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

of self-preservation. Such ideas were swarming through his thoughts as he squeezed into a sheltered place within another ruined building.

Unbeknownst to Willie, both he and Towser had since been posted AWOL; neither could he know about the grateful reply Freddy had received from Willie’s parents. Headquarters were furious at losing their dog as he had been the only one available to them at the time. Towser had been an important link, and nobody had ever heard of an army dog ‘doing a bunk’ on its own. A blinding light in his eyes and a gruff voice woke him from a troubled sleep.

“On yer feet.”

“Thank goodness I’ve been found,” blurted Willie.

“Shut up!” was the reply. Rough hands fell upon him as he was frog-marched away.

Willie’s court martial was conducted the following day. A night-time search of the building described by Willie, found no evidence of the man or dog.

“Your lies to save yourself from disgrace have only compounded the case against you for desertion in the face of the enemy,” said the officer seated in front of him.

*

Several weeks slipped by before Willie’s parents were officially informed of the reason and execution of their son by firing squad. Added to that, they were to suffer the ignominy of friends and neighbours when it became published in their local newspaper.

*

‘Peter’, who was dry and more comfortable, fell into a deep sleep of exhaustion. An hour or so slipped by when Towser’s growls awoke him and a dim gas torch shone on them.

“Hände hoch! Wer sind Sie?”

Peter replied in French that he was ‘Pierre Foret’ and that he and his dog had been walking with hundreds of other displaced refugees in the dark, and had been separated from the rest. He told them they had eventually found themselves trapped in the war zone, where they were both wounded, and that his sight was damaged.

In time, it would be revealed how the Germans had eventually believed his story, so food and medical care had then been given to them. When he was asked what his dog was called he had to think quickly.

“Theo – der Hund,” he said jokingly. That appealed to the German soldiers’ sense of humour, until he heard they would keep ‘Theo’ for their own working dog.

In exchange for ‘Theo’, the Germans put ‘Peter’ back on the road with hundreds of other displaced, wandering people, but as it got dark, shells began to fall close-by, so they all took to their heels in every direction. Someone grabbed his arm and pulled him along; at times they struggled through barbed wire entanglements, and eventually came to a stop, in what seemed to be a sort of ditch where he again fell into an exhausted sleep.

The sounds of moving people woke them at daylight. It seemed obvious they were on the side of a road on which displaced people were moving away from the fighting. He could hear people shuffling and mumbling; then suddenly, he heard the sound of British voices. He considered that there must have been wounded soldiers amongst them. My God! he thought. We must have passed through the German and allied lines during the night, without even knowing it, and we are still in one piece!

There had been no communication with his kind helper – it seemed perhaps they both spoke languages neither of them understood, so sadly, Peter could not express his heartfelt thanks to the wonderful man who had guided him safely through so much peril, and then united him with the British wounded, who could then act as his eyes. He suspected he might have been German, because as suddenly as he came, the kind helper was gone with no thought of waiting to be thanked.

Peter struggled on to the road, and then because he began speaking in English, a voice asked him where he was from.

“I have no past memory,” he replied, “and I cannot see.” A hand took his and placed it on a shoulder.

“Just hang on to that,” said the same voice, “until we find the medics. Those civilian rags are a strange sort of uniform, but I expect we’ll find out what that’s all about eventually.”

Several hours passed before he was guided to a rudimentary First Aid station. Eventually with others swathed in bandages, they moved off in the hope of food, rest and further care.

Soon afterwards, Peter and his fellow walking-wounded entered the ruins of a village, and were heartened by the sounds of soldiers’ voices quietly filtering out of the open door of a cafe that had seen better times.

“I could do with a break,” said one of the men, “let’s go in and have a rest.”

There seemed plenty of space inside, most of which was taken up by tired or wounded men lying on the floor in the corners. Some were leaning on anything that could be leaned on; others sat on the floor wherever there was space. Music came from a battered old piano in one corner of the room, manned by a soldier tinkling out some of the popular refrains of the day.

“We’re fed up with addressing you as ‘Oi’ and ‘Mate’ and as you’ve got a posh voice, what shall we call you?” inquired one of the soldiers.

“Well, ‘Peter’ if you like. It was a temporary name given to me by the young soldier who saved my life.”

“So Mr. Peter, lean against this window shelf. It’ll help to hold you up. That bandage over your eyes is coming loose, so let’s get that done.”

For the very first time in all his awful experiences and despite hunger and tiredness, the piano and deep melodious voices seemed to overwhelm him with unexpected elation, as though it had touched a chord of remembrance deep within his soul.

There was silence for a few seconds whilst the pianist decided what to play next. After the opening bars of ‘Roses of Picardy’, the deep, base voices began to softly sing the verse.

Suddenly, a strong tenor voice entered the chorus, ringing out resonantly and distinctly two octaves above the others, but in perfect blend. It astounded everyone, and most of all Peter, from whose mouth it flowed.

“Roses are shining in Picardy, in the hush of the silver dew...”

It all seemed to come together so magically, that others stopped in their passing to crowd at the door. It was as though some long lost joy in people’s lives was saying to them in that war torn place, that joy will yet come again. Many more beautiful ballads followed in the same way.

Then a sudden loud voice at the door brought it all to silence.

“Get out quickly! The Germans have broken through our lines.”

It was followed by a mad scramble to evacuate.

Peter was too late. He could not even find the door, so he was again at the mercy of fate. He rested on a seat and hoped for the best; he was too worn out to think about anything else.

The usual military pattern began. Falling shells came first to soften up resistance, which took away most of the village buildings. This was followed by the entry of the German infantry.

It could well have ended there for Peter, had it not been for one of the villagers who pointed him out to a German officer, saying: “Look after that blind man he has a remarkable tenor voice.”

The officer asked Peter for his papers, but having none, he then related the story he had told the previous Germans, and gave his name as ‘Pierre Foret’, in his accomplished French. It appeared to satisfy the officer, particularly so, as it seemed he was rather pressed to arrange some diversion for his tired men and had nobody to entertain them. He made it quite clear that his men needed rest and some distraction from the war. The deal was, that Peter would get food and shelter if the men were suitably entertained. That was his change of luck; at the very least he was now surviving. Luckily, Peter discovered he could sing operatic arias in Italian, which really mystified him. The German troops must have enjoyed what he had to offer, because he was shunted off for another concert somewhere else the following day. After that, they sent him here and there to entertain their men, and for a few Belgians in their cafes, when he could squeeze it in.

Nothing more was heard of ‘Peter’ as the hostilities continued, nor after the German capitulation in 1918.

It was almost six months after the cessation of hostilities, when a famous Italian opera diva of that time, heard the voice of a blind singer in a German night club that moved her so deeply, that she arranged that Peter should debut before the public, in a famous opera house in Milan, Italy.

It proved to be such a wonderful voice that it touched the heart of each and every audience, and such an unusual talent has a habit of reaching beyond borders.

*

Although the war was now over, its affects for wounded men like Corporal Alf Fisher, were not. There were thousands like him in hospital wards all over England; some with a hope for their future and, many that had none.

Like so many others, Alf lay on his bed trying to sink his thoughts into the book that he was reading, trying to find a better world for his mind to reside – a temporary way of blanking out visions of things not meant for ears and eyes to be laid upon – for it seemed that to do so must damn the mind forever.

A voice from the next bed interrupted his mental foray into better things.

“Penny for your thoughts Alf.”

“You don’t want to know them Bert,” he replied.

“I see, having naughty thoughts about our lovely nurse are we?” It went quiet for a few moments and then Bert chirped up again. “You won’t believe what’s turned up in today’s Daily Mirror. You remember when we met at the battle of Loos with those other injured men struggling away from the front, with all those civilian waifs and strays? Well, the bit I’m getting to is the blind bloke we helped along, who turned out to have a great voice at the sing-along later in the cafe.”

“I do remember,” said Alf, “go on.”

“He’s here on the front page of the paper. They reckon he’s lost his memory. Poor bloke! I’ll get nurse to get in touch with the Mirror about this.”

By the following morning, Bert was being interviewed by one of the paper’s reporters.

“This is amazing,” he said to Alf, “it seems there are injured soldiers in hospitals all over England that were present, or in hearing shot of that blind man singing in the Belgian cafe.”

The following day, an even bigger story broke in the national papers. It concerned the widening features of the blind singer’s story. By now, Bert had got his home-made crystal wireless set brought to his bedside, from which even more interesting news eventually broke.

The blind singer ‘Peter’, who was thought to have been lost amongst the unfound dead at the Battle of Loos, had been positively identified by his family, as Captain (Viscount) Michael Thornsby, heir to an Earldom and family estate.

The following day’s paper went into even more detail. It said that past memory loss was not uncommon to some soldiers who had experienced too much injury and violence from exploding shells on a battlefield, but some recall progress was being made. Fortunately, it seemed he had no such problem going forwards from the time he had met Towser and Willie, or that it affected his memory for music.

There was so much more revealed when he was later interviewed, from which a shocking injustice became uncovered.

Michael spoke of a young soldier who had heard his injured dog whimpering out in the killing fields between the combatants at Loos. He remembered the young soldier’s name was ‘Willie’, and his dog was ‘Towser’.

When later he was told what had happened to Willie, he was