The Ghost of the Trenches Read online

  The farmer waited patiently in the inn all evening. But the soldier never showed up for that drink.

  Anxious that, climbing alone, the soldier had slipped and fallen on one of Scafell’s rocky paths, the young farmer set out at first light the next day and combed the hillsides, looking for his friend, until the last drops of daylight were squeezed out of the sun.

  The soldier was nowhere to be found.

  A couple of days later, at the end of a long day spent rounding up his flock on the fellside, the young farmer received a telegram. His friend had fallen in the Battle of Passchendaele on Belgium’s rain-soaked fields, at exactly the time that the pair had met on the mountain in the beautiful sunshine of that Lakeland summer.

  The young farmer never told a soul about meeting his friend out on the path at Hollow Stones that day. He was sure no one would believe him. He wasn’t sure if he believed it himself. But those who share a love of the mountains and follow the paths that lead up amid Lakeland’s more remote pikes and fells are often aware of experiencing there an abiding sense of spirituality – a sense that they are closer, somehow, to the heavens.

  Perhaps one day, if you follow the young friends’ footsteps and visit those Lakeland fells, you will feel it too.

  3: The Mysterious Monk

  In Slovenia, near the Italian border, lies the picturesque town of Kobarid. The Italians know it as Caporetto and, during the Great War, the town lay right on the Austro-Italian Front. From 24 October to 19 November 1917, Caporetto was the site of a gruelling battle in which the Italian army suffered a heavy defeat at the hands of the Austro-Hungarian and German armies. So great was the Italians’ loss that thereafter they used the word caporetto to describe a terrible defeat. The Italian retreat from the Battle of Caporetto became the subject of A Farewell to Arms, a novel by the American writer Ernest Hemingway. It is also the inspiration for the following legend.

  The story features an Italian monk named Padre Pio. Born in 1887, Padre Pio studied for the priesthood in the friary of St Francis of Assisi and took his final vows in 1907. It is said that at the age of 31, in the year 1917, he collapsed in pain while praying in church. He was found, unconscious, with wounds in his hands and feet and in his side: wounds which matched those of Jesus Christ when he was crucified. There are other people in history, on whose bodies such marks – known as stigmata – are rumoured to have appeared without cause. Some people believe that they are heaven-sent and are a sign of a devoted Christian believer.

  The appearance of stigmata was not the only miracle associated with Padre Pio. Many people also believed that he had the power to provide miracle cures. Others even claimed that he could appear in two places at once.

  Whether or not Padre Pio was really capable of such miracles, he remained in the service of God all his life and built up a loyal following. When he died in September 1968, there were many who argued that he should be made a saint. In 2002, their wish finally came true, when Padre Pio was canonised by Pope John Paul II.

  There are many stories told about Padre Pio’s life, and many of them, like the one which follows, blend truth with aspects of myth and legend.

  It was the night of 24 October 1917, and the soldiers in the Italian army protecting the front line at the foot of the Julian Alps were trying to catch some badly-needed sleep. As they strained their eyes in the dark night, anxious to spot any movement from the enemy, the look-outs lifted their collars to try to keep out the damp and blew on their hands to try to keep out the cold. But all was still.

  Midnight came and went and the first few minutes of the new day ticked by. One… two… three… each second echoed by the raindrops which dripped from the butts of the look-outs’ machine guns as they maintained their aim across the battlefield and into the drizzly air.

  Then suddenly, on the stroke of 2am, there was a boom and a crack, followed by a rush of air. A shower of earth and metal rained down on the look-outs and covered the sleeping Italians in a blanket of dust and dirt.

  There were screams, shouts. A whistle blew. The Italian soldiers scrambled to their knees, their heads still fuzzy from sleep, their senses disoriented by the suddenness of the attack. They called to the look-outs, desperate to know where the artillery barrage was coming from, but the early morning mist cloaked their German attackers and made them impossible to track.

  And the worst was still to come.

  Just when the Italians thought that the artillery barrage had ended, there came another crack, louder this time, like a giant firework, followed by an explosion.

  ‘Gas!’ screamed their commander, Luigi Cadorna, as a choking, acid-green smoke crept, assassin-like, along the front line.

  The soldiers fumbled in the dark for their gas masks, some already heaving and spluttering as the chemicals burned their throats and filled their eyes and noses; others hopelessly aware that their outdated masks would offer little protection from the deadly fumes.

  In total disarray, the Italians gave no counter-fire as the Germans and Austro-Hungarians attacked. The night became day and one after the other, the Italian soldiers fell, and by the time it was night again, their front line was ragged and torn. Disheartened and scared, the men longed for the presence of their revered and respected commander, General Capello, who, at the very time when his leadership was most needed, was confined to his bed with a fever. Hearing of his men’s plight and anxious to protect them from further losses, the general ordered them to retreat to the river.

  But his command was never carried out, for General Cadorna, who had taken his sick comrade’s place, thought he knew better. He demanded that the men regroup and stand their ground, refusing to accept that they were beaten.

  Five more days of suffering passed, with the Italians under heavy attack, before the stubborn Cadorna gave the order to retreat. Even then, after witnessing ten thousand of their comrades slaughtered, and three times as many wounded, the battered and exhausted Italians still faced a four-day struggle to cross the river to safety, with the enemy still snapping at their heels.

  As the scale of his army’s losses – and his responsibility for them – began to hit home, General Cadorna retreated to his tent. Dejected and ashamed, he paced back and forth as he went over and over his mistakes in his mind. He had hoped to make his mark, to lead his men in a reversal of fortune, yet he had ignored the fact that there were not enough mobile reserves to allow any counter-attack to pack a punch. He had cast aside the advice of the best general in Italy and let his ambition and his pride rule his head. If his men had disliked him before, they must surely hate him now. How could he live with himself?

  In despair, the commander sank down into his chair and reached for his pistol. Trembling, he held its cold and deadly nose against his head.

  But just as he began to put pressure on the trigger with his index finger, there appeared before him a young man dressed in monk’s robes. The man held up his hand and spoke sharply to the commander. ‘Don’t be so foolish!’ Then he bowed his head and backed away, disappearing through the folds of the tent.

  General Cadorna’s hand dropped to his side and the pistol dropped to the floor. Never again, he promised himself, would he contemplate taking his own life, for surely the monk must have been sent from God. Saved by the appearance of the mysterious monk, General Cadorna knew what he had to do. He resigned from his post, leaving active military matters in the hands of wiser men, and secured himself a safer seat on the Allied military council.

  Years later, back in his homeland after the war, the General saw the monk once again. This time he was in the beautiful town of San Giovanni Rotondo in the Gargano Mountains of Central Italy. He was visiting a church there when he saw the monk standing by the altar.

  The monk recognised the General and spoke to him in the same clear, firm voice that he had used in the tent near the battlefield. He told the commander that his name was Padre Pio, and reminded him about his lucky escape.

  The General thanked the monk for saving his life, said
a small prayer, and then went on his way.

  It wasn’t until some days later, when asking after Padre Pio among the inhabitants of San Giovanni Rotondo, that the General learned a startling fact. The monk, he was told, had never once left his friary in the Italian mountains throughout all the years of the Great War.

  4: My Dad’s Got a Gun

  This short tale was given to us by the Cotswold singer and storyteller Ken Langsbury. He heard it from another Gloucestershire folk singer called Bob Bray. Although Ken told it as a Second World War story, we believe that it first surfaced in the Great War of 1914–18 and was recycled when Britain went to war once more in 1939.

  Young Tommy’s dad didn’t go to war. According to Tommy, his mother wrote to the War Office and said that if they took his dad off to war, there would be nobody there to work the horse and then they would all starve. They had a letter back from General Haig himself, saying that he didn’t want the country to starve so indeed it would be best if Tommy’s dad stayed home and worked the horse.

  Young Tommy didn’t mind his dad not going to war because he couldn’t abide fighting, unlike some of the kids at school. One day, one of these warlike kids stood up in the corner of the school playground. With all the little-uns sitting all around him, the big lad boasted, ‘My dad’s got a gun.’

  ‘Cooorrr!’ said all the little-uns. ‘Your dad’s gotta gun!’

  ‘Yes, my dad’s got a gun. He keeps it in a box with his medals.’

  The little-uns said, ‘Cooorrr! Your dad’s gotta gun and he keeps it in a box with his medals!’

  They asked young Tommy what his dad had got. Blushing, Tommy answered, ‘Nothing.’

  The big lad sneered and said, ‘Nothing? That’s ’cause he’s a yellow-bellied coward!’

  Angry at his dad being called such a thing, Tommy thought hard. ‘No, wait. My dad’s got an old army great-coat.’

  ‘Cooorrr!’ said all the little-uns. ‘Tommy’s dad’s got an old army great-coat!’

  Feeling stronger, Tommy told them that the coat had got a brass button on it.

  Impressed, the little-uns said, ‘Cooorrr! Tommy’s dad’s got an army great-coat with a brass button on it!’

  They asked Tommy where he kept it.

  ‘He keeps it in the attic, over the tank,’ replied Tommy, sticking out his chest with pride.

  The little-uns leapt up. ‘Cooorrr! Tommy’s dad’s gotta tank!’

  The big lad went quiet and sloped off.

  5: An Army of Angels

  ‘The Angels of Mons’ is one of the best-known legends of the First World War. Many different versions exist, but it is within the most famous telling of the tale that the origins of the legend lie. For it appears that the idea of angels appearing on the battlefield at Mons originated as a short fictional story called ‘The Bowmen’, written by Welshman Arthur Machen and published in a London newspaper in September 1914. Machen never claimed his story was true, but the style in which he wrote it was so believable that readers became convinced that it was based on eyewitness accounts. What happened next was an example of how a story can grow and evolve as it is repeated and retold over time. What starts as fiction becomes fact and rumours of strange happenings start to spread. What starts as fact becomes twisted, exaggerated and blended with increasing amounts of fiction.

  The historical event that led Arthur Machen to write ‘The Bowmen’ was the Battle of Mons, which took place from 22 to 23 August 1914. The battle offered the soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) their first taste of combat on the Western Front and it proved to be an unforgettable start to the war for them. The action took place near the Belgian town of Mons, close to the border with France. The Allies hoped to hold back the German army and keep them from advancing into French territory. However, the German army proved to be far stronger than the BEF expected, outnumbering the British troops by more than two to one. Losing the support of their French allies, who withdrew towards Paris, the British were heavily defeated and were forced into a rapid retreat.

  As they stared into the jaws of defeat, it is probable that some of the British soldiers, exhausted and terrified, called upon friendly spirits and saints to come to their aid, and it is not unlikely that they may have seen strange visions or experienced hallucinations. Whatever the truth, after Arthur Machen’s fictional story was published, several soldiers came forward and claimed to have seen angels or phantoms on the battlefield at Mons. A story which was first written as pure fiction, then dismissed as a deliberate hoax, began to evolve into a wartime legend. The retelling of the legend of the Angel of Mons that follows is inspired by Arthur Machen’s original story.

  Among the hundred thousand brave soldiers who made up the British Expeditionary Force at the start of the Great War was a sharp-eyed Londoner named Charlie. Charlie was blessed with a beautiful singing voice and as a young boy had dreamed of a career on the stage. But a life treading the boards was no life at all, said his grey-haired father, who promptly sent his son off to volunteer for the Territorial Army.

  A bright student and a quick learner, Charlie soon proved himself to be a skilled marksman. His friends called him Crack-shot Charlie, and when he was ready to be sent all the way to Africa and the Boer War, his nickname travelled with him.

  So by the time August 1914 came around, when the British Expeditionary Force was boarding the ferry for France, Charlie was already an accomplished soldier. Brimming with confidence, he led a rousing rendition of the song ‘It’s A Long, Long Way To Tipperary’, as his battalion disembarked and marched south to the Belgian border, the men swinging their arms and stepping out in time to the tune.

  It’s a long way to Tipperary,

  It’s a long way to go.

  It’s a long way to Tipperary,

  To the sweetest girl I know!

  Goodbye Piccadilly,

  Farewell Leicester Square!

  It’s a long, long way to Tipperary,

  But my heart’s right there.

  As the men drew closer to the front line near Mons, they heard stories of the Belgian city’s links with England’s patron saint George, who had slain the mythical dragon.

  ‘They still slay dragons here,’ remarked a young corporal named Lewis, as he described the great feast which was held every year in Mons in the saint’s memory, in which replicas of the dragon were put to the sword. ‘I pray to God that we can slay our enemy just as easily,’ he added, thinking of the great German army which was gathering nearby, trying to push its way onto French land.

  Charlie and his battalion did not have long to wait to feel their own dragon’s hot breath on their skin. The following morning, they heard news that their cavalry, leading the BEF’s advance and some distance ahead, had spotted the enemy.

  Letting out a thunderous roar, the cavalrymen drew their swords and charged, proud to be leading their country into the Great War. Their enthusiasm served them well, for the British horsemen took many German lives and led away a band of sorry German prisoners.

  Meanwhile back at Mons and under the watchful eye of Commander Haig, Charlie and his battalion had dug themselves a thin line of trenches along the banks of a moss-green canal, hoping that its slow-moving waters would offer some protection when the fighting began.

  As night fell and the men tried to snatch some precious hours of sleep, Charlie eased their path into slumber by softly singing some lines from their favourite Tipperary tune:

  Up to mighty London came

  An Irish lad one day,

  All the streets were paved with gold,

  So everyone was gay!

  Singing songs of Piccadilly,

  Strand, and Leicester Square,

  ‘Til Paddy got excited and

  He shouted to them there…

  At first light the next morning, Charlie and his fellow soldiers awoke to find everything around them soaked in a depressing, dank drizzle. Like a smothering blanket, a thick mist clung to the surface of the canal and remained there way int
o the morning, making any attempt at attack sheer madness.

  Frustrated, the men lay staring over the muddy lip of the trench into the swirling white, and even Charlie remained silent, holding back his songs for better times.

  At one point, the first gust of wind of the morning lifted the edge of the foggy blanket and exposed the British lines to the eyes of a nervous German sniper across the canal. His finger jerked on the trigger of his rifle and the sound of his premature gunshot spread panic among the rest of the men in his dugout, who instantly opened fire too.

  Their experience of warfare kept Charlie and his battalion confident and calm. They remained still, with their heads down low, letting the wild rush of bullets whistle over their heads rather than trying to fire back blindly across the water. Saving his ammunition, Charlie replied to the gunfire with song, loudly chanting some more lines from his favourite tune before silence fell across the canal once more.

  Paddy wrote a letter

  To his Irish Molly O’,

  Saying, ‘Should you not receive it,

  Write and let me know!

  If I make mistakes in spelling,

  Molly dear,’ said he,

  ‘Remember it’s the pen, that’s bad,

  Don’t lay the blame on me.’

  Eventually, as the morning hours passed and the sun climbed higher in the sky, it burned the remaining mist off the ground and the drizzle dried up.

  ‘Holy smoke!’ exclaimed Lewis as he could see for the first time the true scale of the beast they were about to fight. ‘There’s twice as many of them as us.’ He tightened his grip on the barrel of his gun.

  Before Charlie could reply, the German artillery barrage began, raining down on the British trenches from higher ground. In its wake came a second wave of attack, this time at ground level, as hundreds of German infantry men poured across the canal’s narrow bridges, while others clambered across lock gates to get closer to their enemy.