Coming Home

by Roy E. Stolworthy

  “Sorry about that, lads, it were an accident, honest,” Hill said, holding out his mug for the last ladle of stew. Squatting down with a satisfied smile on his face, he spooned the stew greedily into his mouth. “You should have been a cook, Moses. This is bloody handsome. Hello, what have we got here? Piece of string, how’d that get in there?”

  “Oh dear, how remiss of me, I thought I’d removed all the rats’ tails,” Moses said, watching Hill’s face turn green. For the second time that day Leslie Hill broke wind. This time, however, it did not come unaccompanied.

  For the following seven weeks they did nothing but huddle against the driving rain, drink tea and complain until orders came to pack their kit and prepare to march south to a ridge dominating the Ypres salient. Mid-afternoon they arrived, tired and soaked to the skin. One of the men sighted a mobile canteen, and their spirits soared and complaints were quickly thrust aside.

  The next day, after breakfast, Sergeant Bull called the snipers into line. “Your job is to act as a decoy and hinder the Germans while our boys find their way across No Man’s Land. Keep your eyes peeled and remember your training,” he said.

  Thomas smiled. The time was fast approaching when he might at last achieve all he hoped for – death. He’d remained patient, never forgetting the vow he’d made to himself. The Rifles battalion consisted of just over nine hundred men, and they had trudged their way south through the worst weather in forty years. The terrain of No Man’s Land resembled a badly ploughed field without any cover and near-constant sheeting rain filled bomb craters until they overflowed with muddy slime. The men knew the price of slipping or stumbling into them was certain death by drowning.

  “You are not to wait and assist the wounded, do I make myself clear? I don’t care if it’s your best friend or your grandmother lying there dying. Carry on until all your objectives have been accomplished. I want casualties kept to a minimum,” Sergeant Bull continued.

  The drainage system that had once existed long before the event of war had now become non-existent after the continual bombardments from both sides. British and German soldiers fought and died in a man-made swamp of misery while the French cowered in their trenches and watched. Occasionally the snipers took to taking shots at them to while away the time and relieve the boredom. A few days previously the French had been seen drunk with alcohol while brave men fought and died for their country, and the Rifles hovered on the verge of attacking them in broad daylight. Sergeant Bull fought desperately to quell the uprising by sending a few men at a time to a nearby village for de-lousing, which never achieved a great deal. Within days the white lice would once more become rampant. Nevertheless, after an early morning patrol some of the British troops, accidently they pointed out, managed to find their way into French trenches and left the foul-minded occupants in no doubt as to how they felt. With military regularity the British artillery bombarded the Germans day and night for days, and although gains into German territory were being made, men were over-stretched and the casualties numbered in tens of thousands.

  At last the day everyone dreaded arrived and with blackened faces like Christy minstrels the snipers waited hunched in the trenches with a hundred-and-fifty-thousand troops as they had done many times before, nervous, exhausted and trembling with fear. Captain Devonshire waited pistol in hand, for the flare to arc into the sky, and ignoring the sweat springing from his forehead he called out his commands. The wild stubble on his chin bristled like the spines of a hedgehog. Some men waited with chalk-white faces and flitting eyes that stared into nowhere. Others held photographs of wives, girlfriends and children in their twitching hands. The youngest and those about to go over the top for the first and probably the last time clutched pictures of their mothers close to their chests. One youth wearing a brand new uniform grinned from ear to ear for some reason known only to him as urine trickled down his leg and stained his trousers. Men turned their backs and moved away nervously, thinking he might be about to turn insane.

  “Get a bloody move on for Chrissake, blow the bloody whistle and let’s get it over with!” a man roared, with his nerve ends jangling.

  “Fix bayonets, prepare to deploy in battle order!” Sergeant Bull screamed, and then added in a calm voice, “Steady, boys, steady, won’t be long now, when it’s all over we can all have a nice cup of tea.”

  Nobody heard the well-meant remark over the barrage of two thousand British field guns from the rear pounding away at the German trenches. The ground shook and men reached out to steady themselves, blinking to clear the cordite from their stinging eyes. Thomas cringed, his body ramrod stiff, listened to the sound of screaming horses as they tore wild-eyed to escape their halters and bolt to safety. Captain Devonshire gritted his teeth and attempted to control his trembling hands under the concerned eye of Sergeant Bull. Feet away from his head spumes of wet mud spurted into the air on the edge of the parapet as the German gunners found their range with long-distance machines guns. Sergeant Bull sighed. He’d long grown used to the sight and smell of ripped human flesh hanging limp from bodies, and he knew thousands would be cut down before they had gone ten paces. This wasn’t a war, it was organised murder.

  “Advance!” he cried.

  Along the line as far as the eye could see a single line of men climbed out with rifles at the port. With a man every two yards apart, they moved forward.

  “Come on, boys, they’re all ours now, let’s finish the blighters off,” the captain intended to call, but nothing came. The words remained inside him, trapped in the arid dryness of his throat. His hands gripped the scaling ladder and he climbed up to the parapet. The first blast of machine-gunfire took him full in the face. Jack Maynard stiffened and retched over the men climbing the ladder behind him.

  “Move!” Sergeant Bull roared at the top of his voice.

  Maynard slithered over the parapet and lay stiff with fear beside the captain’s headless body. Someone had removed the lid from hell. The stutter of a machine-gun sent his heart racing as bullets, like a swarm of wasps, hummed over his head. The groans of dying men and curses of those still alive with shattered limbs filled the air, and boots slipping and squelching in the sucking mud drowned out all other sounds. He closed his eyes hoping to shut out the fearful noise. Then he forced his mind to clear, and started to crawl out into No Man’s Land ignoring the bloodcurdling screams of agony all around him as men went down kicking and jerking. It was as if a giant hand swept them to one side. Nine days ago he’d sat in a seafront pub in Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast gently pushing a brand new engagement ring onto Maggie’s finger. He’d saved enough for a small cottage overlooking Robin Hood Bay, near Whitby and they planned to marry during his first leave.

  “Come along, lad, let’s get it done,” Sergeant Bull said gently.

  “Aye, I’m with you, Sergeant, get nowt done lying here shitting me’sen. See you at t’other end,” Maynard muttered, climbing to his feet.

  Thomas spread his men out at fifty-yard intervals down the line, and standing on ramps they continued firing through slits between sandbags until the volume of the advancing allies blocked out the sight of the enemy. Before them masses of advancing soldiers pressed forward at walking pace beneath the creeping barrage of their own guns. When the guns ceased firing, thousands of Germans poured from concrete dugouts and, manning machine-guns, cut the advancing soldiers down in a solid hail of bullets. The allied bombardment had proved useless. Allied soldiers fell like wheat beneath the scythe and slithered into the water-filled bomb craters from previous bombardments. Their hollow screams for help ignored by all, even their best friends. Like bedraggled insects crawling to a certain death, most of the attackers were out into No Man’s Land – now they had reached the point of no return and they knew there was no going back. Only the flight of a stray bullet or red-hot shrapnel ripping them to shreds stood between them and their fate. Thomas pushed a fresh magazine clip into the Mauser and sneered. This wasn’t the time to remember orders and he heaved
himself over the blood-stained parapet.

  Beneath his feet the ground trembled and a white flash blinded him and burned into his eyes, a sudden gust of hot air lifted him clear the muddy trench, wrenching the breath from his body. With arms and legs flailing like a ragdoll in a storm he felt himself deposited facedown ten yards behind the trench. Like a lost puppy dog he whimpered and groped blindly around in darkness, searching for his rifle. Panic tore into his body and he rubbed vigorously at his eyes with slime-caked hands – the exploding shell had rendered him blind. His hand reached out into the filthy clinging mud and touched the rifle. He gripped it tightly for fear it would slip through his fingers and climbed unsteadily to his feet. For a moment he swayed unable to decide which way to turn and stumbled towards the sound of the guns. He felt his feet slide from under him and crashed headlong into the bottom of the trench. Darkness turned to a smoky grey, then light blue. His vision returned and his whimper turned to a high-pitched shriek of joy as he clawed away the mud and filth from his face. Everywhere bloated dead rats lay scattered all over the trenches. Then he stopped and sweat poured from his forehead when his eyes fell upon the grotesque sight staring him full in the face. In sheer desperation he reached out at fresh air for support. A man’s head and body, minus his waist and legs, lay embedded in the soft muddy wall of the trench. A look of calmness fixed on its face and the eyes wide and expressionless stared back at him. His companions vaporised, bones and all, into nothing. Vomit snaked up from Thomas’s stomach and he sank to his knees spluttering and rasping for his breath. In the pale light he turned his head and felt a pang of jealousy. They were free of the misery.

  “Come on, you bastards!” he roared, clambering up the trench and spilling into the mud.

  On his feet, he swayed and stumbled towards the Germans’ guns firing from the hip. How could they miss him. Just one bullet and his debt would at last be paid in full. He slowed to almost a dawdle and moved out into the open, away from the other crouching soldiers. And standing to his full height he waited.

  “Come on, please, come on, do it,” he whispered hoarsely under his breath.

  Hans Richter, from the 136th Cologne Infantry, saw him, pushed back his helmet and smiled. “Come closer, you British pig,” he murmured, thinking of his friend Heinz lying screaming and legless in the bottom of the trench. His chin rested on the rifle’s stock and slowly his finger curled round the cold metal trigger.

  “Get down, you bloody fool, are you trying to get yourself bloody killed?” Sergeant Bull shouted, grabbing Thomas by the ankle and pulling him down below the lip of a mud-filled bomb crater.

  Richter pulled the trigger and waited. The bullet struck the rim of Thomas’s helmet and sent it spinning into the air. Thomas sank to the ground shaking his head in despair. Uncontrollable panic fired into his body and he felt himself sliding down the steep side of the muddy crater. Kicking his toecaps into the slippery mud for a foothold he felt himself sliding closer to the morass waiting to suffocate the life from his body. Frantically, his fingers gripped and scraped futilely at the slime, leaving deep trailing furrows as he fought to gain a hold, and the filthy cold water filled with bobbing human remains advanced up to his waist.

  “No, not this way!” he screamed aloud. “I don’t want to die like this, I don’t want to die. I’m sorry, Archie, I don’t want to die!”

  Sergeant Bull’s strong hands reached out, gripped his greatcoat collar and heaved him from the water. Part of a body, mutilated from a shell strike, splashed into the crater sending a wave of blood-red water cascading over his head and shoulders. The body twitched and kicked like a man gripped in the throes of a fit before sinking slowly beneath a pool of gurgling bubbles. Suddenly, he heard the sound of running boots slopping through the quagmire and looked up. Thousands upon thousands of British, Canadian and Australian soldiers came spoiling for a fight. A wave of Highlanders ran screaming with their plaid kilts swirling into the air revealing their nakedness, their white bony knees caked in mud. They looked like dirty raggedy dolls that a child might discard without a second thought. German field guns and trench mortars opened up, and metallic missiles poured down like the drizzling rain. Bodies somersaulted into the air, ripped to pieces. Great lumps of human flesh landed with a loud slapping noise, like someone clapping their hands, as they fell into the mud-slimy earth.

  “Get back to your lines, Corporal Elkin. I’ll be having a long word with you later!” Sergeant Bull roared above the increasing crescendo.

  “Sorry, Sergeant,” Thomas shouted, and climbing to his feet wiped away the blood streaming down his face. The sweat of fear ran down into his eyes, stinging and smarting. Summoning every ounce of strength he reached and grasped for remnants of ragged courage and slithered his way over No Man’s Land towards the German trenches. Like a man who had lost his mind he began to laugh – a throaty laugh that bubbled from his chest – and he felt the lightness in his legs carry him towards the death-spewing machine-guns. He was worthless and dispensable, unfit for the company of those around him and no longer placed any value on his life. Death came forever closer, within touching distance. Men were dying all around him, everyone a better man than him. He told himself today was a good day to die and allowed the Mauser to slip from his hands. Empty-handed and screaming and shouting every obscenity military life had taught him he threw himself at the enemy’s lines.

  Soldiers stood with feet apart hurling grenades into the German trenches, sending limbs and fountains of blood gushing into the air until the ground ran like a river of blood. It was like bedlam in hell. Thomas, ignoring Sergeant Bull’s calls, leapt into the German trench. His legs buckled beneath him when he landed on the duckboards, and losing his balance he staggered back and fell across the prostrate body of Hans Richter. Yards away a German officer holding a wounded leg oozing blood raised his hand and pointed his Luger. He pulled the trigger. An orange flash momentarily blinded Thomas, and the bullet entered his left shoulder pushing him back against the trench wall. His laugh turned to a gurgling cackle as the officer levelled the gun once again. The officer frowned and hesitated, then pointed the Luger at Thomas’s temple. Thomas closed his eyes and waited – the hangman would not have him. ‘Click’ – nothing happened. The officer pulled the trigger again and again. Thomas vaguely heard the explosion behind him and the German officer’s left eye became a black socket, his right eye staring in surprise as he crumpled to the floor.

  “Rather lax, old man,” Moses said, staring down at the dead officer, “running all that way just to get killed. One would think you had a death wish. Shall we return to our own lines? We seem to be finished here for the time being. Lucky the German’s gun jammed, he might have killed you.”

  “Why don’t you mind your own bloody business?” Thomas shouted, incandescent with anger and ignoring the pain searing into his wounded shoulder. Then from nowhere, and without warning, hordes of German stormtroopers, like an innumerable swarm of locusts began a counter-attack from a reserve trench. The allied soldiers pulled back, scrabbling and clawing their way back over pools of blood and stumps of flesh to their own lines. Some so thirsty they drank from the blood-filled craters, pushing aside the floating human remains. Above the crescendo of war they cried and wailed for their mothers to take them away from the universe of human destruction. Some slipped into the trenches unaware of their missing limbs, as naked fear, the greatest antidote for pain, coursed through their young bodies. It was just another day manufactured in hell.

  Moses hefted Thomas onto his shoulder and in an act of blind providence brought him to safety.

  “Move your arse!” the stretcher-bearers shouted at Moses. “We’ve the wounded to attend to, tell him to take his bloody scratch elsewhere.”

  “I’ll be all right,” Thomas shouted over the chaos and moans. “I’ll go to the medical station when things quieten down. Anyway, I reckon the bullet passed clean through,”

  Moses nodded and turned to look across No Man’s Land at the stragglin
g men covered in blood dragging comrades to the Godforsaken haven, where the ever-present rats waited, squeaking and squealing, to banquet on warm human flesh. The unbelievable sight appalled him. Tears turned the whites of his eyes red and trickled down his mud-stained face. He had never felt so lonely and desperate in his life, never so cut off from reality. All perspective of humanity dribbled away to nothing, like piss down a drain.

  “Who will dig the graves and say words in defence of humanity?” he cried out. “Who will tell them why they were born, and for what?”

  With unsteady hands he tore open the top button of his tunic, and pulled out a crucifix. A quick wrench snapped the silver chain holding it around his neck and he hurled it into No Man’s Land. With sobs beating his chest he raised his head and gazed up at the grey sky, the rain splattered and bounced off his face, and he whispered, “I have no want of you any more. You are never where you are needed most.”

  Thomas struggled to yank the pocket watch from his tunic and with flickering eyes opened the protective cover and glanced at the watch face. Snapping it shut, he replaced it in his pocket. He still didn’t know the time, it wasn’t important.

  That evening during a welcome lull in the inclement weather Stan Banks sat trembling on the firing step sharing a tin of prunes with Leslie Hill.

  “I can’t stand prunes, they give me the shits, like everything else around here,” he grunted.

  “You can’t turn down good food in the trenches, very unwise,” Hill answered.

  Banks frowned and shot him a look then glanced into No Man’s Land. The night chorus of croaking frogs and toads were out in full force – twice on previous nights he’d ventured out to catch one for no apparent reason that he could think of – but he never had. He’d heard them but had never discovered their whereabouts. When someone stated it was German animal impersonators keeping them awake, it had stretched his nerves to breaking point.