In Distant Fields (28 page)

‘And particularly now we're at war, Harry. The men were all saying at dinner the other night – and this was before war had actually been declared – that there would be changes coming, social changes – that they had to happen.'

‘Yes, but that was because everyone knew there was going to be a war, Kitty.'

‘Just as much as everyone hoped there wouldn't be.'

‘I don't know about that. You should have heard some of the talk round here. People were getting pretty shirty about the government because everyone had sort of got to thinking that Asquith wouldn't fight – that he wouldn't go to Belgium's aid, and France's. You get the feeling that when we're at peace, all an awful lot of people are waiting for is the chance for another war, for all sorts of reasons.'

‘As long as they don't have to fight it. One does notice really that most of this belligerence comes from the older people who know they won't be the ones shouldering arms.'

Harry turned and looked at Kitty, appreciating as he always did the brightness of her mind and the economy of her thought. Kitty caught the look and smiled at him, something she had not intended to do.

‘Come on,' he said, suddenly dropping his gaze and hopping down off the wall. ‘Let's go and walk by the lake, and imagine it's all frozen over again as it was at Christmas.'

Kitty knew she should be doing busy things, but instead she found herself walking side by side with Harry along the path through the ancient bluebell woods and on towards the lake where only a few months before they had all been skating.

‘Anyway, to return to the subject in hand,' Harry was saying, pretending not to mind that she had politely refused the offer of his arm. ‘My father says that if I am to join up then I should only do so when there really is no danger whatsoever. So I suggested that perhaps I should volunteer after the war is over, that that would be the best time,' he joked.

‘So what are you going to do, Harry?' Kitty wondered, her heart growing heavy since she already knew the answer. Much as she disliked the thought, she knew that any young man of merit and virtue had no alternative but to join up. It was called duty. Yet Kitty knew it was something more than that. People could not be, and were not, simply dutiful, not when the cause was wrong or unjust. But when the cause was right and proper, young men were willing to sacrifice their lives in order to save the lives of others. It might be imagined that it is a very beautiful and proper thing to die for one's country, but what men really died for was
other
men, for everyone they knew and loved, and since she also knew Harry, she was less than surprised by what he said next.

‘I'm going to join Al's regiment,' Harry told her. ‘Al said he'll look after us all and that there actually is less chance of something happening to all of us if we're in the same regiment, and we'll have a hell of a party.'

‘Is this something you intend to do soon?'

‘I'm going to see the recruiting officer tomorrow.

Al has already put a word in for me, so that's that, really. Anyway, from what I gather from the news, the Germans are not finding it as easy as they hoped. Liège still holds – in fact my father told me word has it that twenty-five thousand Germans have fallen there.'

‘That is awful,' Kitty said quietly. ‘Twenty-five thousand … I know they're the enemy, but twenty-five
thousand
…'

‘They want a truce so they can bury their dead, but it's not been granted, which is despicable.'

‘What nation can sustain losses like that? Twenty-five
thousand
– in just one siege.'

‘I don't think any nation can, Kitty,' Harry said, skimming a flat stone skilfully across the placid waters of the lake. ‘Then two German warships more or less committed suicide by leaving neutral waters with us in full pursuit. They chose to go down with all guns blazing, apparently, rather than surrender. After which there's a very big rumour that Japan are about to come in on our side, so really perhaps this
is
the best time for me to join up!'

Harry laughed and threw some more stones across the lake, handing Kitty some for her to try her hand. But Kitty declined, standing instead by the water's edge and imagining it to be the sea.

The following day Harry took himself off into town in the hope of enlisting in Almeric's
regiment, his application being considered by a stern recruiting officer whom he considered to be about the same age as his father.

‘Wrong regiment, son,' the officer said when he was halfway through taking Harry's particulars. ‘No can do.'

‘It's the right regiment, sir, if you'll excuse me,' Harry replied politely, his natural good manners sharpened into deference by the smartness of the man's uniform and general demeanour. ‘I'm absolutely sure of it, sir.'

‘You might be sure of it, son, just as sure as I am that it is not the right one.'

The recruiting officer put an end to the matter as far as he was concerned by defacing Harry's application with a huge pencilled X.

‘I don't understand, sir,' Harry said. ‘Is there something wrong with my – my credentials?'

‘You could say that, son, although if it was up to me I'd have you in like a shot. A likely lad such as you, just the ticket for the army – but not this regiment I am very much afraid.'

‘But – but I have a personal recommendation, sir, from one of the regiment's officers. The Duke of Eden's son, Lord Almeric Knowle, he's a friend, and it was he who said I should apply.'

‘Very impressive too, son, but, with all respect, your friend the marquis, or whoever, should pay attention to the regimental mandate. Were he to do so, son, he would discover that you do not qualify for the regiment.'

‘I don't qualify?' Harry looked at the hardened
old recruiting officer. ‘Then tell me what I have to do to qualify, sir, and I'll set about it at once.'

‘Very well, son. If you want to qualify for your friend's regiment, you will have to go back to school.'

‘What? I need – what? – I need better examination results, do you mean?'

‘I mean nothing of the sort, son. I mean you will need to go back to school but not only will you need to go back to school, you will need to go to a
different
school. A school as itemised and delineated here in the regimental mandate.' The recruiting officer opened a handbook at the relevant page and handed it to Harry. ‘The regiment does not admit young men what have been to a grammar school, son.'

‘That's ridiculous,' Harry muttered, his confusion now turning to anger. ‘How can it matter where I went to school when it comes to joining the army?'

‘I do not make the rules, son. My job is to see they are obeyed. To the very letter. The regiment what you wish to join has very strict rules as to whom it may recruit and admit, and grammar school boys and lesser are not included. But don't let that put you off, son. There are plenty of other regiments – fine ones too. Here's a list of the county regiments, for a start, and if you want I can go through them with you, and mark your card.'

Harry took it but didn't bother either to read it, or to ask for guidance. He simply stuffed it in his
pocket and, excusing himself, left the room to wander the town until he could see the sense in what he had learned: that while the army, in its munificence, was quite happy to take you into its ranks and throw you on the sacrificial pyre, certain members in its serried ranks would rather not have you fighting and possibly dying anywhere near them if you had been unfortunate enough to go to the wrong school.

He found such prejudice almost impossible to believe, even after a couple of bottles of the local strong ale taken in a pub not far from the recruiting office, where several young men were busy arming themselves alcoholically in order to have the courage to present themselves for recruitment. They were local boys, for all the world like so many of the young men working at Bauders in the house or in the grounds, young men of open countenance and seeming high spirits, well-built lads with strong hands and limbs, some of them good-looking, others plain, but all of character, all of them what his father would call ‘sons of the earth', many of whom Harry knew would soon be returning there to be buried, perhaps full of lead and shrapnel.

While he sat watching them laughing and joking, as they sank their pints until it was generally decided amongst them that they had drunk enough to go and take the King's shilling, it was as much as Harry could do not to go and bang on their tables, send their pint pots flying and tell them all they were going to waste their
young lives – that it simply wasn't worth it, that much as they would be flattered and cajoled into joining some glorious old regiment, all they really were – young men like them – was cannon fodder; more bodies to make up the numbers, another half-dozen lads to fall among the other twenty-five thousand at the next siege, or in the next battle.

But of course he didn't do any such thing. He just sat drinking his beer in the knowledge that when it was finished he too would find his way back to the recruiting office, re-present himself and seek advice as to which of the local regiments would take him, which one would accept a lowly grammar school boy, which one could find it in themselves not to mind what your social rank might be as long as you could swell its numbers and willingly go to your death with the best, and the worst, of them.

‘Wavell?' the examining medical officer called to him from the door to his surgery. ‘If you would be good enough to come back in here, please?'

Harry put down the magazine he'd been reading, wondering why he had been asked to stay in the waiting room, rather than be given a quick and clean bill of health like the half a dozen young men who had gone in before him. Silently he joked to himself that he might yet again have chosen another wrong regiment, whose MO had only just discovered Harry hadn't been
to either Eton or Harrow, or at the very least Winchester.

‘Now then, young man,' the medical officer said, ‘I'm afraid it's not good news.' He cleared his throat. ‘You've failed.'

‘I beg your pardon, sir?' Harry returned. ‘I've failed what? I don't quite understand.'

The officer sighed, tapping Harry's papers into order on his desk. ‘I mean you have failed your medical,' he said sadly.

‘I can't have done.'

‘You just have,
let
me assure you – you have.'

‘There must be some mistake,' Harry said grimly. ‘This is some kind of a bad joke. First of all I can't join the regiment I wanted to join, and now—'

‘It isn't a bad joke, Wavell,' the officer interrupted kindly. ‘Alas. Although I have to say normally when I fail men they all but jump for joy, but it seems you really want to fight.'

‘Why else do you think I'm here, sir?'

‘Mmm. Well, you're certainly not like most of the others I've examined today. Mainly they've been too drunk even to take off their shirts without help. They're the traditional type of recruit – the ones who wake up to find themselves in uniform. However, much as I'd like to pass you for your sake – not mine – alas I cannot, because you have a problem with your heart.'

‘My
heart
? There's nothing wrong with my heart, doctor. If there was anything wrong with my heart—'

‘I'd be one of the first to find out, young man. It's one field I happen to know rather a lot about, and you have what is known as a murmur. And any young man who has anything even remotely wrong with his heart, I fail. Those are my orders.'

‘There is nothing whatsoever wrong with my heart, sir. If there was I wouldn't be able to do half the things I undertake, let alone all the things I do,' Harry protested. ‘I'm as fit as a fiddle.'

‘You have a heart murmur, Mr Wavell,' the doctor replied, consulting Harry's forms. ‘It won't kill you, it won't incapacitate you, not unduly. But it will have to be monitored regularly in case of deterioration. When I say it won't kill you, it won't, not under normal circumstances – but war isn't what we regard as a normal circumstance and under the stresses and strains of battle, even the stresses and strains of training for battle, you might suffer a sudden deterioration, or to put it another way, some sort of heart attack, and my instructions are not to pass anyone with this sort of weakness. The army does not consider it worth spending money on any soldier who will not return their investment in full.'

Harry stared at the doctor and the doctor regarded him back just as unequivocally. It was obviously a time for rules, and Harry had just been on the receiving end of two of them. Not socially good enough for a top regiment and not physically sound enough for an ordinary one. He
had begun the day in high hopes, proud of himself for having the courage to go and enlist at a time when it appeared, due to recent heavy setbacks, that the war was not going to be as easy nor as short as initially hoped, and confident that he was well and truly up for the hard training he knew he would have to undergo in order to make a good infantryman. Now he had failed on two counts, the second one not even allowing him the alternative of choice that his first failure had permitted.

‘So what now?' he asked the doctor after he had heard the full details of his medical condition. ‘Isn't there anything I can do?'

‘Plenty, I imagine, if you're that keen, which you obviously are, Mr Wavell. There are all sorts of auxiliary jobs, you know – ambulance driver, stretcher bearer, medical orderly. Even useful and important jobs in civvy street. So don't worry – your determination to help won't go to waste, young man. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an awful lot of young men to examine.'

‘How long does it take to train to be a doctor?' Harry wondered suddenly.

‘Too long, Mr Wavell,' the doctor replied with a frown. ‘You want to be a
doctor
?'