Easterleigh Hall at War (20 page)

Simon said, ‘What about work in the field party? Did you tell them I was a gardener, not a basher, like these pitmen?'

Dave looked at him and frowned. Gerhardt shook his head and leaned forward. ‘You must not speak of pitmen, Corporal. The mines and salt mines are not places to work, and if it is heard that . . .' He walked on.

Jack kicked Si. ‘You need to keep your mouth for eating because if we go, you'll go, Si. They think you're one of us. Those mines are in Germany, and then how do we escape? Come on, we'll be late for roll call.'

Simon flushed. ‘I
am
one of you.'

Dave stood, drowning the dregs of his coffee before swilling his cup out with water from the bucket. ‘Then act like it, you daft beggar, and it's not the bloody first time we've told you. I'm sick of hearing about your gardening, your need for the soil. We live, eat and sleep on the bloody soil, whether it's wet, dry or indifferent, what more do you want?'

After roll call they marched to the factory, and again they bashed apart perfectly good machinery for scrap metal to be transported back to Germany to make more guns. The concept stuck in their throats and they worked as slowly as they could but still their backs were near to breaking, and their heads close to bursting, but they were safe. The thought of all that was happening not too far from them, beneath the shells and the machine guns, made Jack determine to find a way back, somehow.

Turnip soup was waiting for them as evening fell, or was it mangel-wurzels? Even Simon didn't know but at least it wasn't maize soup, which tasted like paraffin. No matter how hungry Jack was, he could never finish it.

Every day he, Dave and Charlie scanned the wire entanglements which surrounded the field. They did the same that evening. Every day they were alert on the march to and from the factory, the railway yard, or wherever they were to work, for any escape opportunities. Only one had occurred, and it was Gerhardt who had clubbed Jack to the ground, saving him from the uhlan's lance. It had earned him a kicking, and solitary for a week in the pigsty.

No further opportunity had presented, so the most he and Dave had been able to do was tip coal out on to the tracks after derailing one of the carts, which was easy enough with a piece of pig iron. The first derailment had earned Jack and Dave a beating and two days' loss of bread for their group. No one had minded, because others had shared their rations. The same thing happened the second time.

Jack's ripped skin from the barbed-wire incident was long healed; his shrapnel was either lying still or had been eased out. It was the same with the others. They were hungry and exhausted, and because they moved billets constantly they had received no mail or parcels, so they didn't know if their relatives thought them dead. It was this that kept some awake at night.

All week they bashed apart the machinery and on the evening of 28th August, thirty of them, including Jack, Simon, Dave, Frank, Danny and Jim, were called to stand out at the front and herded off to one side, guarded by several uhlans. They were told they were moving on. Jack noticed that all but Simon bore the blue scars of the miner, and swallowed his anger at his marra's big mouth. Charlie stepped forward out of the ranks, panic in his eyes. He called, ‘Ask them to take me, Jack.' Gerhardt came abreast, his rifle across his chest, pushing Charlie back.

‘Jack,' Charlie pleaded. Jack called, ‘I suspect you'll be better here, bonny lad.'

Dave nudged him. ‘Poor wee bairn, let him come, we'll take care of the little bugger. We can't leave him, he's your bloody shadow, you know he is now the captain's gone. It might not be a pit.' Jack took a moment, then sighed, and stepped forward to salute Uberleutnant Bauer. The man was standing in front of the hundred prisoners, watching the proceedings as though they were specimens in a jar. ‘Permission to speak, sir.'

The larks were singing above the fields. How strange these birds were, somehow impervious to the guns, which seemed muted this evening. Somewhere a lamb bleated, because it was far enough from the front line for there to be fields which contained something other than prisoners. God, he was so tired, so hungry. He mentally shook himself.

Uberleutnant Bauer was nodding at him. ‘Carry on, Sergeant.' He had been at Cambridge University studying some sort of science, so the story went, and his English was impeccable. Jack said, ‘Permission to include Private Meadowes, sir.'

‘Ah, the one who called out?'

Charlie stepped further forward. ‘Private Meadowes reporting, sir. I'm part of them, sir.'

Bauer tapped his swagger stick against his leg. His gaze swept the troops lined up in squares of twenty for ease of counting, then back to Charlie. ‘You are young and are not strong. Where your friends are going, you need that strength. You should choose to stay, Private Meadowes.'

Charlie stood ramrod straight. ‘I choose to go, sir. I am stronger than I look.' Jack started to shake his head. ‘No, Jack, I don't want to stay here without you all.'

Bauer seemed to be looking at the larks, watching as they swooped. Jack followed their movements too. The lamb bleated again. Bauer looked for a long moment at Charlie, then raised his voice. ‘I need one of the thirty to step back into line.' Behind him, Jack heard Simon step forward, then someone from B Company marched quickly back to the line. The moment was over, and Jack wondered what he would have done if Simon had tried to duck out of a situation he had caused. He wanted to smash the bugger.

Bauer strolled across to Jack, coming close, his voice no more than a whisper. ‘Our young friend is your responsibility now. Protect him well and perhaps you'll get him home in one piece. I pray so, and that we all survive. It is a ridiculous situation, do you not agree? And perhaps tell your young gardening friend that he talks too much, so now he too is bound for the salt mines in Germany, though you would perhaps have gone anyway at some stage. Blue scars are like a badge, sadly, Sergeant Jack Forbes.' He nodded, looked down at his immaculate boots. ‘It was my decision to include Corporal Preston, I fear that he has not half the internal strength of even this boy, Meadowes. You will need to be on your guard, my friend, with that one. His thoughts are seldom far from himself, not quite the sort I'd want for a friend whether I was man or woman.'

Bauer moved on, his hands clasped behind his back, his swagger stick under his arm. ‘Carry on, Sergeant,' he ordered Gerhardt. Jack stepped back. Had Simon heard? He didn't care, because they were moving back from the lines, making it more difficult to escape. He saw that Dave was thinking the same, and cursing Simon under his breath.

They travelled in cattle trucks, but this time, however, there was more room, and stops for the emptying of latrine buckets. They travelled for days, it seemed, and they slept, Charlie tight in with his marra group, for that was what Jack realised they had formed. They were not just friends, they were to be pitmen, and marras. They would watch one another's backs, they would take one another's loads, and because Simon was the love of Evie's life, he would be enclosed within their group. What did Brampton have, in his comfy cosy camp, that came close to that?

They disembarked near the Hartz mountains, miles from the front line, into pure air devoid of the crash and grind of guns, with towering peaks and searingly blue skies. Here there were wooden houses with balconies, flowers hanging from them. How the hell would they get back to the front line?

‘Bloody salt mines,' the men cursed as they marched along the roads. The people, thin and tired, looked at them warily. Simon was quiet, but the men ignored him. Dave marched alongside Jack. ‘Makes you thirsty, I expect, all that salt.'

Jack shrugged. ‘I expect you're right, bonny lad, but doubt it's as hard as coal.' He didn't know, and what he didn't know frightened him. Would it be white, friable, easy? Would they be shovelling, not hewing? Simon marched beside him. ‘I've told you before, and will tell you now I'm right sorry. Me and my bloody great mouth. Jesus, Jack, I'm right sorry, man.'

Jack slung an arm round his shoulders, and pulled Simon to him. ‘Don't go on and on, Si. We've all got gobs on us. We'd have ended up here anyway, and you might still get to a garden.' If he forgave him so would the lads, and he was too bloody tired to do anything else.

Simon grinned. ‘Aye, maybe you're right. But let's get through this day first.' He pulled away. ‘What say you, young Charlie? One day at a time, eh?' Charlie was grinning as Dave joshed him about something. ‘Who knows, I might get some rabbit snared here. Better than potato-peel soup?'

They arrived at a small town at eight in the evening. The sun had gone behind the mountains and there was a chill in the air, even though it was still August. What would the winter be like? Would they bivouack in fields? If so, they'd bloody well freeze. The guards who were, like Gerhardt, too old for service, marched them to a building which it became clear was an old school.

Their boots rang on the wooden floors as they entered a dormitory with narrow beds. ‘Real beds,' sighed Charlie. ‘Aye, and a roof,' Dave added, guarding their corner from incomers. ‘Nah, get your own space,' he muttered to some Welsh pitmen. Danny, Jim and Frank joined them in the corner, with Simon dithering on the edge. There were no mattresses, just bare boards, and gaps in between those. There was one grey blanket per man, but who needed more? They were off the ground, the dirt, the mud. It was bloody heaven.

Guards approached. ‘
Schnell
.' They were led to the ablutions, basins and toilet stalls, then to a kitchen with the luxury of a cooking range and huge pans. They were told that they would collect their own wood for cooking, under guard, tomorrow after work. For tonight they were given black bread, two slices, and potato-peel soup.

They marched to the mine the next day, and entered a world in which the air was clean. It was remarkable. There was none of the smell of a coalmine. They took their tokens, and a lamp, and then plunged down in the darkness of the shaft. Simon and Charlie stood between Dave and Jack. Jack yelled above the rattling and crashing of the cage, ‘Think of those larks, lads, and that blue sky. Think of the forest because that's where we'll be picking up the wood when we're out of here. Mart used to hum. Have a go yourselves, and remember the larks, or whatever, or whoever, takes your fancy.' All the while his chest was constricted, his heart beating too fast, because they were bloody falling. That was the nub of it.

They reached the bottom of the shaft. There was no white salt, glistening and ready to be shovelled. Instead there was salt deposited in old seabeds, which looked like granite. They worked in a huge cavern. ‘It is your task to drill, blast, cut it out. Once your work is done, it will be removed and crushed,' they were told in halting English. They were to work with an equal number of civilians, to prevent sabotage. We'll see about that, thought Jack. Si gripped his arm. ‘Listen to him, Jack. We can't do anything here and it'll be short rations for the rest of us again, if you try.'

They worked for ten hours without stopping, or eating, though they were allowed to drink. Jack and Dave bore the brunt of the work in their group, hewing whilst Simon and Charlie collected the broken-up rocks into carts. ‘They say the air is good for you,' a skeletal figure muttered as he brought water to them. He was from the Nottingham coalfields. ‘They say salt heals, and I reckon it does, but so does food. Trouble is, they don't have much themselves, our blockade is too good, poor buggers.' He took the leather water flagon on to the next group.

Within three days Simon and Charlie had abscesses on the palms of their hands from the non-stop shovelling of the rock salt, though the pitmen fared much better, so hard were their hands. On the fourth day Jack received the first of his beatings, for derailing a cart. The beating took place in the cavern, the pick handles and rifle butts slamming into his curled-up body. The other pitmen stopped work. Charlie was held back by Dave. ‘He knows the score, lad, let it be.'

‘
Schnell
,' the guards called, threatening them with their rifles, and they began work again as Jack was dragged to the cell carved out of the rock, with an oak door. Normally it would hold picks. Now it held recalcitrant prisoners. He was locked in solitary for twenty-four hours, in pitch dark. Dave banged on the door as he passed at the end of the shift. ‘Keep strong,' he said quietly. Charlie, Jim, Frank and Danny echoed him.

The guard banged on the door with his rifle butt. ‘No food for your men. This your fault.'

Jack crawled to the wall and dragged himself into a sitting position, his arms resting on his knees. His bruises would heal, and his back, where it had bled, would scab, but the others would go hungry. How long could he carry on the fight while his men also paid the price? Perhaps Simon was right? The seconds, the minutes and the hours passed, and as the darkness pressed in on him he cursed Auberon, who had promised he would get them out. And then he cursed him again for leaving them, because he was part of the group, wasn't he? And he cursed the bloody war, and the endless movement of his group. They had still had no letters, because no one knew where they were.

He cursed the bloody dark, and bosses, and the crashing and blasting and hewing that continued day and night and was making his head split, or was that because of the rifle that had crashed into the back of his skull, or the thirst that was driving him mad? He cursed the civilians that stumbled past his door, free, with a water bottle on their belts, and bait in their tins, and he cursed himself for hurting his own marras. Charlie's stomach would be aching, his hands throbbing, his abscesses bursting. He buried his head in his hands. The salt on them stung his eyes. He should never have brought the lad. He should never have derailed the cart. Shit, shit.

They let him out after twenty-four hours. His bruised hips and ribs had stiffened and he could barely stand. He was handed his pick by the overseer, his sleeves rolled up, muscles rippling. ‘You work.'