The hardest thing to cope with has to be the changes to reality! They do not affect anyone else here because they remain entirely unaware that there have been any changes. The first with which I had an extreme problem was our Great-War Memorial. One day we didn’t have one. The next we did. This had been a very strange oversight. Usually, any new addition to perceived reality arrives with an historical accretion so that, in effect, it has always existed.
Veterans Day my first year here was marked with a parade down Main Street and speeches from a temporary platform at the fountain. It was a day for memories. We have a very active veteran’s organisation. Men who can describe exactly the shock of a small-town or farm boy’s first coming under military discipline. The slog of the initial training that sort to turn them into mindless automatoms programmed to follow orders. They know France from being there yet they could not have been there. They know the trenches, the mud, the unimaginable noise, the rats, the stink, trench feet, the waiting for the signal to go over, the dread and the resignation. They proudly remember being reviewed by General Pershing. Some of them, our battery men, have been deafened. I admit that I was intrigued at my first meeting them and still am.
Frequently, a half pint of brandy or whisky, the real stuff not bootleg, turns up in a parcel of parts that I have ordered. I have not ordered it. I have never been charged for it. Somebody somewhere likes me or wants to keep me quiet. That I might have a good drop on hand is the sort of thing that gets around and that is probably why a number of veterans in ones and twos just happened to drop into the shop that day with one excuse or another as they do now every year. I wasn’t officially open. I was taking the opportunity to work on the new transmitter that I was building for the crew upstairs. The door was on the latch and this is Crothall. You just tap and, if a door opens, you walk in.
That was my chance.
“Tell me something. How did you guys get out of here and back in again?” I asked this of several of my visitors and they didn’t seem to hear the question which means, in effect, that I had never asked it.
“And show me our cripples. Everyone knows that the war caused tens of thousands of really horrific injuries. So where are ours?” They heard that.
“We’re Crothall boys. We were just lucky thank God.” In every case their answer was along those same lines and they obviously believed it. But me, I couldn’t just let go.
“Okay then. Tell me this. A lot of Crothell boys lost their lives over there, didn’t they? Can you name me even one of them? And how come we have no memorial for them?” Again, the ears were remotely turned off.
Although I cannot believe that anyone from Crothall has actually been over there, and I’m glad they were not, I do think, though, that if they had been there they would have given as good account of themselves as those American boys who did go and would have done our country proud.
The next morning, I saw it at a distance as soon as I turn into Main Street. Our War Memorial! Shock quickened my heart and my feet. I had to touch it to confirm it’s solid existence. I have passed it hundreds of times since and still occasionally have to touch it.
I knew what I would find. The memorial claims to have been erected in late 1919 ‘In Memory Of Those From Crothall And Surrounding Districts Who Paid The Supreme Sacrifice.’ It remembered sons from most of the more common families here, the Walters, the Gibbs, the Hobbs, the Caldwells, and quite a few others. There was a Private Harold Berry. One assumes one of Frank and Wendal’s relatives. People could now remember being present for the laying of the foundation, remember the ceremony, remember the later blessing when the structure was completed. People can now also remember the men named.
“He was a lovely chap. Hated the war. Died right beside me. Bullet in his forehead. And we were due to go out of the line the very next day.” It was more than memory it had become fact. These men had been given existence and every memory would dovetail.
The granite looked exactly as it should with ten years weathering. There were the expected bird droppings, patches of blue-grey lichen. The temporary stage had not been removed yet but was erected in front of the memorial as it had been for yesterday’s ceremony and had been for the past ten year’s.
I thought that that was really something but now I am not so sure. As a bachelor I spend a lot of time in the diner and Maisie who is usually on of an evening shares a past with me. We started in the same year at Bell’s Crossing School. One room, Miss Potter, and a bamboo stick. Heaven help you if you were day dreaming. Bam!! On the back of your hand. Frank and Wendal were a class and two classes respectively ahead of us. If business is slack, Maisie will lean on the counter to reminisce. Tonight she reminded me of the crush I had on Rachel Berry at age ten. Kidded me about it. And strangely, I vaguely remembered it although at the same time knowing that Frank and Wendal had no sister. Then!
“And when are you going to do the decent thing?” At times I have the impression that Maisie thinks she’s my Mom.
“Decent thing?” I was confused.
“Marry her, ya idiot. You’ve kept her waiting long enough.”