Rest Not These Dead , livre ebook

Distributed by eBookpartnership - J Fanshawe Robert

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

147 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

'Rest Not These Dead', this final part of the Cellist Soldier trilogy, lays bare terrible guilt over the injustice of war, overlaid by a new era of love.The end of World War One brings no peace for Ben and his Jamaican lover Pearl in post-war London. A horrific racial attack sends her, grief-stricken, back to Jamaica. Ben is desperate to win Pearl back and, nursing a deeper guilt over his failure to prevent the unjustified execution of his cello-playing soldier friend, takes up the horrific job of body exhumation. But will a dramatic collaboration with a journalist in Arras, France, bring Ben and Pearl back together and reconcile the injustice done to his friend?

Sujets

Historical fiction

Informations

Publié par	Distributed by eBookpartnership
Date de parution	10 octobre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781839785399
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Rest Not These Dead
Robert J. Fanshawe

Rest Not These Dead
Published by The Conrad Press Ltd. in the United Kingdom 2022
Tel: +44(0)1227 472 874
www.theconradpress.com
info@theconradpress.com
ISBN 978-1-839785-39-9
Copyright © Robert J. Fanshawe, 2022
All rights reserved.
Typesetting and Cover Design by: Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.
Author’s note: The Shoreham Cross overlooks the village which was the home of the first British soldier to be shot for desertion in WW1; Private Thomas Highgate. The cross was the inspiration of a local man who himself lost two sons in the war, to commemorate all those who had died in the conflict.

Rest not these dead
Until all their stories are shown
But if they cannot be known
Let the justice of innocence garland their heads.
by the author

This book is dedicated to Christopher John Burgess, a life-long friend, academic and supporter of my writing, including patient editing,since my first publication.

1
The end
W ar whimpered away. No lions roared in victory. No celebrations happened at the front. No parties were held.
Well that’s it then mate, back to Old Blighty, was the attitude. Men sat down and without thinking, laid weapons aside and almost at once forgot them. Suddenly without the constant tumult of war in their ears, noses and mouths; they sat immobile and flat. Some said afterwards it was the flattest day of their lives.
Uniforms were lice and grime encrusted. Greatcoats, some leather jerkins, some trench waders or merely the mud-caked puttees, days, even weeks worn, above boots whose cheap leather was made into wet cardboard by weather; were overlaid by fraying straps and webbing belts and lanyards and pouches of each man’s particular duty or equipment; gunners, bomb throwers with their rucksacks of grenades, riflemen. Greasy haversacks with each man’s gas mask, neck-looped with a tangled canvas strap, still sat on chests.
Faces wore deep trenches of weariness, days of facial hair and some vast moustaches. Helmets like grey upside-down soup bowls were welded to heads. Eyes were sink-holes from which a reflection of some stagnant light paled out, without focus. Inside men there was a terrible ache and a sour taste of yesterday’s rum.
Even the getting back to Old Blighty seemed a task of mighty effort. They knew there would be bullshit aplenty before getting there. Something about – ‘there’ – made them afraid. A threat of death hung over home. The ‘Spanish flu,’ as it had come to be called, was claiming lives in soldiers’ home countries, even counties, where they lived. It was the cruellest twist to the end of a war. Soldiers expressed an attitude of bravado towards it. In private they feared it. Some had seen lives taken on the battlefield, which was very cruel for those who might otherwise have survived the horror around them and then be killed by an invisible virus.
Pals formed themselves into tiny bubbles of hope as they survived, even perhaps with only one cautious friend each. Two pals against so many others lost. The thought that the bubble may be burst by a different horror on returning ‘home’ was for some perhaps too much to bear.
Battalion diaries for the eleventh of November noted the event in words such as; ‘cessation of hostilities was finally concluded at 11.00 am.’ Then next day there was some sort of note about a general clean up, as if the war could be swept away in a general tidy and everything set back to… normal.
Private Ralph Bradshaw wrote to Corporal Ben Routledge, in neat handwriting which never changed despite what he had faced in battle, telling of his survival. Many of the platoon Ben had trained survived, because they had been shown how to stay alive. They had been taught well.
What good was that teaching now?
There was frantic letter-writing to home, or lovers. to announce the good news that men had reached the end alive. This would bring rejoicing. But immediately following the news of the armistice there was an agonising wait at home, to hear who had finally made it to the end or whether they had been taken in the final week, day or even hour. Letters took their normal toll of time in their journey; increased with the post-armistice overload. But often homes were already beyond rejoicing and many people looked at their neighbour thinking; why should their son be coming home and ours not, after hearing the joyful news? The multiplication of losses – sons who were also fathers, brothers, comrades and friends – broke hearts. Like falling plates on a fair ground rifle range; once the aim is right for one, others can fall more easily. They did, often from the same family or circle of friends.
Hope gradually drops with the plates and those left turn to ghosts, searching the missed.
Just as the bells were pealing out across England and celebrations of drunkenness taking place, many blinds of front rooms were being drawn down, without the thought that they might be raised again with hope.

2
The blackout is lifted
B en Routledge, on an extended weekend pass from his Worcester Barracks, walked with Pearl, his Jamaican lover, on the night of the armistice. They considered him going in uniform with his Corporal’s stripes and his oak leaf ‘mentioned in despatches’ decoration. They considered going into a pub, many of which drew them noisily.
They did neither.
They did walk arm in arm, needing each other’s support. Ben had a trim corporal’s type of moustache, which was dark. He always slicked it with something, which made it shine darker than the hair on his head. He was smart in uniform, but in his present, slightly frayed suit – not so. His pale cheeks were a little hollow. His dark eyes were generally directed downwards, but sometimes flashed a look of pain.
‘What, missed your banana boat ‘ome?’ was the first jibe that caught them from a group who were in uniform, on noticing Pearl’s colour.
‘Nobody ‘ad no bananas the whole war. Forgot what a banana is,’ said his companion.
‘Well go anyway. It’s our country now.’
Ben had a sudden idea then. He didn’t mention it to Pearl.
She had come, not on a banana boat but a passenger ship; safely across the ocean, without being threatened by U-boats, or flu; paid package, steamer class from Jamaica. They had met in a moment of almost impossible fulfilment after falling in love through exchanged letters. But moments with a promise of fulfilment of expectations, have an afterlife where the thread can be stretched to almost breaking point.
Ben surreptitiously patted her belly with the hand that held hers, under her flowing scarf. He liked to do that since discovering that something he had a hand in, resided there. It was his way of showing a romantic attitude.
Pearl’s London writer and artist friend, Pamela Colman Smith, had encouraged the romance when they had met, straight from Pearl’s incoming boat. She had swept them up and given them a start. Pearl had been widowed by the war, then fallen for the man whose life her husband had saved. It was a deliciously romantic ideal. For Ben it was also a cause of guilt. A woman widowed at twenty-three years old from the man with whom he had joked about having a black lover. Who what’s more, had saved Ben’s life. After that he had… stolen her.
Pamela had given them a room and fed them.
The story of Pearl, her husband Damien and Ben who had become her new love; was not an unusual one, except for the mixture of races. Men often chased other soldiers’ widows because they knew they would be vulnerable. Often battalions were found from men who lived in the same streets and neighbourhoods, so it wasn’t difficult. It was also a cause of derision against men who did that. ‘Can’t get your own, just step in and take yur pal’s missus, when ‘es gone eh?’
Ben had a deeper story which caused him more direct guilt. A soldier who was a cello-player had joined the section and after a mundane incident had been charged, court martialled and shot for throwing away his rifle and ‘deserting’. The man who they nick-named ‘Cello,’ had asked Ben to be his ‘friend’ at the court martial. Ben had failed to tell the true story behind the charge.
That story was not done yet, not nearly done.
Pamela had used her artistic skills to create a pastel drawing of Cello playing his instrument, which Ben and Pearl presented to Cello’s parents as a partial reconciliation. Though Ben suspected it may only have increased their pain, as they had not been informed by the War Office about the incident or had his cello returned to them.
Ben and Pearl had broken free of Pamela’s loving hold. Pearl would never accept dependence. She wanted them to have their own life. Yes, she wanted children. But she hadn’t written to her family back home in Jamaica about her ‘interesting’ condition. Nobody used the word ‘baby,’ let alone the concept of a baby born to mixed-race parents. Babies of black people excited some sympathy, even admiration. They were tiny and had a hard life, usually without any shoes.
But poverty took away the shoes of white children in England as well and food and clothes. They ran the streets in tatters; their parents struggling to put even bread and milk on the table. That would get harder.
As black people became more evident in London, there was some simmering resentment against them. They had bought the virus some said, or they had taken away the jobs of returning soldiers. However, the sheer flood of soldiers eventually returning made employers turn from them. Some soldiers had shaking hands and even an inability to concentrate, which sent them looking for a new generation and some black men benefitted from this.
Ben and Pearl had stayed in London. For him it was only at the weekend. H