Lovely War(75)

“Goodbye, Ellen,” Hazel whispered. “Colette and I are resigning. Whatever Mrs. Davies tells you, we did break a rule or two, but we did nothing wrong.”

“You’re leaving?” Ellen stumbled out of bed and gave Hazel a hug. “Must you go?”

Hazel returned the embrace. Ellen shook her head in dazed wonder. “I don’t understand. Write to me when you get home, will you?”

Home? Hazel gulped. What, exactly, would her next step be? She had no plan.

“I will.” She blew her roommate a kiss, buckled her carpetbag, grabbed her coat, signed for her pay, and, with Colette at her side, she left.





ARES


     Preparations—February 20–March 20, 1918





THERE IS A SAMENESS to life during wartime. Days blur together when combat isn’t active. A raid here and there, the daily dose of shelling. Casualties, but not enough to write home about. Unless the British Army does it for you, and they sent telegrams. Very brief telegrams.

“Regret to inform you that your son, Private Such-and-Such, is reported killed in action during heavy bombardment” or “has died of wounds at a casualty clearing station.” Followed by a letter from a CO reporting, in every instance, that they passed bravely, swiftly, without much pain. They never said, “hung for hours on a barbed wire fence with his bowels hanging out, pleading for rescue, but nobody dared go for fear of hostile fire.”

The first casualty of war is the truth.

If James and his comrades in 3rd Section and 2nd Section weren’t working, they were sleeping. They slept on the ground. They slept on mounds of artillery. They slept standing up. They slept while marching. You don’t believe me. Half an hour was a long night’s rest.

When the sun went down, their supply fatigue began. Slogging through miles of narrow, congested, twisting tunnels carrying cases of food rations, water, bullets, grenades, sandbags, and wound dressings. Bales of barbed wire that cut their hands to ribbons.

The days grew longer, the nights shorter. Combat activity was quiet. Yet there they were, hauling heavy shells, hauling bales of rifles up and bales of damaged weapons back for repair. Clearly, they were gearing up. The Germans, too. Supply trains, troop trains, and spy planes. Gearing up for a massive onslaught, pointed at the Fifth Army. James’s army. The Germans would outnumber the British forces by something like three to one.

They saw it, they lived with it, they put it out of their minds. Nothing they could do about it until something happened.

The constant grist for the rumor mill, and the source of a lively small-change betting operation, was when the Big One would start. All kinds of dates were thrown into the hat. March 1. The Ides of March. St. Patrick’s Day.

When word spread of a new date, the troops were jaded. Third Section scoffed at March 21. The vernal equinox. The first day of spring. It seemed arbitrary. Superstitious, even. But captured Germans, taken in trench raids, swore that would be the day.

James wrote letters to his parents, to Maggie, and to Bob. So much he’d like to say, but how? Well, he reasoned, if you might die, you don’t worry about what others think.

On the night of March 20, James wrote Hazel a long letter full of things he’d never dared say. Hopes for the future. Hopes that included her. If he never came back from the coming battle, would her heart be more broken, or less, knowing he would’ve given his forever to her?

If it was his lot in life to die for King and Country, if that was his price to pay, it seemed not too much a recompense to ask of Fate that the girl he loved, and would have loved forever, be asked to bear to her grave the burden of knowing how he’d felt.

On the night of March 20, 1918, James Alderidge posted the letter at sunset from his position with his comrades in the support trenches, then found a dugout to lie down in and went to sleep while he still could.





APHRODITE


     Regrouping—March 20, 1918





ON THE MORNING of March 20, 1918, Hazel and Colette arrived back in Paris. Colette crawled straight into bed and stayed there.

It had been a quiet train ride, but at one point Colette spoke.

“When the Germans killed my family,” she said, “nobody let me see their bodies.”

Hazel waited, heartsick.

“I asked, but they all said, ‘Non, mon enfant, you mustn’t see; the sight would kill you.’”

Hazel closed her eyes. Her own parents, slaughtered. James, lying on the ground.

“Hazel,” Colette finally said, “do you think Aubrey is dead?”

The words hit Hazel with a pang. What did she believe?

“I think,” she said slowly, “it’s too soon for that conclusion.”

Colette’s red-rimmed eyes watched for the truth. She would not be lulled by false faith, or lies dressed as encouragement.

“I think,” Hazel said, “we should hold on tightly to hope.”

Colette went back to watching farmland slide by.





ARES


     Operation Michael—March 21, 1918





JAMES WOKE WITH a start. It was dark, the air thick and heavy. Noise thundered in his ears.

Shelling, but no ordinary shelling. The Germans were launching artillery shells so fast, James couldn’t make out the space between one explosion and the next. Just one continuous roar of destruction. A bombardment like a wild beast’s howl.