Forward into Hell

by Vince Bramley

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ I said, ‘who put that there?’ I felt so utterly helpless, so sad.

  ‘Not sure,’ said Steve, ‘but I think he had a sister or something who gave it to him before all this shit started.’

  Had Westy pulled the mascot from his smock before the fatal shell, or after?

  Jimmy tucked it back in his smock again. ‘What a fucking game this is,’ he said.

  Pete Morrison joined us. This guy was excellent. He had been up and down the objective throughout, collecting dead and wounded alike. ‘Thank God I’ve help with these three. I’m fucked, you know.’ He held three grey poly bags. He threw them down and went over to a body. ‘Right, come on, help me,’ Pete said.

  We all stood still. No one moved a muscle.

  He looked up at us. ‘Someone has to do it, lads. Let’s get them down the bottom a.s.a.p., yeah?’

  I knelt on one side of the body. ‘Look, Peter, we’re not wanting this, not our guys,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jim, ‘we’ll help but, Jesus, this is a fucking bastard.’

  Johnny, Jimmy Morham, Steve Wake and I laid out the grey bag and unzipped it ready. A green Argie blanket lay over the body. Steve slowly pulled the blanket off him from the bottom, revealing the wound that had killed him. I grabbed the blanket in frantic haste.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Jim.

  ‘Nothing. Let’s just put him in with the blanket, OK?’

  Everyone got the hint. Johnny and I pulled the body towards us while the bag was slid under him. When it was tucked under him, we gently laid him on to the bag. We then had to push him the other way. As we did this, my hand slipped into the wound. I felt sick at the feeling. I wanted to get up quickly and walk way, to hide somewhere, but I couldn’t. I pulled my hand out and wiped it on the grass quickly, the lads looked at me. No one spoke. No one had to; my embarrassment was shared. The bag was zipped up and we took hold of the corner grips. Pete and another lad went over to Westy, while we carried the body down the hill.

  The walk was rough and longer than we thought, a steep descent. We stopped two or three times to change hands. We reached the bottom and saw the padre with some of the wounded who were still awaiting evacuation. They lay in groups with medics going among them.

  We put down our bag with the rest. The pile was mounting. Among the bodies were Johnny Crow, Sergeant Ian McKay and Corporal Stewart McLaughlin. I didn’t know that McLaughlin had died until that moment. The name tags boldly showed who was dead.

  A few guys sat to one side, looking up at us as we laid the body down. My eyes met those of the medic from our field ambulance, Jock. He looked so different. He looked as if he had been weeping; his eyes were wide and staring. We grinned at each other.

  ‘Jock, is that you?’

  ‘Yeah, why?’

  ‘You look fucked.’

  ‘To be honest, Vince, you look bloody awful too. I wasn’t sure it was you at first.’

  I sat beside him, holding my rifle across my legs. I got out a packet of Rolos. ‘Here, have some,’ I said. ‘What’s it been like for you down here then?’

  ‘Let’s put it this way: I’ve done all the training possible for this and it still hasn’t been what I thought. It’s fucking shitty, Vince.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s like that up there too.’

  Looking at me again, he said, ‘Hope tomorrow never comes.’

  Our little chat was abruptly halted, as two or three more wounded were brought down. They were A Company men, Artillery. One lad on a stretcher held his leg, screaming. Jock jumped up and shouted to me, ‘Here we go again, Vince.’

  I ran with him; there was nothing else I could do. Jock pulled down the wounded guy’s trousers and half-stuffed, half-pushed a plasma syringe up his rectum. He injected morphine and mustered bandages to the wound, all within seconds of the lad’s arrival. The soldier looked up at us all, his wide, frantic eyes staring with fright and concern.

  Jock patted him and said, ‘You’ll be OK.’

  I got up and went away. I wasn’t any use to them there: the organisation was brilliant.

  I walked up the hill through B Company’s rest area. I passed the remains of the company, a small group of worn-out troops lying against rocks on the ground. Everyone I saw had strain in his eyes, almost as if they were on a different planet. Taff Goring stood watching me tramp up the short slope again. His face made a picture I’ll never forget. His whole face was sunken and his hollow eyes told a story in themselves. I felt for him and the lads sitting around him.

  ‘Hi, Vince,’ he said, ‘how’s it going?’

  ‘The pits,’ I said.

  We agreed what a shitty game it was.

  With Johnny, I crossed over towards our night position. We climbed through the shitpit. Human excrement lay everywhere. The smell was unbelievable. It seemed to lie in every corner. The smell even drifted with us, as if it was chasing us.

  When we reached the previous night’s gun position, Johnny and I stood on the spent bullet cases and looked at my target arc. It was huge. This side of the mountain was completely open to my right. Only a small clump of rocks here and there obscured a total view of Mount Tumbledown. Halfway along the smooth side of a hill lay a one-hundred-and-six-millimetre recoilless rifle, similar to a Wombat. Was that the weapon that had nearly killed me? Further on, through A Company’s position, lay Stanley. With my binos, I watched Argentinean trucks coming and going through Moody Brook, the old Marine barracks.

  To my right, Tumbledown buzzed with activity. Argie troops walked about, going from one bunker to another. It was only a matter of time until that battle would begin. Our troops were in twos and threes, still searching and collecting military souvenirs. Johnny nudged me and I looked in the direction he was facing. Sitting behind a small rock were three or four soldiers, Guardsmen, I think, with high-powered binos and a map, busily noting down Tumbledown’s enemy positions.

  ‘Well, Johnny, tonight or tomorrow, what do you reckon?’ I said.

  ‘Tonight, Vince.’

  We turned around to where Ginge had lain, and walked back from the skyline to find the gap through which Sergeant P had led us. In this way, we avoided being seen from Tumbledown. On the ground, I saw bits of clothing and flesh. Everywhere resembled a slaughteryard. We walked down ten metres or so and there was more and more. Stuck on the side of a rock was what was clearly a large piece. Johnny and I moved closer to it and my stomach churned as I saw the nose and cheek of a face. We looked at each other, our eyes wide. I put my bayonet under the flesh and flicked it into the ground, before burying it quickly. Neither of us spoke. I had no doubts, and Pete M confirmed to me, that this was the remains of a mate. Pete told me later that he had died instantly, for only the waist down remained. I felt gutted beyond belief. I had been told of the direct hit that had also killed two others. To see with my own eyes the body and remains was another story.

  Walking over a crest, we bumped into Pat Harley. With him were one or two others, though I no longer remember who they were. As I was talking to Pat, I noticed a helmet on the end of an SLR planted in the rock face. Nodding towards this, Pat mentioned that he had come up and found Geordie Lang dead. We rounded the rock face and at our feet lay Doc and Geordie, both on their backs. They had died in an open space with the infamous Tumbledown looking down on them. Geordie had died trying to save Doc. The bastard sniper had caught him in the open as he reached him.

  Geordie lay with his mouth slightly open. Gunshot wounds to his chest and stomach meant he had died quickly. Evidence around him showed that he had tried to reach Doc. Had he been calling for help himself? Pat, looking cut up, took Geordie’s fags, saying, ‘He’d want one of us to have them rather than the rear echelon.’

  We turned our attention to Doc, who was more depressing. DM hadn’t died quickly. He must, in fact, have been fully aware of his injuries. The top part of his skull was blown away, the brain visible, smashed by a sniper’s bullet. Only the fragmented skull had prevented the complete collaps
e of the side of his head. How he survived the impact God knows. Lying beside him were items from the first aid kit he had been carrying: a field dressing half-open, safety pins at his right-hand fingers near the ground. His left hand held a morphine syringe. This had been used; the thin needle pointed towards him. It must have been his dying act. His radio mike was still attached to his throat. A close friend told me many months later, ‘DM fell on his radio. The sending switch was stuck and he was on permanent “send” to all of us. We could hear him gurgling and moaning as he became aware that he had been shot badly. Vince, it sent the signallers nuts, but we were all helpless. The sniper picked at anyone that moved. Geordie tried and lost his life for it. We eventually had to turn to the emergency frequency to establish communications again.’

  DM had remained conscious and eventually died on a part of that mountain alone with a lad who had bravely tried to rescue him. The sniper had coldly killed with the aid of a superb head-mounted night sight. He had killed at the slightest movement.

  We stepped back with the others as the medics arrived. Our ACC bearers joined us. We watched them carefully place the bodies of two good friends into grey body bags. The zipping up of the bags took from our sight two heroes who had died for two different reasons, for the principles that had brought us there in the first place. One died advancing on the enemy, the other died trying to save the life of his friend. As the bodies were carried away, the only evidence of their deaths was their weapons sticking into the ground.

  Standing back to regain cover, I turned for the last time to look at their rifles crowned by their helmets, the traditional way of marking the spot where a soldier had died. In the distance lay Stanley in full view. The sun was above me. As I looked, I couldn’t help but think, They died so near yet so far.

  Back at the base clearing, the OC came around encouraging everyone sitting there. The strain showed on everyone’s face. The dead lay about us and the smell reminded us all that this was hell itself. Quietly, the OC gave orders for all to spread out and take up defensive positions for the night. Burial parties were busy dragging Argie corpses, either by their legs or by their jackets, through the clearing to a patch being dug by some A Company lads. The bodies went into a makeshift grave; the enemy piled up in full view for everyone to see. A group of Argentinean prisoners helped with the digging and burial, alongside our guys. The Argies wept openly at the sight of their comrades’ bodies. One cradled the head of what must have been his friend. A lad from A Company gently tapped his shoulder to remind him that the body had to be buried. He cried out loudly, ‘Mama, Mama.’ Was that corpse his brother?

  We sat watching without pity, without feeling at all. We were all old men, hard old men with no feelings. Two lads pulled the weeping Argies away while the bodies were dropped and flopped into the shallow grave. Dirt buried the corpses and hid away their deaths for good. The prisoners were led past us back to battalion HQ.

  As I write now, feelings do come into it but during war you have to stop registering what you see. You have to laugh about it or play with it, because if you take it seriously you can come up against a barrier that is enough to send you nuts. Do I feel for the enemy now? Only as a soldier at arms, wrapped up in a conflict in which I had to fight. I feel for the Argies who lost their friends. I lost mates. We became united in loss. What a sad pity that politics failed in this case, otherwise we might only have fought verbally across a football pitch. Perhaps men will always want to kill each other.

  The OC broke up our background activity – ‘Come on, lads, move about now. Get shifted – the shells are still about you; plus we have only one or two hours of light left.’

  We shifted our kit and made for some empty bunkers on the side of the hill. Intelligence had it that the attack from the Argies would be coming from the open left side, not the Tumbledown side.

  Walking up a small slope with all my kit and hundreds of pounds of linked Argie ammo, I couldn’t help but think to myself, Here we go again. Orders for a counter-attack now. Jesus Christ, not again.

  The counter-attack was imminent. Johnny and I found a small alcove. It was only big enough for one to squeeze into and Johnny grabbed it. Five metres further down was a well-hidden bunker. Steve Wake and Mal sat over it, guarding it as if it was their castle. After gentle persuasion, I was allowed to join them for tea, so to speak. Johnny and I had two mess tins of chocolate porridge and a big brew to follow.

  The temperature seemed to have dropped further that day. The wind bit through us. Ricky came up to me moaning that not a single bergen had reached battalion HQ. I shouted to Johnny that we would collect as many blankets or sleeping bags as we wanted before nightfall. Ricky and I walked over the cliff line again. I thought that the empty bunkers would supply us with our needs.

  As we crossed the clearing, a bullet smashed into the rock beside me, less than a metre away. I dropped to the ground, and so did Ricky.

  ‘Where the fuck did that come from, Rick?’ I screamed.

  ‘Christ knows.’

  We were lying in a small clearing with no view at all. I crawled to a rock and stood up, pointing my rifle in the direction the bullet had come from. Nothing. Rick joined me. Gingerly, I poked my head around the rock face into the clearing. Still nothing. There was a gap of not much more than a metre before it met another rock face. In between the rocks, in the gap, rifles and ammo boxes lay abandoned.

  ‘What do you reckon, Rick? Shall we dash across and see if the bastard fires again?’

  ‘Why not, huh? You first; and I’ll scan the area.’

  I looked at him thinking, You bastard, but the guy who was shooting had the area well in his sights. ‘Right, here goes.’

  I ran across the small gap. As a bullet twanged against the rocks above my head, I fell against the rock face.

  ‘See him?’ I screamed.

  ‘No, all I see is Tumbledown.’

  ‘Well, it’s your turn now.’

  He looked at me, grinning, obviously thinking the same as I had. He ran across the clearing but this time the bullet seemed later than the one before as it hit the rocks.

  ‘It’s got to be a sniper on Tumbledown, Rick,’ I said, ‘you’re right. Look, go back to Johnny’s position and get my GPMG and Bob Geddis’s up here.’

  He went off. I looked across the valley. Someone over there was watching and waiting for me. The deadly game began.

  Johnny came up with Rick. After a quick brief with Johnny, we decided to move to a better position. We ran across the gap together with our heads tucked down. Whack – another bullet hit the rocks. I placed the GPMG between two rocks on the ground. I raised the sights to the max and fired in one long indiscriminate spray at the area where we thought the sniper might be. About one hundred rounds were through the gun before I stopped. Nothing was returned.

  Behind us lay three or four bunkers. We grabbed blankets and sleeping bags and found our positions for the night. I sat on my own thinking, Was it really necessary to play with the sniper? Was it really worth it?

  I hadn’t felt anything at all when firing at the sniper. I certainly hadn’t hit him, because I didn’t know his exact position. The whole episode wasn’t worth it, but many things seem different when you do them rather than think about them.

  The Two Sisters had had a shelling from us the previous night. We had a brew and waited, linked enemy ammo lying by our gun, to see if the Argies would counter-attack tonight. We sorted out the stag list with Sas, Steve Ratchford and Clive (the company clerk with our bunker). We had the first seven hours of the night: two hours twenty minutes each.

  As I stood or sat by the gun during the night, my only view was of utter darkness, as clouds had completely enveloped us. I was going nuts listening to every noise, every movement. All I could hear clearly was Steve Wake’s snoring from the bunker; twice I had to push him to break his breathing pattern. I didn’t think of home, victory or anything; my mind was totally wide open to survival, and falling asleep now could kill me.
/>   No one moved that night. The battalion stayed put in their little corners, sleeping or guarding, waiting for the counter-attack. On my shift, I spent more time looking behind me than facing the vast empty space across my arc. Behind me was the very edge of where the battalion had surprised an attack the night before. Surely the enemy had more opportunity to attack from Tumbledown than from the open area in front of me? It didn’t make sense to me to guard a suicidal route but I could only follow orders and the Intelligence reports.

  Even after changing positions and crawling into my sleeping bag, I couldn’t sleep. The Argentinean blankets smelled, and the bag stank like shit. The whole night was a blank, waiting for daylight. The only noises to keep us awake were those of war. The odd shell would crash on to the hill in the night and the ground would shake suddenly with the explosion. Then silence would abruptly return.

  The morning of 13 June was cold and wet. The snow had fallen. I crawled from my cramped bunker and stretched my sore limbs. The view across the valley revealed nothing but white snow with blades of grass sticking out of it. As the sun rose, the snow began to melt, but the cold wind remained. It was an ordeal to wake up, move about and motivate myself. I looked up at Johnny sitting on his stinking bag. We sat together and made a brew with the last of the water. Within an hour of daylight, the snow had gone but not the shelling.

  ‘The booming from Stanley was our alarm clock,’ Johnny said later.

  Shells came in thick and fast, with a vengeance. We crawled into our bunkers again. We listened to dirt, shrapnel and bits of rock thumping into the overhead protection of our bunker. We sat in silence, grinning at the shells as they landed near us, as if to reassure ourselves that if one went we all did. Everyone had gone to ground; no one moved out into the open.