Read Online The Soldier's Song by Alan Monaghan - Free Book Online Page A

was snowing again. He could feel the flakes matting in his eyelashes and he had to kick the slush from his sodden boots before he went in. He’d been out in the open all day and was numb with the cold. As the afternoon slowly turned into night he’d started dreaming about the warmth of the mess and now he could hardly wait. The fire had been burning in there, day and night, for the last week, and the moment he stepped inside he felt his ears begin to burn and his eyes water. The familiar reek of turf smoke brought a smile to his pinched face, but his heart sank when a figure turned to look at him from the ragged armchair near the fireplace. The good armchair.
    ‘Ah, there you are, Ryan. The CO is looking for you.’
    He might have known Hamilton would already be there. He’d hoped to get a few minutes warming himself by the fire, but Hamilton had beaten him to it. Doctor’s orders. He had a blanket around his shoulders and his feet in a basin of water. Frostbite in three of his toes. Half the mess had already come by to see him – partly as an excuse to bask in the heat for a few minutes, partly out of morbid curiosity. Frostbite in Ireland? Who’d have believed it? But who would have believed the weather could be so appallingly bad, and for six weeks with no respite. Day after day the freezing north wind had brought more snow and ice. Trees were falling down under the weight of it. The drifts were thigh deep in places, and the latrines needed boiling water tipped down them to melt the ice.
    But they couldn’t let the weather stop them, not when they were this close. They were at the tipping point: on the cusp of becoming soldiers. Spring was just around the corner, and then they would be going to war. So with only a two-day break for Christmas they’d stuck it out: standing guard through the frozen nights, drilling together, digging trenches in the iron earth. They learned to ambush and skirmish in the snowy heather. They went on route marches across the frozen plains, and they climbed into the Wicklow Mountains with the cold pinching their faces and the icy wind howling around their ears. Maybe it wasn’t so shocking that Hamilton had come down with frostbite. Perhaps the real surprise was that he was their only case.
    On foot of Mr Hamilton’s condition – when he read out the order that morning, the adjutant had paused to let the joke sink in, then repeated it just to be sure – on foot of Mr Hamilton’s condition, feet were to be inspected at the end of every day. Consequently, Stephen had just made the rounds of his platoon – all twenty-five of them sitting on their haversacks with their socks off and their feet held up for him to peer at. Remarkably varied, he thought, as he moved from one pair to the next; one man’s feet were as different from another man’s as his face was. But even though the feet were all scarred to one degree or another – mostly pocked with the fleshy craters of old blisters long since hardened over – there was no blackness, no sign of frostbite. He was relieved and glad to get it over. No weather to be lying on your arse and waving your bare feet in the air. By the time he got to the end of the line his own feet were like blocks of ice and he craved warmth. He wanted heat and he wanted food, but Hamilton had beaten him to the good armchair, and the CO wouldn’t be kept waiting.
    ‘He was here not five minutes ago wanting to know if you were about,’ Hamilton added helpfully. ‘Said to send you over to his office if you showed up.’
    ‘Oh, right-oh. I’d best see what he wants.’ He turned towards the door but hesitated. To linger in the warmth for even a few seconds was a balm, ‘How are the feet?’
    ‘Much better, thanks. Hurt like buggery when the circulation came back, but I can wiggle my toes now.’ Hamilton lifted one foot out of the water and wiggled.
    ‘Good for you!’ Stephen fastened the neck of his greatcoat and turned the collar up around his ears.