Alone In The Trenches by Vince Cross Page B

which is where we spent my happy early childhood years. Then, in 1913, it was on everyone’s lips that war was coming. I can
remember Dad saying to Mum as we sat at the kitchen table, “It
will
happen, Lizzie. It’s just a question of when. The Germans will want to get their hands on Paris, and
Belgium’s in the way. If we’re smart we’ll make our exit while we still can.”
    “But where to, Bertie? Where?” she replied with big eyes, smoothing her long hair away from her face. “You’d never go back to England, would you now?”
    And he’d looked up at her solemnly from beneath his dark fringe, shaking his head sadly in agreement. He’d always said he’d left England for good. It would be a total failure
to turn up like a bad
centime
in Witney, and have to start again.
    In the end we
did
make a move, but a shorter distance to just outside the city of Ypres. My grandpa had died when I was very small, and my mum was his only daughter. Now Grandma had
become ill. She was just about surviving on the family farm, but it was going to rack and ruin around her. Her mind had gone.
    “This place is disgusting,” Mum had whispered when we first arrived. “It’s more fit for an animal than a human.”
    Grandma couldn’t even feed herself properly, and there was no one close by who cared enough to help. So we’d packed up our nice life in Antwerp and moved east to the little village
of Maninghem, five kilometres from Ypres. I didn’t like it there. Grandma was really very difficult, and my mother was usually tired and cross. She was always yelling, particularly at me.
Despite my small size, I’d been born with a strong will. I could never take “no” for an answer. I made up stories too. They entertained me, and I think I even half-believed some
of them. I would rattle on about ghosts I’d seen, or rabbit-sized rats, or unlikely people I’d met in the lane. The stories didn’t amuse Mum one bit.
    “You’re a bad girl, Annette. And you’ll come to a sticky end. I can’t ever trust a thing you tell me,” she would shout, as she smacked my legs and bottom. Her
smacks stung and so did her words. I didn’t think I deserved them.
    Dad wasn’t happy either. The farm was hard to organize and control. Every day he felt he was losing a battle with nature. There was precious little time free to spend in his workshop,
apart from mending tools that broke in the difficult ground. And all through the autumn of 1914 it seemed as if any minute we’d have to abandon the farm. Just a few miles away thousands of
soldiers from the German and British armies were digging deep trenches. During the previous few months they’d chased each other backwards and forwards over most of Holland and Belgium. But
now the ground was slowly becoming sticky with mud. Soon it would be hard enough just walking across the fields, let alone moving heavy guns over them or carrying a heavy pack.
    “They’ll not go anywhere before the spring now,” my dad said. “Perhaps we’ll be all right for a while. And anyway, this war isn’t
about
anything.
Surely the politicians will see sense soon.”
    I’m sixteen years old now. The nine-year-old Annette of 1914 constantly amazes me. She might have been naughty and a storyteller, but I think she was much braver and more confident than I
am. How on earth did I cope when Dad and Michel disappeared that dreadful October day? When I think about it, a wave of sadness washes over me.
    It had been another horrible wet morning after a glorious early autumn. The two of them were soaked through before they’d even started, yet they still waved a cheery goodbye to Mum and me
as they traipsed off to help fix the fences in a neighbouring village. They never came back. I still hope that one day I’ll see them again, but in my heart of hearts I know I won’t. Not
unless the priest is right and we all meet again in heaven some day.
    What happened to them? Well, I used to wonder if they’d been