Soldier's Game by James Killgore Page A

Long Valley near Millencourt nearly 640 men did not answer when their name was called. In that single day fighting at the Somme over 19,000 British soldiers died and another 35,000 were wounded.
    Jack’s head wound had not been serious. The bullet only grazed his skull. But the surgeon warned early on that he might lose his right leg. A bullet had entered the side of his knee and shattered the joint. In the long delay reaching hospital, infection had set in and for weeks the wound refused to heal – leaking a thin, watery pus into the cotton dressing. But within a few weeks the nurses had Jack up on crutches and the skin slowly closed over, although the joint remained stiff and immovable. No one had to tell Jack that his football career was over.
    ***
    Three months later Jack returned to Edinburgh with a medical discharge. The North British Rubber Company took him back in a promoted position as assistant clerk. Most nights he awoke crying in his sleep, his bedclothes damp and tangled. Try as he might to banish the horrors from his waking memory they always returned in his dreams.
    One sunny afternoon that October, Jack’s older sister Mary took him for a stroll in Princes Street Gardens. She left him sitting on a bench in front of the Castle Fountains as she went for ice creams. Two girls of thirteen or fourteen sat on a bench opposite stealing shy glances in his direction. Jack’s crutches were tucked out of sight behind the bench and he was no longer in uniform.
    The bolder of the two girls rose from the bench as the other covered her face and giggled. She was a pretty girl with blue eyes and long strawberry-blonde hair curling over the shoulders of her Sunday dress. Over she came and stood before Jack with a haughty tilt of chin.
    Jack glanced up and smiled. From her pocket she drew a single white feather and held it out before him on the palm of her hand.

15. Not Forgotten
    The clock stands in a traffic island at the busy junction outside Haymarket railway station. It has a double-sided face and is set within a large stone memorial, weathered and blackened with exhaust fumes. Each day commuters stream by on their way to and from their trains. To most it’s all but invisible amid the surrounding buildings, the signs and traffic lights, the rush of cars and buses. Bolted into the stone on one side of the monument is a bronze plaque that reads:
    ERECTED BY
    THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN
    FOOTBALL CLUB
    TO THE MEMORY OF
    THEIR PLAYERS AND MEMBERS
    WHO FELL IN THE GREAT WAR
    1914–1919
    Ross must have ridden past it dozens of times in the car without taking any notice. The afternoon he and Pat walked down to Haymarket they found the stone scrawled with spray paint. Scour marks showed where the council regularly cleaned off the graffiti.
    Pat had brought along an old pamphlet that said the monument had been erected in 1922, four years after the war ended. An estimated 40,000 people had crowded into Haymarket on the day it was dedicated, along with pipe bands and ministers and politicians. Sir George McCrae himself had been present on the platform along with some of the few remaining survivors of the original Hearts Battalion.
    Big Sandy Yule was there, having recovered from his wounds, as was Alfie Briggs who, like Jack, would never play football again. Among other former Hearts players present were Annan Ness and Jamie Low as well as Pat Crossan, who did make the return to Tynecastle. The “handsomest man in the world” started again as winger in the first home match of the 1919 peacetime season, defeating Queens Park. A few years later he would marry Alice Wattie after what he called “the longest engagement in Scottish history”. Alice’s brother and Pat’s best pal would not make theceremony. Harry Wattie died on the first day’s fighting at the Somme.
    Also present at the ceremony was Albert Ripley, who managed to survive the war despite being wounded twice and later gassed at Roeux. He and Jack Jordan