by Thomas Wood
Still, I pushed a little bit further.
“Is it serious?” queried the Captain, leaving just the two Canadians up on watch.
“Yes, Sir. It’s bleeding heavily and I have nothing to secure the dressing to. He needs proper attention, now.”
“We need to head back immediately then,” he sounded almost disappointed, as if Hamilton had let him down.
Hamilton’s face continued to twist itself into all manner of shapes and variations, as he tried his hardest to deal with the pain. The accentuated features of his face, that stuck out on account of his set back eyes and slim stature, began to force themselves out even more now, as a heavy layer of sweat began to form on the surface of his skin.
“Yes, Sir. We need to get him out of here now.”
“Right then, that’s decided. We head back at once.”
I was almost jubilant that the Captain had not had the say in the matter that he had been yearning for.
It meant that I was grateful for the fact that Hamilton had got himself injured.
16
I couldn’t quite work out if the Captain was happy, annoyed or simply completely devoid of any human emotions. While Earnshaw and I tried our best to patch Hamilton up and get him ready to move, Captain Arnold barely even looked over in his direction, instead sitting and sighing, sporadically looking at his watch as if he was late for a very significant engagement.
I wondered if he was beginning to have the same thoughts that I was.
Only five hours to go now until the start of McKay’s trial.
I tried to sympathise with him the best that I could. The way that I saw it, the longer that we stayed out here, the easier it would be for us to end up dead, which would have a dual disappointment to it. The first was that we would have failed in our operation and no one would ever know of the intelligence that we had gained that night. And the second, perhaps more importantly to us all, was that we would not be able to give evidence at McKay’s court martial, meaning almost certain death.
“Hamilton, Hamilton, listen to me, listen to me,” I gave him a couple of slaps around the face, just to make sure that he was still awake and able to take in what I was about to say. For a brief moment, he opened his heavy eyes.
“We’re going to move in a minute, when we do, I need you to keep this arm pressed down as firm as you can go. Do you understand me? Repeat it back to me if you do.”
“Arm…pressed…down on dressing…Got it, Andrew…”
I was taken aback. It was the first time that he had ever called me by my Christian name. But now was not the time to berate him for that. That could wait. I hoped that I would be able to joke with him about it in a few days’ time.
I was trying my absolute best for the young posh boy who lay at my feet, not just because he had saved my life, but because he was a decent chap who did not deserve to die. I had been dreaming not half an hour before about how I had wanted his father to call him back home, so that he could see the rest of the war out safely, but I was beginning to come to the realisation that not even his father would be able to save him now.
“You ready, Ellis?”
“Yes, Sir. As soon as you are.”
I pulled Hamilton’s tunic back on, not bothering to do the buttons up, and pulled his webbing back over his arms, just in case he needed it later on. The straps would cut into his armpit, but it was the best chance he had of keeping the dressing in place.
“Right then, gents. Here is what is going to happen. We will leave in segments; Earnshaw, you are to leave first, just get back to our lines as quickly as possible and tell them of the situation. Next, I will follow, to clear the way for you three. I am expecting you to help move Hamilton, seeing as it was your lot that did this to him.”
He raised an eyebrow towards Maas.
“Yes, Captain. Of course.”
He was just grateful to be coming back with us, he clearly did not mind under what orders it was.
“You two,” he looked over towards the Canadians, “I want you to wait here, to cover our backs. Just in case. Leave a ten minute gap between Ellis leaving and your departure. Got it?”
“Yes, Sir.”
They looked at one another with a knowing expression, which seemed to be almost happy that they would be left alone again. They were used to working as just the pair, making all the decisions and knowing that if they got it wrong, it would be them who paid the price. Working as a team really did not fit their style.
Equally though, they were tinged with annoyance and frustration, as they knew that it was always the last men back to the line who got pinged in the back by a hidden enemy. I just hoped that their luck did not run out tonight.
“Here Hamilton, take this mate,” said Earnshaw, as he prepared to leave first, “Hopefully I won’t be needing that. I’ll be quicker without it anyway.”
He pressed his rifle gently into Hamilton’s chest, before taking one last look at us.
“Right then, chaps. I’ll see you in a bit. Good luck.”
“You too.”
The Captain left a very lengthy pause before finding his voice.
“Okay then, back to our lines. All quite simple really,” he risked a smile, but it didn’t feel quite right to return it, especially as Hamilton had suddenly become transfixed upon my face.
“You ready, David?”
He tried his best to nod.
The Captain left us, before we pulled Hamilton around so that we could pull him by his webbing. He winced as the strap found its way into the pit of his arm, but he was slowly becoming desensitised to the pain, which wasn’t necessarily a good sign. If he could tell us when it really hurt, we could work out whether we were making it worse for him or not.
Our progress was incredibly slow, and I could make out the shape of Captain Arnold up ahead, impatiently stopping and waiting for us to reach the next waypoint.
He was crawling as the crow flies, so that we had as little manoeuvring as possible to keep Hamilton in as much comfort as possible. On the way, he was moving bits of old barbed wire and rotting carts that had been there ever since we had first arrived in Albert.
As we sloshed through shallow puddles and around long-dead men, I couldn’t help but imagine all the dirt and grime that was infiltrating Hamilton as we pulled him along. I could only hope that the dressing was doing its job, at both keeping his blood in, but keeping the dirt out.
We began to tire quite quickly, the weight of any full-grown man taking its toll far more than I could ever have imagined. But I was coupled with the German, who was skinnier and weaker than I was, especially with the wound that had been gushing from his leg ever since his little theatrics.
“Nearly there, Hamilton. I can see our wire now mate.”
I looked down at him.
“Hamilton?”
I put my ear to his nose. He was breathing, just about. But it was weak and irregular. He needed to see a doctor and as soon as possible.
I looked around panicked, trying to spot the Captain so that I could usher him over for some additional help, but I had lost sight of him.
Where is he?
He couldn’t have made it to our lines already, could he?
We weren’t far off. In fact, if I was to get up and run, I would probably have been there in fifteen seconds flat.
But it was going to take far longer than that, with one seriously injured man in tow and another not faring too well either.
My heart began to pound faster than the rate of a machinegun, each beat pumping harder and faster than the last, until the point where I thought it would simply give up all together.
I began to get really flustered but decided there was nothing for it apart from to persevere.
“Come on, let’s go.”
It took us another three or four minutes before I spotted the Captain again, lying behind a pile of rotten old wood that had come to embed itself upright in the mud.
I began to tug Hamilton with a renewed vigour, suddenly pictur
ing the strength with which McKay would have been able to pull him, with his short but incredibly powerful frame, like a locomotive engine, surging towards the British lines. If McKay had been here, I was sure that we would all be back in the British lines already. No doubt about it.
“Wait…Stop…”
“What’s the matter, are you okay?” I said, turning to Maas, who had ordered me to halt.
“Not me. Him. He’s gone.”
“What? No. I’ve only just checked.”
“Check again.”
I looked at Hamilton’s face. One eye was wide open, the other as if it had tried to close but not quite sealed itself. Both of his pupils had widened to the point where you could barely make out what colour they had been. His mouth hung open in a pathetic yawn, which was where I pressed my ear in the hope of hearing or feeling a faint breeze as he continued to live.
But Maas was right. There was nothing.
Hamilton had gone.
I checked his pulse, just to make sure. I didn’t want him to wake up in a few hours, all alone and confused. But there was nothing. Just a distant warmness that was gradually going to lose itself over the next few hours. By sunrise, he would be as cold as all the other men that had been left out there.
“I am sorry.”
There was nothing to be said, we just had to focus on ourselves now.
“Here, take this,” I said, passing Hamilton’s rifle to Maas, who looked at it in bemusement. “You do know how to use it, yes?”
“Yes, it’s just…I don’t know…Never mind.”
“Good. Let’s get a move on then, shall we?”
Maas stared at me, bewildered at my coldness over Hamilton and the way that I had entrusted him with a rifle. But the way that I saw it, if he was to turn the rifle on me in that instant, then I would not have really cared much at all. I was losing friends quicker than I could make them. Before too long, it wouldn’t have surprised me if I was on my own in the world.
As for Hamilton, it felt as though I had taken a pickaxe through my heart. I had loved him dearly and, although he was a year or two older than me, I looked at him as if he was my younger brother. I had tried to teach him as much as I possibly could about raiding and, in the end, he had lasted a lot longer than the one mission that I had predicted for him.
He was a fine soldier. A fine boy. That was how he would always be remembered. By me, anyway.
At that moment, a series of gunshots rang out, and I heard the wayward shots just thump into the mud not too far behind us. We didn’t have time to look back and see what was going on. The Canadians would just have to sort themselves out, they knew what they were in for.
Then, a few more rifle cracks. Followed by silence. Then, a grenade blast.
I couldn’t help it, I simply had to look backwards.
I could see no movement, other than the dust cloud that had emerged from the front of the farmhouse.
I waited for a second or two, yearning to see the two Canadians come stumbling from the back of the ruins.
Come on.
But there was nothing. There wasn’t going to be either.
Three dead in as many minutes.
Just sort yourself out. Come on, be selfish.
It wasn’t a difficult request.
It’s incredibly difficult to be selfless when everyone that you love is either locked up in a prison cell or recently deceased. When that happens, the only person that you can look out for is yourself.
Your sister isn’t dead or in prison. Neither are your parents.
I really must write to them, I told myself for the thousandth time.
I could see our lines clearly now, as the Captain slid his way into the frontline trench, his odd little head bobbing around at the surface as he awaited our arrival.
I was feeling weak, tender and lower than I had ever felt before.
I will write to them as soon as I get back.
If you make it back.
As the thoughts left my mind, they were overtaken by one that I had not had for a while now, one that I had managed to keep supressed for the last few weeks. But it was a thought that I was going to find incredibly difficult to ignore.
It had been a tumultuous night after all.
I really needed a drink. I really wanted some of that paraffin.
17
In the event, I hadn’t had time for a drink at all.
As soon as we had made it back into the frontline trench, we were whisked off back to our billets and ordered to get changed as quickly as we possibly could.
We had only been allowed a very brief ‘goodbye’ with Franck, our hospitable German prisoner, who was taken away by the military police almost as quickly as we were taken off by our own forces.
The Captain and I had been given next to no time to have anything that resembled a wash and, even worse for the Captain, he had still not had the time for a shave. Now in the daylight, it seemed like his beard had grown at least half an inch in the few hours that we had been out in No Man’s Land. That was the stress, I reasoned.
But now, I could feel the sweat beginning to drip from every possible crevice in my body, doing nothing but making me even more aware of the grease and dirt that was coating every inch of my skin. I wondered if Captain Arnold was feeling the same.
My palms continued to sweat like they never had done before, my heart racing as I continued to panic about what might happen in the next few minutes. I hadn’t felt this scared in years, if at all in my life.
I looked at the palms of my hands, which glistened sweetly in the functional room that I found myself in. They were still muddied slightly, with a little smearing of Hamilton’s blood still sitting on them comfortingly.
My uniform was pristine however, the cleanest one that I think I had ever pulled on, every crease and tuck exactly where it was meant to be. It was the same for Captain Arnold as well. It was probably only because someone else had laundered it that it was in such a good condition. I never managed to get mine that good.
“You are Sergeant Andrew Ellis?”
I pulled myself upright and back into the room. For a while I did not feel the need to reply, responding only with a stare that ended with a repetition of the same question, but just a little more irate.
“Yes, Sir. That’s me.”
“You served as a Private at Neuve Chapelle in January with the Second Battalion of The Rifle Brigade, before being promoted to Corporal. All correct so far?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You were then transferred to join Captain Arnold’s men, where you were then promoted to Sergeant. Have I neglected anything in this regard?”
“No, Sir. Nothing at all.”
“Good. Good.” He spent a few moments before looking up at me once again, clearly disgusted at the state of the man that stood before him.
I looked him boldly in the eye, in an attempt to try and unnerve him, but there was no real hope of that. The major sat coolly in his chair, as if he had been there a thousand times already that morning, flanked on either side by two, much younger looking Captains, who had apparently found their way to a nice cushy job this far behind the line.
Hamilton should be the one sat there. He could still be alive.
The table that they sat at was highly polished and overly long, stretching almost from one side of the room to the next, along the length of the far wall with an imposing looking window directly behind the three presiding officers.
McKay was stood over to my right, at the side of the room, sitting behind a battered old table that looked like it was from the days of Napoleon. Next to him sat a young, overenthusiastic Lieutenant, who fiddled with his fingers out of a desperation to do something.
Behind him, reminding him constantly of where he was, was the most stern-faced Company Sergeant Major that I had ever seen. I tried my utmost to avoid eye contact with him, as I convinced myself that I would turn to a pillar of salt the moment we locked on to each other.
“So, Sergeant Ellis,
are you fully aware of the charge that Lance Corporal McKay is on here today?”
“Yes, Sir. Perfectly, Sir.”
“And you are also aware of the plea that he has consequently entered?”
“Yes, Sir. He has pleaded guilty, Sir.”
I had tried my very hardest to get him to lean the other way, as pleading guilty would almost certainly lead him to being shot, especially on the charge of treason and desertion that he was on.
I looked over at him as I responded to each of the Major’s questions, hoping that McKay would see something in me that would make him have a change of heart. But there was no recognition of the torment that I was going through on his part.
He simply looked at me and smiled.
He looked well rested and presentable, quite the opposite to me, who had had no sleep whatsoever and was now presented before a court martial, with senior officers scrutinising my every move. I hoped that they knew of the circumstances, or there was a chance that the Captain and I would both be placed on a similar charge, just for the way that we looked.
I thought for a moment about how lucky McKay had been, to be able to get a full night’s rest. At which point I felt quite betrayed by him.
Why hadn’t he been up all night? He had known that we were out. Why wasn’t he worried about us?
I tried my best to return a half-smile but found it difficult to when I looked upon his sorry situation. Above everything else, McKay had no clue that Hamilton was now cold, lying out in No Man’s Land, waiting for the earth to slowly swallow his corpse, only to be dug up the next time a trench was dug there.
“Do you have anything to ask the Sergeant, Lieutenant Bourne?”
The young man got up, as McKay’s defending officer, who had questioned the Captain in search of some mitigating circumstances earlier on. He had not lasted more than three minutes before running out of things to say. At least it was getting things over and done with nice and quickly for McKay.
“Sergeant Ellis,” he said, his wayward eye looking up at his singular eyebrow while the other looked in my direction. “On the night in question, it was your first time out with Captain Arnold and his men. Am I correct in saying that?”