The Love William Till lay in Madeline's bed uncomfortably awake. The softness of the duvet stuffed with the best French down prevented him from sleeping. It was in stark contrast to the rough terrain and straw mattresses he had become accustomed to with the army.
It takes its toll on a man at forty two years of age.
Even though he was deathly tired he still couldn't sleep. Maybe it wasn't because the bed was too comfortable; it could possibly be because of Madeline. She was half his age and this was the first time they had shared a bed.
She lay next to him sound asleep. The softness of her skin matched that of the sheets. Her dark brown hair was tied up with a few loose hairs sprawled across the pillow, her body rising and falling with each breath. Her stomach slightly bulged in the middle of her pregnancy.
William tried to take it all in before he had to leave again, when the chaos of the Western Front will engulf him again. But he held little compassion for the soldiers under him. Of course he tried his best for them, he had to, but the faces all melt into one and eventually you just don't care in the same way. Maybe at the start, maybe in 1914 and 1915 he cared, but not anymore. He's an old man, too old for a young man's game.
It took its toll on a man at forty two years of age.
His detached feeling in the field continued in the French house he had returned to this leave. Madame Defour's continued tuts and huffs at the shabby interior of the house they were evacuated to never ceased. She looks at William with contempt, and seemingly blamed him personally for the war and the inconveniences she suffered.
It did not phase him, little did. It was clear how she felt about him and Madeline. Monsieur Defour, though more polite, clearly did not approve of him either. English was not needed to make this assumption. After all, why would they want to learn English? England is the 'old enemy'. William was better than no man for Madeleine, and they recognised it, so they bit their tongues.
Breakfast in the sunny June morning was silent, like most social interactions in the house. William wasn't hungry, but ate out of politeness, or more the effort to be polite. He sat in his uniform ready to depart immediately after eating.
The time came and no one showed any acknowledgement of William standing up. He slung his rifle around his back, highlighting the mire he will return to. It was only when he took his peaked cap off the table that Monsieur Defour rose and shook hands with him. Madame Senechal sat in her chair and continued to stare at her breakfast, as did Madeline.
Monsieur Defour walked to the door with him. He was a gentleman, even in his abhorrence for William. He cut a good figure in his suit for an elderly man, he posessed a good posture and sported a fine, thick moustache, a man of a lost age. He was an engineer who had designed some of the roads and buildings in the small village of Harbonnieres, where there family home was. Now overrun by the Germans. Ulysses Defour had seen his village invaded once before this war, when as a boy in 1870 he was forced to fill buckets with water so that the German soldiers marching onto Paris in the Franco-Prussian war could dip their tins and drink from them while still marching so as not to halt the progress to Paris.
He opened the door for William and the sounds of the street in the late morning filled the house - the hustle and bustle of soldiers in the street some on leave others returning to the front, carts going up and down the cobbled street and children playing.
William paused before walking out the door, some strange emotion caught him then and he turned to Monsieur Defour. A good foot shorter than him Monsieur Defour looked up at William's broad body, standing at six feet. They made eye contact.
'Goodbye' William said.
'Au revoir William' Defour replied.
William stepped out into the street and proceeded to walk to the train station, to begin his journey back to his men. He turned around to take one last look at where his love, his Madeleine was staying, so it could comfort him in his thoughts at the front. Madeleine was standing at the door watching him disappear into the moving crowd. Still walking away he raised his arm and waved goodbye, people flitted in and out of his view, and she lifted her own hand up and showed the her soft palm before walking back inside the house.
He returned to face the direction in which he was walking. He held that image in his heart, emblazoned in his mind. But he knew that he could never be an André Pascal.
The Soldiers
'Sergeant Major, I know that when I signed myself up in 1914 I would be putting my life on the line, but I didn't know it was going to be like this. Or come to this.' He paused. 'But I don't want to have to go out and meet something that I don't understand.'
Corporal Harte sighed to himself as William stood with him watching the men labour on the Albert-Amiens road. They carried stones from a horse a cart to fill craters in the road caused by German shelling. Harte had taken off his beret to wipe his face with his handkerchief. The sun beat down on the still day as it approached its highest point.
Corporal Thomas Harte had worked as a conductor on the electric trams in Manchester. He was thirty three years old, a quiet man by his nature. He had the calmness and sensibility required of a Corporal in the Labour Corps. William was afraid that the lack of action seen for several months might slow the men and make them lazy. Harte, he believed, was a man who would keep his squad sharp, and it appeared so as they toiled in the heat. But this war, this monotonous life they lead where they woke up each morning to repair the fresh shell craters in the roads they had worked on just a few days ago. Vital work it may be as convoys waited for them to complete the repairs, but the war dragged on and questions and arguments over what they were 'fighting' for flared up.
When they landed in France as Royal Engineers Harte had a full head of hair, now, as they stood in the hot morning sun in Picardy, Harte was balding fast. Transferred into a new unit, the Labour Corps, an unarmed force used to maintain roads and light railway. Similar to the work they had done before as Royal Engineers, only unarmed. William couldn't see the sense in taking away a soldier's gun. It's like taking away his purpose.
'It's not that I'm afraid.' He continued. 'I just want to see my wife and children. It's been two years we've been here Sergeant Major.' He furrowed his brow. 'Two years.'
William turns to Harte, 'Corporal Harte, we'll get home someday. Make sure those craters are filled by noon.'
Those were the only words of encouragement he could offer as he left Harte to supervise the men alone. It wasn't easy being Company Sergeant Major of a company of older men. They had wives and children they had never left at home alone. Some, he thought, would even prefer to be in the front line than labouring over craters at the rear. Of course they weren't free from danger. They were regularly under fire from the German's guns which they were always in range of. That surely had some effect on the men's nerves. They had no dug outs or trenches to hide in.
As Royal Engineers in 1916 they had gone in as support in some assaults, which had gotten the men's adrenaline racing. It was what they signed up for, Kitchener's call in 1914. They were all classed as labourers, being older men, short sighted or having some other shortcoming that prevented them from being infantry. William was promoted to Company Sergeant Major immediately on account of his occupation, a builder's foreman and a qualified master joiner, that and his military experience.
'Company Sergeant Major Till' Captain Bristed called. 'How long will it be until this road is repaired?'
'About half an hour sir, it would be faster but it's almost noon and it's getting hot.'
'Spiffing weather though isn't it Sergeant Major?'
Bristed looked up at the clear blue sky, stroking his moustache, slightly greyed. 'We had weather like this nine months of the year in New Zealand. I don't know why I ever went back to those dull grey days in England.' He paused. 'Well at least I got this war Sergeant Major. Newspapers say the Bosch are on their last legs.'
-------
See her with the green dress?
She talked to me at the bar.
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Ok, although I have that film on DVD I was not aware of the plagiarism.
