FIC: Roses of Picardy [8/?]
Jul. 8th, 2012 04:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
splixTitle: Roses of Picardy
Author: Alex
Fandom: War Horse
Rating: Varies, G to NC-17
Pairing: Jamie Stewart/Jim Nicholls
Disclaimer: No money made, no harm intended. Michael Morpurgo owns War Horse and its characters.
Summary: Captured in battle, Major Jamie Stewart faces an uncertain fate.
Warnings: Violence, explicit sexual content.
Notes: Canon divergent [see pairing]
Can also be read on AO3
*
He’d scarcely come from leave and London
Still was carrying a leather case
When he surprised headquarters pillbox
And sat down sweating in the filthy place.
---Edmund Blunden, The Welcome
*
Dearest Jamie,
I write this letter scant hours from the moment we bade each other farewell on the platform, although I freely confess that already it seems that months have passed since then. To-day my work sits neglected; I’ve moved it from one side of my desk to another, but have not managed to progress much beyond that. I shall have to make up my unfinished tasks this week-end, which suits me well enough. I think time will find itself heavy upon my hands in the days and weeks to come.
Oh – such gloom! You have my most profound apologies. I do not want the first letter you receive after your all-too-brief home leave to be an unhappy one. On the contrary, what I wish to say is this: For as long as I live, I shall never forget your last words to me this morning. Indeed, I intend to cherish them forever, and what’s more, I expect – nay, I demand to hear them again when you return home to stay. Until that happy day should arrive, know that you are ever in my thoughts and prayers.
I can’t write anymore today, Jamie. Think of me.
Jim
*
The birds and beasts, eminently sensible creatures that they were, had fled the northern portion of the Bois de Troncs; only men remained, hell-bent on destroying each other. They huddled in the trenches that limned the wood’s narrow valley and emerged in and out of endless passages of time, shooting, shelling, striking with bayonets, listening to gunfire and the drone of aeroplanes and the screams of the wounded and the dying.
Hold fast to the last man.
Jamie rested his head against a sandbag and savoured the last cigarette he would likely have for weeks. He was the only senior officer around for miles, and he’d collected a small – a very small – battalion command consisting of one young captain and three lieutenants, all of whom appeared to be wet behind the ears, terrified, and confused. He’d laid out their strategy, ordered the word passed, and now took a moment’s respite in the stinking, muddy trench where he and several others had taken refuge during a shelling, lifting his eyes as another aeroplane flew overhead, strafing the Germans’ observational balloons.
He put his hand inside his tunic and withdrew Jim’s latest missive that had come with the customary packet of useful and amusing items. Unfolding it one-handed, he read the neatly penned letter and felt a pang of regret. He hadn’t had the opportunity to write in nearly a month; there had been snatches of available time, but no way to get a letter through the lines. Nor had he received anything for the same amount of time. He’d received some two dozen letters from Jim in the year and few months since his leave, and he’d read them all to shreds except for the first short note Jim had written the day he’d left. That one was in his kit bag, folded tightly and wrapped in a bit of oilskin. If he died, anyone who found it wouldn’t think much of the contents, but they meant everything in the world to Jamie. He’d memorised every word. If he did make it home alive, he’d take every measure to preserve it forever.
This letter, though, was as agreeably cheery as most of Jim’s missives – or at least it was on the surface. A hint of worry and fear had permeated Jim’s letters of late, and Jamie supposed it was no wonder. He could only imagine the lurid reports in the newspapers, written by correspondents sent to observe and then convey the horrors of war. One such fellow had travelled with his company for a month and had left a far different man than the affable soul he’d been at the start of his journey – his eyes were as haunted as any soldier’s. Jamie had tried to be sympathetic, but he’d seen too much death and pain to expend much sympathy for a man who didn’t have to stare his own mortality in the face day after exhausting day, and who was headed back to London, to comfort and home, to write up a story that couldn’t possibly tell the whole truth.
Jamie brushed his filthy hair from his forehead with an even filthier hand. The day was overcast, and night would descend shortly, bringing some relief from the barrage. The Germans wouldn’t fight what they couldn’t see. He re-read a passage about Pansy’s debutante party: extravagant and silly, according to Jim, and he’d quite drowned in a sea of girls in white gowns. A pity there weren’t men enough to go round.
One of the young lieutenants in the trench with him touched his arm. “Colonel.”
Startled, Jamie glared at the young man. “What is it?”
“The guns have stopped, sir.”
Jamie listened to the soft susurration of wind through the heavy summer leaves and frowned. “So they have. Early, isn’t it?” He stuffed the letter back into his tunic and pulled his field glasses from a pocket. “Stopping for the night, or the calm before the storm, I wonder? You have the watch arranged, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir. Two-hour rotations.”
“Good.” Jamie moved to the fire step, lifted his head carefully, and squinted through the field glasses. “It’s a bit early for – “ He stopped, his breath gone.
A column of grey-clad men advanced toward the trenches, silent and stealthy.
“STAND TO!” Jamie bellowed, drawing his pistol and dropping below the ridge of earthworks. He peered over again and shot, fiercely glad when one of the column dropped.
The men scrambled into action, and all too soon the air was filled with the roar of gunfire and explosives. The young lieutenant next to Jamie fumbled with his bayonet, struggling to fix it into his rifle. The evening seemed to grow darker with astonishing rapidity. It would give cover to the advancing column, but they would have trouble telling friend from foe, and that could be an advantage.
Jamie turned toward Howards, the captain in their unit. “There’s a choke point of trees about fifty yards to the west – they’re all filtering through it. If we close it up, we can trap them. Keep a fair distance and tighten the line at once. Pass the word. Hurry!”
The captain nodded and ran, slipping through the mud, down the length of the trench.
Jamie wheeled on the young lieutenant. “Christ’s sake, pull yourself together! Get that bayonet fixed now!” He unslung his own rifle and demonstrated. “Like this. Clear?”
The lieutenant nodded, and managed to secure his bayonet. “I’ve never –“ He clamped a hand over his mouth, pivoted on one heel, leaned over, and vomited into the mud.
Jamie sighed, took a deep breath, and shouted at the top of his lungs. “OVER THE TOP, LADS!”
Soldiers scrambled up onto the fire step and heaved themselves over the tops of the trenches, weapons in hand, slipping on the muddy earth decimated by shooting and shells. Jamie joined them, keeping his eyes fixed on the column, and took his men further west, slowly advancing toward the column and keeping the German soldiers bottled up. Together, he and his men charged into the fray, aiming in the blinding flashes of explosives, and then hurling himself forward with his bayonet, stabbing and slashing and tearing through flesh. He would not permit himself to think of those he killed as men; they were the enemy, and if he was to survive, the enemy must die. He howled as he drove his bayonet into another body, and felled it, and then pulled it free, feeling a hot splash of blood on his face and hands.
After some time, the German column had diminished, and those remaining retreated, falling back into the woods and disappearing into the darkness. Jamie and his company staggered back into the trenches, fewer in number than before, but – tonight, at least – victorious.
Jamie leaned against the sandbags and struggled for breath. He wiped the blood from his eyes and watched silently as men began dragging in the wounded. He moved toward two rankers who carried a limp body between them – the young lieutenant who’d had such trouble with his bayonet. “Fell at the last minute, sir,” one of the rankers said. “Shot from the woods. Died on the way.”
“We can’t keep him down here,” Jamie replied wearily. “What was his name?”
“Parks, sir. Lieutenant Parks.”
Jamie nodded. “God rest his soul. You – see if you can find my orderly. Waterson’s his name. And whoever’s in charge of registration.” He moved toward the young lieutenant’s body and looked at the still, white face scarcely visible in the feeble moonlight. How old had he been? Eighteen? Twenty, at most?
“Nice lad,” the remaining ranker said. “Bit toffee-nosed, but nice.”
Jamie closed the staring eyes. “What day is it?”
“It’s July thirteenth, sir. The fourteenth now, I reckon.”
“Christ almighty,” Jamie said softly. They’d held this Godforsaken patch of ground for three weeks now. It seemed an interminable time. He would be twenty-nine in less than a week. He wondered if he’d make it to his thirtieth birthday – or indeed, to his twenty-ninth.
He touched his tunic, where Jim’s letter reposed, for luck.
*
My dearest Jamie,
You may need to read this letter at intervals, for I’ve quite a lot to tell you. Most importantly, I hope that this reaches you in time for Christmas – I think I’ve timed it correctly, but I know letters and other post can go astray. I do hope, though! You’ll find the enclosed parcel more silly than not – I hope you followed the instructions and opened it first, because I intend to explain it to you. If not, please do that now, whilst I wait. Have you done it? Splendid, I knew you could follow orders as well as give them. First of all, the stocking is from Pansy, with best wishes for a very happy Christmas. I asked her to knit a stocking for you as she’s rather a dab hand with knitting needles – she made that woollen scarf for you last year, you may recall – but I swear, upon my honour, I didn’t ask her to make it of red and white stripes! I thought she’d manage a sober affair of khaki, an entirely appropriate colour for a soldier. It was rather droll, though, so I didn’t scold her too much.
I do hope you liked the little gifts. Pansy wanted to send all sorts of bulky and extravagant things, but I explained to her that your orderly was not a dray-horse and could not be expected to haul around trunks, and finally persuaded her to contain her inclination to excess. She’s been on a buying frenzy since moving into the flat with her friend Beatrice. Last week she sent a ham to one of her beaux in France. A ham, I ask you! How she managed that I’ve no idea. Be ever so grateful you didn’t receive an entire salmon, old man. In any case, the playing-cards are for long and restless nights, the socks (not red and white, you will please observe) are rather dull, I admit, but practical – res ipsa loquitur, the sugar mice and chocolates are to preserve your sweet disposition, and the coffee and tea are for when the sugar mice and chocolates run out or simply fail to do the trick.
Of course Christmas will be a sad occasion. Mother and Dad have already decided to cancel their traditional Christmas Day party as it doesn’t seem right to revel when so many of our lads can’t celebrate properly. Besides, home isn’t a pleasant place lately; my father, for reasons best known to himself, is in a fearful wax about Ireland and Home Rule, and my poor mother doesn’t dare to say a word. I visited for Sunday dinner a few weeks ago and listened to him rattle on about it until I got quite impatient and asked him if the Irish had stopped buying his bathtubs. For a moment I thought he was going to strike me, he was so angry. Truly I didn’t mean to provoke him – much – but he will go on and forces us all to listen. My heart aches for my mother, who still has family in Ireland, but Father has forbidden her to correspond with them.
For my part, I shouldn’t think I will be able to celebrate at all. I shall save it all up for your homecoming. Talking of homecomings, how lucky your brother is to have a furlough for Christmas! I received the kindest note and invitation from your mother, wishing me a happy Christmas and asking me to pay a call on her and to meet your brother. I must say I’m most curious, simply because of what you’ve told me of him, and I’m quite looking forward to meeting him in the flesh.
Christmas at the War Office is a somewhat dreary prospect as well, though some hardy soul has taken pains to ensure that the Christmas spirit doesn’t pass us by altogether. Some one, I don’t know who, has brought in a tree and decorated it with scraps of tinsel and ribbon and cotton-wool, and Captain Harte has lugged a gramophone in along with a dozen or so records, but the thing skips and scratches abominably, and poor Enrico Caruso sounds as if he has a terrible case of hiccoughs.
But how trifling these complaints are. I know you will chide me and that you told me not to withhold anything to spare you, but I must tell you what I saw yesterday. Colonel McCarthy assembled two or three dozen of us and had us convene for a film. I couldn’t think why, unless it was more Christmas absurdity. But what he showed us, Jamie – it was a film someone had taken at the front in France, and I am both horrified and humbled by what I saw and because I now know what you must endure every day. It wasn’t a news-reel, Jamie – I don’t think this sort of thing would be shown to moving-picture audiences. I saw ‘no-man’s land’ for the first time, all barbed wire and torn earth and smoke. I saw men desolate, starving, mortally wounded, and finally, bodies stacked like firewood. I saw a trench fire-bombed and imagined the dying screams of the poor soldiers trapped inside.
And though I’ve no idea where the film was recorded, I looked for you. I know that’s absurd – how many hundreds of thousands of men are fighting this war? But I did, nonetheless, hoping and fearing at once. And the effect on some of the fellows there – some had to leave, they were so overcome, and I saw more than one man crying silently, but unashamedly. It has not been so long since some of them were in the trenches themselves, suffering and struggling to survive in that terrible, terrible devastation. Oh, Jamie, if I were only with you! I could not hope to remove your sorrows and fears, but surely a burden shared is a burden diminished – and yet I understand why I was refused re-enlistment. If my leg played up during a shelling, or a shooting, I should be utterly helpless. And yet there is a lingering resentment in my heart, the core of which is a desire to be near to you, my dear friend.
1917 has been a very hard year for everyone, Jamie. I had hoped to see you at least once; it was the bitterest disappointment to learn that your home leave had been cancelled. But my petty concerns are nothing when compared with the very real agony you must suffer daily, and I ask your forgiveness. Upon re-reading this letter I see it is increasingly full of gloom, and I had very firmly resolved not to send you gloomy letters, but this time I shall leave it. Why? I can’t say. My disposition is not ordinarily a sour one, and yet I feel compelled to share the truth of my heart with you.
I have been attending daily Mass (there are contradictions and complications herein that I must disentangle, I know, but good Lord, I’ve been dreary enough for one letter) and I pray that 1918 will see the end of this horrifying war and that you will come home. When I pray for these two things, I fervently hope it is not too selfish, too much to ask, that your bravery and goodness will not go unrewarded. Hold fast, Jamie, and keep yourself safe until the guns fall silent at last. My heart, and every prayer I can muster, goes with you.
Yours,
Jim
A postscript, written some hours after this letter: I have exchanged letters with Albert Narracott, the boy who sold Joey to me. He enlisted, as I expected, and was most kind and sympathetic when I relayed to him the circumstances of the loss of our mounts. Though it pains me to think of those wonderful creatures in enemy hands, I pray that their spirit will carry them through misfortune. And I thought it quite extraordinary that we should cross paths via post after all this time. Evidently he’d received the letter and drawings I’d sent him and searched for me – and now he’s abroad and I’m home. Strange, is it not?
I’m so sorry for the tone of this. I promise my next correspondence will be much cheerier.
J
*
Jamie knew his feet were dragging on the ground, kicking up a small cloud of dust that travelled with him as he moved, but he couldn’t bring himself to a livelier march. Dysentery had hit the company hard, killed several men, and left him feeling unmanned and fragile, though he was almost certain he was over the worst of it. Still, better to be sick in the heat of summer rather than in the unmerciful frost of winter – so much pleasanter to drop one’s trousers every twenty minutes in warm weather.
Jamie, as the senior officer, should have had a mount, but all the available horses were dragging guns and carts, limbers and the field-kitchen. The infantry followed behind in a snaking, slow column. The march was a silent one, for the most part; there was muttered conversation here and there, but most men hadn’t the strength for more than picking up one foot and setting it in front of the other. They walked as if asleep, lurching along and shuffling their feet, uniforms dusty and heads bent in their basin helmets. There was a hospital four miles ahead at the end of the rail line, or so they’d been told – nobody knew if it had been bombed to shards, since the fighting along the railway had been fierce for the past few days, and reports were that most of the Gordonstoun Highlanders and the Flintshire Fusiliers had been decimated in skirmish after skirmish.
As he walked, Jamie took out Jim’s latest letter and read it. Jim had made good on his promise to stay cheery since his unhappy Christmas letter, and although Jamie had urged him to write in whatever mood took him, he’d refused, insisting that Jamie had plenty to endure without moaning and groaning from England. The truth was that Jamie would have cherished – and did in fact cherish – any letter from Jim, not just the cheerful ones. Jim’s letters were his bulwark of sanity. When the constant barrage of shelling and gunfire ceased for moments or days or a week and Jamie assessed the carnage that followed, seeing bodies blown to shreds, bodies intact, men wounded and crying feebly for their mothers, it was the thought of Jim’s soft voice, his tall, lean body, his sweet and sunny disposition, that kept Jamie from giving up.
He had seen it before – men who simply sat down, or lay upon the duckboards in the trenches, and faded away. Their bodies lived on for a while, moved and breathed and even fired their weapons, but they were dead, and the guns found their mark and ended things for good, and their dead eyes, at the very end, always brimmed with relief. It would be easy to give up, to let the maelstrom take him, but Jim waited for him in England; James Riordan Augustine Nicholls was Jamie’s light and salvation at the end of this hellish, bleak corridor.
Evening was falling, bringing with it a pleasantly cool breeze from the Marne, not far away. Jamie strained for the last few words of Jim’s letter, then carefully tucked it back into his tunic. There would be time, he hoped, once they reached the hospital, for a respite, time to get his strength back and to write Jim.
He glanced up and squinted against the setting sun. There was a train churning toward them some distance away – they were on a flat expanse of land, surrounded by barley fields, and the length was tricky to gauge. A quarter mile at most, though, and they were no more than a mile from their destination.
“Looks like it’s stopping, sir,” said a young private trudging beside Jamie.
“In the middle of nowhere? Doesn’t seem likely.” Jamie shaded his eyes with a hand and peered at the train. Indeed, the smoke rose from its stack in a fairly straight column rather than being blown back, and its speed was diminishing as it drew closer and closer. Jamie frowned, then shouted, “Halt!”
The company stumbled to a halt, and Jamie, fully alert despite the exhaustion of his body and spirit, strode forward, then froze. The train had stopped, and soldiers were pouring out – grey-uniformed German soldiers.
“Jesus Christ almighty,” Jamie whispered, then raised his voice. “Right flank, quick march! Get into the bloody field, lads, both sides! On your bellies!”
The roar of gunfire and the screams of whistling shells shattered the early twilight calm as the Germans, fresh, healthy, and ready for a fight, advanced mercilessly on the decimated British battalion. With no trenches for retreat or shelter, combat soon turned close, hand-to-hand and bloody. The barley fields on either side of the tracks were trampled down, and all too soon the air was filled with the smell of blood and waste, gunpowder smoke and sundered earth, and the terrible sound of men screaming.
Jamie crawled on his belly next to the young private who’d pointed out the train. The private was crying; he’d taken a bullet in the arm and was trying to stanch the blood as he crawled, but it poured through his fingers with frightening speed, and at last he curled up and whimpered in pain.
“Get up, lad,” Jamie hissed. “Come on, damn you, get up! Don’t lose heart now – there’s a hospital just a little ways off—“
“I can’t,” the boy moaned. “I can’t, sir. Oh, God almighty, it hurts, it hurts –“
Jamie looked desperately around, seeing little but the golden stalks of barley and the occasional burst of fire. “Come on,” he whispered. “We’ll retreat a bit. I’ll get the ambulances to find you – God willing they’ll be along soon enough, with the hospital close.” And if it hasn’t been destroyed.
“Don’t leave me!” The lad clutched at Jamie’s sleeve. “Don’t –“
“Shh!” Jamie heard a rustling noise behind him and looked over his shoulder. A German soldier, no more than twenty, stood staring down at them, his expression a mingling of terror and stunned surprise. Jamie rolled on his back and held one hand up, feeling for his pistol with his other. “Wait,” he said. His German escaped him altogether.
The young soldier held his bayoneted rifle uneasily, as if it were about to bite him. All at once he raised it above his head and gave a shriek.
“No!” Jamie cried, and drew his pistol, but as he fired, the bayonet arced downward and drove into his side. He gasped in shock and agony, and screamed as the soldier’s body toppled onto his, driving the blade deep.
The dead man’s weight crushed the breath from his body, and he felt the blade inside him, a searing, excruciating pain that seemed to split him in two. He opened his mouth to scream again, but no sound emerged but a whistling gasp like a teakettle gathering steam. The pain tore at him with sharp teeth, and his vision dimmed.
Jim, come and find me. It hurts.
“Sir? Colonel Stewart?”
*
Dearest Jamie,
This will be just a short letter as I’m on my luncheon hour – in fact, I’m writing this in a notebook on the tram on the way back to my office, which accounts for the terrible penmanship – I’m sorry for that! I’ve just had the most extraordinary meeting, though, and wanted to tell you about it, as well as wish you felicitations of the day. Thirty years old! Do you feel terribly wise now? I should think you must – I seem to recall thinking that when I reached thirty, I would be a veritable Solomon, but here I am, just three years on your heels, and I don’t think I’ve even begun to approach anything like wisdom. At any rate, I am sending you a birthday packet with the usual trifles and a rather good book I read this spring.
Which brings me to the other topic of this letter. (wasn’t that a graceful segue? I thought so) It’s like this, Jamie: I fell into conversation with one of the chaps at the office whose uncle owns a publishing house here in London, and it seems the fellow believes that there will be a great surge of literature following the war – apparently there always is – and he’ll be seeking editors. I thought the attitude was more than a trifle cynical, but I have been looking for something to do once the war ends – soon, please God – and this might be just the ticket. What do you think? So, to-day I dashed off to meet him and found the place awfully congenial, and he was quite pleasant, not at all the cigar-chewing brusque sort I’d pictured, and he gave me an unedited or ‘raw’ manuscript, told me to have at it and bring it back next week, and he’d make a judgment from there.
I’m rather excited about it, more so because it may happen soon. There are rumours of talks, Jamie, and the possibility of a cease-fire, or better yet, an armistice, has me positively over the moon. That you might come home, that I might see you soon – I cannot tell you how joyful I am at the thought. I’m doing my best to contain myself – and since I haven’t received a letter from you yet that I might reply, am clearly not succeeding. But can you blame me? On that score, I gather you haven’t had time to write, so please don’t take this as a chastisement. Truly, I’m not impatient at all. (Did that ring with the utmost sincerity? No, I thought not. Picture me instead tapping my foot and drumming my fingers – that’s a far more accurate portrait of the way things stand here)
London is beastly hot and smells abominable, and I have fallen in love with it, inasmuch as I am already in love and thought I hadn’t any more room in my heart. But the city is a lively and persuasive mistress, Jamie, and I hope that when you return you can show me the London you know and love, for I know you spent a great deal of time here as a youth. To-night some of the chaps and I are going to the moving pictures, one of those nonsensical Wild Western pictures where the cowboy rescues the fair damsel from a swiftly moving train at the imminent risk of his own life. Why the damsel is incapable of simply rolling off the railway tracks is a mystery that strains the limits of human imagination, but there you have it.
I hope to get this in the afternoon post, so I shall end here, as my tram stop is approaching, and await your next letter. As always, you have the deepest regard and everlasting affection from your
Jim
*
Author: Alex
Fandom: War Horse
Rating: Varies, G to NC-17
Pairing: Jamie Stewart/Jim Nicholls
Disclaimer: No money made, no harm intended. Michael Morpurgo owns War Horse and its characters.
Summary: Captured in battle, Major Jamie Stewart faces an uncertain fate.
Warnings: Violence, explicit sexual content.
Notes: Canon divergent [see pairing]
Can also be read on AO3
*
He’d scarcely come from leave and London
Still was carrying a leather case
When he surprised headquarters pillbox
And sat down sweating in the filthy place.
---Edmund Blunden, The Welcome
*
Dearest Jamie,
I write this letter scant hours from the moment we bade each other farewell on the platform, although I freely confess that already it seems that months have passed since then. To-day my work sits neglected; I’ve moved it from one side of my desk to another, but have not managed to progress much beyond that. I shall have to make up my unfinished tasks this week-end, which suits me well enough. I think time will find itself heavy upon my hands in the days and weeks to come.
Oh – such gloom! You have my most profound apologies. I do not want the first letter you receive after your all-too-brief home leave to be an unhappy one. On the contrary, what I wish to say is this: For as long as I live, I shall never forget your last words to me this morning. Indeed, I intend to cherish them forever, and what’s more, I expect – nay, I demand to hear them again when you return home to stay. Until that happy day should arrive, know that you are ever in my thoughts and prayers.
I can’t write anymore today, Jamie. Think of me.
Jim
*
The birds and beasts, eminently sensible creatures that they were, had fled the northern portion of the Bois de Troncs; only men remained, hell-bent on destroying each other. They huddled in the trenches that limned the wood’s narrow valley and emerged in and out of endless passages of time, shooting, shelling, striking with bayonets, listening to gunfire and the drone of aeroplanes and the screams of the wounded and the dying.
Hold fast to the last man.
Jamie rested his head against a sandbag and savoured the last cigarette he would likely have for weeks. He was the only senior officer around for miles, and he’d collected a small – a very small – battalion command consisting of one young captain and three lieutenants, all of whom appeared to be wet behind the ears, terrified, and confused. He’d laid out their strategy, ordered the word passed, and now took a moment’s respite in the stinking, muddy trench where he and several others had taken refuge during a shelling, lifting his eyes as another aeroplane flew overhead, strafing the Germans’ observational balloons.
He put his hand inside his tunic and withdrew Jim’s latest missive that had come with the customary packet of useful and amusing items. Unfolding it one-handed, he read the neatly penned letter and felt a pang of regret. He hadn’t had the opportunity to write in nearly a month; there had been snatches of available time, but no way to get a letter through the lines. Nor had he received anything for the same amount of time. He’d received some two dozen letters from Jim in the year and few months since his leave, and he’d read them all to shreds except for the first short note Jim had written the day he’d left. That one was in his kit bag, folded tightly and wrapped in a bit of oilskin. If he died, anyone who found it wouldn’t think much of the contents, but they meant everything in the world to Jamie. He’d memorised every word. If he did make it home alive, he’d take every measure to preserve it forever.
This letter, though, was as agreeably cheery as most of Jim’s missives – or at least it was on the surface. A hint of worry and fear had permeated Jim’s letters of late, and Jamie supposed it was no wonder. He could only imagine the lurid reports in the newspapers, written by correspondents sent to observe and then convey the horrors of war. One such fellow had travelled with his company for a month and had left a far different man than the affable soul he’d been at the start of his journey – his eyes were as haunted as any soldier’s. Jamie had tried to be sympathetic, but he’d seen too much death and pain to expend much sympathy for a man who didn’t have to stare his own mortality in the face day after exhausting day, and who was headed back to London, to comfort and home, to write up a story that couldn’t possibly tell the whole truth.
Jamie brushed his filthy hair from his forehead with an even filthier hand. The day was overcast, and night would descend shortly, bringing some relief from the barrage. The Germans wouldn’t fight what they couldn’t see. He re-read a passage about Pansy’s debutante party: extravagant and silly, according to Jim, and he’d quite drowned in a sea of girls in white gowns. A pity there weren’t men enough to go round.
One of the young lieutenants in the trench with him touched his arm. “Colonel.”
Startled, Jamie glared at the young man. “What is it?”
“The guns have stopped, sir.”
Jamie listened to the soft susurration of wind through the heavy summer leaves and frowned. “So they have. Early, isn’t it?” He stuffed the letter back into his tunic and pulled his field glasses from a pocket. “Stopping for the night, or the calm before the storm, I wonder? You have the watch arranged, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir. Two-hour rotations.”
“Good.” Jamie moved to the fire step, lifted his head carefully, and squinted through the field glasses. “It’s a bit early for – “ He stopped, his breath gone.
A column of grey-clad men advanced toward the trenches, silent and stealthy.
“STAND TO!” Jamie bellowed, drawing his pistol and dropping below the ridge of earthworks. He peered over again and shot, fiercely glad when one of the column dropped.
The men scrambled into action, and all too soon the air was filled with the roar of gunfire and explosives. The young lieutenant next to Jamie fumbled with his bayonet, struggling to fix it into his rifle. The evening seemed to grow darker with astonishing rapidity. It would give cover to the advancing column, but they would have trouble telling friend from foe, and that could be an advantage.
Jamie turned toward Howards, the captain in their unit. “There’s a choke point of trees about fifty yards to the west – they’re all filtering through it. If we close it up, we can trap them. Keep a fair distance and tighten the line at once. Pass the word. Hurry!”
The captain nodded and ran, slipping through the mud, down the length of the trench.
Jamie wheeled on the young lieutenant. “Christ’s sake, pull yourself together! Get that bayonet fixed now!” He unslung his own rifle and demonstrated. “Like this. Clear?”
The lieutenant nodded, and managed to secure his bayonet. “I’ve never –“ He clamped a hand over his mouth, pivoted on one heel, leaned over, and vomited into the mud.
Jamie sighed, took a deep breath, and shouted at the top of his lungs. “OVER THE TOP, LADS!”
Soldiers scrambled up onto the fire step and heaved themselves over the tops of the trenches, weapons in hand, slipping on the muddy earth decimated by shooting and shells. Jamie joined them, keeping his eyes fixed on the column, and took his men further west, slowly advancing toward the column and keeping the German soldiers bottled up. Together, he and his men charged into the fray, aiming in the blinding flashes of explosives, and then hurling himself forward with his bayonet, stabbing and slashing and tearing through flesh. He would not permit himself to think of those he killed as men; they were the enemy, and if he was to survive, the enemy must die. He howled as he drove his bayonet into another body, and felled it, and then pulled it free, feeling a hot splash of blood on his face and hands.
After some time, the German column had diminished, and those remaining retreated, falling back into the woods and disappearing into the darkness. Jamie and his company staggered back into the trenches, fewer in number than before, but – tonight, at least – victorious.
Jamie leaned against the sandbags and struggled for breath. He wiped the blood from his eyes and watched silently as men began dragging in the wounded. He moved toward two rankers who carried a limp body between them – the young lieutenant who’d had such trouble with his bayonet. “Fell at the last minute, sir,” one of the rankers said. “Shot from the woods. Died on the way.”
“We can’t keep him down here,” Jamie replied wearily. “What was his name?”
“Parks, sir. Lieutenant Parks.”
Jamie nodded. “God rest his soul. You – see if you can find my orderly. Waterson’s his name. And whoever’s in charge of registration.” He moved toward the young lieutenant’s body and looked at the still, white face scarcely visible in the feeble moonlight. How old had he been? Eighteen? Twenty, at most?
“Nice lad,” the remaining ranker said. “Bit toffee-nosed, but nice.”
Jamie closed the staring eyes. “What day is it?”
“It’s July thirteenth, sir. The fourteenth now, I reckon.”
“Christ almighty,” Jamie said softly. They’d held this Godforsaken patch of ground for three weeks now. It seemed an interminable time. He would be twenty-nine in less than a week. He wondered if he’d make it to his thirtieth birthday – or indeed, to his twenty-ninth.
He touched his tunic, where Jim’s letter reposed, for luck.
*
My dearest Jamie,
You may need to read this letter at intervals, for I’ve quite a lot to tell you. Most importantly, I hope that this reaches you in time for Christmas – I think I’ve timed it correctly, but I know letters and other post can go astray. I do hope, though! You’ll find the enclosed parcel more silly than not – I hope you followed the instructions and opened it first, because I intend to explain it to you. If not, please do that now, whilst I wait. Have you done it? Splendid, I knew you could follow orders as well as give them. First of all, the stocking is from Pansy, with best wishes for a very happy Christmas. I asked her to knit a stocking for you as she’s rather a dab hand with knitting needles – she made that woollen scarf for you last year, you may recall – but I swear, upon my honour, I didn’t ask her to make it of red and white stripes! I thought she’d manage a sober affair of khaki, an entirely appropriate colour for a soldier. It was rather droll, though, so I didn’t scold her too much.
I do hope you liked the little gifts. Pansy wanted to send all sorts of bulky and extravagant things, but I explained to her that your orderly was not a dray-horse and could not be expected to haul around trunks, and finally persuaded her to contain her inclination to excess. She’s been on a buying frenzy since moving into the flat with her friend Beatrice. Last week she sent a ham to one of her beaux in France. A ham, I ask you! How she managed that I’ve no idea. Be ever so grateful you didn’t receive an entire salmon, old man. In any case, the playing-cards are for long and restless nights, the socks (not red and white, you will please observe) are rather dull, I admit, but practical – res ipsa loquitur, the sugar mice and chocolates are to preserve your sweet disposition, and the coffee and tea are for when the sugar mice and chocolates run out or simply fail to do the trick.
Of course Christmas will be a sad occasion. Mother and Dad have already decided to cancel their traditional Christmas Day party as it doesn’t seem right to revel when so many of our lads can’t celebrate properly. Besides, home isn’t a pleasant place lately; my father, for reasons best known to himself, is in a fearful wax about Ireland and Home Rule, and my poor mother doesn’t dare to say a word. I visited for Sunday dinner a few weeks ago and listened to him rattle on about it until I got quite impatient and asked him if the Irish had stopped buying his bathtubs. For a moment I thought he was going to strike me, he was so angry. Truly I didn’t mean to provoke him – much – but he will go on and forces us all to listen. My heart aches for my mother, who still has family in Ireland, but Father has forbidden her to correspond with them.
For my part, I shouldn’t think I will be able to celebrate at all. I shall save it all up for your homecoming. Talking of homecomings, how lucky your brother is to have a furlough for Christmas! I received the kindest note and invitation from your mother, wishing me a happy Christmas and asking me to pay a call on her and to meet your brother. I must say I’m most curious, simply because of what you’ve told me of him, and I’m quite looking forward to meeting him in the flesh.
Christmas at the War Office is a somewhat dreary prospect as well, though some hardy soul has taken pains to ensure that the Christmas spirit doesn’t pass us by altogether. Some one, I don’t know who, has brought in a tree and decorated it with scraps of tinsel and ribbon and cotton-wool, and Captain Harte has lugged a gramophone in along with a dozen or so records, but the thing skips and scratches abominably, and poor Enrico Caruso sounds as if he has a terrible case of hiccoughs.
But how trifling these complaints are. I know you will chide me and that you told me not to withhold anything to spare you, but I must tell you what I saw yesterday. Colonel McCarthy assembled two or three dozen of us and had us convene for a film. I couldn’t think why, unless it was more Christmas absurdity. But what he showed us, Jamie – it was a film someone had taken at the front in France, and I am both horrified and humbled by what I saw and because I now know what you must endure every day. It wasn’t a news-reel, Jamie – I don’t think this sort of thing would be shown to moving-picture audiences. I saw ‘no-man’s land’ for the first time, all barbed wire and torn earth and smoke. I saw men desolate, starving, mortally wounded, and finally, bodies stacked like firewood. I saw a trench fire-bombed and imagined the dying screams of the poor soldiers trapped inside.
And though I’ve no idea where the film was recorded, I looked for you. I know that’s absurd – how many hundreds of thousands of men are fighting this war? But I did, nonetheless, hoping and fearing at once. And the effect on some of the fellows there – some had to leave, they were so overcome, and I saw more than one man crying silently, but unashamedly. It has not been so long since some of them were in the trenches themselves, suffering and struggling to survive in that terrible, terrible devastation. Oh, Jamie, if I were only with you! I could not hope to remove your sorrows and fears, but surely a burden shared is a burden diminished – and yet I understand why I was refused re-enlistment. If my leg played up during a shelling, or a shooting, I should be utterly helpless. And yet there is a lingering resentment in my heart, the core of which is a desire to be near to you, my dear friend.
1917 has been a very hard year for everyone, Jamie. I had hoped to see you at least once; it was the bitterest disappointment to learn that your home leave had been cancelled. But my petty concerns are nothing when compared with the very real agony you must suffer daily, and I ask your forgiveness. Upon re-reading this letter I see it is increasingly full of gloom, and I had very firmly resolved not to send you gloomy letters, but this time I shall leave it. Why? I can’t say. My disposition is not ordinarily a sour one, and yet I feel compelled to share the truth of my heart with you.
I have been attending daily Mass (there are contradictions and complications herein that I must disentangle, I know, but good Lord, I’ve been dreary enough for one letter) and I pray that 1918 will see the end of this horrifying war and that you will come home. When I pray for these two things, I fervently hope it is not too selfish, too much to ask, that your bravery and goodness will not go unrewarded. Hold fast, Jamie, and keep yourself safe until the guns fall silent at last. My heart, and every prayer I can muster, goes with you.
Yours,
Jim
A postscript, written some hours after this letter: I have exchanged letters with Albert Narracott, the boy who sold Joey to me. He enlisted, as I expected, and was most kind and sympathetic when I relayed to him the circumstances of the loss of our mounts. Though it pains me to think of those wonderful creatures in enemy hands, I pray that their spirit will carry them through misfortune. And I thought it quite extraordinary that we should cross paths via post after all this time. Evidently he’d received the letter and drawings I’d sent him and searched for me – and now he’s abroad and I’m home. Strange, is it not?
I’m so sorry for the tone of this. I promise my next correspondence will be much cheerier.
J
*
Jamie knew his feet were dragging on the ground, kicking up a small cloud of dust that travelled with him as he moved, but he couldn’t bring himself to a livelier march. Dysentery had hit the company hard, killed several men, and left him feeling unmanned and fragile, though he was almost certain he was over the worst of it. Still, better to be sick in the heat of summer rather than in the unmerciful frost of winter – so much pleasanter to drop one’s trousers every twenty minutes in warm weather.
Jamie, as the senior officer, should have had a mount, but all the available horses were dragging guns and carts, limbers and the field-kitchen. The infantry followed behind in a snaking, slow column. The march was a silent one, for the most part; there was muttered conversation here and there, but most men hadn’t the strength for more than picking up one foot and setting it in front of the other. They walked as if asleep, lurching along and shuffling their feet, uniforms dusty and heads bent in their basin helmets. There was a hospital four miles ahead at the end of the rail line, or so they’d been told – nobody knew if it had been bombed to shards, since the fighting along the railway had been fierce for the past few days, and reports were that most of the Gordonstoun Highlanders and the Flintshire Fusiliers had been decimated in skirmish after skirmish.
As he walked, Jamie took out Jim’s latest letter and read it. Jim had made good on his promise to stay cheery since his unhappy Christmas letter, and although Jamie had urged him to write in whatever mood took him, he’d refused, insisting that Jamie had plenty to endure without moaning and groaning from England. The truth was that Jamie would have cherished – and did in fact cherish – any letter from Jim, not just the cheerful ones. Jim’s letters were his bulwark of sanity. When the constant barrage of shelling and gunfire ceased for moments or days or a week and Jamie assessed the carnage that followed, seeing bodies blown to shreds, bodies intact, men wounded and crying feebly for their mothers, it was the thought of Jim’s soft voice, his tall, lean body, his sweet and sunny disposition, that kept Jamie from giving up.
He had seen it before – men who simply sat down, or lay upon the duckboards in the trenches, and faded away. Their bodies lived on for a while, moved and breathed and even fired their weapons, but they were dead, and the guns found their mark and ended things for good, and their dead eyes, at the very end, always brimmed with relief. It would be easy to give up, to let the maelstrom take him, but Jim waited for him in England; James Riordan Augustine Nicholls was Jamie’s light and salvation at the end of this hellish, bleak corridor.
Evening was falling, bringing with it a pleasantly cool breeze from the Marne, not far away. Jamie strained for the last few words of Jim’s letter, then carefully tucked it back into his tunic. There would be time, he hoped, once they reached the hospital, for a respite, time to get his strength back and to write Jim.
He glanced up and squinted against the setting sun. There was a train churning toward them some distance away – they were on a flat expanse of land, surrounded by barley fields, and the length was tricky to gauge. A quarter mile at most, though, and they were no more than a mile from their destination.
“Looks like it’s stopping, sir,” said a young private trudging beside Jamie.
“In the middle of nowhere? Doesn’t seem likely.” Jamie shaded his eyes with a hand and peered at the train. Indeed, the smoke rose from its stack in a fairly straight column rather than being blown back, and its speed was diminishing as it drew closer and closer. Jamie frowned, then shouted, “Halt!”
The company stumbled to a halt, and Jamie, fully alert despite the exhaustion of his body and spirit, strode forward, then froze. The train had stopped, and soldiers were pouring out – grey-uniformed German soldiers.
“Jesus Christ almighty,” Jamie whispered, then raised his voice. “Right flank, quick march! Get into the bloody field, lads, both sides! On your bellies!”
The roar of gunfire and the screams of whistling shells shattered the early twilight calm as the Germans, fresh, healthy, and ready for a fight, advanced mercilessly on the decimated British battalion. With no trenches for retreat or shelter, combat soon turned close, hand-to-hand and bloody. The barley fields on either side of the tracks were trampled down, and all too soon the air was filled with the smell of blood and waste, gunpowder smoke and sundered earth, and the terrible sound of men screaming.
Jamie crawled on his belly next to the young private who’d pointed out the train. The private was crying; he’d taken a bullet in the arm and was trying to stanch the blood as he crawled, but it poured through his fingers with frightening speed, and at last he curled up and whimpered in pain.
“Get up, lad,” Jamie hissed. “Come on, damn you, get up! Don’t lose heart now – there’s a hospital just a little ways off—“
“I can’t,” the boy moaned. “I can’t, sir. Oh, God almighty, it hurts, it hurts –“
Jamie looked desperately around, seeing little but the golden stalks of barley and the occasional burst of fire. “Come on,” he whispered. “We’ll retreat a bit. I’ll get the ambulances to find you – God willing they’ll be along soon enough, with the hospital close.” And if it hasn’t been destroyed.
“Don’t leave me!” The lad clutched at Jamie’s sleeve. “Don’t –“
“Shh!” Jamie heard a rustling noise behind him and looked over his shoulder. A German soldier, no more than twenty, stood staring down at them, his expression a mingling of terror and stunned surprise. Jamie rolled on his back and held one hand up, feeling for his pistol with his other. “Wait,” he said. His German escaped him altogether.
The young soldier held his bayoneted rifle uneasily, as if it were about to bite him. All at once he raised it above his head and gave a shriek.
“No!” Jamie cried, and drew his pistol, but as he fired, the bayonet arced downward and drove into his side. He gasped in shock and agony, and screamed as the soldier’s body toppled onto his, driving the blade deep.
The dead man’s weight crushed the breath from his body, and he felt the blade inside him, a searing, excruciating pain that seemed to split him in two. He opened his mouth to scream again, but no sound emerged but a whistling gasp like a teakettle gathering steam. The pain tore at him with sharp teeth, and his vision dimmed.
Jim, come and find me. It hurts.
“Sir? Colonel Stewart?”
*
Dearest Jamie,
This will be just a short letter as I’m on my luncheon hour – in fact, I’m writing this in a notebook on the tram on the way back to my office, which accounts for the terrible penmanship – I’m sorry for that! I’ve just had the most extraordinary meeting, though, and wanted to tell you about it, as well as wish you felicitations of the day. Thirty years old! Do you feel terribly wise now? I should think you must – I seem to recall thinking that when I reached thirty, I would be a veritable Solomon, but here I am, just three years on your heels, and I don’t think I’ve even begun to approach anything like wisdom. At any rate, I am sending you a birthday packet with the usual trifles and a rather good book I read this spring.
Which brings me to the other topic of this letter. (wasn’t that a graceful segue? I thought so) It’s like this, Jamie: I fell into conversation with one of the chaps at the office whose uncle owns a publishing house here in London, and it seems the fellow believes that there will be a great surge of literature following the war – apparently there always is – and he’ll be seeking editors. I thought the attitude was more than a trifle cynical, but I have been looking for something to do once the war ends – soon, please God – and this might be just the ticket. What do you think? So, to-day I dashed off to meet him and found the place awfully congenial, and he was quite pleasant, not at all the cigar-chewing brusque sort I’d pictured, and he gave me an unedited or ‘raw’ manuscript, told me to have at it and bring it back next week, and he’d make a judgment from there.
I’m rather excited about it, more so because it may happen soon. There are rumours of talks, Jamie, and the possibility of a cease-fire, or better yet, an armistice, has me positively over the moon. That you might come home, that I might see you soon – I cannot tell you how joyful I am at the thought. I’m doing my best to contain myself – and since I haven’t received a letter from you yet that I might reply, am clearly not succeeding. But can you blame me? On that score, I gather you haven’t had time to write, so please don’t take this as a chastisement. Truly, I’m not impatient at all. (Did that ring with the utmost sincerity? No, I thought not. Picture me instead tapping my foot and drumming my fingers – that’s a far more accurate portrait of the way things stand here)
London is beastly hot and smells abominable, and I have fallen in love with it, inasmuch as I am already in love and thought I hadn’t any more room in my heart. But the city is a lively and persuasive mistress, Jamie, and I hope that when you return you can show me the London you know and love, for I know you spent a great deal of time here as a youth. To-night some of the chaps and I are going to the moving pictures, one of those nonsensical Wild Western pictures where the cowboy rescues the fair damsel from a swiftly moving train at the imminent risk of his own life. Why the damsel is incapable of simply rolling off the railway tracks is a mystery that strains the limits of human imagination, but there you have it.
I hope to get this in the afternoon post, so I shall end here, as my tram stop is approaching, and await your next letter. As always, you have the deepest regard and everlasting affection from your
Jim
*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2012-07-08 01:39 pm (UTC)I love to read Jim's letters, carefully written, but his love shining through in every single word.
Beautifully written, as always, Alex.
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Date: 2012-07-09 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-08 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 03:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-08 08:36 pm (UTC)^actual representation of my face right now
I am equally prepared for a good or tragic outcome, and also, strangely enough, can't decide which I want more. (Sorry, boys, but you are so very, very, very lovely when you're in the worst possible pain... But, no, I think maybe I'll root for a miraculous rescue. They've earned it.)
Your writing is always so beautiful, clear and concise and wonderfully descriptive, and your side characters always spring to life (and then sometimes die, quite tragically, but better to have known them than to have not).
These dear, dear gents. They tear at my heart and console it all at once.
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Date: 2012-07-09 03:07 am (UTC)*petpet* I was dreading writing this chapter because I knew it was going to be nothing but sad. But yes, I'd definitely agree that they are completely beautiful when suffering. Good god, yes. Thank you, thank you so much for the lovely and thoughtful comments! I'm so smitten with these two. :)
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Date: 2012-07-08 10:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 03:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 01:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 05:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-10 01:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-10 02:03 am (UTC)PS - I want to put your Gladstone's Collar fic on my kindle to read during an upcoming trip. Is it all of a piece, or in separate pieces?
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Date: 2012-07-10 02:15 am (UTC)The Gladstone stories are all on AO3 under the Guitar Man series heading, but the stories are listed separately so I don't know if they'll download as a single story. I'm working on a new story for the series,which I think willprobably be the last one for a while, if you want to wait for that. Might be a week or so yet, though.
The AO3 link is http://archiveofourown.org/series/20267
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Date: 2012-07-10 02:22 am (UTC)I'm not leaving til the 19th, so that'd be perfect. Maybe I can throw them into a PDF somehow. Thank you for the link - I've been wanting to read it.
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Date: 2012-07-10 05:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-10 02:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-11 06:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 07:33 am (UTC)(Though I did keep telling Jamie to hurry up and get hurt so he could eventually get home, but oww!)
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Date: 2012-07-09 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 11:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-24 04:35 am (UTC)Is this time period a lifelong interest (I know you had interest in at least some aspects previously), or are you just a quick study? The detail is amazing.
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Date: 2012-08-24 03:23 pm (UTC)Actually, I was never much interested in WWI - I'm a WWII fiend! I'm all beamy at "quick study" - the truth is, once I start writing a period, I get
obsessedinterested and love doing the research. :)