I just wanted you to know that your letter did not reach anybody that would not appreciate it, or would appreciate it the wrong way, and to say DON’T GIVE UP, because many a young soldier could die happy if he knew somebody like you cared about him. You would not believe what fine young men we have here, far better than they were back home. That is why I am writing now, although I am old enough to be your grandfather, and considering some of the times I have had in Aldershot, that does not seem so impossible at all. Really your letter has given great pleasure to an old man that was getting just a wee bit too intolerant of the folk back home, and that never had any children of his own, not white ones anyway…
Ross finished his letter with some hints that he knew a boy who would make a most splendid man with the right kind of woman behind him. He stopped and read through it, just to make sure that everything was exactly right, and reflected that fifty-nine was still too young to understand women.
‘Ach, she’ll just have tae make allowances,’ he grunted, and sealed the envelope. Later he slipped Jenny’s note into Andrew’s greatcoat pocket.
As the winter drew on, men began to be affected by something more disturbing than any physical ailment: the barely-acknowledged condition which had come to be known as shell-shock. Crushed by the agony and despair of trench war, men would withdraw further and further into themselves, until eventually an unseen curtain would come down. It was as though a man’s soul left him, leaving him oblivious to all the evil of the world – perhaps forever, since of all the men whom Andrew saw taken down the line like that, he never met one again.
It seemed to affect the few originals of 1914 more than newer and more timorous soldiers, and more often stolid, apparently indomitable types than someone like Andrew. This seemed to support the opinion of many army doctors – the enlightened ones, who admitted that it existed at all – that it was a progressive physical deterioration of the nervous system, occasioned by the concussion of shellfire. As a result, though, army medical boards were usually hard on those who had given way under the fear of bullets, gas, infection, barbed wire or cold steel.
At the best it was a coma, a trance, in which a man seemed deaf and dumb, insensible to pain, staring into space with fixed, unfocussed eyes. Worse, the next man might be shaking like a victim of some tropical fever, so that his friends could not hold him still, and he had to be strapped to a stretcher. Or his body might be contorted in an air-clawing rigor by muscular spasms, like an epileptic or a man asphyxiating. Once Andrew saw a man clawing at his own face, with black-edged nails which had just been grovelling in a slime of mud and rotten flesh. Such extremes happened to only a few, of course, and Andrew was determined that he would not be one of them. A few soldiers, like Colin Ross, seemed able to carry on unaffected forever, and he hoped to be another. But of the few men left who had trained with him in Perth, scarcely any were quite as much to be relied upon as they once had been.
Once they spent a week in a rest-camp behind the line, a bleak place of Adrian huts which Andrew hated. One Sunday morning a hard frost had burst a carelessly-laid water-main at the Base Hospital, and a working-party of Black Watch was called in to dig out the rusted piping and clear up after the flood. It was cold, dirty, back-breaking work among the newly-thawed leaf-mould of the wood onto which the hospital backed, although kilted troops were not as badly off as they would have been in sodden trousers. When it was finished, a few of the men started a fire to brew up some tea. But Ross drew Andrew aside.
‘Andrew, Billy Morrison’s likely in that hospital. They’d never let us a’ in, but maybe we’d make it if it wis just the twa o’ us.’
Morrison was one of the trench foot cases, a Fife man who had enlisted with Andrew, in Perth Barracks on that same morning in August 1914.
‘Is that allowed, do you think?’
‘Laddie, how lang have ye been in the airmy? Whit they dinnae forbid is allowed, see? An’ it cannae be forbidden unless ye ask. Come wi’ me if ye want tae see a try-on.’
Ross, who had a puzzling ability to avoid collecting dirt, got Garner remarkably clean, considering. They washed their boots in a stream, and went round to the front of the hospital. It was a big house with ivy-covered walls and French windows, the grounds filled with the usual accumulation of huts. At the gate Ross took out a brown envelope, to look like a message, and the sentry did not challenge them. But they were stopped by the R.A.M.C. porter in his booth just inside the front gate.
‘Here, what’s your business?’
‘Visitin’ a friend, corp’ral. Private Morrison, Black Watch, in wi’ trench feet. That’s okay, is it no’?’
‘No, it bleedin’ ain’t. Sorry, but I can’t let you in without a pass.’
‘What, an’ the colonel askin’ for him? Saved the colonel’s life, Billy Morrison did, up the Salient.’
‘Look, I shouldn’t.’
‘Okay chum, we understand. We’ll need tae get a chit frae the colonel, that’s a’, an’ we’ll maybe be sent up the line afore we can get back.’
‘Oh well, I didn’t see you, did I? Trench feet, that’s outside the main building, second black hut on the left.’
‘Billy Morrison never saved any colonel’s life, neither Cameron’s nor Boswell’s, did he?’ Andrew asked, as they made for the back door.
‘No’ exactly, but he’d have saved them if they’d needed it, an’ whaur’s the justice in punishin’ a man for lack o’ opportunity?’
They were stopped by a middle-aged woman in W.A.A.C. khaki, not the navy blue of the V.A.D. voluntary nurses. She wore badges of rank which looked odd on a woman, but she had a voice and a manner which impressed them more.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘Visitin’, ma’am. We’ve a friend in here, and we’re gaun’ up the line the morn.’
‘Oh? You’ve no permission to be here, and you know it. I’m thoroughly fed up with you soldiers trailing in here, looking for your friends. Look at yourselves, you’re covered with germs, and this is a hospital.’
‘Wi’ respect, ma’am, there were nae germs in my young day.’
‘Why, I can’t understand a word you say! How did you get past Malone?’
‘Ah weel, ma’am, I’m no’ sayin’ we slippit past deliberately. But yon wee window’s no’ very convenient for him.’
‘He’ll see you if you try it again, I guarantee that, or he’ll wish he had. Now go away! Any man in his hospital is getting the best of treatment, and that’s what matters. If I started letting people in whenever they chose, the place would be like a railway station tomorrow, and no more hygienic. You can see that, can’t you?’
‘Oh aye, ma’am, I know fine ye’re only daein’ your job. I’m sorry if we’ve troubled ye.’
‘And I’m really sorry I can’t help you, but the rules have to be the same for everyone. We can’t make any exceptions.’
Once outside, Ross turned to Andrew.
‘That’s it, laddie, I’m afraid. Ye can keep on tryin’ wi’ some folk, but no’ the likes o’ her.’
‘Well, you can’t win all the time.’
‘Look, at least I kept us oot o’ trouble. I never mentioned the colonel again, did I? That’s because she’s the sort that checks up.’
‘You said we were going up the line tomorrow. Suppose she checks up on that?’
‘We could be. An’ that’s a military secret. They’d no’ tell her, an’ she’d no’ like the refusal. The staff’s no’ keen on women, no’ unless they’re young typewritin’ hussies, wi’ hair-ribbons in the divisional colours, an’ their skirts half-wey tae their knees.’
‘She seemed quite kindly, in a way, at the last.’
‘Ah, dealin’ wi’ women’s as much a science as soldierin’. Remember, laddie, that politeness costs ye nae money. I wis polite, see, an’ I sort o’ hinted that I wis protectin’ her gatekeeper, that she hadnae the time for a row wi’. Of course I wouldnae claim a lady, like her, would get seized wi’ the womanly passions at a few words frae the likes o’ me, no’ since we gave up the red coats, especially. But they’re creatures o’ habit, so speak them fair, an’ they’ll no’ mistake a man for cattle.’
As they headed for the gate, a van came in and drew up on the gravel in front of them.
‘Hey Andrew, that’s oor M.O.’
The Black Watch medical officer got out and saw them.
‘Hello, what are you two doing here?’
‘Tryin’ tae see Billy Morrison, sir, but they’d no’ let us in. Can ye help us?’
‘H’m. I need one or two men to bring some things out to the van for me, and I suppose it might as well be you. Tried to get in, you say? You’ve not been caught in any kind of trickery, I suppose?’
‘Sir, the very idea! We wouldnae – ‘
‘Get caught. Yes, I know you, Ross. Follow me, then.’
The M.O. led them inside, Ross exchanging a wink with Corporal Malone. The trench feet ward was the first place he went, and he showed them to the bedside of Private Morrison. There was a screen around the foot of the bed, with an extra piece of cloth tacked in place, so that the patient’s feet were hidden. They exchanged a few conventional words with him, Andrew hardly knowing what to say. When the M.O. and an orderly went to the door to talk, Morrison leant forward and whispered to them.
‘Hey, lads, can ye’ no look an’ tell me whit my feet are like? They’ll tell ye nothin’ here.’
Andrew was nearest, so he edged up to the screen and peered through a crack. Morrison’s feet were uncovered, and it was all Andrew could do to stop himself from drawing back in horror. They were blackened and swollen to such a degree that the toes appeared to have started from their sockets, and protruded at odd angles from a fungoid, glistening growth like something on the underside of a log. Most of the nails were missing, leaving raw scars like eye-sockets. It seemed so inconceivable that those objects could ever again be feet, so monstrous that a man should survive the Taupière for this, that Andrew’s head swam with horror. But he maintained perfect composure, for after all, what was one more horror, these days?
‘What d’ye make o’ it?’ Morrison asked, almost pleading.
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