Casca 21: The Trench Soldier (3 page)

One Sunday—he hardly knew what made him do it and blamed it on the first summer weather—he invited his landlady and her children to spend the day with him at the beach.

The hour-long ride in the train was the first time ever outside the village for the children, and the beach was an undreamed of experience for Gwyneth.

They walked the length of the pier and ate ices while they watched a Punch and Judy show. The children paddled in the shallows, shrieking whenever they splashed themselves. Casca stood with Gwyneth on the pebbles of the beach and watched and thought of other beaches with golden sands and golden-skinned, naked women.

He took the little family to a restaurant and treated them all to fish and chips and persuaded Gwyneth to join him in a glass of bitter.

That night he went to bed as usual but was awakened after a few minutes by a knock at his door. Wrapping himself in a towel, he opened it to the outside darkness, but by the starlight he could just see Gwyneth wearing a nightdress. She walked into the room and over to his bed. "Do close that door and come to bed," she said matter-of-factly. And as he joined her she added, "I'm not going to make a habit of this, and I don't expect you to marry me, but I need a man, and I think maybe you could use a woman."

Casca didn't argue. She never did mention marriage again, but she came to sleep in his bed every night.

Casca's routine was very much improved. By day he admired the cheerful fatalism of his workmates, and by night he enjoyed their company over darts and beer and politics.

Hugh Edwards, a straw-headed giant, was one of his favorites. The big Welshman had educated himself by countless nights in the Mechanics' Institute Library and was an entertaining source of invective in the cause of Welsh nationalism.

Hugh wanted a free Welsh state with its own parliament, taxes, and customs. He also argued that Wales should have its own army but was agreeable to it being always available to British command in time of war.

He also insisted that Wales should have its own king. "There's plenty of the old noble blood," Edwards insisted. "We don't need to import inbred German princelings. We'll have a Welshman for King of Wales—the first true Briton to sit on an English throne since Henry the Eighth." Casca ordered a pint of bitter and smiled into it as he remembered the mixture of Italian blood that the Romans had contributed to the Briton strain. He was sipping at it slowly when he heard a cheerful voice at his ear. A widely grinning face appeared behind another pint pot at the other side of the table. "Wot'cha cock? Down the mine ain't cha?"

"Yeah."
Casca looked at the Cockney stranger.

"Me too.
Saw yer in the cage when I was signin' on at the pit 'ed this mornin'. Me first day down a mine. Bleedin' 'orrible ain't it?"

"It sure is," Casca smiled.

"Dave's me name,” the Cockney went on. "Dave Prince, but I ain't Welsh. Straight Lunnoner. You're not from here either?”

“I sure am not, mate. I'm an American. My name's Rufus
Casterton. Friends call me Cass.” He appraised the lightly built Cockney. “You a miner?”

“No way, mate.
Jes bein’ down there’s enough fer me. I’m a tally clerk. Heaviest thing I lift is me pencil – and it’s still it's the worst job I've ever had—or even heard of—in me life. But it is a job, and there ain't none in Lunnon.

"Shouldn't be here, really," he went on, "
drinkin' money I ain't really got. But me landlady made it plain she fancies me. She's a mine widder—the mine company allows her to keep renting her cottage so long as she takes in single mine company workers like me. She's nice enough, but blimey, I don' want to get settled in this burg. Nor would I want to knock 'er up and shoot through on 'er. She's got two brats already from her miner."

Casca found that he was nodding in agreement.

"The mines is tough enough on men," Dave said, "but they're bloody 'ell for women. Town's full of widder women."

"There were nearly some more today."

"So I 'eard. Were you in that lot?"

"Yeah.
Don't know what happened. Some sort of gas explosion and then a fire. We all got clear—this time."

"Yeah, well," Dave's voice was suddenly quiet and serious, "that 'ole is a damned dangerous place. A
man'll be safer at the war."

"War?
What war?"

"You '
aven't 'eard? The Serbs done in an archduke, and Austria and Serbia are goin' to war over it. The Germans want to be in it too, and Russia will likely back the Serbs."

Another man spoke up from a corner. "And the French and the Russians are allies so the Frogs will be in it too."

"Well," said another, "the German Kaiser Wilhelm is our King George's cousin, so I suppose we'll be with Germany against the Frogs and the Russkis."

"Good thing too," came from another miner. "Time we taught the Frogs another lesson. They've been getting real uppity in Morocco."

"But we supported them when they seized Morocco." "Yeah, but we had to, to keep Germany out." "Well, it's time we bloodied the Czar's nose anyway. He's blocked us in Persia, in Afghanistan, and in Tibet, and all of them are rightly British."

"No," a miner with a newspaper asserted positively, "it says here that we're a party to that Russian alliance with the French, so we'll be with them against the Germans."

"What?" "Are you crazy?" "Us fight alongside frogs?" The shouts came from all over the room. "Us with the Russians—impossible!" "Didn't we just close the Dardanelles to keep the Russians out of the Mediterranean?" "The Russians want Afghanistan so they can push us out of India—how can we side with 'em in Europe?" "How can we side with France?" "They're confronting us in Africa and in Egypt." The conversation became a babble of shouts, and Casca borrowed the newspaper and sat among the arguing miners to read it.

The dateline was June 28, 1914. In Serbia the Premier, Pasic, had discovered a plot by his head of military intelligence, Colonel
Dimitrievic, who had set up a secret society called Union or Death with the avowed aim of creating a pan-Serb nation and liberating all Serbs from the yoke of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Pasic alerted the Austrian Emperor, Franz Josef, in a message so cautiously worded that it could not be understood and so was ignored. Austria sent the Archduke Ferdinand to visit Bosnia which Austria had annexed in 1908, on a tour of military inspections, and at Sarajevo a Bosnian Serb, one Gavrilo Princip, had shot the plump Archduke and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg.

Serbia?
Casca pondered.
Who would go to war over Serbia? Or over an archduke. Must be a rumor
. Aloud he asked: "Who is this archduke anyway?"

"Nobody knows. Europe's full of archdukes, I believe. Some sort of cousin or nephew of the Austrian Emperor and of the old Queen of course."
Well, for sure
, Casca thought,
there can't be a war over that
. He put the matter out of his mind and offered to buy the likeable Cockney a drink.

Over the next few days Casca's view of the European situation became more and more confused. Austria seemed to be reconciled to the loss of its archduke, and Premier Pasic's warning to Austria had cleared Serbia of any guilt. The assassin was in prison awaiting trial, and both the Serbian nation and the leaders of Bosnia's Serbian population had expressed their regrets, and it seemed Austria would accept. The matter seemed to be at an end.

But Germany – it was not clear why – was determined to become involved and, for no discernible reason, was threatening to invade France although neither the French nation nor a single Frenchman had been involved in the assassination.

The lowlands of Belgium provided a level pathway from Germany to France with highways, railroads, and canals all leading directly into northern France. So Germany delivered a formal ultimatum demanding free passage for its armies. It was a demand no country could possibly accept.

The nation of Belgium, a recent British invention, had only come into existence in 1831, and was neutral. So now the potential conflict had widened to include the British Empire, and through the Triple Entente Treaty, Britain would be allied with her long-term enemies, Russia and France.

Casca's daily toil in the mine had become easier as his muscular body had adapted to the demands made upon it. He came to tolerate the heavy, dangerous work and more and more enjoyed the company of the tough, little men he worked with. Gwyneth made no demands on him, except in bed, and his life had settled into a routine that was not at all unpleasant, especially when compared to sleeping out on the London embankment and running to open cab doors in the hope of a penny.

Each evening he came back from the pit to a hot bath and a fine hot meal, then off to the pub for a few beers with Cockney Dave whose landlady had similarly moved in with him. Over pints of bitter Casca and Dave would discuss their undesired, but irresistible, marital arrangements, the worsening economic conditions of the mine workers, and the increasingly bizarre politics of Europe.

On August fourth, its ultimatum unanswered, Germany moved on Belgium, and sixty thousand German troops crossed the frontier, swamping the twenty-five thousand Belgian defenders. The German spearhead attacked Liege, the key to the narrow pass to the Belgian plain.

England and France immediately declared war on Germany, Austria, and Hungary. Russia quickly declared that she too was at war, joining England and France.

The declaration of war gave the two reluctant spouses just what they needed. They bade farewell to their landladies and their underpaid jobs and headed for London to join the volunteer force being raised by Secretary of War, Lord Kitchener.

Half a million men flocked to the
colors, almost half of them miners. Conservatives, liberals, the Labour Party, even the Irish members, supported the war and the recruiting campaign. First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill was to direct the war, personally supervising strategy. Sir John French was to command the troops in the field and was ready for a short, decisive campaign that would wrap up the whole affair before Christmas.

The recruits were paraded through the London streets in their civilian clothes, mostly worn out and none too clean. Crowds cheered them, women threw flowers, and old men clapped them on the back as they passed.

"Popular war," Cockney Dave smiled.

"They all are – when they start," Casca grunted, unimpressed by the crowd's patriotism.

As they came to Whitechapel, they were saluted by a bobby sergeant. Hugh Edwards shook his fist at him in return. "I know that bleedin' perisher," he snarled. "Three months ago I was marchin' with the unemployed, and the bobbies broke up the march. That swine tried to break my 'ead with 'is baton – and now he salutes me."

A pretty woman in a white dress and a flowered hat ran to pin a flower on Dave's chest and kissed him on the cheek. Dave grinned happily then chuckled to Casca, "And a week ago she'd have stepped into the gutter to avoid me."

Casca and the other ragged men within earshot laughed with him. The army of the rear had become the army of the front.

But Lord Kitchener was only accepting the cream of young British manhood, and two thirds of the recruits were rejected as chronically undernourished or otherwise medically unfit. Many recruits were barely eighteen, and many, having lied about their ages, were younger.

Cockney Dave passed fit, his youth making him acceptable, and Hugh Edwards and Casca were readily enlisted for their physiques, but several of their friends were summarily rejected by the army doctors.

The doctor who examined Casca was intrigued by his numerous scars but accepted his explanation that he had survived a number of mine accidents. There was scarcely a miner who didn't carry some scars. But when he looked into Casca's eyes, the doctor was puzzled,
then began to feel uncomfortable. There was something in the eyes that was older than the face. A thousand disappointments had made these eyes as unfathomable as a mountain lake.

The first recruits were drafted into the Territorials, the expeditionary force formed in 1910 as an elite, amphibious corps intended to be always ready for immediate overseas service.

For Casca, the Territorials were something of a surprise. The 125,000 professionals were still clad in the khaki uniforms that had been designed for the South African war against the Boers in the previous century. Only a handful of veterans from that war had seen any action. The rest were proficient in musketry, but their commanders seemed to have little understanding of the handling of troops other than enforcing crushing discipline.

Chief disciplinarian was the regimental sergeant major, a strutting martinet in a shiny, peaked cap with a voice rarely heard at any pitch below an angry scream.

Reveille sounded at six, and RSM Norman's screech tore through the barracks hut. "Orright, orright, orright. Come on, you lot, let's 'ave you out 'ere then."

Norman's raucous voice called the roll, men stepping one pace forward in response to their names.
Until he bellowed, "Atkins, Thomas," at which a dozen or so men stepped out, Casca and Cockney Dave among them.

"I thought your name was Prince," Casca muttered to Dave.

"It ain't that neither," the Cockney answered, "but I saw Atkins on the form and thought, well, that'll do."

"Damn," Casca muttered, realizing that he had made a mistake. He too had liked the look of the sample name on the form in the recruiting booth and had thought it would serve as well as any.

RSM Norman didn't seem to think the number of Atkinses strange; indeed, he was bellowing for more. "Come on, come on, you 'orrible lot. I've got about twenty more Atkins, Thomases on this list, and I want 'em all out here!"

A few more men stepped forward reluctantly.
"What's the matter with you lot? Don't you know your own names?”

It turned out that numerous recruits had adopted the same name from the sample form for their own reasons as had Dave and Casca. Many more, unable to read at all, as almost all Englishmen were illiterate, had simply copied everything – name, age, marital status, number of dependents. About a fifth of the recruits had been enlisted under the name Thomas Atkins.

In a rare moment of wisdom, RSM Norman decided to accept the situation and leave it to the pay corps to sort out. By the time the confused roll call was over, all the recruits were laughingly calling each other Tommy.

Norman's
cretinous monologue continued through a three- mile run with an unending tirade of threats and sneers.

At seven there was a merciful break for breakfast, but by seven-thirty the unmerciful shriek was snarling its dissatisfaction with the cleaning of the spotless barracks. And
at eight RSM Norman's snarling dominance really began with the drill that occupied most of the rest of the day.

The repetition of the simple routines bored and exasperated Casca. Hour after hour, day after day, they repeated the same basic drill. There was no weapons instruction or any combat training. Their torturer's only interest was in endless marching, and he drilled his charges until their actions lost all
semblance to normality, and they moved in a series of timed jerks like so many wooden dolls.

Norman carried a pace stick, two canes fixed to one head and separated at the ground to exactly the size of the regulation pace of the British army.

The regimental sergeant major especially liked to humiliate his immediate subordinates, the drill instructor sergeants, and he would march alongside one of their squads twirling his ridiculous cane and loudly lamenting the tiniest deviation from the sacred length of pace. One of his favorite drill square pastimes was to combine a number of squads and drill them unmercifully their squad instructors, who squirmed mightily at every taunt.

During one endless sequence of left turn, right turn, about turn, into line, form fours, form column, quick march, Casca found himself in the front rank with Cockney Dave in the rank behind and Hugh Edwards farther back. The sergeant major wheeled them to the left, and Casca saw a chance to turn the game on the tyrant. He had
once, and not too long ago, been a drill instructor sergeant in the British Army and thought he could teach Norman a thing or two.

He stepped out mightily, calling softly to Dave and Hugh to stay with him. Their
rankmates kept up, and the nine men opened up a wide gap ahead of those in the turn.

"Come on, come on, you '
orrible loafers, you bleedin' bums," Norman shouted at his men, "shake it up, shake it up."

The entire squad stepped out, but the wheel slowed those who were in the turn, and they had to hasten even more as they came through it. The result was that half the large squad was strung out along one side of the drill square, while the rest were jammed into one corner of it.

The furious Norman saw his mistake too late. He turned his attention to the runaway leaders." 'Orright, you lot in front, slow down will you!"

But Casca had already slowed so that he was now leading a bunch of about thirty recruits, with more catching up at each pace. He now slowed to a crawl. The corner of the square was coming up, and Norman ordered another left wheel. Casca almost marked time through the turn then streaked away again.

Behind him he could hear Norman harassing the stragglers to lengthen their stride – ensuring yet another pile up while Casca strung the whole column out across the next leg of the square.

Norman raced to meet the head of the column and fell into step alongside Casca, twirling his pace stick along the ground beside him. But Casca had anticipated him and was moving at exactly British Army regulation pace. For several seconds RSM Norman was silent as his pea brain strove to understand what was going wrong.

Hugh Edwards, though, was not fooled. "You've done this drill before, haven't you, Cass?" he whispered.

"Some," Casca admitted as RSM Norman returned his attention to calling up the tail end of the lagging column. Casca smiled to himself as he recalled all the times that he had been a rookie on a drill square. The smile widened as he reflected on the times that he had been the drill instructor, a job he had always excelled at.

The sweating NCO brought the column to a halt, dressed ranks, formed them into line, then back into a column. He then marched Casca's rank to the rear, having concluded that somebody in this rank, probably the oversize Casca, had an erratic pace. He then recommenced the march around the square. Within a few minutes he had to call another halt. At the head of the column Dave and Hugh contrived to distort his every order, while at the rear, Casca was working to the same purpose. But to the perturbed RSM, the column seemed to be falling apart by itself.

As the disruption grew worse, more and more of the recruits tuned into the game, and soon the entire column had passed that point at which discipline ceases to be effective. There were simply
too many men too determined to fuck up – and Casca had shown them a way to do so without ever actually committing any offence.

Norman ranted and raved, stamped and screamed until he was almost frothing at the mouth. The men's vengeance was complete when a major, riding past on a splendid horse, was so appalled at the display that he rode over to the drill square and summoned the RSM.

Norman handed over the recruits to one of his sergeants who promptly called the men to order. They responded readily and correctly. He reformed them into squads, then handed them over to their squad sergeants. In a few minutes the drill square was in regular order while the sorely discomfited RSM stammered an explanation to the major.

Casca was gratified but not impressed. A Roman officer would have taken over himself. Even emperors such as Trajan and the great Julius were apt to themselves undertake the instruction of soldiers, challenging them in strength and dexterity. Casca had once so matched swords with Hadrian who took great pride in his skill as an instructor and frequently seized the opportunity to try out his men in the line. Hadrian was a master swordsman, and Casca a mere trooper, but he had acquitted himself well, as Hadrian had expected.

That night the recruits gloated over their victory. The morning, however, brought the raucous voice and vicious snarl back into their lives with redoubled malevolence. But when it came to drill time, Norman left them to their D.I. sergeants.