“Date of birth?” said the man with three white stripes on his arm.
“Twentieth of January, 1899,” replied Charlie without hesitation, but his cheeks flushed as he delivered the words.
The recruiting sergeant looked up at him and winked. The letters and numbers were written on a buff form without comment. “Remove your cap, lad, and report to the medical officer.”
A nurse led Charlie through to a cubicle where an elderly man in a long white coat made him strip to the waist, cough, stick out his tongue and breathe heavily before prodding him all over with a cold rubber object. He then proceeded to stare into Charlie’s ears and eyes before going on to hit his kneecaps with a rubber stick. After taking his trousers and underpants off—
for the first time ever in front of someone who wasn’t a member of his family—he was told he had no transmittable diseases—whatever they were, thought Charlie.
He stared at himself in the mirror as they measured him. “Five feet nine and a quarter,” said the orderly.
And still growing, Charlie wanted to add, as he pushed a mop of dark hair out of his eyes.
“Teeth in good condition, eyes brown,” stated the elderly doctor. “Not much wrong with you,” he added. The old man made a series of ticks down the right-hand side of the buff form before telling Charlie to report back to the chap with the three white stripes.
Charlie found himself waiting in another queue before coming face to face with the sergeant again.
“Right, lad, sign up here and we’ll issue you with a travel warrant.”
Charlie scrawled his signature on the spot above where the sergeant’s finger rested. He couldn’t help noticing that the man didn’t have a thumb.
“The Honourable Artillery Company or Royal Fusiliers?” the sergeant asked.
“Royal Fusiliers,” said Charlie. “That was my old man’s regiment.”
“Royal Fusiliers it is then,” said the sergeant without a second thought, and put a tick in yet another box.
“When do I get my uniform?”
“Not until you get to Edinburgh, lad. Report to King’s Cross at zero eight hundred hours tomorrow morning. Next.”
Charlie returned to 112 Whitechapel Road to spend another sleepless night. His thoughts darted from Sal to Grace and then on to Kitty and how two of his sisters would survive in his absence. He also began thinking about Rebecca Salmon and their bargain, but in the end his thoughts always returned to his father’s grave on a foreign battlefield and the revenge he intended to inflict on any German who dared to cross his path. These sentiments remained with him until the morning light came shining through the windows.
Charlie put on his new suit, the one Mrs. Smelley had commented on, his best shirt, his father’s tie, a flat cap and his only pair of leather shoes. I’m meant to be fighting the Germans, not going to a wedding, he said out loud as he looked at himself in the cracked mirror above the washbasin. He had already written a note to Becky—with a little help from Father O’Malley—instructing her to sell the shop along with the two barrows if she possibly could and to hold on to his share of the money until he came back to Whitechapel. No one talked about Christmas any longer.
“And if you don’t return?” Father O’Malley had asked, head slightly bowed. “What’s to happen to your possessions then?”
“Divide anything that’s left over equally between my three sisters,” Charlie said.
Father O’Malley wrote out his former pupil’s instructions and for the second time in as many days Charlie signed his name to an official document.
After Charlie had finished dressing, he found Sal and Kitty waiting for him by the front door, but he refused to allow them to accompany him to the station, despite their tearful protest. Both his sisters kissed him—another first—and Kitty had to have her hand prised out of his before Charlie was able to pick up the brown paper parcel that contained all his worldly goods.
Alone, he walked to the market and entered the baker’s shop for the last time. The two assistants swore that nothing would have changed by the time he returned. He left the shop only to find another barrow boy, who looked about a year younger than himself, was already selling chestnuts from his pitch. He walked slowly through the market in the direction of King’s Cross, never once looking back.
He arrived at the Great Northern Station half an hour earlier than he had been instructed and immediately reported to the sergeant who had signed him up on the previous day. “Right, Trumper, get yourself a cup of char, then ’ang about on platform three.” Charlie couldn’t remember when he had last been given an order, let alone obeyed one. Certainly not since his grandfather’s death.
Platform three was already crowded with men in uniforms and civilian clothes, some chatting noisily, others standing silent and alone, each displaying his own particular sense of insecurity.
At eleven, three hours after they had been ordered to report, they were finally given instructions to board a train. Charlie grabbed a seat in the corner of an unlit carriage and stared out of the grimy window at a passing English countryside he had never seen before. A mouth organ was being played in the corridor, all the popular melodies of the day slightly out of tune. As they traveled through city stations, some he hadn’t even heard of—Peterborough, Grantham, Newark, York—crowds waved and cheered their heroes. In Durham the engine came to a halt to take on more coal and water. The recruiting sergeant told them all to disembark, stretch their legs and grab another cup of char, and added that if they were lucky they might even get something to eat.
Charlie walked along the platform munching a sticky bun to the sound of a military band playing “Land of Hope and Glory.” The war was everywhere. Once they were back on the train there was yet more waving of handkerchiefs from pin-hatted ladies who would remain spinsters for the rest of their lives.
The train chugged on northwards, farther and farther away from the enemy, until it finally came to a halt at Waverly Station in Edinburgh. As they stepped from the carriage, a captain, three NCOs and a thousand women were waiting on the platform to welcome them.
Charlie heard the words, “Carry on, Sergeant Major,” and a moment later a man who must have been six feet six inches in height, and whose beer-barrel chest was covered in medal ribbons took a pace forward.
“Let’s ’ave you in line then,” the giant shouted in an unintelligible accent. He quickly—but, Charlie was to learn later, by his own standards slowly—organized the men into ranks of three before reporting back to someone who Charlie assumed must have been an officer. He saluted the man. “All present and correct, sir,” he said, and the smartest-dressed man Charlie had ever seen in his life returned the salute. He appeared slight standing next to the sergeant major, although he must have been a shade over six feet himself. His uniform was immaculate but paraded no medals, and the creases on his trousers were so sharp that Charlie wondered if they had ever been worn before. The young officer held a short leather stick in a gloved hand and occasionally thumped the side of his leg with it, as if he thought he were on horseback. Charlie’s eyes settled on the officer’s Sam Browne belt and brown leather shoes. They shone so brightly they reminded him of Rebecca Salmon.