that America was demanding some explanation from the Soviets. At a time when the world lived in fear of a nuclear strike from one side or the other, it seemed like an act of madness for Russia to launch a lunar attack. My father didn’t appear to be listening, however, and at first I didn’t realize the enormity of what was being broadcast. It was only when I sneezed on account of my hay fever that he noticed me.
“Sleep well, cupcake?” he asked.
“Sure,” I told him, looking around. “Where’s Mum?”
As he pressed his lips into a smile, I noticed his eyes shine over. “She’ll be back later,” he said after a moment. “I promised her I’d tell you that.”
At school I found everyone talking about the same thing. At first I thought I was the victim of a grand hoax. How could the moon just cease to exist? I had only been alive for fourteen years. Considering a lifetime without it seemed unthinkable. I remember that first day was clear and bright. The sky, as blue as a lagoon, had not a cloud in sight. During a special assembly, our headmistress explained that with the loss of the moon we faced a time of great uncertainty. Nobody knew for sure what effect its disappearance would have on everything, from the ebb and flow of the oceans’ tides to the rate at which the earth revolved. Still, she assured us that nature would adapt and survive, as would mankind.
Throughout each lesson that followed, we kept turning our attention to the window. Even the teachers couldn’t resist looking, despite the fact that there was nothing unusual to see.
&n
bsp; Come dusk, as we made our way to our homes, stars began to prick the twilight. I kept looking up and around. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to spot. The moon might have sailed through every night sky for billions of years, but sometimes clouds, tall buildings or trees conspired to cover it up. Everything just looked so normal up there, so peaceful and serene. I saw no smouldering remains or hole torn out of the heavens. Had I spent the day in my own company, without news or gossip, it would not have struck me that anything was different. Still, as an urgent breeze picked up all the litter in the streets, I couldn’t help feeling that perhaps we had taken things for granted.
“Come and sit with us, cupcake. There’s something we need to discuss.”
I had found my parents facing one another at the kitchen table. Like everyone, they appeared a little shell-shocked and bewildered. They looked up when I came into the room. As soon as my father invited me to join them, I realized I had just killed a conversation.
“What’s the latest on the moon?” I asked, noting the television switched on in the corner. The sound was muted, but the footage of the rockets climbing into the sky looked ominous.
“The moon?” My father paused and gazed at me. It left me feeling like I hadn’t returned home in years. “I’m not sure,” he said, and cleared his throat. “What did they tell you at school?”
I drew a chair from the table and sat with them. “The Russians are claiming a test firing went badly wrong. That’s what our form teacher told us before the bell rang. They’re suggesting the target coordinates were changed as an act of sabotage by the United States.”
Mum clasped her mug with both hands. Not once did she take her eyes off it. “The last time I looked at the moon,” she said, “it was on the wane.”
I glanced at Dad, confused by her comment. “Mum,” I said, “it isn’t coming back.”
Outside, the wind had strengthened so much that it began to moan and whistle. Only then did I notice that the curtains had been closed against the night sky. I looked at my dad, and found his focus upon me once again.