The Beauty and the Sorrow (44 page)

It is six o’clock in the morning before any more wounded men arrive and Florence is there to help tend them, the only break being for an early breakfast. One of the wounded is a young soldier, just a boy, who has
been hit in his upper left arm. She takes the bullet from the wound, which proves unusually easy since most of its force had been spent and the rear part of it is sticking out. The boy cries and complains the whole time, even when the wound has been cleaned and bandaged: “
Sestritsa
, it hurts!”
^uu
Another of them has a very odd wound: he too had been struck by a bullet, which had then bounced off his shoulder blade, changed direction and passed through the right-hand side of his body, gone down through his groin and lodged in his right thigh. A third patient, another young man, is covered with dirt, dust and dried blood and she begins by washing his face:

“Little Sister,” my patient said, with an attempt at a smile. “Leave it dirty! I shall not go visiting any more.” At first I thought he was joking and some light-hearted repartee was on the tip of my tongue; then I saw the ugly gash on his head and I understood what he meant.

Later on she sees one of the two patients with stomach wounds whose operation she had assisted at the evening before. He is going downhill. His craving for water is such that she has to get a male orderly to help hold him down on his straw mattress. His mind is beginning to wander and he shouts that he and his comrades are now down by the great river drinking, drinking, drinking.

FRIDAY
, 30
JUNE
1916
Kresten Andresen is repairing connecting trenches on the Somme

A blue sky. Sun-warmed grass, smelling of summer. Yet more digging. Andresen has spent much more time with a pick and shovel in his hands than with a rifle and hand grenade—and he is not complaining about it. Sentry duty in the forward line is dangerous, unpleasant and exhausting; and never more so than now when the British are subjecting the German lines a dozen or so miles away to a virtually continuous barrage of drum
fire, presumably in preparation for a major assault. Now and again the fire waltz even sweeps across Andresen’s connecting trenches and they continually need to be repaired. The white chalky soil is heavy to dig but, once dug, provides excellent bunkers.

The work follows a set pattern: eight hours digging with a fairly long pause for food in the middle, after that the men can do whatever they like. One of the connecting trenches he is working on runs through the flickering, fragmented sunlight of a wood still clothed in summer greenery, where the blasted trees lie on the ground like pickasticks; the trench then runs on along a stream and straight through an old water-mill. They sleep in deep subterranean bunkers, safe but crowded. The beds are so narrow they have to sleep on their sides and the wide gaps between the slats of the beds make it extremely difficult to sleep comfortably. The mattresses are stuffed with wood shavings that tend to stick together in lumps. And the air supply is more than a little suspect:

When you’ve been lying there asleep for five or six hours you get a tight, spongy feeling across your chest, as if you had asthma, but it goes away fairly quickly once you get up into the fresh air and light.

Andresen is not really well. He cannot shake off his persistent cold, his stomach is playing up and he often suffers from headaches. They have watched many dogfights up in the clear blue summer sky. The British seem to have the upper hand in the air. “The famous airman Immelmann was recently shot down here.
^vv
I was in bed asleep in the bunker but those who were up above saw it.”

As usual he is hungry to hear any talk of peace. At the moment there is a particularly persistent rumour going around that the war will end on 17 August. That will be a Thursday.

SUNDAY
, 2
JULY
1916
Angus Buchanan buys some chickens in Kwadirema

It is Sunday and for once the Sabbath is being respected. They have been in camp for a couple of days—waiting, so the word goes, for supplies to be built up before they continue their march. They have been suffering food shortages recently and the men have once again been going hungry.

The day is a very quiet one and Buchanan is not even doing machine-gun drill with his men. The result is not entirely beneficial, however, as it is easy to feel homesick when there are no distractions on a close, windless Sunday like today. Buchanan would be happy just to hear how things are at home, but news is rare in the bush and letters even more so. For several weeks now they have been hoping that the post will reach them.

But the day is by no means completely wasted. Apart from having a chance to rest Buchanan is pleased that he manages to pull off a fine business deal. He met two natives a few days ago and they have been away to their village: now he can barter with them and, in exchange for some clothes, he gets flour and thirteen chickens. This unexpected addition to their calories is a great joy and there will be chicken for dinner. It also stirs the zoologist in him. (Not that the zoologist ever switches off completely. Whenever he has the time and the energy Buchanan collects plants, eggs and, above all, birds. He catalogues everything he finds with the care—bordering on love—of the scientist. His latest find, made on 14 May, was a pygmy kingfisher, a female of the species
Ispidina picta
, to which he gave the reference number 163.) One of the chickens he has bought has a peculiar white plume on her head and for some reason he cannot bring himself to kill her, deciding instead to keep her for a while. She might produce eggs—she might even turn into a pet.

FRIDAY
, 7
JULY
1916
René Arnaud’s battalion prepares for a return to the front at Verdun

The news comes as a shock in the heat of high summer: they are to be sent back to Verdun “in order to fill a gap.” None of them believed they would
have to return there, especially after suffering such heavy losses. As a result of the losses the two regiments in the brigade have been amalgamated and Arnaud and his fellow soldiers have had to unpick the number 337 from their collar flashes and stitch on the number 293—the 337th Regiment no longer exists, not since fighting at Verdun just a month ago.

Arnaud is doing his best to reassure the men in his company but does not feel he has succeeded. And he, too, is depressed. All of them are obviously thinking the same thing as him: “You can survive it once, but hardly twice.” During the evening the commanding officer of the regiment gives them a briefing in one of the small subterranean rooms in the Verdun citadel. The unit is to retake a recently lost piece of ground between Thiaumont and Fleury, not far from the place they were defending at the beginning of June. The lieutenant colonel subjects his officers to the same kind of inspiring speech Arnaud has already used on his own men—with the same meagre result. Arnaud can see how tense the commander is, how hard he is clenching his jaws and how he no longer believes his own words. Arnaud does, however, feel a little calmer—initially his battalion is to be held in reserve.

When Arnaud goes out into the corridor he sees fifty or so men from his battalion standing in a queue outside another room, which is where Bayet, the acting battalion doctor, a rotund man with cropped hair and large glasses, is located. The men are reporting sick and thus hoping to avoid the purgatory that awaits them. Every conceivable ailment and condition is cited: hernias, rheumatism, badly healed wounds. The battalion doctor is sweating with the effort, surrounded as he is by a cluster of men “clinging to him like drowning men clinging to a life-buoy.” Arnaud hears later that several of the battalion’s senior officers have also reported sick: “In short, there was a general state of disintegration.”

That evening Arnaud meets Doctor Bayet and makes an attempt of his own to be declared unfit. He feels he does it in a rather subtle way. Arnaud starts by complaining about one of the officers (one of the highly decorated ones) who has seen fit to report sick, and he suggests that he himself would
never
do such a thing, even though he actually has good reason to because of a heart problem. As if incidentally, he unbuttons his uniform jacket and asks the doctor to listen, hoping frantically that the doctor will hear something and send him to the rear clutching yet another medical exemption. The doctor listens and then says in a bored voice that perhaps there is a slight murmur. But that is all he says. Feeling
ashamed of himself, Arnaud buttons up his jacket: “This demonstration of weakness stopped me condemning others from then on.”

Once it is dark they march out of the citadel again. The lines of heavily laden men wind their way across the river and towards the dark heights with their glowing aurora of explosions. When they have climbed the first of the steep ridges Arnaud lies prostrate on the ground, his heart pounding wildly. “I was exhausted, morally more than physically. I thought I was going to pass out, perhaps even hoped that I was going to.” After a long march through a narrow connecting trench they reach a simple bunker with a corrugated-iron roof. There he falls asleep.

The attack takes place at dawn two days later. It fails. The losses are considerable and one of the men to fall is the commanding officer. Arnaud’s unit does not take part in the attack and he survives.

A DAY IN JULY
1916
Rafael de Nogales witnesses the execution of a deserter outside Jerusalem

Virtually every morning there are two or three new bodies dangling from telegraph poles and other improvised gallows around the Holy City. Most of them are Arabs who have been caught after deserting from the Ottoman army. They are the very opposite to Rafael de Nogales in that they did not choose war, war chose them. They represent the silent majority of those now in uniform (irrespective of the colour of the uniform): unlike de Nogales, who eagerly allowed himself to be swept up by the energy, danger and illusions of war, they are men who have been forced into it reluctantly, questioningly, unenthusiastically and—last but not least—mutely.

It is not that de Nogales looks down on them: there is a sense in which he actually understands the deserters. The Ottoman army has yet again been afflicted by supply problems, largely as a result of corruption, wastage and organised theft. And undernourishment has once again opened the way for disease, particularly typhus. Since the whole
region is suffering from food shortages, typhus has taken on epidemic proportions, its impact being felt in particular by the many new Jewish immigrants to the city who, because of the war, have been deprived of all assistance from their former homelands. The simultaneous combination of hunger and homesickness has meant that the number of desertions from Arab units has gone through the roof.
^ww

The typhus epidemic and the desperate supply situation in Palestine means that the so-called Pasha Expedition (a corps consisting partly of Turkish units and partly of German and Austro-Hungarian troops equipped with considerable quantities of artillery, lorries and other modern equipment) does not stop for its planned rest period in Palestine after its long trek through Asia Minor but continues on to Sinai in the intense heat. They have been sent to take part in a second attempt to cut the Suez Canal.
^xx
De Nogales was impressed by the sight of these columns of motor lorries and brand-new cannon rumbling past.

Non-stop hangings have been the Ottoman commander’s answer to the desertions but their effect has been negligible. (De Nogales takes the view that such draconian measures are an attempt to cure a sickness for which the commander himself is at least partly responsible: he is thought to be involved in the corruption that has led to food shortages among the troops.) Which is why he has decided that the latest deserter will be given a very public execution by firing squad and die before the eyes of his comrades in the Jerusalem garrison.

The execution is to take place today.

The condemned man is yet another Arab, this time an imam.

A long procession winds its way out of the shady multitude of roofs and cupolas that is Jerusalem. At the front is a military band playing Chopin’s Funeral March. It is followed by a group of high-ranking officers and civilians. Then comes the man who is to die, strikingly well dressed in a brilliant white turban and a kaftan of bright red cloth. Behind him marches the firing squad. And behind them there is a long tail, consisting of the Jerusalem garrison—or large parts of it, anyway—including Rafael de Nogales.

This long snake of people gathers round a small, low mound of earth
on which a thick post has been driven into the ground. As the death sentence is being read out de Nogales carefully observes the man who is about to die. He seems “very little concerned by the fate that is awaiting him and is calmly smoking his cheroot with all the scorn for death that is characteristic of Muslims.” After listening to the reading of the sentence the man sits down cross-legged on a mat opposite another imam, who is supposed to be his spiritual comforter, but the spiritual comfort gets out of control when the two of them indulge in an ever more animated theological debate that threatens to end in blows.

The condemned man is made to stand up and is tied to the post. A blindfold is put over his eyes. He continues smoking calmly throughout this procedure. When the command “Ready” is given and the squad raises its rifles into firing position and takes aim, the man quickly moves his cheroot up to his lips. The shots ring out, the two shades of red in the kaftan and the body meet and the man crumples, “his hand pinned to his mouth by a bullet.”