Captain Lawton Carrington

A Short Story of World War I

Subscriber: I’m going to move on now to share my writing about the First World War. This is my favorite chapter, my favorite piece of writing, in my 2022 novel Renaissance Radio. You need not know anything else about the novel, as this works as a stand-alone short story. One of my main characters, Francis, shares this story on a national radio broadcast in 1928:

In Fall 1915, the British Army builds a casualty clearing station and an officers’ headquarters right next to our company’s veterinary facility.  It isn’t long before a captain a couple years older than me, in his mid-twenties, begins showing up for meetings at the headquarters and for visits of his soldiers at the casualty center.  Each time, he comes by to survey my animals and my work. 

“Hullo,” he says the first time he ambles over, jutting out his hand for a shake, “Lawton Carrington.”

“Good to meet you, Captain Carrington,” I reply, shaking his hand.  “Francis Calderon.  With the Guyton and Harrington Company.”

“A veterinary facility,” Lawton observes.  “I love animals.  Including mules.  I think this is smashing.  By the way, I’ve just come over here after listening to a lecture on sand-bags.  You know, it wasn’t bad.”

I grin.  “And how are things at the Front?” I ask.

“Cushy, mate, just cushy.”

Think of your most fair-haired, friendly, and enthusiastic friend from school, add a British accent, and you’ve got Lawton Carrington.  Lawton loves life.  He loves work, soldiering, and song, and he loves tobacco and rum.  He’s so “keen”, as the Brits say – so unpretentiously enthusiastic about life – that you sometimes forget he’s an Army field captain who commands 250 men.

You can usually hear Lawton on his way over, long before he arrives.  He’ll be exclaiming to whomever he runs into something like “jolly good, chap!” or “what’s the news from home, mate?” or “right you are, chum!” or “see any good shows while you were on leave, soldier?”

“Ah, Francisco, my good man!” he exclaims each time he arrives at the corrals, and I accept his nickname for me.  He pulls out his tobacco pipe, fills it, lifts his mug, and says, “just a tot of rum to warm me up.  Say, mate, can you oblige me with a match?”  I do so.

Lawton is one of those people who’s always radiant, always aglow, always jibing and laughing and making the most interesting observations.  “Do you know any Welshmen, Francisco?”  I nod, thinking of Riis Evans and his sister Gwendolyn and other Welsh-Americans in my life.  “I tell you,” Lawton continues, “when they are within your command, don’t ever yell at them.  They’ll do anything if you explain the reason behind it.  They have to know the reason why.” 

Then he whips around.  “Say, there’s one of my men now.  My Sergeant-Major.  A big strain of a man, isn’t he?  I’ll be back in a tick.”

When he returns I can’t help but ask him, “umm, Lawton, are you actually experiencing the same war that all the rest of us are?”

“Aye, you fancy yourself a philosopher, do you, Yank?” Lawton asks, looking me right in the eye and grinning.  “Why, of course I am!  I stand up to meet the war same as any man.  I do my work same as any officer, scheduling the men, arranging food and weapons and supplies, managing, leading.  I, too, live down there with the lice and the rats.  I shoulder the same pain.”

“But you never let it get you down?”

“I think of all the dead men who were laughing just a week ago,” Lawton tells me.  “Why not laugh right up to the end?  Why not keep dreaming of a great future?  Why not hear Nature’s music?  Why not hope?  Why not feel joy?  This war is bloody stupid, but no one would be best pleased if I gave up, would they?  I choose to stick at it.”

I nod.  “It’s a great approach.”

“If the lark can keep on singing,” Lawton declares emphatically, “so can I.”

“Excellent attitude.”

“Sure,” Lawton responds.  “Why worry?  If you’re not wounded, you have no need to worry.  If you’re in danger, why worry unless you’re wounded?  If you’re wounded, why worry unless you die?  If you die, you’ll have no need to worry.  So why ever worry at all?”

I grin.  “Love it.  Any more philosophy behind it?”

“I think I know what you’re getting at.  Look, this tragedy is so vast and runs so deep, too vast and deep for my finite mind to make sense of it.  Of course, it seems as futile to me as it does to every other man.  How can Christian nations do this to each other?  What’s the use?  What’s it all for?  Dying or having your body or mind shattered while fighting over a few yards of land.  Look, it seems to be without meaning, but that doesn’t render life as cheap.  Men still have a soul and each soul still has a sacred dignity.  If we’re going to walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, let’s laugh more than we cry.  Let’s continue to take in all the music of this splendid world.”

“Sometimes I agree,” I respond, “that this war has spiritual meaning.”

“Why are we all doing this?” he asks.  “Because of the brutal attack against the Belgians?  Probably.  Because a German victory would mean the end of civilization as we know it?  Maybe.  Because it will lead to a future for billions of people that is free, united, and humane?  All I can do is hope.”

“Your faith is an enduring one.”

“Who am I to question a loving God?  I pray every day that He sends us the healing breezes of Spring.  Until then, the war – all this danger, adversity, suffering, and pain – is an opportunity for us to be strong, brave, compassionate, and kind.  And even full of wonder and joy and appreciation for life.  In the end, no matter our circumstances, life is all about love.  The demons may be smiling and grinning all around us.  But tunes of Divine and human love can still ring out around the world.  So let’s all just carry on.  Let’s play our game out to its very end.  Because that’s all we’ve got to make it through this hell – God, each other, and our sublime endurance.”

“It’s a good sound spiritual philosophy,” I affirm.

Lawton grins at me.  “I also down my share of rum, good sport.  Well, I’d better get back to the Front.  Got to go and mess about with grenades and shells.”

I nod.  “Let the Huns have one extra grenade and one extra shell from me.”

“Will do, Francisco,” Lawton says with a wave.  “Cheerio.”

Midday on Friday, June 30, 1916.  I hear “Francisco, my good man!”  and I look over.  Lawton is heading right toward me as he takes a sip of rum from his tin mug. 

Some 150 miles away, the Germans have been battling the French for more than four months.  The first time Lawton told me the name of it, I had to have him repeat it for me.  “VARE-DUNN,” he enunciated slowly.

The officers’ headquarters, hospital, and veterinary facility are just 13 miles from the front trenches along the river Somme.  A British bombardment of the German enemy lines has been underway for a week.  “Is the Somme about to become the next Verdun?” I ask Lawton.

“I don’t think so, mate.  But we can’t sit here forever.  We’ve got to kill the Germans and end this war.  It’s time to fight like tigers.”

“How are your men doing?”

“They swing between optimism and fatalism,” Lawton responds.  “They’ll say things like ‘don’t worry about me, I’m Hun-proof’ and an hour later they’ll say things like ‘my number is up’ and ‘there’s a shell with my number on it’.  But the truth is, not one of them can really imagine the world without himself in it.  They don’t really believe they’ll die.”

“No one ever said we human beings are rational,” I reply.

“That’s for certain,” he says, grinning.  “Every one of my guys has some lucky talisman.  A coin, a button, a dried flower, a cutting of hair, a pebble, a medallion of Saint George or Saint Christopher, a teddy bear from his boyhood.  My favorite are these carved figures of Lazarus.  More common than you’d guess.”

“What do you tell your men?”

“That war is filthy and degrading and awful and wrong, but that it can inspire us to be noble.  To keep dreaming of a future back in England, of summer days, picnicking in the grass on a riverbank, listening to the birds sing, laughing with our friends and parents and sisters and brothers, and a wife and our own daughters and sons.  To take joy in our own bright promise and to remember that the odds for each of us in this war are uncounted.”

“Good advice,” I say.

“Don’t worry, Francisco.  Don’t trouble yourself about it.  We’ll get out of here and shake the world together, my good man.  Keep feeling the wonder and joy of it all.  Stay glad to be alive for as long as you are alive.”

“So you feel good about the Big Push?” I ask.

“The generals, colonels, and majors are telling us to ignore our pre-battle jitters.  Telling us that they’ve pulverized the Germans with this bombardment.  They say the Germans are all dead, that not even a rat will be left alive in the German lines.  They say just to walk my 250 men right on over to the German trenches.  There will be no opposition.  There will be no casualties.  Just march on across.  A cakewalk.”

“And what do you think, Lawton?”

He looks me right in the eye.  “I think that things look pretty rosy when you’re sitting in the map room of a chateau.”

“Indeed.”

“Good luck, Francisco.  See you on the morrow.”

Saturday, the first of July, 1916.  We get word at dawn that 100,000 British soldiers are moving toward the German lines across a 16-mile line of battle.

Early in the afternoon I jump on one of the wagons our mules are pulling toward the first-aid station some ten miles east.  When we arrive we empty hundreds of shells from our wagons and stack them up.  It’s too dangerous to go any closer to the Front.

I’ve been near the first-aid station almost an hour when I see about forty men come over the crest, stagger into full view, and walk down the dusty road in my direction.  Each man, his uniform caked in mud and blood, is disheveled and streaked with grime.  Each man looks haggard and dazed as he drags and shuffles his body along.  Each man’s face is as white as a sheet and his hollow and glassy stare tells me they’ve been to Hell and back and remain in shock.  And then I see the figure of their beleaguered Captain, Lawton Carrington, marching at the head of his devoted band.

Their legs can carry them no further.  A lame soldier leads a blinded soldier.  One soldier has been horribly mutilated and is immediately loaded onto a wagon by stretcher bearers, who are speechless, their eyes and faces horror-struck.

We get this small band of walking wounded into three wagons.  Lawton gets into the vehicle last.  “Captain,” I ask him, “where are the rest of your 250 men?”

“Sixty, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, only sixty,” Lawton replies.  “None of the rest survived.”

“My God!” I exclaim.  “This is all that remains of your company?”   

“Yes, my good man,” he says.  “It was a far cry from the walkover we’d been promised.”

I determine that Lawton’s not bleeding.  He’s speaking in a strong clear voice.  As the wagon takes the road ten miles west, I listen as he describes the past few hours:

“I told the sergeant it was time to go over the top and he began yelling: ‘First wave ready.  Fix bayonets.  Advance.’  As the men went over the top, the sergeant told each one ‘c’mon lad, courage’.  When a private hesitated, the sergeant joked ‘c’mon, do you want to live forever?’

“We lined up shoulder to shoulder in plain view and began slowly walking toward No Man’s Land.  We tried to crawl over or under the barbed wire as we used our wire cutters.  This left us exposed, sitting ducks.  I saw hundreds of us all messed up on the wire.  They died on the wire and hung there.   

“All of a sudden those German machine guns went jolly active.  Jerry let us have it.  Jerry let hell loose on us.  German gunners ripped us to pieces.  Cut us to ribbons.  Mowed down row after row of lads.  The Huns annihilated us.

“Men were dropping right and left.  We laid with the dead under the wire, clinging to life surrounded by corpses.  We couldn’t see through the fog.  We couldn’t hear through the hurricane of noise.  The land beneath us was trembling and shaking.  That battle over there is ripping the world off its hinges. 

“I see British lads shot down.  Buried alive.  Burnt to death with fire cannisters.  Soon thousands lay where they’ve fallen, bleeding to death in No Man’s Land.  Moaning, groaning, writhing, crying for help, cursing, shouting, shaking, sobbing, screaming, yelling.  Every lad who rose to his feet was shot down again by a German sniper.  Those blood-thirsty Huns have been firing on our wounded all day.

“I saw dozens of my men lying dead in front of me – dozens of bodies in the space of a tennis court.  Francisco, the Battle of the Somme is a field of death, of wholesale murder, sick and repulsive.  It’s a Meat Machine, being fed with live men, churning out corpses.” 

We arrive at the casualty clearance station.  I head back to the veterinary facility.  Lawton sees that his most wounded men are taken in for care by the doctors and nurses.

To his surprise, about 40 more of Lawton’s men show up in the evening.  Half are wounded, half are not.  Almost 50 of his 100 surviving men are still physically able to fight.  Lawton is put in charge of a new company, made of the remnant of his company and two other companies that have each lost about 100 men and whose captains died on Saturday.  On Sunday, Lawton leads 250 men back into No Man’s Land.  Nearly 60 of them die and nearly 90 of them are wounded.

We learn on Monday that of the 200,000 men sent into No Man’s Land on Saturday and Sunday, 30,000 were killed and 60,000 were wounded.

In the casualty station, Lawton sits down and speaks to each wounded young man in his company.  With his rare depth of empathy, he senses each young soldier’s needs and he finds the consoling words most apt for each.

He tells a patriotic young private that ‘you have done your duty for king and country, and you remain a gallant hero to your final breath'“.  A minute later the lad dies peacefully. 

To a sergeant who’s angry, Lawton says, “I understand, chum.  What was of value in life has tumbled down around us like a house of cards.  It’s not fair.  It’s not just.  It’s rotten luck.  This war is trampling life into dust.  The Somme is snuffing out so much, too much.  But we must not give in to the corroding power of cynicism.”  The young man’s sneer gives way to a wiser expression.

Lawton sits beside a youth who calls out for a friend who died the day before.  Lawton tells him, “my dear lad, when we are at one with grief we are at one with Love.  And love is a clean stream that rinses away our suffering.  Love blesses broken hearts like ours.  Did you think you were alone?  You are not alone.”

Another young man, a devout Christian, knows that he’s approaching death.  He sobs about his wedding.  “My good man,” says Lawton, “it appears that your fiancée may be left to roam an empty shore.  Your earthly dreams may not be fulfilled here in this world.  But whenever you pass to the other side, while you’ll sit no more at familiar tables, you’ll build a home that Time cannot overthrow.”  The young man nods and becomes calm. 

A soldier is babbling about angels.  Is it the morphine?  Lawton bets that it’s not.  “The angels are folding you in their soft wings, good chap.  You do not wish to die, of course, but you’ll soon gain a peace beyond pain.  You’ll see nothing but blue skies and a shining sun.  You’ll soon step into the dawn of Eternal Morning.”

“Mum!” a lad cries out.  Lawton senses what’s happening.  “Do you hear your mother whispering to you?” he asks.  The lad nods.  “Did you know that almost every man who dies on or near the battlefield, almost every time, the last word to cross his lips is ‘Mother!’?  As long as you are on this Earth, lad, cherish your love for your mother.”

Each time a soldier in his company dies, Lawton finds the letter the young man had written home to his loved ones.  Then Lawton packs up a few possessions, especially photographs, fixes them in a parcel, and takes one of the identity discs from around the lad’s neck and adds it to this parcel.  Each time, he asks me, “can I oblige you to reach me a pen?”  And he writes a few words about what made the family’s son and brother so special.  He packs his note with Tommy’s note and the other items and then arranges for the whole parcel to be mailed home to Tommy’s relatives.

One day in November a wagon arrives with Lawton in it.  His eyes are watering something fierce.  He’s wriggling, squirming, writhing, and kicking.  He’s choking, coughing, gasping, spitting, and vomiting.  He’s rolled into the casualty station by an orderly.

“What is it?” I ask Lawton’s aide, Lieutenant Harold Hanley.

“Phosgene,” Harold tells me.  “Deadlier than chlorine.  He saw the eight-foot cloud of vapor rolling in, but he couldn’t run fast enough.  And he didn’t have his gas mask handy.  He inhaled a lot of poison.”

The next day Harold and I are sitting on either side of Lawton when he wakes up in the casualty station.  His breathing remains shallow.  His eyes are stuck shut, but he senses who is at his bedside.  He whispers to us.  “That stuff smells like pineapple.  Or bitter almonds.  Maybe like moldy hay.”

“But then it turns pungent and acrid,” Harold says to me.  “The Captain yelled, ‘I must get out of here!’  But the gas had already seared his lungs.” 

“Dreadful,” I say.  I notice how ashen and bloated Lawton’s face is, how much his lips have swollen.

“I ran over to get him to stop digging his fists into his eyes,” Harold tells me. 

“Felt inflamed, like red-hot needles thrust into my eyes,” Lawton says hoarsely.

“He grabbed at his throat,” says Harold, “and clawed at his nose.”

“And started biting my coat,” whispers Lawton, “and howling.  And foaming at the mouth like I had rabies.”

“The nurse says you’re still retching,” I tell him.  He nods.  “And coughing,” I say.  “Spitting up blood.”  He keeps nodding.

“His pulse is 120,” Harold says.

“I feel like I’m drowning,” Lawton says. “Suffocating.”

“This phosgene is insidious,” I say.

“They haven’t told you it’ll probably be lethal?” Lawton asks in my direction.

“What?!  No!  They haven’t!”

Lawton almost whispers that “each hour I’m spitting about four pints of yellow liquids out of my lungs.”

“The doctors say they’re powerless,” Harold adds.

Lawton bellows out several harsh coughs.  I see the yellow discharge.  His eyes are turning into scabs.  He senses my alarm.  “Either my lungs are damaged for life or my lungs will break down over the next few days.  Either way the upholstering of my lungs is destroyed.”

Each day Lawton’s health is worse than the day before.  “Kripes!” he says in pain from time to time, but rarely.  He never complains. 

Through his parched lips Lawton asks me for a sip of water.  I bring the cup to his mouth.  “More than pleased,” he says hoarsely, attempting a grin.

“Hullo Francisco, my good man,” he says each time I visit him.  “The effects of gas poisoning are awfully interesting.  I’d like to say that I don’t mind whatsoever, but I’m having a rough time of it.”  I nod and squeeze his hand.  “I’m on edge, but I want to see it through to the end with gusto.”  I nod and squeeze his hand again.  He says, “but enough said of self.  Let’s join in the spirit of good fellowship.”

As the days go by, Lawton’s able to speak less and less.  One day he makes himself heard.  “I’m glad that when we face the loss of all we have on Earth we can look to the Lord’s Face,” he says in his scratchy voice.  “We can take the cup of Divine Wisdom to our lips, and drink from It, and drain It to the bottom.”

I say to him more than once that “I will always remember your joyous ways and words, Lawton.  My whole life through.”

“My dear Francisco,” he replies, “we both believe that what is of eternal value lies out there beyond the reach of Death.  You and I will meet again in the Hereafter.”

The next day there’s another point he wants me to grasp.  He raises his voice as best he can.  “Friend or foe, no one will care when we cross over.  Victor and vanquished are one in death, one in the next life.  I know you detest the Germans, good mate.  But we and the Germans share one wound under a common sky.”

The next day he’s taken a turn for the worse.  He’s still a joyous spirit with the Light of Divine Love gleaming in his mangled eyes.  But his arms are making frantic gestures, he’s gasping for breath, and his body is in regular spasms.  He grips my arm.  He twists his mouth and whispers, “tell my friends that I know they were better than I deserved.  Goodbye to all and good luck to you, mate.”  One last grin and then he drops his head.  In a moment, all is quiet.

We wrap his body in a brown Army blanket and wrap the blanket in the Union Jack.  Within a couple hours Tommies from Lawton’s company arrive.  As we carry his body along the path to his grave, the sun breaks forth from the clouds. 

The military cemetery is a forest of wooden crosses stretched up and down hills that are fertile with roses and other colored flowers.  Harold marks the grave with a cross fashioned out of wooden ammunition boxes.  On it he has written, “In loving memory, Capt. Lawton Carrington, April 7, 1890 – November 17, 1916”.  Harold and I want to help his relatives find him after the war, and I’ve already written them the letter telling them that everything has been done for their son and brother in all reverence.

We sing a funeral hymn:

Let saints on Earth in concert sing

With those whose work is done

For all the servants of our King

In Heaven and Earth are one

As we sing the last stanza, I notice a young soldier whose legs have been blown away holding a hymnbook for a young soldier who’s lost both his arms.  They are singing with gusto and joy.  Lawton’s gusto and joy.

I’ve been asked to say a few words.  “I was so touched and moved and proud to have known Lawton, to have become his friend, to have shared in his joyful spirit.  Today, Lawton, you lay amidst blanket and dust.  Today your joyous song is stilled.  But while we cannot hear your footsteps, we will go on living in the dream you shared.  And someday we will share with you again life filled with joys – joys that will endure to eternity.”          

We stand to attention as his body is lowered.  Each British Army officer steps to the grave, salutes, and turns away.  The buglers blow their sobbing, piercing “Last Post”, shattering our hearts.  And the non-commissioned Tommies form into rows of four, make their right turns row by row, and march away.

I stand for a couple minutes at Lawton’s grave.  Then I head back to the veterinary clinic to tend again to the mules.