young man, the boy, sang a sad lament—composed for a soprano voice—from one of Handel’s operas, Rinaldo, I think. I don’t remember the Latin title, but in English the lament was called “Let Me Weep,” which I thought no more than appropriate. An English boy singing a German song in a Flanders field. Handel, I know, had found real fame only in London. The aria was doubly suitable.
When the boy had finished and the strains of the mouth organ subsided, leaving only a faint whisper of wind, we all knew that there would be no more music that night.
“Gute Nacht, Fritz!” shouted our linguist. “Schlafen Sit gut.”
The mood of the men in the trench that night was different. “Maybe we’ll get some proper sleep,” one man growled.
“I hope so, too,” I replied. “But the guard will be maintained, as always. We’re taking no risks.”
“Do you think that’s really necessary, sir?” said one of the men.
“I don’t know, but I don’t want to lose anybody for the sake of elementary precautions. In any case, whoever is on duty will have me for company, at least to begin with. I have letters to write.”
They didn’t like it, but they could see the sense in what I said.
The men designated as guards took up their positions and I settled down to my letters. I say “my” letters, but they weren’t really. Besides being underage, a handful of the “men” in my unit—as in all units—were unable to read or write. Most of them had never anticipated the importance of letters at the Front—letters received from home, and letters they sent to their families. I hadn’t foreseen this problem either, but it quickly became apparent where the solution lay. Many of the men who could read and write could do so only with difficulty, and by Christmastime writing letters for the men, and reading aloud the replies they got from home, was one of my more important duties, crucial so far as morale was concerned.
My routine was simple. I read the men’s letters to them as soon as they arrived, usually late at night. The men told me what they wanted to say in return, I made notes, and spatchcocked their personal details together with an account of what action our unit had seen in the previous few days. They made their mark at the end of whatever I wrote before it was sent off. In this way I got to know far more about the men under me than I had ever anticipated—who had missed the birth of their infants, due to being abroad, whose brothers had already been killed, who supported which football team, who expected their girlfriends to stay faithful and who didn’t, the names of their dogs, what brand of beer they missed most.
It was amazing how quickly we slipped into the routine, and how much the men came to rely on these exchanges. Even though they couldn’t read them, they carried their letters from home in their tunic pockets and would take them out from time to time. “Here, sir, read us that bit about our Lily telling the vicar his sermon was defeatist.” “Sir, can you just read that part about my mother’s prize at that garden show?”
“Oh no, don’t, sir,” others would complain.” Jee-sus, we had all that garden fête stuff nonstop yesterday—and the day before. Give us a break.” But they didn’t mean it. For men who had seen what we had seen, even in our short time at the Front, normal news from home— about a garden fête, or a vicar’s sermon, or a terrier who had had puppies by caesarean—was as near sacred as it got.
There was lots of sad news, of course, especially for the men from large families with several brothers away in the war. I read those quietly, and in private, warning the men what was to come. That helped me know whom to give leave to, and when.
I don’t know when I did fall asleep that evening, but eventually the letter writing was done and I nodded off. When I woke up it was just getting light. A weak sun was lifting itself over the Caillette hills in the east. Yawning, I sneaked a look across to the German lines. Never was a landscape so pitted and pockmarked with shell holes, flats of mud, and disfigured by twisted shards of shrapnel as our section of south Belgium. Nowhere, in the entire history of