Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #19. Arthur Conan Doyle
known what to expect when I stepped into the room, but when I saw the figure lying on the floor in that cramped and dusty space, I scarcely recognized my young friend.
Gone was the sturdy, self-reliant young man I had sailed beside for more than a dozen years; in his place was a defeated soldier with haggard features and sunken eyes that were accentuated by shadows thrown from an oil lamp on the floor beside the mattress. I knelt beside him and took his hand, and was rewarded by a wan smile:
“Padrig, Padrig,” he said weakly, “I feared I would never see you again.”
I glanced up at his father as I struggled to find words to reflect my sorrow at his plight while, at the same time, offering some solace. And I realized that, in his devastation, Old Yann had also been unable to comfort his son sufficiently. I turned back to the boy, put my arms around him and kissed his cheeks. But in the end all I could manage was a weak, “Thank God you’re alive,” and I lowered my eyes in shame.
Mercifully, the doctor’s wife set her tray down beside me and began preparations for changing the dressings. So I pulled myself to my feet, took Old Yann by the arm and pulled him gently to one side.
“At least we have him back,” I whispered. He nodded grimly, but there was no joy in those eyes.
During the next few days, I came to realize that my old friend was having great difficulty coming to terms with two inescapable facts: the sudden collapse of the invincible French army, after his comrades and he had struggled for four years in the trenches of the Great War; and the loss of his boy in terms of a shipmate and fellow fisherman. In the Brittany of the thirties and forties to lose one’s only son’s wage earning capacities was a calamity, but to have to nurse and financially support an amputee in addition was a devastating burden.
On the third day, we loaded Young Yann into the doctor’s Citroën CV and brought him down to the river where the Kenavo chafed at her moorings, eager to carry him home. And because his patient was still weak from his surgery, the good doctor helped us carry him on board and make him comfortable on a field cot of fishing nets. Doctor Bertrand then cast off our lines and wished us God speed as we fired up our motor and pushed out into the Loire to begin our return voyage.
And as we island-hopped our way back up the coast, our passenger spent most of the first day in a drug-induced sleep. But by the second afternoon the salt air and the gentle roll of the ocean seemed to be having a healthful impact, so I sat him up in the stern, made him comfortable by propping up his stump with my duffel bag, and offered him the helm:
“Here,” I said, with a wink. “If you can’t pay your passage, you are going to have to work for it.”
His contented expression told me all I needed to know as he grasped the tiller and ran a practiced eye over the trim of the sail. Then he looked off to the south-west over the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean and filled his lungs with air laced with the salt and spray of a thousand waves: “This is where the Good Lord intended me to spend my days, Padrig,” he said. “And that’s exactly what I intend to do from this moment on.”
It was good to see Young Yann in such a positive frame of mind after all he’d been through, and we bantered back and forth, just as we had when he was a boy. And when he asked how we came to find him, I entertained him with a lighthearted version of our preparations and our outbound voyage, making sure to emphasize his father’s critical role.
“But you,” I said, when I had finished. “How did you end up in Nantes, of all places?”
“That’s a long and twisted tale,” he replied. “And I don’t have anything like your story-telling skills. But if you’ll bear with me, I’ll do my best:
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The regiment is stationed on the Maginot Line—on the edge of the Ardennes—two leagues from the Belgian border. We are bivouacked under canvas and they put us to work digging trenches. All day we are digging trenches—a maze of stupid trenches. In the evenings we sit around in our tents playing cards, drinking cheap wine and reminiscing about our homes, our families, and our former lives. This doesn’t make us feel better, but it does remind us why we are here.
When our captains decide the trenches are ready, High Command comes down to inspect them. There are meetings at Battalion headquarters with parades and inspections—all the usual bullshit. First they make us dig through a mountain of mud, and then they expect us to get all cleaned up for inspection. I tell you, Padrig, the military has some stupid ideas about how to win a war.
But after all that, it turns out they don’t like our trenches, or our position for that matter. The official word is we are too vulnerable. So they pull us back to the next hill and we start over. They pull this shit three times—it’s like they want us to dig a fucking trench all the way back to Paris. But for me, the worst part is the planes. All the time we’re digging, enemy spy planes fly over us, watching us—it’s eerie. But does anyone try to shoot them down or chase them off? Nann! That would be too easy.
Then it begins! Suddenly, there are no more spy planes. Now the air is filled with Stukas raking our positions with machine-gun fire. Then their artillery starts—the sky is black with shells and mortars. The bombardment lasts for two days—we just sit in our trenches with our heads down. On the second day the regimental headquarters takes a direct hit, killing our colonel and his second-in-command.
When we hear about that, my sergeant says that’s the end of us as a fighting machine. He says they were the only officers we had who knew what they were doing. According to him the rest of the staff officers got their commissions from political pandering—whatever that means; and our field officers, he says, are a joke—just kids—wet behind the ears.
On the third day comes the big push—wave upon wave of tanks, with infantry battalions moving in behind them. We try to hold ’em off, but it’s like trying to hold back the tide—men are dying all around me. But it’s the noise that really wears us down. The crash of guns; the screams of the wounded—you can’t hear yourself think.
The sergeant receives word from field HQ: “Begin withdrawing your men in an orderly fashion!” Who do they think they’re kidding? There’s nothing orderly about being in Hell. Some men throw down their rifles and start running. When I see that, I want to run too—I’m just as scared as they are—but I’m in the same trench as the sergeant. But when he climbs out of the hole to try to stop the stampede, he’s cut to pieces by machine-gun fire and his body falls back in the trench on top of me.
That’s it. I’m out of there. We’re all out of there. I heave his body to one side, scramble out of the hole and start running. I tell you, Padrig, I never ran so far or so fast in my life. But when the cannon roar fades and the carnage is far behind, I collapse on the outskirts of a forest hamlet and lie on the ground gasping for air. Some fifteen minutes later, when my body stops heaving and I pull myself to my feet, I discover to my shame and chagrin that my face and coat are covered with my sergeant’s blood.
There’s another soldier from my regiment skulking in the woods nearby, and together we head into the village, slinking between the houses like a couple of thieves. And beside the square, another man I know calls to me from one of the houses. Now there are three of us in this bombed-out settlement not knowing what to do or where to go.
Then the shelling starts afresh and the soldier from the house leads us back inside, and we take cover in the cellar. And for the first time that week I begin to feel safe—the rock walls are dense and substantial. But we’re all exhausted, so we agree to stay there and rest up until dark and then try to make our way back to our lines—wherever the hell they are.
There we are, three Breton peasants sitting in the cellar of a house in an abandoned village in the middle of the Ardenne forest. Shells are flying overhead, and we have no idea where the Germans are, where the French are, or where we are. I am sitting on the floor with my back against a stone wall. Sitting beside me is Joseph Le Bris, a farm laborer from the Black Mountains.
Across from us is Marcel Guillou, a miller’s son from Malestroit, on the Lanvaux Heath, north-east of Vannes. He is the first among us to shake off his fear,