British Booksellers by Kristy Cambron

Author:Kristy Cambron [Cambron, Kristy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

15 September 1914

County Northumberland

Newcastle upon Tyne, England

Men, mustaches, and marching drills.

It was the view for the last weeks Amos had spent at the Army Riding School. That, and the cricket pitch with endless rows of horse lines set to join the cavalry unit of the British Army’s 7th Infantry Division.

Amos still couldn’t get used to it, the required mustache for the mounted brigade scratching his lip every time he tried to blow in his palms and warm bitter-cold hands in the early mornings. And though he expected water and clean razors were scarce at the front, he also knew the military ban on shaving might not be the blessed convenience the soldiers seemed to think. A mustache didn’t give a tight seal to a gas mask. And while a soldier couldn’t question orders from the big brass, it rankled Amos’s insides not being able to think for himself as he always had.

Swift and clinical, that was the moving-through process of recruitment he and Tate had undertaken to turn from farmers’ stock into soldiers. It took them from a stacked queue at the recruitment depot to passing the basic medicals, reciting the solemn oath to defend the king’s country, and then joining a unit that parted them at a train platform. Tate had gone on to a camp outside London—Aldershot, his letter said—with an infantry division soon to see action alongside the British Expeditionary Force.

Amos, a farmer’s son from County Warwickshire, oughtn’t to have found himself among the distinguished Yorkshire Mounted Brigade. But the experience he had with horseflesh, the ability to care for the animals with a cool head, and the knowledge he’d retained from his reading habit over the years meant he could have rivaled a veterinary surgeon. And that made Amos useful with the first units of the Northumberland Hussars’ infantry.

Mere weeks later, he’d been promoted to the new quartermaster sergeant farrier, and no longer recognized the man in the mirror, mustache and all.

That was how he spent his days. Teaching soldiers to ride. Learning the basics of marksmanship and hand-to-hand combat they’d use against the Boche. Reading Dickens and Sir Walter Scott in his bunk—or any books he could find—while the rest of his unit spent their free time on the town. And digging so many ditches that it seemed the whole of England was poised to move belowground.

The nights were longer. Amos lay awake in the barracks most hours, listening to the sounds of an army sleeping around him. Daring not to explore in his mind what might have been with Charlotte. And trying not to think too much on whether there would ever be a tomorrow shared in order to set things right.

“Sergeant Darby?”

A soldier trampled into view, snapping Amos back to the pitch. James, the stable master’s son from a Yorkshire manor on his first adventure away from home, skirted up the back of the line of horses. Like a fool.

“There you are.”

“You want to be a basket case before we even get to the fighting? I told you—always come round the front.

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