The next day was my appointed one for rejoining the battalion, and the wife accompanied me to the station in the early afternoon. Here again, I avoided the Chief – in fact, the police office seemed closed down entirely – and the wife offered to show me the famous Soldiers and Sailors Buffet on platform eight. I of course had my uniform on, so the ladies inside were pleased to see me, and to serve me tea and a bun, which I did not want, having lately eaten sausages and fried potatoes in Thorpe-on-Ouse, but they were particularly keen to see Lydia, who talked to them all until my train time.
We naturally had a bit of a choky moment as I leant down to her from the carriage window. With the train pulling away, she called out, ‘I’ll send you a hamper, Jim!’ I believe because it seemed to her the safest thing to say just then.
PART TWO.France
Albert: December 1915
We went round the houses to get to France: Southampton to Le Havre (a four-hour Channel crossing) as against the holiday-makers’ route, Dover to Calais (two hours).
Dover to Calais, Oamer said, was ‘taken’, what with all the men and supplies going over every day. Oliver Butler, who was sick on the steamer, moaned about it, and Oamer (who recommended a pipe for seasickness) said, ‘Anyone would think you wanted to get there fast.’
But there wasn’t much talk on the way. The day before leaving Hull, we’d all been questioned in the adjutant’s room on the ship Rievaulx Abbey by the regimental police of the battalion. These were a couple of quiet NCOs who seemed embarrassed at the whole business. One of them – a bloke called Brewster or Baxter (he was not the sort whose name stuck) – went so far as to say that he felt sorry for us chaps. He and his mate wore the letters ‘MP’ in red on black brassards, but didn’t have the red cap covers that marked out the Military Mounted Police as men to be feared. Captain Quinn had sat in on the questioning as our ‘accused adviser’. None of us had yet been accused, but this term was rather anxious-making. Also, we had been told that the case papers would be passed on to the Military Mounted Police for their consideration. There would be no public inquest, the military activities going ahead on Spurn being hush-hush, but we were informed that an army doctor had found the cause of death to have been a blow to the head, or rather to the eye. It was admitted on all sides that Harvey might have jumped, or fallen, into the sea, and then been clashed against the sea wall. He might have collided with an iron ladder that was fixed to it, before becoming entangled in the stray length of rope. This theory was favourite among the section – or so we all pretended.
As far as I knew, no man had yet admitted being up in the night. I myself said little more to the regimental police than I had to Oamer in the Hope and Anchor. I did not try to cast suspicion on any man. I admitted the tussle with Dawson, but made light of this as far as possible: ‘Horseplay. We were just larking about. I admit we’d had a drink taken.’ I did mention that I had gained a cut on my knuckle in the skirmish, although I held off from saying exactly how.
But Quinn, like Oamer, had been mindful of the fact that I was a trained detective, and after saying, ‘It’s all too perplexing’ over and over, had taken me into his confidence: ‘What about Private Dawson?’ he said. ‘Apparently the man fights like a tiger when drunk.’ I made some remark of a neutral kind.
Marching us off the ship, Oamer had assured us that the matter did not seem to merit further investigation, and that Quinn believed it would not come to anything; that he would do his best to write down the death as a suicide.
At Le Havre, early in the afternoon, it was snowing on the grey docks, but as fast as the snow came down it melted. The troop train we boarded was made up of coaches from every system in France – not their best specimens either, but we’d heard that many blokes had gone to the front in horse wagons, so we were better off than some.
‘It’s vestibuled throughout,’ said Tinsley, as we found a compartment.
‘But springless,’ said Oamer, as we creaked away from the station, almost directly on boarding. I was sitting with Oamer (with pipe, poetry book and magazine), Tinsley (with note book on knee, observing the railway scene), Scholes (who sat silent), and a reasonably cheery Dawson. Presently, Scholes and Dawson seemed to doze. At intervals, Tinsley would make a note and a remark, usually to do with railways. The trains we passed seemed to be civilian-operated, but approaching Rouen, Tinsley twice observed ‘Hospital train’, and the second time, Scholes stirred and shook his head sorrowfully. Tinsley also made a note whenever he saw one of ‘ours’ – that is, the engines run by the Railway Operating Division of the Royal Engineers.
When there was nothing to see but dull, flat fields under grey sky and falling rain, Tinsley said, ‘Look at that farmer – funny sort of cart he’s got.’
‘He’s a peasant, in fact,’ said Oamer.
I happened to have writing paper and one of the franked army envelopes on me, and I had the idea of killing a bit of time writing a letter to the Chief, since I was feeling rather guilty at not having looked him up in York. In the letter, I explained briefly what had happened on Spurn, and told him I thought any promotion would be held back as a result. I suppose I was half hoping he’d step in on my behalf, but I knew he didn’t really have any authority to do so.
At a spot called Romescamps, there was a great military siding, and I pointed out some North Eastern Railway engines to Tinsley.
‘I wish we could go slower through here,’ he said.
‘We’re going slowly enough, mate,’ said Dawson, who’d now stirred.
Just then we lurched to a halt in a mass of sidings.
‘This is likely to be a two hours’ business,’ said Oamer.
He said he was getting out to stretch his legs. He had a letter of his own to post, and offered to take mine, so I addressed it: ‘Chief Inspector Weatherill, York Station Police Office, York, Yorkshire, England’ and handed it over. I noticed that he paid no attention to the address as he took the letter.
In fact, we were only one hour at Romescamps, during which Tinsley and I climbed down, and looked over the wilderness of rainswept sidings. Tinsley was very taken by the French engines. ‘Look at that!’ he’d say, ‘Square funnel! What I wouldn’t give to have a camera just now.’
I told him he’d very likely be shot if he started taking pictures here. We both saluted as we passed Captain Quinn, who’d also climbed down from the better class of carriage in which he’d been riding. He was speaking to some of his fellow officers, and I heard him say, ‘I believe it’s snowing heavily in Scotland at the present time.’
When we climbed back up, I reported this remark to Dawson, who said, ‘Snowing heavily in Scotland, eh? That’s unfortunate.’
Oamer came in on the joke, saying, ‘Captain Quinn does have a penchant for that word. But over here it’s going to have to be in French, thus malheureusement.’
Dawson shook his head, saying, ‘Don’t see him getting his chops around that.’
We set off again, and Tinsley said to Oamer, ‘We’re for Albert, aren’t we?’ which he pronounced like Queen Victoria’s husband.
‘Whatever makes you think that?’ said Oamer, for our destination had not been officially disclosed. But Tinsley’s habit of cocking his ear to every rumour where the subject was railways had paid dividends, and he blurted it all out, as Scholes listened, horrified.
Albert, Tinsley said, was a ‘rather forward’ railhead. It was in the Somme department of France, and had taken a lot of punishment from shellfire, but was still heavily populated by French civilians and Tommies both. We were approaching it from the south-west, via Amiens. It was not possible to approach it from the north-east, via Arras, which would have been quicker, because the line between Arras and Albert had been cut by the German advance.