Kid Soldier Read online

  A voice from the loudspeaker crackled. “These fellows do pin-point photography for artillery observation.”

  All eyes scanned the sky.

  “Their job is to locate arsenals, troop assemblies, or batteries of guns.”

  One of the aircraft flew low. A small bundle fell to the ground and exploded into a puff of white. The crowd reacted with awe and applause.

  “Part of the navigator’s training,” the voice explained, “is to calculate the proper point to operate the bomb release. No actual bombs will be used today,” he assured the crowd, “but the camera on the ground will record the plane’s drop. These boys will find out later if they hit their target.”

  Several men ran out on to the field carrying poles, canvas, axles, and a set of tires.

  “Watch our men construct a target vehicle before your very eyes,” the announcer said.

  Within minutes a large canvas truck appeared in the middle of the field.

  “How about that?” asked the announcer, encouraging the audience’s applause. “Now all we need is some gas.”

  To the amusement of those in the stands, a man dressed in khaki overalls wandered out on to the field carrying a can of gas. Shading his eyes to the sun, he looked from side to side in search of the truck.

  “Looks like this lad hasn’t done his navigation homework,” the announcer said. “He’ll need some help finding his way.”

  The crowd complied, calling directions out to the man on the field. Catching sight of the false truck with exaggerated surprise, he placed the can of gas inside the canvas and scurried away.

  “With a wing span of forty feet, and a cruising speed of 206 miles per hour, the sting of this fighter plane is its guns,” the announcer said to the mesmerized crowd. “The Hawker Hurricane’s pilot has the combined firing power of eight, that’s right, I said eight machine guns.”

  The full-throated roar of a powerful engine filled the sky. The fighter plane flew towards the stands, making the crowds duck before it pulled back up into the heavens.

  Then the fighter plane returned and zoomed towards the truck. A barrage of bullets chewed up the grass around it, tearing huge holes in the canvas.

  The crowd screamed and cheered when the target truck exploded into flames.

  As the plane flew over the horizon, one of the commanding officers moved along the base of the wooden stands, inviting able-bodied young men to ride the demonstration vehicles. He spied Richard in the crowd and called up to him. “You! There! Why aren’t you in the army?”

  Richard’s mother placed one of her gloved hands on Richard’s chest and grabbed his arm with the other in an attempt to make the officer back off. But he didn’t.

  “Such a fine specimen of a young man,” the officer bellowed. “How about taking a ride in one of the very latest army vehicles?” He looked around at the crowd and gave a large wink.

  Richard wanted to ride, but the pressure of his mother clutching his arm made him shake his head in refusal.

  “The Canadian Army has extended you an invitation, sir!” the man in the red-banded hat bellowed out to all around. Many in the crowd laughed. “The Canadian Army is not used to having its invitations turned down, sir!”

  Two soldiers wearing yellow armbands with the white letters “MP” hustled Richard out of his mother’s arms, down the steps, and into a small vehicle. Richard grinned and gave a shrug.

  The military police set off at top speed. The vehicle, reeking of oil, bounced across the hoof-pocked grounds. The powerful noise of airplane motors once again echoed across the sky, bringing everyone to a hush.

  Just as the vehicle came around a hill of hay, a flour bomb landed on the hood, exploding into a cloud of white. The MPs leaped out except for Richard. He fell out and rolled along the ground. There he lay still, covered in flour.

  The crowd screamed and moaned.

  Grace Fuller rose with her hands to her mouth.

  Mrs. Black put both her arms around her.

  A Red Cross ambulance rushed on to the field with its siren wailing. Two men hopped out, picked Richard up, and flung him on to the stretcher.

  “They shouldn’t be so rough with him,” Mrs. Black protested, “especially if …” She stopped speaking, unsure as to what word to use next.

  The ambulance travelled the entire circuit of the field, instead of heading off to the hospital as everyone expected. It came to a full stop in front of the stands.

  Before Grace Fuller could gather her senses and make her way down, the back door of the ambulance opened. Richard jumped out as clean as a whistle waving the Union Jack.

  The crowd cheered and whooped as the demonstration ended.

  —

  “Mr. Black is relying on my youthful spirit of adventure to accept the challenge of training,” Richard explained to his mother that night in their kitchen. “Those were his exact words.”

  His mother kept her hands in the dishwater but had stopped cleaning the plates. Then she lifted them, wiped them on her apron, and turned her thin face towards him. “Isn’t picking fruit and delivering bread every spare minute enough?” she asked.

  But Richard couldn’t hear his mother. The voice in his head belonged to Mr. Black. “You’d have no trouble getting a job on a ship, once you learn wireless telegraphy.”

  Training like that, Richard knew, could only bring money, travel, and adventure.

  Chapter 6

  Camp Niagara

  The next morning, Richard got off the army bus with Mr. Black and followed him to the long line of men waiting outside the flaps of a white tent. Hundreds of these tents had sprung up like daisies overnight on the grassy common. Military personnel crossed back and forth between them.

  “You’re one lucky young man,” Mr. Black told him, clapping Richard on the back. “It’s not often someone doesn’t show up, leaving a last minute space.”

  Richard grinned. It took a lot of talking before his mother finally agreed to let him go to the camp for two weeks. After his part in the demonstration, he felt like Superman. He might even try riding one of those cavalry horses.

  Mr. Black waited with him in line. When it was Richard’s turn to register, he reached down and tapped a name on the list. The officer nodded and put a check mark next to it without looking up. Mr. Black leaned in and whispered into Richard’s ear. “All you have to remember,” he said, “is your name.”

  Richard smiled at the joke until Mr. Black cleared his throat and announced, “Private Chester Lee Houston, reporting for duty, sir.” Then he nodded at Richard and turned and walked away.

  Richard looked about in confusion. That wasn’t his name. But before he could straighten the officer out, another soldier ordered him to step aside into the next line.

  He followed the line of men towards a row of tents hoping he would remember to answer to this new name. The soldier pointed out the gun park, vehicle lines, and classrooms along the way. Passing a tent crowded with men, Richard strained to see inside as a soldier dispensed soft drinks, chocolate bars, chewing gum, and cigarettes. “Canteen,” the soldier called out as they passed, but it was of no importance to Richard. He didn’t plan on spending any money. At the end of this week he hoped to put several bills into the thin square tin under the floorboard. One dollar and thirty cents a day was far more than he would make staying home and picking fruit.

  At the next tent he received a blanket, wash basin, and a small stack of clothes. “These are your fatigues,” the corporal told him, slapping a white pith helmet on top of the pile. “Remember, no hard hats after dark.”

  They marched down the row of tents. “Drop your gear here,” the corporal told him, stopping in front of a tent marked with the number five. “These are your quarters.”

  Richard pushed back the tent flap to see six cots, three on either side. Two men were already inside. One was lying on his cot reading a newspaper. The other polished his boots.

  “Excuse me, sirs,” Richard said, his voice cracking as he spoke.
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  The man behind the newspaper ignored him. The one polishing his boots looked up. His hair was jet black, a little too black, Richard noticed. It was almost the same colour as the polish on his boots. He fixed his large gooseberry eyes on Richard.

  “Jeez,” he said. “They’re getting younger every day.” He put his boot down and wiped his hands on the rag. “What are you, twelve?”

  Before Richard could reply, a voice came from behind the newspaper. “Sirs?” the voice repeated as the man lowered the newspaper. His plumpish face had a piano-keyboard smile. “Either you are one polite kid or you’ve got yourself in the wrong tent. We’re all privates here, no sirs.” He looked Richard up and down. “He does look young,” he admitted to the guy polishing his boots.

  Richard claimed the cot farthest from the front and went back outside. Beneath a canopy roof, in a classroom of folding tables and chairs, Richard took his first elementary test along with the rest of the new trainees.

  “Experienced in signalling, I see,” the officer commented after Richard responded in perfect Morse code. Richard smiled. It wasn’t any different from the games he and Mr. Black played with their fingers on the dash board while making deliveries.

  A junior officer marched the men around him to another classroom in the training tent line, but Richard was told to remain behind.

  Soon others filled the empty chairs. Richard glanced about. Everyone was much older; some old enough to be his father.

  A tall, bony, uniformed man entered the classroom tent and strode to the front. “A signalman is a fully trained expert,” he began, “competent in every branch of signalling and in the installation of all necessary equipment.”

  Richard cupped his head in his hands focusing on the tight-skinned man’s face. Dark brown hair plastered his scalp. His moustache was so well formed it almost looked false.

  “I am Sergeant Gifford from the signal training centre in Barriefield,” he said, as he pulled out an empty chair and put his polished boot on the seat. “Every now and again they let one of us senior officers out to honeymoon in Niagara.”

  There were a few twitters of laughter among the crowd.

  Sergeant Gifford pulled a stack of small black notebooks from the table beside him and indicated to a fellow in front they were to pass them about. “But,” he paused dramatically, making sure all eyes were on him, “a signalman must first and foremost be a soldier. You will learn to march, obey orders, and handle a rifle. You will keep your equipment clean.”

  “Yes sir!” Richard called out before he could stop himself. He closed his eyes in embarrassment expecting the instructor to come down on him with a swoop. But he didn’t.

  “Soldiers?” the officer called out to the rest.

  “Yes sir,” the men in the tent chorused.

  Lunch was nothing like he had come to expect working for Mr. Black. Richard dropped on to the grass with a tin tray holding a square of cheese, a slice of bread, a dollop of red jam, and a tin mug of tea.

  “More bread if you want it,” the man handing out the trays told him.

  “Great,” replied Richard, closing his eyes thinking he would soon be sinking his teeth into a snowy white slice of one of Mr. Blacks crusty loaves. But this bread was dark and doughy; he had to use his tea to wash it down.

  Training continued until supper. Richard marched from classroom to classroom. Dinner was sausages and mashed potatoes, with vanilla pudding on another tin tray.

  At night, Richard lay on his narrow rock-like cot, reading the discarded newspaper while the others sat outside the tent, playing cards, smoking, and passing flasks. They were to be up for a morning run at five. He didn’t even get up that early for school.

  At first they all thought it was a joke when they arrived at the common the next morning. Seven pedal bikes right out of the 1920s, with straight frames, large tires, and brakes on the handlebars, stood in a row. But as soon as they heard that pedalling these monsters around the fringe of the common was their first lesson in learning to ride a motorbike, everyone hopped on.

  The instructors stood in the middle of the circle waving people off as they decided who was good enough to go the next step. That afternoon, after taking a few turns around the square on the motorbike, two of the instructors took Richard for a spin along the highway.

  “You should have seen me,” Richard told Mr. Black when he found him behind the officers’ cook tent. “One soldier ahead of me and a soldier behind me,” he shouted. “I even rode along Highway 2!”

  “Wait until your mother hears you rode a motorcycle,” Mr. Black said with a hearty laugh.

  Richard didn’t reply. He hadn’t planned on telling her.

  Chapter 7

  Signalling

  “Signalling is essential to the performance of a large body of troops,” the instructor began the next morning, “whether you are in training or on the battlefield.”

  “Think there’ll be war?” a voice called out from the back. “Someone needs to whip that Hitler fellow into shape.”

  The instructor ignored the comment. “You are here today to learn the mysteries of line.” He held up a small metal suitcase. “This is what we use for wireless telegraphy.” He patted the radio on the table next to him. “If you are good,” the officer told the class, “you will get to work with Wireless Set No. 19.” He held it up with a contented sigh. “The model of the future.”

  Richard sat back in his chair and smiled. He could just see Tommy’s face if he got his hands on one of those for the tree house.

  “In the meantime,” the instructor informed them, “learning by doing is the guiding principle of training. Gunners, today we lay wire.”

  A truck dropped Richard and two other men off near a clump of trees on the steep rise of the 1812 battlefield, west of the village of Niagara-on-the-Lake.

  Vincent Butler, an enormous, hairy man with large fingers like bananas, went by the nickname Ape. Albert Kennedy, a gentleman in every sense, worked with piano-

  playing fingers. The driver handed Ape a large spool of wire. “You’ve got to lay and conceal a half-mile of signal wire to battalion headquarters,” he told them. He handed Al the battery-operated telephone. “Then transmit this message,” he said, handing Richard a sealed envelope.

  The blue sky rose before them as they walked the rise of the hill unwinding the wire. Just before they reached the top, a Royal Canadian Dragoon rode up beside them on horseback. Richard couldn’t take his eyes off the beautiful brown gelding with black mane and tail as it galloped past. The horseman stopped at the top of the hill and climbed up onto his saddle. He used flags to send a message to the other Dragoons at the bottom of the road.

  “Wow,” Richard said in awe of the flags flashing above rows of shining gold buttons.

  The Dragoon ignored them and dropped back into the saddle. Then he rode off to a small wooden shed by the road. He stood on his saddle, paused for a moment, and climbed up on to the roof. From there he gave another magnificent display of flag waving to those on the common.

  But to everyone’s surprise, the shed, with a loud groan of timber, collapsed into a cloud of dust.

  The horse, frightened by the commotion, ran off. Richard, Al, and Ape could only stare with mouths open. When they finally rushed to his side, the Dragoon rose from the pile of broken boards.

  “Don’t you dare to laugh,” he commanded, as he dusted himself off.

  No one did, but the merry look in Richard’s blue eyes angered the Dragoon. He strode into the middle of the road and whistled for his horse. Seeing what they were doing, the Dragoon leaned down to the spool of wire on the road and gave it a hard yank. It jumped and bounced all the way back down the hill and fell into the ravine, where it was impossible to retrieve.

  Horrified, Richard, Al, and Ape watched the Dragoon mount his horse and ride away.

  “No wire,” Ape said, slumping against the fence by the side of the road. “We’re beat.”

  Richard and Al stood with their hands
on their hips wondering what to do.

  “Wait a minute,” Richard said. “The fence is made of wire.”

  “You can’t expect us to tear down a fence,” Albert said, twisting his hands about.

  “We don’t have to tear it down,” Richard said. “If I am not mistaken, this fence runs right past headquarters. We just have to hook a wire up to it.”

  He told Ape to head back to headquarters, find some wire, and lay a short line to the fence.

  Richard connected the radio wire to the fence. He and Al curled up in the ditch by the side of the road and waited. Within half an hour, they had made contact with Ape and sent their message.

  If the signal officer hadn’t come across the empty spool of wire on his way to inspect, they wouldn’t have had to explain. But, instead of getting into trouble, they received hearty congratulations for their ingenuity.

  As the week progressed, Richard studied The Manual of Military Law, learned The King’s Regulations, practiced, drilled, ate, and slept.

  On the second last day of camp, his unit marched to the rifle ranges.

  “A signaller on the field lives with his rifle,” their instructor told them. “He must be ready to defend himself and know how to shoot.”

  Richard almost dropped the thick, smelly weapon put into his arms. He never expected it to have such a weight and such a powerful odour of oil. He looked down the long, straight barrel and lifted it to his chest as he’d been instructed. When he fired, he staggered backwards. Richard recovered from the unexpected recoil, rubbed his shoulder, and managed to fire off a few rounds.

  The hot sun, dusty road, and the ache in his shoulder, made Richard think he would never make it back to their tent. But as they came within sight of the camp gate, the waiting regimental band played them in. The music seemed to give Richard the extra energy needed to lift his head and march on as the commandant took the salute.