It started before my time.
The story went that in the Garling woods, after a short stop for a brew, tired and exhausted, Karlie the squad commander had left Jacks on sentry when they pulled out. They only realised an hour down the faint trail, and had to go back, cursing quietly trying to find the way. Luckily Jacks was still up his tree with only a small patrol of Charlies within hearing distance, crashing through the woods as they do.
When they formed up to pull out again Karlie - furious with worry, shame and especially with the ribbing he’d been getting – got them to quietly sound off their names. It became a habit, and a good one too, especially when caught in the organisational mess that any large scale military operation brings.
I joined after Jacks was shot off the roof at Bark Lee. When the section formed up on the road with the rest of the company, Karlie called the roll as usual and when it came to Jacks’ name they paused, then Harls who was next said his. And that kind of stuck; the gap was a reminder, a flashing moment of memory; not immortality but a kind of longer-life, a we-shall-not-forget.
When I arrived I took Jacks’ place as the long-eye, but no-one was going to have my name replace his in the call. I just tacked my name on the end.
It was a good squad, the guys relatively old, gathered in from all over, with a lot of quiet experience. They didn’t flash it about and so they got ordinary jobs for a recce squad, and losses were slow compared to others. It fitted me well; I’d seen a little action with the Annar Legion, enough to fit in and admire the competence.
Even so, Granton Fields hit us hard. Some squads were wiped out in the ‘withdrawal’ - or ‘fucking route’ as Harls put it. We lost Grumpy (he had a real name I guess, I never knew it) and Backer and Mills. After each engagement, rendevouz, brew break or re-armament station, the roll call came with its pauses, seemingly silent even when the fight thundered around us so loud that we had to scream our names out.
Then it was patchy for months; Heckel reached the end of his term and was pensioned off home, lucky bastard. Frender died from some stomach sickness that was doing the rounds. We all got it but he was caught short – in so many ways – too far from the medics to get help. He always seemed to get the lurgy poor sick bastard.
So there were more gaps in the roll call now, and while the replacements knew what it was all about, they didn’t know the missing names. Until New Tom – a young lad we all liked for his enthusiasm and dirty jokes – was knifed in a grim hand-to-hand running battle in the alleys and cellars of the poor quarter in Centerville.
It was in a minor skirmish near Craig Castle – I think it was in Woodly Wood or some other stupidly named local spot – when Karlie took it, through both lungs, just as we were driving Charlie off.
That got to us all: the guy had dithered, forgot things, couldn’t navigate, until we were in a fight, then he was fast, direct, clear, always seemed to know where everyone was, and he knew his tactics.
By then the roll call was habit, so when I took over on the way out we just naturally said it anyway. Odd though, ‘cos of course Karlie was never part of the list. I guess he just lived on in our saying it at all.
There were only three from the original roll left by then; Malcom and Old Tom (cos there’d been a New Tom see) and Asher, and the gaps in the call seemed long. We were beseiged at Carling for a year and that saw the end of them and others: Malcom and Asher and Pete and Grange wasted away from disease and starvation, Tarker and Matts from long range fire on the perimeter, and Old Tom on the last day from a lucky shot. Or unlucky really, for Old Tom.
When we left that smoking, festering ruin, the thought of a long silence at the start was too much, and I just told Micky, the first survivor in the roll call, to start. He looked at me puzzled, then hard, then grim, then said his name.
There were still plenty of gaps to remember people by.
