Sergeant Nelson of the Guards

by Gerald Kersh

Back came the old “Ho-de-Ho!” And Bill started to sing Coconuts. He had a voice like a saw. A sort of cow-bell voice; hoarse, but it carried miles. I shouldn’t be very much surprised if the Jerries heard us singing. I forget the exact words….

  Lots o’ lovely coconuts!

  Lots o’ lovely balls!

  Here comes me wife,

  She’s the idol of me life,

  Singing roll ’em,

  Bowl ’em,

  Pitch ’em—

  Penny a ball,

  Gorblimey!

  Roll ’em, bowl ’em, pitch ’em,

  Penny a ball!

  It was crazy as bloody hell. Everybody picked it up. Everybody started to sing, putting all his beef into it, while the bombs came down and the planes came over, and as true as I sit here the ground looked like a pavement in a thundershower with the bullets splashing up dust out of it. We all sang, and it broke the tension. You could see everybody’s mouth moving, although you couldn’t hear your own voice for the H.E. and the plane engines and the M.G.’s and everything else. Johnny Stallion died singing it, and so did a few more….

  Roll ’em!

  Bowl ’em!

  Pitch ’em—

  Penny a ball!

  I’ll never forget it, not in all my life. When I was in dock afterwards, delirious, I was singing my guts out all the time: that same song.

  Then, thank Christ, there was a Jerry infantry attack, after a style. A shower of them came over and we mowed ’em down and swept ’em back; and then they swept us back; and then we swept them back. And there seemed to be a bit of our artillery banging about somewhere. I said to Bill: “I wonder what the big idea is.”

  Bill said: “I somehow fancy either one of two things, Bittern. Either we’re advancing or retreating. Either the Jerry tanks are right through and we’re doing what we can to let the other kids slip out; or else we’re waiting for reinforcements. I’m not quite certain which.”

  But then the officer passed the order, and we knew which it was all right. Back. Coast. We had to scram. We’d been left standing. It was true about France having been bought and sold, it seems. The officer said: “Don’t worry. We’ll be back.”

  Bill said: “Hi-de-Hi, sir!” But he didn’t look like Hi-de-Hi just for that second or two. His face was twitching like a ferret in a bag. He’d had more strain than any of us. But he yelled like a mad lion: “Come on, you horrible men! What d’you think this is? A private hotel? Come on, you shower of women! Hi-de-Hi!”

  They said “Ho-de-Ho!” We started to move, still trying to sing Coconuts. The men were dead beat. We’d had it for days and nights. Days and days, and nights and nights. We had plenty of rough ground to cover to what there was of the road. You go out fresh in the morning from here with a belly full of breakfast and clean socks and shirts on, for a little thirty-five-mile route-march, and you feel it’s pretty hard. We were dead men before we started. We’d held out for (it seemed like) years; no grub worth mentioning; hardly any of us left, and those few so stinking tired we had to bite our lips to keep ourselves awake; bomb-blasted to jelly; thirsty; sick to bleeding death … the Jerry after us all the time, gunning for us, trying to stop us. We were rotten with tiredness. We were more exhausted than a man dying of fever. We had temperatures. Some of us were wounded. Some of us were scared. I would have lain down and died if it hadn’t been for Bill. So would we all. The officer went down like a … coconut. Not too bad a kid. Shot in the head. Bill was in charge. I said I would have lain down and died. I wanted to. I really wanted to. I was too fagged out to live. But as a Lance-Jack I couldn’t very well set the example. And Nelson was tireder than me, and he was going strong. He told us to dump our packs and stuff. He made us keep our respirators in case Jerry used gas. Rifles we dumped, and chucked the bolts in a pond so that they’d be no use to Jerry. We had no ammunition, only thirty rounds or so, which Bill took. He kept his rifle. He kept his pack. He was setting an example. I said: “What now?”

  He said: “There’s something like a matter of sixty-odd miles to go, as I work it out. Sixty to seventy. At the double. To the coast. That’s why we’re travelling light. Step it out for your lives, you bastards! Hi-de-Hi!”

  It came back like a whisper: “Ho-de-Ho.” Then one feller, dead tired, burst out crying. His nerves were all frayed out to string. Bill put his arm round him like a woman, and talked to him like a baby, and the feller hit the road. Yes … Bill got us on to the road. There wasn’t one single hope in hell. Not one single hope in hell. If it hadn’t been for Nelson we’d have stayed where we were.

  But we started to walk. Don’t ask me where we got the strength. Ask Purcell, he might know. I don’t. If we’d been fresh that road would’ve been hell. And we weren’t fresh. We were walking corpses. But we walked. You ask Purcell….

  XVI

  Feet That Left Red Patches

  “WELL,” said Purcell, “if you ask me, we dreamt it all. We couldn’t of done it. Walking corpses? We was dead six weeks and falling to bits. Dead? We looked like it, we felt like it, we smelt like it…. That road, eh, Bitt? That rotten road! You tell ’em, Bitt.”

  So Bittern proceeds:

  *

  I don’t mind saying that I have felt fresher in my time. And as for the road … I’ve been along nicer roads.

  We’d helped to cover the Stra-bloody-tegic Withdrawal, and now we were trying to get out ourselves. And I told you, and Purcell told you, we were whacked. I know I was walking along not feeling my legs any more. Then I felt myself running. Then I was flying. Then I was on the ground unconscious. I’d just dropped. Dropped like a poleaxed ox, and Bill was waking me up with the point of a bayonet. I got up and we slogged on, and on, and on. We’d hoped there might be some sort of a chance of a lift on a lorry. No. John Shanks’ pony. Our boots were finished. We were walking on bare feet. Purcell’s boots gave out first. He tied rags round his feet, and kept going. Then the rags gave out.

  We weren’t the only people on that road. There were others. There were some soldiers and a lot of civilians, all making for the coast; desperate. The civilians were the worst. They’d just run away in a blind panic. There was no holding ’em. The Jerries were coming. Bet your life the Jerries ’d spread the news beforehand, and started scares; poked the wind up the civilian population … got them to run, got them to choke up the roads and stop troop movement. It’s a Jerry trick, that, a typical one.

  There were millions of ’em, all mad with fright. They’d tried to get their furniture away, too. That was madness. I saw somebody with his old mum and a big clock on a little wheelbarrow. I dare say they were what he most wanted to save. His mother and a clock. He’d harnessed himself to the shafts of this barrow and was pulling for his life. And the old girl was screaming at him and shouting. All along the way there were bundles and bits of furniture scattered about. The mugs. They’d tried to get pianos and sideboards away. I saw one woman standing by a great big harp. A harp, with a gold frame. I was light-headed, and wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t get it out. As we got along the people got thicker. Right in the middle of the road there was a busted two-wheel cart and a dead horse, and an old man tearing his own hair and beard out and hitting himself on the chest and face. He’d gone mad I don’t blame him. I saw a woman squatting on her backside with a great bundle of crockery, nearly all smashed. She was sorting it out. But it was terrible to see some of the real old ’uns lying there by the roadside, dead beat, sort of waving to you as you passed, as if they wanted you to pick ’em up and carry ’em.

  And the mob of refugees got thicker and thicker, and then, all of a sudden, while we were trying to get through, somebody yelled “Gas!” It was a Jerry trick, again: Fifth Column stuff. And you should have seen the stampede. People screamed and tried to run away. Men were trampling on women. Women were treading down children. And right in the midst of it all—Zing!—right down out of the clouds they came, Jerry dive-machine-gunners firing right into the middle of the crowd and cutting down dozens o
f them like nettles. God Almighty, you should have seen those Jerries come down on them evacuees! Some of us didn’t dare to duck or fall down, because in the first place we’d have been too tired to get up again, and in the second place there was more danger of getting trampled to death than shot, because the people were mad with fright. It’s argued that you’re safer standing than lying when they dive-machine-gun you, anyway. Bill tried to do something with the few rounds he had left, but he couldn’t do anything that I could see. Then the bloody nightmare ’d start all over again…. “GAAAAAAS!” And stampede. So we moved very slowly, and every step was agony.

  I don’t know how far we went before the thing I’m telling you happened. It was miles, millions of rotten miles. There was another bit of Jerry-diving. Then somehow the mob thinned off a bit. A lot of them got the idea of keeping off the road, I dare say. And then, under a tree, we saw a woman. I forget whether fair or dark. She was sitting there with a kid in her arms, and she was giving this kid the breast. There was another kid standing next to her and sucking his thumb and looking down: a boy in a black beret, maybe four or five years old. Bill gives her the “Hi-de-Hi,” but only the kid standing up looks round. Then Bill said: “So help me, she’s copped it.” It was just like he said. She’d got under this tree to feed the poor little baby, and Jerry’d come down and machine-gunned around the place. And the kid was killed while he was sucking, and she was killed too. She must have had a dozen rounds in her, chest and neck. She’d had some things with her, and they were all scattered about … kid’s clothes, mostly, and a little tiny baby’s pot no bigger than a teacup with a picture of Mickey Mouse on it, and stuff like that. And there stood this poor feller sucking his thumb and just staring. Not crying, mind you, but staring, staring and sucking his thumb. He didn’t know what it was all about. Maybe he thought it was all a great big joke. It might have been fun to him, only I doubt it very much; because he looked shocked and dead-white.

  Bill says: “By God! Look, look at that!” His face was so white it made the dirt on it look blacker, and he looked terrible. “By God! Look at that!” And he says: “Halt!”—like a lion at feeding-time, and out of sheer force of habit everybody sort of stopped on the right foot. “Look at that!” says Bill, “look!” He couldn’t think of anything more to say for a second, and then he said: “Are you going to march, you bastards? Are you going to get yourselves ready to come back? Or are you going to stay here and die and let them get away with that down there? Look! Or do I have to rub your noses in it?”

  One of the fellers fell down, asleep, exhausted. Bill picked him up, and dragged open his eyes with his fingers, and stuck his face close, and said: “Look!”

  I was a bit scared of Bill then. I was scared he’d gone mad. He started to take off his big pack. He kicked it across the road. His feet were bleeding a bit and there were reddish patches where he put them down. He spat into the air. He was trying to hit the sky where the Jerries ’d come from. “You wait!” he said. “I’m coming back for you! But now I’ll take this.”

  The kid was just staring at him. Bill’s ammo was gone. He picked his rifle up by the nose-piece and slammed it down and broke off the butt. Then he picked up the kid, and said: “March or die.”

  Then a few minutes later, he said: “I’m sorry I lost my temper with you. Hi-de-Hi!”

  Three of us managed to say “Ho-de-Ho,” and the rest moved their lips.

  And we slogged on, and we thought that road would never end, Nelson carrying the kid and talking to it in English, which the kid couldn’t understand. The kid didn’t cry. It sneezed once, and Bill wiped his nose for it with his cuff, having no handkerchief. Once we got to a bit of road that looked exactly like the place we’d come from first, and one of us had hysterics. But we were moving, Nelson talking to us and the kid about this and that, but I don’t remember what he said very much, because my brain was beginning to go dead on me and I only heard things in bits, like you hear noise coming through the doors of a pub when somebody’s just gone out and they’re swinging backwards and forwards. One man died on the way.

  There was another raid before long. The kid began to cry as soon as he heard the planes. It woke him up, you see: he’d been stunned with shock or something before. It was then that I got that bullet in the shoulder. We took cover, standing. Bill had his tin hat over the kid’s head, and I was standing close by, swaying a bit. And then they started to spray us with bursts. I saw a woman about sixty years old jump into the air like a greyhound and come down sprawling. I sort of blinked, and said to Bill:

  “Who’re you pushing?”

  Then I felt my arm wet, and knew it had been a bullet that pushed me, not Bill. It must have gone through a narrow part of the tree, straight through the soft part of my shoulder, and into Bill’s eye. It was just about spent when it hit him, what with me and the tree being there first. He was holding one fist over his left eye. When he took it away, I saw the round about two-thirds buried in his eyeball. About another ten pounds of force behind that bullet and it would have been inside his head. I said: “For Christ’s sake, Bill!” He said: “Pull it out, quick. It’ll frighten the kid.”

  I remember reaching out two fingers and giving the bullet a hard pull. It came free at once. The next thing, I was on my knees, trying to get up and singing something to myself. It was Coconuts. I’d just passed out for a moment, and woke up again as soon as I’d hit the ground. I managed to get up, but I knew that if I went down once more, I’d lie there till I died or the Jerries found me. Bill had got hold of a bit of somebody’s blue dress. He tied his eye up as he walked, and the feller we called Bullhorn—it was his real name—held the kid while he did it.

  And he went on. That was a road. By Jesus that was a road. I don’t know how long it took us. We had no feet left. I’ve got the scars on the soles of my feet still, and one toe gone where I cut the muscle of it on some glass.

  The kid cried and cried, and then stopped crying. “He’s asleep,” said Bill, and managed to walk on without joggling it very much. But some miles later, he lifted up the kid’s face with a finger under the chin, and said: “He’s dead.”

  So he was. I don’t know what he’d died of. It must have been shock. His heart had just stopped beating when he stopped crying. Bill laid him down in a ditch, and said nothing at all, absolutely nothing.

  We were on the bones of our feet, nearly.

  And then we got to the beach.

  *

  It is Purcell who continues:

  XVII

  Journey from Hell to Breakfast

  WHAT BITT says is dead right. Straight up, what Bitt says is a hundred per cent. We got there. When we got to the beach, Bitt keeled over and went spark out. So did nearly everybody else. I didn’t. I was sort of stunned, but kind of awake. You know when you’re just dropping down dead of needing sleep—and then all of a sudden you come spark awake for a second or two, or maybe an hour? The way I look at it, you’ve got a reserve of liveliness tucked away and you kind of rub down to it. Bitt was wounded, you see. It was only a flesh wound, but he was a bit tired, like the rest of us. I saw men lying down and crying like babies. It was all sorts of things. We’d got that far. But we could foot-slog on raw plates-of-meat … but not across the bloody Channel, not even we couldn’t. I said to Sarnt Nelson: “Well?”

  He said to me: “What d’you mean, well? Now we get an issue of divers’ helmets and lead boots and bleeding well march to attention across to the other side.”

  I was light-headed, see? I said: “I don’t get that, Bill. Divers’ helmets?”

  He said: “Listen.”

  I listened, but I couldn’t hear nothing. “Listen to what?” I said.

  And Sarnt Nelson said: “Deaf?”

  I said no, I wasn’t deaf, and he said I must be.

  “Guns,” he said. “Things what go off bang.”

  “Oh,” I said, “them! I thought they’d been going on all the time.”

  Because guns was going from the se
a. Only I’d had my head so full of ’em, I didn’t notice. It’s a fact.

  “Well, Bill,” I said, “I can’t go much farther than this.”

  “Boats,” he said. “Can’t you see?”

  I saw it all then. I blinked a bit and rubbed the gum put of my eyes, and it was like a fog lifting. The sea was like iron, dead flat. There was ships, bags of ’em, and bags of boats, all sorts of boats. They were coming ashore, you see, and taking bags of us off. And I’ll tell you something. I don’t listen to no bull-and-boloney about discipline being bad, not now I don’t. I’m all for it. After that mob on the road, after all I’d seen, I could have cried my eyes out at the sight of them geezers lined up like a pay parade on that bloody beach, waiting for the boats.

  Bill got our mugs on their feet and we joined the queue. I said: “Hadn’t you better let me take over a bit, Bill? Your eye …”

  He said: “That’s right, Purcy, I did get something in my eye. But that’s all right.”

  There was stuff coming out of it, and it looked horrible. I said: “It was a shame about that kid, Bill.”

  He said: “Never mind about the kid, Purcy. Keep these mugs on their feet, if you can.” Then he gives ’em the old “Hi-de-Hi!” and back comes the old “Ho-de-Ho” with something like the good old spirit in it.

  “Sing!” he bellows. “Sing! It’s an order!”

  And so we struck up Coconuts, and by the time we come to

  Roll ’em!

  Bowl ’em!

  Pitch ’em!

  Penny a ball!

  that bloody silly song was running up the line like a heath fire. And we stood there singing our hearts out while we kept an eye on the sea for boats. No stampede here, my cockos! Go on, laugh at discipline! Slouch about bolo and do as you bleeding like, and feel free-and-easy!—The time’ll come when you’ll go down on your bended knees and thank your lucky stars for a bit of the good old Guards order, bags and bags of it, and the more the better!