The Somme Stations Read online

  His office was a cabin of the SS Rievaulx Abbey, and behind it were two oil paintings: one showing the crest of the North Eastern Railway Company, the other some Northumberland Fusiliers of a different, older battalion. (They looked to be out in India, or somewhere.) Oamer had marched me in, and my heart sank at Butterfield’s first words.

  ‘There is at present no vacancy within our regimental police …’

  (I had not asked whether there was.)

  ‘… but I would be happy to recommend that you be transferred to the corps of Military Mounted Police, who are the elite of the force. You would seem an excellent man for the job. I have good reports of you from both your section and platoon commanders and of course you were a policeman in civilian life.’

  Of course I was, I thought … but why couldn’t everybody leave off about the military police? It wasn’t proper soldiering as far as I was concerned. I wondered whether the same pressure had been applied to Scholes and Flower.

  I said, ‘If it’s all the same, I’d rather stick with the battalion, sir’ and he’d said, ‘It’s all the same to me, Stringer, but it may not be all the same to you.’

  When I came out, I said to Oamer, ‘I didn’t seem to get any points for loyalty to the battalion.’

  ‘But you may do in time,’ he said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘When the penny drops that you have been loyal.’

  He was perhaps saying that Butterfield was rather dim, which didn’t help me at all – and I had an inkling that the path to promotion would now be blocked as long as I said no to the Military Mounted Police.

  For a while, the blokes at the back of the troop had been singing ‘Another Little Drink Wouldn’t Do Us Any Harm’. It was all about the Prime Minister, who liked a drop. Now they switched to ‘Watkins of the Railway Gang’, and this they kept up manfully as we passed a never-ending cemetery, but when another, still bigger cemetery came into view … Well, it seemed to knock the heart out of them, and they gave it up. The only exceptions were those odd boys, the Butler twins, marching a little way ahead of me, who sang to each other a private song: something about ‘a mistake’s been made’ or, as they had it, ‘a mistek’s bin med’, and ‘He’s got no eyes, cos he’s got no head’ and ‘He’s got no feet, cos he’s got no legs’, and this did tickle them.

  Our troop was a quarter mile long. The Hull citizenry could see we were soldiers from our ragged formation and the officers riding alongside but, not having any guns, we didn’t command respect, and the looks that came our way … they were half amused, as though people were thinking: ‘You mugs!’ After we’d turned a corner in a somewhat disorganised manner, Alfred Tinsley, the railway-nut, was chattering away alongside me, talking shop.

  ‘Would you break up the coal while riding?’ he enquired.

  ‘No time for coal trimming on the road,’ I said. ‘I’d do it beforehand, while my mate’s going round with the oil can.’

  ‘But wouldn’t you want to supervise your mate as he oiled up?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’d trust him.’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ said Tinsley. ‘It’s a job that has to be done right.’

  Presently, we came to a closed level crossing gate, and this threw us out of formation. When we were rearranged, I found myself alongside the bulky figure of Oamer, who was puffing away on his pipe. He was a dark horse, Oamer. He was a good shot, and he’d been in the Territorials, but his red hair was surely longer than regulation army length, and the sweat was prickling on his forehead. He was overweight, and not quite in A1 condition. Young William Harvey was on the other side of him, and our supposed ‘four’ was completed by Scholes. It was odd to see Scholes without his mate, Flower, but Flower was in another ‘four’ and there was nothing either of them could do about it. Scholes’s face looked especially droopy as a result. ‘You seen the North Eastern Railway Journal?’ he asked me. ‘The latest number of it, I mean?’

  ‘I have not,’ I said.

  ‘They’ve opened the bloody roll of honour,’ he said, ‘for all those company blokes who’ve gone out already, with other regiments.’

  He didn’t half sound depressed about it.

  ‘You mean for the blokes who’ve won medals?’

  ‘Some of them have won medals,’ he said. ‘They’re all bloody dead.’

  At this, Oamer took his pipe from his mouth.

  ‘The term roll of honour is used in two senses,’ he said, in his slow, thoughtful way that sat so oddly with the two stripes on his arm. (He ought to have been a major on the Staff, ought Oamer.) ‘Firstly, as a record of certain notable new recruits, transfers and so on – ’

  ‘How are they notable?’ I cut in.

  ‘They are notable in the sense that they have come to the attention of the compiler of the roll of honour. Secondly, it is used as a record of men who have – ’

  ‘ – had their heads blown off in France,’ said Scholes.

  ‘ – those who have suffered in the cause of liberty in the field.’

  I looked sidelong at young William. He had no time for this morbid talk.

  ‘Why are you called Oamer, Corporal Prendergast?’ he enquired.

  I watched Oamer smoke for a while. Every time he put his pipe in his mouth, his red bushy moustache cleaned the stem. It was a highly convenient arrangement. At length, he answered the kid’s question.

  ‘Oamer is a mispronunciation of Homer, who is apparently taken to be a philosopher by the men of the York ticket office. They believe – and it’s very flattering, I must say – that I am on the philosophical side myself. Hence the name.’

  ‘Do you mind it, Corporal?’ asked William.

  ‘Not a bit of it. Homer is the greatest name in epic poetry, a figure comparable with Shakespeare. I am, or was, the deputy superintendent of a ticket office.’

  ‘But it’s a very big ticket office,’ said William, and Oamer flashed a grin at me over the kid’s head.

  We came to the famous field – a recreation ground with a football pitch marked out, and a gang of seagulls parading in the centre circle. As I walked through the gates, I caught sight of our platoon officer, Second Lieutenant Quinn, and he was talking to a fellow officer and uttering, very slowly and deliberately, his favourite word, ‘Unfortunately … It’s not quite big enough.’

  The ground was overlooked by hoardings for a shipping company; railway signals and masts lay beyond the boundary fence. An advance party of the battalion, quartered in a bell tent on the touchline, had made the ground ready for us. Among other entertainments was a line of sandbags with a long rope draped over, and a likely-looking sergeant standing by – that would be for tug of war. A track was marked out for the hundred-yard dash; a long sandpit had been dug – for the long jump, of which the army was very fond. But as they split off into their platoons, most of the blokes eyed the gibbet-like arrangement on the far touchline of the football pitch. From this dangled an over-sized scarecrow with a pasteboard disc for a face, and another disc lower down: the heart. Fifty yards in advance of this, neatly aligned on the grass, lay a line of rifles with bayonets fixed.

  All the platoon sergeants were shouting (how had the North Eastern Railway thrown up men who could shout like that?) and it seemed we could make for our activity of choice. Whatever you chose, you had twenty minutes at it, and one option was ‘rest easy’ or some such cushy number. You’d sit and smoke in the drizzling rain and watch the others. I thought: the officers’ll look out for who goes there first, then they’ll be down on them for the rest of the bloody war.

  The red hot types dashed straight over to the shooting range or the bayonet practice. Other tough nuts went for the tug of war. Young Tinsley was heading that way. Dawson walked past me with shoulders hunched. He was lighting a cigarette, trying to keep the rain off it.

  ‘Where you off to?’ I called after him.

  ‘Hazard a guess, mate,’ he said, turning round and grinning.

  I explained my theory to him, and he did a sort of m
ock-frown, making his face very crumpled.

  ‘Trouble is, mate,’ he said, ‘I’ve already lit up, and it’s a Woodbine. Lovely smoke, is a Woodbine. Here, help yourself.’

  And he held out the packet.

  If there was one thing I’d learnt so far from the British Army, it was the value of a Woodbine, so I took one, and as Dawson trooped off to ‘Rest Easy’ together with every last slope-shouldered slacker of the battalion, I looked across the recreation ground. Most of the blokes criss-crossing the ground were younger than me, as were most of the officers.

  I was beginning to think like the wife: in a pushing sort of way. Why shouldn’t I be sitting up there on a great, grey horse?

  I puffed away at the Woodbine for a while, then set off for the shooting range. I was no cracksman, but a decent shot when I had my eye in. As I made off, there came a horrible penetrating scream – a man’s scream, which is the worst kind. It sent all the seagulls rising up from the boundary fence, to where they’d retreated upon our arrival, and it came from the direction of the bayonet practice. The instructor, bent practically double with bayonet to the fore, was charging at the straw figure, and every last man had stood still and was watching. The bayonet went right through the cardboard heart … and the instructor had no end of a job yanking it out again. There didn’t seem to be any established procedure for pulling a bayonet out of a man, and there was some laughter at this but not much, because most of the blokes had been put in mind of France all of a sudden.

  When he’d recovered his weapon, the instructor steadied the dummy, and walked back to the line of blokes waiting their turn. First in line was the smallest and youngest man in the battalion, hardly a man at all: William. What kind of scream would he produce? He was handed his rifle, and I watched as he readied himself for his rush at the swinging scarecrow. But William had seen something amiss in the way the bayonet was fixed. With a crowd of blokes holding rifles behind him, and agitating at him to get on with it, he tried to shove the thing more firmly into its housing, which he did by directly grasping the blade. A sort of dismayed groan came from the blokes behind him; the man running the show dashed over to him, and the shout went up for medical orderlies. The kid was looking down at his hand, unable to credit the size of the gash he’d made there.

  ‘Oh mother,’ said a voice behind me. It was one of the Butler twins. ‘I’ll bet he’s sore,’ said the other one.

  ‘I’ll bet he’s sore as owt,’ said the first, and they turned and grinned at each other.

  Behind them stood their older brother. Most of the battalion had seen what had happened to the kid, but Oliver Butler wasn’t looking at the casualty. He was, as usual, eyeing me.

  That evening, half of the battalion – A and B companies – had been given leave to go off into the town. Why them? The question was not to be asked. We were all at the mercy of the orderly corporals and the notices they pinned up in the dining hall. Some A and B blokes had been too tired after the march to take advantage, but most had gone, and come eight o’clock the reading room was practically deserted. A couple of blokes I didn’t know played a quiet game of cards, and the Butler twins sat opposite each other. They weren’t reading of course – I doubted they could. One – it might’ve been Andy – took out a Woodbine for himself, then passed one to Roy (if it was he).

  Roy said, ‘Fine style, Andy-lad,’ then struck a match.

  His brother, taking the light, said ‘Fine style, Roy-boy,’ in return.

  They always did that when they smoked together. A little further along sat young William Harvey, reading with a bandaged hand. He looked particularly small, just then, the reading room being massive, like all the others. The place was filled with the sound of the droning wind, and the electroliers swung in time with the surging of the sea.

  William sat on one chair with his feet on another, and a magazine across his lap. When he saw me, he took his feet down, just as though I did have a stripe on my arm.

  ‘How’s your hand, son?’ I said, wondering whether they’d had to sew it, and he just nodded, evidently not over the shock yet. His bandage was stained with iodine. He stood up and made towards the door, moving at about half his usual pace. I walked over to where he’d been sitting, and I saw that it was the latest number of the North Eastern Railway Journal that he’d been reading. This was now almost entirely given over to the war, and had very little about the ordinary workings of the railway. You’d think the editors had been waiting all along for an excuse to drop railway subjects. Young William had evidently been reading the roll of honour, as mentioned on the march by Scholes, for he’d left the magazine open at that page. I picked it up, and read of the glorious deaths of railwaymen who’d gone to France at the earliest opportunity, prior to the formation of the battalion. Private Willetts, a labourer at Darlington Locomotive Works … a bullet had gone through his cap. Well, it hadn’t only gone through his cap. There’d been the small matter of his head as well. But in the case of a Private Harrison, a shunter at York, the writer had written more plainly. Harrison had been ‘blown up at Le Cateau’. But that wasn’t quite the end of it. They’d amputated both legs … but he’d pegged out anyway. There was in addition a photographic portrait of a bloke who’d stopped something at Mons. He was reported ‘as well as could be expected’, but I doubted that he still looked as he did in the portrait.

  Young William was watching me from a little way in advance of the doorway. He turned and made for the door as I looked up. The moving electroliers and the oil lamps acted in concert to make his shadow rise and fall as he walked. That, at least, was big.

  Young William Harvey’s hand did mend, and it might be that over the endless months of bull his chest expanded to the required thirty-four inches. He got back his martial spirit, or appeared to, and the blokes would ask him what he meant to do to Brother Fritz just to hear such bloodthirsty language coming out of such an angelic face – and of course with him, Britain was always ‘Blighty’.

  His jingoism put some of the blokes’ backs up, but I didn’t mind him, and he seemed to have quite taken to me. One evening he came up to me and asked me how I polished my cap badge. He seemed a bit shocked when I said it hadn’t occurred to me to polish it at all. For something to say, I told him I’d seen Oamer going at his with some sort of white paste.

  ‘That’s toothpaste, Mr Stringer,’ said Harvey, who never would call me Jim. ‘Toothpaste is for teeth. Best thing is to use a dab of vinegar.’

  ‘You sure, son?’ I said, ‘I don’t want to smell like a pickled onion.’

  ‘Vinegar,’ he said, winking at me, ‘it’s the army way.’

  He’d had this from his family, I believed. He had a number of relations who’d been in the colours before the war, and I’d heard that his father – currently working as a barman in the York Station Hotel – had won the Distinguished Conduct Medal in some long forgotten Empire Campaign.

  We spent half of every day training, half of it drilling, and it got so you’d actually think about standing. I’d be out in Hull, waiting for a tram, and I’d be thinking: now I’m standing at ease; now I’m standing easy. The idea was that we would all move as one mechanism, but this never quite came about. We remained individuals, and most of us more railwayman than soldier. I kept cases on those particular individuals I have already mentioned, because we were all from York, and all in the same company. Anyhow these blokes interested me, and some of them I liked.

  Oamer was about the best-liked NCO in the battalion, and the only mystery was why he’d not become an officer. I supposed he was seen as an oddity with his pipe, his thoughtful remarks, his rather too comfortable appearance. I recall one night in the dormitory watching him slowly applying foot powder while turning the pages of a difficult-looking book. He wrote a letter to somebody every night, and no man knew who. It did cross my mind that he might be queer.

  My particular pal was Bernie Dawson (as I came to know him). His shadowy moustache survived the hatred of two sergeants and one sergean
t major. He soon got a name for liking a drop of ale, and I believe he was involved in a bit of a barney in one of the Hull pubs, but I never saw any repeat of the Bootham Hotel sort of carry-on. He went everywhere with scuffed boots and – when we got our uniforms – pocket flaps undone, but he was amusing company.

  My other mate was young Alfred Tinsley. Off duty, he and I would go and look at the engines at Hull Paragon station, and he would write down the numbers while telling me all about this footplate god of his – the York South Shed man – whose name, I learnt, was Tom Shaw. I’d never heard of Tom Shaw, and could scarcely credit his existence, since Tinsley only ever spoke to me about him, and the bloke seemed so perfect in all respects. But I was happy to go along with the lad’s railway talk. (The footplate had been my original calling, and late at night in the dormitory, I would imagine myself driving engines for the army in France, and somehow saving the day by putting up some hard running of my own.)

  Tinsley had a down on Harvey, who, he complained, was forever boasting of his army connections. Other blokes said the same, but I only ever saw the enthusiasm of the boy scout in Harvey; I found him amusing more than anything, and it counted for something with me that the Chief had liked him.

  In February of 1915 I was called in again to see Butterfield, and he was still worrying away at the question of why I would not join the military police. At the end of our interview, he sat back, and said, ‘I consider your decision unwise’, and so there it was in the open: I could not hope for promotion on his watch, having twice defied his wishes. Scholes and Flower had come under the same sort of pressure, and Flower had cracked. His departure for the Military Mounted Police (where he’d be made straight up to corporal) left Scholes glooming about on his own, or sitting on the wall in the dock playing his flute.