The Lost Soldier (38 page)

“That’s no answer,” snapped Sarah.

“It is to me,” Molly said simply. They fell silent for a while and then Molly said, “I know you don’t understand, Sarah. I can’t explain it to you. All I can tell you is that I don’t regret it for minute. Not the love, not the baby. I am sorry it will be born without its father’s name, but that can’t be helped now. If we’d been able to get married before Tom went back everything would have been different.”

“You couldn’t, Molly. You know you couldn’t. Even now you hardly know him, just through letters.”

“It was all right for your brother to get married quickly when he was on leave, he’s an officer.” There was no mistaking the bitterness in Molly’s tone. “He didn’t have to wait. His wife is expecting too. That’s all right,
he’s
an officer.
She’s
an officer’s wife.”

“Oh, come on, Molly,” Sarah said impatiently. “Being an officer has nothing to do with it. You know that. They were on leave. They were both over twenty-one, the circumstances were not the same.”

“So his baby is welcomed and mine is not.”

“Molly, it’s different…” began Sarah.

“Yes,” agreed Molly wearily. “Isn’t it always?”

“Look,” said Sarah, “this isn’t getting us anywhere. What we have to decide now is what we do next. Did Tom say why he was refused leave? I mean, they do give compassionate leave. Why not now?”

“I told you,” Molly said, “there’s going to be a big push any day now. They need every man there is. Hasn’t Mr Freddie told you?”

“They can’t say that sort of thing in letters,” Sarah said. “I know almost nothing of what is going on.”

“Well, from what Tom told me when he was here, and from what he’s hinted at since, it’s that they are going to attack the Germans very soon. A huge attack all the way along the front line. Until that is over and the Germans have been pushed back a long way they need every man they’ve got.”

“When?” asked Sarah, her thoughts immediately with Freddie.

Molly shrugged. “Don’t know,” she said, “I don’t think anyone knows, but it’s soon. I told you what Tom had said at the time, remember?”

“I know, but that was weeks ago.” She thought for a moment and then said, “Who did Tom go to? To ask for leave I mean?”

“Didn’t I say? He went to Mr Freddie. He’s his company commander. He told Tom that he couldn’t possibly have leave now.”

“Perhaps if I wrote to him,” suggested Sarah, “explained how important it was he might change his mind. What do you think?”

“Oh, Sarah, would you? He’d listen to you. You could tell him we only need Tom for a day. I would go to Albert and meet him and then we’d get married and Tom would go back.”

“It might make a difference,” Sarah said, “but it might not. I’ll write to him tonight, but you mustn’t get your hopes up, Molly. He may not be able to do anything.”

Molly grasped her hand. “Oh Sarah, I knew I could count on you. Tom told me to tell you, but I kept putting it off. I thought you’d be so angry with me.”

“Well I am,” said Sarah. “I’m condoning nothing that you and Tom have done, but I can’t leave you to sort it out on your own.” She gave Molly a fleeting smile. “I know if I were in any sort of trouble you’d help me. So, I’ll write tonight, but I think we may have to tell Reverend Mother in the end. We have to explain why you are going home.”

Before they put the light out the letter was written and in its envelope, waiting to be posted.

22nd June

Dearest Freddie,

I am writing to you about Molly Day and one of your soldiers. His name is Tom Carter, he’s the private in your company whom you met when you were here. Molly and he met here in the hospital, fell in love and decided to get married. It wasn’t possible before he had to return to the front and so they jumped the gun. Now Molly is expecting and though the man says he will stand by her, he can’t get here to do the decent thing and she will have to go back to England to have the baby without benefit of clergy! Is there any possible way you can give him a 48-hour pass so that he can come down to Albert and we can get them married there. I think the padre here, Robert Kingston would marry them in the circumstances, both are of age now. Anyway, dear Freddie, please see what you can do. We understand the position at present, but surely one man for 48 hours wouldn’t be too much to ask. I know you will say it is their own stupid fault that they are in this mess, and I agree, but Molly has been with us a long time and perhaps we owe her our help now. It would be a dreadful thing for her to go back home as an unmarried mother. She has been truly wonderful in our work here at the convent and certainly “done her bit”. Also, they weren’t lucky, like you, able to get married when they wanted to and I know their baby is just as important to them as yours is to you, and they so want it to have its father’s name!

I know you will do what you can, and look forward to hearing from you soon. Take care, brother mine, especially over the next few days, your wife and baby need you as well… not to mention me!

Your loving sister, Sarah

It was sometime before they had any more news from the front, and when it came it came in two pieces of mail; a trench postcard from Tom to Molly, telling her exactly nothing, and a scrawled note to Sarah from Freddie.

Wednesday 28th June

Dear Sarah

I’ve done the best I can. TC may be able to come to the town in a few days’ time, but don’t bank on it. If he’s not there by the 15th July, send the silly girl home. She won’t be the only one in her predicament while this war is on! Pray for me and for success in the coming weeks.

I have written to the governor and Heather. I send my love to you all.

Freddie

“He’s done the best he can,” Sarah told Molly, “but it doesn’t sound very hopeful. His letter was dated 28th, something must have happened by now.”

Four days later news began to filter back from the front of the grand offensive which had finally been launched. The sound of the artillery had rumbled round them for days, and continued an ever-present though remote thunder, and then the convoys of wounded began to arrive. Sister Magdalene went to Albert to meet the ambulances and the hospital trains, telling the medical staff who arrived there with their loads of wounded just how many they could accommodate at St Croix. She took Sarah with her to translate, and when they returned to the convent, they were both pale and shaken by what they had witnessed. Thousands of wounded were pouring in from every front, many simply to be transferred to trains and taken to the waiting hospital ships that plied non-stop across the channel with their broken cargoes.

The news that arrived with the wounded was very mixed. Some said that the push had been a great disaster. Others that the allies had broken through the German lines and though there were heavy casualties they had achieved their objectives; yet others that the battle was still raging with trenches changing hands and Germans launching a counter-attack. Most were only aware of what has happened to them and their mates, and for many who had survived the fateful attack on 1st July, the memories of it were haunting and terrifying. The wounds to their bodies were many and terrible, the wounds to their minds could not be reckoned.

All thoughts of tiredness gone, Molly and Sarah worked flat out in their wards trying to keep up with the injured men flooding in. The two medical officers from the convalescent camp spent their days in the convent hospital along with the overworked Dr Gergaud. Hours were spent in the operating theatre, and hours more in the wards with treatment and aftercare. The regular duty hours were gone as the nuns and the two girls snatched sleep as and when they could. Molly was no longer the only one with a tendency to fall asleep almost without warning, exhaustion caught up with all of them, and still the wounded flooded in.

Nothing was heard from Tom or Freddie. The chaotic state of affairs at the front persisted, with a handful of brave and exhausted men hanging on to their trenches in the face of a powerful enemy. Molly thought of Tom and could only pray that he had survived the carnage of the attack. If he had, he must be among the survivors who had been thrown back into the allied trenches to hold them against the expected German counter-attack. There were no men from the Belshires in the wounded that arrived at the convent, but several of the men that she and Sarah questioned said that the Belshires had been in the thick of it near Beaumont Hamel. There was no news of Freddie either, and Sarah found herself praying, a mantra in the back of her mind as she worked, “Please God, let Freddie be safe. Please God, let Freddie be safe.”

The 15th July came and went, but neither of them gave any thought to Molly going home now. She could not be spared, and if her condition became apparent to all, well, she told Sarah, she would deal with that when it happened.

June 30th

Dear Molly

I am well.
I have been unwell
.

I received your letter

I received your parcel

I will write again soon.

I send my love, Tom

The artillery barrage had been thundering round them for six days. Six days of unrelieved blasting from the great guns set two miles back from the front line. The men of the 1st Belshires arrived from their billets in the early morning, having trudged all night through the maze of communication trenches, bringing more supplies up to the front line with them. Their section of the front trenches ran through the last shattered trees of a copse, zigzagged and narrow, with little room for movement. Artillery had flattened almost every tree, leaving only occasional stumps pointing like accusing fingers to the sky. It lay in a small defile, so the ground gently sloped up and away from them towards the German lines less than a mile away at Beaumont Hamel. Wreaths of early mist twirled and drifted like smoke, hiding and exposing no-man’s-land as it moved on the breeze. The men they relieved hurried thankfully back down the lines and the Belshires dug themselves in and waited. The pounding of the artillery continued non-stop, unending, head-banging thunder, crash and boom.

“If the bloody Hun don’t know something’s up by now,” remarked Tony Cook gloomily as they stood to next morning, peering into the early morning mist, “they must be thicker than trench mud. When they finally decide to send us over, it’s ’ardly going to come as a surprise now, is it?”

Young Davy Short, newly arrived in the platoon, in the front-line trench for the first time, looked across at him. “But surely, Cookie, no one could have survived that barrage, could they? I mean, it’s been days now them guns ’ave been pounding ’em. Their trenches must have been all but flattened.”

“May be.” Tony Cook looked at the fresh face of the man, no, not a man, a mere boy. He couldn’t be a day over seventeen, Tony thought, bitterly. They’re sending us babies to fight now. He glanced across at Tom Carter. He and Tom had been together from the start. He and Harry and Tom had joined up together. They had trained with Hugh Broadbent, Charlie Fox, Jim Hawkes, Bill Jarvis, Peter Durrant, little Andy Nugent, and now there was only him and Tom left. Harry, Davy Potts, Will Strong, all gone, buried in a front-line grave or the mud of no-man’s-land.

Tony Cook shifted his feet on the fire step and peered cautiously over the parapet. “What do you think, Tom?” he murmured, “Must be soon, eh?”

Tom nodded. With his leave pass tucked safely in his tunic pocket, he couldn’t wait for the order to come. All this waiting was giving him too much time to think and his thoughts of Molly were driving him mad.

All day they were kept busy checking equipment, despite the fact that they’d had almost no sleep the night before, and when they finally stood down in the early evening and were eating a scratch meal, Captain Hurst came round with Sergeant Turner and the rum ration. As the sergeant dished out a double tot to each man, Captain Hurst spoke to them all.

“It’s set for tomorrow,” he told them quietly. “You know the drill. The barrage will continue, and there’ll be smoke. The artillery will have destroyed the wire so there’ll be no problem there. We move at a steady pace across no-man’s-land to take the enemy trenches just as we’ve been practising. The artillery will have destroyed their machine gun positions, so once we’re on the move we’ll have very little opposition from the Hun. With no covering fire they’ll have to evacuate their trenches, if there’s anyone left alive to evacuate them.”

So said Captain Hurst, but Tom wasn’t sure he believed him any more than any of the others who had survived previous attacks; but for the new boys, the raw recruits brought up to the front-line trenches for the first time, like Davy Short, it was a rallying call, and the shuddering fear which had built up over the last dragging hours receded a little. Now the battle was upon them they could face the enemy with a certain courage; hearing that the way had been cleared before them and resistance would be non-existent, boosted their morale, so that when Captain Hurst finally blew his whistle they would scramble out of the trench and cross the desolation of no-man’s-land with courageous and steady tread.

Before Hurst and the sergeant moved on along the trench, they handed trench postcards to the men, telling them that these were the only communication they would be allowed to send that day. Tom took his and with a stub of pencil crossed out the irrelevant lines so that his post card to Molly simply read, “I am well. I will write again soon. I send my love,” and he signed it, Tom. The postcards and other letters, letters of farewell written on the eve of this great battle to be sent only if the writer did not survive, were then collected up by Corporal Johns and passed back down the lines with other personal belongings screwed up into sandbags… to be returned later… or not.

The battalion padre came along the trench, speaking quietly to the waiting men. At the corner of a bay he met Freddie Hurst, who clapped him on the back and said, “Smalley, you shouldn’t be up here.”