The Lost Generation

By R.M. Hamlin

The year is 1914, and the Great War has just begun. For eighteen-year-old A.J. Mitchell, living in rural Tennessee, the war seems the adventure of a lifetime, promising action, glory, honor, and above all the passage into manhood. Unfortunately for A.J., America has decided to take no part in what it sees as yet another European squabble, leaving A.J., along with his five like-minded friends, sidelined and despondent. Willing to go to any lengths to participate in the last great war, the event that they believe will define their generation, A.J. and his friends hatch a plan to journey to Britain to enlist in her army and fight alongside them. Over the next several years, A.J. and his friends are confronted by all the realities and horrors of war, leaving each to cope as best they can. Through the crucible of the Western Front, A.J. indeed grows into a man, but at what cost? He is left to confront the emotional scars left by the war and attempt to find some meaning beyond it. One century since the year of the Somme and Verdun, take this opportunity to explore the brutal, gut-wrenching tragedy that was World War I. Explore the true nature of war, and bear witness to the lasting wounds left in those charged with fighting it. The Lost Generation is a gripping and passionate story of one soldier simply trying to survive the greatest war the world had ever seen, and to attempt to collect up the pieces of himself in its wake.

• Language: English
• Publisher: R.M. Hamlin
• Release date: Jun 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311032775

R.M. Hamlin

R. M. Hamlin was born in Sacramento, California, where he has lived his entire life. He spent four years serving in the United States Army and is a veteran of the Afghan Campaign. Hamlin has been writing professionally since 2011, and The Lost Generation is his first full-length novel.

Book preview

CHAPTER I

A steady, rhythmic thumping hammers away in my head. I can’t be certain whether it is the pervasive pounding of the artillery, or just my terrified heartbeat, racing out of control. We have been standing here at the lip of the trench for nearly half an hour, listening to the deafening roar of the barrage, waiting in a mix of fear and morbid excitement for that whistle which will send us over the top, and into uncertainty. We don’t look over the edge at what destruction our guns are wreaking. To do so would invite a bullet to the skull, or at the very least the near-instantaneous evaporation of what fortitude a man had been able to summon for the job at hand. For peering over the edge would reveal to any eyes that beheld it, a brutal, hellish waste, torn to pieces by months of heavy bombardment, churned into a thick slurry of mud, and populated only by wire, blown-out stumps of trees, and the ever present dead. No-man’s land was just that, a land unwelcome and hostile to any man foolish or suicidal enough to set foot upon it. I have seen the crater-strewn killing fields that divide the trenches before. This is not my first time going over the top. But from every time I have stepped into its hellish embrace, I have learned that it is best not to even glance into no-man’s land before you are over the lip and committed to forward motion. For even the bravest or simplest of men will waver if too much thought is given to the inferno into which they will presently enter. I know for myself at least, that I can ill afford to lose what little courage I have.

I am surrounded to my left, right, and rear, by the other men of my company. Men I have lived with and shared all of this war’s hardship with for the better part of three years now. They are friends, and indeed even closer than that. They are my brothers, no matter how I feel about each of them individually. I know many of them better than I knew my own family back home. It is their presence around me that steels my resolve, that reassures my heart that when the whistle blows I will go over, and I will move forward, and I will not let that throbbing terror take hold of me. They are my strength to do what must be done. To do what no sane man would ever think to do. To throw myself headlong into the jaws of a ravenous and insatiable beast, hungry for the lives of all men.

With my left hand I unconsciously tighten my grip on the barrel of my rifle at my side. Aside from the men of my company, he is my closest friend. For he has the power to inflict death upon my enemy, and to perhaps spare me from such a fate. He is a rugged and dependable friend. One that will not let you down, even in the mud and grime of no-man’s land. He, the mighty Lee-Enfield, is every infantryman’s most trusted friend. At least, every infantryman in the British Army. I imagine, with no small amount of empathy, how the Huns must feel about him. For Lee-Enfield has cut down their youth as surely as Mauser has our own.

I look down briefly at my rifle, and my stomach sinks slightly as I look upon the sixteen-inch steel blade protruding upward from beneath its barrel. I have always looked upon the bayonet with dreadful loathing. I have never yet been forced into a situation where its use was demanded, and I pray to almighty God that I never am. The thought of ramming this blade into another man, so close that you could feel as his life drains away, was so abhorrent to me that I wonder if I would actually be able to do it when the time came. Shooting a man was nothing. It was so impersonal, and after all of our training it became something akin to just knocking down targets on the firing range. Bombs were even easier. You just pulled the pin and hurled it in the direction of the enemy. Rarely did you have to see directly the fruits of your deadly labor.

An enemy shell falls nearby. The explosion is deafening and the concussion rattles the very teeth in my skull. I press my head even more firmly against the earthen wall of the trench, hoping that, somehow, this small bit of dirt and clay will spare me from the torrent without. From the sound of that last round, the Huns have brought their heavies to bear against us. Unlike the trench mortars and the light daisy-cutters, the heavy shells burrow into the ground slightly before bursting, causing much larger craters and sending the shock of the blast much farther through the ground. The daisy-cutters and mortar rounds generally burst above ground, spewing their lethal rain of shrapnel down upon the heads of men. Whenever we are in the open, unshielded by cover, we fear these most. Today, the enemy would wait patiently for us to come out of our trenches before letting those loose on us. Combined with the ubiquitous curtain of machinegun fire, it would make for a harrowing advance.

As I wait at the wall of the trench, clutching my rifle and alternately dreading and anticipating the whistle that will set it all in motion, it comes. Piercing the roaring din like church bells on Sunday, the whistles blow, and with them I am, we are, blown over the top.

In a heartbeat I am up the ladder and over the lip. By the next beat I am on my feet, running headlong forward into the maelstrom. My eyes are open this entire time, yet it takes a moment for them to register everything I am seeing and process it all clearly. It is as though my body knows exactly what to do and moves accordingly, absent my conscious mind’s interference. Every time I have gone over the top it has been the same. My body moves automatically for the first few moments, before my head returns. It is almost as though my mind has created this as a defense, to protect me from the all too likely possibility that I may be killed in those first few steps.

As my senses return to me and I take stock of my surroundings, the full nightmarish reality of no-man’s land is there to greet me. A few hundred yards are all that separate our trench from theirs. Everything that lies between is a muddy, pockmarked, shade of the countryside that once existed here. There are no trees left. At least none taller than a man’s waist. Shattered stumps sporadically dot this wasteland, though in enough time even these will be cut down by the fire of the guns.

Absent foliage, no-man’s land is mostly populated by wire and other obstacles. Maze-like zigzags of barbed wire fill this grave expanse, with no logical paths plainly evident. Preliminary bombardments were intended to break large gaps through the wire that would provide us infantry with channels to the other side, but as I can see now, and have seen all too many times before, the results have fallen far short of expectations.

Not only wire, but a whole host of varied obstacles lie strewn across our way. Burnt-out automobile chassis, rotting horse carts, abandoned artillery carriages, and equipment of every kind from both sides pepper this landscape. These things are both a blessing and a curse, for many provide brief reprieve from the torrential hail of bullets and shrapnel, while many others serve only to slow a man’s advance, making him easy pickings for the enemy.

Most disconcerting of all are the remains of the dead. Shell holes are often occupied by the pale bloated remnants of previous attacks. Walking through no-man’s land one can easily find enough dismembered body parts to reassemble a whole section of men. It is a sad fact that most who fall during attack or withdraw within the middle ground between the lines will never be buried. It is simply not an option to risk the lives of more of the living by attempting to retrieve from no-man’s land the already dead. Abhorrent as it is, there are times when we can not even retrieve the wounded, and are forced to leave them, crying in agony, to die slowly there in the mud.

But as for me now, I must move forward. So, I start running. All about me, my comrades are advancing as well, running as best they can over the hard terrain. Some trip over obstacles or flounder in the mud, but many are falling from other causes. Our trench and the enemy’s are separated by only a few hundred yards. As such, the very moment we leave our lines we are within range of their machineguns. We have not moved far and already men are crumpling under the withering fire. As I run forward, negotiating my way around a short section of wire, the man to my right collapses. I do not stop. I can’t help him here, and if I stop I’ll be blocking those behind me. So I keep going. Bullets crack overhead and I am shaken by the near constant concussion of nearby explosions.

About fifty yards ahead of me there is a decent-sized boulder, which oddly enough has not yet been destroyed by bombardments. I decide to make a sprint for that rock and pause briefly behind its cover. As I begin to run it becomes clear that one of the Boche gunners has drawn a bead on me. The ground ahead of me erupts in a trail of dust clouds, kicked up by the bullets. I quickly dive to my left and press as flat as humanly possible against the earth, hoping that the gunner will not be able to adjust his point of aim quickly enough to follow me. The stream of bullets tear through the space which a second past I had occupied, and then continue firing in other directions. Apparently there is a slight rise in the terrain between my current position and the gunner’s, meaning that while I am pressed flat as I am, I am safe from his fiery wrath.

Still I have to keep moving forward, so I crawl a little forward, to a point where I can spy the boulder ahead in the distance. My target is now only thirty or so yards away. I wait for a nearby explosion, which doesn’t take long at all, and then jump to my feet and take off. The dust and smoke from the blast helps to cloak me from watchful eyes, and I make it to the boulder quickly and without incident. Once there, I squat down in the rock’s lee, shielded from direct fire, to catch my breath. By this point my heart is racing, I am gulping for air, and my mouth feels as though every last drop of moisture has been sucked from it. Unfortunately, if I have learned anything from this war, it is that there is no rest for the weary.

That in mind, I grab my rifle and peer out from the right side of the rock. I’m roughly two hundred yards away from the enemy line, well within range of my Lee-Enfield. From here, even with the smoke and haze of the battlefield, I can easily make out individual soldiers poking up out of their trenches. The Huns do, after all, have very distinctive helmets, which are clearly recognizable even in this chaos.

Quickly, I line up my sights on a helmet’s silhouette, hold my breath, and squeeze the trigger. The rifle pops back into my shoulder, and instinctively I am already working the bolt, ejecting the spent casing and chambering the next one. I have nine more rounds to spend before I am forced to reload. Bringing the rifle back up to my shoulder and looking again down my sights, I take aim at another silhouette. I cannot be sure whether or not I hit the first target. The recoil from the shot, and having to manually operate the bolt took my focus away from the round’s intended recipient. I imagine it struck home. A target at two hundred yards distance is practically a chip shot for any decently trained rifleman carrying the Lee-Enfield.

I squeeze the trigger again, at the second target, chamber another round, and then line up another shot. I repeat this process several more times, though exactly how many eludes my memory. Finally I decide that it is time to move forward again. Around me, more and more men from my company, as well as sister companies of our battalion, are pushing on, many of whom have passed me by now. By this point I have sufficiently regained my wind, and hopefully in the process I have knocked down a few Huns with my brief fusillade.

I stand quickly and move around the left side of my boulder, breaking into a brisk run. The enemy fire is still heavy, though by this point our boys have massed enough strength that it appears certain we shall take at least their first trench.

I run past a crater with three men inside. Two are operating a Lewis gun, while the other is frantically working his rifle. This is a stroke of good fortune, as the fire laid down by the Lewis gun will give the rest of us some measure of support and cover as we move up to the trench itself. The Lewis gun is truly a Godsend. It is light enough to actually be carried forward with the advancing infantry, but still carries roughly the same punch as the heavy Vickers guns which defend the trenches. The Lewis guns provide us with forward fire support at some of the most critical points of an attack, such as now, when we are running point-blank into the muzzles of the enemy guns. The best use of a machinegun when advancing against the enemy is not to kill the enemy soldiers, but to suppress them with heavy volumes of fire, causing them to duck back down and cease their firing, so that our infantry can close the distance and eliminate them. In this the Lewis gun has proven invaluable. The enemy soldiers aren’t brainless. A sustained spray from a Lewis gun at their parapet, and they will duck down for a moment at the very least. It might not seem like much, but that brief pause in enemy fire can mean the difference between reaching your objective alive and bleeding to death in some mud-sodden hole in the middle of Hell.

The closer we get to the enemy’s trench, the heavier the fire becomes. The artillery has let up, for fear of bombing their own lines, but now, in addition to the constant barrage of the machineguns as well as increasingly accurate rifle fire, we are made to contend with the bombs as well. Around forty yards out from their line, we are now within range of the Boche stick-bombs, which are hurled at us by the enemy soldiers in great quantity. If one lands on the ground nearby, you have no more than two seconds to dive behind some form of very sturdy cover, or else make your peace with God.

These bombs are now exploding all around us, taking many down with them. But we too have bombs. I slide down into a shell crater not more than ten yards from the edge of the trench and, pressing myself down into the dirt to present as little a target as possible, I grab one of the five Mills bombs from my satchel. The bomb is a small metal sphere, similar to a baseball in size and dimensions, making it very easy for me to throw long distances. This one however, only has to make it ten or eleven yards. I pull the pin and let the spoon fly off, still holding the now armed bomb in my hand. The Mills has a seven-second fuse on it, so when throwing it this close to target it is often advisable to burn off a few seconds, to avoid allowing the enemy enough time to escape the blast radius or worse, throw it back. I count to four and then heave it toward the trench. As soon as I hear the boom I am up and sprinting at the trench. Two others nearby join me upon seeing the explosion. I think they are from C Company. How they got mixed in with us is beyond me.

I crest the lip of the trench and jump down, without hesitation, into the smoky haze and unsettled dust left by the bomb’s blast. The instant my feet hit the ground I swivel to my right and bring my rifle to bear. An enemy soldier a few yards away is on his hands and knees, trying to stand. Evidently he was stunned or wounded by the explosion. I squeeze the trigger. He collapses back to the ground, dead. I notice however, that his leg continues to twitch.

The two others are behind me now, and I turn toward them and point down the trench. I yell for them to clear that area, they move out, and I am left relatively alone. Others from our battalion are descending on the trench now, though no one else has dropped down very near to me. Alone as I am, I move down this area of the trench, clearing it as I go. I come across a dugout on my left, and I throw a bomb into it for good measure, sending a billowing column of dirt and dust spewing from its mouth before collapsing in upon itself. In all likelihood there were no enemy inside, but it’s always better to be sure than to assume and find a Boche dagger in your back.

Up ahead several yards the trench opens up on the left into a communication trench, a small trench designed to connect the first-line trench with second, the second with the third, the third with the reserve trench, and so on. I run toward it, admittedly less cautious than I should, and as I turn the corner, I all but run smack into the face of an enemy soldier moving my direction. I hesitate for an instant in surprise, but then, as my composure returns to me, I take a step backward, bring up my rifle, and squeeze the trigger. However, to my shock and horror, instead of the deep, characteristic boom of the .303 caliber cartridge, all I hear is a sharp, metallic click.

Somehow, in all of the chaos and confusion of the morning’s events, I must have spent my tenth round without noticing and gone on till now with an empty rifle. Damn, what a stupid, rookie mistake! The soldier in front of me had frozen in place when I lifted my weapon to fire, but now, seeing that I am out, he moves to raise his own rifle, which at the moment he holds at his side. In his other hand he carries an ammunition can, which he must drop to the ground before he can bring his weapon to bear on me. This gives me just enough of a pause for my racing mind to go over my limited options.

There is certainly no hope of reloading my rifle in time. The other man could pump half a magazine into me in the time it would take me to reload. If I try tackling him, he will still likely get a shot off at me in the melee, or else it will come down to a fight with daggers. By the time the third and final option begins to cross my mind, my body is already acting on it, moving lightning fast, as though completely outside of my own control. I grip my rifle tight and thrust its bladed tip as hard and deep as I can muster into the man’s gut. I twist the weapon to the left, just as we were taught to do, and rip it savagely from the now dying man’s abdomen. Warm, red blood sprays me as I do.

The enemy soldier lets out a low groan and recoils back a step or two. Across his face is painted a look of both complete shock and mortal agony. It is only now that I take a moment to actually look at the man’s face. When I do, I find that I am not looking at a man at all. The soldier in front of me can’t be a day over fifteen. His freckled nose and cheeks are stained by smoke and grime, and his piercing emerald green eyes seem to convey, along with the obvious pain, a sense of confusion, as though they were asking why this was all happening to him.

The boy collapsed into the mud, still looking up at me, holding his now exposed entrails with one hand, and fidgeting with one of the belts of ammunition that had been draped around his shoulders with the other. Still he looks at me, his eyes demanding an answer. Why did you do this to me? Why am I dying here, when I should still be back home, in school, chasing girls, with the promise of many years ahead of me? I have no response. Why are any of us here? This dying boy strikes me deeply, as I feel that I understand him. I remember not too long ago, when I was young and stupid, thinking that war would be some great and honorable adventure. I thought that I would come to France, slay a few of the Huns, and then return a hero, bedecked with medals and decorations. I dreamt of honor, and a feeling of fulfillment and satisfaction at having gone over to fight and win a just war. No doubt this boy had similar thoughts. War to him must have seemed a delightful adventure, until the reality set in. And like this boy dying at my feet, I had come with such laughable imaginings of war, and now find myself empty, broken, and completely drained by it.

The boy makes a low gurgling sound and blood oozes from his mouth. I know it is about to happen. His green eyes continue to stare at me, imploring me to give answer to his questions, until, after one final gurgling breath, their piercing focus breaks, and they are staring no longer at me, but through me, unmoving and unblinking. It is at this moment that I realize, regardless of the heart still beating in my chest, that I am just as dead as this boy before me.

CHAPTER II

My eyes shoot open and I am surrounded by dim gray light. As I focus and my vision clears, I see the ceiling of my room and realize that I am in my bed, safe at home. I am covered in a cold perspiration and am breathing heavy. These nightmares have been tormenting me with increasing regularity ever since I returned from the war. The attack where I bayoneted that German boy seems to be one of the more prevalent, though by no means the worst. Too many nights have I seen his piercing green eyes staring at me, growing ever dimmer as the life drains from them. Too often have I felt the rifle in my hands as I rip the bayonet from his belly. It haunts me still.

I don’t entirely know why my mind fixates prejudicially on that one incident as opposed to the myriad others. The war was rife with equal horrors my brain could churn through in my slumber. And to be fair it does, though just less often.

I sit up on the edge of my bed and swing my legs over the side. With great effort, and the strain of a man decades beyond my twenty-four years, I stand, hearing joints crack and pop, and feeling that familiar pain shooting through my left leg. I shift my weight more to the right to compensate, and then hobble my way over to the sink. Almost two years since the Armistice and that limp has still not gone completely.

I splash the cold water over my face and it feels good, as though I am washing the night’s dream off of me. I dry my face with the towel hanging opposite the sink and then walk back over toward the bed. I pick up the old gray pair of pants off the floor and put them on, and then make my way over to the cabinet. Upon opening it I grab a small glass and the half-empty bottle of bourbon sitting on the top shelf. I pour myself about three fingers of the drink, take it all in one gulp, and then pour another. I put the bottle back in the cabinet and take my glass over to the chair by the window.

As I sit in the old, stiff wooden chair, the pain in my leg lets up slightly. I take a sip of the bourbon and look out the window. It is early. The morning is dark and gray, with only the very first few hints of pink sunlight visible from behind the hills to the east.

From this second-story window I can look down into the street below. This early there are only the beginnings of the day’s hustle and bustle. Some shopkeepers are out, stocking their wares or cleaning up their stores, and a few miscellaneous people are walking down the sidewalks, but aside from these, the street is empty.

I enjoy this time of the day, when everything is quiet and still. When one can appreciate the sunrise or the crisp morning air, before it is drowned out by the cacophonous din of people talking, commerce moving, and automobiles chugging. This time of day one can still hear his own thoughts. That aside, I would still be awake at this time anyway, even if I didn’t appreciate it. It seems my mind is hardwired to wake me up every morning just before the dawn, whether I set the alarm or not. If I sleep at all that is. Sleep has become increasingly problematic of late. Back during the war I could sleep anywhere and at any time. We were so tired, and given so few opportunities to rest, when we were on the line, that one learned quickly to seize any opportunity. I have slept through terrible storms, bombardments, you name it. I even fell asleep while playing cards once. But lately, I have found it ever more difficult to fall asleep, and certainly to stay asleep, since I have been home. Many nights I will spend the entire night jut lying in my bed staring at the ceiling, completely unable to give in to sleep. Even the drinking hasn’t been able to cure this, though God only knows I’m trying hard at it.

I take another sip from my glass. Some might thumb their noses at having a drink this early, but I have found that it’s best to nip the hangover in the bud, before it can grow into a monster. I can’t believe there was once a time when I abhorred the drink. It seems a lifetime ago, but now that I think about it, it really has been. Though it has only been six years since that damnable war broke out, I could easily stretch those six of my years over a dozen normal lifetimes and probably still have a healthy remainder.

I see a couple of children playing with a ball in the street below, probably the baker’s kids. They run and laugh, without a care in the world. Not weighed down by ghosts from the past nor by worries of the future. Content in the present, they are free. How I envy their youth and their innocence, and mourn the loss of my own.

To this day I still remember that fateful August afternoon, when first I heard of the outbreak of war. I knew not then how profoundly that day would alter the rest of my life, but I did know it was important. There had, after all, been rumblings coming out of Europe for several weeks now, speaking of tensions between the Entente and Central Powers, and of their bellicose threats against one another. I vaguely remember having heard about that Archduke Franz something or other being assassinated some time before, but it did not then strike me as bearing much importance. But as the single spark begets the flame which goes on to devour the entire forest, so did this one death in some unremarkable part of the Balkans beget the war that would end up devouring all of Europe.

I remember reacting to descriptions of the war with natural boyish excitement. The newspapers spoke of infantry advances and cavalry charges, and all the glorious trappings of war. There were pictures of splendid-looking soldiers marching through the streets of London and Paris in perfect columns off to what promised to be a quick and decisive victory against the German aggressors. It seemed like a grand adventure to me then, and surely the only real ticket into manhood for the youth of my generation. This was after all, the greatest war the world had seen since the times of Napoleon.

But of course, all my hopes of battlefield glory and marching through the Brandenburg Gates as a vanquishing hero were quickly dashed by the cold facts of reality. I was an American. Living on a farm in Middle Tennessee, some four thousand miles away from the green fields of France. There was little chance I would ever be able to take part in the war that would define my generation. The country was, at that time, adamantly opposed to taking any part in some European squabble that might endanger good American lives. To make matters worse, we had damn-near a pacifist for a president. There was no way on God’s green earth that Woodrow Wilson was going to enter a war unless the enemy was at the very steps of the White House itself. So, for the time being, all I could do was accept my humble fate and complain about it to my family and friends.

My mother was jubilant that America was refusing involvement in the war, and scolded me for even suggesting that it do anything else. Among my friends however, I did find some sympathetic to my views. We were all seventeen and eighteen-year-old country boys with nothing in life to excite us, and war sounded like a great escape.

It was a warm summer September afternoon a few weeks after the outbreak of hostilities, when I happened to be discussing the very matter with some of my friends from around town. There were five, all of whom I had known since I was a child. We had grown up together, gone to school together, and endured the unending boredom of a life in a small rural community together. Now, we were talking about how fantastic it would be to find a means of escape. Naturally, as we were all hot-blooded teenagers, impervious to any and all harm, we believed the war to be the best idea. It would be grand! We would go over, kill some Heinies, win some medals, and return as lauded heroes, matured but unscarred by the trials of war. For in everyone’s mind when dreaming of war, they always return unharmed. We were invincible then, so why should it be any different over there? It was at this point that one of my friends, Bill Hanfield, made an offhand remark that would lead us all down a dangerous topic.

We could just go, ya know, he said with a shrug. My buddy Masters down in Murfreesboro got family or somethin’ up ‘n Canada somewhere. Says he’s goin’ up ‘cross the border to enlist with the Canadian Corps. Fight the war while my country ass sits on the farm gatherin’ dust. At this he spat angrily in the dirt.

Fuck the Canadian Corps, responded George Thompson, sitting across from Bill. I’d rather not fight at all than fight with the fuckin’ Canadians.

No one knew exactly why, but the Thompson family had a long-standing hatred of Canada. I believe it had something to do with George’s father or grandfather being nearly bankrupted by a failed business venture with a traveling entrepreneur from Ontario, but it may run deeper than that. In any event George was heartily opposed to having anything to do with serving under a Canadian flag.

Well don’t France have that Foreign Legion thing? Chimed in Buck O’Neal. They let people in that from any country.

Yeah, but I hear they let fuckin niggers in too. This was Jimmy Holloway. You wanna be in the heat a’ battle, fightin’ next to a nigger? Count me the hell out. ‘Sides, how many a’ you fuckers know French? We all nodded in agreement, even Buck who had proposed the idea.

What about the Brits? I remember myself asking. Anyone know if they take Americans?

I reckon it’s prolly bout the same as Canada, said Bill with another indifferent shrug. I could always see if ol’ Masters knows. He s’posed to be up this way, here in a couple a’ days. I’ll ask him then.

After a few minutes of further discussion, we all agreed that this would be the most agreeable option and decided to wait for Bill to talk to Masters before we settled on any one course of action. After we parted ways that day to return to our respective lives, home in the real world and away from the daydreams of glorious adventure, I did not see Bill for another two weeks. Mostly it was because I was busy around the house and working the back field. I found that so long as I kept myself thoroughly preoccupied with work, my mind didn’t seem to wander quite so far and quite as often. This I have since learned: idleness truly is the greatest obstacle to contentedness. And perhaps if I hadn’t so much free time to think and dream of a life away from my tiny little slice of the world then, I might be a different man today. Perhaps for the worse, perhaps for the better. But this sort of thinking is rot. They say that hindsight is perfect, and this is true, but for an eighteen-year-old farm boy dreaming of war, my foresight was legally blind.

When I did finally meet up with Bill again, it was in town outside the general store. He had discussed our matter with Masters, who in turn had written his relatives up in St. Catharines in Canada. These relatives, an aunt and uncle I believe, wrote back to Masters assuring him that the British Army was indeed accepting volunteers from America, just as Canada was, so long as said volunteers could find some means of transport to Britain.

This was amazing news to me then. I had hoped that this would be the answer, and that I would get the chance to go on my great adventure, but in the back of my mind I hadn’t been so sure that it would pan out. I remember being so excited upon receiving the news that I nearly hugged Bill right there on the sidewalk. Instead I insisted that we had to get all of us who wanted to go together as soon as possible to share the great news. I laugh even thinking about it now, how happy I was at the thought of going off to war. So young and naïve. But weren’t we all once?

We managed to round up all six of us the following afternoon, when we gathered to discuss the news. Every one of us seemed excited at this fortunate turn of events, and we unanimously decided that if we were really serious about doing this, that the British Army was the best option. Well, now that I think about it, Jimmy still argued that it would be much easier to get to Canada and enlist there than find a way across the Atlantic to England, but we quickly managed to convince him that if he actually wanted to see combat, the Canadian Corps was out of the question. I mean, there was no way the Canadians of all people were going to be in the thick of it over there. Of course, what we didn’t know then was that the units of the Canadian Corps would consistently be involved in some of the fiercest and most savage fighting of the whole war, from Vimy Ridge to the Somme. At one point or another, most everyone in our group ended up serving alongside Canadian units at the front, and to a man, those left of us have nothing but the deepest admiration for their courage and tenacity in the face of many hopeless situations. Even George Thompson didn’t have the heart to keep up his generations-long hatred of Canada after he got separated from his unit at the Somme and spent three days fighting with a section from the 10th Canadian Battalion. But that story is for a later time. Still, at the time we believed our best chance of seeing actual combat was to find a way to England and enlist in the British Army.

So naturally, the course of conversation then shifted to how on God’s green Earth we were going to acquire passage to England. The logistics of the trip were staggering to us, a group of boys who had never left the state of Tennessee and had never seen a body of water greater than the Cumberland River, let alone an ocean.

We all quickly agreed on the basics. We would have to travel overland to a port on the east coast, and from there somehow find a way onto a steamer bound for London. Of course none of us paid too much thought to the issue of how the hell we would proceed once we reached London, but that was for later concern. After we established these basic parameters, the more detailed, and troubling, issues of the journey began to rear their disconcerting little heads.

First of all, how in God’s name were we going to pay for any of this? Most of us barely had five dollars to our name, and some not even that much. Gradually we all began to turn to the last member of the group, Walt Scranton, or more appropriately, Walter John Scranton III. Walt’s family owned a great deal of land in Middle Tennessee, and one of his uncles was a state senator. Needless to say, he and his family were better off financially than all the rest of us combined. If anyone might be able to bankroll our little European holiday, it would be him.

Walt was always a shy boy, painfully awkward in social settings, made worse by his slight, almost sickly-weak build. He was never really included as a child by his peers, and this had only deepened his social reservations. It certainly did not help that his family as a whole was not very well liked by most of the people about town. His grandfather had been one of those most despised Yankee carpetbaggers, who swooped in upon the crippled southern states after the Civil War and reaped their fortunes by taking what few material possessions the common folk yet clung to. Walt’s grandfather had done this by buying up vast quantities of small farms whose owners either could no longer pay their mortgage, or had been killed over the course of the war or during the sectarian violence that Reconstruction engendered. To most of the carpetbaggers this was simply seizing upon a lucrative business opportunity, but it left those born-and-raised southerners, many of whom now found themselves homeless and destitute, with a bad taste in their