The Dawn Comes Up Like the Gentle Rain from Heaven

Standing on the hilltop just up from the campsite, the horizon is just beginning to emerge from the darkness, the stars already fewer than there had been an hour before. The dawn air is cold; after all, it is December and the night had been free of clouds, so you rub your hands together and jam them into your armpits in a vain attempt to return some warmth to them, cursing that you had forgotten your gloves. There is nothing else you could do now but wait for the sun to come up and the clock to hit eight before trudging off to the phone box a quarter of a mile away to make the call.

Might as well enjoy the spectacle, because it is rare indeed for you to be up early enough to catch the dawn, and from such an unexpectedly excellent vantage point as well. The world would turn, the sun would rise, and what would be would be. Accept your fate. Face it with as much phlegm as you can muster.

By now the horizon is a darker line against the dark sky. Maybe tinged with just a hint of the deepest red? Imagination? Probably. After all, your imagination has been working overtime that night, ever since the first cadets crashed into camp telling how they had lost one of their squad, had called and searched but no luck, so decided to make for camp and tell the expedition leader: you.

It had all started so well. When you joined the school’s chemistry department, you knew that the school insisted all its masters join one of either the Cadets, Scouts or Voluntary Service. The cadets had seemed the most exciting. The Quartermaster had issued you with your uniform and the pair of pips you would need for your shoulder tabs, to mark you as a Second Lieutenant. A brief introductory training course in Frimley over the summer holiday and that was that, you were a Cadet Force Officer. Oh yes, and your first job as the new subaltern was to organise the yearly winter night march in the Ashdown Forest for the school’s contingent of around one hundred Army Cadets. The Regular officer attached to the contingent would do a dry run with you, but otherwise it was up to you to locate a campsite as final destination, choose drop-off points and recce the routes. Actually, not entirely, as your colleague who had done this last year provided some sound advice, so you were not marching completely blind. He'd walked the route with you in daylight before the Regular showed up for the practice run at night, so you did not look a complete fool. After all, the school’s reputation was at stake!

Now, the sky was definitely lighter, a band of red running into orange, harbinger of the sunrise probably twenty to thirty minutes away. Still cold though. Your toes are starting to numb inside your regulation boots, despite some seriously thick socks. If you are cold, what would the lost cadet be feeling right now? Or was he dead, drowned in some black ditch that he’d tripped into and banged his head, sinking unconscious into the muddy trickle just deep enough to be lethal. Or knocked down by some careless driver and left for dead, like the roadkill foxes and badgers that littered the roadsides. Don’t think like that. Chances are he is OK. But still, in the dark, alone without his mates, anything was possible…

The recce with the Regular Army captain had gone like a dream. At night, everything looked different, but at least it was not raining so you could make out the route by starlight, memory and the Ordnance Survey map that the boys would be using; through the small coppice to the footpath, over the stile, take a bearing then across the meadow and down into the streambed with its little plank bridge. You’d impressed the captain with your knowledge of stellar navigation: using the two pointer stars in the Plough to find the Pole Star, as an adjunct to your compass. You and he had chatted; how you got to be here as a Cadet Officer, his career (as far as he was allowed to say). This assignment was a cushy one for him, truth be told, but someone had to do it. The Cadets were a useful source of officer recruits so the big-wigs wanted to support the few schools that offered this adventure to their charges. So you’d chatted as you walked (not marched!), the night air crisp, the land a silvered presence with its woods and meadows and rivulets. There was even an owl, hooting somewhere far off to lend enchantment to this sylvan vision. It all seemed so easy. But then the cadet had gone missing.

Your first thought was to arrange search parties to comb the woods, but after mulling this idea over, you decided against it. No point, you’d said to your fellow cadet officers, senior in rank and experience, but you were the one in command here so it is your call. Sending cadets out willy-nilly would most likely result in injuries and more of them getting lost. No. Better to limit the damage, start the search when the sun was fully up and everyone is fed and rested. A hard choice. But the right one in the circumstances. No-one demurred. They hung around, trying to cheer you up, but one by one they retired to their bivvies, feeling the weight your bore and, most likely, glad it was not them. If you had been in their shoes, you’d have felt the same, done the same; better to grab some sleep ready for the morning’s search. Meanwhile, you stay awake, too wired to sleep, you imagination sprinting around the racetrack of your mind. Was this the end of your career? What else could you be but a teacher? What would you say to his parents? You cannot imagine how they will feel, not at twenty-seven years of age. All these unanswerable questions flapping about your mind like malevolent life-sucking bats. In the starlit dark, the bats offer no answers. How would you break the news to the headmaster, given you would probably have to wake him at the crack of dawn? No, that would be too early. Better to wait for the sun to be up and for him to be at his breakfast, given you could do nothing until then anyway. At least that is a plan of sorts. A small iota of certainty amid this sea of awful uncertainty.

The horizon is now lined with bright orange and yellow bands, distant clouds reflecting the invisible sun. You stand and watch, still as the forest around you, the air heavy with expectation. The sun will rise. The cadet will be found. Eventually. And you will face the headmaster and the parents and the silent sympathy of your colleagues.

Is that a tinge of gold? Yes, definitely. A quivering hint of the solar disc that gifts life to the Earth, around which the planet and all the others in the Solar System dance their stately dance. There it is: a sliver of brilliance, so slight you can look at it directly. But only for a second or two; it grows and you have to squint not to be blinded It is now clearly a thin sector of a disc. You wait. The sector grows into a half-circle, brilliant yellow-blue that cannot be borne by naked eyeballs. It climbs, fills out, becomes an undimmed disc. Give it five minutes. Until quarter past eight. The hands on your watch crab forwards, eking out the millimetres towards your fate.

Time to go.

You know the way to the phone box, one of the precautions that are a standard part of any night march’s plan. You have enough change for an hour’s conversation. More than enough for this little task. Hands shaking, you lift the receiver and dial the number. It rings at the other end…Could I speak to the Headmaster please, so sorry to disturb him so early. There is something he must be aware of. To be honest, he took the news really calmly. Keep him informed. Have you a plan? Yes. He would call the parents, let them know what has happened, let them know we are doing everything in our power to find him. He would do that now. Could you call him again in, say two hours, and update him. Of course.

Back to the camp. Rouse the cadets earlier than planned. Get breakfast cooking over their ration pack’s waxy-white paraffin-reeking fuel blocks, then gather them for an Orders Group. Same teams. These are your areas. Out and back in one hour. Do not risk yourselves, you must not, under any circumstances, take risks and make this worse. Off they go, each group with an officer in charge. You’d feel better if you were doing something active but you can’t. You must stay put; your job as leader. More waiting. The search teams dribble back. No news. No news. The same tale, over and over. Then it’s time to trudge back to the phone box. Headmaster? I’ve sent search parties out. No news. Ah, said the headmaster. He’d called the boy’s parents. He has some good news. The little rascal called home. He is safe. Told them he’d got separated from his team. Could not find them, despite calling for them. He’d used his initiative, found a road, and a house and knocked on the door. He was lucky. A married couple took pity on him and put him up for the night, let him use their phone in the morning. His parents are driving down to pick him up as he spoke. So, all’s well that ends well eh?

You finish your planned activities and return to the school that evening. Parents hug their boys like nothing has happened. The story grows arms and legs in the telling. And the lost cadet? In the end he apologises. He’d never liked the idea of the night march. He admitted later that he’d dawdled deliberately. You suspect that he had planned this in advance, but you don’t tell him that, after all, he was one of the brightest students.

All’s well that ends well indeed. And you got to see the sun coming up. But the echo of this long night never really leaves you, for ill and for good. Your career? That’s another story, but maybe it turned on this night, when you first asked yourself what you could do.