Storyteller - Colin & Anne Brookfield (ebook and pdf reader .txt) 📗

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Early the following morning, Freddy found himself herded with hundreds of other young men aboard the train that would transport them to their training camp at Catterick in Yorkshire. The over-excited chatter was deafening from so many uneventful lives, now turned to anticipated adventure.

They had been many hours on the tedious journey, when the train unexpectedly drew alongside the platform of a minor rural station, where thick chunky army cheese sandwiches and mugs of tea were already waiting. A nearby field had been allocated for rows of canvas-shielded toilet trenches, each with a plank over it, on which several men at a time were expected to relieve themselves in full view of one another. The future began to bode a little less exciting after that.

Freddy finally arrived at the front of the sandwich queue and was attempting to take a bite, when someone smacked him on the back. He spun quickly expecting trouble, but instead, found the smiling face of his friend Willie in front of him.

“Don’t look so grave Freddy,” he said, “I’m tougher than I look, so don’t blow the whistle on me.”

“Too bloody late now isn’t it Willy? I blame myself for bragging about all that waiting glory. Don’t worry, I’ll keep quiet, but for God’s sake, try keeping away from the front line when we get to the fighting.”

Things didn’t get any better. After disembarkation at Catterick Station, they were tumbled into the backs of waiting vehicles and transferred to the training barracks. By now, everyone was worn out and the time was well past midnight. Nevertheless, bedding had to be collected from the store and barrack rooms assigned.

Reveille sounded at six o’clock the following morning, and everyone was tumbled out of bed by bellowing NCOs. Life would never be the same again. Shaving was done with cold water and, breakfasts took on flavours and consistencies that would have made them leave home, had mothers or wives served it up. Everything was now done at break-neck speed. They collected their uniforms and boots then marched on to the parade ground for drill.

“Yer got yerself a new mummy now!” shrieked the Regimental Sergeant Major. “It’s me! But am I goin’ ter tuck you up at night with your little teddy bear? Not on your bloody life! Your new teddy’s called a Lee Enfield rifle, and it’s the only thing you’re going to cuddle till you’ve beaten the Bosch.”

Like all ‘good’ things, they must come to an end, so several months later they were shipped with mixed cargoes of munitions and horses to France.

They were now far from home, in a strange land swarming with soldiers and military equipment of every unfamiliar kind, and they still had nowhere to call their own. So once again Freddy and Willie said their goodbyes to their many barrack-room friends and reported to their new detachments.

“Bit of luck us being together,” remarked Freddy. “Perhaps I can keep you out of trouble, and don’t forget, no more volunteering.”

Their eventual arrival with hundreds of others had been arranged to reinforce the battlefront regiments at Loos in Belgium. They soon realised that war was a much more devastating phenomenon that they could ever have imagined. The ugly sights of wounded men struggling along muddy roads away from the action, would haunt the mind of anyone for a lifetime, and that was before the awaiting baptisms in the trenches and fields of death.

The allotted trench position for the two boys seemed terribly close to the German wire entanglements, behind which, were the German positions. Freddy was soon teamed up with a machine gunner, which was going to be a lot safer than going over the top with the others carrying only a rifle.

“He’ll teach you all about Bessie, our water-cooled Lewis gun,” the sergeant informed Freddy. “Learn quickly if you want to stay in one piece and…”

His voice was overwhelmed by a salvo of exploding German shells just beyond their wire. The trench was avalanched in dust, debris and the choking stench of cordite. Even before the dust had settled, the sergeant turned to Willy. “What’s YOUR name titch?”

“It’s Willy sir.”

“You call me ‘Sarge’ son. ‘Sir’ is for officers. Corporal Williams our dog handler has a job that’ll suit you. That’s ‘im at the far end of the trench. Look lively now lad!”

Willie and Towser the war dog took to one another immediately, though it took quite a lot of hard training before Willie could be left to get on with the jobs that went with it.

Several times a day the message cylinder had to be fixed to Towser’s collar for him to take to headquarters. At other times, Towser carried the phone wire pack on his back for running out new lines to different trenches. Everyone was amazed at how he escaped the constant shell explosions, and sputtering machine-gun bullets raking up the muddy earth around him.

There were still pockets of chlorine gas lying in the hollows of many trenches; gas that had been blown back into the faces of the British troops several weeks before, in September 1915. So it was the legacy of this heavy gas that had poured into the trenches that kept Towser’s journeys back and forth out in the dangerous open, instead of the myriad of safer trenches.

Following a lot of soul searching, Willie came up with an idea to contact his parents, who by now must have been going out of their minds with worry over their missing son. Freddy’s next letter home to his family, instructed them to visit Willie’s parents and tell them that he was with him in the army in a nice safe job, but couldn’t write without giving the game away, otherwise the army would pack him off back home.

A duty officer’s voice bellowed at Willie through the covered dugout opening.

“Get yourself out lad; you’ve ‘ad yer sleep, the dog’s got some work to do.”

Willie struggled off the bunk and wiped his wet ear that Towser’s tongue had affectionately placed there. His boots and uniform were already on. Things were moving too quickly at the front to be caught with your boots off and your pants down – as they were constantly reminded by the Old Contemptibles, those old hands who had survived more than four months.

“Over ‘ere lad,” said a voice as Willie stumbled from the dugout. “Get this message cylinder fixed on the dog’s collar. We need more 303 ammunition and grenades from Supply, then get yerself a mug of tea and fried sausages, they’re just being cooked in the next trench.”

Willie didn’t need a second telling and Towser was sent speedily on his way. The dog didn’t need instructions as the journey had been done many times before.

Sure enough, the smell and sound of sizzling sausages met Willie as he rounded a corner into another trench. He wasn’t the only one drawn to the smell of breakfast, so he hastily took his allocation, plus three extra sausages for Towser when he returned.

Towser never came back for his sausages and the long worrying day dragged on; it was close to midnight, and Willie’s long drawn-out vigil for the dog had reduced him to tears. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve as he heard boots approaching through the mud.

“Doesn’t look good, does it lad? We’re likely as not, seen the last of poor old Towser.”

“He’ll be back Sarge,” Willie replied desperately.

“Careful lad, time to move on; we can’t make friends in the trenches; there’ll be a replacement dog in a day or two. Now get that stack of ammunition distributed along the line, and make it snappy.”

By the time Willie had completed his task, the no-man’s land between the opposing antagonists had settled into an unnatural ghost-like silence, interspersed occasionally by a revealing flare-burst, high above the ravaged land between the enemies.

Willie was on his way back to his dugout sleeping place, when he heard a faint distant sound that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck, but before he could further listen, there was a trigger-happy eruption of machine gunfire across the wild lands, followed by return fire, and another flare high in the sky from the other side. Then just as suddenly, it went deadly quiet again. He listened, scanning this way and that to pick up that distant sound, and then he heard it again. He already figured out its direction. He was out of the trench and into no-man’s land, with no thought for himself.

Staying low, Willie felt his way towards the faintly visible break in the British wire entanglements that he had previously noted. The going was slow as he tested the ground ahead to avoid the lethal quagmire shell craters that could swallow man or horse, and he looped around places pervaded by the stench of corrupted flesh. All the time he was whispering, “Towser”.

A soft whine told him he had been heard, and within minutes, they were together once again. Willie felt Towser all over until he discovered the blood-soaked wound to his back leg.

He was about to hoist the dog onto his shoulder, when an educated English voice nearby whispered, “Help me, I can’t see.” Then something close to him, part in and part out of a mud hole, seemed to move.

“Who are you?” whispered Willie.

“I don’t know, I can’t remember,” was the fading reply.

Willie felt around in the darkness and a reaching hand touched his.

“You’re no bloody light-weight,” said Willie in a hushed voice jokingly, as he struggled to pull the man clear of the sucking mud.

“I’ve got a shoulder wound; it made me too weak to get myself out of this mire,” the man replied. “I would have given up long ago if it hadn’t been for that wounded dog ‘Towser’. I heard you whisper his name. We talked to each other – he in his way and me in mine – so that we knew we were not alone.”

The ragged outlines of a former farmhouse could be seen against the skyline, scarcely fifty yards from them, and it was towards this that the struggling figures of Willie, with Towser on his shoulder and a wounded blind man leaning on them, crept their precarious way.

“I brought us to this ruin,” Willie explained to the man later, “so that it can be more easily found when I return with help.”

Another flare exploded high above, exposing every aspect of the no-man’s land. Willie noticed the mud-soaked man was shivering in the cold night air. He also saw the farmhouse belongings, that had been scattered in heaps from the blast of ordinance. Keeping low, he scrabbled around amongst it, returning quickly with a dry pair of trousers, thick jersey, a coat and some boots, in the hope they might all fit. It took almost an hour of struggle and pain before the man was in dry clothes and Towser’s wound tightly wrapped.

“I must leave now,” Willie hastily told the man, “but I fear the Germans might find you first.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll say I’m a displaced Belgian civilian. I must have learned French as I’ve been talking to myself in the language, in an effort to remember something of my past. You’d better get rid of my uniform, just in case. Also, this thing I can feel attached to Towser’s collar.”

“My name’s ‘Willie’ by the way. What’s yours?”

“I have no memory of it; perhaps ‘Peter’ will do.”

They said their farewells as Willie sank away into the darkness.

Willie never discovered what had struck him, and it was the evening of the following day before his eyes began once more to take in their surroundings. He was lost, and had no idea how far he had wandered during the previous night. He was in a lot of pain from his neck and shoulder and could only assume that a rifle butt had been used on him, perhaps by a walking wounded German soldier who may have struck out in the dark as an act