Kipling's Choice (12 page)

Word about John diminishes, but the Kiplings grasp at any straw. Almost every day the Royal Navy's hospital ships bring the newly wounded from Belgium and France to the army hospitals in southern England. Some of those wounded are Irish Guards who fought in the Battle of Loos. On October 26, a month after the battle, Rudyard and Carrie are at the bedside of Private Troy in the Eastern General Hospital at Brighton. Troy clearly remembers that first attack on the Monday when Lieutenant Kipling was wounded. He recalls how they crept through Chalk Pit Wood and fell under enemy fire, which was coming from the direction of a house standing on the left and several mine buildings on the right. Carrie is sitting on the edge of her chair; Rudyard is diligently jotting down the account in a small notebook.

"It was a two-storied house," the private says. "And it was full of Germans."

"Was Lieutenant Kipling in the area?" Rudyard wants to know. "Did you see him?"

"Oh yes, and how! The lieutenant stormed the building, even though there were machine guns set up inside. And he fired his revolver into the windows. He must have killed a few Germans, sir, that's for sure!"

"Was he wounded?"

"I heard later that he was badly wounded in the neck."

"Who told you that?" Carrie asks in disbelief.

"Sorry, Mrs. Kipling, I don't remember. He was okay when I saw him attack the house. That was the last I saw of him. Your son was a brave officer, believe me. And so good to his men. He would regularly buy bread and tea for us, and even paper so that we could write home. Even though not all of us could write. But sometimes he wrote letters for us."

They are pleasing words for the parents, and Rudyard is especially satisfied because Troy's description is exactly the same as those of other witnesses. The places he describes tally perfectly with the detail map of the battlefield, too. But that injury to Johns neck is probably a fabrication, Rudyard thinks.

His hope is short-lived. In November the Red Cross sends the Kiplings a report from Sergeant Kinneally, Fourth Company, Second Battalion Irish Guards:

 

Then I came on Lieutenant Packenham-Law, who was dead, and then met Sergeant Cole, also of the Fourth Company. He said, "Poor Mr. Kipling is killed." Then I came on Mr. Kipling myself. He was lying on his face and his head was covered with blood. I am sure that he was then dead. This must have been about an hour after he was hit. At that moment we were being heavily shelled...

It would not have been possible for Lieutenant Kipling to have been taken prisoner. The whole Guards Division was between the Germans and the place where he lay, and we have held the ground ever since.

 

"This report can't be right," Carrie Kipling protests, and in the margin she writes, "Quite incorrect." But Sergeant Kinneally has more bad news:

 

I can easily explain why his body was not found and brought in. The ground where he lay was very heavily shelled by the big guns, and men lying there might be buried in a crater. It was impossible to bring in even all the wounded men, let alone the dead.

 

Another letter arrives a day later. It is from Sergeant Cochrane, who has sent Rudyard an extensive eyewitness account from the Red Cross Hospital in Springburn. He knew John well and fought alongside him on September 27. Cochrane was in the sixth platoon, situated next to the fifth platoon that John led, but in the confusion of the advance the two groups merged into one.

 

On Sunday 26 September we marched to Vermelles, our first stop at the front, near Loos. The day before we sloshed through the rain for ly hours and it was only late in the night that we found a place to sleep.
This time Captain Alexander and Captain Hubbard walked in front to scout out the trenches that we were to take over from our fellow soldiers, the First Scots Guards. There was much confusion when we arrived. Our officers had a long discussion with the Scots. Who was going to do what? It was eventually decided that we Irish Guards would occupy the trenches that had been captured from the Germans, which lay in a line between Le Rutoire and Lone Tree. Just before midnight we reached our positions, dead tired once again. Two or three hours later came the command to move 300 meters to the east. It was already growing light when we finally sat at our firing line. Our trench was close to the road that ran from Loos to Hulluch.

At about four o'clock we left our positions and slowly began to advance. My platoon was next to Lieutenant Kipling's, but our men got mixed together rather quickly and Lieutenant Kipling took charge of the two platoons. There was shooting exchanged with the enemy. He kept walking to and fro along our line. I politely advised him to lie down and share the protection of my sandbag, but he waved the advice
away with a laugh. Then a German machine gun began to plow into our area. I pulled Mr. Kipling down by his sleeve. It was just in time, for our sandbags were hit. He didn't appear frightened at all. "Quite warm here, isn't it, Sergeant!" he said, and he laughed. The order to attack came after that. Lieutenant Kipling led the charge and ran in front to the first buildings near the chalk pit. We could get closer to them by going through a gap in the wall that surrounded the grounds. We made our way through the piles of rubbish in the yard. He and I got very near to the window from where the machine gun was firing. The lieutenant sidled along the wall so that the Germans could not hit him without exposing themselves. He took his pistol and fired inside. Others in the meantime smashed the door in. We cleaned up the machine-gun nest. There were about 25 Germans in it. We killed them all.

I was hit by a bullet near the building, but I didn't even feel it in the heat of battle. When the mine buildings had been cleaned up, Mr. Kipling called out, "Come on, boys!" We rushed round the right of the house, where some of our other men were. We went
on immediately to the first German trench, which ran along a line about 30 meters behind the pit building. Then I was hit again. Later it appeared that I had been grazed by a lead ball from a fragmentation shell, a piece of shrapnel. I fell and the others went on, led and encouraged by Lieutenant Kipling. They dove into a wood behind the German trench. That was the last I saw of Mr. Kipling. Nor have I heard from any of our men what happened to him afterwards.

Our regiment and another division cleared out this wood the next day and found our dead. Since they did not find Lieutenant Kipling, it is possible that he was wounded and taken prisoner. Otherwise I would have expected his body to be found. As an officer he was rather conspicuous, with an officer's cap and a leather Sam Browne belt (our belts are made of cloth).

I lay therefor 24 hours, even during the German counterattack. Shelb were falling all around me. It's a miracle I survived. I was finally able to get back to my own lines by rolling myself along the ground. I was then taken to a dressing station near Hulluch.

***

Rudyard and Carrie draw additional strength from the letter. John was a brave, capable officer and a good human being, too. His soldiers respected him. And above all, once again there are some signs indicating that their son might still be alive.

***

The months crawl by. The war continues unabated, but in the Kipling home it stopped on September 27, 1915. Rudyard and his wife hear little more about their lost son. On the field there is not a trace of John to be seen. Carrie takes her mind off her troubles by making Red Cross packages, which are sent to the boys at the front. Elsie sews and mends clothes for the wounded, and sends gifts to them. She is the chauffeur for the family now and drives
Car-Uso,
her brothers Singer. And while of course Rudyard is still known as the famous writer, the Nobel Prize winner, his pen dries up. His thoughts become somber. He gets sick more often and constantly has stomach complaints. There are no more exciting adventures, there is no Puck or Mowgli. Rudyard waits impatiently for a sign of his son, his own Mowgli, dead or alive. And every day the question running through his head becomes clearer:
Why? Did he have to defend that war so strongly?
Who dies if England live?
What kind of a father sends his only son to his death? How many boys have I written into the grave,
he wonders.

On a dark day he seizes upon his doubt and bitterness and expresses them in two lines:

 

If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.

 

The Kiplings get a new lead every now and then. They continue to believe that John is a prisoner of war in a German camp. Through Lady Edward, they have contact with Margaret, Crown Princess of Sweden. Even though the princess has family ties to the German Kaiser, her efforts to find John are to no avail.

In 1917, two years after John's death, Rudyard arranges for an airplane to drop a load of fliers over the German lines. Written in German, these fliers ask for news about his son, for Rudyard still firmly believes that John has been wounded and the Germans are waiting for him to recover. The captured son of a world-famous father would be an invaluable figure to flaunt for propaganda purposes. But the fliers garner no response.

There is silence on the official side as well. Rudyard's powerful friends in government, at court, and in the army have other worries besides finding John Kipling, and they certainly have more dead. The toll is horrific; when the First World War ends on November 11, 1918, the British alone can count more than a million lost sons. The worldwide death count is twenty times that. John Kipling was just one small officer in the Great War.

RUDYARD KIPLING IS SITTING AT HIS DESK, DREAMING AWAY. THE OLD
writer's shaggy mustache covers up a sharp twist on his tense lips. His left hand rubs his aching stomach. He has acquired many nervous tics. Tired eyes look out the window at the mighty oaks on Donkey Hill and the little meadow in front of the house. Rudyard is thinking about John, his son. Who else?

Rudyard dozes off. Mowgli appears before him: the man-cub from
The Jungle Book,
that other child of his who grew up with wolves. Mowgli always reminds him of John.

 

KIPLING
. War is worse, Mowgli. Worse than the jungle.

MOWGLI
. Do you think so, Mr. Kipling?

KIPLING
. The front in France doesn't let go of its prey, Mowgli. The monster has an insatiable hunger.

MOWGLI
. Worse than Shere Khan, the tiger?

KIPLING
. And meaner than Tabaqui, that sly, sneaky jackal.

MOWGLI
. That's terrible, Mr. Kipling.

KIPLING
. Will
you
be my son, Mowgli?

MOWGLI
. But I'm the man-cub sir. The man-cub has no father or mother. And
you
are Rudyard Kipling, the world-famous writer!

KIPLING
. My son has disappeared in the jungle. My only son!

MOWGLI
. Isn't there any trace at all?

KIPLING
. Nothing.

MOWGLI
. Not a hair, not a bone?
(Silence.)
I'm very sorry, sir.

KIPLING
. Daddo, that's what he used to call me.

MOWGLI
. Daddo.
(Silence.)

KIPLING
. I sent you into the jungle, Mowgli. Just like that.

MOWGLI
. I was a young tenderfoot then, inexperienced and naive.

KIPLING
. But
you
survived, Mowgli. John didn't.

MOWGLI
. That's terrible, Mr. Kipling—Daddo.

KIPLING
. You survived without a father. Now I must survive without a son, my son.

AMONG THE MANY HONORS, AWARDS, AND NOBLE TITLES THAT WERE OFFERED
to him, Rudyard Kipling accepted only the academic or literary ones. Because of his widespread popularity, from a fairly young age he was regularly asked to join the boards of prestigious societies and foundations. He invariably declined these offers. Thus it is noteworthy that in 1917 he agreed to serve on the Imperial War Graves Commission, which was established by royal decree in that same year. Now known as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, it is still very active in 150 countries all over the world. There are 2,500 cemeteries and countless monuments dedicated to the hundreds of thousands of fallen soldiers from all the countries of the British Commonwealth. Kipling wanted to do something for John, his only son. And he undoubtedly took on this mission to make amends for all those many other lost sons. Rudyard Kipling was the official author of innumerable inscriptions. He furnished the texts that are carved on large and small war monuments. One of those texts is unique:

THEIR NAME LIVETH FOREVER MORE

We run across the text in every big British military cemetery all over the world. It is inscribed on the Stone of Remembrance, which looks a bit like an altar. As always, Kipling's thoughts were of John when he came up with this inscription. The inspiration was from an obscure Bible fragment in the Apocrypha (Ecclesiasticus, Jesus Sirach 44:9–14). Kipling used just the last line, but the lines preceding it totally reflect his bitterness over John's disappearance: