Free The Somme Stations by Andrew Martin Page B

get a week in a gaol for second time Drunk and Incapable.
    ‘Fined thirty shillings the first time, forty shillings the next. The second time I had to blow the whistle for Fowler.’
    ‘Resisted, did he?’
    ‘Just a bit of lip, really. Not much more than that. Flower wanted him charged with assault, but I talked him round. Didn’t seem worth getting the bloke lagged.’
    Any other grade of railwayman would have been stood down for drunkenness, but the porters were all boozy, and known to be so. I reminded Scholes of the run-in the Chief and I had had with Dawson in the Bootham Hotel, and he said, ‘Did you know he’s been warned off half the pubs in York?’
    ‘Well,’ I said, warming my hands at the brazier, ‘it’s a good thing he doesn’t hold a grudge.’
    ‘But how do we know he doesn’t?’ said Scholes.
    That evening, we were in our makeshift cribs in the barn, one oil lamp to every two men. Scholes was playing his whistle in the farmyard outside in the dark. He’d said the smoke from the brazier made his eyes smart, at which Bernie Dawson had muttered to me, ‘You know, I don’t think he’s going to like the Western Front very much.’
    We’d been warned by Oamer to expect news of a duty that would take us onto the actual peninsula for the first time. Meanwhile we were killing time, and listening to Scholes.
    Young Alfred Tinsley, the next bloke along from me, was sucking a peppermint and reading the Railway Magazine – lost in it, he was. On the cover, I read ‘Don’t forget your friend in the services. Buy him a Railway Magazine !’ I hadn’t had that particular number yet. It would probably be waiting for me at Hull, the wife having sent it on from Thorpe. I was just then trying to write to the wife. In my last letter I told her that I was unable to disclose our location, and she’d written back saying, ‘Would it be Kilnsea, East Yorks? Because that’s what the postmark says.’ I was now writing that it might be and it might not be, but she should keep in mind that incoming letters were soon to be read by officers as well as outgoing.
    ‘Who are you writing to?’ asked Oliver Butler.
    ‘Mind your own fucking business,’ I said.
    ‘Everywhere one goes, the spirit of merry badinage in the air,’ said Oamer, who’d just stepped into the barn. (Scholes had also come in behind him.)
    ‘What’s the special duty, Corporal?’ came the voice of young William, who had his crib on the other side of wooden partition, next to Oamer’s – his bolthole from the twins.
    ‘Bide,’ said Oamer.
    This was the nearest he ever came to saying ‘Shut up’, and he was eyeing the twins, who hadn’t yet left off with their secret whisperings. Presently, Oamer said, ‘Be it known by all …’which was his way of beginning an announcement. He then told us that the Spurn military railway very nearly was half completed.
    ‘Oh good-o,’ said Oliver Butler.
    According to Oamer, it now ran from a railway pier at the tip of the peninsula to a spot somewhere in the middle. Tomorrow, we were to march to that spot, and there we’d board the train and be conveyed to the pier.
    ‘That’s a bit of all right,’ said Alfred Tinsley, because here was a railway for him to look at.
    ‘ Why are we going to the railway pier, Corporal?’ asked Oliver Butler.
    ‘You are to unload a ship,’ said Oamer, ‘… quite a small ship, you will be pleased to hear.’
    Digesting this news, we all turned in for the night, and every lamp in the barn was soon extinguished except the one from Oamer’s (and William’s) side of the petition, which continued to burn low. Oamer would no doubt be writing to … well, whoever he wrote to.
    I couldn’t get off to sleep. I turned on my side; I heard a sort of grunt from the direction of Oamer, and then the noise hit. It did hit as well; the whole barn rocked, and every man instantly sat up. Every man was talking as well, but I couldn’t make out a word; soft muffles seemed