Postcards From No Man's Land (7 page)

We had been working for about half an hour when Mother said, ‘Look, Geertrui, look who he is!’ She had cleaned his brow, his closed eyes, his nose and mouth, so that his face looked like a white mask on his still blackened head, with tiny blood-red scratches all over it. ‘Isn’t he one of the soldiers on Sunday?’

Father said, ‘He is. The one called Jacob.’

‘The one you gave a glass of water,’ said Mother when I did not answer.

But I had seen at once who she meant. I was thinking: the one with the melting eyes. But I said, ‘He called me an angel of mercy.’

‘More of a prophet than he knew,’ said Mother.

After his face and hands we began on his legs and lower body. All was in a dreadful state. Then we came to his private parts. This was a shock to me, the first time I had seen a mature man’s penis, let alone been expected to handle it. I was fascinated, seeing so closely this secret of maleness, and felt a twinge of fear too. How innocent we young people were in those days. How little informed about such things. An embarrassing shyness came over me. I turned my eyes away. Though I did so, I think, more because I felt this was expected of me, rather than because I wanted to. On the contrary, I wanted to look and look.

Mother touched my arm and said with a sad smile, ‘This week, I think you finally leave your childhood behind.’ And with that she got on with the job, and I too.

For fear of hurting him, I’m sure we went far more slowly than we needed to. It was nearly two hours before we were finished.

During the next four days the fighting worsened. At times I
thought our house was being demolished brick by brick. More and more wounded soldiers were brought in to our cellar, and Mother, Father and I had our hands full tending them. They bore their pain with great fortitude. Except for one poor boy called Sam, who was suffering from what was then called shell shock. One of the medical orderly’s ‘basket cases’. His nerves had completely gone. He crouched in a corner, suffering from terrible bouts of shivering, would sometimes suddenly cry out or burst in to tears with his head held in his hands, but would say nothing and would not allow anyone to comfort him.

‘You wanted to be a nurse at the Schoonoord,’ Father teased. ‘Well, you’ve got your wish, only here at home.’ And then he said in English one of the ‘familiar sayings’ we had used for practice in those days before the parachutes fell from the sky, which already seemed a century ago: ‘All things come to he who waits.’

The soldier I was tending at that moment, hearing this, said, ‘But he who hesitates is lost.’

To which Father replied, ‘Because time and tide wait for no man.’

Not to be left out, I said, ‘But a stitch in time saves nine.’

At which: ‘Come what, come may,’ called out another soldier, ‘time and the hour runs through the roughest day.’

And another, ‘“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “to talk of many things—”’

‘“Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax—”,’ another butted in.

At which several voices shouted together, ‘“Of cabbages and kings.”’

Everyone was laughing by now.

‘You can fool all the people some of the time,’ someone sang out in a comic voice, ‘you can even fool some of the people all of the time—’ and the others shouted back, ‘But you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.’

We were just recovering from the fresh burst of laughter this caused, when someone, flapping a piece of paper in the air, said in a high squeaky voice, ‘Peace in our time!’, which reduced them to such uncontrollable gusts of laughter that some soldiers upstairs heard the noise and came down to see what was going on. So the joke had to be repeated, which caused further gales of merriment. Even though I did not understand why it was so funny, not knowing about Mr Chamberlain and his pact with Hitler at Munich, their laughter infected Papa and me and soon we were holding our sides too.

‘What is it, what is it?’ Mother kept asking. ‘What are they saying?’ But neither of us could find the breath to tell her.

Then, just as we were calming down and blowing our noses and wiping our eyes, a mock-cheerful voice said, ‘Well lads, for sure, life is a bowl of cherries.’ There was a second’s pause before another voice muttered with exaggerated sorrow, ‘But someone’s eaten all mine.’ And this set everyone off in aching laughter again.

As we were recovering from this I saw poor Sam laughing with us—or I should say that is what I thought he was doing. It was only when he suddenly stared unblinking at me with blazing raw eyes, tears streaming down his cheeks, the skin of his face stretched tight and white over the bones of his skull, that I knew he was not laughing at all but—well, I think wailing would be the right word. Everyone else seemed to become aware of him at the same moment. I was about to go to him when the soldier next to me laid a hand on my arm and shook his head. And then Sam spoke for the first time since he was brought to us, saying in a clear high sing-song voice, ‘I have desired to go where springs not fail, to fields where flies no sharp and sided hail and a few lilies blow. And I have asked to be where no storms come, where the green swell is in the havens dumb, and out of the swing of the sea.’

*

How must I know such things, from so long ago and in a language not my own? The old often say they remember their youth more clearly than the day before yesterday. But this is not it. I know these things because those few days and the few weeks that followed them were such an intensity of living, so much more than any other time of my life, that they are unforgettable. And I have gone over and over them ever since. Sometimes you live more life in an hour than in most weeks, and sometimes it is possible to live more in a few weeks than in all the rest of your life. This is how those days in 1944 are to me. And also I know what was said in that other language I already loved because, as I shall explain you, these events during the battle were later talked over with Jacob again and again.

Far from being difficult to remember, my problem is that it is impossible to forget.

When I heard them, I thought poor tortured Sam was uttering beautiful strange shell-shocked words. But Jacob knew they were a poem, which later he taught to me. As also one other, of which I shall tell you soon, that I have treasured throughout my life.

In the silence after Sam had spoken we heard a dry voice rasp, ‘Hopkins.’ We all turned to see it was Jacob who had spoken, propped up on an elbow, looking at us with gaunt sunken eyes, and smiling a smile like the smile of a starved dog. He had returned to consciousness while we were laughing. He told me later he had heard us as if he were buried a long way down beneath the earth, and our laughter had dug him up. Everyone turned to look. ‘Gerard Manley Hopkins,’ Jacob said. Hugh, a soldier sitting near him, moved so that he could give him support, saying, ‘Look who’s come back to the land of the living.’ I went to him at once, and helped him drink some water and later to eat some biscuit. We had no bread by this time, and very little
of anything else. The soldiers had eaten all our stored food, except some bottles of preserved fruit that Mother had kept in the cellar.

Naturally, as soon as he could speak properly Jacob wanted to know where he was and what had happened. He was confused at first and weak from lack of food and drink besides everything else he had endured. He could not believe he had been unconscious for so long and was worried because he could remember nothing about what he had been doing when the shell-burst knocked him out. The wound in his leg was hurting. He wanted to see it. We persuaded him to wait until we dressed it again. We knew how painful that would be. I gave him a painkiller. After a while, he recovered himself and was calmer. But he kept saying, ‘They should be here by now,’ meaning the main army. ‘They’ll come,’ Hugh told him, ‘they wouldn’t let us down.’ Even at that moment their big guns were shelling the German positions not far from us, making a terrible noise and shaking the earth where we sat.

While this was happening Jacob kept giving me intent looks, struggling, I guessed, to remember who I was. At last it dawned.

‘The angel of mercy!’ he suddenly said but quietly, only for me to hear.

‘And you are Jacob Todd,’ I replied.

He gave a little laugh that brought the melting look back in to his eyes. ‘They call me Jacko,’ he said.

‘I like Jacob better,’ I said.

‘Me too. What’s your name?’

I told him, he tried to say it but was no better at our Dutch pronunciation than most of his comrades, so now it was my turn to have a little laugh at him. ‘Your friends call me Gertie,’ I said.

‘Not me,’ he said.

‘No?’

‘It’s no name for an angel. So what shall I call you? Have
you another name? One I can say.’

‘Yes. But I never use it.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. I never have.’

‘What is it? Come on, you have to tell me. You know you can’t refuse a wounded soldier. It isn’t allowed.’

‘Maria.’ (It is really Marije, but I wanted to make it easy for him.)

‘Maria,’ he repeated. ‘A good name for an angel. Can I call you Maria, Maria?’

His eyes persuaded me of course. Youth is my excuse!

I said, laughing, ‘All right. But only you. No one else.’

The weather had become very cold and during that night
regende het pijpenstelen
, as we say in Dutch—which means, it was raining in sheets. I thought the sky as well as our house was falling on our heads. We were all feeling very miserable. Jacob began to shiver. During a lull in the fighting Father rescued from the wreckage upstairs a pair of his trousers and a pullover for Jacob to wear, for what was left of his army clothes was useless. ‘Better not let Jerry catch you like that,’ said Hugh, ‘or he’ll take you for a spy and shoot you.’ He meant it as a joke, I’m sure, but it sent a tremor through me. I could see it also made Jacob think for a moment, but then he picked up his plum-red paratrooper’s beret and put it on, took his paratrooper’s scarf and tied it round my neck, and said, ‘That’ll fox him!’ It was not a good joke, but we laughed anyway as we huddled against each other for warmth.

The next day an officer brought orders for the men to leave. Only then we learned that those at the bridge in Arnhem had had to give up on Thursday. Not for forty-eight hours, as planned, but for four days they held out against tanks and guns and mortars, and greatly outnumbered by the Germans. Only when they ran out of ammunition, and were
almost all captured or injured or dead, had the few remaining given in. Now, eight days after the first paratroopers landed, the British soldiers trapped in Oosterbeek were surrounded by ever stronger German forces. It could not be long, a day or two at most, before they would be overrun. The only way to save them was by withdrawing across the river, from where they could reach the main army. But to have any chance of success, this would have to be done during that Monday night, with a barrage of heavy gunfire from the main army south of the river to cover their escape, confuse the Germans and make them keep their heads down.

Orders were given that the barrage was to begin at 8:50 p.m. that evening and the withdrawal at ten o’clock. Men defending the northern perimeter, which was furthest from the river, were to withdraw first, and so on, like an ebbing tide, down to those at the southern end on the river itself. As we were near the river end of the village, the soldiers in our house would be among the last to leave.

In preparation, the men were ordered to blacken their faces, to muffle the sound of their boots by wrapping them in strips torn from blankets, and to make sure their weapons did not rattle when they carried them. All other equipment was to be destroyed.

Of the wounded men, any who could walk were to leave. But those who could not or were too ill were to remain where they were, along with the medical officers and orderlies. They were to give themselves up and become prisoners of war when the Germans took over the village again.

In all the days of the battle till these orders came, everyone had tried to be cheerful and optimistic. Now a strange mood overcame us. That Monday the fighting was fierce, the worst of any so far. What remained of our house was often hit, even was burning in the upstairs rooms at one point, but Father and some of the lightly wounded men managed to put the flames out while the uninjured men
went on firing at the enemy, who had occupied houses on the other side of the street. Twice German soldiers almost reached us, but were fought off, hand-to-hand sometimes, though not without cost. Ron, who had been with us throughout that terrible week and so often helped us, died in this defence of our home. His companion, Norman, brought the news to us in the cellar. Mother and I wept for this brave and kindly man who had done so much to try and make our lives bearable during the battle, never complaining, and who we knew left behind in his own country a young wife and baby daughter, whose photos he had often shown us. Norman sat silently with us, dazed by the loss of his friend, but before he could recover he was called for from above and had to run back up to face the enemy again.

I think this was the moment when I knew for sure that, after all, we had not been liberated but would soon once more be in the hands of the German invaders. And for the first time that week I was truly afraid. So afraid that my legs felt too weak to carry me and my hands trembled uncontrollably. I wanted to scream but could not utter a sound. My stomach tightened in a knot, yet I wanted to rush to the lavatory.

The wounded men with us in the cellar became silent and inward. It was as if they were ashamed. They did not want to look at us—Papa, Mama and me. Some of them said they felt that leaving us behind was a kind of betrayal. And, quite naturally, they suffered a punishing sense of failure. None of our privations together was as bad as this.

With resigned fortitude, for the rest of the day we helped them as best we could as they prepared for that night’s danger. Even poor Sam would leave. He could walk, had recovered enough composure to understand what was going on and was calm enough for one of the others to lead him to the river. Also, I’m sure the thought of being left behind to become a prisoner had filtered through his addled brain and made him determined to keep control of himself somehow.
It struck me even then that his bravery in the face of his suffering was quite as great as the bravery of the men who went on battling to save us.