Unexplainably, Albert refused to make the trip to Bristol. At the same time, Janie Moore fussed over Jack, making sure that he had a good last two days in England. The contrast between his father’s and Janie’s reactions had a profound impact on Jack, who soon came to regard Janie, Maureen, and Paddy as his real family—apart from Warren. Jack felt these were the people who cared about him most in the world.
After two wonderful days in Bristol, Jack found himself on a ship bound for France. He spent his first night in France in a huge tent, sleeping on a plank bed alongside a hundred fellow officers. Twelve days later, on his nineteenth birthday, November 29, 1917, Jack arrived at the battlefront in the trenches of France’s Somme Valley. Here for the first time he could see the German army, the common enemy of the Allied forces.
The soldiers in the battalion Jack was assigned to were a mixture of West Country farmers; professional men such as lawyers, accountants, and teachers; and university students like himself. Jack enjoyed the conversations he had with many of the men and noted the strange camaraderie that war produced among such a diverse group of people. He also enjoyed reading the literary books that the men swapped among themselves. Often the books were so worn from constantly being read that they were held together by pieces of string. None of the men seemed to mind what condition the books were in so long as they had something to read to take their minds off the deplorable conditions around them.
Jack found himself living in a muddy trench in a landscape that had been completely denuded of trees and any other vegetation by three years of constant shelling by each side. In front of the trench was a quagmire, a strip of land laced with razor wire and decaying bodies. On the other side of this strip of land, which was called “no-man’s-land,” were the German trenches. A constant barrage of artillery fire raged back and forth between the two sides, and the trenches were so close that you had to be careful not to inadvertently put your head up. The price for doing so was usually a bullet in the head from a German sharpshooter.
Jack watched as countless lives on both sides were lost trying to capture and hold some portion of no-man’s-land. Each time Jack led his men over the top of the trench to fight for a small piece of this forsaken strip of land, he never knew whether he would return. Bullets and artillery shells laced with shrapnel would rain down on them, killing and mutilating soldiers. Some of the mud holes in no-man’s-land were so deep that it was not uncommon during the fighting for a soldier to become trapped in mud up to his waist or chest.
Fortunately for Jack, each time he went over the top, he managed to return. The smell of rotting bodies filled the air as the men huddled together to eat what each man knew could well be his last meal. In this environment Jack tried to take his mind off things by not only reading books but also writing poems in a small notebook.
In late November, Jack learned that Warren had been made a captain, and soon after that Warren was training at a Mechanical Transport School in France. The Lewis brothers were both in France, and both were in mortal danger.
Despite the grimness of the trenches, humorous moments sometimes presented themselves. One such moment occurred when Jack and his men were on patrol away from the trenches. The men came upon a seemingly deserted and bombed-out farmhouse. Jack grew suspicious of the place and stopped to confer with Sergeant Ayers, upon whose judgment in military matters Jack, as a junior officer, had come to depend. The two men decided to proceed cautiously, with Jack and the rest of the men waiting in hiding while Sergeant Ayers took several men with him and moved in on the farmhouse from the back.
Jack heard the sergeant and his men crash through the back door of the farmhouse. Thirty young German soldiers immediately came tumbling out the front door of the house in a panic. The Germans, obviously terrified, threw down their rifles when they saw Jack. Cautiously Jack walked over to them while the rest of his men came out of hiding with their rifles at the ready. As he got closer to the soldiers, Jack could clearly see the terror in their eyes. He tried to talk to them in German, but in the excitement of the moment, all that came was stammer instead of German words. So Jack switched to French. At hearing his words in French, the German soldiers fell to their knees in surrender and begged him for mercy.
After a few minutes Jack was able to work out what was going on. It appeared that the rumor among the Germans was that French soldiers were taking no prisoners, choosing instead to kill their captives on the battlefield. When the Germans heard Jack’s French, they had feared the worst. Jack could see the relief in their eyes when they learned that he was English.
As the captured soldiers were marched away, Jack felt proud of himself. Sergeant Ayers then stepped forward and pointed out to Jack that in such situations in the future, it would be better if Jack drew his weapon!
Not long after capturing the German soldiers, Jack became one of the lucky ones, if anyone is lucky in war. He came down with a case of trench fever, a flulike illness spread by ticks, and had to spend three weeks in the hospital at Le Tréport. His time in the hospital was an island of calm in a seemingly endless sea of destruction. Jack spent hours reading books by G. K. Chesterton from the hospital library and writing letters to his friends and family. When he recovered from his illness, Jack returned to the frontlines refreshed and began writing more poems for his collection, which he had titled Spirits of Bondage.
By midwinter, Jack was astonished to realize that he had survived five months in the trenches, and he began to wonder how much longer his luck would last. On April 15, 1918, he thought the day that his luck ran out had arrived. Jack was in the trenches at Mount Bernenchon, near Lillers, France, as the Battle of Arras got under way. Jack was ordered to take his men “over the top” and attack the German line. The plan called for Allied artillery to pound the Germans with heavy shells. As Jack’s platoon moved forward, the artillery fire was to advance ahead of them, softening up the Germans’ lines.
Jack ordered his men to attach their bayonets to the end of their rifles in preparation for the battle. As they did so, the Allied artillery fire began right on schedule. Heavy, explosive shells impregnated with shrapnel to inflict maximum damage on the Germans began to stream above the trenches. Jack waited for several minutes for the shells to do their work, and then he gave the order. “Over the top, men,” he barked.
Jack, along with the rest of his platoon, clambered up one of the rickety wooden ladders that led out of the muddy trench. Once over the top, the men began advancing toward the German trenches. Sure enough, the artillery fire was doing its job, silencing most of the German machine guns.
Everything was going according to plan until Jack noticed that instead of staying ahead of them, the Allied artillery fire was getting dangerously close to the advancing men. And then to everyone’s horror, the shells began falling among the advancing British soldiers. All around soldiers were being blown to bits or torn apart by shrapnel from shells fired by their own side. As Jack looked frantically over at Sergeant Ayers, who was advancing beside him, he heard an ear-shattering boom and saw a bright flash, and then Jack’s world went blank and silent. Jack fell face first into the dirt.
Chapter 6
An Oxford Scholar
Jack regained consciousness, aware that his mouth was filled with dirt but lacking the energy to spit it out. Slowly he lifted his head and looked around. He was still on the battlefield, only now it felt to him like it was all a dream, like seeing something through foggy glasses. A bloodied, lifeless body, minus its legs, lay beside him. Jack wondered for a moment whether he still had his legs. He got his answer when he tried to get up. Although he did not have the strength to stand up, he did manage to make it onto all fours—he still had his legs and arms!
Jack began to crawl away from the sounds of screaming and moaning, away from the carnage, struggling over the mangled body parts of fellow soldiers and through muddy bomb craters. With each movement he could feel searing pain pulse through his body, as though a lightning bolt had hit him.
Jack had no idea how far he had crawled before he heard a shout. “Hey, lads, there’s a live one here.” Then a voice closer to him said, “Lie down, sonny, and we’ll roll you onto this stretcher.”
Relief surged through Jack’s body as he surrendered himself to the care of the stretcher bearers. Jack had done all he could to keep himself alive. Now his fate was in the hands of others.
Two days passed before Jack was conscious enough to comprehend what had happened to him. The story was basic—nothing heroic—unless taking “friendly fire” in a hellhole was heroic in its own right. Jack had been hit by shrapnel in three places: the back of his left hand, his chest, and his left thigh. Fortunately the shards of shrapnel had not lodged in any vital organs, and the doctors were confident that Jack would eventually make a full recovery. Going back into battle immediately was out of the question, however, and Jack began a long journey back to full health.
As he lay in a hospital bed in Étaples, France, Jack learned that Sergeant Ayers had died in the same blast that had injured him. And there was more bad news. Paddy Moore was missing in action. Jack propped himself up in bed and wrote to his father, explaining the new developments:
14 May 1918
I am doing exceedingly well, and can now lie on my right side (not of course on my left) which is a great treat after you have been on your back for a few weeks…. The wound under my arm is worse than a flesh wound, as the bit of metal which went in there is not in my chest…this however is nothing to worry about, as it is doing no harm…. I am told that I can carry it about for the rest of my life without any evil results…
My friend Mrs. Moore is in great trouble—Paddy has been missing for over a month, and is almost certainly dead. Of all my own particular set at Keble he has been the first to go, and it is pathetic to remember that he at least was always certain that he would come through.
Ten days after writing the letter, Jack was transferred from France to Endsleigh Palace Hospital in London. From there he wrote to his father once again, this time begging him to come and visit him in the hospital. But Albert stubbornly refused to break his daily routine to make the trip to England. It was a bitter blow to Jack, especially when he contrasted it with the loving attention Janie Moore was lavishing upon him. Paddy was still missing in action, and instead of feeling sorry for herself, Mrs. Moore spent her energy helping Jack get well.
During his stay in the hospital, Jack came to realize that his wounds were not only physical but also psychological. Every night he dreamed of death, of being buried alive in a trench or shot to pieces with shrapnel. Each dream became more vivid as he learned that more of his friends had been killed in the fighting. In September news came that Paddy Moore was in fact dead. Of the six friends Jack had made at Keble during basic training, he was now the only one still alive.
Jack continued his slow convalescence and was transferred to a hospital in Bristol, where he was close to the Moores. He now had a new and permanent responsibility—taking care of Mrs. Moore and Maureen. It was a task he took very seriously, and in many ways he viewed his obligations to them as more important than those to his own family.
While recuperating in the hospital, Jack edited the poems he had written in the trenches on the frontlines of battle, and he added other poems to the collection. When he was finished, he submitted the collection to a publisher in London. Word soon arrived back that the poems—Spirits of Bondage—were to be published in book form. Jack was about to become a published author. It was a thrilling time for him, and it blunted the agonies of war for a moment.
