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smackenzieCorporal Simonson's Christmas wish for a quick peace turns out to be no kind of prophecy. The war is still raging a year later, and the battalion is still in France. They have fought at Arras and Ypres and Passchendaele, been shot and shelled and gassed. Lt Fiske is invalided out of the army and Corporal Simonson is promoted to lieutenant, only to be killed during an attempt to break through the Hindenburg Line, the stronger, shorter line to which the Germans retreated in early 1917.
Davies is shot in the arm and catches shrapnel in both legs again. Powell is shot twice in the shoulder. Naylor acquires a pair of rubber boots to deal with the flooding in the trenches but steps on a piece of barbed wire and punctures not only the bottom of the boot but also the bottom of his foot. Captain Harris is shelled, loses his arm at the elbow, and is sent home. Captain Bradford is hit by shrapnel as a shell explodes behind him, catching him in the back and shoulders and nearly taking off his head.
What's left of the battalion celebrates Christmas 1917 in a reserve trench, again cold and muddy and dispirited, although the cards and gifts from home do cheer up the men some.
They are back in the Somme in 1918, fighting over ground they thought they'd alread won, going back to a ruined landscape only some of them remember. There are men in the battalion who joined after 1917 who have never been here and don't know the place, although by now it seems as if every acre in this part of France looks like every other acre – the shell craters are the same, the decimated villages, the destroyed roads, the dead trees, the uprooted fields, the bodies. Everything is mud, everything is dead.
I have never seen any other part of France, Davies writes home. I've been told it was a beautiful country once but there's nothing beautiful left. I do not want to die here.
Once, and only once, does he consider trying to shoot himself in the foot so he can be sent home. He realizes the court-martial would not be worth it. And he can't do what Charteris did, and present himself to the Germans to be killed, because he doesn't want to betray the the rest of his platoon and his company commander by asking to die. He can't do it to his parents, or to his sisters. They are proud of him and he needs to be able to live up to that. When he goes home, he needs to be worthy of their respect.
* * *
When Armistice is declared, the 18 Div is in a reserve trench about thirty miles from the Belgian border. There were slightly over seven hundred men in the battalion when Davies and Powell and Bradford and Cuthbertson stepped off the steamer in Le Havre two and a half years and a lifetime ago. Now there are just under three hundred. There are sixty-one men left in C Company, of whom only nineteen were there in May of 1916, and in Bradford's possession are many neatly-written casualty lists by which he remembers all the men who were wounded and killed and went missing on his watch. He has written more condolence letters home in two and a half years than one man should ever have to write in a lifetime. He has been shot three times, shelled, gassed, frozen, and nearly drowned. It is a miracle that he was never ill, beyond an anomalous three-day cold in the middle of June 1918.
Cuthbertson was shot during the first battle of Passchendaele, but recovered and returned to the battalion, only to be caught by a shell explosion during the defense of Villers-Bretonneux in April 1918, which shredded his leg and hip to the point he was worried he would lose it. The second-worst memory of Bradford's war career, and the most terrifying, is letting Cuthbertson squeeze his hand off as he tries to reassure him and promise he'll look after Victoria and the children should anything happen. Bradford went with the stretcher bearers to the closest dressing station, because he'd been caught by shrapnel too and had been ordered to find someone away from the trenches to look at him, and he talked to Cuthbertson the entire way, even when Cuthbertson was delirious with pain and nothing he said made sense.
He didn't lose his leg. But he was sent back to England and never returned to France, and on Armistice Day he is home in London with the cane he will need the rest of his life.
(When he learned he could keep his leg but he'd be crippled, he wrote to Bradford at the front to say he thought he was lucky that he had only been lamed. Bradford tried to think of it that way, rather than that Cuthbertson's luck had run out when the shell fragments ripped into him.)
When word comes down that the Armistice has been signed, peace declared, and the war ended, Bradford collects all his men to thank them for their service, their bravery, and their heart.
"It has been a great honor and a privilege to lead this company," he tells them. "You have done your country and your families proud, and I hold you all in very high esteem. I wish nothing more for you than that you are able to go home and live the rest of your lives in peace, because by god you have earned it."
They cheer him and each other and the king, and then someone calls for a moment of silence for all the men who lost their lives in this wretched war, and Bradford thinks about Armstrong and Harris and platoon commanders and privates and his poor hardworking quartermaster, who was killed by a shell even as he was being taken to a casualty clearing station.
He thinks about Cuthbertson, home and safe in London with his beautiful wife and children and his cigarettes and his lighthearted teasing and his fancy cane, and he thinks about Davies, who saved his life early in the war by shoving him into a shell crater and who waited by his bedside for him to wake up after surgery to repair the damage made when he was shot in the side and broke three ribs.
I would not have survived this war without either of you, Bradford thinks. And even if I had, I would not still be sane.
He wonders what kind of future there is for him and Davies, if it is even a future Davies would wish to share. Now that the war is over, he might get to find out.
(In a few months, after the battalion has gone home and the men have tried with varying degrees of success to fit themselves back into normal peacetime life, Bradford and Davies have occasion to call each other by their first names. Bradford adjusts easily to this, although Davies still sometimes calls him "Captain" to be sarcastic or joking.)
Several years later, Bradford's sister covinces him to write a memoir of his time at the front, as a kind of therapy. Trying to remember everything and order it in a readable fashion gives him nightmares, and more than once he has a flashback in the middle of London, but the process of composing a memoir of the worst two and a half years he will ever experience is cathartic in its own way.
It takes him four years to write, but the book is finally published in 1929. He wants to title it A Dark Day and a Cold One, but Amelia talks him out of it. He settles on They Call It Peace, a title taken from the Tacitus he quoted to Cuthbertson at Thiepval, with the line itself as an inscription to help make his ironic point - Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant [They make a desolation and they call it peace]. The dedication page reads:
Dedicated with love and gratitude to
Amelia
Bertie
Thomas
And all the boys who never came home
Bradford hopes it is a fitting tribute, because it is the only tribute he knows how to offer.
words: 1384
total words: 51,186
note: if anyone knows how to pronounce "passchendaele" or "thiepval", please let me know.
Davies is shot in the arm and catches shrapnel in both legs again. Powell is shot twice in the shoulder. Naylor acquires a pair of rubber boots to deal with the flooding in the trenches but steps on a piece of barbed wire and punctures not only the bottom of the boot but also the bottom of his foot. Captain Harris is shelled, loses his arm at the elbow, and is sent home. Captain Bradford is hit by shrapnel as a shell explodes behind him, catching him in the back and shoulders and nearly taking off his head.
What's left of the battalion celebrates Christmas 1917 in a reserve trench, again cold and muddy and dispirited, although the cards and gifts from home do cheer up the men some.
They are back in the Somme in 1918, fighting over ground they thought they'd alread won, going back to a ruined landscape only some of them remember. There are men in the battalion who joined after 1917 who have never been here and don't know the place, although by now it seems as if every acre in this part of France looks like every other acre – the shell craters are the same, the decimated villages, the destroyed roads, the dead trees, the uprooted fields, the bodies. Everything is mud, everything is dead.
I have never seen any other part of France, Davies writes home. I've been told it was a beautiful country once but there's nothing beautiful left. I do not want to die here.
Once, and only once, does he consider trying to shoot himself in the foot so he can be sent home. He realizes the court-martial would not be worth it. And he can't do what Charteris did, and present himself to the Germans to be killed, because he doesn't want to betray the the rest of his platoon and his company commander by asking to die. He can't do it to his parents, or to his sisters. They are proud of him and he needs to be able to live up to that. When he goes home, he needs to be worthy of their respect.
When Armistice is declared, the 18 Div is in a reserve trench about thirty miles from the Belgian border. There were slightly over seven hundred men in the battalion when Davies and Powell and Bradford and Cuthbertson stepped off the steamer in Le Havre two and a half years and a lifetime ago. Now there are just under three hundred. There are sixty-one men left in C Company, of whom only nineteen were there in May of 1916, and in Bradford's possession are many neatly-written casualty lists by which he remembers all the men who were wounded and killed and went missing on his watch. He has written more condolence letters home in two and a half years than one man should ever have to write in a lifetime. He has been shot three times, shelled, gassed, frozen, and nearly drowned. It is a miracle that he was never ill, beyond an anomalous three-day cold in the middle of June 1918.
Cuthbertson was shot during the first battle of Passchendaele, but recovered and returned to the battalion, only to be caught by a shell explosion during the defense of Villers-Bretonneux in April 1918, which shredded his leg and hip to the point he was worried he would lose it. The second-worst memory of Bradford's war career, and the most terrifying, is letting Cuthbertson squeeze his hand off as he tries to reassure him and promise he'll look after Victoria and the children should anything happen. Bradford went with the stretcher bearers to the closest dressing station, because he'd been caught by shrapnel too and had been ordered to find someone away from the trenches to look at him, and he talked to Cuthbertson the entire way, even when Cuthbertson was delirious with pain and nothing he said made sense.
He didn't lose his leg. But he was sent back to England and never returned to France, and on Armistice Day he is home in London with the cane he will need the rest of his life.
(When he learned he could keep his leg but he'd be crippled, he wrote to Bradford at the front to say he thought he was lucky that he had only been lamed. Bradford tried to think of it that way, rather than that Cuthbertson's luck had run out when the shell fragments ripped into him.)
When word comes down that the Armistice has been signed, peace declared, and the war ended, Bradford collects all his men to thank them for their service, their bravery, and their heart.
"It has been a great honor and a privilege to lead this company," he tells them. "You have done your country and your families proud, and I hold you all in very high esteem. I wish nothing more for you than that you are able to go home and live the rest of your lives in peace, because by god you have earned it."
They cheer him and each other and the king, and then someone calls for a moment of silence for all the men who lost their lives in this wretched war, and Bradford thinks about Armstrong and Harris and platoon commanders and privates and his poor hardworking quartermaster, who was killed by a shell even as he was being taken to a casualty clearing station.
He thinks about Cuthbertson, home and safe in London with his beautiful wife and children and his cigarettes and his lighthearted teasing and his fancy cane, and he thinks about Davies, who saved his life early in the war by shoving him into a shell crater and who waited by his bedside for him to wake up after surgery to repair the damage made when he was shot in the side and broke three ribs.
I would not have survived this war without either of you, Bradford thinks. And even if I had, I would not still be sane.
He wonders what kind of future there is for him and Davies, if it is even a future Davies would wish to share. Now that the war is over, he might get to find out.
(In a few months, after the battalion has gone home and the men have tried with varying degrees of success to fit themselves back into normal peacetime life, Bradford and Davies have occasion to call each other by their first names. Bradford adjusts easily to this, although Davies still sometimes calls him "Captain" to be sarcastic or joking.)
Several years later, Bradford's sister covinces him to write a memoir of his time at the front, as a kind of therapy. Trying to remember everything and order it in a readable fashion gives him nightmares, and more than once he has a flashback in the middle of London, but the process of composing a memoir of the worst two and a half years he will ever experience is cathartic in its own way.
It takes him four years to write, but the book is finally published in 1929. He wants to title it A Dark Day and a Cold One, but Amelia talks him out of it. He settles on They Call It Peace, a title taken from the Tacitus he quoted to Cuthbertson at Thiepval, with the line itself as an inscription to help make his ironic point - Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant [They make a desolation and they call it peace]. The dedication page reads:
Amelia
Bertie
Thomas
And all the boys who never came home
Bradford hopes it is a fitting tribute, because it is the only tribute he knows how to offer.
words: 1384
total words: 51,186
note: if anyone knows how to pronounce "passchendaele" or "thiepval", please let me know.
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no subject
Date: 2013-04-14 05:18 am (UTC)Also, because I know you through a (mostly) slashy fandom, I kept waiting for this to be a slashy love story. And maybe it was, but it was a very, very good kind that felt real and was surprising. (I'm sorry, it's very late, I reviewed nine weeks of medical lectures over the past three days, and I can't see straight much less think, so sorry if I don't make sense!) Ahem. Anyway, not that I have anything against slashy love stories (quite the opposite), but it would've felt fake if this one suddenly took that turn. I'm very glad it didn't. I very much liked your setting and all the research that went into it, and to have it turn to a cute but somewhat unrealistic fandom-style slash would've been a disappointment. It's a great war story with some very cool bonding in the middle of it. You did a fantastic job of research and writing. Loved this story :D
(And thank you, this was the first bit of fiction in way too long, and it was great all the way.)
no subject
Date: 2013-04-19 02:30 am (UTC)because i was writing about brits, and i got the original idea from brits (altho actually i think one of them is irish), and i know less than nothing about the british army during ww1, i had to do what felt like a significant amount of research because i really didn't want to fuck it up.
(the christmas truce is one of those things that sounds like it came from a movie rather than verifiable historical record. i mean, opposing armies put down their arms and met in no man's land to play soccer! and exchange gifts! and, er, cut hair! and i found exactly one photo of trench foot in my travels, because one was all i could deal with. just... ew. so much ew.)
(you're very welcome! i'm just glad you liked it. :D )
no subject
Date: 2013-04-19 02:55 am (UTC)On the subject of the lacking buttsex, I think this turned out to be just right. Davies was heterosexual and didn't seem inclined in the other direction, and it makes sense to me that a man at that time would be far less flexible. So this is perfect. You know how everybody jumps over gender lines kinda easily in slash stories (not to say anything against them, because I love them), but it doesn't really happen that way in real life, imo. And Davies was very attached to his commanding officer in a platonic way, which was double awesome. So it was like one-sided UST that Bradford had the maturity and good sense not to push and Davies had the grace to not give him shit for. I loved that :D It was an awesome story.
I have literally one fragment of a sentence stuck in my head regarding the Christmas truce, which was spoken by my high school history teacher back in the Mesozoic. Back then it was an interesting concept that stuck, and then I read about it in your fic, and hey! There is Wiki these days!
Anyway, I really loved it, thank you for the great read.