The Deep Dark Sleep

‘Long gone. Let me explain something. Back in the First War, I saw the main benefit of class and privilege. The main benefit is that there is always someone to do things for you. The lower classes. And in a war like the Great War, they do the dying for you. That was the biggest benefit: keeping you out of harm’s way. So, if I wasn’t the part, I could play the part.’

‘Your little excursions impersonating officers?’

‘It started as impersonation, but then I found that I sank into it rather too well. When I was caught, I became an embarrassment to the army. The act I put on was so convincing that I kept it going throughout the trial. It really threw them. A cockney or a scouser or someone with a heavy Glaswegian accent – it was easy to put someone like that in front of a firing squad, but if you talked like an officer, then it was a bad show to put you against a wall. They knew I was putting it on, but they couldn’t see past it, or hear past it. So when I was asked if I had anything to say before sentencing, I said that I did not want my family shamed by me being branded a coward … as if my family would give a tinker’s damn about me. I asked if, instead of facing a firing squad, I could be sent on dangerous missions over the wire. Missions where I would inevitably, eventually, die in action.’

‘And they agreed to that?’

‘As I said, they couldn’t see past the bearing and the accent. I told them I would rather die fighting for my country than shot as a coward, which I was not. It was the out they were looking for and I was assigned to Battlefield Intelligence. Basically, I was ordered to crawl all the way over to the enemy’s trenches and get as much information on their deployment as possible. So I did it. And they ended up giving me a medal for it.’

‘How did you survive?’

‘The first few times I did my duty and came back with accurate reports. They were used to direct our artillery on the best points in the enemy’s lines. It was after that first artillery barrage, where they not only missed the points in the enemy trenches I had pointed out, but they missed the trenches completely, that I decided there was no point in risking my life for nothing. They had been sending me out with another ex-deserter, but he stood on a landmine, so I was left to do the intelligence gathering on my own.

‘Command seemed to think that one man was half as likely to be spotted as two. So I would crawl out into the dark, halfway into no-man’s-land, find a deep enough shell crater and have a few hours’ sleep. Then, when I got back, I would give a made-up report. Made-up, but based on what I had really seen on the first few sorties. I just changed the positions, the numbers, shuffled around the regiments, that kind of thing.’

‘And no one suspected?’

‘Not for a long while, then a young intelligence corps captain started to question me about one of my reports. He said I couldn’t have seen the regimental markings that I reported seeing. Everyone else was convinced, but Williamson insisted he came with me on the next sortie. We went all the way over to the German lines, following the route I had taken when I’d really gone over. I guided him from cover to cover, and that convinced him that I really did make the trip each night. The problem was that he then insisted on coming on other sorties. The fool was going to get me killed. But it allowed me to become chummy with him, or as chummy as the chasm in rank and class would allow. I asked him all about his background, and he told me he was South African but had been sent to their version of public school. I did a bit more chat and got out of him that he had no close family left. He was about my age and size, and even looked rather like me, so I decided I’d kill him in no-man’s-land, take his papers and all his marks of rank.

‘I needed everybody to believe that Henry Williamson was still alive, in order for me to use his identity after the war, so I planned to tell command that he had been captured, not killed. I had it all planned out for the next time we went out into no-man’s-land at night, but we were halfway across when the Germans sent up a flare right above us and we were spotted. They opened fire and Williamson was hit in the legs.’

‘So the Germans did your job for you …’

‘No. Not at all. I needed Williamson alive, so I carried him back to our trenches. And that was it. Suddenly I’m not a deserter any more, I’m a hero. Instead of getting a chest full of firing-squad bullets, I get a chest full of medals. And Williamson …’ Strachan shook his head in disbelief. ‘Williamson became my bosom buddy.’

‘Williamson survived the war?’