Coming Home Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Historical Note

  Anthem for Doomed Youth

  About the Author

  Copyright

  CHAPTER

  1

  Peeeeep!

  Dawn, 4th November 1918, and the shrill blast of the lieutenant’s whistle sent us out of the deep, muddy trench where we’d spent the night, up the wooden ladders and over the top. Ahead of us, on the other side of the Sambre-Oise canal, was the German defensive line – but we had to cross open fields to get to it.

  Tacka-tacka-tacka-tacka! The German machine guns opened fire as soon as they saw us, as did their rifles, and bullets tore into us. Some of the men either side of me stumbled and fell, but we kept going. We ducked low and weaved from side to side, opening fire ourselves. Our unit’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Owen, was right at the front, leading the charge and urging us on. Bullets thudded into the earth at my feet, sailing past me so close that one tore at the sleeve of my uniform.

  Bang! Bang! I fired back and kept going. Nearer and nearer we got to the canal. We were making for a place where there was a lock, but the Germans had put a machine gun inside the lockhouse and the rapid fire was tearing into our advance, with more soldiers falling the closer we got.

  We’d been told that the Germans were in retreat and that they’d only left a handful of soldiers to hold the canal, to allow most of their forces to move further back for a last stand. But we’d been told that before and it had been wrong.

  We ran on, firing, getting ever closer.

  I saw a flash as a hand grenade was thrown from our side towards the lockhouse. Flames and thick black smoke belched out of the lockhouse window. Another grenade followed. German soldiers stumbled out of the lockhouse and ran to dive behind cover. But they were soon firing at us again.

  Some of our Royal Engineers had reached the lock and were laying ladders across the open lock gate to make a bridge to the other side. More ladders were dropped into place, while our troops gave the Engineers covering fire.

  We dropped down to the ground, lying as flat as we could and using whatever we could find for cover – a low mound of earth, a small bush – while we fired at the Germans on the other side of the canal. We had them trapped in their defensive positions while our forces crawled across the ladders to the German side. Some didn’t make it, tumbling down into the waters of the canal as rifle fire struck them, but more and more managed to cross and attack the German positions from behind.

  More ladders appeared, more crossing points opening up across the canal. We were gaining ground! I saw Lieutenant Owen rise up from the ground next to me and wave us to move forward, breaking into a run. We got to our feet and followed him, firing as we advanced.

  But the Germans weren’t giving up just yet. They returned fire, machine guns and rifles blasting, tearing into our front line. Lieutenant Owen, who was just a few paces in front of me, staggered and fell, crumpling on to his rifle as bullets cut him down. But we ran on.

  Some of the Germans stood up behind their defences to get a shot at our soldiers, who were coming at them from the sides and the rear. When they realized they were surrounded, some of them threw down their rifles and put their hands in the air to surrender. Soon the others did the same.

  The Battle of the Sambre-Oise canal was over.

  CHAPTER

  2

  My name’s Joe Henry. I was with the 2nd Battalion of the Manchester Regiment. I joined up in July 1918, telling the recruiting sergeant that I was eighteen. The truth is I’m thirteen, but I’ve always been big for my age. I thought that as long as I didn’t talk much about myself to the other blokes, and give clues that I was a lot younger than I looked, I could get away with it. And so far, I had.

  I was sure my best mate in the Manchesters, Bob Taylor, suspected the truth. He used to try and trick me with questions about where in Carlisle I lived, and who I knew. He was from Oldham, just outside Manchester, and said he knew people in Carlisle. Once he even asked me directly: “How old actually are you, Joe?” But when I said, “As old as me feet and a bit older than me teeth,” he just grinned and gave it up.

  The reason I volunteered was because of my dad, Walter. He joined up in 1914, when the war started. He came home for a bit in 1916 after he got gassed in the trenches, but then he went back again. He said he had to do it for King and country. Me mam, Doris, tried to get him to change his mind. She said he’d done enough for his country and he’d die if he went back, especially because his lungs have been damaged by the gas. But Dad has always been stubborn. He says being stubborn is what makes the people of Cumberland who they are. They don’t give up, no matter what gets thrown at them. I suppose that’s true, I can be stubborn as well, once I get an idea into my head. Like going to war.

  Dad went back to the front late in 1916, and by the start of 1918 the war was still going on with no sign of it ending. And that’s when I got the idea: I’d go to the war myself and help it be finished quicker. Then Dad could come back home. Conscription had been introduced in 1916, so I knew I’d be called up to join the army when I was eighteen. But that was five years away. I couldn’t wait that long.

  I told Mam my idea, but she just said not to say silly things like that. She said it would just put false hope into the heads of my six-year-old brother, Tim, and my little sister, Ann, who’s four, about Dad coming home soon.

  “And don’t let me hear you talking about going off to war again. You could get badly wounded! Or die!” She glared at me furiously, her eyes glittering. “It’s bad enough your dad being away, I don’t want to lose you too.”

  “I’d be all right,” I assured her. “I can look after myself.”

  “Stop it this instance, Joe,” she said, holding up her hand. “Anyway, they wouldn’t take you. You have to be eighteen to join up.”

  Although I knew that was true, I also knew of at least four boys in Carlisle who’d joined up by lying about their age. Danny Mays, a boy who lived on our street, had managed it and he was only two years older than me.

  “I’m sure the recruiting sergeant knew I was under age,” Danny told me afterwards. “He winked at me when I told him I was eighteen and said, ‘Welcome to the army, son’.”

  Like I said, I’ve always been big for my age. I’m tall enough to pass as a man, and when my voice broke I thought I had a good chance of getting away with it. I thought that if I joined our local regiment, the Lonsdales, Mam would just march down to the barracks and drag me home. Instead, I went down to Manchester, where my cousin Eric lives, and used his address to join up with the Manchester Regiment. I didn’t want Mam to get suspicious so I told her I was going to stay with Eric for a while because he needed some help with his coal business. I didn’t want her to worry; she had enough on her hands with working at the munitions factory at Eastriggs near Gretna, and looking after my little brother and sister. It was only after I’d done my basic training and was about to be sent to France that I sent her a postcard telling her I was off to war. I posted it on the way to the ship and tried not to think about her face when it arrived through our letter box.

  Our unit arrived in France in the middle of August. We were told that the Germans were retreating but were stuck on the Hin
denberg Line, which was a defensive line of troops and weapons between France and Germany they’d built at the start of the war, and then extended as the war went on. Well, if they were in retreat there didn’t seem to be much sign of it. We were sent to fight them.

  Nothing I’d read about it or imagined had prepared me for what real war is like. The first time I saw the bodies on no man’s land, I was sick. And the second. But we all got hardened to it in the end. We just got on with what we were there to do, which was to fight, and do our best to stay alive.

  In early September, things began to change. Our armies broke through the Hindenberg Line and started to force the Germans back. I say ‘our armies’, because it wasn’t just the British army. We were fighting alongside French, Belgian, Australian, Indian and New Zealand soldiers, as well as the Americans, who had joined the war at the start of 1917.

  By the end of September and early in October, the Germans were heading backwards, although they were fighting all the way. I often wondered if Dad was anywhere nearby. Did he know that I was out here fighting alongside him? Mam could have written to tell him what I’d done, but the army censor might have cut that bit out. They didn’t want soldiers being upset by bad news. Bob said the real reason they censored all our letters was to hide the truth from us. He said if we knew about the stupid decisions our generals made, we’d shoot them ourselves.

  Sergeant Blake overheard Bob say that and he got really angry. He said if Bob ever repeated those things, he’d have him up on a charge of treason and shot. I didn’t think he really would, because Bob was one of the best and bravest men in our regiment and Sergeant Blake would have been stupid to lose him. All the same, Bob was careful about what he said after that. Some of our own side had been shot for saying similar things. They called it mutiny in the ranks.

  I don’t know if Bob was right or wrong about the generals and the top army brass, because I never had anything to do with them. Most of the officers I came across were all right, but then they were junior officers like Lieutenant Owen, who’d died during our attack on the canal. Bob and I thought he was a hero. He had led our unit in October when we stormed a German defensive position on the Hindenberg Line. It was 1st October at the town of Joncourt. It had been near a canal, just like today’s assault, and we had overrun it, taking loads of Germans prisoners.

  After that battle, Bob told me that Lieutenant Owen was actually a poet back in England.

  “Wilfred Owen’s his proper name,” Bob told me. “My wife says he’s getting a name for himself among the literary people.”

  “I’ve never heard of him,” I said.

  “Well, you’re not literary, are you?” said Bob.

  “I can read and write,” I told him indignantly.

  “Literary, not literate,” Bob snorted. “Anyway, my sister says it’s the London lot who like him. You people from the sticks in Cumberland only know about sheep, not poetry.”

  “Yes we do!” I retorted. “We’ve got a poet.”

  “Who?”

  “William Wordsworth. He writes about daffodils.”

  “There you are, then. Country stuff. My sister says Lieutenant Owen writes about the war. And the war like it really is, not the way some poets write about being brave and such, to make everyone feel better.”

  “If he writes about how it really is, he’d better be careful,” I said. “Sergeant Blake will report him for mutiny in the ranks and have him shot.”

  And now Lieutenant Owen was dead, shot anyway. He was a very brave man, and – as an officer – fair to us ordinary soldiers. I decided that when I got home I’d see if they had any of his poems at the library in Carlisle.

  CHAPTER

  3

  After the victory at Sambre, I thought we’d continue with the advance, pushing the Germans right back and maybe even forcing them to surrender. As it turned out, our regiment was going to do that, along with the French, Canadians, Americans Australians and New Zealanders. But Sergeant Blake called me and Bob and ten others and told us we’d be doing what he called ‘special duties’.

  “I bet it’s something rotten,” muttered Bob after Sergeant Blake had gone. “Something dangerous that no one else wants to do.”

  We were allocated a lorry. Sergeant Blake sat up front with the driver. The rest of us sat on long wooden boxes in the back loaded down with our rifles and ammunition, mess kit and kitbags.

  The canvas at the back of the lorry had been rolled up, so although we couldn’t see where we were going, we could see where we’d been. We soon worked out that we were heading south-west, back into France and away from the Hindenberg Line.

  “I don’t like it,” said Bob. “Why are we going away from where all the action is?”

  “Maybe we’re being sent home,” said Nipper Read. “Maybe the war’s over, only they haven’t told us yet.”

  At his words, my heart gave a happy beat. Maybe he was right! Maybe we were going home! That meant Dad would be going home too, and we’d all be together again.

  “No chance,” said Bob. “If that was the case they’d tell us. They only ever tell us good news.”

  That wiped the smile off my face. It was true.

  We travelled over bumpy roads for hours, with toilet stops now and then, and a break for a bite of bread and cheese and a mug of tea. Finally we left the main roads and bounced over tracks, until we entered a forest, thick with trees.

  “I don’t like this,” said Bob. “Forests mean trouble.”

  The lorry slowed down, and then gave an extra jolt as we crossed over a railway line. Everyone was silent now. What were our special duties?

  “Maybe we’re going to be a firing squad,” suggested Terry Watts. “Maybe they’ve rounded up some top German generals and they’re going to be shot, but it has to be done in secret. A forest would be the perfect place for it.”

  “I didn’t sign up to be no executioner,” said Bob. “I saw enough of that when we was in the trenches. Shooting those poor kids from our own side who didn’t want to fight any more so they refused to go over the top. Cowardice in the face of the enemy, they called it. I saw one kid so scared he couldn’t stand. Fourteen, he was. He’d lied about his age so he could join up, and when he found out that war wasn’t a game, he didn’t want to do it any more.” He shook his head. “It was because he was poor. When it happens to the rich ones, the officers, it’s called shell shock and they get sent back home to a comfy hospital. It ain’t fair.”

  Suddenly the hatch between the back of the lorry and the driver’s compartment slid open and Sergeant Blake shouted through it.

  “I can hear you, Private Taylor!” he said. “Any more of that kind of talk and you’ll be the one on the sharp end of a firing squad. Mutiny and treason!”

  The hatch slammed shut, and Bob scowled and shrugged. We all knew he was right. It was just like he said, and it wasn’t fair. Soldiers from poor homes who couldn’t carry on fighting were shot by a firing squad to discourage anyone else who was thinking of refusing to fight. But the posh rich ones – and that meant most of the officers – were sent back home to recover.

  I thought about the fourteen-year-old boy who had been shot. He was a year older than me and he’d lied about his age, same as I did. He had thought war would be fun and exciting.

  Me and my best friend, Arthur Graham, who lived next door to us in Carlisle used to play at war. We used broomsticks as rifles, and we’d thought of it as a kind of game, until we started to see the wounded soldiers coming home. Some of them were missing legs or arms. Some were blind. Lots had been gassed, like my dad. Dad had managed to get back to the front, but some of these other soldiers couldn’t walk more than a few steps without passing out. Arthur and I stopped playing at war after that.

  The lorry bounced along the track a bit further, with all of us in the back keeping silent after Sergeant Blake had shouted at Bob, and then it pulled to a halt. We heard the doors at the front open and slam, then Sergeant Blake was standing at the back of the lorry
.

  “All out!” he said.

  We were in a clearing that had a railway track running through it. In the middle of the clearing was a railway carriage made out of polished dark wood. It had brass around the windows and doors, and along the edge of the roof.

  “That’s a very posh railway carriage,” said Nipper.

  “But why is it here in the middle of this forest?” asked Bob. “And why are we here with it?”

  CHAPTER

  4

  “Your first job is to put up the tents,” said Sergeant Blake. “They’re in the wooden boxes in the lorry.”

  I spotted a movement in the trees on the other side of the railway track, and then caught a flash of a uniform, before whoever it was disappeared back among the trees.

  “There’s someone over there, Sergeant,” I said. “In those trees.”

  “French soldiers,” said Blake. “Don’t worry about them. They’re here on special duties as well.”

  “What special duties, Sarge?” asked Charlie.

  “We’re guarding this side of the clearing,” said Blake.

  “But the enemy’s a long way away,” said Bob. “Right back past the Hindenberg Line.”

  “You know that for sure, do you, Private Taylor?” snapped Blake. “Our orders are to put a guard line this side of the tracks. The French are doing the same on the other side. You don’t talk to them, is that clear?”

  “Yes, Sarge,” we said.

  “Right, start putting up the tents. Then we’ll sort out a guard rota.”

  We unloaded the wooden boxes from the lorry and began putting up the tents.

  “There’s something funny going on here,” said Bob. “Guarding a railway carriage in the middle of a forest? Why? Who’s in it?”

  “No one, by the look of it,” said Nipper. “I’ve been checking the windows and I haven’t spotted anyone inside.”

  “Well, I’m going to find out,” said Bob. “These ‘special duties’ sound dangerous, and I like to know where the most danger is so I can keep out of it. It’s kept me alive so far through this war, and I don’t intend anything bad to happen to me now if we’re close to the end of it.”