Christmas at Emmerdale by Pamela Bell

Author:Pamela Bell [Bell, Pamela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409185017
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2018-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

1915

Chapter Seventeen

‘Mother of God, my feet!’ Nat pulled off his boots and socks and collapsed back onto the cot.

‘What feet?’ Beside him, Mick was lowering his bare toes into a bowl of cold water with a grimace. ‘I can’t even feel mine any more. Twenty miles with full kit! Whose idea was it to join the army?’

‘Yours,’ said Nat with the closest he ever came to a sour look.

‘I didn’t think they’d make us march up and down every one of the bloody Yorkshire Dales. In the rain.’

‘That’s your trouble, Mick. You don’t think.’

Levi could hear them sniping at each other but their voices seemed to be coming from a long way away. Around them, men were groaning and grumbling, and the stench of feet and wet wool socks in the hut was almost overpowering. Levi lay splayed on his cot. His whole body pulsed with exhaustion. His feet were raw and throbbing with pain, but almost worse than that was the humiliation of having to be carried home by his brothers.

He had the first blister before the end of first mile. After ten miles he had collapsed and begged Nat and Mick to leave him to die where he lay.

‘We can’t do that,’ Mick had said, hauling him back to his feet. ‘We promised Mammy we wouldn’t let any harm come to you. What do you think she’d say if she knew we had left you by the side of the road?’

He and Nat had shared out the weight of his rifle and pack between them which had helped Levi to limp on for a while, but they had to carry him for most of the last five miles.

He was never going to make a soldier.

‘Ah, it’s not been all bad, has it?’ Mick was saying as he inspected his feet gingerly. ‘Look what a dab hand you turned out to be with a rifle.’

To his and everybody’s surprise, Nat had shown unexpected ability for shooting. Mick was noted for his running speed and agility – learnt from years of getting out of scrapes, Nat said – and there was talk of him doing specialist training as a scout, although he was more interested in learning to drive.

Levi wasn’t good at anything. He was clumsy and fumbled with a gun. He couldn’t keep up on the route marches. He gagged at the smell of the latrines. He had even fainted when one of the cooks had cut off the end of his finger when serving Christmas lunch in the canteen.

‘What are we going to do with you?’ Nat had said humorously as he shoved Levi’s head between his knees.

Levi knew his brothers worried about how he would cope when it came to real fighting. He was worried too. He should never have enlisted, he knew that now. He wasn’t cut out to be a soldier, that was obvious, but there was no way he was going to desert, and besides he had reached the point where even the prospect of fighting seemed better than staying in the camp for another two months.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.