My Brother's Keeper (6 page)

George was kneeling in the bottom of the trench, holding Cyril in his arms. Alfie knelt beside the two of them and saw that George was sobbing, the tears leaving streaks in his blackened face. Cyril suddenly coughed, thick blood this time flowing out of his mouth, over his chin and onto his chest. He tried to grab Alfie's forearm but his fingers
were too weak, too clumsy, so Alfie took his hand and squeezed it.

‘What do we do?' he asked Ernie, not looking away from his dying friend.

‘We help him,' Ernie hissed, then spoke softly to Cyril. ‘You're going to be all right, mate, don't you worry. We'll get you to the First Aid Post pronto.'

Ernie pulled Cyril's jerkin and tunic and shirt open, blood flicking off the soaked fabric. The skin below was pale white, but more blood was oozing from two large puncture wounds caused by shrapnel. The German grenade had done its deadly work all too well. Ernie paused, his face grim. Cyril was panting, his ribs heaving, and he shook his head, his eyes searching for Alfie's, his expression desperate. He tried to grab the wall and haul himself up, but Alfie held on, pulling him close.

Alfie was crying now too. He rocked back and forth, cradling Cyril's head. But at last Cyril shuddered once and went still, and Alfie knew his friend was dead.

The next few hours were a blur for Alfie. He felt totally numb, unable to connect with anyone or anything. Fritz let them have it with more shelling,
in retaliation for the raid on their trenches, Alfie thought, although none of it seemed to matter any more, and he barely registered the British counter-shelling in response. Then it was time for morning stand-to, but Ernie told him to stay in the dugout.

Alfie watched Ernie and George join the others on the fire-step in the dark. He was sitting on an ammunition box, looking down at his hands under the pale lamplight. They were covered in dried blood, Cyril's blood. He scraped away at it with his fingernails, but he couldn't seem to get it off. Two thoughts kept running through his mind over and over and over again.
It's my fault Cyril is dead. If I hadn't volunteered for the raid he wouldn't have gone either. It's my fault Cyril is dead. If I hadn't…

Later that day Alfie found himself standing in a field under the cold grey Flanders sky, looking down at something else. Cyril's body had been wrapped in a sheet of tarpaulin and laid in an open grave in the Battalion's makeshift cemetery, a large field just behind the reserve line.

Several hundred more filled-in graves stretched beyond Cyril's, each marked by a temporary cross made of scrap wood. George had knocked one up for Cyril, and Alfie had pounded it into the ground at the
head of the grave with a mallet, taking care that it stood absolutely straight.

Alfie, Ernie and George were on one side of the grave with Lieutenant Reynolds and Jonesy – the Captain hadn't allowed anyone else to go to Cyril's funeral. On the other was the Battalion's vicar, or ‘Padre' as everyone called him. He was wearing an officer's uniform, but had a white dog collar like an ordinary vicar, a combination which seemed very odd to Alfie.

The Padre hurried through the funeral service – all that ashes to ashes, dust to dust stuff, with some noble sacrifice added in – glancing up every so often as if he was worried it might start raining. The Lieutenant muttered something under his breath, and Alfie looked round.

‘For thy sake we are killed all day long,' the Lieutenant said more clearly, so Alfie could hear. ‘We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Romans 8, verse 36.'

Alfie stared at him, but the Lieutenant wouldn't, or couldn't, meet his gaze. Then the funeral was over, the Padre putting on his helmet and scurrying away. A working party had been waiting, and the four men stepped up to shovel dirt into the grave, each
spadeful of soil thumping down onto the tarpaulin. Onto Cyril.

‘Come on, Alfie,' Ernie said gently as the others moved off. ‘It's time to go.'

Beyond the field was the road that would take them to the rest area. The Company was waiting, ready to march, a column of two hundred men in lines four abreast. Captain Johnson was pacing up and down impatiently beside them. He had made it back unharmed from the German trench just before the Jerry shelling had begun. Fourteen members of the raiding party had been killed, all of them but Cyril left behind.

‘Sergeant Jones!' the Captain called out. Jonesy ran over to him. ‘Move the men out quickly, will you? I'd like us to be properly settled in billets before supper.'

‘Yes sir, right you are, sir,' said Jonesy, saluting. ‘You heard the Captain, lads!'

Alfie, Ernie and George picked up the packs and rifles they'd left by a tree and joined the column at the rear as the men marched off. It should have been soothing to feel the familiar rhythm of the march, to hear the sound of all those boots thumping in unison on the road, but Alfie was acutely aware of the gap
beside him, where Cyril should have been grumbling as usual. He couldn't get the Lieutenant's words out of his head, either. Was it true? Were they really just sheep for the slaughter?

Then he remembered the Lieutenant saying during the raid that they shouldn't risk losing any more men, and the Captain's reply: ‘That's what they're for.' A solid lump of anger began to form round the grief and guilt in Alfie's heart.

Maybe Captain Johnson wasn't such a hero after all.

Once the column had passed Battalion HQ the road was theirs alone, with only the occasional French farmer in a field watching them pass. The rain held off for the first hour, the grey clouds breaking up to let a weak sun through from time to time, and some of the lads said it definitely felt a bit warmer, a hint of spring in the air. Then a fine drizzle started, and before long they were all wet through.

After the second hour Captain Johnson gave the order to halt and fall out. The men moved onto the grass verge beside the road, slipping off their packs and sitting down to ease their feet. Alfie sat with Ernie and Cyril against a stone wall edging a field. At a nearby crossroads stood a small painted carving
of Christ on the cross, his face in agony, his ribs showing through white skin, red blood running from his side.

Alfie stared at it for a moment, then looked away. He'd seen such carvings before, on every road they'd marched along, and outside the village churches. Ernie had said it was a Catholic thing, and Alfie had never taken much notice, although he'd thought they seemed a bit morbid. But now the little figure reminded him of Cyril, and suddenly his mind was full of those awful images again, of blood and pain.

Then he heard a noise, the distant sound of lorries, and soon a convoy was roaring past on the road. The lorries were piled with boxes containing supplies of all kinds – rations, rifle and machine gun ammunition, Mills bombs, mortar bombs, artillery shells large and small. Vehicle followed vehicle, hundreds of them, a never-ending metal river of destruction and death.

‘Looks like someone is organising a party,' said George. ‘A big one, too.'

‘Yeah, well, let's just hope we don't get invited this time,' muttered Ernie.

The convoy did come to an end though, the last lorry leaving a strange silence behind it. Then Alfie
heard another noise, the sound of marching boots and singing. A group of officers on horseback came into view, and behind them a column of men in clean new uniforms, their shiny helmets glistening in the rain. The officers were smiling, the men cheerfully belting out a song, one Alfie had sung with pleasure himself when he had marched up from base camp a few short weeks ago.

It's a long way to Tipperary
,

It's a long way to go
.

It's a long way to Tipperary

To the sweetest girl I know!

Goodbye, Piccadilly

Farewell, Leicester Square!

It's a long long way to Tipperary
,

But my heart's right there
.

The column was longer than the convoy of lorries, Alfie and his mates and the rest of the men watching silently as company after company marched past. Some of the soldiers on the road glanced at those on the grass. Alfie realised he and the others must be a sight in their filthy uniforms. His was still stained with Cyril's blood.

Eventually Captain Johnson came striding along the verge, Lieutenant Reynolds and Jonesy behind him. ‘Come on, men!' yelled the Captain. ‘Are you just going to sit there like dummies and let these new boys show you up? Let's have a song!'

No one moved or said anything, and Alfie could see that the Captain was cross with them. Then George jumped to his feet and saluted. ‘Yes sir, coming right up, sir!'

He sang in a loud, rich voice, ‘The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling…' The rest of the lads in the Company joined in one by one. Soon they were all singing together, a wild choir that grew rowdier and more unruly with every line. Alfie didn't know the words, but he quickly picked them up. He was carried along by his mates, purging all their anger and misery with one voice, hurling it at Johnson, at the new recruits, at anyone stupid enough to think the trenches were somewhere you could want to be.

The bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling

For you but not for me:

And the little devils sing-a-ling-a-ling
,

For you but not for me
.

Oh! Death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling?

Oh! Grave, thy victory?

The Bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling

For you but not for ME!

The song of the new recruits faltered and died, and the entire column seemed to turn as one to stare at the soldiers on the side of the road. George began to conduct the Company like some manic choirmaster, and before long the Captain's men were cheering and whistling and stamping their feet as they sang. Several stood up to dance with linked arms. Alfie laughed at the men's cheek, rebelling like naughty schoolboys faced with an all-too-serious teacher. The Captain glared at them and Alfie sang louder, showing him how ridiculous it all was, hooting at him for the order to be lively.

Johnson eventually stomped off, Jonesy and the Lieutenant in tow, struggling to keep straight faces.

‘I don't think that's what he had in mind,' said Ernie, grinning and slapping Alfie's back.

Alfie grinned too. For the first time in days he was having fun, and it was all at the Captain's expense.

They reached the Battalion's designated rest area in the middle of the afternoon and were dismissed to
their billets. At the centre of the rest area was a small village that had been fought over and heavily shelled in the early weeks of the war. Most of the inhabitants had fled, but a few remained and were happy to rent rooms to British officers. The men had to make do with barns in the surrounding countryside.

Alfie, Ernie and George went off to their billet, a large wooden barn that was part of an abandoned farm ten minutes' walk from the village. The farmhouse was half burnt down and the people and animals long gone, but the old barn was big and spacious and full of straw that made good bedding. The three of them soon settled in, Ernie getting the primus going so they could brew up and have something to eat.

‘You all right, Alfie?' said Ernie. ‘Not still blaming yourself, are you?'

They were sitting cross-legged round the primus in the early evening gloom, a couple of candles in dixie tins their only light. Alfie stopped spooning up stew from his bowl and looked into his friend's eyes. ‘How did you know I was?'

Ernie shrugged. ‘We all blame ourselves when one of our mates cops it. For something we said or did or didn't do, sometimes just for being alive when
they're not. But you didn't kill Cyril, Alfie. It's the war you should blame.'

‘And Mad Jack,' said George, almost spitting out the name, his voice full of anger. ‘It's officers like him who do for most of the men in the line, them and those red-tab swines. None of them care if their cock-ups mean us privates end up dead.'

Ernie and George talked on into the evening, grumbling about red-tabs and the people back at home who didn't understand what was happening here at the Front. It was all the usual stuff that Alfie had ignored before. Now he listened closely.

The next morning Alfie got to do something he hadn't done in far too long – have a wash. Ernie had found a barrel of rain water behind the barn and told Alfie to strip off and climb into it, giving him a bar of scratchy soap to scrub away the weeks of dirt from his body. The water was freezing, but it felt good to be clean.

‘Seeing as how you look presentable for a change, you can go and fetch us some proper grub from the village,' said Ernie, giving Alfie a handful of French coins.

‘Happy to,' said Alfie. ‘If you promise not to smell as bad when I get back.'

The day was crisp and bright and as he walked down the country road, Alfie tried to put everything that had happened out of his mind. He was going to buy eggs and bread and maybe even butter, then sit around eating with his mates. They were safe behind the lines, for the time being at least. There was a small market in front of the village church and, if he closed his eyes, he could almost trick himself into believing he was back in Covent Garden, listening to people laugh and joke.

He didn't even have to spend the money he'd been given. All sorts of amazing food was being handed out from the back of an Army lorry to a crowd of cheerful soldiers.

‘Ah, I thought it was you, Barnes,' someone behind him said, and Alfie almost jumped out of his skin with surprise.

It was Lieutenant Reynolds, Alfie snapped to attention and saluted. ‘At ease,' said the Lieutenant. ‘Walk with me.' He led Alfie into the churchyard and stopped. More graves, Alfie thought, although most of the headstones were old, the French inscriptions weather-worn and covered in moss.