somewhat solitary-minded young man.”
I arrived half-dead in Amiens and cast a bitter look upon the hotel I should have slept at. Instead, I had slept with my head against the vibrating train window, but Iopened my eyes to see the Carlton at Amiens slide past and stop and I had a sense that objects in the distance could affect the vibration in your forehead. The Carlton was where Siegfried Sassoon had stayed. I went in and sat at the dark plush bar and ordered a beer. It was early and no one else was drinking. There was no music, but there were the sounds of staff resuscitating kitchen life. I thought of the officers who tried to remain civilized, who had the luxury of periodic picnics of lavish eating and comfort behind the lines.
I walked through the town of Amiens. Men were working on the modern road and the plastic flatboards over holes had on them “trench limit” and, on a computer store sign, the word “reparations.” Words that had other meanings in 1918, happily being used again. My parents used to call the radio in our kitchen the wireless. Then I walked past the old Godbert’s restaurant where Sassoon ate; it is something else now but I darted in to the tall bright foyer that hosts a theatrical venture. He ordered lobster and roast duck, two bottles of champagne. Strolling out in the sunshine, his friend Edward Greaves suggested looking for a young lady to make his wife jealous. There was always the cathedral to look at, Sassoon said, “and discovered that I’d unintentionally made a very good joke.” The Notre Dame cathedral used to house the head of John the Baptist.
It was overcast. Officers kept sending in receipts for taxis and meals they took, and there were tussles over billsunpaid. The discrepancies were beneath the officers, but they still spent time and energy making these quarrels over bills go away. I’ve seen adults with mortgages and bank loans and lines of credit use the persuasion of their economic clout to have a banking fee waived. The poor have not this option.
I found a taxi and asked for the fare to Mailly-Maillet. It was a grey afternoon in this small farming village near the Somme. I passed high stone walls and a large galvanized barn where you can hear the echo of cattle inside and your nostrils are full of the funk of animals bunched together in soiled hay. This was where I was spending the night, at the Delcour’s cow farm. In April of 1916 the Newfoundlanders first went into the line near here.Arthur Wakefield, who had joined the regiment but then left to attach himself to the Royal Army Medical Corps, was delighted to see the regiment arrive with the 29th Division. Back home, the seal fishery was happening, and there were reports of men who could not return to their vessel because of a trench of water. The
Florizel
was pinched off Newfoundland in a crack in the ice and men were marching over ice pans for thirty miles with a piece of hard-bread and nothing else. Wakefield knew of these dangers as he had, during a winter in Labrador, got his party lost for two nights while following thetrail of a caribou through the snow.
I climbed the stairs to my billet and slung off my pack and fell on the thin bed, spent from having travelled over the surface of the earth—sea and land—between England and France over the past few days. The modern ceiling was hard to admire. I stared at everything around me, looking for significance. The unobstructed view out the window looked over a thousand green acres of French farmland. I had asked the very short pension owner about a bicycle and she’d told me the nearest hire was some distance away, in Auchonvillers. Now I unfolded my map and measured with the top joint of my thumb. It was only four miles to Beaumont-Hamel. I could walk there.
So instead of falling asleep without brushing my teeth, I exerted myself. I switched on the button within me that willed myself into life and decided to march to Beaumont-Hamel on this, the anniversary of
I arrived half-dead in Amiens and cast a bitter look upon the hotel I should have slept at. Instead, I had slept with my head against the vibrating train window, but Iopened my eyes to see the Carlton at Amiens slide past and stop and I had a sense that objects in the distance could affect the vibration in your forehead. The Carlton was where Siegfried Sassoon had stayed. I went in and sat at the dark plush bar and ordered a beer. It was early and no one else was drinking. There was no music, but there were the sounds of staff resuscitating kitchen life. I thought of the officers who tried to remain civilized, who had the luxury of periodic picnics of lavish eating and comfort behind the lines.
I walked through the town of Amiens. Men were working on the modern road and the plastic flatboards over holes had on them “trench limit” and, on a computer store sign, the word “reparations.” Words that had other meanings in 1918, happily being used again. My parents used to call the radio in our kitchen the wireless. Then I walked past the old Godbert’s restaurant where Sassoon ate; it is something else now but I darted in to the tall bright foyer that hosts a theatrical venture. He ordered lobster and roast duck, two bottles of champagne. Strolling out in the sunshine, his friend Edward Greaves suggested looking for a young lady to make his wife jealous. There was always the cathedral to look at, Sassoon said, “and discovered that I’d unintentionally made a very good joke.” The Notre Dame cathedral used to house the head of John the Baptist.
It was overcast. Officers kept sending in receipts for taxis and meals they took, and there were tussles over billsunpaid. The discrepancies were beneath the officers, but they still spent time and energy making these quarrels over bills go away. I’ve seen adults with mortgages and bank loans and lines of credit use the persuasion of their economic clout to have a banking fee waived. The poor have not this option.
I found a taxi and asked for the fare to Mailly-Maillet. It was a grey afternoon in this small farming village near the Somme. I passed high stone walls and a large galvanized barn where you can hear the echo of cattle inside and your nostrils are full of the funk of animals bunched together in soiled hay. This was where I was spending the night, at the Delcour’s cow farm. In April of 1916 the Newfoundlanders first went into the line near here.Arthur Wakefield, who had joined the regiment but then left to attach himself to the Royal Army Medical Corps, was delighted to see the regiment arrive with the 29th Division. Back home, the seal fishery was happening, and there were reports of men who could not return to their vessel because of a trench of water. The
Florizel
was pinched off Newfoundland in a crack in the ice and men were marching over ice pans for thirty miles with a piece of hard-bread and nothing else. Wakefield knew of these dangers as he had, during a winter in Labrador, got his party lost for two nights while following thetrail of a caribou through the snow.
I climbed the stairs to my billet and slung off my pack and fell on the thin bed, spent from having travelled over the surface of the earth—sea and land—between England and France over the past few days. The modern ceiling was hard to admire. I stared at everything around me, looking for significance. The unobstructed view out the window looked over a thousand green acres of French farmland. I had asked the very short pension owner about a bicycle and she’d told me the nearest hire was some distance away, in Auchonvillers. Now I unfolded my map and measured with the top joint of my thumb. It was only four miles to Beaumont-Hamel. I could walk there.
So instead of falling asleep without brushing my teeth, I exerted myself. I switched on the button within me that willed myself into life and decided to march to Beaumont-Hamel on this, the anniversary of
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