Fall of Giants

The Catholic priest recited Psalm 129, “De Profundis,” in Latin. He shouted as loud as he could, but those at the edge of the crowd could hardly hear. The Anglican rector read the Collect Order for the Burial of the Dead from the Book of Common Prayer. Dilys Jones, a young Methodist, sang “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” a hymn written by Charles Wesley. The Baptist pastor read I Corinthians 15 from verse 20 to the end.

One preacher had to represent the independent groups, and the choice had fallen on Da.

He began by reading a single verse from Romans 8: “If the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” Da had a big voice that carried strongly all across the park.

Ethel was proud of him. This honor acknowledged his status as one of the principal men of the town, a spiritual and political leader. He looked smart, too: Mam had bought him a new black tie, silk, from the Gwyn Evans department store in Merthyr.

He spoke about resurrection and the afterlife, and Ethel’s attention drifted: she had heard it all before. She assumed there was life after death, but she was not sure, and anyway she would find out soon enough.

A stirring in the crowd alerted her that Da might have diverted from the usual themes. She heard him say: “When this country decided to go to war, I hope that every member of Parliament searched his conscience, sincerely and prayerfully, and sought the Lord’s guidance. But who put those men in Parliament?”

He’s going to get political, Ethel thought. Good for you, Da. That will take the smug look off the rector’s face.

“Every man in this country is liable, in principle, for military service. But not every man is allowed a part in the decision to go to war.”

There were shouts of agreement from the crowd.

“The rules of the franchise exclude more than half the men in this country!”

Ethel said loudly: “And all the women!”

Mam said: “Hush, now! It’s your da that’s preaching, not you.”

“More than two hundred Aberowen men were killed on the first day of July, there on the banks of the Somme River. I have been told that the total of British casualties is over fifty thousand!”

There was a gasp of horror from the crowd. Not many people knew that figure. Da had got it from Ethel. Maud had been told by her friends in the War Office.

“Fifty thousand casualties, of which twenty thousand are dead,” Da went on. “And the battle goes on. Day after day, more young men are being massacred.” There were sounds of dissent from the crowd, but they were mostly drowned out by the shouts of agreement. Da held up his hand for quiet. “I do not say who is to blame. I say only this. Such slaughter cannot be right when men have been denied a part in the decision to go to war.”

The rector stepped forward, trying to interrupt Da, and Perceval Jones tried unsuccessfully to climb up onto the platform.

But Da was almost done. “If ever we are asked again to go to war, it shall not be done without the consent of all the people.”

“Women as well as men!” Ethel cried, but her voice was lost in the cheers of support from the miners.

Several men were now standing in front of Da, remonstrating with him, but his voice rang out over the commotion. “Never again will we wage war on the say-so of a minority!” he roared. “Never! Never! Never!”

He sat down, and the cheering was like thunder.

CHAPTER NINETEEN – July to October 1916

Kovel was a railway junction in the part of Russia that had once been in Poland, near the old border with Austria Hungary. The Russian army assembled twenty miles east of the city, on the banks of the river Stokhod. The entire area was a swamp, hundreds of square miles of bog interlaced with footpaths. Grigori found a patch of drier ground and ordered his platoon to make camp. They had no tents: Major Azov had sold them all three months ago to a dressmaking factory in Pinsk. He said the men did not need tents in the summer, and by winter they would all be dead.

By some miracle, Grigori was still alive. He was a sergeant and his friend Isaak a corporal. Those few left of the 1914 intake were now mostly NCOs, noncommissioned officers. Grigori’s battalion had been decimated, transferred, reinforced, and decimated again. They had been sent everywhere but home.

Grigori had killed many men in the last two years, with rifle, bayonet, or hand grenade, most of them close enough for him to see them die. Some of his comrades had nightmares about it, particularly the better-educated ones, but not Grigori. He had been born into the brutality of a peasant village and had survived as an orphan on the streets of St. Petersburg: violence did not give him bad dreams.

What had shocked him was the stupidity, callousness, and corruption of the officers. Living and fighting alongside the ruling class had made him a revolutionary.