Kid Soldier Page 4

  That night they received the assignment to set up a signal station on one side of the grassy common and communicate with camp headquarters the next morning.

  “Here is your message,” the signal sergeant said, handing Richard an envelope. He was a full head taller than Richard and as big around as a barrel.

  At the crack of dawn, Richard, Ape, and Alfred took up a spot on the lower ground about three miles away from headquarters. Al opened a wooden case and removed the battery-operated lamp that reminded Richard of a large bicycle light. He raised the metal hood that protected the spotlight and fiddled with the small knob in the centre of the lens to adjust the brightness. Ape positioned the telescope for the return signal. Richard translated their message into the correct series of dots and dashes and called it out.

  Their signal lamp winked across the landscape. When their response came back, Richard translated, just as the thunderclouds rolled in. They made their way back to the mess tent in the pouring rain, proud of their success.

  At the close of the camp, the major-general gave a speech. “I had two goals for this camp,” he said. “The first was to have as many well-trained men as possible. I am pleased to announce all signallers qualified first class.” He brought his arm up to the vicinity of his face and waved it to his right in a congratulatory salute to the gunners before him.

  “My second goal was to pick up some of the prize money offered by the government. That we will find out once all camp results are in.” He leaned forward and smiled. “I hope to see all of you again next year. Good show, men!”

  Richard slept in the back of the army bus all the way home, his hand inside his pocket, clutching his pay packet.

  Chapter 8

  Gunner Fuller

  Richard returned to Vogel’s farm when he finished camp. As he had hoped, he found the crates in the tractor shed jammed with parts. He spent most of his free time over the month of September on his back underneath the tractor, hoping to have it running before it got too cold to work in the shed.

  —

  Mr. McLaughlin, Tommy’s father, herded Richard and his mother into the back seat of his car early Sunday morning for church. Usually everyone sat together, but lately adults filled the pews. The youngest children had to sit on the floor in front. The older ones stood in the back.

  “My friends,” the minister began at the end of the service. He stood at the front in a pool of coloured light coming from the stained glass windows above. A picture of King George sat on a table in front of the altar, flanked by the Union Jack and the Canadian Red Ensign. “For those who do not know,” he said, “Hitler demands Danzig be returned to Germany or he’ll invade Poland.”

  A profound silence fell over those in the church.

  The minister cleared his throat and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “It is tempting to give way to anger,” he said. “But I urge you to think of how Jesus forgave those who placed him on the cross. We must prepare our souls for this great conflict. Let us pray.”

  “What’s a damn zig?” Amy asked, tugging at Richard’s arm as they got out of the church. “Why does Germany want it back? And how did they lose it, anyway?”

  “It’s a city which used to be part of Germany,” Richard explained. “The League of Nations made it a free port the first time the Germans made trouble.” He knew this because Mr. Black tossed war information around daily. “The Germans want access to water.” Richard turned to Tommy. “Great Britain won’t tolerate Germany invading Poland,” he said, repeating Mr. Black’s exact words in a serious voice.

  “Holy mackerel,” Tommy shouted. “That Hitler guy must be trying to take over the world. Let’s go listen to our radio.”

  “You go ahead without me,” Richard said. He was never comfortable when they tried to huddle in the McLaughlins’ silent, lemon-polished room used only for special occasions. When their cathedral radio crackled like bacon in a frying pan, Amy had to turn it off. The noise gave her mother a headache.

  Richard knew his mother wouldn’t bother with their small black hump of a radio when she got home. “No point in feeding off bad news,” she always said, turning it off when Richard was trying to listen.

  “I’m heading over to see Mr. Black,” he said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

  The rotund baker heaved himself out of his chair when Richard appeared in the doorway.

  “Did you hear the news?” Richard asked.

  “It looks grim,” Mr. Black said. “It will mean war with Britain for sure.”

  “The Commonwealth,” Richard said, straightening his shoulders, “will need soldiers.”

  “You’re not thinking …” Mr. Black said, catching the look on Richard’s face.

  “I have to enlist,” Richard said in a strangled voice. “You did. Mr. Vogel did. My own father did.”

  “But we were all much older at the time,” the baker argued.

  A determination came over Richard as if Mr. Black had flipped a switch. “Mr. Vogel came from a farm, you were working in a bakery, and my father left trade school. None of you had the training I had,” he said.

  “You better talk it over with your mother first,” Mr. Black said, putting his hand on Richard’s shoulder. But Richard had no intention of doing that.

  —

  The officer from Camp Niagara shuffled the pile of papers on top of the scarred wooden table. When Richard strolled in, he looked up and grinned. “So Houston, we meet again.” He made a wide sweep with his arm until his fingers touched his temple in salute, and then dropped them down. “Are you signing up?”

  “Yes sir,” Richard said, pushing his library card across the desk. He had to get rid of the name that got him into training camp.

  The sergeant read the card and blinked. “You changed your name?”

  “My mother remarried,” Richard said with a stutter. “That was my step-father’s name.”

  “You didn’t keep your father’s name?” the sergeant asked in surprise. “Most boys do.”

  “This is my father’s name,” Richard said, stabbing the card in front of the sergeant. “I took a different one because my mother remarried, but changed it back.”

  “Good for you,” the sergeant said, writing the word Fuller on the form. He paused and looked at the card again. “You changed your first name too?”

  “That was always my first name,” Richard blurted out. His face grew hot. “I mean,” he stammered, “I was going by my middle name before.”

  Several men carrying cardboard suitcases crowded through the doorway and formed a noisy line behind Richard. The recruitment officer had no more time for talk. He ticked off a few boxes and added his signature to the bottom of several blank papers. “Fill them in and sign,” he said, handing Richard the sheaf.

  The soldier at the next desk took the completed forms from him. “Good luck,” he said. “You’ll receive your joining orders in the next couple of days.”

  —

  “What’s that in your hand?” his mother asked when the letter arrived at the door.

  “Look, Ma,” Richard said, holding it in the air away from her. “In the army, I’ll get paid a lot more. It’s a lot better than picking fruit or delivering bread.”

  Grace snatched the letter and read it. Her hand went to her heart as she took a step backward. “Why on earth would you want to join up?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  “The higher your rank, the more you get paid,” Richard went on. “As a private I would make a dollar thirty a day. Since I went to camp, they’ve made me a gunner and I’ll make a dollar fifty.”

  “You know it’s a twenty-four hour day,” she argued. “Not an eight hour one.”

  “I get all my clothing and meals,” he said, snatching the letter back.

  “And no overtime,” she continued. “What do you know about being a soldier?”

  “I know a lot,” Richard replied with a jerk of his head. “I’ve got training.”

  “All you know is crawling around in t
he dirt playing with radios.” Grace returned to her ironing board, collapsed it, and put it against the wall.

  “It’s a privilege to be able to serve my country,” Richard said in a loud, arrogant voice.

  His mother leaned against the porcelain lip of the sink and folded her arms. “Is it a privilege to sleep in a tent, use an outhouse, and eat meals off a tin tray?” she asked. “And is it a privilege to get shot?”

  From that day on, Grace Fuller stopped speaking to her son.

  Richard stopped trying to think up ways to change his mother’s mind. That would be like attacking Germans with one of her hat pins. He became nothing more than a ghost haunting his own home.

  —

  The gearshift clanked like a hammer pounding iron. The engine managed a steady twenty miles an hour on a flat grade but a small hill made the ride an adventure. It took Richard over two hours to plough a single acre. His heart rose at the sight of the furrows between the fruit trees and the smell of freshly turned soil. Richard realized, as he sat in the middle of the field, that the orchard was beautiful in any season.

  The last thing Richard said to Mr. Vogel was, “The dials on the dashboard will look frozen until she takes time to warm up. You know how to jiggle the gears.”

  The farmer gave him a long stare as he stroked his beard. Then he placed his hand on Richard’s shoulder and said, “It looks like we’re in for a nasty storm. You better take care of yourself.”

  —

  Richard stowed his pocket knife with the antler handle in his rucksack, along with all the underwear and socks that he owned.

  With a tiny click, he unlatched and lowered the top of the desk in the living room. Two stamps in an empty cough drop tin sat on an unused blotting pad next to a dry bottle of ink. He opened the small drawer at the top, removed an envelope, and put all the money he had saved for his bike inside. He propped it up in front of the sewing machine.

  After he shut the front door, Richard leaned against it and took a deep breath. This will be no different from going to training camp, he told himself as he walked towards the train station in the early dawn. School seemed so far away and so unimportant; after all, he was now a soldier serving his country.

  Chapter 9

  Spaghetti Villa

  Richard stepped off the train into a bitter November wind sweeping off Lake Ontario. Kingston, built almost entirely of grey limestone, seemed to be wall to wall servicemen. Every kind of military personnel hung about the shops, walked the streets, and filled the wooden city benches.

  He clutched the neck of his greatcoat as he followed the river of men uphill to Vimy Barracks. A relic from the Crimean war, its pleated back, designed to cover the end of a horse, reached the ground. Not wishing to hurt Mr. Black’s feelings, Richard had accepted it, and was now very glad that he had.

  Entering the building, the smells of damp wool, cigarette smoke, and stale beer engulfed him. “Gunner Fuller,” the sergeant-major said when Richard reported in. “They are expecting you in Barriefield.”

  “Barriefield,” Richard repeated in surprise. “Why?”

  “Signal training centre,” the officer replied. “Catch the next truck out.”

  North of the Montreal highway, Camp Barriefield was nothing but a collection of wooden huts with canvas siding. A single light bulb dangled from a cord above the iron beds with a bench at each end.

  “You are financially responsible for everything issued,” the quartermaster told all the newly inducted men. He slapped a list on top of their first stack of clothes. “Items marked with two asterisks will be issued to you in your company.”

  Richard looked at the only item on the list marked with asterisks, identification tags.

  Battledress included shirts, trousers, two rolls of puttees, two pairs of socks, and a pair of big-toed boots. The coarse, brown, woolen tunic had a row of brass buttons down the front. With the cuff of his shirt, he rubbed the brass badge that sat above the peak of the cap.

  The morning began with the sharp clear call of a bugle followed by roll call on the parade square. A junior commanding officer marched them to classrooms in the training wing. They received instruction in visual telegraphy, battery operated telephones, map reading, and orienteering. The route marches, assault course, and drills made Richard fitter and leaner and hungrier.

  “You look familiar,” Sergeant Gifford commented to Richard. “Are you from the west?”

  Richard shook his head. “No, sir,” he said. “We met at Camp Niagara.”

  “I was wondering if that’s why you haven’t put in for your leave,” the sergeant said. “The train journey uses up all of the westerners’ time. That’s why they remain in barracks.”

  Richard just shrugged. He hadn’t bothered with leave, knowing it wouldn’t be for very long and a visit home wouldn’t be comfortable.

  It wasn’t long before word passed they were to attend a “special parade.”

  “Gentlemen,” the major told them all. “I have received a request for signallers overseas.”

  Richard’s heart jumped.

  “But, unless you sign one of these pink slips and go willingly, you aren’t shipping out.”

  Richard signed on the spot.

  The doctor jammed a cold stethoscope against Richard’s chest. “Cough,” he said. “Now stick out your tongue.”

  Richard moved to the next man who pulled out a tape measure. “Chest,” he called out to the woman in uniform. “Thirty-two inches.”

  “Tattoos?” she asked.

  The medical man looked at Richard and raised his eyebrows in question.

  He shook his head.

  Richard watched the barber trim moustaches to perfect little points, clip away curly mops, and turn the tops of heads into thatched roofs before he too lost his blonde shock.

  After reading an eye chart, the man shoved a paper into his hands. “Sign at the x,” he directed. Then he took Richard by the elbow to a small table. “Wait here for your needles.”

  Richard received two needles, one in the arm, and another in the chest. One needle was bad enough, but the two at once made him woozy. As he lay on a cot in the medical room, talk flew about him. Rumours were the frontline units badly needed reinforcements.

  “We’re going to Egypt to help the Arabs guard the Sewage Canal,” one man said.

  “It’s not the Sewage Canal, you idiot,” another called out. “It’s the Suez Canal.”

  Richard received a railway voucher and a directive to report to the armouries in St. Catharines.

  —

  “Welcome to Spaghetti Villa.” The heavily accented French-Canadian voice greeted Richard at the doorway of the abandoned macaroni factory at the corner of Tasker and Welland. Tobacco smoke filled a room that smelled of sour beer. Men stood in groups throwing darts and sat around scarred wooden tables playing cards amid glasses of amber liquid.

  He held his breath, doing his best not to cough as he made his way through the mass of male bodies. Shouts rang out above the buzz of male conversation as Richard checked the order board.

  —

  In the crisp morning December air, they paraded in marching order in front of their barracks and then through the back streets of St. Catharines to the train station. There, they broke rank to say goodbye to family and friends. In the sea of khaki some wives tried to hold their husbands back while children chased each other about. Richard stood waiting to board. He reached up out of habit to push away the blond shock of hair that usually fell across his forehead.

  “There he is,” a small voice called out. “Hey! Richard!”

  Tommy, along with Amy, ran up to him. Mr. and Mrs. Black followed.

  “How did you know where to find me?” Richard asked with a huge grin.

  “Army connections,” Mr. Black replied with a smile just as big.

  “I saw policemen on horses,” Tommy said, “and …”

  Amy put her gloved hand over her brother’s mouth. Then she twirled in her open-toed shoes wit
h small heels for Richard to admire her lace-trimmed dress with tiny heart-shaped pockets. Her shiny copper hair played loose about her shoulders.

  Richard gave a long, low whistle.

  Mrs. Black’s eyes shone seeing Richard for the first time in his black boots, knee-high puttees, khaki breeches, brass-buttoned tunic, and cap. She put her arm around him and drew him in for a hug. “It’s as if my own son is leaving,” she said in a tight voice.

  Mr. Black put his hands on Richard’s shoulders and looked him in the face. Richard could see the admiration in his eyes. “Step carefully,” he said, “and always swing a long stick.”

  Giggling at Mr. Black’s words, Amy handed Richard a shoebox tied with brown string.

  “What’s this?” he asked as his thumbs rested on the backs of her soft, warm hands.

  “Envelopes, paper, and pens,” Amy said. “No excuse not to write.”

  “Thanks,” was all Richard could think to say as the crowd pushed them all closer. He felt her soft breath and smelled her lily of the valley perfume. Warmth spread up his arms, making his heart race.

  “I have to go,” he said at the whistle of the train.

  Amy smiled and waved as Richard boarded the train. The image of his mother’s pursed lips and disapproving look was forgotten.

  Chapter 10

  The Empress of Britain

  As the troop train sped eastward towards the sea, Richard slept. At Rivière du Loup they stopped for a route march to get exercise. In Moncton, three other batteries boarded, completing the mobilization of the 1st Canadian Infantry Division.