At Some Disputed Barricade_ A Novel - Anne Perry [133]
The Peacemaker would say her sight was too small, too ordinary.
She would say that his was too far from the human heart to see into it: too overweening, exercising not leadership but dominion.
“Mason!” the Peacemaker said sharply. “It is the beginning of the end! Can’t you see that? Peace! There need never be this abomination of war again!”
“Yes, sir,” Mason said a little flatly. “Well, not here anyway.”
The Peacemaker was not to have his spirits damped. “You’re tired. Go home and sleep. Write your article. Then go back to Passchendaele. Attend the court-martial and write the truth about it. The men deserve that. Cavan deserves it.”
Joseph and Morel, with Geddes in tow, made the crossing back through the German lines, over no-man’s-land and then through the French lines. They had great difficulty but achieved it in the same manner as they had crossed the other way: running, crawling, scrambling the moment it was dark enough between the star shells. Perhaps they had been a little less frightened, thanks to the schnapps, and for the same reason also a little clumsier.
They had found parting from Kretschmer and Wolff had occurred naturally because the German soldiers had had to report to their units. In the darkness and the tension before an attack, other people’s minds had been more preoccupied with what was to come than identifying individuals. Like the British and French armies, their regiments had also been decimated. The losses were staggering, and men were assigned anywhere just to fill in the numbers and make up a platoon or a brigade. There were more strangers than friends left. No one questioned Joseph or Morel closely, and the clerical disguise did the rest.
Getting through the French lines was more difficult. They were taken prisoner at the point of a rifle—in fact several rifles.
“We’ve got a German prisoner,” Morel said immediately, in French, indicating Geddes, whose mouth and lower face were still bound. He was still in his stolen German uniform, so there was nothing to make the statement appear untrue.
The French lieutenant in command looked dubious, but he accepted the story, at least on the surface. Joseph was so covered in mud that his dog collar was all but invisible.
When they had been taken farther back to a dry dugout suitable for interrogation, they told the truth, more or less.
The French lieutenant shook his head. “I suppose you want to take him back to Ypres now?”
Joseph smiled. “Yes, please. If you can help it would be enormously appreciated.”
The lieutenant shrugged. “Well, you can barely walk! And I don’t suppose your prisoner is very keen. We’d better have somebody drive you.” He rolled his eyes. “Entente cordiale,” he observed, making an elegant gesture of despair with his hands, but he was smiling. He might never admit it, but he obviously found it secretly rather entertaining. It was something different, and a story to tell.
He must know, just as Joseph did, and any other soldier anywhere would, that war is frequent terror, occasional hideous violence, sometimes terrible pain, a lot of exhaustion and discomfort and hunger, but it is mostly boredom. It is the comradeship, the laughter, the stories and bad jokes that make it bearable, the sharing of the glorious and the absurd, the dreams and memories, and the letters from home through which one clings to sanity.
Thus it was with the help of the French lieutenant, after a meager but well-cooked meal, and armed with a new stock of tall stories, they were driven the long way back to Passchendaele. They arrived the following day, with Geddes still bound but no longer gagged since there was no necessity for it.
They thanked the French driver profusely and offered him a tin of Maconachie’s and a bar of decent chocolate, which he accepted reluctantly but with grace.
Before reporting to Colonel Hook, Joseph had a brief moment alone with Morel. There was a military police sergeant in the doorway; there would be no second chance to escape. He wanted to ask Morel what he intended to say about his original