Chapter Twenty-Six
The Train Came On Time
Bloody hell, the train came on time. Some of the boys sang softly as we worked in the pouring rain to get exposed packing crates into the boxcars. Lanterns swung from hooks and nails in the soft breezes. The rain came in everywhere, as the wind backed and filled, being variable in direction as well as intensity.
“I saw her snatch…the suitcase from the closet,”
“I held her but(t)…a moment in the rain,”
“I kissed her as(s), the train pulled into the station,”
“And we saw her Uncle Jack off on the train…”
Voices called in the darkness.
“Put the rollers under.” An anonymous voice called, as willing hands groped in the murk.
It was stupid not to have more lights, but then we had been working all day. Just now getting started at clearing out our little wire-mesh compound. The crate began to move, with a trio of the lads pulling and tugging and gently cursing.
“Go grab a couple more lanterns, Jake.” I told someone who appeared momentarily idle.
The ground was slippery, with flattened, wet grass and mud from our big boots. The rain made a hissing sound as it came down through the trees overhead. No one singing. The song remains the same. Time to write a new verse. Reluctantly, I remembered it was my turn. Oh, an oldie from my pop. I caught him singing it one day in the barn, before he left for good.
My deep voice bellowed out in stentorian tones, penetrating the fog and dreary gloom of the embattled night.
“I wish I could fart like a warthog,”
“I wish I could quack like a duck,”
“Wish I could spin webs like a spider,”
“And whistle a tune as I…swim…”
A couple of the guys laughed so hard they fell down.
They were already soaked to the skin anyway. Working in this muck was atrocious, but the rain came at a bad time. Howls, hoots and catcalls, and we’re on our way to the hit parade.
“Cooey. That’s bluidy guid, sirrah.” One of the new guys, Taffy, joshed from the darkness by the far rear corner.
More men with mover’s dollies. Here come our lanterns now. There are still guys out there repeating the song, but they’re all out of synchronization, and it sounds like a gaggle of voices.
Tee-hee, giggle, giggle.
“Come on boys, attitude is like altitude.” I called. “The higher you get, the better off you are.”
“Yes, sir.” A couple of the nearest ones called back.
“Hickory dickory dock,” called Snotty.
“A mouse ran up my foot.” Stated the sergeant firmly.
The boys broke up again. Another four or five hours, and we would be ready to go. Work’s not so bad when you’re with a good bunch of people.
“Knock them off just as soon as we’re done, okay, sergeant? This lot will be cleared out in ten minutes or so.” I instructed Jaeckl.
“Yes, sir. Should we take the wire down?” He asked.
“Leave it. There’s plenty more where that came from.” He grimaced in agreement.
“Indeed there is, sir.”
We needed the space. There were still a couple of hangars full of stuff to put on the flatcars. When I look back on those times, every stinking moment of every stinking day was somehow precious. And we didn’t waste a single stinking second of it.
We had one crate left, and three boxcars jammed to the rafters.
“Now that’s bluidy stupid.” Said a puzzled voice, already familiar after half a day’s acquaintance.
“Stick it in the next one and lock up.” The sergeant told Taffy. “You boys can use it to play cards on, while we ride in comfort up front.”
Taffy grinned in return.
“Right-oh.”
Sergeant Jaeckl posted guards around the train.
“Get the men back to base and cleaned up.” And I let him go then.
“How’s the leg?” Howard-Smythe came up beside me. “What about your back?”
“Oh, it’s all right.” I grouched, but he insisted on driving me.
The RFC boys and the new people were being assembled into a ragged line, and a cheerful, noisy, boisterous lot they were, too. I was damned grateful for that Sergeant Jaeckl. Men like him very seldom got noticed for promotion. Too useful where they were. That was the suspicion in the Corps. The men were cleared of their billets. The bills in all the pubs had been paid. The girls had all been kissed goodbye, and we were sleeping in the empty hangar tents. We ought to be ready to go by noon tomorrow, Howard-Smythe and I agreed, although it was already the middle of the night.
“You have to look after yourself better.” He advised. “What were you doing out in the rain? You look like you’ve been rode hard and put away wet, as they say.”
“A leader should share some of the hardships.” I responded ruefully.
Man, that knee hurt, now that there was time to think about it. My back too, and left elbow.
“By all means lead from in front, but lead from the top, as well.”
“Who said that?” I was pretty familiar with the sayings of various historians and military pundits and pedants.
“I did.” He said simply.
He pulled up in front of my tent.
“I believe someone was heating up some water.”
I got out of his vehicle.
He was going to drop it off at home and would be back shortly, as agreed earlier.
The message seemed clear.
‘You’re tired, Tucker.’
“Thanks.” I said, and he motored off in a big half-circle to go out the gate again.
As I stripped out of my sodden old battledress, complete with dog-collar jacket and a rather unofficial pair of trousers, men from the cookhouse called at the door.
A whole gaggle of them.
“Come on in.” I yelled.
They arrived with a big tin tub, huge really, and they began pouring metal cans of steaming hot water into it. Howard-Smythe was a genius.
“You got something like this for the rest of the lads?” I asked Corporal Whittington.
“Yes, sir. And it is quite an impressive rig we built for heating the water, if I do say so, sir,” he averred, with his toothy grin that was so perfect it looked artificial.
“Good work.” I agreed in sheer exhaustion.
“Thank you, sir.” He stood, supervising the boys who kept burbling water all over the place.
Sitting on the cot in my shorts, I had a jolt of Navy Rum while waiting for them to leave.
Christ. What a long day.
***
Up at dawn. Forcing myself to eat. I wouldn’t get a chance until noon, and I would be the last in line when grub became available. Some of my boys had done enough ‘kitchen party’ duties to last a lifetime. Food would be coming down the pipeline at some point.
Two hundred and fifty fucking guys running around, and I’m the lucky bastard that gets to tell them all what to do. Everything hurt all over, and I had to try and keep a balanced temper, so as not to unnecessarily crap all over some poor bugger’s head for a minor fuck-up.
Howard-Smythe was sorting though a litany of items that needed to be taken care of.
Sergeant Jaeckl was yelling off of a list, work parties peeling off to their destinations, one group taking down empty hangar tents, one bunch crating the last half-dozen kites (planes,) one party loading twenty and thirty-foot crates onto the flatcars at the siding. Groups of men, boys, pilots, soldiers, miscellaneous clusters like myself and Corporal Bill. He had water barrels, cups, all the men’s personal kit under control. By the look of things, the officers and men had done it all before. Before they were in the RFC, they had served in some way, whether it be in the Army, or in civilian life.
“Last thing we do is fill in the latrines.” He concluded.
Surprisingly quickly, we had everything aboard. Our small convoy of motor transport lumbered off, dragging a trail of chalky dust. They would rendezvous with us at a compound near Dover. Now it was time to ‘hurry up and wait,’ for we had no real idea of when to fire up the locomotive until this exact moment. I waved at the engineer, patiently watching out of his window.
“Better take one last walk around.” I observed. “I like to leave a clean campsite for the next fellow.”
We ambled around while the locomotive slowly built up heat in the boiler. Aside from some bare patches, quite long ones in the grass, and flattened-out areas from the hangars, maybe a few mucky spots, we were leaving the place pretty much as we found it.
“I want to streamline this operation.” I suggested. “Wouldn’t it be nice if it didn’t take three days to load a train?”
He listened carefully. When we did it next time, we were going to fly the planes from one locale to another. But the rest of the materiel was far too bulky.
“The more often we do it, the quicker we’ll get, sir.” He observed confidently.
“Huh. My personal feeling is that some of this crap will never be used.” I explained as we walked back to the siding, bone-tired. “At some point I will declare it useless, and jettison it in a farmer’s field somewhere.”
Bill grinned.
“Dogs and dartboards I can handle. The timber we can use. Some of the other items, kind of questionable,” he admitted. “The desks are good, the tubs and cooking gear are actually very bulky.”
Bedding, clothing, tables, chairs, all hard to come by in the front lines. That much is true. Lamps. I mean literally, ‘lamps.’ It was unbelievable, much of it in the form of simple, common, household items.
“If we can just grab a farmhouse for ourselves, some of that is unnecessary.” He concluded.
“I don’t know, Bill.” I ventured. “It’s tactically-sound practice to set up an aerodrome, entirely self-contained. The enemy will look for us, in order to bomb us. I’ll bet the Fritzies know every likely prospect for an aerodrome, on both sides of the line.”
Ultimately, it was his job to explain everything in detail to the men. And they would ask questions, which is a socially-acceptable way of complaining in the military. The idea that we would always set up in a cozy chateau somewhere. Wasn’t that what the enemy prisoners were telling us? We were too rigid. Too set in our ways. It was time to do something about that. Chateaus are marked on maps, and the enemy knew where to look, if they wanted to retaliate for a particularly nasty raid on their own aerodrome. And there were a few interesting ideas on that subject kicking around in the old ‘brain-box.’ If we set up in remote locations, they had no choice but to come looking. If we bombed them first, we could provoke them.
Comfort is important to a soldier. It keeps up morale to get enough food, or sleep, to be able to wash and shave once in a while. To get mail, or have a beer, or a hot cup of tea and a biscuit.
To sit on a chair. What an unbelievable luxury, after life in a hole.
But we had an awful lot of junk on that train.
***
Canada, where I come from in southwestern Ontario, is cold, and it snows in the winter. But it is by no means a sure thing, and we have that endless season of fog, murk, mist, rain, flurries, melting snow, and slush everywhere. It goes on for weeks, sometimes. Hell, it goes on for months. Cabin fever actually sets in about the end of winter. It’s at its worst in early spring.
Sometimes a thaw, usually brief, sends the temperatures soaring up to ten or twenty degrees above freezing. Freak weather, but there is also the season where winter is not over yet, and it’s just mud, mud, mud. Sunny days are cold and windy, and then there’s the mud.
The mud of February, covered under a sticky layer, two inches thick, of fresh white snow, newly-fallen. Yet the grass seems perfectly alive under it, and there is a ring of warm earth exposed under every pine tree, under every bush or shrub. Bare patches in front of every home, barn, wall, or rock outcropping. The mud of March, the breezes of March, roaring for endless days across the slowly, interminably-drying land.
England has its season of mud, I realized, as we sped across the winter-deadened landscape. Yet I could see the buds all ready for the spring, from the bitter cold of the doorway.
We stood on the step, looking over the countryside as we smoked. These sessions, with a couple of the NCO’s and Howard-Smythe, were part of the team-building process. For these gentlemen, non-flying personnel, the challenge was to get them to build the system I wanted, and not necessarily the one they expected, based on familiarity or past experience.
“It’s been dry lately.” Said Jaeckl. “That little sprinkle last night was a bit of a royal pain in the arse.”
There were nods of agreement. The sun beat down on the greys and browns of England in mid-February. In the distance, heat waves were coming off of the metal roof of a building in an otherwise indiscernible village, obscured by the trunks of a thousand trees. An English forest. One often thinks of Robin Hood and his merrye men, expecting them to step out, arrow tips raised to greet strangers. The train gently swayed from side to side as we clicked over the points where the rails join up.
“There are buds on the branches.” I observed. “When we get stuck on a siding, it might be a good idea to strike up a football game, keep the lads out of trouble.”
On and on and on we rolled.
As long as it’s not too far away from the train. Someone might wander. We had quite a motley crew along with us.
“Don’t you worry about that, sir. We’ll look after it.” said Sergeant Jaeckl. “We’ll keep the lads out of trouble.”
Swear to God, I smiled when he said that.
I grabbed the rail, as we entered a sweeping turn. Doctor Jones jostled up against me.
“How’s it going with you, Doc?” I asked, barely knowing the guy’s name.
“The usual thing so far.” There was this neutral tone that said he didn’t really want to be here.
This was no surprise. He was ‘on secondment’ from jail and didn’t want to go back.
But there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm, as he said further, “Aches and colds and sore assholes, and pimples on the dink.”
We roared with laughter. He cheered up a little at this reception to his conversational gambit. Technically, Jones was a captain, but otherwise useless.
“As long as you can tell the difference between an ague, a fit and a quinsy, and humors of the brain.” I told the man with a knowing look. “That’s all I care.”
He raised an eyebrow. No comment, apparently. He was a volunteer, but then it was better than a pioneer battalion, where you have to work with pick, shovel and axe all day long, like Paul Bunyan. The Doc and I were due for a chat, very, very soon. A nice little man-to-jerk talk. Nobody likes sitting in jail, but this wasn’t a holiday camp for wayward alcoholics and drug addicts. He needed to know that.
Knocking the bowl of my pipe on the railing, so I could put it away without risk of fire, I nodded good evening to them and left them to it.
No doubt a little discussion amongst themselves would help. Time for a walk through, and then to bed.
END
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