Fantassin
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Copyright jeanne_d_artois October 2020
[jeanne_d_artois is a nom de plume of oggbashan]
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
Most of the conversations are assumed to be in French
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"Je suis un fantassin."
Fantassin? I didn't know that word. Although I had a reasonable command of French, I had never met the word 'fantassin'. At first that puzzled me more than hearing a disembodied voice in my head.
The voice continued.
"Je suis un soldat, un fantassin, how you say? I am an infantryman?"
My violent but silent sobbing began to ease. I had been crying to myself in my small tent, wrapped tightly in my sleeping bag. I had been silent because I didn't want to disturb any others on the campsite near Dunkerque in Northern France.
Why was I crying? Because my long-planned holiday had turned sour at the end of the first day.
I thought it would be wonderful. I had taken delivery of my first brand-new car. I had a boyfriend of several weeks who had seemed perfect. I wanted to show him the parts of France that I loved. We had allocated two weeks of our holidays for a camping holiday, the only way we could afford to go, to tour the French coast from the Dunkerque campsite, the cheapest close to Calais, down to Normandy and back.
Early this morning everything had seemed great. We left on time for the long drive to Dover. The sun had shone as we navigated around London on the M25 motorway. The feared Dartford Crossing had been simple with no delays. We had even had time for a couple of hours walking around Dover Castle before booking in for the ferry crossing to Calais.
What had gone wrong? We pitched the tent, or rather I pitched the tent because Bob had never been camping before. He had helped in a clumsy sort of way that I had thought endearing. Surely by the end of the fortnight he would have learned how to pitch the tent, or at least how to help effectively?
We had had dinner on the ferry so I hadn't had to cook. That was deliberate because I had felt as tired as I had expected to be. I had worked late on Friday to leave no loose ends at work. I had driven several hundred miles to the ferry and negotiated the change to driving on the right without causing any French drivers to curse me. It would have helped if Bob had passed his driving test.
Actually, to be fair to Bob, it wouldn't. Even if he had passed his test last week I couldn't have afforded to add him as a named driver on my car insurance. As a new driver he would have been very expensive. As it was he had failed -- again. He hadn't admitted it but he had failed dismally because he had exceeded the thirty mile an hour speed limit while on the test. That had been the third time he had failed because of speeding. He was just too impatient.
Impatient Bob. Bob's impatience had caused my tears. I had expected to make love to Bob and to enjoy it during our holiday but not on the first night when I was so tired. We had argued about it and the argument had grown into an exchange of insults. I had been pushed too far and had even criticised his driving test failure. He stormed out of the tent, not a very dramatic exit because he had to crawl to the tent's door, unfasten it when he didn't know how, and grab his sports bag and exit backwards. He had said he was going to find a taxi and take the first ferry back to England.
I had thought he would soon reconsider. He couldn't speak a word of French. Surely he would be back? After an hour I accepted that Bob had really gone and crawled into my sleeping bag to cry. What would I do now? What sort of holiday could I have on my own? I seemed to have been crying for hours when I started to hear this male French voice trying to soothe me. It took some time before I began to understand the words of comfort and the feeling of a friendly presence.
I had asked who he was. His answer, "Je suis un fantassin," included the word 'fantassin' that I couldn't translate.
"What is your name?" I asked in my head, in French, wondering if I was slightly deranged.
"Raoul, Raoul Dupont," was the answer.
"Where are you, Raoul?"
"I'm dead. I'm a phantom fantassin," His answer seemed to have a wryly humorous tone.
"How can I hear you? Why can I hear you?"
"Perhaps because you are alone, sad and vulnerable. I don't know why you can hear me when no one else ever has. What is your name?"
"I'm Celia," I replied.
"Hello, Celia. Welcome to France."
"Thank you, Raoul. I don't feel welcome. I feel unhappy, alone, rejected and..."
"You're not alone. I'm here. Be calm and relax. I'll try to make you less sad. What would do that? Your friend Bob returning, contrite and apologetic?"
"No! I have had enough of Bob. Tonight was the last straw. I know that he is impatient but I thought he was considerate. He's not. He's gone and he can stay away. But now I'm in a foreign country, alone..."
"You've got me, Celia."
"But you are a ghost. What can you do for me?"
"This, perhaps..."
I had to stifle a scream as an invisible hand stroked my hair gently.
"Sorry, Celia. I didn't mean to startle you. I didn't think you would actually feel my touch."
"I did. Please warn me next time or I might wake the whole campsite by screaming."
"OK. We'll just talk for a while, if that's better. No one can hear us. You're the only one who can hear me. Your responses are in your head, not spoken aloud."
"But why can I hear you, Raoul?" I repeated.
"I don't know, Celia."
"If this isn't just a dream, I'd like to know more about you before you touch me again."
Should I have said that? It sounded as if I wanted Raoul to touch me.
"Where shall I start? Perhaps why I'm here, near Dunkerque? I died in 1940 defending the perimeter as the British Army and many of the French Army were picked up from the beaches. Someone had to hold off the Boches, and I was one of those. I didn't care. I think I wanted to die."
"Why? Why did you want to die?"
"I'd had a row with my girlfriend Martine just before my unit left for Belgium. Now I know that it was the sort of row that could have been forgotten if we had time but there was no time. France was in real trouble."
"What was she like?"
"Not like you. You're fair-haired even blonde, tall, slim..."
"I know what I look like..."
"Martine was dark haired, small. Her head would rest against my heart. She was rounded, not fat, but curvy if you know what I mean. If she had married me I think she might have become like a Rubens woman because she was such a good cook and liked to eat. But she never had the chance. She too died for France."
"She did?"
"Yes. After I'd been killed and France had been occupied she joined the Resistance. She was killed just after D-Day while returning from taking a message from her group to another. The Germans were very jumpy then. A bridge sentry didn't challenge her as he should have done. He just opened fire and killed her."
"And Martine's not with you?"
"Sadly, no. After I had died she had met and married another. I assume that she's with him."
"But why are you here? As a ghost? Shouldn't you have moved on?"
"Yes. I should have. But perhaps it is because I was angry and annoyed with myself."
"Why, Raoul?"
"I didn't need to die. I could have joined the others heading for the beaches. I was injured, shot in the leg with a bullet that had lost most of its force. But because of my argument with Martine I didn't think I had anything to live for. My injury looked worse than it was. I volunteered to stay behind, to cover my colleagues' retreat. They left me with a machine gun, our last belt for it, and they went."
"What happened?"
"I let the Boches get close and opened fire. I killed a dozen or so before one of them threw a grenade. I died instantly. But the Boches hadn't finished with me. They had called up some Stukas before the soldier with the grenade killed me. The Stukas' bombs buried my body deep but I was pleased that those bombs killed more Germans than I had. I suppose my hatred kept and keeps me here."
"Why are you still hating all these years later?"
"My grandfather died in the Franco-Prussian War. My father died when I was small, because of the wounds he got in the Battle for Verdun in the First World War. I wanted to keep the Germans out of France but I failed, and France failed. My hatred was increased by knowing that Martine had died too."
"Raoul, I can't understand how you knew about Martine?"
"I suppose it was because we had been so close. I knew when and how she died. Even before then I knew what she was doing, that she had married and was happy, as happy as she could be with Germans everywhere."
