A Guid Soldier
by Charles Todd
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he
remembered when the raw recruit had come up the lines. Dougal Kerr was solidly
built, and strong, but not as tall as most men his age. A good soldier.
Quiet and dependable. One of
too many who would die before the week, the month, or the year was out.
Rutledge made a point, as he always did, of speaking to the newcomer that
night, asking him where he was from and a little about his family.
It was important to know something of each man for when the time came to
write the letters to the dead men’s families.
Dougal said, “I’m fra’ Glasgow.
No family. I’ve been in care
ever since I can remember.”
An orphan.
No mother to grieve, no father to weep in private or boast about his hero
lad in public.
“Good luck, son.
Come to me if you need help.
It’s not easy, it never is, to deal with the fighting.”
A broad and appealing
grin spread across Dougal’s face. “Thankee sir, but I doubt I’ll have trouble.
I’ve always wanted to be a soldier.”
From time to time after
that, Rutledge saw Dougal going about his duties with good grace and no
complaints. Sergeant MacNabb called
him “laddie.” Hamish, standing
beside Rutledge one night as they watched the German lines across No Man’s Land,
spoke of Dougal as “a guid man.”
Others on the line took a fatherly interest in him.
It wasn’t until they
took the machine gun nest that Rutledge found himself in close company with
Dougal. He’d sent most of his men
toward the German line as a distraction while he and five others crawled toward
the unguarded side of the machine gun emplacement.
In a last second rush, they were on their feet and inside before the
gunners could turn and protect their flank.
The surprise was complete.
Two of his men went
down as Rutledge, followed by another soldier, leaped into the nest with his
pistol drawn while Dougal stood on the rim of the emplacement, rifle at the
ready. The gunner and his crew got
slowly to their feet, shock on their young faces, their hands beginning to rise
in surrender. But before Rutledge
could speak to them, Dougal fired five times at nearly point-blank range,
killing the Germans where they stood.
Rutledge wheeled,
shouting, “Enough of that!” But it
was too late. His eyes met Dougal’s,
and in those eyes Rutledge saw an expression that for an instant disconcerted
him.
He leaned down to
disable the machine gun before leading his men, carrying their wounded, back to
their own line.
Afterward, he asked
Dougal why he’d shot the Germans as they were surrendering.
“They’re machine
gunners, aren’t they? Lower than
the low!”
“Yes, that’s what’s
said in the lines,” Rutledge retorted impatiently.
“But it doesn’t give you the right to kill them out of hand!”
“No, sir,” Dougal
answered slowly, his eyes cast down in contrition.
“I got carried away a bit—the excitement and all.”
There was nothing else
Rutledge could say. No one else had
seen what he had seen. Others were
slapping Dougal on the back and calling him a hero, not a murderer . . ..
But the expression on
Dougal’s face as he’d shot the enemy down was burned into Rutledge’s mind.
He had seemed . . . gleeful.
It didn’t sit well. He tried
to tell himself that the man was young, that he’d only been at the Front for a
week. But Rutledge had been a
policeman before the war, and what he’d seen had sent the hairs on the back of
his neck rising up in alarm.
There was no such thing
as a born killer . . ..
When he got a chance,
he spoke to Hamish. The Scot shook
his head. “I’ve seen nae sign of
trouble,” he said skeptically, “but I’ll keep an ee oot.”
Rutledge had more on
his mind than Dougal for the next seventy-two hours, with a push on by the
Germans and the men under his command tiring under the onslaught and the heavy
shelling. Hamish, reporting on the losses and the wounded, said, “I must tell ye
that young Dougal has a guid eye.
He found the sniper before I did.”
And Corporal Hamish
MacLeod had one of the best eyes Rutledge had ever come across.
“Did he shoot the man?”
Rutledge asked. “Or did you?”
Hamish grinned.
“We tossed for it. He won.
Private Chisholm called it a rare shot.”
Chisholm was one of
their own snipers, a man born to gamekeepers on a Highland
estate who was a gamekeeper himself.
Rutledge said nothing.
Hamish went on.
“Though I must tell you that he took undue pleasure in the shot.
I couldna’ be sure if it was his pride in the marksmanship or the thrill
of bringing doon the man that set him up sae well.”
“Yes.
He appears to take pleasure in killing.”
Hamish shrugged.
“It’s what a soldier does.
Still . . ..” He paused for a long moment, then shrugged as if to himself and
said, “He doesna’ complain. And
he’s no laggard o’er the top.”
In the quiet of the
night Rutledge and Hamish stood there, shoulder to shoulder, watching the stars
come out as clouds moved on.
Rutledge could see Orion clearly now.
And the Great Bear.
Hamish said after a
moment, “There’s something I canna’ like in him, for all he’s a guid soldier.
What’s lacking, I canna’ say.”
Rutledge said, “I’ve
heard the men call him lucky.”
“Aye, he is that.
He doesna’ seem to ken what death is.”
Rutledge’s fingers went
to the tear in the cloth of his sleeve where a shot had just missed him.
It had been close, but not close enough.
“He’s quiet in rotation, back of the lines.
He has little to say for himself.
I’ve asked. And there’s no
mail for him.”
“An orphan,” Hamish
reminded him.
“Yes.”
Rutledge was silent for a time, then added, “No past.”
Hamish chuckled softly.
“Ye’re no’ a policeman, man.
No’ here. He’s verra young.
Two days ago I saw him try to shave.”
He grinned in the darkness, white teeth a flash of brightness in the
shadows of the trench wall. “It
wasna’ successful.”
Later in the day
Rutledge spoke to Sergeant MacRae about
Dougal.
MacRae said, “It’s
strange. You notice no one calls
him by his surname. He’s Dougal,
like a boy.”
“He looks like a boy,”
Rutledge agreed, “as if his mind hasn’t caught up with his body.”
MacRae frowned.
“He’s a guid soldier,” he said, echoing Hamish’s words, “but somehow I
canna’ trust him.”
Rutledge turned to look
at MacRae’s lined face, the face of a man who’d been dragged back into the war
after retiring from the Army in 1912, and said, “That’s an odd thing to say.”
“Aye, it is.
He charges hell-bent for the Hun lines as if he hears no orders, and tries to
get up as close as he can. It’s
almost as if he wants to see the faces of the ones who lay dying after they’ve
been shot. He’s likely to get
himself shot being sae stupid, and we’ll have to send other men out to bring him
back. I do na’ care for
foolishness.” He stopped to listen
to the sounds of distant fire, then turned to his men and called to them to be
watchful. “But he’s a guid
soldier,” he repeated, as if trying to convince himself of the fact.
When Rutledge spoke to
Dougal about his rash charges and the danger they represented to others in the
company, the boy grinned and said, “I hit more that way,” as if he were keeping
count. “There were sixteen
yesterday. I made sure of each kill.”
And then he said, as if perplexed, “I’m not sure why I like it so much,
but there’s something about fighting that makes me happy.”
Rutledge found himself
shivering. The policeman in him,
alert and uneasy, listened for overtones, the voice of someone who killed for
sport. But the boy seemed unaware of Rutledge’s suspicions.
If anything, he seemed surprised by his own admission and eager to
examine it further.
There were days when
Rutledge watched Dougal and debated with himself about speaking to his
commanding officer about the boy. But Dougal had done nothing wrong, nothing
that could support Rutledge’s concerns.
Still, a small voice inside his head asked him how well Dougal would
adjust to civilian life again after the war.
Would he continue doing what he loved best back home, ultimately ending
up being caught and hanged by Scotland Yard?
Or would his taste for killing end with the war?
There were no answers
for any of his questions. And no
time for them . . . .
They were under attack again.
The Germans were probing under cover of their artillery, testing the
British lines to the north of their position.
In a strong counterattack, the British took back the yards the Germans
had gained, then counted their dead.
They had brought back all of their men except one—Maxwell, who hung on
the wire. The two men sent to
retrieve him were shot down and had to crawl painfully back to safety.
“He’s twitching, but for all I can see, he’s dead,” one of them informed
Hamish with a shake of his head.
“We’ll wait until after
dark to bring him back,” Hamish said.
Watching the man hang
there, his limbs moving erratically, one hand beckoning as if begging for rescue
before it was too late, was having a bad effect on morale in the sector.
Maxwell was well liked.
Death was one thing. They had grown
used to it. But helplessly watching
one of their own suffer was another.
For the young recruits who had just come to the front, it was appalling.
One sat down, head in his hands, and wept.
Another cursed steadily, as if damning the man on the wire.
That night Sergeant MacRae sent another two men out to attempt to bring
him back. Both died in a hail of
bullets from behind the German lines.
It was one of the worst
days of Rutledge’s life. He watched
the dying man and prayed to God that it would be over soon.
Finally another soldier
volunteered to try and bring him in, but MacRae refused to let him. Hamish,
leading the soldier away, said for all to hear, “Sometimes when the brain is
shot, the heart keeps beating. He doesna’ know he’s twitching! He doesna’ feel
it.”
“I wish someone would
shoot him and put him out of his misery. Why don’t the Germans do it for us?”
someone said, his voice tight with anger.
“It’s no’ in their
nature to be merciful,” the sergeant snapped.
Hamish said, “As long
as he keeps hanging there, they know we’ll keep sending more men out to try
bringing him in. They’ve done for four of us already.”
And then Dougal stepped
up to the trench wall, brought up his rifle, and fired.
The man on the wire
sagged and was still.
Dougal said, “It’s
over.” But there was something in his face, a flash of something dark and
pitiless, that Rutledge caught before the boy turned away.
He enjoyed it,
he thought.
And when the war is over, he’ll go on
killing.
MacRae was shouting at
Dougal Kerr, threatening to send him off to face court-martial. Others stood
staring at him, horrified. But Dougal just walked off down the line, ignoring
all of them.
That night, while
Rutledge was writing a letter to the matron of the home where Dougal had grown
up, in order to request information about him, Private Chisholm came to find
him. Chisholm was their best sniper, a man with steady nerves and steadier
hands. But the face of the man who stood before him at the moment, asking
permission to speak, was twisted with anger and his hands trembled with his
efforts to control himself.
“That was my mate on
the wire,” he said, “and you let that bastard shoot him!”
“I didn’t let anyone
shoot Private Maxwell,” Rutledge replied, keeping his voice level. “It happened
before any of us could have prevented it.”
“Then why hasn’t he been
sent for court martial? That was murder!”
“Sergeant MacRae is
taking it up with the major. But the general feeling is that it was an act of
mercy. The Germans were using Maxwell to draw us out. And he was dead. The two
men who came back after the first try said he had been shot in the head and was
not responding.”
“He was alive! That’s
what everyone says. He was alive. We
don’t shoot our wounded.”
But they had been shot,
more than once, Rutledge could have answered. Perhaps not like this case, but
men who couldn’t be brought back, who lay in the shell craters and screamed for
release. It had been done . . .. But
that would have been no comfort to Chisholm.
“What am I to tell his
family?” Chisholm demanded. “How am I going to face them?” He was on the point
of breaking down, his voice unsteady. “I’m to marry his
sister, for God’s sake! What am I to
tell her?”
“That he died in
battle,” Rutledge said. “I’ve already written to them. I told them nothing that
would upset them. And neither will you. What you know you will keep to
yourself.”
“I can’t. You’re
telling me to condone what Dougal Kerr did!”
“I’m telling you that
whatever you may feel about him, you will spare the family of a man who died for
his country.” Rutledge’s voice was cold. “Is that understood?”
Chisholm was silent for
a time as if replaying the words in his mind. Then he took a deep breath and
said, “Yes, sir. I understand. I won’t let them hear of this, I swear.”
He was on the point of
turning away, when he asked, “What do you think Headquarters will make of this?”
“They’re too busy
worrying about Verdun,”
Rutledge said frankly. “The French aren’t holding and something has to be done.”
“Yes. That makes sense,
then”, Chisholm answered, nodding. Then he was gone in the darkness.
Rutledge finished his
letter concerning Dougal and sent it off by runner. Then he stepped out into the
night, looking for Chisholm. But the man was already asleep, his head on his
arms.
Would Chisholm get over
it? Or would Maxwell’s death become a festering sore in this tightly-knit
company of men fighting to hold onto inches of land, all the while fully aware
that most of them would become cannon fodder if another big push came? Maxwell’s
body had been brought in after nightfall, and it was clear that he wouldn’t have
survived even if he’d been retrieved and sent back to hospital. Half of his head
had been shot away.
It was plain to see
that what Dougal had done, however reprehensible, had also been merciful. It was
also cold-blooded, leaving the young private untouched by it. Something needed
to be done about this. For Dougal’s sake, Rutledge told himself. But he had a
feeling the boy wouldn’t understand—or would refuse to understand—a rebuke.
He went in search of
Dougal and found him to be enveloped in sleep as well—the sound sleep of a man
whose conscience is clear.
The next few days were
frenzied, unrelenting hell. Rutledge had no time to think about Dougal or to
discuss the situation with anyone.
It was on the last attack of the day that Rutledge found
himself making a futile, hopeless charge across No Man’s Land toward the German
lines with Dougal, Hamish, and another man from the ranks. Chisholm and two
other snipers were set on bringing down a German sniper who was so cleverly
concealed that no one had yet spotted him, and it was hoped that a direct attack
on the German positions would bring him into the open. Additionally, the reports
had shown that the German line was weakest at this point, and that it might be
possible to take the sector with a determined assault. In a corner of his mind,
Rutledge wondered if HQ knew what they were doing.
Dougal was firing his
rifle with his usual cold skill, picking off enemy soldiers as their heads
popped up over the trench lip. His skill was amazing, his aim relentless. And
that look in his eyes was back—pure excitement and blood lust. A killer’s face .
. ..
Then, without warning,
Dougal spun around, stumbled, and fell, going down hard. Rutledge, his
policeman’s brain working behind his soldier’s façade, noted the way the boy had
spun. Then he was too busy to think about anything but getting his men back
alive as reinforcements poured into the German lines and the British attack
faltered.
They brought Dougal in
with the other dead and wounded. Rutledge went to examine him. Hamish, behind
him, looked over his shoulder.
“It couldna’ been a Hun
bullet,” he said softly, for Rutledge’s ears only.
“One of our own?”
Rutledge asked quietly.
“No’ one of the men at
our heels. Look you, the angle is wrong.”
“I saw that. Yes.”
“Chisholm was the
sniper on our right. He could ha’ brought Dougal down.”
The implication behind
Hamish’s words was clear. Rutledge had already reached the same conclusion.
Chisholm could well have exacted his revenge for Maxwell today. And who would
have been the wiser?
Sergeant MacRae came to
stand with them. “A guid soldier,” he said, shaking his head.
It was an epitaph,
recognition of one man’s usefulness in war.
Rutledge found it
fitting, but incomplete. Keeping his thoughts about Dougal to himself, he asked
to see Chisholm.
“He’d dead,” MacRae
said with deep regret. “They just brought him in.”
So much for getting to
the bottom of what had happened.
Rutledge got to his
feet and walked away, checking on his men one by one. When that was done, he
found himself wondering what he should do. Dougal was dead. Chisholm was dead.
It was finished.
But his policeman’s
mind wasn’t satisfied. Had this boy been a born killer who had found his place
in a war where killing was face to face and rampant? Or had he been a boy who’d
had an extraordinary talent with a rifle and who’d been too young to understand
what his skills meant in terms of human life?
There was nothing the
policeman could do. Nothing Rutledge, the officer could do. It would be
unsettled, and he would be uncertain for the rest of his life, whether Dougal
deserved to die at Chisholm’s hands.
And whether Chisholm himself was a murderer, with Dougal’s blood at his
door…a hangman doing his duty.
Ten days later, at the
end of June, a letter came from the home where Dougal had been cared for as a
child.
“He is a most unusual
boy,” the letter said. “A busy and
loving child. But there was
something about him that frightened me then and still frightens me now.
He was a firestarter, you see.
He loved to watch things burn.
We were quite concerned about that and were secretly glad when he ran
away after the barn burned down with all of our horses inside.
We tried to trace him, without any luck.
Will you be sending him back to us?
He’s only fourteen, you see, and shouldn’t be in the army at all.
I’ve written to the colonel to ask if we could have him back again.
But I wish there was somewhere else he could go.
I’m so sorry to say that of a child.
It means I’ve failed the boy.
But the truth is, I’m more than a little afraid of him . . ..”
After some thought,
Rutledge showed the letter to Hamish.
He read it through and then said, “Puir lad.
He was a guid soldier. But
he liked to kill more than was natural.
She’ll be relieved, this matron, to know he’s no’ coming back after all.”
Case closed, Rutledge
found himself thinking, his policeman’s mind persuading him that there was
nothing more that he could do, or should do.
He would let the dead sleep in peace.
But in his mind’s eye
he could see Dougal’s wide grin and cheerful face even now.
Odd, he thought, how his carefree spirit had so brightly concealed what
lay inside—a gradually uncoiling darkness that was just beginning to find
expression along the sights of a rifle barrel.
At some point between his birth and his death, Dougal Kerr seemed to have lost
something he was unable to retrieve.
Perhaps his soul . .
.
The End
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