A New World Begins

At the eleventh hour…

*Ping*

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Craig: Hi Nat, how are things over there?

Nathan: Pretty good, Boots, pretty good…

Craig: Putting me on the big screen, Nat? Are the guys there?

Nathan: No, not today Boots. I’m keeping you to myself. The guys are all at lunch still, I came back over to the dorm early via the admin office to sort something out for them. We’ve had a few problems trying to organise their trip to Travis’s for Thanksgiving.

Craig: What’s the problem? Did it turn out they really do need visas and passport stamps and stuff like that from Chief Sitting Bull after all?

Nathan: No, not quite, but nearly as difficult to fix. Travelling in the days leading up to Thanksgiving is always a problem. The ticket prices go up of course, but that’s not really the issue. As the guys are all under eighteen that limits the amount of travel options open to them. They either need an adult with them, or they have to travel as unaccompanied minors with staff to look after them. That ruled out Greyhound Bus and Amtrac, neither of which was ideal in any case - no direct routes and journeys that were over a day long too. The airlines limit the number of unaccompanied minors on any given flight, and we couldn’t book them all on to the same flights, in fact for one leg they would all have to have been on different aircraft, with different airlines, hours apart.

Craig: I can imagine the chaos that might cause, all four of them loose in the world if they gave their handlers the slip…

Nathan:  Anyway, I think we’ve fixed it now. I’m just confirming with Will’s parents that they are okay with the solution before I tell the guys the good news at tea tonight. So far only Travis knows of it.

Craig: What’s the solution? Stick a stamp on their foreheads and dump them in the post?

Nathan: I hadn’t thought of that one…

Craig: Maybe you should tell Kyle to add an extra lock to his Bronco in case Travis decides to change the age on his driver permit and borrow the truck to get the guys to his home.

Nathan:  I reckon Kyle’s probably got that sorted already…

Craig:  What is the solution anyway?

Nathan: Travis’s folks have offered to fly them there in their own aircraft. Apparently, they have a small plane, something called a Pilatus, that belongs to their company. It’s usually used for aerial survey of farms and flying urgent cargo between some of their plants, but it can be reconfigured with seats too. I remember Travis saying they use it to go on their ski holidays, flying down to their winter place in Aspen. Anyway, it’s scheduled to be in some maintenance facility down in Florida undergoing an upgrade just before Thanksgiving so Travis’s dad has fixed it so that it returns via Pittsburgh and the guys get to ride it home.

Craig: Wow! Their own private jet!

Nathan:  Sure sounds like it. I’m wishing I was going with them, but then if I wasn’t needed at home to be put on public display I’d have been able to drive them to Dakota anyway.

Craig: They wouldn’t all fit in Lemon Steroids, Nat! You’d have had to tie two of them to the roof…

Nathan: 😊 I think we might have hired something bigger, Boots.

Craig: Tell the guys that if they can see a green glow over on the horizon tonight it’s just me being envious.

Nathan: Sure thing. 😊

Nathan: How’s your screeching coming along, Boots?

Craig: I’m getting there. The Last Post and Reveille aren’t that difficult, technically, and I’m starting to get the right sounds out of the bugle now. Well, some of the time. I’ve not been bothering with the drum. I don’t need it for the Remembrance Parade so I’ve kicked it into touch and concentrated on the bugle. Even mum’s admitted I’m getting better, but maybe that’s her cunning plan to try and get me to reduce how much practice I do.

Nathan: You should take up the trumpet, Boots. It’s easier. You have valves and keys to sort the notes out for you. I used to play trumpet before I took up the cello.

Craig: Bugles are traditional, Nat. All armies use them. They were invented for giving orders and commands, not playing bloody symphonies. They can be heard over the battlefield, so were ace before radios were invented.

Nathan: They have another advantage too, Boots. You’ll get awesome with your mouth technique… 😉

Craig: Nat! Be serious…

Nathan: I am, Boots. I can’t wait to test out your embouchure. In fact, I can imagine you right now, in your smart uniform, standing to attention, licking your lips…😊

* * *

“Mum, careful with that drum, don’t scratch it!”

“I don’t see why we need to take the drum, Craig. If you’re not using it, why take it to school with you?”

“Mom, I’m a Drummer / Bugler. It’s part of my kit. I have to have it. Just put it on the back seat, carefully. Put a seatbelt round it. Mandy, watch the uniform, don’t crease it. Just hang it carefully in the back.”

“Craig, what on earth have you got in those towels? Why are you putting them on the back seat? There isn’t space for us all if you put them there.”

“Those are my boots, Mandy. I spent ages polishing them. That’s why they are wrapped in towels. They can’t get scuffed.”

Mandy and my mum exchanged glances. “If you think he’s fussy, Mandy, you should hear what his dad was like when he was serving as an equerry…”

* * *

I was excused geography so I could go and get changed out of my school uniform and into cadet uniform before the Armistice Day service began. Geography was all about the Gobi Desert so I didn’t miss much anyway. I could just have handed in a sheet of sandpaper for my homework and it would have been okay as both a map and a description of the place. Mrs Collins probably wouldn’t have got the joke though. She wasn’t really sure what to make of my dad last Parents’ Evening when she was describing Mesopotamia as the cradle of civilisation and dad said he didn’t think it was very civilised of the Mesopotamuses to chuck petrol bombs at his Land Rover.

There’s a definite split in the school. A fair few of the kids here are from the barracks and we kind of have a different view about today from the town kids. The town kids will be thinking about Hitler and the Somme and Spitfires when we have the two-minute silence. It’s just history to them. It’s going to be a lot harder for the kids from the patch. Mikey in the class above me for example. A gang of us were playing football on the green just down the road from his quarters a couple of years ago - Mikey was in goal - when a car pulled up and the Adjutant and the Padre got out. We knew what it meant as they walked up his garden path and knocked on the door. Saw the numb look on his mum’s face when she opened the door. Mikey just stood there. We all did. Nobody knew what to say. We were all thinking the same thing though. Thank fuck it’s not my house they’ve gone to.

* * *

“Are you ready, Craig? The hall is just about full. The headmaster is coming down the corridor now. We’ll walk in behind him then when he gets to the stage and goes to the lectern, you move over to the left and I’ll go over to the right.”

“Of course I’m bloody ready, Mandy. And I’m going to beat a quiet tattoo as we march in. Well, as I march in. I expect the head will just saunter down the aisle as usual. So long as he keeps his hands out of his pockets. Keep an eye on Danny down in the front row. He’s got the stop-watch. He’ll signal to you ten seconds before you need to finish singing and shut up, then give me the signal exactly one minute forty seconds before eleven. That’s when I start playing, Mandy, even if you haven’t finished. I stop dead on eleven for the two minutes of silence, then I sound Reveille.”

“Okay, General Wright.”

“I’m a Lance Corporal, Mandy. Not a general.”

“Relax brat, I’m just joking…”

“Good morning, Amanda, and, err, Craig. You’re both looking very smart. Excellent idea to have a live trumpeter for the service, Amanda. I can’t imagine why I didn’t think of it before!”

Live trumpeter? Trumpeter? We’ll have a bloody dead headmaster in a minute if he doesn’t get a move on.

“Come on, Sir, time to go. Head up, chin up. Walk proud…”

I stepped forward, starting a slow, quiet beat on the side drum. He has to go in now or get trampled. I’m not stopping for anybody. That actually sounds pretty neat, my boots crunching on the parquet floor in time to the drum. Bugger the scuff marks, they’ll buff out. The caretaker’s got one of those polishing machine things to push up and down the floor. It’ll give him something to do tonight before he locks up and goes down the pub.. Mandy’s smirking. Just as we climbed the last step and began to head to our positions on opposite sides of the stage she looked at me and smiled again.

“Spit boy, spit!” she said quietly.

Bloody hell! Mandy knows the quote from Zulu!!!

She can actually sing too. Not that I’m going to tell her that, I don’t want it to go to her head obviously. The important thing is that she shuts up on time. What with the headmaster babbling on for way too long, then the pianist taking ‘Abide with me’ at a snail’s pace so the chorus almost fell asleep before the end, we’re getting squeezed for time. At least Mandy had the sense to sing solo and not with the piano accompaniment, so she can set her own pace. She might just pull back the few seconds we need to make this perfect.

“I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
The love that asks no questions, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.”

She’s done it. Right on cue. Didn’t even need to rush the last notes when Danny waved the ten second countdown. Now all I have to do is my bit. I wish Nat could see me now. Foxy boy as Mandy calls him. What was he saying about my embouchure? About licking my lips? And he wasn’t meaning about bugling either! Come on, Craig, get a grip on yourself. Don’t burst out giggling like Shane would.

Now what’s the headmaster doing? Why’s he walking over to the lectern? He hasn’t got time to say anything. Not on my bloody watch he hasn’t! Danny’s just given me the three second signal.

Two.

One.

Snap that bugle up, take a breath.

Blow…

* * *

It had really been Noah’s suggestion, though all the guys in the dorm would later claim it as their own idea. The time difference between the England and Pittsburgh meant that when it was eleven o’clock for Craig, it was six o’clock in the dorm. Six ante meridiem EST was reveille: the time they would usually tumble out of bed, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and head off to the washroom. Today was different. Everyone was out of bed a few minutes before six and, wrapped in dressing gowns against the lingering chill of the night, quickly clustered around the admin area. Will busied himself connecting his internet radio to the BBC World Service and then nodded with satisfaction as the announcer’s voice suddenly broke through the mush of static and spoke clearly.

“We now link to the Cenotaph in London and invite the Commonwealth to join us in a two minute silence at this, the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, to remember those who gave their lives that we may be free.” Somewhere in the distance, carried around the world by radio and the internet, a field gun of The King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery, fired a solitary shot as Big Ben chimed the hour.

Kyle spoke quietly. “Room, ‘shun.”

The guys in the dorm stepped smartly to attention and stood silently, each thinking their own thoughts. There would be a short Veterans Day service later of course - classes ended at lunch time for it - and then in the afternoon cadets were free to go into town, in uniform, for the Veterans Day Parade there. However, this was more personal. They weren’t just thinking of the Veterans. They were showing solidarity with Boots. Wishing him well, standing by his side as he stepped forward to signal the two-minute silence at his own school. They owed him that.

* * *