Beckoning War Read online

  He opens and closes his eyes to little difference in the dark under his helmet. Eyelashes brush gently against unseen bonds of oilcloth and rubber. Here and now. The worn rubbery smell of the underside of his tin hat, infused with that of the oil and sweat of his own dirty hair, fills his world as his world contracts to the limits of its thin protection over his face and to the olfactory memories of months of wear, and he can hear the wheeze of his shallow nervous breaths against the concave dome of padding and metal against which his nose is lightly pressed. Its feeling of protection is enhanced slightly by the lived-in odour, a time signature of experience, the added dimension of trust, that he has worn this helmet on and off for months during moments such as this. That it has seen him through eight and a half months on and off the battle lines. Scratched and dinged, pinged and knocked about, it is a material diary etched and inscribed by shot and shell, fire and brimstone. He runs his hand over its convex exterior. A slight dent from a pebble cast by an artillery blast. From his first battle, the diversionary attack on the Arielli Line in the Rapido River valley last winter, launched on a clear, cold morning from the hard mud of icy slit trenches. Exhilarating and terrifying—grimacing as hundreds of guns opened up at once and plumed the German positions ahead in eruptive geysers of smoke and dirt; pound, pound, pound, fifteen minutes of relentless thunderous sky-splitting clamour, a sonic dominion of devastation absolute in its rule of the senses, followed by sudden silence, the cue for the assault companies to dash out of their slit trenches. Ragged grey shrouds of smoke hung and slowly unthreaded themselves in the air after the guns stopped. Another bombardment, this time of smoke shells to obscure the Germans’ view of their own lines and the cratered earth ahead of them in a thick fog of eye-stinging smoke, to hide the attackers. He was situated above and behind the battle line, in immediate reserve to exploit whatever gains the first wave might make, his platoon along with the others offering machine-gun and mortar support from the top of a gentle incline overlooking the front line proper, about two hundred yards behind. He peered over the sandbagged lip of his narrow and confining slit trench through his field glasses as squads of infantrymen, hunched over and running to their objectives, were suddenly clearcut in a serrated staccato of machine-gun bullets and rifle fire, crackling hollow against the hillsides, and blasted by mortars and artillery. Return fire began crashing into the reserve positions, and into the artillery emplacements behind. PING! A pebble dashed off his helmet from a nearby shellburst. He maintained his composure and was proud of it. You have a cool head under pressure he said to himself, and felt proud. He heard an unearthly metallic wail, approaching from ahead and above, increasing in volume.

  “Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!” he yelled, and hit the floor of his trench. The world of his impressions was concussed into fragments by a series of deafening bangs. The ground spasmed with each and he was jarred up from the protesting earth. The air above whirred and rippled with molten shrapnel and stones and splinters and clots of mud. The last in this series of blasts was right beside his hole and he was partly buried in an avalanche of dirt. His ears rang like the echo of a gong. Get used to this, he remembers thinking, get used to this. This is only the first day.

  Here and now. Stay in the here and now. He draws air deeply into his lungs to offset the febrile conjurations of the past that have plagued him all day. The reverberating ringing of the past, from ever, forever. He hears a likeness of Lieutenant Colonel Hobson bark in his ears as though he has stuck his head under the pew to give him a good pasting: “Goddamnit, McFarlane! You’re a captain! Now get a hold of yourself and start acting like one before you’re sent back to Civvy Street!”

  He runs his hand over his helmet again and traces over a dented ripple in the rim, a distracting imperfection in the cold lip of metal that feels to the tip of his finger like the edge of a warped cymbal. One well-percussed in war’s cacophonous rhythm, in this case during the battle for Montecchio only a week ago in the fortified hills overlooking the Gothic Line, and he begins to lapse into another memory, of a relentless bombardment while digging into the slopes of Point 111—

  “Sir?” His shoulder is being ruffled. “Sir, you alright?” His eyes flutter open. He looks to his side to see Cooley’s face peering down in the space between pew and floor. The floor ripples as a shell bursts nearby. “You just yelled out really loudly. Scared the shit out of me.” He chuckles.

  Jim looks at Cooley and smiles. “Yes, I’m okay Cooley, I just had a charleyhorse. It’s all cramped up down here, and I’m stiff and kinked.” His hands and face are cold and sweaty. There is a mixture of concern and suspicion on Cooley’s face, a sadness in his eyes coupled with a close and clinical examination, a sense of responsibility to always assess those around him. A lingering gaze. He blinks. A lingering gaze through my malingering ways.

  “Yes sir, I understand.” In the wavery lanternlight Cooley’s face is spectral, lit softly like a gibbous moon hovering in the dusty darkness. I’m sure he didn’t buy that. He knows I’ve been shot before, and I never as hell screamed then. Didn’t even hurt till Charbonneau pointed out to me that I’d been shot. Then, did it ever hurt. A slight wave of dizziness washes over him, and the wound in his arm throbs in cutaneous remembrance. Quit dwelling on the past, don’t get eaten by your demons, don’t fall into the snapping, hungry mouths of the crocodiles in the swamps below. The sweat on his hands cools in the shellshaken darkness. He realizes he is breathing shallowly, tugging at the air in an arrhythmia of rising panic. He attempts to collect himself. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out—his breathing becomes more relaxed, more deep and restful, and he falls into a meditation of sorts as the world shakes around him, under him and over him, as he breathes himself into a trance in which it does not shake within him. He closes his eyes and keeps them closed.

  7

  The summer of 1940 had passed so far with a monotony incongruous with the fact that a war was apparently raging overseas. That is, for James McFarlane. War, for Jim, was nothing but some frantic headlines and grainy pictures, and radio broadcasts with the muted, staticky wails of air-raid sirens in far-off, fabled London. Those sirens may have alerted Londoners to the peril of incoming German bombers, but to Jim, they were a call to arms, much more exciting than the summer evening vocational school classes he’d been teaching lately. Marianne, his wife, was not impressed. During the past few months, the tension in their home began to reach a boil. At the breakfast table amid coffee, sausages and eggs one Saturday morning, they argued.

  “Hmm. Look at this,” he said, intent behind the sanctuary of the front page. And now, the statement that would light the fuse of battle: “You know, I do think I should join.”

  According to the paper, German bombers were now hitting central London. He sipped his coffee.

  “Jim, you’re twenty-nine years old. Even if you did join, do you really think you’d actually fight? You have a home, you have a job, and you have me.” Her eyes were pleading pools of nervousness. And annoyance.

  “Well, they need everyone they can get.” He looked so important, so knowledgeable, wielding the morning paper. “My brother, he’s in the service and he’s doing fine.”

  “Your brother is single and can do whatever he wants.” His brother was currently training in the RCAF at the air force base in Trenton. His letters were enthusiastic, the kind of letters that a little brother sends his big brother, wide-eyed about airplanes and women, complete with humorous caricatures of his commanding officers.

  Jim was pensive for a moment. Then, he tried a new approach in a careful, understanding voice: “Look, I’m married to you because I love you. I want to be married to you. I—”

  “But to get married to me and then run off to the army within a year? That’s like leaving me Jim, really leaving me. You have to understand how that makes me feel.”

  “I’m not leaving you if I join. And if I do join, remember that I wouldn’t be anywhere n
ear the action for a long time. I’d be training here for quite some time, and I know for a fact we’d get to see each other. I’d get leave money. I can always catch a train if I’m posted elsewhere.”

  “How about all the footage from the last war? Mud and blood. You’ve seen what it did to my father. It’s scary.” She looked more worried than angry. The Great War had billed her father for his left eye, most of his hearing, and much of his wits.

  “Well,” he said slowly and thoughtfully. He peered out from behind the paper. “Look at it this way. If I join the army, I could be making more than I am now. Much more. I think I could make officer. I’m fit and strong. I’m a little older than most recruits, I have more life experience, and as a teacher I’m in a position of authority. Of some sort. But the fact is, I know I could do it. And they’d look at all this when I’ve applied.” He bit into a sausage, chewed, and then continued. “And, by the way, you know there’s more than just infantry. So if that’s your worst nightmare, me in a muddy trench, it may not come true. In fact, it’s not even likely. For every guy up front, there are a few more keeping him fed, armed, whatever.”

  “But why the army?”

  “Well, you know I’d never, never make the air force. Not any of the good jobs, anyway. Do you think I could fly a fighter or a bomber? I’d wind up tightening bolts on grounded shitboxes in northern Alberta or something like that. And I’m too much of a puker to join the navy. I get seasick in the bath. I’d be too bloody green to do anything but lie in my hammock.”

  Marianne was attentive but unconvinced.

  “Look, I know this is important. I’m not stupid. I read about it too. I listen to the reports with you. I’m aware of things that happen in the world. It’s scary. But I don’t think it’s for you. It’s not for us. We’ve just been married, and we’re going to move into a new house, and—”

  “But what the hell am I doing here?” he interjected. “Not much. I’m a teacher in a school full of kids eager to get in the action. Christ, a few of the boys quit and joined the service before the end of the spring term.” He looked thoughtful, gesturing to the air. “The only thing going strong right now is the military and everything that feeds it. I might as well get in on it.” The eager look in his eyes betrayed his pragmatic reasoning. Marianne sighed. This was going to be tough, tough, tough. “Also, we have no kids. Yet. It’s not like I’d be abandoning young children that need me there, all the time.”

  “Look,” she commanded, getting up and pacing. “There must be some sort of civilian job you can do, one that’s connected to the war somehow. Then you could still contribute, and yet, you’d still be here, out of danger.”

  “No. I don’t want to work in any mine, or in any factory.”

  “Why not? The pay’s good, and they’re essential to the war effort.”

  “Too dangerous,” he said with a grin. Marianne rolled her eyes with exasperation.

  “You’re impossible.”

  “Let me just say it: I want to go to war. It’s what I feel I have to do. Now if you excuse me, I’m going to go out for a while.” He got up.

  “Where? Where the hell are you going to go now? I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me,” she demanded.

  “Out,” was his answer, followed by his proud, defiant exit.

  Out into the streets he went, his mind awash with anger and excitement, his body with adrenaline. He glanced back at the house, an imposing white Colonial partly hidden behind a bushy stockade of poplars and an enormous and gnarly crabapple tree. It was a rental, owned by a doctor currently living in New York, a friend of his father’s from the University of Toronto medical school. In a few more months, they would be making a down payment on a house of their own not too far away, a smaller one, albeit comfortable in its unassuming modesty. Connections got him this house, and they got him his teaching job, connections binding him to a world of quiet complacency. This sense of permanence frightened him, framed in the new house in its plain respectability. For Christ’s sake, Mark had joined the air force, and being the family darling, became the family toast as well. Jim was the older one, left now with something to prove. From his pocket he produced a packet of Wrigley’s gum, unwrapping the foil covering of a piece, unleashing a cool wintry zing of peppermint as he did so, and popped the pliable rectangular stick of gum into his mouth. He looked about as he walked. It was a sunny day, the sun peaking through the leaves along the oak-lined Glebe street and twinkling between the penumbral shadow branches on the grass. A young boy cycled by. An older man in a crooked straw hat and dungarees was mowing his lawn, pushing the wheel mower in rows, the turning blades chewing and shearing the grass, the man lost in a reverie of pastoral toil. Birds chirped. It was idyllic. One would never imagine the world was embroiled in war. On he walked, thinking: What the hell did I just do? He had just walked out on Marianne. Not permanently, of course. But he’d walked out on her just the same.

  He walked and walked, around the town, tipping his hat and saying hello whenever appropriate, thinking all the while. He passed St. James’s Church. A somewhat religious man, Jim remarked to himself that perhaps he should chat with Father Dave about all this. Father Dave would have the answer: or would he? Jim had been full of religious doubt recently, had been since the end of high school in fact. Would Father Dave recommend going to war? He might, having been a chaplain in the last one. Or he might not, having been a chaplain in the last one. The recruiting office was just a half-hour walk away, at the Cartier parade square. Tempting, very tempting. A halfhearted career as a teacher, a banshee wife, and a war that’s just too good to miss, he thought crassly. Oh the thrill of such thoughts. On Jim walked, wasting much of the morning in his musings.

  He ended up sitting on a bench alongside the Rideau Canal, under the protective canopy of an oak tree. A small sightseeing motor launch putt-putted by with its cargo of waving weekenders. He waved back. Here he spent half an hour listening to the bustle of the city during lunchtime, the whine of saws and drills of construction crews hurriedly erecting buildings for the burgeoning wartime civil service, the sounds of the engines of a wartime economy. His hometown of Sudbury, nestled in and perched upon the rocky crags of northern Ontario, was in the midst of a nickel boom, the mines operating around the clock, as in the dark and dripping tunnels lamp-helmeted miners set dynamite and fuse lines and blasted at veins of nickel like the congealed blood of ancient titans, necessary for the armour plating of the Allied engines of war. From the depths of the earth and from the violent hearts and scheming minds of men arose the fever shapes of aeroplanes and artillery and tanks and battleships and their murderous munitions. In the distance, the Parliament buildings loomed over Parliament Hill and Major’s Hill, where on weekdays the cabinet sat and the prime minister engaged in arguments relating to such unusual Canadian topics as mobilization and conscription and munitions. Prime Minister Mackenzie King, potato-shaped, dour, elusive and enigmatic, and, since partway through the Depression that this war cured overnight, in absolute control of the country he had sent officially to war on the heels of Britain, ten days after the German invasion of Poland.

  The war, he thought. How can I not do something about it and feel good about myself? He had helped run a scrap metal drive at school last winter, the students bringing in all manner of old junk—old cans, broken tools, dinged and dented shovels and hoes and shears, bicycles, bicycle and automobile wheels, a broken-down car, empty food tins, ancient fountain pens, a clanging clatter of old pots and pans, dull knives, bent forks and broken spoons. Ploughshares to swords. The moment the military began mustering, thousands of men lined up in long queues at armouries and recruiting centres all across the country, in every province, wrapping around city blocks, signing up for what was for many the first steady job in years or the first they’d ever had. At school, on the street, in the cafes and diners and beer parlours and clubs, it was war talk. I’m joining the air force; I’ve got 20/20 vision. I’ve
always wanted to sail around the world—I’m joining the navy. My two brothers and I just joined the army together. I’m training to fire the big guns! He one day bumped into a young Ottawa valley farmer on his way to market who was sure that because of his experience driving tractors, he would get into the Tank Corps. Men and women in uniform everywhere—everywhere. All of this in a little less than a year. Marianne was now working for the civil service, typing reports for the Ministry of Trans­portation, in addition to working shifts at the failing family furniture store. She had been flirting with the idea of joining the Royal Canadian Women’s Air Force to work in communications. She had even suggested that he enlist in a non-combat position if he desired to take part. But he was adamant all along about joining the overseas expeditionary force.

  “If I’m going, I’m going,” he said that evening in the parlour, after a frosty détente of several hours’ duration that ensued after his return home, and the truth of his words and intentions registered in her eyes. She looked at him with the weight of inevitability in her eyes, if turning to when in the certainty of his tone.

  “It’s not that I don’t understand why you want to go, or feel that you have to go,” she reasoned through gathering disappointment and sadness, “It’s that we are married. I couldn’t bear for you to be away so long having grown together into marriage as we have these last months. Surely you understand that, don’t you?”

  “I do,” he said in the flat tone of the obstinate and inconvincible. He said nothing further, there being nothing further to be said. He looked out the picture window, at the sun winking between the mesh of leaves and twigs of the droopy weeping willow that obscured the other side of the street. “Let’s put on some music.”