First World War Story #Samplesunday

ESCAPE

Mitchell had not meant to desert. It was a June morning and he was taking a message to B Company. He was highly regarded by his officers, an intelligent and trustworthy man, steady under fire. He trudged along the pitted earth then stopped in surprise. In a gash in the earth a butterfly was sipping from a tiny flower. At that moment he started to run.

He saw a line of trees on the horizon. He swerved and headed for them. He was panting by the time he reached them and tumbled into the long, protective grass. He lay there for a moment, dazed by what he had done. The sunlight glittered through the branches. I must go back, he thought. If I go back now no-one will realise I've been missing. Then his eyes closed.
When he awoke there was the faint smudge of dawn above the German lines. He had slept for twenty hours. His stomach rippled with fear. The officers would think he had deserted.

He staggered up. The night was fading and, as he watched, the fragile lines of the trenches came into view. What had made him run? He should go back. If he went back now he could say he had got lost. If he delayed he would be shot as a deserter. He went fifty yards towards the lines and stopped. He would not fool Captain Bell. He darted back to the cover of the trees.
He had to think this out.

The sun had risen far above the horizon and the day was light and clear. He was not thinking at all but was listening to the sounds of birds chirping in a nest above his head. He had not heard sounds like this for years. Even when on leave the men were driven to fill the unfamiliar silence with their own clamour. The birds sounded sweet, and they paid no regard to the war and the killing and the waste.

He stood up and turned his back on the trenches. He plunged into the trees, walking fast to keep himself from thinking. He walked for hours and only gradually noticed that there was a sound following him. He reached a clearing and halted, feeling naked and vulnerable. Somebody was near. A snigger sounded close behind him. He spun round but no-one was there. It must be a madman hiding in the trees. Again, the laugh came loud and clear and he spun around once again to find nothing. Then his hand reached up and touched his mouth. It was working furiously, jabbering a mad, crazed cackle in a voice he could not recognise as his own. He shuddered and willed himself to stop. He failed. For an hour he stood rooted in the clearing, his mouth giving out great gusts and whoops of laughter, his eyes raining tears of anguish and fear.

At last the clearing fell quiet. He was exhausted. He looked around with dull eyes. He knew he had to think but three years of noise and slaughter and the swift obeying of orders had left his brain stale and weary. He banged his forehead as if he could pummel his mind into functioning.

Gradually, his thoughts began to clear. He had been away for thirty hours now. No-one would believe he had been lost for so long. Could he have been captured? He imagined himself telling the tale to the officers and their praise for his escape. But then he thought of their questions and the report he would have to write and knew that he could not pull it off.
He looked around wearily. He could not stay here for ever. There were rumours of mutineers' camps in the forests but he guessed they would soon be discovered. Or perhaps he could find some peaceful village where they would shelter him. But no Frenchwoman would hide a British soldier when her own men were dying at the Front.

The long hours passed and night fell. He wondered what his mates would think of him. Perhaps he should go back. But if he did he was certain to face the long silent walk with the firing squad, the click of the rifles as they were readied. Only a madman would return. Then he thought back to his laughter in the clearing and shuddered.

He looked up at the stars and as he did when a child he asked them for the answer. But they were far away and silent. Finally, on the edge of sleep an answer came, yet one so lunatic that he truly did begin to think himself mad.

The following evening he knocked at Captain Bell's door.

'Mitchell,' Bell cried. 'Where the hell have you been?'

'I ran, sir,' he replied, calmly.

The captain looked at him in astonishment. Every deserter they caught claimed he had got lost or captured.

'Surely, Mitchell, you mean you got lost?'

'I wasn't lost. I was running from all this.'

The captain leaned back in his chair. 'You do know the penalty for desertion?'

'I do, sir.'

'So why on earth did you come back?'

Mitchell shrugged.

'Because of King and Country?’ Bell said. ‘Or not to let your mates down?'

Mitchell realised that Bell was trying to give him a way out.

'I came back because I'm not a deserter,' he answered.

The captain stared at him, his eyes giving nothing away.

'You did desert,' he said finally.

'I ran. But I'm not a deserter.'

A candle began to gutter, causing the shadows of the two men to shudder then to shrink and to grow.

'I don't know whether you're a hero or a fool, Mitchell,' said the captain quietly.

'A fool, I suspect, sir.'

'You're certainly an honest one.'

Bell stood up and stared at Mitchell. 'Get some rest,' he said.

Mitchell's eyes narrowed, cautiously, uncertain. 'Is that all sir?'

'That's all.'

Mitchell did not move.

'That's all. Believe me, that's all.'

Mitchell saluted and left.

Republishing out of print books

Now that ebooks are becoming so well established I've begun to muse on the books which are now out of print which I would love to see republished. My current suggestion would be Alf's Button by W.A. Darlington.

This concerns two soldiers in the Great War who discover that one of their tunic buttons has been made of Alladin's Lamp. As soon as some spit and polish is applied the Genie appears, to the consternation of the Tommies. The Genie offers them the usual choices but the two soldiers seem unable to make any sensible decisions. Alladin did not have it so difficult.

What would yours be?

Separate Tables

Just watched the classic 50s film Separate Tables again. It was based on two Terence Rattigan plays, released in 1958, nominated for seven Oscars and won two. It has an impressive cast: Rita Hayworth, Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Wendy Hiller, Gladys Cooper, and Burt Lancaster. Niven won the Oscar for Best Actor and Hiller for Best Supporting Actor.

It is a sublime and sensitive portrait of people imprisoned by the constraints of society and their own personalities, facing a moral dilemma which manages to combine the parochial and the universal.

The acting is peerless, every one of the actors having an intensity and honesty which is remarkable and memorable.

If you want to see a window into the mores and customs of a certain time, one which has long gone but is also eternally with us, then watch this marvellous film.

Monty Python Economics

The lead article of the British Newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, quotes a cabal of City big-wigs who claim that the only way to save the British economy is by abolishing the 50% top rate of tax for the highest earners and increasing personal tax allowance. They claim this will attract entrepreneurs to the country.

Sheriff of Nottingham One : Robin Hood Nil.

I find it incredible that anyone seeks to reward the rich (many of whom got us into this mess in the first place because of their relentless, reckless gambling greed) while expecting ordinary people to endure all of the austerity.

I ask a few questions.

Are the rich solely motivated by money? What about loyalty, patriotism, wishing to do good for good's sake?

How will a few of the already rich make such an improvement in the economy when so many people are being thrown out of work with a consequent decline in tax yield?

How much more money do the already wealthy need? How much can one person or family spend in one life-time?

Why weep for the rich while slashing at the poor?

I am reminded of two songs, the first the theme song to Robin Hood.

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen.
Robin Hood, Robin Hood with his band of men.
Takes from the bad, gives to the good;
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood.

The second is from Monty Python's Flying Circus

Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore
Galloping through the sward
Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore
And his horse Concorde
He steals from the rich
And gives to the poor
Mr. Moore, Mr. Moore, Mr. Moore.

Healing my injury

I've just got back from a Reiki session with Yvonne Bottarelli at the therapy centre at Marlborough House in Taunton.

It was magic. I feel healed and free of pain. The trauma of my injury slipped away like an iron gauntlet being unlocked and falling to the ground. I can hardly believe it.

Just to put this in context; I had a fall over three years ago and broke my ankle and shattered and dislocated my elbow. I was phobic about broken bones in general and dislocated elbows in particular having seen my mother struggle with two dislocating elbows throughout her life.

The people at Marlborough House have helped me incredibly in a number of ways. Nabeeh Marar has helped with the phobia and Daniel Hayward with the injury.

I was recommended to try out Reiki and booked a session with Yvonne Bottarelli. She was marvellous. Her inspired healing has made a profound difference to my injury, gradually weaving improvement, strength and health.

And now, today, at the final session I had booked with her before moving to France she worked what I can only describe as magic.

I feel I have got my arm back again. I feel whole and wonderful.

Four Men in the RAFA

My wife and I went up to the Royal Air Force Association Holiday home in Weston-Super-Mare on Sunday to celebrate my father's 88th birthday.

He introduced us to his three new pals, three men as old as he. They had been placed at the same dining table for the week's holiday and clearly hit if off immediately. Peter was from Malta, Jimmy from the Midlands, Bill from Wales and my Dad from London. The only thing they had in common was that they had all served in the RAF during the Second World War and had all chanced to be placed on the same dining table.

Yet there was more. They had a defiant and good-humoured grasp on life, a willingness to try out new things and stretch their resilience.

I spent some time talking to Jimmy. He looked frail and was in a wheel-chair. His hearing was bad. He had the most impish, naughty smile and was clearly a favourite of the female staff.

He told me that he had been a rear-gunner on a Lancaster Bomber. I calculated that he would have been twenty one years of age at most. On one of the raids the plane was shot to pieces and the crew had to parachute out. He landed badly. Indeed all of the crew were injured in one way or another.

'It was at Eindhoven,' he said. 'Eindhoven in Holland.'

'What happened then?' I asked, expecting him to say that he had become a prisoner of war.

'I don't remember much,' Jimmy answered. 'The next clear thing I remember is waking up in hospital in Roehampton.'

'Roehampton?' I said. 'How did you end up there?'

'Dutch partisans,' he answered. 'They got every one of us out, injured though we were.'

He leaned forward and touched me on my knee. 'I've been very lucky,' he said. 'Very lucky.'

Claire Tomalin's Dickens: A Life

I can't put down Claire Tomalin's biography of Charles Dickens. I feel as if I am living in the nineteenth century, an observer of the writer's life, perhaps a servant or maybe a butcher's boy who calls with the chops and sausages and is astonished by his energy and sometimes alarmed by his mania.
For make no mistake, Dickens was a man of phenomenal energy and life-force. His constitution must have been magically strong. Charisma is too small a word to encompass him.
The beauty of this biography is that Tomalin's shows him warts and all yet indicates that the warts were, perhaps, an essential part of his towering, monumental personality. In fact there were more than warts, there were huge failings as a human being. Yet, I am reminded of the fact that we are dealing with a man who was born almost two hundred years ago and that some of these faults would not have needed to surface in the way they did in another era.
As I read with mounting distress the harsh way he treated his wife Catherine and his young lover Nelly I thought for a moment, why doesn't he just marry the girl? But he couldn't. Divorce was not an option, especially not for a man who did so much to create the notion of the happy family enjoying the Christmas turkey.
My favourite part of the book so far takes place when Dickens was in the midst of his marital break-up, a break-up considered so terrible that many long-time friends deserted him. He was starting a new weekly magazine and insisted that it be called 'Household Harmony.' His best friend Forster suggested that such a title would raise a few eyebrows. Isn't it delicious that the great spinner of words could not see what a terrible error of judgement such a title would have proved. In the end, Forster's arguments prevailed and the magazine was called 'All the Year Round.'