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  “You think we are?” I asked.

  “Yes, I do,” said Bob. “The Germans have been pushed right back, and thousands have surrendered. We saw it ourselves at Sambre, all those Germans with their hands up. I don’t know what’s going on here, but it’s something unusual. And I’m going to try to find out.”

  “How?” asked Nipper.

  “I bet the French know,” said Bob.

  “But Sergeant Blake told us not to go and talk to them,” I said.

  “Who said anything about going to talk to them?” said Bob. “But if I stroll past and one of them asks me for the time, say, or if I think it’s going to rain, it would be rude not to answer him. We’re allies, after all. And if someone happens to mention this railway carriage…”

  “Don’t say any more,” snapped Terry Watts. “That sounds like disobeying orders, and I’m not having any part of it.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Bob, shrugging. “I’d just like to know who or what we’re guarding.”

  As we put the tents up, I had to admit that I was curious about that as well. It had to be important for us to be taken out of the battle. So what was it?

  CHAPTER

  5

  Much as Bob wanted to talk to the French soldiers and find out what was going on, he never got the chance. Sergeant Blake seemed to know what Bob had in mind and kept a close watch on him. None of the rest of us wanted to get caught, so we kept away from the French soldiers on the other side of the tracks. They must have had the same orders because they kept their distance from us too.

  The next day, things started to happen. About the middle of the morning, two large open staff cars pulled up at the French guard line. I was on guard duty on our side of the tracks, along with Bob, Nipper and Charlie. Even from a distance we could see that the chests of the officers in the back of each car were covered in rows of medals, and they all had gold braid on their hats and uniforms. There was a lot of saluting from the French soldiers, and then the two cars drove on. They pulled up beside the railway carriage.

  Five of the men got out of the cars and went into the carriage. The two with the most decorations were the ones in the French uniforms. Two others wore the uniforms of the Royal Navy, and the fifth was a British captain.

  “This is big,” muttered Bob.

  “Do you know who they are?” asked Charlie.

  “The French ones are Marshal Foch and General Weygand,” said Bob.

  This news was a big shock for me. Marshal Foch was the leader of the Allied forces, the top man in charge of everything: the French and Belgians, the British, the Anzacs, the Canadians, even the Americans. I didn’t know who General Weygand was, but he was obviously very important, judging by the array of medals on his chest and all the gold braid on his hat and uniform. It meant that something really big was happening here.

  “The two Royal Navy men are Admiral Wemyss and Deputy First Sea Lord Hope,” said Nipper. “I saw their pictures in the newspaper. They’re right at the top too.” He shook his head. “I don’t know who the captain is, though.”

  “Stop that chatter!” snapped the voice of Sergeant Blake. “You’re on duty!”

  The five men stayed inside the railway carriage for the next couple of hours. We were eventually relieved from guard duty by four other blokes. We went back to our tent and sat outside, watching the railway carriage and waiting. What was going on in there?

  “They’re making a plan,” said Bob. “I bet it’s about the final attack, or something.”

  “But why would the top brass from the Royal Navy have anything to do with that?” asked Nipper. “All the fighting’s on land, so it’s army business.”

  None of us could answer his question. But that afternoon something happened that gave us a clue. We heard the rattle of wheels on the railway lines, and then an engine trundled out of the forest, pulling just one carriage behind it. We heard its brakes grinding, and then it stopped behind the stationary carriage in a hissing of steam. As the clouds of steam thinned, we saw Foch, Weygand, Wemyss, Hope and the army captain come out of their carriage and gather at the foot of the steps.

  Four men appeared from the newly arrived carriage, walking stiffly down the steps with grim expressions. They headed towards the Allied leaders.

  “Germans!” said Bob. “And top Germans as well. Look at the decorations on those uniforms.”

  Two of the Germans wore army uniforms weighed down with medals and gold braid, and the same went for the one wearing the uniform of the German navy. The fourth man was dressed in civilian clothes, a very smart dark suit and a top hat, of all things.

  They stopped in front of the waiting Allied leaders, and then the three in uniform snapped to attention and saluted. Foch didn’t return their salute, but the others did. Then all of them walked up the steps and disappeared into the carriage we were guarding.

  “Top brass from both sides,” muttered Bob. “It’s the surrender.”

  I looked at him, stunned. Could he be right? Could this be the moment the war ended and we could all go home? The thought of it filled me with excitement, going home to see Mam and Dad and Tim and Ann again. But I fought hard not to let myself get too carried away. There’d been so many false hopes, claims that the Germans were beaten and the war was over, but they never turned out to be true.

  “If it is the surrender, we know why we’re here,” said Bob. “Us and the French. To protect them. Let’s face it, there’s a lot of angry people in France who’d like to take their revenge on those Germans in that carriage. That’s why there’s all this secrecy.”

  “It’s not the surrender,” said Nipper, shaking his head. “For that they’d have to have the Kaiser here. The officers couldn’t surrender without their leader.”

  “Maybe he’s dead,” said Bob. “Some leaders commit suicide when their side loses a war. It’s to do with losing their honour.”

  “That sounds a stupid thing to do,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, war’s stupid,” said Bob. He took a quick look round to check that Sergeant Blake wasn’t around to hear him. “Think about it. This has been going on for four years. There’s thousands of our lot dead, maybe millions. Same for the Germans. What have we got out of it?”

  “We stopped the Germans ruling us,” I pointed out.

  “Maybe, but will we be any better off when we get back home?”

  “We did our duty,” said Nipper firmly. “If we hadn’t, we’d have ended up as slaves of the Germans.”

  Bob grimaced. “Sometimes I wonder if it makes any difference to us ordinary people who’s in charge at the top,” he said. “King or Kaiser. Prime Minister or President. For us folks at the bottom, it always seems to stay the same.”

  CHAPTER

  6

  Whatever was going on with the talks between the top brass clearly wasn’t straightforward, because they were in the railway carriage for the next three days. The talks even carried on through the night. Every now and then the Germans would come out and talk privately, before going back inside.

  It was on the fourth day of these talks, in the early hours of 11th November, that things changed. I’d got some sleep around midnight, and gone back on guard duty at four o’clock in the morning.

  At about half past five in the morning I saw the four Germans come out of the carriage, walking as stiff and straight as when they’d arrived. They climbed back aboard their own carriage. The engine came to life, and I realized that the engine driver and his crew must have begun firing up the engine’s boiler some time before, as if they’d been expecting this. Smoke belched out of the engine’s funnel and the engine began to rock, and then the bars along the wheels started moving, and the train went slowly off, taking the Germans away.

  The British captain came down the steps of the carriage we were guarding. He signalled to Sergeant Blake and the commander of the French soldiers to come to him. Both marched smartly over and snapped to attention, saluting. The captain returned their salute and said something to them
quietly. Then he saluted again, and returned inside the carriage.

  Sergeant Blake headed towards us, while the French officer went to his own troops.

  “Guard unit, fall in!” commanded Blake.

  Me, Bob, Nipper and Charlie formed a line, and were soon joined by the rest of our unit.

  “I have been given instructions to alert you to what has occurred here,” said Blake. “At five o’clock this morning, an armistice was signed following the surrender of the German forces. This Armistice is to take effect from eleven o’clock today, the eleventh of November 1918, being the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

  “From that time there will be no more fighting. This message is being sent to all forces. From this moment, the war is over.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  Some of the lads thought this meant we’d be able to get the next boat home to England, but I had my doubts. And I was right. Even though the war was officially over, there was a lot to do. The first thing was to make sure all the Germans’ weapons were confiscated, just in case some of them wanted to defy the Armistice. Then the Germans in France and Belgium had to be returned to their own country under guard.

  Luckily, it was decided that the French and Belgians should be the ones to oversee the German soldiers being returned to Germany, and then reinforcing the border to make sure they didn’t come back. But it still meant it was a few weeks after the Armistice before the 2nd Battalion of the Manchester Regiment was stood down and we really could go home.

  Lorries took us back to Calais, where we were put on a troopship bound for Dover. Halfway across the English Channel, I made my way up on deck, because I wanted to see the famous white cliffs as we neared land. I wasn’t the only one. After so long away, it seemed like every other soldier had the same idea. Soon the whole deck was filled with men standing looking at the white cliffs as they emerged from a haze. I saw tears in the eyes of more than one tough-looking soldier at the sight.

  Standing on English soil again seemed strange. I was home, but part of me still felt like I was back in France, fighting the war. Now I was really back, it struck me that there had been many times when I thought I’d never get home again. But here I was. I’d made it.

  Once we were all off the ship, I was officially demobbed and given a travel voucher for the long journey home to use on trains and buses. Some of the other soldiers exchanged their uniform for clean clothes. Bob and I didn’t want to hang around in the queue – we were too anxious to get home. Besides, I didn’t really mind wearing my uniform. It made me feel proud.

  As we came down the gangway from the boat, crowds of men, women and children began cheering and waving at us, There were people lining the route all the way from the disembarkation sheds, and right up to the railway platforms at Dover station. Many of them wanted to shake our hands, and one woman even gave me a bunch of flowers. There were handmade signs being held up as well, greeting us with messages like ‘Welcome our heroes’ and ‘We’ll be grateful to you for ever’.

  We got on a train from Dover to London. Some of the men were planning on spending a few days in London because it had been a long time since they’d had any proper fun. They wouldn’t be able to have much once they got home to their families and had to find work again. Bob and I, though, wanted to keep heading north. Both of us wanted to get home to our families as soon as we could: me to Mam and Dad and my brother and sister, Bob to his wife and son.

  When we got to Euston station, we were puzzled to see that a lot of people were wearing cloth masks over their mouths and noses. At Dover there had been a couple of people with scarves pulled up over their mouths too. I’d guessed it was because they were just wrapping up from the icy December weather. Some men whose faces had been badly injured in the war wore masks to hide their wounds, especially if the injury was something really bad. But at Euston it wasn’t just men wearing these masks. It was women and children as well. We saw a woman in a very expensive coat, accompanied by a porter wheeling a trolley with loads of luggage, both wearing masks. An elderly gentleman was also wearing one, and from the look of him there was no chance he was a wounded ex-soldier.

  “What do you reckon the masks are for?” I asked.

  “Gas?” suggested Bob. When we were in the trenches a gas attack had been one of our worst nightmares.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Not everyone’s wearing them. It’s strange.”

  “I’m going to find out,” said Bob. And he headed towards the porter with the mask on.

  “’Scuse me!” he called. “Me and my pal have just come back from France, and we’re curious about these masks you and others are wearing. What are they for?”

  “’Cause of the flu,” said the porter.

  Bob frowned.

  “But everyone gets flu this time of year,” he said. “A few days of coughing and sneezing and you get over it. Unless it turns into pneumonia or something bad.”

  “Not this flu,” said the porter. “It’s the worst kind there’s ever been. They’re calling it the Spanish flu ’cause they think it came from Spain.”

  “How did it get here?” I asked.

  “Some say it’s the troops coming back home who are bringing it. They reckon after it started in Spain it spread to France.” He looked at us suspiciously. “You two are feeling all right, are you?”

  “Of course we are,” said Bob. “And this is the first we’ve heard of it.”

  “How bad is it?” I asked.

  “Very bad,” said the porter. “People have been dying from it. And quick too. One day they catch it, a couple of days later they’re dead. That’s why people are putting masks on, to stop breathing in germs.”

  “So why isn’t everyone wearing them?” asked Bob.

  The porter shrugged again.

  “Some people think it ain’t that serious and it won’t happen to them.”

  As we headed for our train, Bob looked thoughtful.

  “If it was in France, how come we didn’t hear about it?” he asked.

  “Maybe ’cause we were mainly in the north of the country,” I said. “Spain’s south of France.”

  Bob nodded. “Maybe,” he said.

  The journey north was a long one, with several train changes on the way, so we ended up spending a lot of time sitting on cold platforms waiting for trains. At Crewe we were heading in different directions, Bob was getting a train to Manchester and I was heading further north to Carlisle.

  “Well, Joe,” said Bob. “After all we’ve been through, it looks like this is goodbye. At least for now.”

  “If you’re ever coming to Carlisle, make sure you let me know and we’ll meet up,” I said. We’d already swapped addresses on the train.

  “And the same goes for you, if you’re ever in Manchester,” said Bob. “You’ll always be welcome. We can always fit you in.” Then, with a grin, he couldn’t resist asking me one more time, “How old are you exactly?”

  This time I just grinned back and said, “Old enough.”

  With that, we shook hands and wished one another well, and that was it. The end of my life in the army.

  The final part of the train journey to Carlisle seemed to take for ever, with the train crawling up the inclines as it went through and over the high fells of Cumberland and Westmoreland. The haul up to the high point at Shap took so long I thought the train was going to pull to a stop and then roll backwards. But eventually we pulled into Carlisle Citadel station.

  Our house was on a terrace in Tait Street, not far from the station. With my kitbag over my shoulder, and the steel of my army boots ringing on the pavement, I made my way home. Perhaps it was because I’d spent so much time out in the open in France, but the houses seemed very small.

  When I reached our street, Mr and Mrs Chapel were sitting outside their house on kitchen chairs, just as they had been on the day I left, only now they were bundled up in their winter coats. He was reading a newspaper and she was doing her knitting. Li
ke everyone else on our street, their house was tiny, and the Chapel family had even more of a crush than most. With their kids and relatives there were twelve people to find space for, so the front step made an extra room, if it wasn’t too cold out. Of course, it also let them keep an eye on what was going on.

  Mrs Chapel looked up as I reached them, and dropped her knitting into her lap.

  “Joe Henry!” exclaimed Mr Chapel. “What’s happened to you? You look all grown up.”

  “I’ve been to war,” I said.

  Mr Chapel nodded.

  “Aye, we heard as much,” he said.

  Mrs Chapel gave me a stern look.

  “Running off and leaving your mother like that,” she said. “You should have thought of her.”

  “I thought of her the whole time I was away,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything to that, and nor did Mr Chapel, but I felt their eyes on me as I approached our front door. As always, I knew it would be unlocked. I stood there for a moment, my hand on the door, wondering what Mam would say when she saw me. Would she be angry? She deserved to be. Still, it was too late to worry about that now. It was time to face her.

  I pushed the door open.

  “Mam?” I called out. “I’m home!”

  CHAPTER

  8

  Tim came running down the passage towards me.

  “It’s Joe! Joe’s home!”

  Then Ann appeared, looking taller than when I went away. She ran to me and hugged my legs tightly.

  “Joe!” she yelled. “It’s Joe!”

  Mam came out from the back room and stared. She ran forwards and threw her arms around me.

  “Joe,” she said. “Joe. You’ve come back.”

  I felt wet on my cheeks, and realised she was crying.

  “It’s all right, Mam,” I said. “I’m all right.”

  She pushed away from me and wiped her eyes.

  “Why didn’t you write and say you were coming?” she asked. “I could have got myself ready!”