Kipling's Choice (11 page)

Colonel Butler is formal: when the news comes, everyone must be ready to proceed to the trenches within thirty minutes. The front is less than two hours away by foot. Each company must have two men posted to sound the alert. John finally heads to a farmer's barn and sinks down to the straw, exhausted. It is the middle of the night. He has a splitting headache. He wants to sleep, but he's much too tired.

***

Sleep, headache. Yes, I want to sleep, nothing more...

A lean young figure is lying in a ditch next to a woods by the village of Loos. It is Monday, September 27, 1915. The Bois Hugo is a sad, lonely place to die. His officers tunic is crumpled and covered with mud and lime. It looks like he has two different legs: there is a khaki-colored puttee on one calf and a gleaming red and brown one on the other. The blood-soaked cloth has become loosened, yet it binds the wounded flesh together. A round, dark bloodstain stands out against the sparse grass that surrounds his head. The ring is growing wider by the minute.

Let me sleep and never wake up again,
John Kipling prays silently.
This awful pain is keeping me awake. Someone is driving one nail after another into my head. God, it's horrible. A wild dog doesn't deserve to die in the jungle like this, not even Tabaqui, the Jackal. I'm being skinned alive here. Mum! Mummy, how long do I have to keep this up? Mowgli can't stand it anymore, Daddo. Akela, Father, Wise Gray Wolf, take me to the Peace Rock so that I can throw myself into the Wainganga River...

 

"Twenty-five
Fritzen!
"

John can picture the little stone building by the chalk pit during the first attack a few hours before.

"Good work, Sergeant Cochrane!"

"Dead Germans are good Germans, sir."

"You're wounded, Cochrane."

"That leg of yours looks worse than my shoulder, Lieutenant."

"I've done well, haven't I, Daddo?"

"Sorry, sir?"

"Has that machine-gun nest been put out of action, Sergeant?"

"It's been completely destroyed, sir."

"Do you know my father, Sergeant? This is the great Rudyard Kipling!"

"Hello, Sergeant. How do you do?"

"Excuse me, sir. What do you mean, Lieutenant?"

"I'm going to die, Daddo. Hold my hand tight. Are we going to scout out this building together? Daddo, I'm going to die."

"Come, come, my boy. Who dies if England live?"

"Tell me anyway, Daddo. Tell me I've done well!"

"Of course, boy."

"Daddo, I'm getting my second star soon."

"Aha, that's more like you, John. That's my boy!"

"And that's all there is to my whole life, Daddo? That's it?"

"Yes, boy. Giving your life means you'll live in eternity."

"Just one time in combat? No more than that?"

"
Pro patria, pro rege.
For king and country."

"
One
battle? For
that
you've groomed me and molded me since childhood, Daddo?"

"The king will be satisfied, John. God save the king!"

"Is this really all, Daddo?"

 

Suddenly two arms reach up from a ditch at the edge of a woods called the Bois Hugo. The thin hands grasp at the air. The arms stiffen now, then fold quietly and come to rest on the little officer's chest and he lies on his back like a fallen saint, with the palms together and fingers and thumbs pointing toward the sky. He is not breathing. His body is seized with a powerful spasm. His arms reach out one last time; it is the image of a diver getting ready for the plunge. John Kipling tumbles into space and disappears into the water of the Wainganga in a slow, graceful curve. A red ring is left behind on the Peace Rock, like a halo.

***

A long, chilling scream pierces the heavy silence behind the dark doors and thick walls of Bateman's. A jolt is passing through the Kiplings' centuries-old house in Burwash. Three separate doors open as the kitchen maid, gardener, and butler come bursting into the parlor with puzzled looks on their faces. Rudyard Kipling is slumped in an easy chair, grasping the armrests and weeping hysterically. He rants and raves like a man fighting with death. His glasses are on the floor. A telegram is crumpled up next to him. The servants stand there, bewildered. What are they to do? They shouldn't be witnessing this, certainly not in the presence of Bonar Law, the leader of the Conservative Party. After the king and the prime minister, Law is the most powerful man in England. Kipling roars and rages like a wounded tiger. His friend Bonar Law stands before him with his head bowed. The distraught maid puts her hands over her ears and runs out of the room.

A fourth door flies open. Carrie Kipling storms in.

"Darling!" she calls, looking around anxiously. Her husband becomes quiet all of a sudden. "It's John, isn't it? News about John?"

"Carrie, I am very sorry," Mr. Law mutters.

"Is he...?" She already knows the terrible answer; it is clear by the anguished look on her face.

"Missing. Not quite a week ago," the politician says with a sigh. "Last Monday, September 27, in a battle at Loos."

Rudyard Kipling is silent as he stares blankly at the ceiling. Carrie snatches the telegram from his chair.

"'Missing in action,'" she reads. "My God!" She maintains her composure. "Is there a chance, do you think that he...?"

Mr. Law shakes his head carefully. "We must hope and pray," he whispers hoarsely.

"John, my boy!" Rudyard's voice is as dry as parchment.

"Naturally the War Office informed us immediately," says Mr. Law in a soft, smooth voice, but the rigid, formal undertone of the statesman rings through. "I didn't want the postman to bring you—"

"Of course. Thank you. We appreciate your concern, Mr. Law."

 

Bateman's is quieter than usual. The Kiplings cling to a single word: "missing." They know all about the scenario with the dreaded telegram, however. Many of their acquaintances have received such messages during the past months. The entire home front lives in fear. Any unexpected knock on the door makes the blood run cold. Every British doorbell is a death knell. Each courier could be the bearer of bad news. Is he bringing word about your husband, your son, a brother, cousin, or friend? Families await the mail in terror.

The Kiplings know all these stories. Most of them end badly, too: Oscar Hornung, the Grenfell brothers, George Cecil and his friend, John Manners. The list is getting longer all the time, just like the daily list of the dead in the newspapers that everyone sifts through. But John? No, their boy doesn't belong in that group. It's impossible. Not yet.

Rudyard Kipling is like a beaten dog. He sits silently upstairs in his writing room, unable to concentrate on anything. He has just returned from France and is suffering from a bad cold. If only he had received this shattering news during his visit to the front! Perhaps he could have organized something. Now he locks himself away, talks to no one, and waits patiently. And he knows that Carrie is feeling the same way downstairs. And John's poor sister, Elsie, too. They are sick with doubt and grief.

Why doesn't Rudyard get his powerful friends involved? Can't he start searching for his son himself? No one would deny him a travel pass if he wanted to return to France right away. But no, not now. Is he afraid that more news about John is forthcoming?

His thick, bristly mustache hides clenched teeth. His left hand unconsciously rubs his aching stomach—a new tic. The lively, steel-blue eyes are now dull and sunken behind the ever-present glasses. The writer sits at his cluttered table. It is from this spot that he has treated the world to breathtaking adventures. Now he peers wearily through his thick lenses and stares out the window and across the quiet little street. Donkey Hill is an empty pasture. The animals are in the stable. The crown on the large oak tree is turning brown. The clock strikes the time in the hall.

Once again Rudyard Kipling lets his gaze fall on the sheet of paper under his fingers. It's the last letter from his son, which came the day before the fatal telegram. He has read John's words backwards and forwards, probably ten or twenty times.

 

We are very wet and tired. Finally we're lying in the straw. I can't sleep with this pounding headache. Too tired, I think. This is another very hurried line as we
start off tonight. Everyone knows the order: he ready to move at 30 minutes' notice. The frontline trenches are nine miles off from here so it won't be a very long march.

 

Rudyard Kipling tries to picture his only son: exhausted, wet, anxious about the trial by fire. What was going through his boys mind the night before he disappeared?

 

This is THE great effort to break through and end the war. We have to push through at all costs. We'll be in the trenches and therefore will have little time for writing. Funny to think one will be in the thick of it tomorrow. This is a fantastic adventure! But what a responsibility, too. They are staking a tremendous lot on this great advancing movement as if it succeeds the war won't go on for long. You have no idea what enormous issues depend on the next few days.

 

Rudyard analyzes the sheet of paper, word by word; it is as though he wants to hear a voice, feel a breath.

 

This will be my last letter most likely for some time as
we won't get any time for writing this next week.
Well, so long old dears.
Dear love,
John

***

Three days pass without further news. It is October 5, 1915, and the helpless feeling from just waiting around is becoming unbearable. Rudyard and Carrie set out in their Rolls-Royce for the Irish Guards' headquarters in London. There they meet with Viscount de Vesci, a senior officer. In spite of his excellent connections, the viscount knows even less about John's disappearance than the Kiplings do. Rudyard and Carrie are disillusioned, but the wheels have been set in motion; instead of waiting around like frightened rabbits, they will undertake the investigation themselves. And those who have important friends—as the Kiplings do—can open doors.

On this same day they visit Max Aitken in Leatherhead, where they spent Christmas night with John. Sir Max is just back from France and was informed that the young Kipling had been wounded and left behind in or near a little building that was surrounded by Germans a few minutes later. There are no further details. John's commander, Colonel Butler, added that Lieutenant Kipling was wounded on an open field where he lay with his men. Only nine of them returned.

 

The next day all the papers report the news. Anything about Kipling is news.

 

Mr. John Kipling was the hoy for whom his famous father wrote the
Just So Stories,
the child for whom Puck told so many immortal stories from the beloved land.

 

Rudyard and Carrie don't mention it, but they also read the words "Missing, believed killed." At least the telegram left a glimmer of hope with "Missing in action." Their hearts bleed as they read the article by the journalist Gwynne, Rudyard's good friend:

 

The Kiplings are paying the highest price: their only son. Yet they could have avoided this sad fate in view of their boy's young age and frail health. In spite of
everything, John wanted to do his part in the war. The whole British Empire sympathizes with Mr. and Mrs. Kipling.

 

It's not exactly a comforting thought for Rudyard, who did everything he could to send a Kipling to the front.

 

The small post office in Burwash is flooded with letters. Sympathy cards flow into Bateman's by the thousand. Many letters arrive from acquaintances in the highest circles, even from the former president Theodore Roosevelt, who will also lose a son in the war some time later. Sir John French, field marshall in the British Expeditionary Force, sends a telegram:

 

THE TERRAIN WHERE JOHN DISAPPEARED HAS BEEN RECAPTURED. PERHAPS WE'LL FIND A TRACE.

 

At the time he receives the telegram, Rudyard learns that Lieutenant Rupert Grayson, John's best friend at the front, was also wounded on September 27, the day in question. In the same attack, too. Grayson is back in England. Rudyard and Carrie Kipling leave immediately for the hospital to speak with the young man, even though they are aware that he won't be able to tell them very much. Rupert is recovering from a concussion and some minor wounds he received after being blown into the air by a shell. He can only remember a few small things, including the excitement on the night before the attack. John's parents are warmed by the thought that Rupert was with John in his last hours. And Rupert has a tip for them, too. Edward, Prince of Wales, is a member of the staff of Lord Cavan, commander of the Guards Division. The prince is a popular figure who can move freely at the front. Rupert sends him a telegram and asks if he can find out more about Lieutenant Kipling.

The prince sends his personal answer a few days later. He went to the scene, did all he could, but has come to the same conclusion as Captain Bird. And Prince Edward feels terrible that he can't do more for the Kipling family.

Rudyard and Carrie know who Captain Bird is. On September 26 and 27, he conveyed the order to attack to the Johns Second Company. On October 11, two weeks after Johns disappearance, the Kiplings receive the classic letter that is sent to all parents or spouses of a fallen soldier. But Bird's letter goes beyond the call of duty; he writes that John was leading a platoon in the direction of Pit 14. A red brick building was standing there. They lay under heavy machine-gun fire. Two of Bird's men noticed that John was limping and then fell near the building. They say someone ran toward him to help. Perhaps it was his orderly, a personal aide that is assigned to each officer. Later this orderly appeared to be missing, as well. Captain Bird hopes that Lieutenant Kipling is alive and a prisoner of war.