A Life Eternal

by Richard Ayre

  But it seemed they may have come too late.

  Some German General somewhere finally made a decision and the Stukas came in, screaming their hellish war cries as they belted down at us like carriages on a roller coaster. Christ, they were terrifying machines and, because of our massed ranks, they couldn’t miss. They came in again and again and it felt like every single one of them was aiming its nose just at me.

  Explosions rocked the beach, and sand and ragged chunks of bodies were scattered all around me and over me.

  The men around me ran blindly and I was caught up with them, the blood-drenched sand sticking to me, grinding against the skin of my neck. I’ve never liked the feel of sand since then, and don’t go to the beach very often now if I can help it.

  We were in a total panic. We pushed and shoved at each other in our desperation to escape the death coming from above. The noise was like the bells of hell. It was carnage. Spitfires and Hurricanes did their best to protect us from their bases on the South Coast of England, but it took days of noise and chaos before we were eventually evacuated.

  I was near the sea, waiting my turn, eagerly watching a trawler crawl inexorably towards us, when I saw one man blown backwards from the blast of a bomb. He lay spread-eagled on the sand. He must have been thrown ten yards or more.

  I saw him move so I ran across to him through the surf, the bombs blasting all around me; I still had some feelings towards humanity at that time. He was semi-conscious, but I frowned as I saw he seemed to be completely unmarked. His entire uniform however, had been shredded. The massive concussion of air from the blast had knocked him out, and it had also ripped his clothes from him. He was bollock-naked apart from his boots.

  He stirred and blinked up at me with unfocussed eyes.

  ‘Here,’ he muttered weakly. ‘Whossagame?’ It was the young lad who had said everything was a fuck-up.

  Luck, I thought madly. Pure luck.

  I grabbed him and waded out to the trawler that had come as close to the shore as it dared. Explosions rocked the sand and ploughed up the water around us. Hundreds of us half-swam, half-waded out to that trawler. Oil from another stricken ship coated all of us. It got into my mouth and I gagged at its foul, burnt taste. I prayed it wouldn’t catch fire.

  Arms reached down from the trawler and the young lad was hauled over the side. I reached up, shouting to the men on board, and strong, calloused hands gripped my own, heaving me upwards. I was black and slick with the oil.

  I found myself slipping and sliding onto the boards of a deck I could barely see for the ranks of wide-eyed, white-faced soldiers packed onto it. The young lad I’d rescued was given a fisherman’s jacket to cover his shrunken dignity.

  Amazingly, the trawler was not hit. It backed up as rapidly as it could away from the shore, turning when it had enough space, and from the stern I watched the burning beach, scattered with the lost hardware of a defeated army and the crumpled bodies of men who would never be rescued. The beach slowly receded as we made our way back to Britain.

  We didn’t know it at the time, but we owed a lot of our ignominious escape to the French soldiers who had fought on for us as we scrambled to safety. Our generals had not told them we were planning to escape but they had fought for us anyway, along with thousands of British soldiers who hadn’t made it to the beach. Churchill ordered ships to go back and get French survivors, and over 26,000 were rescued. But something like 30,000 were captured and 16,000 of them lost their lives, along with thousands of our own men.

  However, the amazing grit and courage shown by the ordinary people of the British Isles got me and 338,000 men off that beach. We all cheered when we saw the shores of Britain appearing again on the horizon. We were safe for now. But the war in France was over and Germany was in complete control of Western Europe.

  It was only a matter of time before Hitler decided to invade Britain.

  XIII

  I returned to my cottage on the sixth of June, 1940. That date would become very important to me four years later, but at that moment I was simply pleased to have a little time for rest and recuperation.

  I had been gone for over four months, what with my initial training and my brief, if disastrous, sojourn in France. I only had a few days’ leave, as the survivors from Dunkirk were to be re-equipped and re-organised for the future but, before returning to the barracks, I wanted to see Grace.

  I dumped what little equipment I had in the dusty cottage and strolled along the lane, a cigarette keeping me company, thinking about what might happen now.

  It was only twenty-odd miles from France to the south east coast, and the rumours were rife about when the Germans would come. London was sand-bagged to the hilt and bejewelled with ack-ack guns and barrage balloons. The enemy was coming and all anyone could do was wait.

  I didn’t have any answers; I think I was still in shock. Even though I was probably the only man on that beach who had been under fire before, that had been over twenty years ago. It does not get any easier, believe me. The noise and death and destruction is just as shocking, just as frightening, no matter how many times it has been experienced. Even now I sometimes dream of the wars I went through and the things I experienced. Those nightmares still make me scream myself awake.

  I got to the vicarage and rang the doorbell. A woman answered the door. She was aged about fifty, attractive in an upper-class, aloof sort of way, and she looked a little like Grace. I guessed she must have been an aunt. She glanced at my lowly Private’s uniform and smiled coldly.

  ‘Yes?’ she asked.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ I said. ‘My name is Robert Deakin. I was wondering if Miss Yeo was available.’

  She frowned at this but, before she could say anything else, Father Yeo himself came to the door. He looked at me sternly.

  ‘I’m afraid Grace is not in,’ he said. ‘She’s away at the moment. However, she did ask that if you called, I was to give you this.’

  He handed me a sealed envelope. I could feel something small and hard inside it and my heart sank.

  Yeo seemed to soften slightly at the look on my face.

  ‘It’s for the best, old boy. Grace is happier now then I have ever seen her. Surely that is worth a little lingering sadness on your part. We both want what’s best for her, eh?’

  I lifted my eyes from the envelope and the look I gave them both caused them to simultaneously take a step back in fear, the woman’s hand reaching for her throat, protectively. I kept my gaze upon them a moment longer, that strange, dark hatred emanating from me in waves, then I turned away, walking back to the cottage. Once there, I poured a whiskey. I had a feeling I would need it.

  The engagement ring fell to the floor as I opened the letter, almost in the same place it had lain when she threw it at me. I didn’t pick it up. As far as I know it’s still there, for I never set foot in Aylesford again after that day. I read what she had written.

  Dear Robert,

  If you are reading this then it must mean you have survived. Allow me to express how happy I am about this. Things have changed in such a short time that I hardly know where to start.

  Shortly after you left for France, I received a letter from a childhood friend of mine, Roger Bellews (we knew each other when Father was the vicar of Basingstoke and he is from a very well-to-do family.) He wrote to tell me he was in the area and would very much like to meet me for tea. I naturally agreed as we had been such good friends when we were eighteen or nineteen. Imagine my surprise when we met and I found out that he is now a Commander in the Royal Navy. A Commander! And soon to be Captain, no doubt!

  I’m afraid I realised that my affections for Roger have never really disappeared. He looked so smart in his uniform. So dominant! I am afraid he turned my head, Robert, dear. One cannot fight one’s base emotions, as we both know. Our relationship was lovely, Rob, really lovely. But that night, when you showed me you would rather break off our understanding than fight for my safety, I’m afraid that night played on my mind
a lot.

  So, dearest Robert, I am writing this letter to inform you I have decided to break off our engagement. It is in both our best interests as I’m sure you will understand one day. (I have enclosed the ring back to your keeping.)

  Goodbye, Robert. I wish you all the best for your future as I’m sure you will wish me the best for mine.

  Kind regards,

  Grace.

  I slowly crumpled the letter into a ball and dropped it beside the engagement ring. I lit a cigarette, swallowed a mouthful of whiskey, and then had another.

  Wish her all the best? At that moment I hoped the bitch would burn in hell, along with her Commander Bellews. I had a sudden image of Grace writhing, naked, under the body of some faceless man with a copy of the Karma Sutra lying beside them open at my favourite page, and a dark, furious jealousy seared through me. It was as if there was something inside me, something somehow different and detached from me, screaming in hatred and spite. I poured another drink and forced myself to calm down, eventually succeeding to a certain degree. It is quite remarkable how quickly that screeching vindictiveness disappeared and the old cold nothingness came back to me. At the time I supposed it was my natural state, although I was to find out I was wrong about that many years later.

  I had several more whiskeys that night and, in the morning, I was no further forward. Instead I was only sick in heart and sour of stomach, my head pounding from the most aggressive hangover I had ever known.

  I lay in bed all morning, just staring up at the ceiling I would never see again, but in the afternoon I got up and packed my kit bag with a few odds and ends.

  I wrote a letter to my solicitor, telling him to make arrangements for the sale of the cottage and also saying that, if anything happened to me, he was to make provisions for all my worldly assets to be transferred to one William Taylor, address to be confirmed soon. I sealed the envelope and took one more look around my house. Grace seemed to be ingrained in that place and I could not face going back there again.

  I walked out and closed the door behind me. I posted the letter then went straight to the train station and caught a service to London, where I spent my final few days of leave getting blind drunk.

  I heard later that Commander Bellews—he never made captain—was killed when his ship was torpedoed in 1942. Grace Yeo ended up marrying a politician who gave her all the money and status she wanted but who eventually left her penniless and destitute for another woman. There was some vindication for my rapidly hardening heart in that, at least.

  I had no idea at the time that our paths would cross again, briefly and disastrously, in the future. But even if I had known I doubt I would have cared.

  There was only one thing I wanted to do at that point and that was to disgorge the terrible, ice-cold rage I felt pulsing and heaving within myself.

  I wanted to kill. And thankfully, I was in just the right position to do that.

  *

  The months went on. I re-joined my battalion. Shortly after the narrowly won Battle of Britain we were sent to Africa, where I fought in most of the action there. Once more my life became consumed by warfare.

  I didn’t think of Grace much in those years; I didn’t really have the time. I fought and killed and survived. I became little more than a machine. I was unthinking, unmoved, without any sense of pity or empathy. My cold-hearted professionalism earned me a sergeant’s stripes once more, and the last thing many a German saw was my impassive, utterly uncompassionate face. We moved inexorably forward, through the dust and the heat and the blood.

  I was shot a couple of times but both were light wounds, scratches really, so I didn’t know if the strange magic was still inside me. But in December 1943 I found myself back on leave in London and something happened that seemed to confirm it was.

  God, I was an empty man back then. Empty and dark and unthinking and uncaring. The blackness that seemed to have consumed my soul emanated from me in a dark aura, and I was always left unmolested wherever I wandered in the city. I visited various different pubs in the capital and drank the watered-down beer, not even bothering to move from my bar stool when the occasional air raid warnings went off.

  There had been few attacks on the capital since late 1941, nothing like at the height of the Blitz, but they still happened now and then and, one night, a bomb went off without warning right outside the pub I was in. The alarms had sounded but the bombing seemed to be miles away, so a lot of the war-worn Londoners had done the same as I and simply ignored it.

  The bomb smashed into the side of the pub, blowing bricks and wood into the interior in a sudden maelstrom of crashing orange fire and blasting debris.

  I was blown off my stool, thrown right over the bar, where I collapsed in a heap. Rubble rained down around me and onto me. I cowered until the tearing explosions moved on, and then slowly pulled myself free from the wreckage.

  It was only then that I discovered the foot-long shard of glass from the fractured bar mirror embedded in my side. The pain cut through my alcohol-dulled body, but I just grimaced and pulled the glass out. The blood gushed from the huge wound but I ignored it, squinting through the dust around the blasted room.

  The front of the bar was gone, a jagged hole showing the shattered street outside. Half the roof had come down, leaving a mound of rubble and bricks from which a low moaning now began. Water sprayed mindlessly from a ruptured main.

  Rescue teams soon arrived. I was just going to leave them to it; I’m afraid to say that by that point I hardly cared what happened to the survivors. But they asked me for help and so I begrudgingly stayed long enough to help them drag the shattered bodies, both dead and alive, from the ruined building and, when we had got as many out as we could, I disappeared into the night and found another pub.

  There, I went into the toilets and inspected my side.

  The gash was massive: at least ten inches long and very deep. It must have pierced internal organs but, as I washed away some of the blood, I could see my skin was already beginning to knit together.

  I closed my torn tunic over it as best I could and stared into the mirror for a long time, my face blank but my mind in a whirling turmoil of fear and wonder. Then I exited the toilets, sat on a stool, and ordered another pint. I was a bloodied, filthy mess but I ignored the astonished stares from the other customers in the bar as, underneath my uniform, my body healed itself again.

  I believe I had become almost totally dehumanised by then. Not quite as bad as I became later in my life, but even so I was a strange, dangerous figure. I was avoided by anyone who encountered me. They all seemed to sense something wrong about me.

  Which was fine with me because I despised everyone I met: British or German.

  I gazed blearily at myself in the bar room mirror and saw the same, unchanging face staring back at me that I’d seen in the pub when I was de-mobbed back in 1918. By that December of 1943, I was on my way to being forty-eight years old. I was a miserable, ageing man trapped inside the body of a youth.

  When I got back from leave I learned that I was not going back to re-join my battalion, which was by now forcing its way into Italy, but instead I was to be part of another group of men who began training for some sort of secret mission. All we were told was that invasion was being planned and my new battalion was going to be part of it. We trained in the wilds of Inveraray in Scotland whilst American troops constantly raided the village of Woolacombe on the North Devon coast.

  Something big was coming.

  *

  The sixth of June, 1944, dawned clear and bright, but quite windy at sea. My first glimpse of France in four years showed me the long, flat beaches of Normandy. The beach we were to take was codenamed “Gold”.

  The months of military exercises had culminated in this: Operation Neptune, the Allies’ attempt to re-take France and defeat Germany once and for all. The invasion of Normandy, which we were involved in was codenamed Overlord. Not that anybody cared about names at the time.

  Our ord
ers were simple enough on paper. We were to establish a beachhead and then take Arromanches, joining up with the American forces who would land at Omaha beach down the coast, before moving inland and taking Bayeux. From there we would start pushing the Germans back to their homeland.

  It didn’t quite work out like that.

  Before we landed, we witnessed huge explosions and heard the booming crackle of heavy artillery on the beach. The tide was running incredibly fast and had stopped the engineers in their mission to destroy the anti-tank defences on the beach, although we didn’t know this at the time. We had all been throwing up constantly because of the queasy motion of the landing craft we couched in. As frightened as the mortals around me were, I think they were pleased to get onto dry land.

  At 7:26 exactly, we landed.

  Me and the men under my command rushed forward, bullets spitting all around us. It reminded me for a moment of the Somme.

  I just ran, once again working on impulse and instinct, men falling and twisting to the sand around me, the noise of their screams and the roar of the machine guns ringing in my ears. I dropped down behind the dubious safety of a sand dune as my remaining men caught up with me. We struggled through the sharp Marram grass and I found myself staring up at a house where Germans could be seen firing down onto the beach.

  There were a few of these houses dotted along the top of the beach, with the road behind them. Once well-to-do beach homes, they had all been fortified with sandbags and concrete and they were spitting their machine gun fire down onto the men still struggling from the landing crafts at the water’s edge. The sea was red already and bodies littered the beach.

  My captain, a man named Johnson, slammed down beside me. He gave us brief orders, but in fact we all knew what we had to do. Before we could move anywhere, we had to take these fortifications, and the house we were lying in the lee of was ours. Other units had their own targets.