Remembrance Day (34 page)

Shari needed her love and support, not her criticism. Life was too short. What could she do to help?

Perhaps she could prepare the ground a little by writing to the West family, or better still, take a trip east and look them up. After all, they were almost one big family now.

It was almost Christmas when Charlie and his supply trucks found themselves bogged down near the Ardennes, stuck in the freezing cold hell of ice and snow. The first he knew that this was no Alpine vacation was when a barrage of German artillery battered them through the forest, turning tree branches into flying scythes. There were sightings of snowmen advancing westwards, crack
troops in Alpine suits for perfect camouflage, ghostly figures encircling the 106th Infantry, causing mayhem, confusion and retreat.

They were all caught up in the attack and every man had to defend himself. They were running short of supplies and air support because of the fog. By the middle of December the battle was raging round the hilltop town of Bastogne, and Charlie knew if they didn’t hold the town, all would be lost.

Charlie had been right through Europe and seen enough carnage to know what was in store. They’d been caught napping, thinking the enemy was retreating east, going home without a murmur. Now they knew different. Never underestimate a soldier with his back to the wall, but two could play that game. They may not have been the best frontline troops, but the kitchen boys and the mechanics were no pushover either.

He was sick of seeing carpets of frozen corpses, buddies knocked off by snipers and shrapnel. He was weary and scared of what was to come. He was no crack infantryman but once his dander was up he’d found himself cursing like a trooper, grabbing a gun with the best of them and leading his men forward into the worst of it.

He was gutted when Gary got hit, watching the life ebbing away from a tough guy, who had had so much to look forward to in his life. It wouldn’t be long before a bullet came with his number on it. He tried to think of Shari and those precious nights in the London hotel on their honeymoon; he thought of Ma and Pa and his sisters, so far away. Pa was right about war. He’d seen it all before in a foxhole in France. Had they learned nothing since then?

Yet this war had to be won, though they weren’t doing much of a job here, and the bloody weather didn’t help. If only the fog would lift and air support could begin again. He glanced at the paper flyers dropped down on the Third Army, not propaganda, for once, but a prayer from no less a general than Patton himself: a prayer to shift the fog in their favour. Charlie almost laughed at the desperation this was showing.

Grant us fair weather for battle,
Graciously hearken to soldiers who call
Upon thee, that armed with that power
We may advance from victory to victory.

Where was the Lord in all this? Whose side was he on, if any? Charlie was too tired to think about anything but staying warm and keeping his feet from freezing. It was hard to dig in when the ground was rock hard and covered with snow, and still the barrage came, lifting him off the ground with its impact. All he could do was duck and pray.

When another shell landed close by, he felt nothing, but kept on firing his weapon. Then another one came closer, flinging shrapnel around him. Charlie felt no pain, nothing at first, everything was intact but he couldn’t lift his gun and then he saw there was no hand left to do the job. Someone pulled him into the back and pushed him towards the dressing station to get his stump bandaged before he lost too much blood. They gave him morphine and a transfusion and sent him back to an evacuation hospital, knocked him out to clean up the mess.

Charlie woke to a world that looked like a Christmas
card, the telegraph poles outside his window sparkling like tinsel, a forest of Christmas trees, but the snowmen he’d met were storm troopers, their snowballs were grenades and being wet and numb with cold wasn’t much fun when you couldn’t run home to where a log fire burned and Mom’s cookie jar was waiting.

This was no Christmas party. Charlie stared down at his bandaged wound in disbelief. How the hell was he ever going to write home with his left hand?

Dearest Mom,

I wrote before about Charlie’s injury. I got to see him in hospital near London and he’s in good spirits. I think he’s still in shock at losing his right hand. He’ll be shipped out eventually to some hospital in California for amputees, but he’ll get some leave first.

I’m trying to get leave to be with him. He’s being such a brave spirit but his progress is slow and he gets so impatient. He is too proud to write to his parents at the moment so I have told them everything they need to know. It’s not the end of the world. It could have been far worse, believe me. You can live with only half an arm and they can do wonders with artificial limbs these days, but it will take time.

It has been a hard few months and the losses from the winter battle they call the Battle of the Bulge have been staggering. But the Germans are routed and racing back home to defend their own territory. It can’t be long now. They are exhausted and demoralised. We just have to hang on in there and see it through.

There are so many broken people to mend and the doodlebug rockets have made London a scary place to live. Have you made contact with the Wests like you said? Perhaps when Charlie comes home, we will all meet up together. Thank you for your wonderful parcel. Thank Lisa for the beautiful silk underwear and pretty dress. I shall be so glad to be out of uniform, one day, but for now it is like an armour I wear for protection. When I’m in the street I feel I’m flying the Red Cross flag for humanity and decency and compassion, and so lucky to have Charlie back safe in England for a while.

Your loving Shari

Selma shivered at all this young couple had been through together already. They made her feel ashamed of her easy life so far away from their troubles. A little bit of charity work wasn’t enough. She’d not bothered to make the effort to visit the Wests. Her excuse was the journey by train or bus was not absolutely necessary. The posters everywhere demanded sacrifice and savings. Now it was different.

Shari’s husband was going to need all the support of his family to overcome this blow. No point on standing on ceremony, the young couple must be welcomed home in style with a party gathering, a reunion. Weren’t two families blended into one by this marriage? It was going to be something to look forward to, to plan for, but first she must make the effort to go to Pennsylvania and seek out these elusive Wests.

‘The mother is coming to visit with us. She has plans to discuss their return.’ Rose read out the letter with a sigh.
‘Shall I put her off? It’s a long way for her to travel just to be told we’re not inclined to rejoice in the same way as she is doing. Charles, are you listening to a word I’ve said?’

Guy was staring out the window. So it had come, the moment of truth he’d been avoiding for months. ‘Oh, let her come and see for herself. We can’t put it off. For Charlie’s sake, we must make them all welcome.’

Rose had taken Charlie’s injury to heart. How would a man without his right hand be able to work the fields or guide horses, build barns or do the necessary repairs, she cried.

Guy tried to explain about artificial limbs and prosthesis, how in the Great War many limbless had found ways of getting round their loss by compensating with other parts of their bodies: toes became fingers, blind men read Braille and wheelchairs became legs.

If only their boy had resisted enlistment. But he was his father’s son, and impetuous, just as he himself had been. Now he would know better. He would understand how it felt to look hell in the face and realise there must be another way to keep peace among men. All Guy wanted now was to see his son home safe and well, and to meet the wife who had written to them so graciously, breaking the news of his injury with such delicacy. He liked the sound of Shari West, if her letters were anything to go by.

Rose was jealous that her son had left home so abruptly against their wishes and found a wife for comfort. Rose was hurting at his wounding, angry, shocked and confused. They were going to have to open their hearts to strangers, to English relatives, and he was going to have to face a ghost from his past.

‘Let her come, Rose. We can’t keep putting this off. We have to make a bridge between us all for the children’s sake. What happened in the past between us was none of their doing. Why should they suffer because of my mistakes? It’s time I faced Selma Bartley.’

‘She may not recognise you after all these years,’ Rose said.

‘I’m not that decrepit, surely?’ he laughed. ‘Do I look that old?’

‘I won’t feed your vanity. I don’t want her to steal your heart again.’ Rose looked up at him, revealing her fear, and he gathered her into his chest in a bear hug.

‘You have filled every crevice in my heart. There’s no room for anyone else. We were children then, just sweethearts for a season, just practising being in love.’

‘But your mother broke it up so it must have been strong. It didn’t run its course. It must still be there somewhere inside you, waiting to come out,’ she argued.

‘What happened, happened. It brought me here. I’ve no regrets…none at all. Only that it caused Selma pain for a little while. Come on, no more of this talk. Work’s got to be done. We don’t want Mrs Barr thinking we live in a mess. There’s fences to mend and yards to be tidied up!’

Guy was being bright and breezy but, like Rose, he was wishing this visit could be cancelled. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing that face from his past again.

Selma’s journey took several days, many connections and delays on trains and buses, until her backside ached, her feet swollen with the heat. Now she knew what a real pioneer must have felt like! She could have flown across but wanted to see more of the Midwest states. Lisa offered to come
with her for company but she had her college work to prepare and was waiting for more news of Patrick, who was a POW somewhere on a South Pacific island.

She thought of that first overland journey all those years ago when she was so excited and naïve, so full of Jamie Barr. He was last heard of running a bar in Vegas, married to a showgirl there. Why had she never bothered to look for someone else, as Lisa had suggested?

She smiled, thinking about all Pearl Levine’s lovers since Corrie died; all those Hollywood liaisons kept secret by the studio executives from their adoring fans, the fake marriages of homosexual stars to please the public. There was so much fakery and illusion in Tinseltown, such a long way from the Yorkshire Dales. What had she lost by going west and staying there?

Perhaps a bit of her true self. She had Shari and Lisa but not a lot else. She’d kept up some horsemanship, loved going to the races and driving around in Lisa’s open-top tourer, learning to drive.

She kept returning to Arizona to stake out her claim on the territory round Prescott. She loved its Victorian houses and prim streets. It reminded her of Sowerthwaite, in some strange way. ‘If ever I come into money, this is where I’d live,’ she told Lisa.

The clothing bank and collections kept her busy supporting the war effort. Looking around the town, with its growing wealth and glamour, she sometimes felt as if she didn’t belong here any more. It worried her, as if the gaps in her life were never going to be filled. Would she end up living alone with only her thoughts for company? She wondered what Charlie’s parents would be like—solid farm stock, religious by all accounts. She’d have to mind
her language with teetotallers and churchgoers, not her type at all these days. But having promised Shari to go and introduce herself, she was keeping to the bargain.

She landed in Philadelphia and caught a bus north through open country, pretty, rolling green hills and lush forests. The colour of stone and earth were so different from California. She could see why the Yorkshire Quakers felt at home and settled around these rivers and creeks all those years ago. There was a horse and buggy waiting for her at the Crossroads Inn to bring her to Springville and the Wests’ farmstead.

By this time it was hot, and she was steaming and very tired. As they drew closer to the stop, she glimpsed a man waiting in shirtsleeves, with a large straw hat and a beard. His wife stood in her sky-blue dress with white pinafore, and her hair covered in a white cap with strings tied round. Were they plain folk, Amish, Quakers or what? That’s all she needed, she sighed, to be stuck for a week with holy rollers. She was too exhausted to look them in the eye.

‘Mrs Barr, Selma Barr?’ said the man with the strangest of accents.

She nodded, not looking up into his face. ‘Mr and Mrs West, I’m pleased to meet you. Thank you for waiting. Not one thing has left on time since I started out,’ she sighed.

‘You’ll be ready to rest then,’said his wife,smiling.‘Charles will put all your things in the back.’

It was a slow awkward ride through the leafy lanes, trying to make polite conversation with strangers, trying not to show her ignorance of their way of life. It brought back memories of home. She’d not always been a city girl. The scenery was pretty and the shade of the trees welcome. The farmhouse was a wooden slatted salt-box affair with
neat glass-panelled windows and a picket fence round a yard full of vegetables. There was something very familiar about the foursquare shape that reminded her of the farms out in the Dales. There were cattle grazing, and in the far meadows she could see horses.

A line of girls stood on the steps waiting to be introduced: Kitty, Lorrie, Joan and Dorothy, all dressed in the same plain frocks, with scrubbed faces, braided hair tied into buns. They had old-fashioned manners, waiting for their parents to take the lead.

All at once Selma felt overdressed in her frilly frock with ruffled sleeves and peep-toe sandals, her hair piled up in pompadour style, her nails coloured bright pink.

Lorrie kept staring at her fingers and back at her hair. They were quiet, polite, shy girls, who disappeared as soon as was respectable to run out into the fields, no doubt to discuss her frivolous outfit.